What if Greta Garbo had played the Bride of Frankenstein, instead of Elsa Lanchester?
via whywonder
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in cinema, gorgeousness, photography, stuff I likeFrom the category archives:
cinema
Plenty of money and you… and Reagan. And Virginia Mayo. From “She’s Working Her Way Through College.”
From 1944′s “Gents without Cents.” Courtesy of my nephew.
I always see Julie London when I drink. That’s why I don’t drink.
Big finish. From the 2001 Tonys.
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in chexy's saturday matinee, cinema, dancing with the stars, gorgeousness, money, stuff I like
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.”
for Nina Zivancevic. Happy Birthday!
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in cinema, legends, turban tuesday, unfortunate
A little local nostalgia to close out the year.
All the gay colors… big 12.5″ too.
Bugs sings it.
Have fun tonight, dance on the ceiling.
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in advertising, animation, cinema, legends, stuff I like
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.
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in cinema, little known facts, turban tuesday
Hanukkah cartoon. Have a latke.
Rose Marie wants a fella. She’s 88 now.
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.
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in animation, cinema, holidays, little known facts, stuff I like, ya gotta love it
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.
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in Friday Face, cinema, old people, pearl clutch, the jews
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.
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in Friday Face, awards, cinema, fabulosity, little known facts, movies, stuff I like
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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in animals, animation, cinema, stuff I like, the internets
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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in 1930, Friday Face, cinema, gorgeousness, little known facts, stuff I like
