Arturo

After the semi-autobiographical STAR DUST, the studio was going to cast Linda in PUBLIC DEB NUMBER ONE (1940), which like her debut HOTEL FOR WOMEN, is also known by the preface ELSA MAXWELL'S . . . The studio did not cast her in this screwball comedy, but gave the role to Brenda Joyce, another Fox ingenue then enjoying her 15 minutes in A films; like Nancy Kelly, she would be relegated to B-films within a year or so. Instead of PDNO, Linda was reteamed with Tyrone Power for the historical epic BRIGHAM YOUNG. When the studio decided to feature a relative unknown in the title role (Dean Jagger), they felt they needed boxoffice insurance in the form of Power and his popular new costar Darnell. They played young lovers in the westward trek of the Mormons. This was Fox' most expensive film up to then, and while it proved to be popular, it found it difficult to recoup its huge costs in the deteriorating boxoffice situation of 1940, with the threat of the then European-only WW2 looming.

Bringing this back to the original content of the thread, I have a DVD (released by 20th?) that has both the 1935 and 1952 versions. Fox had contemplated remaking it in 1945, and was to have been directed by John Brahm and starred Laird Cregar, the winning combination of THE LODGER and HANGOVER SQUARE. Cregar's undtimely death put a stop to that.

I've been trying to cut and paste here stills of Linda to illustrate the movies I am discussing, but am unable to do so. If anyone here would like to help me out with this, I'd be very appreciative, and would be a nice complementary service for those who visit the thread. Thanks in advance.

*When Muni was giving the studio a hard time, they fell to Edward G. Robinson for a few of these things and I much prefer him, again, another man who appears to be enjoying his craft and not just insisting that his greatness be applauded.* Eddie G. was the recipient of a script development department at Warners that had been geared to fine-tuning prestige screenplays for the demanding Muni and his wife. When Muni bailed from WB at the end of the 30s, Robinson inherited some of these roles, and made them his own. He was especially impressive in the biopics A DISPATCH FROM REUTERS and DR. ERLICH'S MAGIC BULLET. I agree with the assessment here that Muni is not so well known today because he disappeared into his characterizations, rather than having his roles revolve around his establishe persona or image. However, i enjoy his biographical roles of the late 30s as well as his earlier movies. That said, his French accent in HUDSON'S BAY is a little hard to take (I much prefer Laird Cregar's joyful character as his sidekick here). Edited by: Arturo on Dec 11, 2012 11:56 PM

Linda Darnell's second movie role (not counting the aborted DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK) was in DAYTIME WIFE, where her name was above the title with that of co-star Tyrone Power. This lightweight entry proved popular upon release for the 1939 holiday season. The studio got plenty of fan mail requesting that the photogenic duo be reteamed. They thought of doing so in Power's next feature, JOHNNY APOLLO (1940), then known as DANCE WITH THE DEVIL. Also being considered was another promising ingenue, Nancy Kelly. 16 year old Linda would have played a gangster's moll. Since she wasn't trained as a singer or dancer, the studio thought better of casting her; for these same reasons, Fox also decided against Kelly. Director Henry Hathaway suggested Dorothy Lamour, with whom he had previously worked, and she was borrowed from Paramount to lend her sultry presence to this crime drama. Ironically soon after this, 20th signed to a long-term contract another player who had been at Paramount, but was only now making it big on Broadway, Betty Grable. A hoofer who could sing a bit, she would have fit the bill perfectly. Her starmaking turn would have to wait until later in the year, replacing Alice Faye in the technicolor confection DOWN ARGENTINE WAY. Anyway, Linda was then cast in the story based loosely on her discovery and arrival in Hollywood, STAR DUST (1940). This movie did well upon release, and during the premiere, Linda (with sole billing above the title) committed her prints into the cement in the forecourt of Graumann's Chinese Theatre, just as in the movie. She was on her way up.

*On a broader scale, we could say that all actors AND actresses had their film careers interrupted somewhat by the war. In 1945, Bette Davis has only one film. In previous years she has four or five each movie-going season.* Well with Davis, she did have lessened film work, but it predated 1945. The previous year she only had one release as well (not counting cameos in all-star revues), MR. SKEFFINGTON. The year before it had been two: WATCH ON THE RHINE and OLD ACQUAINTANCE. What she and many other female stars were up to that lessened film work, was they were doing their part on the home front. Not all could travel here and/or abroad to entertain troops, as mentioned here for Dietrich, but some traveled the country selling war bonds, etc. In the case of Davis, she was a co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and would be found there many evenings dancing with soldiers or helping out in general.

*I hope so! (Amber finally popping up on TCM...)* Yes, but even better would be a fully restored and released DVD, with deleted scenes as bonus material. The 65th anniversary just passed, but maybe for the 70th?

*Yes. I would say THE BAD SEED is Nancy Kelly's most-played film on TCM. I found her to be a very good actress, but it is clear that she found her niche on stage. Usually they go from stage to screen, but in her case, she went from screen to stage.* I agree she was very good in TBS, but as I said, she was variable while under contract at Fox in the late 30s-early 40s. I think she was good in costume films (JESSE JAMES, STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE) and seems she would have continued to be so in some films earmarked for her but didn;t do (SWANEE RIVER, THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES). I think that she was then not adept at playing comedy; she was derivative and very unsubtle (HE MARRIED HIS WIFE), and this may have helped the powers that be determine that she was not the all around player they were looking for (additionally, her turning 18 around this time might have had the men in charge there lining up...and she may not have been forthcoming, to the detriment of her career. This is all speculation on my part, but during this period, one promising starlet after another at that studio got strong roles initially, these then tapered off to supporting parts or B films...just saying).

Over the years I have known and partied with some women who loved wearing vintage dresses/outfits they found at thrift or vintage stores. Being the Hollywood area where these shops were at, they sometimes wondered if the original owners might've been a name back in the day. Needless to say, their glamorous getups were at minimum conversation starters, and often great crowd pleasers,

LadyE: Welcome to the boards. Great first post. You expressed concisely and articulately your reasons for having Barbara Stanwyck so high on your list of favorites. She too is one of my absolute favorites (higher than the better known Davis or Crawford IMHO), as well as many of the others here on these boards. Again welcome.

Here's a picture of Linda from a scene that was deleted from the released print of FOREVER AMBER. I first saw this still around 1980, in a Life magazine article on that movie dating from the time of its release in the fall of 1947. I marvel at what can be found on the internet these days. Edited by: Arturo on Dec 11, 2012 2:19 AM

I posted this on the Classic Movie Actors on Episodic TV thread awhile earlier this evening, but seems to be just as appropriate here: I recently came across a series of videos on Youtube that shows the mystery celebrity clip segments on "What's My Line". I found this while looking for whatever clips were available for Linda Darnell. Hers is a good one, done in march 1956, talking in a good Italian accent, and looking glamorous and beautiful. of course in the comment segment I obviously didn't know Youtube etiquette, and being me, posted 1500 characters, when most had brief comments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cef-S3oXSuA There are many more movie star clips you can access, most are quite entertaining.

Well confining my choices to those that were romantic leading men and women, as opposed to character actors, it's still a hard choice. of the cuff i'd go with: For women: Miriam Hopkins (especially as she aged) June Allyson For men: James Mason Jack Lemmon

I recently came across a series of videos on Youtube that shows the mystery celebrity clip segments on "What's My Line". I found this while looking for whatever clips were available for Linda Darnell. Hers is a good one, done in march 1956, talking in a good Italian accent, and looking glamorous and beautiful. of course in the comment segment I obviously didn't know Youtube etiquette, and being me, posted 1500 characters, when most had brief comments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cef-S3oXSuA There are many more movie star clips you can access, most are quite entertaining. Edited by: Arturo on Dec 10, 2012 11:59 PM

*The war interrupted many careers. Of course, Loretta continued to appear in motion pictures at this time and her career continued along nicely in the 1940s.* Well yes, but it was specifically the men who went to war who's careers were interrupted. Not all were able to get back on keel when they returned.

*Nancy Kelly is one that tends to be forgotten. Not many people discuss her around here. Was she friends with Linda?* Well< I don't know if they were friends, but soon enough, it must've been obvious to Nancy that she was being bypassed for roles originally announced for her. She had started off promisingly at 20th in 1938 at the age of 17, after a child actress career, and the studio saw her as a successor to Loretta Young, who was adamant that she would not sign another contract at Fox. However, Nancy's roles demonstrated a variable acting quality, and by the end of 1939, the studio no longer were sure if they saw her as star material. After a couple of loan outs in 1940, she was reassigned to Fox' B Unit, where she pretty much remained for the duration while under contract. By 1943 or so, she was dropped, and did whatever B movie roles she could get. There was a gap where she worked on stage, and in the 50s scored a huge hit as the mother of "The Bad Seed", a role she recreated for the movie version, earning a Best Actress nomination. She did some more stage venues, but the oscar nomination did not lead to the expected revival of her film career.

If and when there is a Linda Darnell SOTM tribute on TCM, I am hoping they will show her debut film, HOTEL FOR WOMEN (1939), which had been on an early schedule for her SUTS day last year. After a false start in the film capital, when a horrified Darryl F. Zanuck sent her home when he found out her true age of 14, a year later she returned to Fox, where with a couple of weeks of her arrival in Spring 1939, she was given the lead in HFW. She played a prospective model coming to New York, and acquitted herself well. Her age of 15 was publicly changed to 17, so she could more believably play a romantic lead. Zanuck was so pleased with her in this that he quickly cast about for another role for her; he found one in an epic about to begin production, John Ford's DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK. She was given the supporting role already assigned to starlet Dorris Bowden, and went on location to Utah. When she returned to Hollywood, Zanuck was more convince that he had a star-in-the-making, and decided she would be wasted in DATM. So he took her out, and Bowden was given back the role. However, the part was sharply curtailed, as the studio would not refilm those scenes done on location. To this day, Linda is in some of the long shots where her face is not recognizable. Zanuck next cast Linda to costar with the top male star on the lot, on then one of Hollywood's biggest stars, Tyrone Power, in DAY-TIME WIFE. Loretta Young had balked at being cast in this screwball comedy, and left the studio around this time. Fox then cast their (hopefully) new star Nancy Kelly, who had been Power's costar in JESSE JAMES earlier that year. She was removed from this, and given another screwball, HE MARRIED HIS WIFE, with Joel McCrea. Darnell and Power proved to be a popular twosome, and the studio would soon re-team them three more times.

*Nice pictures, TopBilled ... I loved Richard Greene, particularly. I think he was married to Patricia Medina when they made that movie.* Richard Greene was in the first year of his contract at 20th Century Fox when he made KENTUCKY in mid-1938. Fox saw him as a rival to Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor and their own Tyrone Power; he was an immediate sensation with women, including those on the lot. At the time, he seemed to be dating red haired starlet Arleen Whelan; later, he was involved with Wendy Barrie, his costar in 1939's THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. In 1940, Greene asked for release from the Fox contract, so he could return the Britain and join the armed forces against the Axis. It was only then, in 1941, that he met and married Patricia Medina. He would do the occasional propaganda British was film. He returned to Hollywood in 1945-46, principally to accompany his wife to see about a film career here. He quickly got work in films (FOREVER AMBER among others), but was unable to reestablish his pre-war popularity as a matinee idol. In the 1950s, he was doing mainly swashbuckling programmers, then found renewed success as Robin Hood on TV. Edited by: Arturo on Dec 10, 2012 11:37 PM

*I think it is good that folks purchase titles from the Fox Archives. This is where commercialism can actually help rescue Hollywood history from those dusty vaults!* I actually think that TCM is doing a similar service, first in making available al those classics on DVD through their site, and in actually havng their own released sets of films that have had no official DVD release. Altuistic we maywant it to be, and to an extent I believe it so, but if money was not made it would dry up quickly. This is what happened with the manufactured series of classics put out by WB, Fox and others, and stopped around 2009-2010, as sales slipped for a number of reasons but also as the Recession was hitting its nadir. The studios saw no money in this. Now through the DVD-Rom releases, they are tentatively moving back.

I saw KENTUCKY on the schedule. I didn't mention it as I recorded it to DVD off of Fox in the last year or , thereby replacing my VHS copy. But if it is a release on the Fox Archive Classics series, I will try to buy it as well (money permitting). I really enjoy this early technicolor film, and it was the archetype of one of the stories that the studio would adapt time and again, in this case, rival horse breeing families with a Romeo/Juliet situation of love between the families. They first remade it a couple of years later in DOWN ARGENTINE WAY, as a musical with Don Ameche and Betty Grable in her starmaking role, replacing Alice Faye. In KENTUCYK I think that Loretta and Richard Greene make a stunningly beautiful couple, as they had earlier in 1938 in FOUR MEN AND A PRAYER, Greene's debut on Fox.

*You have my support, so between the two of us, we've got September (I'm touting Alan Ladd in a thread that has dropped back a page or two) and October covered.* Thank you clore for your support. here's hoping that Ladd and Darnell each get a near future SOTM tribute, and we get to see many Paramount and Fox classics, respectively, that have not yet graced the airwaves of TCM.

I see that on January16 and January 23 TCM is showing two movies that Loretta made at 20th Century Fox, which I am anxious to see. I have both on VHS, recorded years ago off the FMC (or was it AMC?). Both are also part of the early releases on Fox Archive Classics, and plan to buy them, as opposed to recording these upcoming showings, to help encourage more of these releases: SUEZ(1938): 19th Century fictionalized epic dealing with the building of said canal, and which Loretta was unhappy filming, feeling her role as the future and present Empress Eugenie was window dressing. Well she makes the loveliest of window dressings IMO. Starring with Loretta are Tyrone Power, and Power's future wife Annabella, which turned out a fortunate accident for the pair. Originally cast had been Fox' French import, Simone Simon, but she was replaced with Annabella. How diferent for those involved might their lives played out had the original casting been adhered to. WIFE HUSBAND AND FRIEND (1939): Funny late screwball comedy, with Loretta imagining herself an aspiring opera singer, exasperated husband Warner Baxter actually the one with the talent to do this, and Binnie Barnes as the diva encouraging him to use this talent as well as trying to seduce him. Great fun. AND in a tie-in with the thread on Linda Darnell for SOTM, Fox remade it in 1949, as EVERYBODY DOES IT, with Linda as the diva, Paul Douglas as the harried husband, and Celeste Holm as the wife. It was just as good as the original. Edited by: Arturo on Dec 9, 2012 1:50 PM

*Don Ameche is one I would buy a book about in a heartbeat.* I found one on Ameche recently on-line, called "The Kenosha Comeback Kid". Its a slimvolume, but packs a lot of information. Apparently, It was published by a new publishing house focusing on Hollywood (or so it seems), BearManor Media. I also found an excellent biography they published on Lynn Bari, Fox' own Queen of the Bs (once Claire Trevor left in the late 30s), "Foxy Lady". The author of the Ameche book is Ken Ohmart, I believe and Bari's is Jeff Gordon. Edited by: Arturo on Dec 8, 2012 7:44 PM

TB, I've always thought that a number of stars are not now given their due because when the wave of filmographical volumes on Hollywood stars, be it Citadel Press or the little Pyramid books, they were overlooked. For whatever reasons, this semed especially true of Fox stars: sure Power and Faye got theirs late in the cycle, and Shirley Temple and Marilyn Monroe were each a phenomenon, but what about Don Ameche, Loretta Young(admittedly only a short time at Fox but a star nonetheless), Betty Grable, Gene Tierney, Jeanne Crain and Linda, among others. So subsequent generations have had no clue as to their actual popularity back in the 30s, 40s etc. And when the nostalgia wave of the 70s focused on fabulous female faces, seems that Young, Tierney and Darnell should have been prominent in that pantheon. So the search has been frustrating for long stretches.

*In this thread you wrote about a book that you bought regarding Linda Darnell. Thanks for mentioning that.* *A book that is a prized possession of mine is The Alice Faye Movie Book which goes into considerable detail about all of Alice's motion pictures. The author is W. Franklyn Moshier, and there is a foreword by director Henry King.* I also have the Alice Faye Movie Book, and enjoy perusing through it occasionally. Besides the book I mentioned, "Forever Amber: From Novel to Film", I have "Linda Darnell, Hollywood Beauty", and a home-made job I recently found online, "Linda Darnell: The Girl With the Perfect Face". This last one I can't recommend; besides poor quality picture reproduction (it's a photo book of Linda's movies basically), t]some are distorted to fit the space. Worse, some are out of order, representing the wrong movie, and there are some inaccuracies in the text, but as a fan of Linda's who has suffered a drought on published information on her since I first started to like her, it was welcome. Edited by: Arturo on Dec 8, 2012 6:18 PM