Each Monday for the last few weeks we’ve been featuring movie stars and their automobiles. But today we’re featuring the car and not the star (or in this case, stars).
Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to continue in a fashion our Stars & Cars series.
The above photo is a shot from the the 1937 film Topper which starred Cary Grant, Constance Bennett and Roland Young.
In the movie, the Kirbys (Grant and Bennett) were a wealthy, madcap couple and Topper (Young) was their banker. When they are killed in an accident, Topper inherits their car, a Cord roadster, and the ghosts of George and Marion Kirby.
Did the movies make the Cord a more desirable auto, or did the movies just use the popular and sought after auto to glamorize the stars and the films? The chicken or the egg?
Cords were indeed flashy and popular in 1937. They were manufactured by the Cord Corporation, founded by one Errett LobbanCord in the late 1920′s. Besides the Cord brand, the company also put out another model popular in classic Hollywood, the Dusenberg. These vehicles were actually manufactured in that most American locale, the state of Indiana.
The Cords was certainly among the most beautiful automobiles ever made, and the designs, as you can see, were truly revolutionary. The vehicles had a short life, though. By the year Topper came out, the Cord Corp., financially ravaged by the Great Depression, went into bankruptcy.
Still, it’s a bit of an eye-opener to see what beautiful vehicles the American auto industry USED to make. And, classic Hollywood fully appreciated that beauty.
Here’s director Cecil B. deMille in his Cord!
