Here are pictures of some of the biggest stars Hollywood ever produced.
What do these photos have in common?
They are all candid shots which were first seen on this blog.
And that’s Donald Gordon above with Eleanor Powell. We have him to thank for these photos.
Not much going on today from Joe & Frank…
But the Roy Rogers photo is very familiar, and it’s certainly been published before long ago.
And speaking of star candid poses, there were more than a few photographers taking them. One of the four original LIFE magazine group was Peter Stackpole, but he was a professional of course…
But there were amateurs out there doing the same, but one in particular was taking candid shots also with his home movie camera…
KEN MURRAY the cigar-chomping veteran of vaudeville, screen and television has diligently shot and collected impromptu footage of HOLLYWOOD in it’s ‘Golden Era.’
If you don’t recall him exactly, he’s the wise-cracking town doctor who pronounces Lee Marvin dead in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALENCE.
Murray had his own TV show in 1950, and in it he would show these “home movies” of the stars, they were later compiled into a documentary called HOLLYWOOD WITHOUT MAKEUP, his commentary in the two is a brisk one, folksy but informative…
And in 1965, he put together HOLLYWOOD MY HOME TOWN. Between the two you saw 38 years of rare behind-the-scenes movie history…
A youthful Bob Hope saunters out of the Orpheum vaudeville house in Los Angeles and cavorts for Mr. Murray’s lenses, setting the tone for much that follows. So do Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, between scenes.We see Mary Pickford in rehearsal Richard Arlen at poolside, John Barrymore and Dolores Costello ardently wooing to a sideline violin accompaniment, a glimpse of a baby-faced cowboy extra named Walter Brennan, and Grauman’s Chinese Theater’s opening night with THE KING OF KINGS. The footage slides into the thirties with informal vignettes of Cary Grant hosting a Malibu party of stars like Carole Lombard. Irene Dunne and Gertrude Lawrence. It includes an Agua Caliente race track round-up that has a wonderfully funny close-up of Polly Moran. Most of the top-liners saunter past Mr. Murray’s camera, human as any of us, we see the youthful Clark Gable and Norma Shearer, Glenn Ford and Tyrone Power doing Army duty, and other informal shots of Thomas Mitchell, Debbie Reynolds contrasted with Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford as vintage queens. Mr. Murray brings the footage through the years of the Hollywood Canteen and adds a tour of Disneyland with producer Walt Disney and Mr. Murray’s two daughters.The picture’s most novel footage (Mr. Murray thinks so, too) is a long, detailed middle sequence on William Randolph Hearst’s baronial estate, San Simeon, shown under construction and as a party playground for film stars. That same rare and exclusive footage is still being shown every day to visitors touring the Hearst Castle estate.
There are plenty of wonderful moments in those two documentaries: Maurice Chevalier’s original screen test rendition of “Louise” to a scratchy piano. And there is a truly poignant minute when a sweet-faced 15-year-old named Marilyn Monroe auditions for Louella Parsons’s old radio program, “Hollywood Hotel.” And wait till you see Miss Parsons costumed as Shirley Temple at a San Simeon party.”
As Ken Murray said in the 1960’s “today you just can’t get many of the stars to kid around for the camera.” And today that’s all the ‘stars’ ever do!
His famous quote on HOLLYWOOD -“A place where you spend more than you make on things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like.”
I’d write more about him, but like Joe & Frank I feel we’ve done enough already…
Keep those COMMENTS coming…