Posts tagged Robert Mitchum

What a Scandal! (The “Hollywood Babylon” Quiz)

Mar19
2013 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

It was published in 1975, and for years thereafter author Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon set the standard for juicy, tell-all star guides. The book covered the scandal waterfront from the silent movie era through the 1960′s, and it still makes for entertaining reading.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to note that by today’s standards, Hollywood Babylon is relatively mild stuff. Cocaine, orgies, sensational divorces, out-of-the-closet revelations, mobsters on the back lot, mental breakdowns, booze and drugs, rehab… the works. Old stuff to us now.

Thanks to the insatiable thirst for scandal on the internet, we now get a breathlessly assembled menu of Hollywood hijinks on a daily basis. It all goes to prove the old saying — the more Hollywood changes the more it remains the same.

In honor of Anger’s pioneering tome, we’ve assembled a short Hollywood Babylon quiz linking famous names covered in the book along with their offscreen indiscretions.  Try and match the two.

1) Question: Charlie Chaplin may have been a silent screen genius but he was certainly a busy guy in the love and lust department, which sometime entailed court appearances. Which of these woman was NOT involved with Chaplin?  a) Oona O’Neill; b) Lillita McMurray; c) Pola Negri; d) Mildred Harris; e) Joan Crawford; or e) Joan Barry?

2) Question: “Mexican spitfire” Lupe Velez committed suicide in 1944 at the age of 36 after making miserable the lives of which of the following: a) John Gilbert; b) Gary Cooper; c) Johnny Weissmuller; d) Clayton Moore; or e) Clifton Webb?

3) Question: In July of 1948, Rex Harrison walked into the Pacific Palisades home of his mistress (at the time, he was married to actress Lilli Palmer), and discovered her dead body. His lover had just overdosed on sleeping pills.  Who was she? a) Bette Grable; b) Frances Farmer; c) Gail Russell; or d) Carole Landis?

4) Question: Part of the Robert Mitchum legend is that he was arrested and jailed after attending a summer 1948 party at the Hollywood cottage of starlet Lila Leeds.  What was the charge? a) Drunken driving; b) petit larceny; c) cheating on his studio expense accounting sheets; or d) smoking marijuana.

5) Question: Distinguished character actor Albert Dekker revealed an intimate part of his private life when he hung himself in his bathroom 1968. What was his secret? a) He was a cross dresser; b) he left a note confessing to a series of burglaries; c) he enjoyed using handcuffs; or d) he had had a sex change operation.

That’s it.  See if you can come up with the correct answers without referring to another source.  After that, enjoy yourself as you consult a copy of Hollywood Babylon.

 

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HOWARD HUGHES — The Godzilla of Big Studio Moguls

Nov22
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s become trendy in academic circles these days to view the big studio bosses — Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Mayer, the fractious Warner brothers, Darryl F. Zanuck,  Harry Cohn — as tough-as-nails egomaniacs and ruthlessly strong-willed dictators, necessary if you wanted to get the job done.

The moguls, goes this view, may not have been even remotely likable as individuals. But boy, they ran their respective dream factories with iron-grip efficiency. They may have been personally nasty, bestial to those who worked for them and renowned casting couch enthusiasts.  But, they were the tough, competent chiefs the Hollywood dream factories demanded.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to discuss the one mogul who definitely doesn’t qualify for this revisionist, forgiving academic assessment.

We are talking about Howard Hughes.  (That’s a flattering photo of young Howard above.)

Of all the moguls, he most resembled today’s all-to-common financial and business executive who profits in incompetence, who screws up whole enterprises and then departs with a huge benefit package. When Hughes was through with RKO, the studio was in ruins while Howard was millions richer.

“While a profusion of books, articles, movies and television programs about Howard Hughes are biblical in scope, his ownership of RKO Studios has often been little more than a footnote compared to some of his more notable exploits,” writes Alan K. Rode, author of the excellent Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy published by McFarland & Company.  (McGraw, a superb all-around supporting actor for decades, starred in some of RKO’s finest noir titles ever made during his two-year tenure at the studio, begun in January 1950.)

Rode argues that the famed builder of the “Spruce Goose” heavy transport aircraft never had the makeup of a studio mogul. “The balanced temperament and specialized skill sets required to run a delicately complex operation like a movie studio were noticeably absent from his personal repertoire.” That’s putting it mildly.

Hughes was far more interested in machinery than movies. In his 1978 memoir, director Edward Dmytryk wrote of his Hughes fascination. He recalled what Lewis Milestone (who directed two of Hughes’ early movie ventures, 1927′s Two Arabian Knights and the 1931 version of The Front Page) had told him. When Milestone planned to screen film footage, he was flatly told one day his usual projection room was not available.

“On his way past the booth, (Milestone) stuck in his head to see what was wrong.  There, on the floor, was a spread-out sheet, and on the sheet sat Howard Hughes, surrounded by the hundreds of parts of a completely stripped-down projection machine.

“Just wanted to see how it worked,” Hughes explained.

His work habits were strange, to put it mildly.  He often didn’t show up at the studio’s Gower and Melrose Streets headquarters. Robert Mitchum, a huge RKO star, dubbed him “The Phantom.” Hughes was a micro-manager, who hounded, alienated and finally drove out his cadre of expensive managers including producers Dore Schary and Jerry Wald, among many others.

Hughes obsessively reviewed final cuts, ordering extensive re-shooting at whim — expense and distribution dates be damned. He was infamous for delaying the release of finished pictures for years. And, he ripped through employee ranks, ordering wholesale firings.

Hughes bought RKO on May 11, 1948 for $8.8 million; that’s about $82.5 million in today’s dollars.  At the time there were 2,000 employees working at the studio. By 1953, there were about 450 left.  By then, Hughes was bored with being a studio boss.

Hughes managed to reach an agreement to sell RKO to a syndicate of Chicago investors with Mafia ties. That deal collapsed after the press got wind of some of the unsavory personalities involved (Hughes was suspected of leaking the information.)

In July 1955, the studio was finally sold to a unit of General Tire at a profit to Hughes of at least $6 million — which works out to the equivalent of $50 million in today’s dollars. (The Gower and Melrose lot was bought two years later by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, becoming their Desilu TV production colossus.)

“Hughes walked away with millions and (RKO) ceased to exist,” Rode notes.  Gone was the studio that gave us Citizen Kane, King Kong, Top Hat, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Journey Into Fear, The Magnificent Ambersons, the Val Lewton-produced titles and perhaps the best film noir ever made, Out of the Past.

Why did Hughes insist on trying to be a studio head?  We explore the answer to that in tomorrow’s blog.  Hint — it had much to do with a three-letter word beginning with “s” and ending with an “x.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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JANE RUSSELL–ABORTION AND RELIGION

Jun02
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Didn’t Russell confess to having had an abortion?

Yes. It happened when Jane was 21.

Hello everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers here, your classic movies guys.

Jane Russell, one of Hollywood’s biggest female stars of the late Forties and Fifties, made clear in her 1985 autobiography, “My Path & My Detours,” that she was brought up in a highly religious family.

The Russells were fundamentalist Christians, and Jane found herself speaking in tongues at a young age.  Her God was personal, a friend to whom she would openly address almost as if in casual conversation.  Her faith was a lot more than a once-a-week-on-Sundays thing.

Here, then, is how she described a distinctly un-Godly situation she confronted.

“From my free and easy life, leaving God out of things, I suddenly found myself to be quite pregnant. I was terrified. In those days no ‘nice girl’ got pregnant. There was no such thing as keeping a child out of wedlock in 1942.”

So Russell had an abortion.  She describes two procedures (the first didn’t take) concisely but painfully in her book. Referring to her paramour at the time, Bob Waterfield (more on him later), she wrote: “I suppose Robert thought it was his.  I wasn’t that sure.” The procedures left her “very sick for the first time in my life.”

She recovered at home with her mother who “prayed for me and read the Bible. Every morning as I looked out on her beautiful garden, all I could see was the good Lord and how much He loved me in spite of myself.”

It’s hard to say how Russell dealt with issues such as premartial sex and abortion and continued to maintain her devout faith.  She never had children of her own, although she emerged as a potent Hollywood advocate over the years for adoption, founding the World Adoption International Fund in the 1950′s. She became the mother of three adopted children (to whom her autobiography was dedicated) — “Who more than once have been my reason for living.”

After her abortion, Jane broke off her relationship with Waterfield, and began what she described as a “very serious affair” with actor John Payne, who she described as “a thinker, a reader, a writer.”  He certainly was a far-sighted businessman. While employed at 20th Century Fox, Payne invested in land along the Malibu coastline.  For some reason, such a auspicious relationship didn’t last.

In any event, Russell eventually married Bob Waterfield, in Las Vegas in 1943.  The couple had met in high school when Waterfield noticed that Jane had transformed “from a skinny fifteen-year-old to a well-stacked seventeen-year-old.”  Jane confessed to two infidelities during the marriage including a one-night stand with “one of my old loves, who I’ll call Lance.”  Many in Hollywood thought Jane and Robert Mitchum had been lovers, but she never admitted it .  They were very close friends and their on screen chemistry was vibrant.

Russell maintained that Waterfield, an all-star quarterback with the Los Angeles Rams from 1944 to 1952, was unfaithful multiple times.  Their 24-year-marriage veered from ecstatic to acrimonious, and the divorce came through in 1967.

Jane married twice more after Bob Waterfield, but outlived both husbands. Throughout her life Jane remained deeply religious.  In 2003, she described herself as a “conservative Christian bigot, but not a racist.”

YESTERDAY’S PIC: Jane and Bob Hope in “Paleface.”  It was Hope’s highest grossing picture without Crosby and Lamour.

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Did Jane Russell Sleep With Howard Hughes?

Jun01
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Today’s question, posed in the headline above today’s picture, is not meant to be disrespectful or rude. Not at all.

It’s  just that this blunt question arises whenever you assess the career of Jane Russell, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars of the Forties and Fifties.

Hello everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys here again.

Whatever Jane Russell”s acting skills — and Frank rates her higher in this category than most — she oozed sex onscreen.  Not the cuddly, baby-talking kind exuded by Marilyn Monroe, Russell’s costar in Howard Hawk’s wonderful  1953 rendition of the fortune-hunter romp, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

No.  Russell’s eroticism was more direct, a lipcurling, no-nonsense, full figured approach that made amply clear the rewards of pleasing her were great, but those crossing her would be chewed up and spit out before breakfast.  Her figure was her claim to fame as Bob Hope, her costar in “The Paleface,” and its sequel,”The Son of Paleface,” would point out to the world when he’d  introduce her “as the two and only…”

Check her out in Josef von Sternberg’s 1952 thriller “Macao,” in which Jane was cast opposite Robert Mitchum as a sultry, worldly-wise nightclub singer at loose ends in the steamy Asian gambling capital now part of China. The chemistry between the two stars is evidently helped by the fact they were fast friends off-camera.

Both intensely disliked the Vienna-born von Sternberg (Marlene Dietrich’s svengali.)  During “Macao’s” less-than-smooth shooting, the director would turn to Mitchum and say: “Now we have to bolster this beautiful girl with no talent.”  This infuriated Mitchum, who would cut von Sternberg short — in more ways than one. (Von Sternberg was eventually taken off the picture to be replaced by a young Nicholas Ray.)

Getting back to our headline question, we felt compelled to search for the real Jane as expressed in her 1985 autobiography, “Jane Russell My Paths & My Detours.”

– Did Russell sleep  with  Howard Hughes, the studio mogul who made her an international sex symbol in her first movie, “The Outlaw”?

Jane says, absolutely not.  She found him likable, kooky and timid. “I often hollered at Howard, and I think in a funny kind of way I scared him.” Hughes would later confide to friends, “that woman terrified me.” Hughes did make one serious pass, according to Jane, but got nowhere.  Hughes did volunteer during the making of “The Outlaw” to design a special-fitted bra for Russell, but she didn’t wear it.  ”I found it uncomfortable and ridiculous.” The powerful agent Lew Wasserman, who represented Jane at one point, asked her: “Look, are you sleeping with this guy or what?” A stunned Jane responded, “No, Lew, my God! He’s my friend.”

There were rumors that Hughes lent, or gave Jane money when she found herself in financial straits late in her career.  This isn’t true,  but the eccentric mogul did provide financially for her after he sold the RKO studio and after completion of 1955′s “Underwater,” which Jane bluntly described as a “turkey.” Hughes offered what she described as a “unique” contract reserving his right to loan Jane out to any other studio (she was under contract to him at the time) for six pictures over a five-year period with her payments spread over 20 years. She could also make pictures on her own. Jane was guaranteed $1 million dollars, a pretty big payday 56 years ago. Agent Wasserman “helped Jimmy Stewart and many stars set up the same format, but mine was the first of its kind,” boasted Jane.

One of Russell’s best remembered films is”Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”  The box office receipts and  the critical reviews were “great,” recalled Jane.  The picture was a highlight of her 27-year-career.

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