April 23, 1944
Don’t get me wrong. Loretta still is a glamor girl and never prettier than she is at this moment, but with a difference. She’s found what any woman would give 10 years of her life to have — a husband whose companionship, understanding and adoration have made her one of the few completely happy women.
Note the reference to Judy, her 7-year-old adopted daughter.
April 23, 1944
Errol Flynn and Peggy Maley are a thing … Judy Garland and Vincent Minnelli are dinner companions … In his next Andy Hardy picture, Mickey Rooney will go for a glamorazon and Dorothy Ford is being considered for the role … George Jessel and Gypsy Rose Lee were a combination this week. Phil Silvers told off a writer who kept heckling him on the set. “If you don’t behave yourself,” said Phil, “I’ll say those lines the way you wrote them.”
In perusing Film Spectator for 1928, I found this review of “London After Midnight,” one of the most intriguing of the lost silent movies.
Oh dear:
“The whole thing is too utterly silly to warrant detailed criticism…. There is about one reel of story embellished by six reels of utter rot.”
April 22, 1944
HOLLYWOOD, April 22 — Col. Frank Capra’s “The Negro Soldier” had its premiere at the theater in the Ambassador Hotel this week and was highly lauded by all who attended. Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis, highest ranking Negro officer in the Army, made an excellent speech before the picture.
April 22, 1944
HOLLYWOOD, April 21 — Jean Arthur’s contract with Columbia ends with “The Impatient Years” and she is not re-signing with this company, or any other. Jean is doing what Claudette Colbert did when she announced recently she would not continue with Paramount. Both girls are going on their own to pick their own stories, studios and directors.
I was given a box of material that was cleaned out of the old press room at the LAPD’s Parker Center headquarters, sometimes called “the cop shop.” The box was a jumble of press releases, photographs, artists’ sketches and other items dating from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.
All I know about this gentleman is that he is Capt. Villanueva Serial No. 10235. I can’t find any other information about him in the clips.
This week’s mystery movie was the 1965 film “Once a Thief,” written by Zekial Marko (our mystery man for Tuesday) and directed by Ralph Nelson, with longtime Alfred Hitchcock cinematographer Robert Burks (“North by Northwest” and “Vertigo” among many others).
The jazz score was by Lalo Schifrin in one of his first pictures, with editing by Fredric Steinkamp (“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”). The art direction was by George W. Davis and Paul Groesse (both of whom had worked on the TV show “Twilight Zone”) ; and set decoration by Henry Grace, another “Twilight Zone” veteran, and Jack Mills (“Attack of the Puppet People” and “One Step Beyond”).
Garden City Foto Co. demonstrated its setup for high-angle shots in this ad from a Los Angeles city directory.
Long before topnotch stills photographers like Fred Hartsook and Albert Witzel began shooting high-end portraits, many early photographers captured Los Angeles residents’ likenesses for posterity. Most worked for only a few years as photographers before moving on to other professions. Then as now, rapidly changing technologies forced many out of business. By the 1890s, portrait photographers dominated the Los Angeles’ photography field.
Photography as a medium began with Joseph Nicephore Niepce’s use of heliography to capture the first image of a view from an upstairs window of his estate in 1826 or 1827, now part of the Harry Ransom Center’s photography collection. In 1829, Niepce partnered with Louis Daguerre to experiment with which materials were most sensitive to light and would most expose detailed, finished images on plates. Daguerre’s use of fuming his plates after exposure with heated mercury created a permanent image, revealed to the public in 1837. William Henry Fox Talbot in England developed his own printing techniques around the same time, which he displayed to Royal Institution in January 1839. Thus, photography as we know it, was born.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.
Nobody does “true” crime stories quite like the Brits. And the Daily Mail is all over this one.
Suppose I told you that Suzanne Degnan (1946), the Black Dahlia (1947), Jimmy Hoffa (disappeared 1975), the Zodiac victims (late 1960s) AND JonBenet Ramsey (1996) were killed by the same man?
And that it WASN’T Dr. George Hodel?
That is the totally crazy theory of “retired cold case detective” John Cameron, who calls himself “Cold Case Cameron” and is the author of “IT’S ME, Edward Wayne Edwards, the Serial Killer You Never Heard Of.”
I’ve seen a lot of crackpot stuff written about the Black Dahlia case but this takes it to a whole new level of absurdity. And the sad thing is that somewhere, someone is going to take this nonsense seriously. He’s a retired police detective…. he must know what he’s talking about. (Does that remind you of anyone else?)
Carl Davis conducts a live orchestra in his score for “Why Worry?” at the TCM Classic Film Festival. Photograph by Tyler Golden / Turner Entertainment Networks.
Just as the TCM Classic Film Festival offers a diverse selection of film genres spanning the history of American film, it also provides a diverse cross-section of accompanying music for silent films screening in the festival. This year’s silent film accompanists represented most of the ways typical silent film audiences would have heard music played with films at theaters.
There was no typical form of accompaniment for silent films, as location and size of theatre dictated what type of music would be appropriate. Movie palaces lavished rich accompaniment and presentation on films, while smaller local theaters provided bare, basic music. Accompaniment spanned everything from full orchestras, to chamber groups, bands, organ, photoplayer, piano, and guitar.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.
April 18, 1944
Hedy Lamarr is having the picture “Diamond Rock” prepared for her at Metro while she is busy making “The Conspirators.” Grad Sears is telling friends that United Artists will acquire “The Voice of the Turtle,” with Leland Hayward in on the producing set-up… Vivian Marshall says she just found out the difference between her legs and Betty Grable’s. Vivian says, “Mine just hold me up; hers support her.”
Also: At MGM, one end of Sound Stage 15 has been removed to accommodate four B-25s for filming “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.”
What’s going on with the “Greatest Generation?”
April 18, 1944
HOLLYWOOD, April 17 — Now I ask you, who better than Errol Flynn could do “The Adventures of Don Juan” and have five feminine honeys, no less, fighting for his affections all through the movie? Not only is the picture on tap for Errol at Warners but John Taintor Foote has turned in the finished screenplay. About 12 or 15 years ago John Barrymore made “Don Juan” for Warners and before that it had been one of De Wolf Hopper’s stage successes. He also made a movie but that was when movies were flickers.
The high romance of the Spanish adventurer and great lover who lived in the 16th century will follow “Objective Burma” for Errol with Jerry Wald producing. Speaking of Errol, here is a little followup on his recent fisticuffs with Dan Topping: Dan went to Flynn’s house to tell him he was sorry and that it had all been a mistake. The boys are still friends.
The reject pile! Aspiring authors, avert thine eyes!
In case you just tuned in, this is one of the books I retrieved from the piles of review copies put out for the staff.
I’m not familiar with Alejandro Morales, a UC Irvine professor of Chicano and Latino studies, but the text seems interesting and definitely worth a look.
Here’s a sample chosen at random, Pages 84-85.
April 17, 1944
Esther Williams is the cover girl in this week’s issue of Life magazine with a feature on “Bathing Beauty.”
And what happened to all that WPA artwork? It was sold as junk.
April 17, 1944
Who is Harold Heffernan? He’s a new one on me.
HOLLYWOOD, Cal., April 17 — Friends of Steve Crane and Lana Turner say that it finally was a case of two ambitious people under one roof. Crane came to Hollywood believing he had leading man qualifications and was determined to carve out a career for himself.
On the same day Lana issued her announcement that everything was lovely, the studio (Columbia) where Crane is under contract slipped out the story of their latest break. Crane had already left home to reside with a friend. He couldn’t bear to read his wife’s protestations of bliss, so he broke the story.
“Only one girl in Hollywood history ever approached Lana for doing the unexpected,” said an old timer. ” Her name — Clara Bow.”
Also: Howard Hawks’ tip on how to get a throaty voice.
April 17, 1944
A VERY PRETTY COMPLEMENT HAS BEEN PAID Mrs. Lillian Fontaine, mother of Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland, by Mark Dennison, who writes to say: “I should think Joan Fontaine and Olivia De Havilland should be terribly proud of their mother, who sometimes acts under the name of Kit Colvin. I saw her performance as Aunt Martha in a camp show of ‘Arsenic and Old Lace.’ She is so different from most movie mothers — so obviously well bred and not a stage struck, ambitious woman, but a charming older woman of beauty and as much talent as, if not more than, her daughters. I admire her for using her talent instead of just sitting back basking in their reflections I should think she would be wonderful in movies.”
April 16, 1944
WAR NOTES OF THE WEEK: Errol Flynn purchasing a newspaper with the headline, “Chaplin Acquitted,” and saying to Pal, the newsboy on Sunset Strip, “I’m awfully glad to read this.”
April 16, 1944
HOLLYWOOD, April 15 — “There is no happiness possible,” Myrna Loy said, “when two people have divergent interests. You do not think alike and you cannot find real congeniality or mutual enjoyment.”
That statement, following just a few weeks after an interview with Joan Fontaine, in which she told me “I am convinced happiness isn’t possible for two people in the same profession,” made me wonder which girl is right.
Myrna believes a husband and wife must be of the theater, and Joan believes it’s fatal to happiness to have two stars in one family. It’s not for me to analyze the pros and cons of these statements.
I was given a box of material that was cleaned out of the old press room at the LAPD’s Parker Center headquarters, sometimes called “the cop shop.” The box was a jumble of press releases, photographs, artists’ sketches and other items dating from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.
Before I tell you anything about this woman, take a moment and try to guess what her story is.
Carl Davis conducts an orchestra for “Why Worry?” at the TCM festival. Photograph by Tyler Golden / Turner Entertainment Networks.
Blending popular, timeless films with bountiful celebrity appearances, the TCM Classic Film Festival gloriously salutes the epoch of classic American filmmaking from the 1920s through the 1960s during its four-day stay in Hollywood. As in past years, the 2014 festival celebrated iconic cinema moments and glamorous, larger than life personalities in a joyous presentation of beloved motion pictures, geared to those who live in places where classic films are rarely presented on the big screen or feature celebrity appearances.
Turner smartly carries attendees back in time by organizing the festival around the historic built environment of Hollywood, in the actual movie palaces and streets through which legendary stars shaped film and cultural history. The festival employs such famous, striking locations as the El Capitan, Egyptian, Ricardo Montalban and TCL Chinese Theatres as film venues, with the legendary Roosevelt Hotel serving as festival headquarters, just as it did as Hollywood’s party central from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Mary Mallory’s “Hollywoodland: Tales Lost and Found” is available for the Kindle.
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