Posts tagged Did Carole Lombard have an affair with George Raft?

YOUR FAVORITE VALENTINE’S DAY PICKS + Sage Observations From Our Email Bag

Jan31
2012 3 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

 

Hello, everyone.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today reminding you that Valentine’s Day is just a week away.

In a move of maximum modesty, we decided to refrain from dictating our picks of the best movies to mark the romantic occasion. Instead, we ask you — yes, you!

Don’t be shy, please. We’d like to know about your Valentine’s Day favorites, both familiar (Casablanca, Brief Encounter, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, Moonstruck, etc.) and unfamiliar. Especially the latter.

Is there a great romantic gem out there that you have been keeping to yourself all these years?  If so, now is the time to spill the beans. We’ll happily print your answers, so don’t hesitate to let the world in on your movie secret.

We’d like to know not only the title of your favorite Valentine’s Day movie, but what about it makes you like it so much.

We plan on publishing as many reader picks as we can in our Feb. 14 blog.  So, by all means, shake a leg. The sooner we receive your choice(s) the better. Just click onto the “Leave A Comment” box (upper right) and fire away.  Thanks.

Troweling through our email bag, we came across the response of regular correspondent and fellow blogger Patricia Nolan-Hall (Caftan Woman) to our Jan. 27 What’s A “Working Actor”? (Richard Jaeckel, Anyone?) blog.  As you’ll see, Pat has a favorite in the “working actor” sweepstakes:

I’ll put Wallace Ford at the top of the list. From “Freaks” to “A Patch of Blue” he did it all in the movies. (That’s our man pictured above and below)

A detective in “Shadow of a Doubt”, a snitch in “T-Men”, Jean Harlow’s leading man in “The Beast of the City”, the doomed Frankie McPhillips in “The Informer” and the philosophical cabbie in “Harvey”. He created the role of George in the Broadway production of “Of Mice and Men”. When he appeared on screen you could relax and enjoy a good performance because he knew what he was doing and never disappointed.

We couldn’t agree more, Pat.  Frank especially appreciates Ford’s expressions of pathetic desperation while being parboiled in a steam bath by nasty Charles McGraw in 1947′s T-Men.

In response to our Jan. 10 Carole Lombard & George Raft — Lovers? Can That Be? blog, we received interesting responses from two of our regular correspondents.  Kim Wilson provides the woman’s point-of-view about the plausibility of team Raft and Lombard as lovers:

I can see it. He had intensity and that can be attractive to women.

Our man Vincent tells us more about Raft’s liaisons:

It should be noted that among Raft’s other lovers were Norma Shearer (after Irving Thalberg’s passing), Betty Grable (pre-Harry James) and Mae West. He and Mae were lifelong friends — in later years, they talked on the phone daily — and he worked on both her first film (“Night After Night”) and last (“Sextette”). Raft and West died within two days of each other in late 1980.

Thanks, Vincent.

Finally, back to Pat Nolan-Hall, who took one look at the photograph of Spring Byington surrounded by Edmund Gwenn and Charles Coburn (costars of 1950′s Louisa) in our Jan. 25 blog, What’s An Old-Fashioned, Charming Picture Doing In A Place Like This, and wrote:

I scrolled down to the picture and “Bam!” I was a kid again, sitting in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon watching “Louisa”. It’s been that long since I’ve seen that gem, as you so rightfully called it. Truly, they don’t make ‘em like they used to.

One of the plot points deftly and discreetly made in Louisa is that romance is indeed possible post 60 or even after 70.  Sounds like a great Valentine’s Day choice to us.

 

 

 

 

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Carole Lombard & George Raft — Lovers? Can That Be?

Jan10
2012 2 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

Do you have trouble, as we do, picturing George Raft (right above) as a bigtime screen lover man?

Dancer? Ok.  Gangster?  But of course.  Lothario?  We dunno.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today with a slightly different slant on Raft, a major Hollywood star at Warner Brothers in the Thirties and Forties whose implicit belief in his own press releases eventually resulted in a an over-inflated ego and a truncated movie career.

The idea of Raft as lover came to us courtesy of one of our most alert readers. In response to our Was George Raft A Gangster? blog (Dec. 13), we received an informative response from our pal, Vincent.

The idea of our blog was to highlight Raft’s often over-looked dancing skills rather than his many gangster movie roles. None other than self-described “song-and-dance-man” James Cagney rated George’s terpsichorean talents right up their with the those of Fred Astaire.

Here’s what Vincent wrote:

You can see Raft dance in the 1932 Cagney film “Taxi!” George and Carole Lombard (one of many actresses he was intimate with; Lombard reportedly told close friends that Raft was, in the bedroom sense, the best lover she ever had) made two dance films together: “Bolero” (a big hit for Paramount in early 1934, including a scene where Carole dances in lingerie and stockings!) and the less successful “Rumba” a year later.

Raft was slated to co-star with Lombard in 1936, but he walked off the set after learning Ted Tetzlaff would be the cameraman, and Fred MacMurray replaced him in the film that became “The Princess Comes Across.” More on that can be found at http://carole-and-co.livejournal.com/166158.html.

It’s worth mentioning that Vincent also responded to our earlier bog on Howard Hughes (Howard Hughes — The World’s Greatest Womanizer) with the following missive:

Not many are aware of it, but apparently one of Hughes’ bedroom conquests was Carole Lombard, around 1929; in fact, it’s believed she lost her virginity to him. In “Screwball,” Lombard biographer Larry Swindell wrote as such, but had to dance around it a bit, describing Hughes but not mentioning him by name. (“Screwball” was issued in the fall of 1975, about half a year before Hughes’ passing, and I’m guessing the publisher, remembering the Clifford Irving hoax of a few years earlier, didn’t want to take any chances.)

Lombard finally came to her senses, ditched Hughes, Raft and whomever else and married Clark Gable in 1939. The union was a happy one and lasted until her death in a plane crash in 1942.

Thanks, Vincent, for both Lombard contributions.

Back to George. It seems that Raft was plagued throughout his career with making rash, boneheaded decisions about role choices, and coworkers. Remember, it was Raft who was first offered but turned down the Bogie played role in Casablanca. (Not to mention The Maltese Falcon.)

Here’s another shot of the “lovers.” Wow, what a classic studio still. Raft doing his chiropractor routine.

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