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Monthly archives for July, 2012

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Dolores Del Rio — That Elusive Magic of Stardom

Jul31
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

What ever happened to that glamorous, untouchable aura created by super celestial Hollywood stars of the classic movie period?

No “just folks” acts for them.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers here today to muse on that magical period when the feet of big stars rarely, if ever, touched the ground.  They were different from you and me, and not only because they were richer.

What brought this to mind was a brief but telling recollection of Dolores del Rio contained in the recently published (and highly recommended) memoir, Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them, written by 74-year-old stage and screen actor Frank Langella.

We’ve written about del Rio before in our periodic series covering Mexican-born talent in Hollywood. One of the all-time biggest silent screen stars of the 1920s, she was born in  Durango (nee Lolita Dolores Asunsolo de Martinez in 1905), and began her movie career in the mid-Twenties (Joanna, High Steppes, Pals First).

But her career flourished well after the silents were history.  del Rio became noticed early on as one of Hollywood’s most beautiful actresses.  She had many romances including an extended fling with Orson Welles.

Among Frank’s favorite performances is Dolores’ turn as a worldly-wise cabaret performer in 1943′s Journey Into Fear.  As ‘Josette Martel’, the better half of a slightly cheesy husband-wife dance team (her husband is played in jaded fashion by Jack Durant), del Rio explains to costar Joseph Cotten (as ‘Howard Graham’) that her parents were very poor.

“Poor but honest, no doubt,” replies Cotten.  ”Oh, no,” gushes del Rio, whose character goes on to describe various nefarious activities embraced by her family.  A great touch to a fine performance.  (Don’t miss any opportunity to see Journey Into Fear, which costars, incidentally, Orson Welles.)

In his 1987 memoirs, Cotten described del Rio as “the second most beautiful woman in the world” (first place went to wife, Patricia Medina). Dolores lived in an aura of dreamland exoticism, the actor wrote. Her house and its decor were poetically conceived by Omar Kiam…The aroma of her garden was heady, and the protective wall of thick green leaves was cooled by a trickling fountain.

Looking in the back seat of her limosine, a keen observer might glimpse a quick impression of her her cuddled under layers of fur, her black eyes sparkling with humor and the joy of living.

Langella didn’t encounter del Rio until much later, in 1956 when the then 18-year-old aspiring actor was apprenticing at the Pocono Playhouse in Pennsylvania. She was touring, as stars did in those days, from summer theatre to summer theatre, playing one-week engagements to full houses of audiences anxious to see the glamour, allure and mystery celebrities of today no longer possess.

Langella writes sharply that there were no TV talk shows then for the incessant dismantling of self. If you wanted to see Miss Del Rio you had to watch her movies or venture forth of a summer’s evening.

The play at hand was Anastasia  – a movie version co-starring Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner was made in 1956, directed by Anatole Litvak — in which del Rio (then 51) starred in the title role of a 24-year-old woman, recalls Langella.

He once asked why he never once saw del Rio at the Playhouse when she was not onstage.

Dolores’ costar at the time, character actress Lili Darvas, patiently explained that she doesn’t leave her accommodations. Never on this tour does anyone see her in daytime. She travels alone in her Rolls-Royce with her lady-in-waiting from theater to theatre and only comes out for the performances. Her shades are always drawn in her rooms to protect her skin from the light, and she lies in a bath of milk.

A fascinated Langella noted that Dolores performed “exquisitely” onstage especially as the grande dame when she departed it.  At play’s end, after each actor had taken his or her bows, the stage emptied. A wait of approximately five seconds.  The two center doors upstage opened, and out came Miss del Rio in a stunning white flowing gown over which hung an equally beautiful soft and voluminous long white coat.

She floated to the apron of the stage, a radiant smile on her face, and sank into a deep curtsey as the applause swelled….

Langella also noted that after the curtain fell for the final time, she immediately left the theater building – her driver, standing by the door, arm outstretched, took her hand, brought her down the steps, and put her into the waiting Rolls-Royce, its engine already humming. 

Above is del Rio in Bird of Paradise with co-star Joel McCrea. In her films she often portrayed exotic or mysterious women, and looks pretty streamy here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Author Meets Creation — ANOTHER MONDAY MYSTERY PHOTO!

Jul30
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to note that many of you correctly identified last Monday’s mystery men, Charlie Chaplin and Mahatma Ghandi.

We still believe that judging from the photo we ran, the latter was giddy with excitement at posing with “The Tramp.” Chaplin, judging by his fixed smile, seems less thrilled. Oh, the burdens of international stardom!

Now, how about the men in today’s picture?

We’ve gone from the world of politics to the world of literature– well, the world of fiction, at least as far as the guy on the left is concerned.

The guy on the right in the above photo should be easily recognizable. But who’s the chap on the left?  A clue.  He’s the creator of the famous character portrayed by the other.

That’s a huge hint, but in our infinitely generous spirit, we’ll provide additional clues.

– The two men pictured above did not get along especially well.  Think “class warfare” in a larger context.

– The middle name of the fellow to the left is the surname of an actor named Burt.

– Mystery man to the left also worked for a time in his family’s bank. He died fairly young (at age 56) of his second heart attack.

– The names Cary Grant and David Niven have special relevance to the fellow to the right and, for that matter, to the man on the left as well.

Ok, who are these two?

 

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FILM NOIR in Living COLOR — Or, Gene Tierney With Dead Eyes.

Jul27
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Sounds like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it.  The term ‘film noir’ literally MEANS “black film” or “dark film.”

The reference, originated by those canny French, refers to those marvelous American-made thrillers which played in France after World War II, chocked full of deadly violence, greed and sexual obsession shared by petty crooks, desperate (but often strong-willed) women and sleazy private eyes. (The actual term, ‘film noir,’ is attributed to Italian-born French critic, Nino Frank, who is said to have come up with the description in 1946.)

But, we ask, if ‘film noir’ means ‘black film,’ how can such a title be shot in color?

Yet as early as 1945, when the genre was less than a half dozen years old, noir films were made not just in color but in vivid Technicolor.

Hello, everybody.  Mr. Joe Morella and Mr. Frank Segers back again while MRS. Norman Maine, both in black-and-white and living color, is now out searching for 3D. (At least she’s not shopping for a ‘gat.’)

A few days ago we reminisced about Lizabeth Scott, the virtual queen of film noir. We noted that she started at the top.  Star billing right under Robert Cummings for her debut in 1945′s You Came Along.

Then, star billing with heavyweights Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin in 1946′s The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.  And then, in only her third film, top billing over John Hodiak, Burt Lancaster, Mary Astor and Wendell Corey in 1947′s Desert Fury.  And in color.

Desert Fury is thought by many to be the first film noir shot in color.  But it’s not.  Two years before Fury, Twentieth Century Fox, who’d scored such a hit with director Otto Preminger’s Laura presented Gene Tierney in another noir classic, Leave Her to Heaven.

It was a brilliant piece of casting.  Tierney had always been somewhat mysterious. There was also no denying her stunning oscreen presence; she was gorgeous. (One of her admirers was a young John F. Kennedy.) She’d portrayed fallen women, sophisticated women, exotic beauties. But in this film she was downright evil.  Death followed pretty much her every move in this melodrama. (That’s her above with co-star Cornell Wilde.)

As Ellen Berent, a stylish newlywed given to psychotic jealousy, Tierney delivers in Leave Her To Heaven one of the most chilling performances ever seen in film noir.  It frightens Frank to watch it even today.

Concerned that her new husband’s crippled younger brother is interfering with her marriage, Tierney’s character invites the young man (Darryl Hickman) out for a swim in the lake.  From a rowboat, she observes him paddling into dangerously deep water. He soon is in trouble. She does nothing.

‘You’re not making very much progress, Danny,’ says Tierney without a trace of urgency or emotion, immovable in the rowboat.

As he sinks below the lake’s surface, struggling for his life, Ellen watches implacably from behind her fashionable sunglasses, writes Eddie Muller, author of Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. The scene is a lengthy one and is tough to watch.

Muller calls Tierney’s character the most deranged femme fatale ever.

In her memoirs, Tierney (who had more than her share of personal offscreen drama, subject for another blog) wrote that as much as any part she played onscreen, Ellen has meaning for me as a woman….She believed herself to be normal and worked at convincing her friends she was. Most emotionally disturbed people go through such a stage, the equivalent of an alcoholic hiding the bottle.

Concludes Muller: There was no precedent for the morbidity of these scenes (in ‘Leave Her To Heaven’), somehow made all the more malignant by the overripe lushness of (Oscar-winning) Leon Shamroy’s (Technicolor) cinematography.

 

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VIVIEN LEIGH – Sex and Sir Larry – Our Readers Respond

Jul26
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

She was a two-time Academy Award Winner, a feminine, gorgeous and refined star of her day, and she still has millions of fans.

Hello everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here to comb through some of the mail we received about Vivien Leigh.  We love to hear from our readers.

In response to our April 3 blog, Vivien Leigh – What A (Split) Personality – Kim Wilson wrote:  Leigh had the really bad misfortune of being in love with one of the biggest asses ever.  When the going got tough he left. How does a rich and connected person die of TB in 1967?  Where were her handlers? (We should clarify that “one of the biggest asses ever” was then husband, Sir Laurence Olivier.)

Our April 3 blog also included this:

In the recently published memoir Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, coauthor Scotty Bowers, at the time a bartender-caterer of celebrity parties, claims to have had an assignation with Vivien in a guest house on the estate of her close friend, director George Cukor (as 1951′s A Streetcar Named Desire was going into production).

She was a hot, hot lady, reports Bowers. She was very sexual and very excitable…That night we screwed as though the survival of the world depended on it…She had orgasm after orgasm and each one noisier than the last.

OK.  Carole Heath writes more recently both in response to Kim Wilson’s observation, and the April 3 blog’s references to Leigh’s sexuality:

I do agree with Kim Wilson  about Vivien Leigh’s illness. Yes she should never have died in 1967 from TB as the illness was treatable then. She had suffered from TB in the 1940′s, and had to rest for months during that time. Her manic depression or now called Bi-polar was with her on and off for most of her life sadly.

But quite honestly I think Laurence Olivier tried to help Vivien Leigh as best he could. I think there were many reasons why the marriage ended. Only they knew the real truth, I think.

Yes, Vivien Leigh lived with (actor) Jack Marivale after the split, and he was a calming influence on her where maybe Olivier wasn’t.

I read ‘Confessions of an Actor,’ the (1982 autobiography) by Olivier, and he was quite candid about his marriage to Vivien Leigh without being nasty or catty. But whenever you saw him in an interview and the subject of Vivien Leigh and their relationship came up, he didn’t really want to talk about it and got quite upset. You could hear it in his voice.

I am not taking his side, of course. He was very into his acting that is what made him a good actor, I think. Vivien Leigh was also a good actor,  much better than she was ever given credit for. Her Blanche in (‘Streetcar’) had such pathos, and she really made the part her own

Unfortunately the Oliviers had a love hate relationship like the Burtons; they loved each other but the marriage was so stormy. I don’t think Olivier or Vivien Leigh ever got over each other although they went different paths in life. He married (third and final wife) Joan Plowright and she took up with Jack Merivale.

I also think Vivien’s sexual demands on Olivier were to much for him to handle. As mentioned in this article she was very highly sexed. That could have also been to do with her bi-polar illness. What ever the reason the relationship ended. I think it was very sad. They looked so happy together but unfortunately the public persona was not the private one.

Great comments.  Thanks.

 

 

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Gilbert Roland: An early star — and bigtime lover — from South of the Border

Jul25
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Question:  How is Gilbert Roland best remembered?  For his movie roles or for his offscreen conquests? Both, we like to think.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today with another look at a south-of-the-border star well worth remembering — and honoring. We admit it, we are big Roland fans.

His Hollywood career started in silent films in the mid-Twenties opposite such stars as Clara Bow. Much to his amazement — Roland never viewed himself as an overabundantly gifted actor — he subsequently starred and costarred in more than 140 movie and TV titles spanning nearly six decades. He continued working until 1982, a dozen years before he died in at 88 of cancer.

Although he generally portrayed “Latin,” few people knew he was Mexican (although Roland would sometimes say he felt more Spanish than Mexican). He’d chosen his screen name by combining the names of his two favorite stars, John Gilbert and Ruth Roland.

Roland was born Luis Antonio Damaso de Alonso in 1905 in Juarez, and had initially intended to become a bullfighter. But his good looks propelled him to a career in silent films, and he had enough talent to successfully make the transition to talkies.

He also had the ability and good sense to return to Mexico in the early 30s to hone his craft there before returning to the States and resuming his career. Roland presented himself believably as quite a lover (dig that hirsute neckline above), and had had affairs with almost all of his leading ladies.

He married  Constance Bennett in 1941 but they divorced four years and two children later. By the late 1940s he was bouncing between leading and supporting roles.  He scored hits in such films as director John Huston’s We Were Strangers costarring with Jennifer Jones and John Garfield in 1949, and director Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful in 1952, costarring with Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner.

Frank accidentally stumbled on a Roland performance in Fox’s 1953 diving adventure, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef.  Frank’s attention was initially directed to costar Terry Moore, with whom he had an adolescent infatuation.  But Roland’s amiable, confident screen presence — as ‘Mike Petrakas,’ the Greek patriarch of a young Robert Wagner — pretty much stole the show.

Roland was nearly 70 when he met stage and screen actor Frank Langella, who recalls their encounter in his superb new memoir, Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them. The actors were in Tucson, Arizona filming the 1974 TV movie, The Mask of Zorro.

Sitting together outside his production-set trailer, ‘Gil’  announced to Langella: I fucked them all, you know.

The younger actor (a mere 36 at the time) wrote: (Roland) then proceeded to give me a rundown of his specialties, detailing the sexual peccadilloes of every female star I’d grown up with….He was so matter-of-fact and businesslike about it that I began to laugh hysterically as he described sex acts the way one man might tell another the order in which to oil, polish, lube, and wash his car.

The more I laughed, the more explicit he became, not once cracking the slightest smile …he regaled me with scenes of sexual acts in which he costarred with some of the most famous women in the world. 

Roland, wrote Langella, was grand, imperious and totally engaging; appearing always to have just flung back a tent flap after ravishing a maiden and heading for his horse. I just loved every minute I could grab with him.

 

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LIZABETH SCOTT — THE QUEEN OF FILM NOIR

Jul24
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Few if any classic Hollywood stars have made more Film Noir movies than the sultry, deep voiced actress pictured above, Lizabeth Scott.

Among femme fatales of the genre, Scott had stiff competition from such durable stalwarts as Marie Windsor and Audrey Totter, not to mention Gloria Grahame.  But we believe Scott came out on top.

Hello Everybody. MR. Joe Morella and MR. Frank Segers here.  MRS. Norman Maine is out shopping for a small but chic hand gun.

Every film noir “heroine” has a nifty “gat,” and knows how and when to use it.

Lizabeth Scott has the distinction of not only making more noir films than any other actress, she is the only woman who was actually the STAR of a noir film, 1949′s Too Late for Tears.

In other noir films the woman is often just the supporting player to the male lead. But in Too Late for Tears Scott IS the lead and is supported by three men, Dan Duryea, Don DeFore and Arthur Kennedy.

Scott portrays a greedy housewife, who bumps off her husband (Kennedy) to keep a valise full of cash someone tossed into her open convertible. The honest husband (poor fellow!) wanted to turn in the cash to the cops.

Scott, it turns out, is in cahoots with a sleazy private eye (Duryea), who slaps her around.

Dan thinks that a few stiff smacks in the kisser will be enough to keep Liz in line, but she proved him wrong, writes Eddie Muller in his definitive 1998 tome, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. (The one sheet advertising Too Late For Tears shows Scott being struck under the headline, ‘That’s Just To Remind You…You’re In A Tough Racket Now!’

It’s a terrific film, with double cross after double cross, and one of Joe’s favorites.  He’s not sure, but he thinks it was the first drama he’d ever seen in a movie theater. Up until then he’d only been allowed to go to musicals and family pictures.

Needless to say he fell under the spell of the sexy Scott, and followed her career from then on.  He’s seen every one of the 21 films she made.

Even more than from her sultry eyes, Liz’s sex appeal emanated from her husky bedroom voice, wrote Muller. It sounded soaked in gin and burnished by endless cigarettes, hung over from long nights of laughing or crying too hard…If you had to have a voice whispering in your ears, hers was the one.

In many of her films she portrayed sexy night club singers.  Her voice was always dubbed. But after her film career ended in 1957, to prove that she really could sing, she released an album which Joe ran out to buy (its attractive cover is pictured below).

And it proved she was a damn good singer.  Her voice was just perfect for the torch songs she did so convincingly.

Scott was born Emma Matzo in Scranton, Pa.  She made her way to New York for drama lessons and landed the role of understudy to Tallulah Bankhead in Skin of Our Teeth. Although Bankhead never missed a performance, one of her subsequent replacements did miss performances and the show’s producers called on Scott to fill in. She even got the job in the Boston company of the touring show, and it was there she dropped the E in Elizabeth, in order to be different.

And different she was.  She was noticed by Hal Wallis when she made a screen test at Warners, and when Wallis moved over to Paramount he signed her and guided her career.

She got star billing from the get go.  And in two years she was sharing top billing with Humphrey Bogart in 1947′s Dead Reckoning made by Columbia Pictures. Scott’s role was a part originally intended for the studio’s homegrown star, Rita Hayworth. (The cover photo of Muller’s book is taken from the film, and shows Scott and Bogie grappling over the pistol she is holding to his head.)

Scott’s career was later dented by “scandal” because, as Muller put it, Offscreen, Liz reserved the pillow talk for other women.

Scott had been “outed” by Confidential Magazine back in the 1950s. She sued the magazine, but lost. It should be noted that she has never confirmed or denied the stories about her sexuality.

Her career seemed to stall. By the Sixties she was living in seclusion but resurfaced in British director Mike Hodges’ most entertaining 1972 film, “Pulp.”

Her costars are Michael Caine as a seedy pulp fiction writer for hire; Mickey Rooney (in a refreshingly restrained performance) and Lionel Stander.  Caine co-produced the United Artists release, which was shot in Malta. Scott is very much at home in the picture, which is well worth tracking down if only for her performance.

Scott lived in quiet retirement since then.

 

 

 

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MORE CANDID PHOTOS — Who Are These Two Guys?

Jul23
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys here today to continue our regular Monday exercise during the summer silly season of challenging you to identify who is who in our weekly series of candid photos.

Today’s photo is of two of the biggest “stars” of the 1920s and 30s. They certainly make for an odd-looking couple.  Do you recognize them?

Before we provide a few helpful hints, we should explain who was who in last Monday’s candid shot.

Yes, it was taken in Texas, the location of the movie being made, director George Steven’s screen version of the Edna Ferber novel, Giant. It was released in 1956, and Texas was hot (as usual) during production the year before. So, between setups, our two mystery subjects opted for a bit of r&r.

Giant’s cast included Rock Hudson (his finest performance) along with character-actor stalwarts as Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Earl Holliman, Mercedes McCambridge, a 25-year-old Carroll Baker, a fresh, 20-year-old  by the name of Dennis Hopper and an even fresher 17-year-old from the Bronx, Sal Mineo.

The picture’s other two principal costars — and the mystery couple shown in our candid shot — are, of course, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor. Both were in their early twenties at the time. Giant was Dean’s final movie.

Small gatherings of fans still congregate each year at the exact spot of his death along Route 46 at Chalome, California, where on Sept. 30, 1955, the actor’s Porche 550 Spyder slammed head-on into another vehicle. The accident occurred before Giant was released,  just as Dean’s movie career was skyrocketing.

Taylor went on to a life-long reign as Hollywood royalty (she died just last year), marrying seven husbands (Richard Burton twice) and bring at least one Hollywood studio (Fox) to its knees.

Ok, now to this Monday’s photo quiz — who are these guys (above)?  Some hints:

– Today’s photo, not strictly a candid, does reinforce the idea that relationships between film celebrities and political figures have always interested the public.

– Although one of the subjects was NOT a movie star, he was the subject of a lavishly-produced 1982 screen biography.

– Although impeccably turned out in this shot, the guy to the left cut far less affluent characters in his many movie roles. He also was known offscreen for being tightfisted with a buck and verrry wealthy.

– Judging by their expressions, the guy to the right seems slightly more pleased than the guy on the left to share this photo.

Who are these two?

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That Red-White-and-Blue CAGNEY-COHAN Duo. From The Email Bag.

Jul20
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, dipping once again into our reader emailbag, an exercise that always produces interesting results. It goes without saying that we love getting your emails, and enjoy corresponding.

What a patriotic bunch you are!  Our July 4th blog about Jimmy’ Cagney’s portrayal of legendary showman George M. Cohan (Happy 4th — To All You Yankee Doodle Dandies) drew these comments.

Flickchick weighed in with:  It just isn’t the Fourth of July without this film (1942′s ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’). It is impossible not to love Cagney in this role and it did inspire me to learn more about the real George M.   A Yankee Doodle Dandy post! 

Mike Sheridan concurred, and corrected a goof of ours.  Great story, Great movie. George M. was 21 years older than Jimmy –1878 & 1899 respectively (not the 10 or 11-year age difference we incorrectly stated). Walter Huston plays a great part too (that of Jerry Cohan).

From Patricia Nolan-Hall (Caftan Woman):   In John McCabe’s Cohan biography, ‘The Man Who Owned Broadway,’ he recounts a story from Cohan’s son, who was given a copy of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ to show George, who was too ill to attend the opening.  After watching Cagney, Cohan said, ‘That’s a tough act to follow.’ Cohan and Cagney – two  uniquely talented men of whom your country can be proud.

 

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Where’s Hitchcock in the ‘LIFEBOAT’?

Jul19
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, continuing today our bout of summer silliness marked by our trivial pursuit of Alfred Hitchcock cameos in the director’s movies.

We’ve just run a quiz asking you to match his many brief, often humorous bit appearances with the specific pictures that included them.  We discovered, however, that one of his titles we left off the list posed, let’s say, a special challenge.

In 1944, Hitch was filming Lifeboat on a special set on the Twentieth Century Fox lot. The fact that the production largely confined to just one set pleased Darryl F. Zanuck, the supremely cost-conscious head of the studio.

Nonetheless, the Zanuck-Hitchcock combination was not a happy one.  The two shared many disagreements about Lifeboat, including one about the movie’s pacing. Zanuck wanted to speed up the action, wrote the mogul’s biographer Mel Gussow. The result: It was the only time Hitchcock worked for Fox.

The film stars Tallulah Bankhead (above) and John Hodiak (with Bankhead below) and features William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Henry Hull, former boxer Canada Lee, Heather Angel, Mary Anderson and Hume Cronyn.

The story was written by John Steinbeck and Jo Swerling.

Our cameo “complication” arose because the entire action of the film takes place on a lifeboat in the Atlantic after a ship has been torpedoed by the Nazis.

At first there are eight survivors, a motley bunch representing different occupations: actress, journalist, businessman, radio operator, nurse, a sailor and engineer with leftist political views. Then a pushy German sailor (Slezak) discovered in the water is picked up after the U-boat that attacked the passenger ship also sank. He takes over the lifeboat.  What to do? See the movie to see how it all comes out.

But no sign of Hitchcock in or out of the craft. So how was the director able to accomplish one of signature movie cameos in Lifeboat?  Hitchcock was an extraordinary director but even he lacked the capacity to walk on water.

He solved the dilemma in truly inventive fashion.

Note carefully the back page of the journal Bendix is reading in part to stave off hunger pains that are creeping up on him. Take a close look at that advertisement for a diet program called “Reduco Obesity Slayer.” There, in before and after photos, is — Hitchcock. Presto, cameo completed.

But that begs the question:  what was Bendix doing reading a newspaper in a lifeboat adrift in the North Atlantic?

 

 

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PETER O’TOOLE — DO OLD ACTORS EVER RETIRE?

Jul18
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Peter O’Toole’s recent announcement that he has retired from acting made us think of the old cliche: “Actors never retire, they’re just between engagements.”

Ok, we take the 79-year-old Irish actor at his word, that “it’s time to chuck in the sponge…the heart has gone out of its for me.” (His most recent movie appearance was as a Catholic priest in this year’s Mexican civil war drama, For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada.) 

But look at O’Toole’s retirement announcement in this historical light: when Mary Pickford, Jean Hershold and others who headed The Motion Picture Relief Fund bought property in Woodland Hills to build a refuge for actors who were old, down on their luck and broke, Pickford insisted the place be called “The Country House.”

It was not to be thought of as a “Home.”  In her view, “Actor’s are just between engagements.”

Hershold (above) was a great humanitarian.  The Jean Hershold Award given out each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is, of course, named in his honor.

The “House” (various cottages and buildings) was completed in the 1940s.  A Hospital was added in 1948. Today it’s called The Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital and is a full service retirement community.  It is open to anyone who has worked in any capacity in the industry.

Over the years Joe has interviewed many stars (Mary Astor, Rose Hobart, Mae Clarke) who spent their final years there.  None of them had ever officially “retired.”

Some stars do end up penniless and need assistance. Others, like the character Norma Desmond, the silent screen star from Sunset Boulevard, may be forgotten but have enormous wealth.

Mary Pickford (above), enormously wealthy, never really retired. Although she hadn’t made a film since 1933, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett in 1949 approached her about portraying Norma Desmond. Until her death at 88 in 1979 she was merely “between engagements.”

Yes, Peter O’Toole has lived hard, and looks it (see below). After all, it’s been a half century since he electrified international audiences in the title role of director David Lean’s classic, Lawrence of Arabia.

It wouldn’t surprise us that health considerations contributed to his retirement decision. Still in all, we suspect that O’Toole, too, would consider returning to the screen if “the right part” came along. We kinda hope it will.

 

 

 

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