This magnificent building was located at 16th and Curtis Streets in Denver, built in 1881 for a then unheard of $850,000 ($19 million in today’s dollars) by one Horace A.W. Tabor, who made a fortune in silver mines. Look at this interior!
Cherry wood was imported from Japan and mahogany from Honduras, with 1,500 mohair seats facing a 72-ft. stage that was 50-ft. deep, with a giant painted curtain… seen here in glorious black and white.
The inscription on the curtain prophetically states:
“So fleet the works of man, back to the earth again.
Ancient and holy things fade like a dream.”
Here’s another view of the building…
The Tabor was remodeled in 1921 for movies, and operated for nine years as the Colorado Theater, before once again becoming The Tabor. The great acts of Vaudeville played the stage. It was sold in ’49 for a million dollars. By the ’50s, it was facing the threat of demolition as the population departed for the suburbs.
It was torn down in 1964. Its giant curtain, too large to be displayed anywhere, was stored for years and disintegrated, and was later hauled to a dump. Today, the site is this:
…the Denver branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Florence Arto of Houston Texas was born in 1895. Her husband was film director King Vidor, who put her to work in silent films in 1916 as Florence Vidor. They had a daughter, Suzanne. Flo divorced King in 1925 and married famed violinist Jascha Heifetz.
Her career ended with the advent of sound pictures. She died in 1977 at the age of 82.
Here’s a trailer for her lost film, Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Patriot,” the last silent film of the era to be nominated for an Oscar.
And here’s Jascha now with a little Tchaikovsky, ya slobs.
Barbara LaMarr (formerly Reatha Watson) was known as “The Girl Who is Too Beautiful,” and you can see why right here with her in this glittery turban.
She wrote at least seven screenplays for UA and Fox, starred with Douglas Fairbanks in 1921′s “The Nut” (that name!), and danced in musical comedies on Broadway, making numerous dance shorts with various partners in NYC, CHI and L.A. She was making $5,000 a week — which would be like making $63,000 a week today.
LaMarr married 5 times and had one child, Marvin Carville LaMarr… all before she was 29, when she died of TB and nephritis (reportedly brought on by drugs and alcohol — possibly the first drug-related death in filmdom).
Her son was adopted by her friends, character actress ZaSu Pitts and her husband, Tom Gallery. Little Marvin became Don Gallery (link is a PDF), an actor who occasionally dated Elizabeth Taylor.
LaMarr’s lovely beach house was blown up for a scene in “Inside Daisy Clover,” starring Natalie Wood. You can see LaMarr’s Hollywood house here.
Her famous quote: “I like my men like I like my roses… by the dozen.”
Today’s Turban Tuesday is the great character actor Frank Morgan as Professor Marvel in “The Wizard of Oz,” seen here advising Dorothy Gale just before the twister.
Morgan also played the gatekeeper of Emerald City, the driver of the carriage drawn by the horse of a different color, and of course, the Wizard of Oz.
The roles were originally to have been played by W.C. Fields, and you can almost hear Fields in the way the dialog is written. MGM got tired of haggling over Fields’ price, and gave the role to Morgan, with whom they had a lifetime contract.
Born Francis Phillip Wupperman in New York City in 1890, he was the only principal of the film who did not live to see its resurgence as a result of television.
Morgan died of a heart attack at 59 while filming “Annie Get Your Gun” in 1949.
Hug it out. Here’s 2010′s Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism winner John-Clark Levin, chatting it up with neuroeconomist and oxytocin expert Paul J. Zak aka Dr. Love at Claremont College.
Bring on the dancing girls, and don’t be stingy with the sequins.
Kirk Douglas is 95 today, and that makes him today’s Friday Face.
And as my grandmother would say, “Did you know Kirk Douglas was Jewish?!”
Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch in Amsterdam New York, December 9th, 1916. His first film, “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” is one of my favorites. It was profiled in a previous Friday Face.
But Douglas is best remembered for Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus,” which Douglas also produced, using writers who had been previously blacklisted during the McCarthy era.
Happy Birthday to one of Los Angeles’ great citizens, Kirk Douglas, today’s Friday Face.
If a piece of New York cheesecake could talk, it would sound like Thelma Ritter, today’s Friday Face, born in Brooklyn on Valentine’s Day 1902. She would become the most beloved character actress of her day.
At age 8, Ritter was performing recitals and monologues at Brooklyn’s PS 77. After acting in high school plays and stock companies, she enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She married actor Joseph Moran in 1927, and they had two children.
She resumed her career performing in radio in 1940. In 1946, her old friend, director George Seaton, offered her a bit part in the now classic “Miracle on 34th Street,” in which Thelma would play a tired holiday shopper. Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck was so moved by her performance, he had her role expanded — and it launched an unparalleled film career that would see 6 Oscar nominations as Best Supporting Actress. She never won.
Her first nomination was for her absolutely delicious role as the acerbic maid Birdie, opposite Bette Davis in 1950′s “All About Eve.” There isn’t a scene she’s in that she doesn’t steal.
She would earn four consecutive nominations — a feat equaled only by Jennifer Jones, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, and Al Pacino. Greer Garson had five consecutive nominations.
In the original “Titanic” made in 1953, she portrayed the cardplaying wisecracker, Maude Young. One of her lines is delivered wistfully and has always stayed with me.
Maude: [after Richard has rejected his son Norman and refused to play in the shuffleboard match with him]
“It certainly clouded up. Well, word’ll do it faster than a hickory stick any time.”
Hitchcock fans know her from 1954′s “Rear Window,” where she plays Stella, the visiting nurse for Jimmy Stewart. She played opposite Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson in “A Hole in the Head.” She got drunk with Rock Hudson in “Pillow Talk.”
Ritter played serious roles too… she was perfect as Burt Lancaster’s mother in “Birdman of Alcatraz.”
She had the gift of being able to say everything with a look.
Thelma worked steadily in television. Her daughter, Monica Moran, launched a brief film career. I can’t find any info about her son.
Here’s a clip from a Hitchcock TV show opposite another great character actress, Mary Wickes.
Nurse! This is from her work opposite Susan Hayward in “With a Song in My Heart.”
Below as Moe Williams with Richard Widmark in “Pickup on South Street.” … she was a walking Hopper painting.
Here’s Thelma in an early uncredited role, “A Letter to Three Wives,” where she plays Connie Gilchrist’s loveable neighbor with an opinion. She often played cards in her films.
Thelma Ritter died of a heart attack 10 days before her 67th birthday, shortly after performing on a Jerry Lewis TV show.
Shockingly, Thelma Ritter does not have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Howie Mandel, Nicolas Cage and the Olsen twins do.
You can write to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce here, to ask for a star for Thelma.
The marvelous, witty, earthy, darling Thelma Ritter is today’s Friday Face.
