VP19
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Posts posted by VP19
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Speaking of vintage film star cards, perhaps the most beautiful were the Garbaty series issued in Germany in the 1930s. You can learn more about them at http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/205341.html.
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"Cherokee Strip" opened in October 1940.
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As a Carole Lombard fan, I can think of several stars she should have been teamed with, and indeed might have had she not left us at a relatively young age. For male co-stars:
James Cagney
Humphrey Bogart
Edward G. Robinson
Errol Flynn
Henry Fonda
Tyrone Power
Paul Muni
Cary Grant*
*Grant and Lombard appeared in several films, and even co-starred in "In Name Only," but the acknowledged top stars of the screwball genre never made a comedy together.
There weren't many co-star pairings of actresses n those days, but it would've been fun to see Lombard work with Myrna Loy (their comedic approaches were quite different, but they might have complemented each other) or her good friend Jean Harlow (imagine them cast as sisters).
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Sorry to rain on the parade, but...
According to IMDB, Virginia Bruce died Feb. 24, 1982, (the day after my father died, BTW). So it may be the centenary of her birth, but alas, she won't be here to celebrate it.
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TCM will show nine Constance Bennett films on Oct. 22 (the 106th anniversary of her birth). She was a pretty capable actress in her day, especially the pre-Code era; not the easiest personality to get along with, to be sure, but definitely one of the screen's great beauties.
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Carole Lombard apparently performed four times on "Silver Theater," but only one is known to currently exist -- a March 9, 1941 thriller-comedy called "Murder Unlimited," where Carole portrays a newspaper reporter who uncovers a murder ring, then has to escape their clutches. It took Lombard some time to become comfortable with radio, but by the end of the 1930s she was a skilled broadcast performer -- and had she lived longer, she might have done a lot more in radio, similar to contemporaries such as Alice Faye or Lucille Ball.
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The character actor tribute suggestion is a splendid idea. Here are a few I'd like to see recognized:
Walter Connolly
Eugene Pallette
Una Merkel
Then there are a few who sort of straddled the line between leads and supporting roles. Two who come to mind are Roland Young and Glenda Farrell.
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I like to think they planned the Myrna-thon just for you.
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Hope you're enjoying the Myrna-thon, featuring multiple appearances by Irene Dunne and Rosalind Russell.
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Doom, it's people like you that give me hope for the future. (I'm 54.)
As for me, I guess I became a fan through TV in the 1960s. Stations in my hometown of Syracuse played old films all the time; one regularly showed them late Sunday afternoons, back in the day before weekend network sports dominated programming.
I think I've mentioned this story before here, but it's worth repeating: In 1964, when I had just turned nine, one of the stations ran the multi-episodic "If I Had A Million," which I wanted to watch because one of the segments starred W.C. Fields, a favorite of mine. Well, this version had not been cut for television and was the original film shown in theaters in 1932...and the second episode starred Wynne Gibson as a prostitute who uses the million she is willed to go into a fancy hotel to sleep...alone. We got to see her strip to her underwear at the side of the bed, take off her stockings and turn out the light. Needless to say, seeing a woman in lingerie at that age was a new experience, and my horrified mother hurriedly changed the channel. I wouldn't see the Fields segment for many years. (It may also explain why I'm such a fan of pre-Code!)
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It should be noted that "Morocco" was the basis for the first "Lux Radio Theater" broadcast from Hollywood, on June 1, 1936. ("Lux" actually began out of New York in 1934, but its ratings were lackluster. The sponsor decided to move the show to Los Angeles, since the cost of transcontinental radio hookups was decreasing, and the subsequent added star power made it a huge success.)
Some other things to note: For some reason, the radio adaptation was retitled "The Legionnaire And The Lady" (Production Code problems, perhaps?), and Marlene Dietrich's co-star was not Gary Cooper, but, of all people, Clark Gable! (They would never team up on screen.) The broadcast was recorded, as were most of the Hollywood "Lux" broadcasts, and can be found on mp3 discs and online.
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John Wayne was in a mid-1940s train movie, "Without Reservations" with Claudette Colbert.
A movie with a train sequence that comes to mind is "Third Finger, Left Hand" with Myrna Loy. IIRC, there was a black train conductor or porter (forget which) who was taking a correspondence law course, and provided advice for Myrna's character.
Someone mentioned the 1950 "Union Station" (which I have never seen) and noted some link to subway tunnels in Los Angeles. At the time, LA didn't have a subway system -- but it had a subway station, of sorts. Many streetcar routes (the "red cars" and "yellow cars" of yore) had their downtown terminus at the Subway Terminal Building; the station opened in 1925 and closed in 1955 (although the building still exists). However, that was several blocks from Union Station, which is on the northern edge of downtown. It didn't have a subway link until MTA opened the Red Line in 1993.
This is a fascinating thread. I traveled cross country by train in September 1996 (the Lake Shore Limited from NY to Chicago, then the now-defunct Desert Wind from Chicago to southern California). Every American should make a transcontinental trip at ground level at least one during their lifetime; it gives one a grasp of this country's geography and how it grew.
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This promises to be a simply incredible book, a ticket to the glory that was classic Hollywood. I only hope this leads to books visually exploring and giving insight to other fabled studios such as Paramount/RKO (hey, they were neighbors for decades until the former absorbed the latter), Warners and Fox.
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Let's not forget the title song, done by Mel Torme over the opening credits. Bobby Darin, in his ersatz Sinatra mode,(that's not meant as criticism; he was darn good at it), had the most successful recording.
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Any link? Can you tell us more about it (author, etc.)?
Apparently Mark Vieira is trying to get a publisher interested in a pictorial book about Harlow, though I don't believe it's this particular project. Anyway, it's good to see that the centennial of one of filmdom's most likable stars and genuine icons is being noted.
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Nothing against Monroe, but couldn't we have one biopic about Carole Lombard, who has more to say to today's women than Marilyn could? (And Lord knows we could use such a biopic to erase the trashy inaccuracies of "Gable And Lombard.")
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There were essentially three stages of Gable:
*1. The early, threatening Gable* (think of "A Free Soul" or "Night Nurse") -- he started as a very menacing type, comparable to what James Cagney was doing at the same time. Clark certainly had the presence to pull it off, and he drew a great reaction for it, but there was no way he could have done this over the long haul (especially since Gable lacked Cagney's natural deftness). So MGM evolved his persona into...
*2. ...the charming Gable of the 1930s* ("No Man Of Her Own," "It Happened One Night," "Gone With The Wind" and many others) -- beginning in 1932, MGM gradually reworked Gable into a more sympathetic type; he still had much of the animal magnetism that made him a star in the first place, but had more texture and likability. Women wished they could be with him; men wished they were him. He was like this through 1941 or so.
*3. The postwar Gable* (from "Adventure" to "The MIsfits") -- World War II, and the loss of Carole Lombard, certainly changed Gable...but the industry had changed as well. Hollywood was a more sober-minded place after the war, and the persona Clark carried through the 1930s didn't play anymore. Age also dimmed his energetic quality.
Gable always admitted his acting chops were not as strong as that of his good friend Spencer Tracy...but conversely, Tracy admitted being jealous of Gable's outsized personality. They were both effective in what they did, but reached the result in differing ways.
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I've seen a lot of baseball over the years, and some memorable moments and teams. I was at David Cone's perfect game in July 1999 at Yankee Stadium; the following Memorial Day at the Stadium, I witnessed Oakland's Randy Velarde (a former Yankee) pull off an unassisted triple play. Before moving to north Jersey, where I saw a lot of Yanks and Mets games, I lived in suburban Philadelphia, and saw many great moments from Mike Schmidt and memorably wild ride of the 1993 Phillies (RIP Harry Kalas and Rich Ashburn). I've been to postseason and All-Star games, including the World Series in 1993 and '96..
Now I live in the Washington area and am an avid Nationals fan, and would be happy merely to see them in a pennant race (something Washington hasn't experienced since 1945, when D.C.-born Goldie Hawn (A-Rod's future mother-in-law) was in her mother's womb (she was born that November). You can talk about the Cubs, Indians and Giants, none of whom have claimed the World Series for more than 50 years, but no area has been more cursed by the baseball gods than Washington (e.g., losing the team that became the Minnesota Twins 50 years ago just as their corps of young players was beginning to blossom, replaced by a nondescript expansion team that eventually defected to Dallas-Fort Worth). Hope you can change all that misfortune, Stephen Strasburg..
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Some actors study film history; others either aren't interested or simply are too busy with their craft to have the time. It's like current ballplayers who may not know who Walter Johnson or Honus Wagner were.
Speaking of sports and the lovely Ms. Welch, one of the earliest public images of her was as San Diego teenager Raquel Tejada on the sports page of the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 2, 1958 (she's in the white swimsuit in the lower right-hand corner):
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/files/1958_0802_sports.jpg
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> {quote:title=MissGoddess wrote:}{quote}
> > {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}
> > VP19 -
> >
> > Thank you so much for the link to the Lombard Archive, and also for the information about her. I was very close to posting Lombard as my first entry in this thread, but I simply couldn't decide which of the hundreds of photos to post, and it would have taken some time to go through and choose the best. She will definitely be spotlighted here at some point when I get it together a little more. I believe MissG has quite a good collection of Lombard photos as well.
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> VP19's site is amazing, I haven't checked it out in a while but it's always been bookmarked and is the best place on the web for all things Lombardia. I'll try to post some pix later today of my favorite blonde.
Thank you for the compliment...the reference is to "Carole & Co.", which you can find at http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/
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> {quote:title=primosprimos wrote:}{quote}
> Judas Priest, that satin gown in the second picture is breath-taking. And the curtains!
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> If I had them, I would do a Carol Burnett and make a gown out of them. Gasp.
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> Jack, do you have a shot of Constance as Marion Kerby from Topper in that dolman-sleeved satin gown she wore for most of the picture? I don't know which was prettier, the dress or Cary.
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> I'm curious -- were more glamour shots taken of her than other actresses? If yes, why? Was she a studio darling?
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> Are there as many shots of Carole Lombard, who was equally fetching?
Sure! Lombard was a photographer's favorite because of her beauty, her vivacity and her knowledge of the process. While at Paramount, she posed for more than 1,700 portraits over her seven years at the studio...and she made hundreds and hundreds of others during her career, from work at Mack Sennett and Pathe in the late 1920s to Columbia, RKO and other studios in later years.
To see hundreds of examples of Carole before a camera, visit the Carole Lombard Photo Archive at http://carolelombard.org/gallery/index.php?cat=3.
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I'm surprised no one has brought up the "Gunsmoke" radio series, which ran from 1952 to 1961 and to my mond was superior to its TV version. William Conrad portrayed Marshal Dillon on radio, and he's brilliant; so are the scripts (which could be a bit less compromising than the episodes on TV) and sound effects. I would love it if those making the film used the radio series as primary source material. For more of my observations, go to http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/289360.html ..
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A project to post many film-related magazines from the classic Hollywood era online in high-quality PDF form -- fan magazines, trade publications and others -- has just begun. You can see several volumes of Photoplay from 1925-1930, as well as Motion Picture Classic and Moving Picture World. More magazines and volumes will be installed in the near future.
To access the material, go to http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=%22media%20history%20digital%20library%22. For more information on the endeavor, visit http://community.livejournal.com/carole_and_co/291439.html.
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> {quote:title=tcmprogrammr wrote:}{quote}
> This is the way it usually works: we ask for a list of their top 10 (or so) and we can almost always access at least 4 of them. Sometimes they ask for a list of what we have, which is many thousands of films, and we send that to them. Sometimes they request specific films about which they're very passionate, but that aren't licensed, and on occasion we're able to license a special run. As a couple of people have already mentioned, we don't have every movie available to us at any particular time, but we have tried to work closely with studios to have broader access to their libraries than ever before.
Thanks for the background.
I'd like to suggest a possible future guest programmer -- Julie Newmar. She's a very bright lady with a fondness for classic Hollywood, particularly actresses of the era such as Rita Hayworth and Carole Lombard.
Whose bio would make a great film
in General Discussions
Posted
William Powell's life would be intriguing, particularly if you focused on his period from 1929 to 1940, when he made the transition from silent-screen villain/character actor to sound-film leading man. His rise, then fall (including a severe illness and the tragic death of someone he loved) and career rebirth would make a fine story -- and when you consider the legends whose lives intersected with his, either professionally and/or romantically (Lombard, Harlow, Loy), it would have much appeal. Of course, what actor today would have the suavity to portray Powell?