hassan974
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Posts posted by hassan974
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An excerpt from "The Making of COVER GIRL" c2004 Hassan Khan.
RITA HAYWORTH and the fine art of DISPLAY
All collective talent on Cover Girl agree that Rita Hayworth possessed the fine art of "display." They consider this quality, which Hayworth possessed to be the most intensely feminine quality that any actress could bring to the screen. It is not mere empty display, and involves far more than being unfailingly decorative. Women more beautiful than Rita have paraded across the screen, carefully photographed, gowned and made up, and lacking the ability to display. It is Hayworth's own and seeing Rita Hayworth in movement is to believe it. And it could only be seen on the set of a shooting company, for that is the only time that Rita Hayworth chose to bring it forth.
Off-screen and during rehearsals, Rita withheld the spark. "But when the camera turns", warns Cover Girl film editor, Viola Lawrence, "You just have to stand there and wonder where it all comes from. She is electric and the camera doesn't want to photograph anything else." Hayworth had a precious feminine quality that many a self-propelled Hollywood actress has struggled to duplicate before being cruelly unmasked by the camera.
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How many of you have seen her pre-codes on TCM? THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP is completetly hysterical with Charles Laughton doing his usual over-acting of the period with the worst east end cockney I ever heard. Love him though.
Tallulah is great in FAITHLESS (1932) with Robert Montgomery. She plays a spoiled rich girl who, despite depression era warnings, refuses to curtial her extravagant spending. The eventual riches to rags happens and she has to take to prostitution to get medicine for her dying husband. It's more of a Clara Bow type motion picture, but Tallulah does a great job in it. They showed it first on the old TNT and then on TCM.
I haven't read all the Tallulah posts so I hope I am not mentioning something that has been gone over before.
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Hi,
It's not a book I am doing. It is a series of quarterly newsmagazines in which each features a different Hayworth film with in depth behind the scenes "creation of" kind of stuff. It's the kind of thing that has limited marketability since it does not contain sleezy personal life details. There is no "hook" to bring in buyers; just good old fashioned accurate Hollywood history. It's strictly for people interested in film from that standpoint. It really gives an idea of how a studio work at creating these now classic films.
I haven't figured out the cost per issue yet but I do have my printer lined up. I've done everything myself on computer: layout, typesetting, design. You didn't think that Orson Welles was the only one who liked controlling everything, did you? lol
The nice thing is that people are able to email me photos from their collection to use without having to send originals. People have been generous in scanning and sending photos rare photos at the required resolution for printing.
I don't need to retire off these newsmagazines but I would like to recover my costs and make a little for years spent researching. We'll see what happens in this soft book market. The people at Columbia have been very generous with tie-ins because I am also giving them publicity for their Rita Hayworth DVD's. Thanks for asking. Hassan K.
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April,
Can you give some information about the short? Perhaps story line and anything you can remember about it?
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Hi sandykaypax,
I understand that the Judy devotees panned the Gerald Clarke Garland book because he did not diefy her. I know it took Clarke ten years to complete the book and he tried to make it as balanced as possible. I haven't read all of it because I have little patience for some of her shenanigans.
Garland did herself a career injustice in pandering to her post 1951 gay cult of followers and playing "poor Dorothy victim of the world." In doing so, she lost her mainstream followers. In 1963, when I'd ask people at work if they had seen the Judy Garland show their remarks were: "Judy Garland? I thought she was dead." Most people didn't care about her anymore.
There's a bit I read skimming the book where Judy and her children are at a hotel in NYC and they are asking her to pay the bill. There is Judy, leg hanging out the window on the 16th floor threatening to jump. All of this in front of her children, mind you. "What will my fans think when they read that poor Dorothy has jumped from a hotel window because of you?" Instead of being an adult and going directly to the hotel manager and saying: "Look, I am Judy Garland. I am broke and I have children here who will be in the street if you throw us out. I'm still able to perform. If you give me a room, I promise I will make it up to at a later date." They would not have put her out. Tina Turner did the same thing when Ike beat her for the last time and she walked out on him. She walked into a hotel in Vegas, told them the truth, that she had no place to go, and promised to repay them later when she was working. And they gave her a room for as long as she needed it. No charge.
I saw many of Judy's final concerts in NYC, New Jersey and they were not sell-outs. I saw her 1964 concert in Australia and the audience was more "mainstream" than "cult follower" and she was booed off the stage. I think that is the first and only time that ever happened to her. She left Australia saying "Perhaps I'll do stage work---a comedy." When she was late in Australia, they did not sit and wait for an hour saying "She'll be here, our Dorothy is scared." They said": "I want a refund." My attitude was: 'Honey, you've been singing onstage for 40 years. If you can't do it now you need to try hypnosis or retire." In losing a broader audience by playing up to her personal problems it is her own fault she lost considerable ticket-selling appeal.
Sad, especially since Garland was one of the major talents of all time. When she was on top form, she could do musically what many could not. She was highly intelligent. She was musically and intellectually superior to many around her. Her husband Vincente Minnelli was gay but George Bassman of Metro told me that he felt that Judy never had anyone else in her life who was as important cerebrally as Minelli. He felt Judy was with really unimportant people and needed someone with big brains. Judy said she never knew Minnelli was gay but I seriously doubt it since she was surrounded daily by gay men. Bassman told me Metro was a haven for homsexuals. All of them were married, he said, because socially it was more acceptable, but nothing was hidden. Musical arranger, Conrad Salinger, who Bassman described as looking like a bird, was called "Cherry Lips" by the straight men at Metro. He'd laugh with all the guys and say: "You make me take all my hairpins out and throw them away."
While they were making THE CLOCK, Bassman entered Judy's dressing room unannounced and she was reading. Judy quickly put the book away but Bassman pressed her to see what the book was. "It is important that you read," said Judy. "I read as much as I can and the book I am reading now I just can't put it down." The book turned out to be "The Fountainhead", the same book Bassman was reading. Judy and Bassman had something else in common: Judy's favorite scent was the smell of Gasoline. So was George's. Judy used to stop her car at a gas station and run out, smell the gasoline and hop back in her car and drive away! So, Bassman went home and got one of his wife's expensive Parisan perfume bottles, purloined it, filled it with gasoline and gave it to Judy. Judy went into hysterics when she took a sniff of the contents.
When she wasn't in "victim" mode, this lady was really something and, at times, apparently so much fun to be around.
KATHERINE HEPBURN AUCTION
in Your Favorites
Posted
An auction of Katherine Hepburn's personal effects will be held soon. While I do not know the exact date of this auction, a preview of the contents will be held tomorrow morning on the television show, Good Morning America.
Apparently, Hepburn kept quite a collection of 11x14 stills of herself and among the contents being auctioned are her artwork and her wedding dress from 1934!
Hassan (formerly musclephoto)