Monthly archives for March, 2012

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‘Citizen Kane’ Quiz — It’s Crunch Time, Classic Movie Fans!

Mar30
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

We all agree, we think, that it’s a masterpiece.

There aren’t many movies of any age than have commanded as much commentary and printer’s ink was Orson Welles’ signature 1941 film Citizen Kane.

Sure, some may say that the same director’s The Magnificent Ambersons, made a year later, is better. But we believe classic movie fans by and large don’t buy that.

As British author-critic David Thomson — a keen analyst of all things Welles — puts it: Beyond question, ‘Kane’ is the film that has influenced film-makers in the years from 1955 onwards. The late critic Pauline Kael didn’t expatiate at length on why the movie is “the best film ever made” for nothing.

The respected British movie journal Sight & Sound has been polling international critics every 10 years since 1952, asking them to identify the best movies of all time.  In 1952, the first-place choice was Italian director Victoria DeSica’s moving 1947 film, The Bicycle Thief. But Citizen Kane took over as the critics’ No. 1 choice in all the polls since, from 1962 through 2002. (The magazine is currently preparing its 2012 poll.)

Hello, everybody. Your classic movie guys Joe Morella and Frank Segers back again with a quizlet for all you Citizen Kane fans.  Let’s see how much you really do know about this great classic that we cannot get enough of.  Questions are in multiple choice form, and the answers will be published next week.  Here we go:

1) Question:  Orson Welles is credited as the producer of Citizen Kane.  But there was another individual deeply involved in the production process. Who was he, and what did he do? — (1) George Shaefer, RKO Pictures studio boss from 1938 to 1942, who gave Welles maximum freedom on the picture; 2) actor-director John Houseman, Welles’ Mercury Theater partner who is an uncredited contributor to the movie’s screenplay; 3) Herman Mankiewicz, the screenwriter of credit with Welles; or 4) Joseph Cotten, who also wrote much of his own dialogue in the picture.

2) Question:  Which public figure was the character of Charles Foster Kane actually based on?  1) Utilities magnate Samuel Insull; 2) newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst; 3) Orson Welles himself; or 4) MGM head Louis B. Mayer.

3) Question: The Citizen Kane cast consisted of many performers drawn from Welles’ Mercury Theater stage company.  Which one of these cast members was NOT a Mercury Theater veteran? 1) Joseph Cotten; 2) William Alland; 3) Dorothy Comingore; 4) Paul Stewart; or 5) Ray Collins.

4) Question: Which one of these actresses was auditioned by Welles for the role of Charles Foster Kane’s opera-singing second wife? 1) Joan Crawford; 2) Anne Baxter; 3) Lucille Ball; or 4) Bette Davis.

5) Question: Which one of these male stars-in-the-making appeared in a small bit part in the ‘News On The March’ segments early in the picture?  1) Fred MacMurray; 2) Errol Flynn; 3) Alan Ladd; or 4) Preston Foster.

6) Question: Citizen Kane was snubbed by the Academy Awards in 1942′s best-picture competition.  Which picture walked off with the Oscar that year? 1) John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon; 2) Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion; 3) John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley; 4) Mervyn LeRoy’s Blossoms in the Dust; or 5) Alexander Hall’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

7) Question: Orson Welles received a best-actor Oscar nomination for Citizen Kane in 1942, but lost out to which one of these actors? 1) Robert Montgomery; 2) Claude Rains; 3) Cary Grant; or 4) Gary Cooper.

8) Question: One of Hollywood’s most colorful character actors was cast as Signor Matiste, the singing coach to Kane’s second wife with operatic ambitions. Who was this actor, and was he really a opera singer? 1) J. Carroll Nash; 2) Sam Levine; 3) Fortunio Bonanova; or 4) Sig Ruman.

9) Question: It is widely known that Citizen Kane was Welles’ debut feature, and that he was considered a ‘boy genius’ at the time he began making it.  Just how old was he back then?  1) Thirty-one; 2) Twenty-five; 3) Thirty-seven; or 4) Twenty-nine.

10) Question: Finally, what was the real meaning of Rosebud? 1) Simply the name assigned to the protagonist’s prized sled he played with as a boy; 2) a anatomical reference employed by William Randolph Heart to describe a private part of his mistress, Marion Davies; 3) the symbol of the dust heap a Charles Foster Kane’s life had become; or 4) none of the above as no one really knows.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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FROM THE EMAIL BAG: Crawford Kicks Up Her Heels, McGraw Croaks & Martin Memorialized.

Mar29
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, dipping once again into our e-mail bag, and coming up with some interesting correspondence.

We are delighted when one of our blogs inspires you to sit down and write us. It’s encouraging to hear back from you when you agree with us. And it’s also encouraging to hear back when you don’t.   So please communicate early and often.

Our Motoring Monday segment (March 12) featuring Joan Crawford inspired Mike to write:  I just watched ‘Laughing Sinners’ (1931) last week on TCM, and thought it was a really good movie. It starred 26-year-old Joan, and in second spot, ahead of young Clark Gable, a very impressive Neil Hamilton.

What I enjoyed most of all was a very sexily clad and beautiful Joan Crawford doing a floor show. She had great movement and grace, a wonderful dancer… If you get a chance to see this one it is surely worth it. 

No question that Crawford was one sexy number early in her day. And Gable was no slouch in that department either. That’s why its a bit strange to have both characters playing members of the Salvation Army.  Oh, well, anything is possible in this romantic comedy from MGM. (Hamilton played the bad guy who leads Joan to sin.)

No question that Joan’s pre-Salvation-Army cabaret dancing is worth beholding, as you say. In strictly car terms, at this stage of her career Joan was leaving 1929 Ford Town Car territory and heading toward Cadillac Fleetwood terrain. Thanks, Mike.

Our three blogs (March 2, March 8, March 9) devoted to film noir tough guy Charles McGraw drew several responses of such brevity and directness, they could have been lifted from the dialogue of the actor’s better pictures.

The Lady Eve writes :  Very happy to see Charles McGraw getting his due. He is riveting in just about everything I’ve seen him in and at his best in ‘Armored Car Robbery’ and ‘The Narrow Margin.’

R.A. Kerr seconds that with:  Glad to see you’re blogging about Charles McGraw. Looking forward to more posts about him.

Kurt Niece was taken with the punchiness of the McGraw dialogue fragment (in 1950′s Armored Car Robbery) he employs to console his police partner’s widow. Niece writes:

‘Tough break, Marsha’… Swear to God I’m gonna use that line over cocktails…

The circumstances of McGraw’s grisly death drew this from Kim Wilson:  What a crappy way to go out!  (We heartily agree, Kim.)

Wyatt Kingseed mourns McGraw’s fatal finale with this:  Terribly sad end to a terrific character actor. He’s great in ‘The Birds’ in the cafe scene.

McGraw lent authority to any scene he was in, and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic benefited from his portrayal of a weathered skeptic who wrongly doubts the severity of the film’s pending aviary invasion.

Finally, our uber-Dean Martin enthusiast, Dino Martin Peters poses this question about March 7 blog covering biographies of the singer-actor:

Hey pallies, Mr. Frank and Mr. Joe likes …now you got me wonderin’ by your words, ‘Well, Dino in his inimitable prose style surprised us with the following…’

Gotta ‘fess up that I am likes totally totally surprised that youse all were ‘surprised’ by my Dino-reflections on Nick Tosches’ tome. Might I ask you to say more ’bout what surprised you and why? 

We were a tad surprised, given your feelings about Martin, to read of your unqualified enthusiasm for author Nick Tosches’ 1999 biography Dino: Living High In The Dirty Business Of Dreams.

Unlike books about the late actor-singer by his children, Tosches’ takes a tougher stance towards Martin, and doesn’t hesitate to criticize him.  Give your enthusiasm for Dino, we thought this might not sit well. Glad it does.

 

 

 

 

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BELITA and Suspense — What’s A Nice Figure Skater Like You Doing in a Movie Like This?

Mar28
2012 2 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

Another Olympic ice skater in the movies? Sonja Henie wasn’t alone.  Republic had Vera Hruba Ralston and Monogram had — Belita.

Hello, everybody.  Mr. Joe Morella and Mr. Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again with musings about Ice Skaters in Films. Mrs. Norman Maine is over at the rink working on her counterclockwise jumps.

By the mid 40s, Sonja Henie, who pioneered the genre, was in a film career slump.  Her last film at 20th Century Fox, Wintertime (1943), hadn’t been as successful as her previous films. Her contract hadn’t been renewed, and she was now freelancing.

In 1945 she appeared in It’s a Pleasure, for the new independent company International Pictures. Then she was off the screen for 3 years.

But fans of ice skaters as movie stars had other choices.  The minor studios for some reason picked up the ball.  In 1946, Republic released Murder at The Music Hall starring the Czech skater/actress Vera Hruba Ralston.

Over at Monogram in the same year, they pulled out all the stops, producing their most expensive film EVER, Suspense, budgeted at over $1,000,000.  A hefty sum for the time.

It was a strange combo — film noir and ice skating production numbers.   But it works. (The plot involves an ice skating promoter eyeing an ex-peanut-vendor who is eyeing the promoter’s figure-skater wife.)

The studio signed a British skater, Belita (pictured above), who like Ralston had competed in the Olympics. But Belita also had ballet training, and was a much more accomplished skater.

Although she didn’t have the charisma of Henie, she was a decent actress, and Monogram paired her with some top talent.  Suspense co-starred Barry Sullivan, Albert Dekker, Bonita Granville and Eugene Pallette. It was directed by Frank Tuttle.

Born Maria Belita Jepson-Turner, the star skater was known by fans as “Belita, the Ice Maiden.” In Suspense, she had several big scale skating production numbers, and had to jump through a circle of knives (See below. Ouch!) . Of course, the bad guy would attempt to kill her by rigging the prop.

The next year Monogram teamed Belita and Sullivan again in The Gangster.  But more about that one in a later blog. Vera Ralston (she dropped Hruba), pictured below. had a longer career.  But Belita had a better one.

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CLAUDE RAINS of ‘Casablanca’ — democrat with a small d!

Mar27
2012 2 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

We are probably all too familiar with that annoying personality trait that compels some insecure types to flatter the powerful — those above them in status — while at the same time demeaning the ‘little people’ below.

Not to be vulgar about it, but in Hollywood the syndrome is known as sucking up while excreting down.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, with this odd introduction to one of our most admired classic film actors, Claude Rains, who came relatively late to movies (he was in his mid-Forties when he made his debut in 1933′s The Invisible Man) after a successful stage career on both side of the Atlantic.

The London-born actor was a genuine cinematic gift, costarring in some of the most memorable movies ever made including Alfred Hitchcock’s superb 1946 thriller, Notorious, with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman; Frank Capra’s 1939 classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with James Stewart; 1942′s Now Voyager with his good friend Bette Davis and Paul Henreid; and 1962′s Lawrence of Arabia, playing a worldly diplomat opposite Peter O’Toole’s title-role visionary.

Rains’ most famous screen role by far was ‘Captain Louis Renault’ — who is “shocked” to discover that gambling is going on at Rick’s Cafe — in 1942′s Casablanca, currently celebrating its 70th anniversary.  The character is, to quote British critic David Thomson, a most engaging cynic, surviving with amusement amid so much compromise.

Rains’ key costars in Casablanca are, of course, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Henreid, who wrote about his experiences in making the picture on the Warner Brothers lot in his 1984 book, Ladies Man: An Autobiography.

The director of the picture was Michael Curtiz, a native Hungarian described by Henreid as a charming man, balding, in his late fifties …. But as charming as he was to his major stars, he was just as rude to the bit players. He treated them abominably, as if he had to let all his meanness out on them so he could be extra sweet to the actors, who in his view, mattered.

One day Rains overheard  Curtiz yelling at a bit player, a refugee German aristocrat: ‘You stupid son of a bitch! Can’t you understand English?…you idiot — just listen to me, and don’t be such an asshole.’  Rains, who Henreid described as always the perfect gentleman, was deeply offended.

The actor convinced Bogart and Henreid to confront Curtiz.  ’Mike,’ he said, ‘Paul, Bogie and I all feel we should have a happy set from the first to the last day. We don’t want to hear an ugly word from you to anyone on this stage.’ His voice hardened as he spoke. ‘Not to a grip, a cameraman, or even, God help us, to a bit player!’ He nodded toward the crushed German actor.

Do it again, threatened Rains, and the three stars would walk off the set. Henreid wrote that Curtiz’ eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Finally collecting himself the director promised Rains ‘it won’t happen (again), believe me!’

And until the last day of the shoot — when Curtiz screamed at a bit player prompting a walkoff by Bogart, Rains and Henreid — the director kept his promise. 

 

 

 

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Another Dusenberg Owner — That’s GARY COOPER In The Saddle!

Mar26
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Last week we showed you Ty Power and his Dusenberg.  This Monday we’ll motor with another star who was a big fan of that model auto, Gary Cooper.

Hello Everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again with a photo from the Golden Days of Hollywood.

The above shot was taken on the Paramount lot back in the very early 1930s when Cooper was showing off his new car to fellow actor William Powell. Frankly, at first glance, it appears that Powell looks to be the real Dusenberg owner.  He appears to be allowing Cooper to get a momentary feel of what it’s like to sit behind the wheel of one of these beauties.

The attire of each is telling, of course.  Cooper is shown in the garb of one of the westerns he was shooting; Powell  dressed as the man about town, obviously shooting the type of picture he was noted for.

But for many readers of the newspapers which carried this photograph the car was the star.  It was probably the only time the average Joe would see a Dusenberg, unless he lived in Los Angeles, Chicago or New York.

These cars were special. They weren’t nicknamed “Duesies” for nothing. Very expensive, they reeked of luxury. Interestingly, they were not European made but hand built (from 1913 to 1937) in a factory in Indiana.

Although he led a life of old-fashioned Hollywood-style luxury, Cooper was not snotty about his Dusenberg or much anything else for that matter.

Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine, a hardnosed and shrewd judge of talent in his own right, recalled working with Cooper (in 1954′s Vera Cruz) more than a quarter century after the above photo was taken.  (Ernie got to know Cooper well on that western, which is well worth another look today.)

Wrote Borgnine: That six-foot-three legend was a perfect gentleman, an absolutely wonderful man. He never got excited, never got angry, never got flustered. If he flubbed a line…he apologized to the actors and director and we did it again…He was one of the most brilliant actors I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked with some pretty good ones.

British writer-critic David Thomson notes that in his long career, Cooper never played a malicious or dishonest man.


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HELP

Mar24
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Joe Morella and Frank Segers

A NOTE TO OUR FAITHFUL READERS

For some reason we have lost the comments several of you have made on recent blogs. If you commented on the St Patrick’s Day blog please send your thoughts again and we will publish them.  If you once saw your comment on a recent blog and then noticed it had disappeared, we apologize.  It’s a mystery to us.  We’re happy to have the internet and wish we were better at using it.  But we’re just two old movie buffs doing our best to understand how it works.

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Deanna Durbin Quiz — THE ANSWERS!

Mar23
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to provide the answers to our Deanna Durbin quizlet posted last week (March 13).

She has been off the silver screen for over 60 years, so don’t be too hard on yourselves if our questions about the singing star of the 1930s and 40s stumped you. After reading this, by all means take a peek at our previous DD blogs (Need To Know Deanna Durbin and Deanna Durbin – Rival to Judy,  Nov. 10-11, 2011).

Ok, let’s get to our answers:

A) Question: Where was she born? 1) Des Moines, Iowa; 2) Sheffield, England; 3) Nutley, New Jersey; or 4) Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Answer:  Durbin wasn’t known as “Winnepeg’s Sweetheart” for nothing. That’s where she was born as Edna May Durbin.

B) Question: How old is she now? 1) Seventy two; 2) Eighty three;  3) Ninety; or 4) One hundred and four.

Answer: She’ll be 91 this coming Dec. 4.

C) Question: Where does she live? 1) in Pasadena, California; 2) London, England; 3) Nutley, New Jersey; or 4) Neauphle-le-Chateau, France.

Answer: She now resides in (4), a small town north of Paris. Like another classic movie doyenne, Deanna prefers lives quietly far from the limelight, and wants be left alone.

D) Question: Did she ever win an Academy Award? 1) No, but was nominated several times; 2) Yes;  or 3) Yes, but it was shared.

Answer:  If you chose No. 3, congratulate yourself. Deanna won the best the Academy Award’s 1939 Best Juvenile Award, which she shared with Mickey Rooney.

E) Question: She made over 20 films and shorts in her 12-year career, yet only one film was in color. Which one?

Answer:  1944′s Can’t Help Singing, which costarred Robert Paige and one of our very favorite character actors, Akim Tamiroff.  Deanna plays a politician’s daughter in this western romance with music who follows her boyfriend West during the California gold rush.

F) Question: Was Deanna the voice for Walt Disney’s Snow White?

Answer: Durbin auditioned as the voice of the Snow White in 1937′s animation classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but Walt Disney turned her down because she sounded too mature. She was a teenager at the time.

G) Question: On which radio program was Deanna a regular feature? 1) The Charlie McCarthy Show (with Edgar Bergen); 2) Allen’s Alley with Fred Allen; 3) The Jack Benny Program; or 4) The Eddie Cantor Show.

Answer: Deanna spent two years on Eddie Cantor’s radio show, making her debut in September 1936.  She was, incidentally, a big hit.

H) Question: What’s the connection between Deanna Durbin and Anne Frank?

Answer: It was a star-fan thing. Durbin was the Holocaust victim’s favorite movie star. Frank adorned her secret Amsterdam hiding nook with photos of Deanna. If you visit the Frank house you will still see a photo on the wall.

I ) Question: Who gave her her first screen kiss?  In what movie? And why was it front page news?

Answer: It was Robert Stack in his 1939 movie debut in First Love, who provided Deanna with her first onscreen kiss. As to why this event commanded front page attention, it musta been a slow news day.  Says Joe:  It was a big deal because it was.

J) Question: In what novel does a character claim to have seen a Deanna Durbin film seven times, only he can’t remember which film?

Answer: Trout Fishing In America by Richard Brautigan.

K) Question:  Durbin appealed to several key World War II figures who considered her their favorite star. Who are they?  1) Dwight Eisenhower, 2) Albert Speer; 3) Benito Mussolini; 4) Douglas MacArthur; or 5) Winston Churchill.

Answer:  Mussolini and Churchill were nuts about Deanna, and MacArthur admired her work as well.  Cannot vouch for Speer, however.

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Linda Christian — ‘Bad Girl’ With Style.

Mar22
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Joe keeps telling Frank to write about STARS!  But Frank can’t help himself.  Periodically he needs a Hollywood ‘bad girl’ fix, and today seems like a good time for one.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here to indulge Frank’s interest in marginally talented actresses who live large, expensively and always with a passionate interest in having fun. (Actors, by the way, are not exempt. Beware. Frank is planning a Tab Hunter monograph.)

Hollywood was crawling with ‘bad girls’ in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, and many were big stars.  Could anyone top Lana Turner in this department? One favorite on the low rent side is Barbara Payton, the sometime actress in the late Forties and early Fifties and full-time seducer who got Franchot Tone’s face punched in by actor Tom Neal.

But Linda Christian was in a different league.

She was super sexy with a more than a touch of elegance. The daughter of an Dutch oil executive, she traveled the world early and often. She spoke six or seven languages. She had, let’s say, a tasteful appreciation of what wonderful things money could buy. And, she attracted men who could buy them.

Christian was a favorite subject of Mexican painter Diego Rivera.  She was also the first ‘Bond girl’ in the 1954 tv production of Casino Royale starring Barry Nelson as the pre-Sean Connery 007.

In the late Fifties, Christian found herself in Rome between marriages and hooked up with a Brazilian business mogul celebrating his latest divorce.  The two traveled the world together, after which the mining and metals magnate publicly declared her “the best lay of all time.” When Christian began making movies in Hollywood, Life magazine labelled her ‘The Anatomic Bomb.’

Born Blanca Rosa Henrietta Stella Welter Vorhauer in Mexico in 1923, Christian was said to be ‘discovered’ by Erroll Flynn (of all people) in a Mexico City bar and later on the beaches of Acapulco where the couple repaired for further discussion. By the mid-Forties she was in Hollywood, and drew the interest of MGM.

She had parts in 1952′s Battle Zone, starring John Hodiak, and in the same year The Happy Time with Charles Boyer.  But MGM was largely unimpressed, loaned her out to other production companies and allowed her seven year contract to lapse.

Enter Tyrone Power.  In 1948, Twentieth Century Fox’s matinee idol, a huge star, was having an affair with Lana Turner — there’s that name again — after separating from his first wife Annabella. The actor and Christian met in a hotel they just happened to be sharing in Rome. Romantically speaking, Turner suddenly was history.

In January of 1949, Power and Christian were married in the Church of Santa Francesca Romana in the Eternal City, not far from the Colosseum. Power’s international fame drew thousands of fans outside the church. The event was fulsomely described as ‘the wedding of the century.’ (The newly married couple was later received by Pope Pius XII.)

Such grandly launched unions often turn out badly, and this one was no exception. The couple divorced in 1956 (they had two daughters, Romina and Taryn).  Christian blamed Power’s infidelities while he claimed that she had became much too friendly with British actor Edmund Purdom — Christian’s second and last husband for all of 10 months (March 1962 to January 1963).

Although Christian remained single for the rest of her life, she by no means lived austerely. There was that Milwaukee socialite who provided expensive jewelry (but didn’t pay fully for it; his check bounced). There was a flaming affair with a Spanish racing driver. There was the $1 million divorce settlement provided by Power.

Christian died last July, at age 87, in Palm Desert, California.  No doubt stylish to the end.

 

 

 

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PETER LORRE: The Prankster of ‘Casablanca’

Mar21
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

What are the words most often evoked by the characters played by Peter Lorre?   Refugee? Spy? Lunatic? Murderer?

Perhaps.  But what about prankster?

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to expose another facet of this marvelous actor — born Lazlo Loewenstein in Hungary in 1904.  That is, that Peter Lorre was an inveterate practical joker.

That may come as as a surprise to those who cherish Lorre’s performances in dozens of unsympathetic roles notably including a child murderer in 1931′s M, as the effete, gun-wielding ‘Joel Cairo’ in 1941′s The Maltese Falcon or as the sleazy killer-thief  ’Ugarte’ in the 1942 Humphrey Bogart classic, Casablanca. 

In honor of Casablanca’s 70th anniversary, we’ll concentrate today on Lorre’s outrageous prank staged at the expense of director Michael Curtiz during the making of that classic.

Off-camera, Lorre was notorious for engendering fun and laughs, often at the expense of key coworkers. Some of his devilish gags were targeted at Sydney Greenstreet during the five-year-period (from 1941 to 1946) in which the actors made eight pictures together including Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. 

Besides these two movies, Greenstreet and Lorre appeared together in 1944’s The Mask of Dimitrios, directed by Jean Negulesco and based on an Eric Ambler novel.  The pair also delivered entertaining performances in Negulesco’s 1946 mystery Three Strangers. Greenstreet and Lorre are justifiably regarded today by classic movie fans as one of the screen’s great actor duos. British author-critic David Thomson refers to them as “Lear and the Fool.”

Lorre’s most notorious prank took place one day on the Warner Brothers’ studio set of Casablanca (no, the picture was NOT shot in Morocco!). Director Curtiz, a native of Hungary (nee Mano Kertesz Kaminer), had a reputation as a dedicated womanizer.

Curtiz would hire winsome young extras to accompany him during shooting breaks, with sexual favors as part of the deal. He would choose any private place on the set usually behind some flat in a secluded area. He’d have the grips move a piece of furniture there, a couch, or even a mattress — almost anything to soften his lovemaking, recalled Paul Henreid in his 1984 autobiography.

Lorre got wind of this arrangement, and arranged for the sound department to bug the location of Curtiz’ assignations. Henreid (‘Victor Laszlo’ in the movie) recalled that we were all resting betwen takes one afternoon when suddenly, over the loudspeaker, we hear Mike moaning, ‘Oh God! Oh no,no,no…’

We were stunned.  For a second we thought he was in pain, and we jumped up, but Peter Lorre, grinning like a madman, waved us back, and we realized what was going on. Mike’s moaning became increasingly ecstatic: ‘Oh yes, yes — oh God, yes.’  And then: ‘Take it all, take it all — my balls too!’ 

The entire cast collapsed in laughter. Fortunately for Curtiz and his status on the set, he never found about Lorre’s trick.

 

 

 

 

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From Big Band Singer to Movie Star — Remembering Dick Haymes

Mar20
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

There were many famous Big Band Singers of the 1940s.  Many went on to have successful recording careers, many appeared in films, recreating their big band hit songs, but only a very few made the transition to movie star.

Hello,everybody.  Mr. Joe Morella and Mr. Frank Segers back again.  And as every film buff knows, Mrs. Norman Maine (in the 1954 version of A Star is Born) made the spectacular transition from band singer to Star.

But how many real life singers have?

The most famous of the bunch, of course, is Frank Sinatra.  But there was another VERY popular Big Band Singer of the 40s who also became (for a time) a top box office movie star.  Dick Haymes.

Ironically Haymes had followed Sinatra several times.  He replaced him as the singer with Harry James’ Orchestra, then later replaced him as the singer with Tommy Dorsey’s Orchestra.  Then when the movies made Sinatra a star, the studios figured they could do the same with Haymes.

He was signed by 20th Century Fox. His breakthough film was 1944′s Four Jills and a Jeep, a musical romance with Kay Francis and Martha Raye. Then the studio starred him opposite their top leading ladies, June Haver and Betty Grable. His recording career flourished as well.  Many of his hit records were duets with fellow band singer Helen Forrest.

Haymes was in the cast of 1945′s State Fair. He also appeared with Ava Gardner in 1948′s One Touch of Venus for Universal.  Although an excellent singer, he is probably best remembered today for the women he married.  He had exquisite taste.  His wives included actresses Joanne Dru, Fran Jeffries, Nora Eddington (who’d been married to Errol Flynn) and, most notably, Rita Hayworth. (In all, Haymes made six trips to the marital altar.)

The marriage to Hayworth generated the most publicity. He was her fourth husband and, according to writer-reporter Bob Thomas, the union came about (in 1953) because she felt sorry for him when he came to visit her Hawaii during the filming of ‘Miss Sadie Thompson.’

The trip brought him under the threat of deportation since he was an Argentine citizen (Haymes was born in 1918 in Buenos Aires) and had not notified authorities that he was traveling to an American territory. Rita married him to eliminate the possibility that he would be deported.

Soon Dick Haymes was dictating the style of Rita’s hair, her costumes in films, the kinds of roles she should play. Haymes also volunteered to produce Rita’s pictures and to costar opposite her.  It was more than …Cohn could bear, wrote Thomas in his 1967 biography ‘King Cohn: The Life and Times of Hollywood Mogul Harry Cohn‘ (the dictatorial boss of Columbia Pictures where Rita was under contract).

(For much more on the blessedly short (1953-to-1955) Haymes-Hayworth union, take at look at Joe’s 1983 biography, Rita: The Life of Rita Hayworth, co-authored by Edward Z. Epstein.)

After his film career was over — Haymes last movie was 1976′s Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, joining a platoon of Hollywood veterans in the cast — he turned to tv and nightclubs.   He was a notorious alcoholic and died at 61.

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