News, Politics, Religion, Entertainment, Gossip and Opinion for Thinking Folks
From the category archives:
Animated gifs are the hot new old thing on the internets. I’ve always liked them.
Just look at the pretty pictures.
I like to call this one: Knock it off, you bitches!
And this security cam gif is truly incredible.
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That beautiful woman is Paulette Goddard, formerly Marion Pauline Levy from Queens, who got her start as a fashion model and then landed one of the prized gigs of the day — in the Ziegfeld Follies. She married a lumber tycoon and moved to North Carolina. That didn’t work for her. She was back in show biz by 1929, and in Hollywood… with a substantial divorce settlement.
After bouncing through a few Hal Roach pictures, she met Charlie Chaplin in 1932. He cast her in “Modern Times.” She moved in. The status of the “marriage” was not entirely known. They may have been the first Hollywood couple to shack up.
Before the success of “Modern Times,” Goddard was a “Goldwyn Girl,” whose peers included Lucille Ball, Ann Sothern and Betty Grable. In 1939, she appeared in another screen classic, “The Women,” with Joan Crawford and others. Below is a pic of her in the early ’70s with Joan.
In 1939, it was fully expected that Paulette Goddard would nab the coveted role of Scarlett in “Gone with the Wind.” We know how that went.
Here’s a great montage of clips, with some awful music… watch it on mute.
She co-starred with Bob Hope, and appeared in another Chaplin classic, “The Great Dictator.” They parted as friends. She danced with Fred Astaire in “Second Chorus,” where she met the man who would become another husband, Burgess Meredith (Penguin on the “Batman” TV series). She snagged an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for “So Proudly We Hail!” — but lost.
She and Meredith divorced in 1949.
Paulette dabbled in TV. She met the author Erich Maria Remarque and married him in 1958.
He died in 1970, and she inherited properties, cash and art. It seemed she had a knack for accumulating wealth. By the 1980s, she was a grand dame of New York Society and a friend of Andy Warhol — their unlikely friendship lasted until his death in 1987.
Paulette Goddard died of breast cancer just before her 80th birthday in 1990. She had no children. She bequeathed $20 million to NYU.
Goddard said, “You live in the present and you eliminate things that don’t matter. You don’t carry the burden of the past. I’m not impressed by the past very much. The past bores me, to tell you the truth; it really bores me. I don’t remember many movies and certainly not my own.”
In recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Paulette Goddard is today’s Friday Face.
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Today’s Friday Face is the delicious Ronald Colman, Best Actor of 1947. Will I ever have that moustache? Probably not.
He just kept getting better looking. Born in Richmond, Surrey in 1891, he was a professional actor by 1914. He took shrapnel to the ankle in WWI and limped as a result, which he hid from camera. He was awarded the Mons Star.
He was a hit in silent films, often paired with Vilma Banky. An experienced stage actor, he successfully transitioned to talkies because of it, and his “beautifully modulated and cultured voice” was also described as “bewitching, finely-modulated, and resonant.”
Here’s a bit from his Oscar-winning role in “A Double Life.”
Colman performed on Jack Benny’s radio show. You can listen to this when you have time.
In 1956, Colman recorded all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets at his home in Santa Barbara.
Colman as the handsome groom in 1925′s “Stella Dallas,” later remade with Barbara Stanwyck.
He also “sang.”
Colman died in 1958 at age 67. His widow, actress Benita Hume, married actor George Saunders one year later.
George had been married to Zsa Zsa Gabor before that, then divorced her. After Benita died, George married and divorced Zsa Zsa’s sister, Magda Gabor.
Saunders later committed suicide.
Ronald Colman, “the most complete gentleman of the cinema,” and today’s Friday Face.
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Betty Joan Perske was born on this day in 1924. She took her mother’s maiden name and became Lauren Bacall, today’s Friday Face.
As the legend goes, she was a fashion model, and was spotted on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar by Nancy Hawks, wife of director Howard Hawks. Nancy urged him to give her a screen test for “To Have and Have Not.” She got the part, and won Humphrey Bogart’s heart as well. She was 19.
At 20, while visiting the National Press Club in DC, the head of WB publicity asked her to sit on a piano, which was being played by then VP Harry Truman. The controversial photo went the equivalent of “viral” in 1945.
She married Bogie that year; he was 45. They would have 2 children and 12 years together, until his death of esophageal cancer.
Bacall made a few films in the 1950s, including a role as a pseudo-lesbian wackjob in “Young Man with a Horn,” the first big budget film about jazz, loosely based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke.
Her big ’50s success came with “How to Marry a Millionaire,” opposite Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable.
Nice outfit on Grable.
Frank Sinatra wanted to marry Bacall in the late ’50s, but the two had a falling out and he dumped her.
In the ’60s she headed for Broadway and picked up two Tonys for “Applause” and “Woman of the Year.”
She married Jason Robards in 1961, and said in her autobiography that she divorced him in 1969 because he was a drunk. Their son is an actor (he bought a used car from my Aunt Lorraine’s friend in New Jersey).
In 1981 she played the object of obsession of a crazed admirer in “The Fan,” which presaged stalkers. This was 8 years before actress Rebecca Schaeffer would be gunned down in the doorway of her apartment by a sicko fan.
Bacall received her first Oscar nomination in 1997 for her supporting role in “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” for which she nabbed a Golden Globe, but Oscar went to Juliet Binoche for “The English Patient.”
In the ’90s she picked up a Kennedy Center Honor… and became the voice of Fancy Feast cat food and its “gourmet taste.”
In the new century, she made “Dogville” and “Birth,” both with Nicole Kidman, and appeared as herself in an episode of “The Sopranos.”
In a 2005 appearance on “Larry King Live,” Bacall described herself as “anti-Republican… a liberal. The L word,” adding that “being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind.”
Seen above with her three children, Bacall was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2009… and became the voice of the “Tuesday Morning” discount chain commercials.
Happy 87th Birthday, Lauren Bacall, today’s Friday Face.
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Hello, Kitty. Today would have been Kitty Carlisle’s 101st birthday. Alas, she only made it to 96. Here she is in 1934′s “Murder at the Vanities.” You get to see what Earl Carroll’s Vanities looked like. Art Deco masterpiece!
Miss Carlisle was best known for the Marx Bros. romp, “A Night at the Opera,” and for being a panelist on “To Tell the Truth.”
Will Kitty guess Sheedy?
Rosa Parks, will you please stand up? No!
Here she is, near the end, in her own words.
for Andy and David
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Happy 59th birthday, Pee-wee Herman.
Lester Young, born on this day in 1909.
There’s nothing like making an understated entrance.
Bring on the zaftig dancing goils.
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in 1930, birthdays, chexy's saturday matinee, cinema, legends, stuff I likeThat’s a face that launched a million peek-a-boo hairdos, belonging to one Veronica Lake, stunning star of one of my favorite films, “Sullivan’s Travels,” perhaps the best film ever made about making films.
When Veronica was 10, her father died in an industrial explosion, in Philadelphia, no less. What a place to blow up.
She was expelled from an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal, not the worst fate that can befall a girl, but she was likely schizophrenic, and you know how reticent those schizos can be about admitting that.
Through her mother’s second marriage, Veronica ended up in Beverly Hills (of all places) and got work at RKO as a teen. She made it big in 1941 by stealing almost every scene in “I Wanted Wings.” She was 19, married an art director who was much older, and had the first of her 4 children.
Lake was frequently paired with Alan Ladd because he was 5’5″ and she was 4’11″. During WWII, Veronica Lake’s sex appeal made her a favorite pinup girl among soldiers, along with Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable.
Her drinking and erratic behavior earned her a rotten reputation in Tinseltown, where the sultry blonde began to rust like so much war surplus. Joel McCrea turned down a second film with her, saying, “Life’s too short for two films with Veronica Lake.”
During filming of the Nazi spy drama “The Hour Before the Dawn,” she fell on a cable while pregnant and began hemorrhaging. She recovered, but the child was born prematurely and died a week later of uremic poisoning.
Noir scribe Raymond Chandler began calling her “Moronica Lake.” She married Hungarian horror director Andre de Toth and had two more kids. It was rumored that one of them was Alan Ladd’s. Her mother sued her for support. It was 1944, and Veronica was earning $4,500 a week… the equivalent of $56,684 in today’s dollars.
Here’s a couple of minutes of her magnetism, a few stills and some footage, with a cornball song I love. Oh, and there’s more to this story…
She got a pilot’s license and was able to fly solo coast-to-coast, and turned 24.
By 1951 she was divorced again, and her assets were seized by the IRS for unpaid taxes. How did stars blow all that dough?! She managed to get some work on TV and the stage, and remarried in 1955, this time to a songwriter, divorcing him in ’59. She broke her ankle and was arrested for public drunkenness. The big sink from the drink and red ink stinks.
A reporter discovered her working as a barmaid in a Manhattan hotel, and wrote up the story, and as a result she got some work on TV. For a brief time in 1966 she was a TV hostess in Maryland. Have you been to Maryland? She moved to Hollywood… Florida, where her paranoia kicked in; she believed she was stalked by the FBI.
Her autobiography was published in 1972. She used the money from it to finance her last film, “Flesh Feast,” a low-budget horror flick with some kind of Nazi storyline. She moved to England and was married a fourth time — to a sea captain. That didn’t work out either. She filed for divorce and returned to the US in 1973, age 50.
She was immediately hospitalized with hepatitis and renal failure (alcoholics get that) and died, in Burlington, Vermont on July 7, 1973. Her ashes were scattered off the Virgin Islands, per her request. This is a pic of her near the end…
Below is the original trailer for “Flesh Feast,” in which she plays a mad scientist, uttering the classic line, “What’s the matter, don’t you like my little maggots?!”
And that’s today’s Friday Face, with a peek-a-boo ‘do. Happy Friday, everyone! I love you all!
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Today would have been author Jacqueline Susann’s 90th birthday (dates vary), so it’s all Valley of the Dolls, all the time.
Here’s Dionne in a swing.
Judy Garland had the part, but she kacked.
Let’s watch the catfight, shall we? Yes.
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Look at those faces! That’s my favorite actor, Van Heflin (left) Barbara Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott, and Kirk Douglas in his first film role at age 30, which former classmate Lauren Bacall helped him get.
I’ve seen the mesmerizing film noir “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers” (1946) countless times. There’s always something new in it for me, even though I can practically recite the dialog. It’s about a successful woman (Stanwyck) with a dark secret… I won’t say more because it just ain’t proper.
Here’s the poster…
Douglas will be 95 in December. Stanwyck continued her illustrious career; she succumbed to emphysema and congestive heart failure in 1990 at age 82. (click the below pic twice for a better look)
Van Heflin, one of the best and most underrated actors of his generation, died just over 40 years ago after taking a dive in his swimming pool and having a heart attack. His acting is so natural, it’s timeless. You’ll see in the clip.
Scott quit show biz in 1971, but she turned up last summer (below) for an Academy tribute to this film. She is now 88.
Lizabeth began her career as an understudy for Tallulah Bankhead — some say the storyline of “All About Eve” was based on their relationship. Her nickname was “The Threat.” She has a mystical quality on film — she always looks like she’s been abandoned, or as if she just finished crying and pulled herself together, with a voice of velvet, molasses and scotch. More about her another time.
Here’s part of the second reel.
L. Scott in 2010 by Getty
for Jake
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More great Judy… new on YouTube. Lady who?
Keep cool with Mickey.
Betty and Kate and John on Bogie.
Bring on the dancing kids.
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"If the phone doesn't ring, it's me.”
--Jimmy Buffett
