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.
You just never know who’s going to be the Friday Face, and neither do I. Today, it’s Jean Nidetch, nee Slutsky, formerly fat founder of Weight Watchers in 1963, after she’d lost 72 pounds on a similar program. By 1968 it was a worldwide phenomenon and the IPO sold out.
In the late ’70s, it was sold to Heinz for a reported $78 million. Nidetch, born in Brooklyn in 1923, now lives in Florida, following her retirement as a spokesperson in 1984. Weight Watchers continues to help people lose weight around the world, and I do mean AROUND the world.
Jean, daughter of a cab driver and a manicurist, was interviewed a few years ago… listen to her tell the story of how it all happened.
Jean Nidetch, entrepreneur, weight loss magnate and bouffant superstar, is today’s Friday Face.
Today marks what would have been the 99th birthday of Loretta Young, who began her career in silent films in 1917 at the age of 3, winning an Oscar in 1947 for “Farmer’s Daughter,” and making a highly successful transition to TV with an 8-year run of “The Loretta Young Show.”
Young had a child with the then-married Clark Gable in 1935. She hid the birth and later “adopted” the child, naming her Judy Lewis.
Loretta Young was a lifelong Republican and very active in the church, earning her the nicknames “Attila the Nun” and “Saint Loretta.” She married three times, with one annulment and one divorce.
In 1993, she married 83-year-old fashion designer Jean Louis, who died four years later. (Louis designed the gown Marilyn Monroe wore to sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President,” which sold at auction in 1999 for $1.26 million.)
In 1973, her son Christopher Lewis, then 29, was charged with child molestation and filming and distributing child porn. He plead “no contest” and faced life in prison, but got probation and a $500 fine. Another son, Peter Lewis, was in the rock group Moby Grape.
“Auld Lang Syne” is an old Scottish song that was first put on paper in the wee 1700s, with the version transcribed by Robert Burns being the one that got the most recognition, leaving the ages to associate the song with him.
The best translation of the words “auld lang syne” is “times gone by.” So the translation goes, “We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet for “times gone by.” And I know a lot of people who have gone by. (You have to say that aloud for it to work.)
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.
Marion Davies, the first lady of Hearst Castle, film star and hostess extraordinaire, as seen in 1936, wearing a Cossack turban and matching coat. Hearst never married Davies because his wife wouldn’t grant him a divorce, or he wouldn’t pay the settlement.
Here’s Marion, doing her own singing, in 1934′s “Operator 13.” The handsome chap is Gary Cooper.
Publisher, movie producer and collector Hearst died at age 88 in 1951, leaving half of what remained of his fortune to Marion. “Citizen Kane” is loosely based on his life, with the Susan Alexander character based on Davies.
Davies died of cancer in 1961, leaving an estate worth $20 or 30 million. She bequeathed millions to UCLA for a children’s hospital, and half of the estate went to her “niece.”
After the 1993 death of Davies’ niece, Patricia Van Cleve Lake, it was revealed by Lake’s family that she was actually the birth daughter of Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst. Here’s Patricia in a modified turban…
It is said that Hearst told Lake that she was his biological daughter, on her wedding day at the castle, to actor Arthur Lake of “Blondie” fame. She’s entombed, with Arthur and Marion, at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
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.
