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Mary Astor

April 12, 2022 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an American actress.

She is best remembered for her role as Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. She eventually changed to talkies. At first her voice was considered too masculine and she was off the screen for a year. She appeared in a play with friend Florence Eldridge, and the film offers came in, so she was able to resume her career in talking films.

Four years later her career was nearly destroyed due to scandal. In 1936 Astor was later branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband, in a custody fight over her daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, Astor went on to greater success on screen, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in The Great Lie (1941).

Astor was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to work in film, television and on stage until her retirement in 1964. Astor was the author of five novels.

Her autobiography was a bestseller, as was her later book, A Life on Film, which was about her career. Director Lindsay Anderson wrote of her in 1990 that “when two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played”.

Early life

Astor was born in Quincy, Illinois, the only child of Otto Ludwig Langhanke (October 2, 1871 – February 3, 1943) and Helen Marie de Vasconcellos (April 19, 1881 – January 18, 1947).

Both of her parents were teachers. Her father, a German man from Berlin, emigrated to the United States in 1891 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen; her American mother was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, and had Irish and Portuguese roots. They married on August 3, 1904 in Lyons, Kansas.

Otto Ludwig Langhanke, Mary Astor’s father

Astor’s father taught German at Quincy High School until the U.S. entered World War I. Later on, he took up light farming. Astor’s mother, who had always wanted to be an actress, taught drama and elocution. Astor was home-schooled in academics and was taught to play the piano by her father, who insisted she practice daily. Her piano talents came in handy when she played piano in her films The Great Lie and Meet Me in St. Louis.

In 1919, Astor sent a photograph of herself to a beauty contest in Motion Picture Magazine, becoming a semifinalist. When Astor was 15, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, with her father teaching German in public schools. Astor took drama lessons and appeared in various amateur stage productions. The following year, she sent another photograph to Motion Picture Magazine, this time becoming a finalist and then runner-up in the national contest. Her father then moved the family to New York City, in order for his daughter to act in motion pictures. He managed her affairs from September 1920 to June 1930.

A Manhattan photographer, Charles Albin, saw her photograph and asked the young girl with haunting eyes and long auburn hair, whose nickname was “Rusty”, to pose for him. The Albin photographs were seen by Harry Durant of Famous Players-Lasky and Astor was signed to a six-month contract with Paramount Pictures. Her name was changed to “Mary Astor” during a conference between Paramount Pictures chief Jesse Lasky, film producer Walter Wanger, and gossip columnist Louella Parsons.

Silent movie career

A 1924 publicity photo of Astor from Stars of the Photoplay

Astor’s first screen test was directed by Lillian Gish, who was so impressed with her recitation of Shakespeare that she shot a thousand feet of her.

She made her debut at age 14 in the 1921 film Sentimental Tommy, but her small part in a dream sequence wound up on the cutting room floor.

Sentimental Tommy (1921) Dir: John S Robertson

Paramount let her contract lapse. She then appeared in some movie shorts with sequences based on famous paintings. She received critical recognition for the 1921 two-reeler The Beggar Maid. Her first feature-length movie was John Smith (1922), followed that same year by The Man Who Played God. In 1923, she and her parents moved to Hollywood.

The Beggar Maid (1921) Dir: Herbert Blache

After appearing in several larger roles at various studios, she was again signed by Paramount, this time to a one-year contract at $500 a week.

After she appeared in several more movies, John Barrymore saw her photograph in a magazine and wanted her cast in his upcoming movie. On loan-out to Warner Bros., she starred with him in Beau Brummel (1924).

Beau Brummel (1924) Dir: Harry Beaumont

Mary Astor and John Barrymore in Beau Brummel (1924)

The older actor wooed the young actress, but their relationship was severely constrained by Astor’s parents’ unwillingness to let the couple spend time alone together; Mary was only seventeen and legally underage.

It was only after Barrymore convinced the Langhankes that his acting lessons required privacy that the couple managed to be alone at all. Their secret engagement ended largely because of the Langhankes’ interference and Astor’s inability to escape their heavy-handed authority, and because Barrymore became involved with Astor’s fellow WAMPAS Baby Star Dolores Costello, whom he later married.

In 1925, Astor’s parents bought a Moorish style mansion with 1 acre (4,000 m²) of land known as “Moorcrest” in the hills above Hollywood. The Langhankes not only lived lavishly off of Astor’s earnings, but kept her a virtual prisoner inside Moorcrest.

Moorcrest is notable not only for its ornate style, but its place as the most lavish residence associated with the Krotona Colony, a utopian society founded by the Theosophical Society in 1912.

Moorcrest Estate

The 6,432-square-foot gated estate was designed by philosophical architect Marie Russak Hotchener and built in 1921, combining Moorish, Gothic and Art Nouveau architectural influences to striking effect

Built by Marie Russak Hotchener, a Theosophist who had no formal architectural training, the house combines Moorish and Mission Revival styles and contains such Arts and Crafts features as art-glass windows (whose red lotus design Astor called “unfortunate”), and Batchelder tiles.

Moorcrest, which has since undergone a multimillion-dollar renovation, remains standing. Before the Langhankes bought it, it was rented by Charlie Chaplin, whose tenure is memorialized by an art glass window featuring the Little Tramp.

Astor’s parents were not Theosophists, though the family was friendly with both Marie Hotchener and her husband Harry, prominent TS members.

Marie Hotchener negotiated Astor’s right to a $5 a week allowance (at a time when she was making $2,500 a week) and the right to go to work unchaperoned by her mother.

The following year when she was 19, Astor, fed up with her father’s constant physical and psychological abuse as well as his control of her money, climbed from her second floor bedroom window and escaped to a hotel in Hollywood, as recounted in her memoirs.

Marie Rusak Hotchener (born Mary Ellen Barnard)

Hotchener facilitated her return by persuading Otto Langhanke to give Astor a savings account with $500 and the freedom to come and go as she pleased.

Nevertheless, she did not gain control of her salary until she was 26 years old, at which point her parents sued her for financial support. Astor settled the case by agreeing to pay her parents $100 a month. Otto Langhanke put Moorcrest up for auction in the early 1930s, hoping to realize more than the $80,000 he had been offered for it; it sold for $25,000.

Don Juan (1926) Dir: Alan Crosland

Mary Astor in Don Juan (1926)

Mary Astor and John Barrymore in Don Juan (1926)

Cast and crew of Don Juan (1926)

Astor continued to appear in movies at various studios. When her Paramount contract ended in 1925, she was signed at Warner Bros.

Among her assignments was another role with John Barrymore, this time in Don Juan (1926).

She was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, along with Mary Brian, Dolores Costello, Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Janet Gaynor, and Fay Wray.

WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1926

On loan to Fox Film Corporation, Astor starred in Dressed To Kill (1928), which received good reviews.

Dressed to Kill (1928)

Edmund Lowe and Mary Astor in Dressed to Kill (1928)

Ben Bard in Dressed t o Kill (1928)

That same year, she starred in the sophisticated comedy Dry Martini at Fox. She later said that, while working on the latter, she “absorbed and assumed something of the atmosphere and emotional climate of the picture.”

She said it offered “a new and exciting point of view; with its specious doctrine of self-indulgence, it rushed into the vacuum of my moral sense and captivated me completely.”

When her Warner Bros. contract ended, she signed a contract with Fox for $3,750 a week. In 1928, she married director Kenneth Hawks at her family home, Moorcrest.

Dry Martini (1928) Dir: Harry D’Arrast

Mary Astor and Albert Conti in Dry Martini (1928)

Mary Astor and Matt Moore in Dry Martini (1928)

He gave her a Packard automobile as a wedding present and the couple moved into a home high up on Appian Way, a small hilltop street in Laurel Canyon above the Sunset Strip. Their address was 8803 Appian Way.

Other celebrities who lived at different times on this short street include Errol Flynn and his French wife Lili Damita (8946 Appian Way); Ida Lupino (8761); fashion designer Jean Louis [Berthault] (8761); Ginger Rogers(8782); German composer Rudolf Friml (8782); Gypsy Rose Lee (8815 Appian Way); Carole King (8815); Courteney Cox (8815).

As the film industry made the transition to talkies, Fox gave her a sound test, which she failed because the studio found her voice to be too deep. Though this was probably due to early sound equipment and the inexperience of technicians, the studio released her from her contract and she found herself out of work for eight months in 1929.

Mary Astor and Kenneth Hawks on their Wedding Day

New beginnings

Astor took voice training and singing lessons in her time off, but no roles were offered. Her acting career was then given a boost by her friend, Florence Eldridge (wife of Fredric March), in whom she confided.

Eldridge, who was to star in the stage play Among the Married at the Majestic Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles, recommended Astor for the second female lead. The play was a success and her voice was deemed suitable, being described as low and vibrant.

She was happy to work again, but her happiness soon ended. On January 2, 1930, while filming sequences for the Fox movie Such Men Are Dangerous, Kenneth Hawks was killed in a mid-air plane crash over the Pacific.

Astor had just finished a matinee performance at the Majestic when Florence Eldridge gave her the news. She was rushed from the theatre to Eldridge’s apartment; a replacement, Doris Lloyd, stepped in for the next show. Astor remained with Eldridge at her apartment for some time, then soon returned to work.

Newspaper article on Kenneth Hawks’ death

Shortly after her husband’s death, she debuted in her first “talkie”, Ladies Love Brutes (1930) at Paramount, which co-starred friend Fredric March.

Ladies Love Brutes Dir: Rowland W Lee (1930)

George Bancroft and Mary Astor in Ladies Love Brutes (1930)

Mary Astor and Fredric March in Ladies Love Brutes (1930)

While her career picked up, her private life remained difficult. After working on several more movies, she suffered delayed shock over her husband’s death and had a nervous breakdown.

During the months of her illness, she was attended to by Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, whom she married on June 29, 1931.

Mary Astor and Dr Franklyn Thorpe

That year, she starred as Nancy Gibson in Smart Woman, playing a woman determined to retrieve her husband from a gold-digging flirtation.

The clever dialogue, played against the trappings of a lavish mansion, involves another man who is obviously in love with Astor’s character.

This wealthy lord, at the behest of Gibson, attracts the attention of the gold-digger during lazy days at the manor. The husband, initially set upon divorcing Nancy and marrying the intruder “Peggy Preston”, is dismayed to find Peggy attracted to the newcomer because of his extraordinary wealth. All done in a civil, but cunning, manner.

Smart Woman Dir: Gregory La Cava (1931)

Mary Astor and Johnny Halliday in Smart Woman (1931)

Mary Astor in Smart Woman (1931)

In May 1932, the Thorpes purchased a yacht and sailed to Hawaii. Astor was expecting a baby in August, but gave birth in June in Honolulu. The child, a daughter, was named Marylyn Hauoli Thorpe: her first name combined her parents’ names and her middle name is Hawaiian. When they returned to Southern California,

Mary Astor with her baby Marylin Hauoli Thorpe in 1932

Astor freelanced and gained the pivotal role of Barbara Willis in MGM‘s Red Dust (1932) with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

Red Dust Dir: Victor Fleming (1932)

Clark Gable and Mary Astor in Red Dust (1932)

Jean Harlow and Mary Astor in Red Dust (1932)

In late 1932, Astor signed a featured player contract with Warner Bros. Meanwhile, besides spending lavishly, her parents invested in the stock market, which often turned out unprofitable.

While they remained in Moorcrest, Astor dubbed it a “white elephant”, and she refused to maintain the house. She had to turn to the Motion Picture Relief Fund in 1933 to pay her bills. In 1933, she appeared as the female lead, Hilda Lake, niece of the murder victims, in The Kennel Murder Case, co-starring with William Powell as detective Philo Vance.

The Kennel Murder Case Dir: Michael Curtiz (1933)

Mary Astor and William Powell in The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

Film critic William K. Everson pronounced it a “masterpiece” in the August 1984 issue of Films in Review.

Unhappy with her marriage, she took a break from movie-making in 1933 and went to New York alone. While there, enjoying a whirlwind social life, she met the playwright George Kaufman and they had an affair, which she documented in her diary.

George S Kauffman

Mary Astor Diary

Scandals

A legal battle drew press attention to Astor in 1936. Dr. Franklyn Thorpe divorced Astor in April 1935, and a custody battle resulted over their four-year-old daughter, Marylyn.

Los Angeles Examiner 14/07/1936

Thorpe threatened to use Astor’s diary in the proceedings, which told of her affairs with many celebrities, including George S. Kaufman. The diary was never formally offered as evidence during the trial, but Thorpe and his lawyers constantly referred to it, and its notoriety grew. Astor admitted that the diary existed and that she had documented her affair with Kaufman, but maintained that many of the parts that had been referred to were forgeries, following the theft of the diary from her desk.

The diary was deemed inadmissible as a mutilated document, and the trial judge, Goodwin J. Knight, ordered it sealed and impounded. In 1952, by court order, Astor’s diary was removed from the bank vault where it had been sequestered for 16 years and destroyed.

Astor had just begun work as Edith Cortwright, opposite Walter Huston in the title role of Dodsworth as news of the diary became public. Producer Samuel Goldwyn was urged to fire her, as her contract included a morality clause, but Goldwyn refused and the movie was a hit.

Dodsworth (1936) Dir: William Wyler

MBDDODS EC001 — DODSWORTH, Walter Huston, Mary Astor, 1936

MV5BMjE3NDAzMDUyMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzAzMjM4NA@@._V1_ — Dodsworth (1936) Directed by William Wyler Shown from left: Walter Huston, Mary Astor

Mary Astor and Walter Huston in Dodsworth (1936)

Mid-career

Ultimately, the scandals caused no harm to Astor’s career, which was actually revitalized because of the custody fight and the wide publicity it generated; Dodsworth (1936), with Walter Huston, was released to rave reviews, and the public’s acceptance assured the studios that she remained a viable commercial property.

In 1937, she returned to the stage in well-received productions of Noël Coward‘s Tonight at 8:30, The Astonished Heart, and Still Life. She also began performing regularly on radio.

Some of her best movies were yet to come, including The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), John Ford‘s The Hurricane (1937), Midnight (1939) and Brigham Young (1940).

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) Dir: John Cromwell

Mary Astor in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

Mary Astor and Raymond Massey n The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

Mary Astor and Ronald Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

The Hurricane (1937) Dir: John Ford – Poster

C Aubrey Smith and Mary Astor in The Hurricane (1937)

Raymond Massay and Mary Astor in The Hurricane (1937)

Brigham Young: Frontiersman (1940) Dir: Henry Hathaway

Mary Astor in Brigham Young: Frontiersman (1940)

Midnight (1939) Dir: Mitchell Leisen

Mary Astor and John Barrymore in Midnight (1939)

Claudette Colbert, Francis Lederer, Mary Astor and John Barrymore in Midnight (1939)

Francis Lederer and Mary Astor in Midnight (1939)

In John Huston‘s The Maltese Falcon (1941), Astor played scheming temptress Brigid O’Shaughnessy. The film also starred Humphrey Bogart and featured Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. This was to become her most memorable role.

The Maltese Falcon (1941) Dir: John Huston

Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon (1941)

John Huston, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart – publicity shot for The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Peter Lorre, Mary Astor and Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941)

MALTESE FALCON, THE (1941) — Medium shot of Mary Astor as Bridgid O’Shaughnessy/Miss. Wonderly/Miss. LaBlanc and Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, who wears hat/fedora.

Mary Astor and Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Another noteworthy performance was her Oscar-winning role as Sandra Kovak, the selfish, self-centered concert pianist, who willingly gives up her child, in The Great Lie (1941). George Brent played her intermittent love interest, but the film’s star was Bette Davis.

The Great Lie (1941) Dir: Edmund Goulding

Bette Davis and Mary Astor in The Great Lie (1941)

Mary Astor in The Great Lie (1941)

Bette Davis and Mary Astor in The Great Lie (1941)

Mary Astor in The Great Lie (1941)

Davis wanted Astor cast in the role after watching her screen test and seeing her play Tchaikovsky‘s Piano Concerto No. 1. She then recruited Astor to collaborate on rewriting the script, which Davis felt was mediocre and needed work to make it more interesting. Astor further followed Davis’s advice and sported a brazenly bobbed hairdo for the role.

The soundtrack of the movie in the scenes where she plays the concerto, with violent hand movements on the piano keyboard, was dubbed by pianist Max Rabinovitch. Davis deliberately stepped back to allow Astor to shine in her key scenes. As a result of her performance, Astor won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, thanking Bette Davis and Tchaikovsky in her acceptance speech. Astor and Davis became good friends.

Bette Davis and Mary Astor in The Great Lie (1941)

Astor was not propelled into the upper echelon of movie stars by these successes, however.

She always declined offers of starring in her own right. Not wanting the responsibility of top billing and having to “carry the picture,” she preferred the security of being a featured player.

In 1942, she reunited with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet in John Huston‘s Across the Pacific.

Across the Pacific (1942) Dir: John Huston

Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor in Across the Pacific (1942)

Though usually cast in dramatic or melodramatic roles, Astor showed a flair for comedy as The Princess Centimillia in the Preston Sturges film, The Palm Beach Story (1942) for Paramount.

The Palm Beach Story (1942) Dir: Preston Sturges

Mary Astor in The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Mary Astor and Joel McCrea in The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Mary Astor, Claudette Colbert and Rudy Vallee in The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Claudette Colbert an Rudy Vallee in The Palm Beach Story (1942)

In February 1943, Astor’s father, Otto Langhanke, died in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital as a result of a heart attack complicated by influenza. His wife and daughter were at his bedside.

That same year, Astor signed a seven-year contract with MGM, a regrettable mistake.

She was kept busy playing what she considered mediocre roles she called “Mothers for Metro.”

After Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), the studio allowed her to debut on Broadway in Many Happy Returns (1945). The play was a failure, but Astor received good reviews. On loan-out to 20th Century Fox, she played a wealthy widow in Claudia and David (1946).

Meet Me in St Louis (1944) Dir: Vincente Minelli

Tom Drake, Mary Astor and Leon Ames in Meet Me in St Louis (1944)

Mary Astor and Margaret O’Brien in Meet Me in St Louis (1944)

Lucille Bremer, Mary Astor and Judy Garland in Meet Me in St Louis (1944)

Mary Astor on the set of Meet Me in St Louis (1944)

Claudia and David (1946) Dir: Walter Lang

Mary Astor in Claudia and David (1946)

Mary Astor and Dorothy McGuire in Claudia and David (1946)

Mary Astor and Robert Taylor in Claudia and David (1946)

She was also loaned to Paramount to play Fritzi Haller in Desert Fury (1947) playing the tough owner of a saloon and casino in a small mining town.

Desert Fury (1947) Dir: Lewis Allen

Lisabeth Scott and Mary Astor in Desert Fury (1947)

Burt Lancaster, Lisbeth Scott, John Hodiak and Mary Astor in Desert Fury (1947)

Lisbeth Scott, John Hodiak and Mary Astor in Desert Fury (1947)

Mary Astor in Desert Fury (1947)

Burt Lancaster, Mary Astor and Lisbeth Scott in Desert Fury (1947)

Before Helen Langhanke died of a heart ailment in January 1947, Astor said she sat in the hospital room with her mother, who was delirious and did not know her, and listened quietly as Helen told her all about terrible, selfish Lucile.

After her death, Astor said she spent countless hours copying her mother’s diary so she could read it and was surprised to learn how much she was hated. Back at MGM, Astor continued being cast in undistinguished, colorless mother roles. One exception was when she played a prostitute in the film noir Act of Violence (1948).

Act of Violence (1948) Dir: Fred Zinnemann

Van Heflin and Mary Astor in Act of Violence (1948)

Act of Violence (1948) Lobby Card

Mary Astor and Berry Kroeger in Act of Violence (1948)

Act of Violence (1948) Dir: Fred Zinnemann

The last straw came when she was cast as Marmee March in Little Women (1949).

She later described her disappointment with her cast members and the shoot in her memoir My Story: An Autobiography: “The girls all giggled and chattered and made a game of every scene. Taylor was engaged, and in love, and talking on the telephone most of the time (which is fine normally, but not when the production clock is ticking away the company’s money). June Allyson chewed gum constantly and irritatingly, and Maggie O’Brien looked at me as though she were planning something very unpleasant.”

Little Women (1949) Dir: Mervyn LeRoy

Mary Astor in Little Women (1949)

Margaret O’Brien, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, June Alyson and Elisabeth Taylor in Little Women (1949)

June Alyson and Mary Astor in Little Women (1949)

Margaret O’Brien, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor, June Alyson and Elisabeth Taylor in Little Women (1949)

Astor found no redemption in playing what she considered another humdrum mother and grew despondent. The studio wanted to renew her contract, promising better roles, but she declined the offer.

Middle years

At the same time, Astor’s drinking was growing troublesome. She admitted to alcoholism as far back as the 1930s, but it had never interfered with her work schedule or performance. She hit bottom in 1949 and went into a sanitarium for alcoholics.

In 1951, she made a frantic call to her doctor and said that she had taken too many sleeping pills. She was taken to a hospital and the police reported that she had attempted suicide, this being her third overdose in two years, and the story made headline news. She maintained it had been an accident.

Mary Astor and Sandra Dee in Stranger in My Arms (1959)

That same year, she joined Alcoholics Anonymous and converted to Roman Catholicism. She credited her recovery to a priest, Peter Ciklic, also a practicing psychologist, who encouraged her to write about her experiences as part of therapy. She also separated from her fourth husband, Thomas Wheelock (a stockbroker she married on Christmas Day 1945), but did not actually divorce him until 1955.

In 1952, she was cast in the leading role of the stage play The Time of the Cuckoo, which was later made into the movie Summertime (1955), and subsequently toured with it. After the tour, Astor lived in New York for four years and worked in the theater and on television.

Her TV debut was in The Missing Years (1954) for Kraft Television Theatre. She acted frequently in TV during the ensuing years and appeared on many big shows of the time, including The United States Steel Hour, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Rawhide, Dr. Kildare, Burke’s Law, and Ben Casey.

Mary Astor and Doro Merande in Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Episode: Mrs Herman and Mrs Fenimore (1958)

Mary Astor in Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Episode: Mrs Herman and Mrs Fenimore (1958)

Mary Astor and Franchot Tone in Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Episode: The Impossible Dream (1959)

Mary Astor in Dr Kildare “Operation Lazarus” (Season 1 Episode 33)

Mary Astor in Rawhide – Episode: Incident Near the Promised Land (1961)

In 1954, she appeared in the episode “Fearful Hour” of the Gary Merrill NBC series Justice in the role of a desperately poor and aging film star who attempts suicide to avoid exposure as a thief. She also played an ex-film star on the Boris Karloff-hosted Thriller, in an episode titled “Rose’s Last Summer.”

Mary Astor signed still from Thriler – Episode: Rose’s Last Summer (1960)

Mary Astor in Thriler – Episode: Rose’s Last Summer (1960)

Mary Astor signed still from Thriler – Episode: Rose’s Last Summer (1960)

She starred on Broadway again in The Starcross Story (1954), another failure and returned to Southern California in 1956. She then went on a successful theatre tour of Don Juan in Hell directed by Agnes Moorehead and co-starring Ricardo Montalban.

Astor’s memoir, My Story: An Autobiography, was published in 1959, becoming a sensation in its day and a bestseller. It was the result of Father Ciklic urging her to write. Though she spoke of her troubled personal life, her parents, her marriages, the scandals, her battle with alcoholism, and other areas of her life, she did not mention the movie industry or her career in detail.

Mary Astor autobiography – My Story: An Autobiography (1959)

In 1971, a second book was published, A Life on Film, where she discussed her career. It too became a bestseller. Astor also tried her hand at fiction, writing the novels The Incredible Charley Carewe (1960), The Image of Kate (1962), which was published in 1964 in a German translation as Jahre und Tage, The O’Conners (1964), Goodbye, Darling, be Happy (1965), and A Place Called Saturday (1968).

Mary Astor – My Life on Film (1971)

She appeared in several movies during this time, including A Stranger in My Arms (1959). She made a comeback in Return to Peyton Place (1961) playing Roberta Carter, the domineering mother who insists the “shocking” novel written by Allison Mackenzie should be banned from the school library, and received good reviews for her performance. According to film scholar Gavin Lambert, Astor invented memorable bits of business in her last scene of that film, where Roberta’s vindictive motives are exposed.

Mary Astor in Return to Peyton Place (1961)

Final years and death

After a trip around the world in 1964, Astor was lured away from her Malibu, California home, where she was gardening and working on her third novel, to make what she decided would be her final film.

Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964)

She was offered the small role as a key figure, Jewel Mayhew, in the murder mystery Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, starring her friend Bette Davis. She filmed her final scene with Cecil Kellaway at Oak Alley Plantation in southern Louisiana. In A Life on Film, she described her character as “a little old lady, waiting to die.” Astor decided it would serve as her swan song in the movie business. After 109 movies in a career spanning 45 years, she turned in her Screen Actors Guild card and retired.

Olivia De Havilland, Mary Astor and William Walker in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Astor later moved to Fountain Valley, California, where she lived near her son, Tono del Campo (from her third marriage to Mexican film editor Manuel del Campo), and his family, until 1971.

That same year, suffering from a chronic heart condition, she moved to a small cottage on the grounds of the Motion Picture & Television Country House, the industry’s retirement facility in Woodland Hills, California, where she had a private table when she chose to eat in the resident dining room.

She appeared in the television documentary series Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980), produced by Kevin Brownlow, in which she discussed her roles during the silent film period. After years of retirement she had been urged to appear in Brownlow’s documentary by a former sister-in-law Bessie Love who also appeared in the series.

Astor died on September 25, 1987, at age 81, of respiratory failure due to pulmonary emphysema while in the hospital at the Motion Picture House complex.

Grave of Mary Astor at Holy Cross Cemetery

She is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Astor has a star for motion pictures on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6701 Hollywood Boulevard.

She has been quoted as saying, “There are five stages in the life of an actor: who’s Mary Astor? Get me Mary Astor. Get me a Mary Astor type. Get me a young Mary Astor. Who’s Mary Astor?” Several other actors, among them Jack Elam and Ricardo Montalban, have been quoted as saying this.

Radio appearances

Year	Program	Episode/source
1941	Gulf Screen Guild Theatre	No Time for Comedy^[17]

Bibliography

My Story: An Autobiography (1959)
The Incredible Charlie Carewe (1963)
The O’Conners (1964)
Goodbye Darling, Be Happy (1965)
The Image of Kate (1966)
A Place Called Saturday (1968)
Life On Film (1969)
Sorel, Edward (2016). Mary Astor’s Purple Diary: The Great American Sex Scandal of 1936. Liveright Publishing. ISBN 9781631490231.^[18]
Egan, Joseph (2016). The Purple Diaries: Mary Astor and the Most Sensational Hollywood Scandal of the 1930s. Diversion Publishing. ISBN 9781682302996.

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b Thomas, Bob (September 26, 1987). “‘Maltese Falcon’ star Astor dies at 81”. Kansas, Salina. The Salina Journal. p. 8. Retrieved February 20, 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d “Mary Astor Not Actress by Accident; Career Planned”. Montana, Butte. The Montana Standard. August 24, 1936. p. 5. Retrieved February 20, 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
Jump up^ Lindsay Anderson “Mary Astor”, Sight and Sound, Autumn 1990, reprinted in Paul Ryan (ed) Never Apologise: The Collected Writings, 2004, London: Plexus, pp. 431–36, 431
Jump up^ Distinguished Americans & Canadians of Portuguese Descent
Jump up^ [1]
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c “Mary Astor Dies at 81 – A ‘Maltese Falcon’ Star”. Los Angeles Times. (September 26, 1987) Accessed on August 14, 2007.
Jump up^ Mary Astor, 81, Is Dead; Star of ‘Maltese Falcon’
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Mary Astor Profile
Jump up^ Trivia – Mary Astor scandal
Jump up^ Mary Astor, “A Life on Film”, Dell Publishing 1967, New York pp. 125–127
Jump up^ Sorel, Edward (September 14, 2016). “Inside the Trial of Actress Mary Astor, Old Hollywood’s Juiciest Sex Scandal. Vanity Fair, September 2016, retrieved December 6, 2016.
Jump up^ “Justice“. The Classic TV Archive. Retrieved February 8, 2011.
Jump up^ Brownlow, Kevin; Gill, David (1980). Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film. (video). Thames Video Production.
Jump up^ Mary Astor at Find a Grave
Jump up^ “Walk of Fame Stars, Mary Astor”. walkoffame.com. Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Archived from the original on April 3, 2016. Retrieved December 1,2016.
Jump up^ Astor, Mary. A Life on Film. Dell Publishing Company, 1969
Jump up^ “Abel, Walter”. radioGOLDINdex. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
Jump up^ “Woody Allen Reviews a Graphic Tale of a Scandalous Starlet” by Woody Allen, The New York Times, December 22, 2016

Mary-Astor

External links

Actors, Articles, Pre Code Films

Joan Blondell

August 31, 2021 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress who performed in movies and on television for half a century.

After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy, wisecracking blonde, she was a Pre-Code staple of Warner Bros. pictures and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time, she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting in major film roles for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).

Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films — Grease (1978) and The Champ (1979) — released shortly before her death from leukemia.

Early life

Rose Joan Blondell was born in New York to a vaudeville family; she gave her birthdate as August 30, 1909. Her father, Levi Bluestein, a vaudeville comedian known as Ed Blondell, was born in Poland to a Jewish family in 1866.

He toured for many years starring in Blondell and Fennessy’s stage version of The Katzenjammer Kids. Blondell’s mother was Catherine (known as “Kathryn” or “Katie”) Caine, born in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York (later Brooklyn, New York City) on April 13, 1884, to Irish-American parents. Joan’s younger sister, Gloria Blondell, also an actress, was briefly married to film producer Albert R. Broccoli. The Blondell sisters had a brother, Ed Blondell, Jr.

Joan’s cradle was a property trunk as her parents moved from place to place and she made her first appearance on stage at the age of four months when she was carried on in a cradle as the daughter of Peggy Astaire in The Greatest Love. Her family comprised a vaudeville troupe, the “Bouncing Blondells”.

Joan had spent a year in Honolulu (1914–15) and six years in Australia and had seen much of the world by the time her family, who had been on tour, settled in Dallas, Texas, when she was a teenager.

Under the name Rosebud Blondell, she won the 1926 Miss Dallas pageant, was a finalist in an early version of the Miss Universe pageant in May 1926, and placed fourth for Miss America 1926 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in September of that same year.

She attended Santa Monica High School, where she acted in school plays and worked as an editor on the yearbook staff. While there (and after high school), she gave her name as Rosebud Blondell, such as when she attended North Texas State Teacher’s College (1926–1927), now the University of North Texas in Denton, where her mother was a local stage actress.

Career

Around 1927, she returned to New York, worked as a fashion model, a circus hand, a clerk in a store, joined a stock company to become an actress, and performed on Broadway.

In 1927, the actress made her Broadway debut with a small role in “The Trial of Mary Dugan.”

In 1930, she starred with James Cagney in her third play, Penny Arcade on Broadway. Penny Arcade lasted only three weeks, but Al Jolson saw it and bought the rights to the play for $20,000. He then sold the rights to Warner Bros., with the proviso that Blondell and Cagney be cast in the film version, then renamed Sinners’ Holiday (1930).

Penny Arcade (1930)

Sinner’s Holiday (1930)

Placed under contract by Warner Bros., she moved to Hollywood, where studio boss Jack L. Warner wanted her to change her name to “Inez Holmes”, but Blondell refused. She began to appear in short subjects and was named as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1931.

Wampas Baby Stars (1931)

Blondell was paired several more times with James Cagney in films, including The Public Enemy (1931), and she was one-half of a gold-digging duo with Glenda Farrell in nine films.

During the Great Depression, Blondell was one of the highest-paid individuals in the United States. Her stirring rendition of “Remember My Forgotten Man” in the Busby Berkeley production of Gold Diggers of 1933, in which she co-starred with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, became an anthem for the frustrations of unemployed people and the government’s failed economic policies.

James-Cagney-Jean-Harlow-The-Public-Enemy

The Public Enemy (1931)

Gold Diggers of 1933

In the years that folowed, Joan Blondell made almost 50 films, with 1930s being the most productive period of her career. Some of the most successful included Night Nurse (1931), The Greeks had a Word for Them (1932), The Crowd Roars (1932), Three on a Match (1932), Footlight Parade (1933), We’re in the Money (1935), Bullets or Ballots (1936), Three Men on a Horse (1936), and Stand‐In (1937).

In most of these films she appeared as the wisecracking working girl who was the lead’s best friend. In gangster films and musicals she was mostly the second lead.

Often cast opposite the era’s leading male stars, she appeared frequently opposite Mr. Cagney (seven times) and Dick Powell (also seven times)

Night Nurse (1931)

The Greeks had a Word for Them (1932)

The Crowd Roars (1932)

Three on a Match (1932)

Footlight Parade (1933)

We’re in the Money (1935)

Bullets or Ballots (1936)

In 1937, she starred opposite Errol Flynn in The Perfect Specimen. By the end of the decade, she had made nearly 50 films. She left Warner Bros. in 1939.

The Perfect Specimen (1937)

In 1943, Blondell returned to Broadway as the star of Mike Todd’s short-lived production of The Naked Genius, a comedy written by Gypsy Rose Lee.

She was well received in her later films, despite being relegated to character and supporting roles after 1945, when she was billed below the title for the first time in 14 years in Adventure, which starred Clark Gable and Greer Garson.

The Naked Genius (1943)

Adventure (1945)

She was also featured prominently in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) and Nightmare Alley (1947).

In 1948, she left the screen for three years and concentrated on theater, performing in summer stock and touring with Cole Porter‘s musical, Something for the Boys. She later reprised her role of Aunt Sissy in the musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for the national tour, starred opposite Tallulah Bankhead in the play Crazy October (which closed on the road) and played the nagging mother, Mae Peterson, in the national tour of Bye Bye Birdie.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)

Nightmare Alley (1947)

Crazy October (1948) with Tallullah Bankhead and Estelle Winwood

Bye Bye Birdie (1949)

Blondell returned to Hollywood in 1950. Her performance in her next film, The Blue Veil (1951), earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She played supporting roles in The Opposite Sex (1956), Desk Set (1957), and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957).

She received considerable acclaim for her performance as Lady Fingers in Norman Jewison‘s The Cincinnati Kid (1965), garnering a Golden Globe nomination and National Board of Review win for Best Supporting Actress. John Cassavetes cast her as a cynical, aging playwright in his film Opening Night (1977).

The Blue Veil (1951)

The Opposite Sex (1956)

Blondell was widely seen in two films released not long before her death – Grease (1978), and the remake of The Champ (1979) with Jon Voight and Rick Schroder. She also appeared in two films released after her death – The Glove (1979), and The Woman Inside (1981).

Blondell also guest-starred in various television programs, including three 1963 episodes as the character Aunt Win in the CBS sitcom The Real McCoys, starring Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna.

Grease (1978)

MBDCHAM EC036 — THE CHAMP, Joan Blondell, 1979, (c) MGM

The Champ (1979)

The Glove (1979)

The Woman Inside (1981)

Also in 1963, Blondell was cast as the widowed Lucy Tutaine in the episode, “The Train and Lucy Tutaine”, on the syndicated anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Lucy sues a railroad company, against great odds, for causing the death of her cow. Noah Beery Jr., was cast as Abel.

In 1964, she appeared in the episode “What’s in the Box?” of The Twilight Zone. She guest-starred in the episode “You’re All Right, Ivy” on Jack Palance‘s circus drama, The Greatest Show on Earth, which aired on ABC in the 1963–64 television season. Her co-stars in the segment were Joe E. Brown and Buster Keaton.

What is in the Box – Twilight Zone (1964)

In 1965, she was in the running to replace Vivian Vance as Lucille Ball’s sidekick on the hit CBS television comedy series The Lucy Show. Unfortunately, after filming her second guest appearance as Joan Brenner (Lucy’s new friend from California), Blondell walked off the set right after the episode had completed filming when Ball humiliated her by harshly criticizing her performance in front of the studio audience and technicians.

The Lucy Show (1965)

Blondell continued working on television. In 1968, she guest-starred on the CBS sitcom Family Affair, starring Brian Keith. She replaced Bea Benaderet, who was ill, for one episode on the CBS series Petticoat Junction. In that installment, Blondell played FloraBelle Campbell, a lady visitor to Hooterville, who had once dated Uncle Joe (Edgar Buchanan) and Sam Drucker (Frank Cady).

That same year, Blondell co-starred in all 52 episodes of the ABC Western series Here Come the Brides, set in the Pacific Northwest of the 19th century. Her co-stars included singer Bobby Sherman and actor-singer David Soul. Blondell received two consecutive Emmy nominations for outstanding continued performance by an actress in a dramatic series for her role as Lottie Hatfield.

Here Come the Brides (1968)

In 1971, she followed Sada Thompson in the off-Broadway hit The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, with a young Swoosie Kurtz playing one of her daughters.

In 1972, she had an ongoing supporting role in the NBC series Banyon as Peggy Revere, who operated a secretarial school in the same building as Banyon’s detective agency. This was a 1930s period action drama starring Robert Forster in the title role. Her students worked in Banyon’s office, providing fresh faces for the show weekly. The series was replaced midseason.

Banyon (1972)

In 1974, Blondell played the wife of Tom D’Andrea‘s character in the television film, Bobby Parker and Company, with Ted Bessell in the starring role as the son of Blondell and D’Andrea. Coincidentally, D’Andrea had earlier played Jim Gillis, the television husband of Blondell’s younger sister, Gloria Blondell, in the NBC sitcom The Life of Riley.

Blondell has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry. Her star is located at 6311 Hollywood Boulevard. In December 2007, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a retrospective of Blondell’s films in connection with a new biography by film professor Matthew Kennedy, and theatrical revival houses such as Film Forum in Manhattan have also projected many of her films recently.

She wrote a novel titled Center Door Fancy (New York: Delacorte Press, 1972), which was a thinly disguised autobiography with veiled references to June Allyson and Dick Powell.

Center Door Fancy – Joan Blondell Novel (1972)

Personal life

Blondell was married three times, first to cinematographer George Barnes in a private wedding ceremony on January 4, 1933, at the First Presbyterian Church in Phoenix, Arizona. They had one child, Norman Scott Barnes, who became an accomplished producer, director, and television executive known as Norman Powell. Joan and George divorced in 1936.

Joan Blondell and George Barnes

On September 19, 1936, she married her second husband Dick Powell, an actor, director, and singer. They had a daughter, Ellen Powell, who became a studio hair stylist, and Powell adopted her son by her previous marriage under the name Norman Scott Powell. Blondell and Powell were divorced on July 14, 1944. Blondell was less than friendly with Powell’s next wife, June Allyson, although the two women would later appear together in The Opposite Sex (1956).

Joan Blondell and Dick Powell

Dick Powell, Ellen Powell and Joan Blondell

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Joan Blondell and Dick Powell in Stage Struck (1936)

On July 5, 1947, Blondell married her third husband, producer Mike Todd, whom she divorced in 1950. Her marriage to Todd was an emotional and financial disaster.

She once accused him of holding her outside a hotel window by her ankles. He was also a heavy spender who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling (high-stakes bridge was one of his weaknesses) and went through a controversial bankruptcy during their marriage.

Joan Blondell and Mike Todd

An often-repeated myth is that Mike Todd left Blondell for Elizabeth Taylor, when in fact, she had left Todd of her own accord years before he met Taylor.

Death

Blondell died of leukemia in Santa Monica, California, on Christmas Day, 1979, with her children and her sister at her bedside. She is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Joan Blondell Plate, Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetary, Glendale, California

Filmography

Feature films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1930	The Office Wife	Katherine Mudcock	^[19]
1930	Sinners’ Holiday	Myrtle	^[19]
1931	Other Men’s Women	Marie	^[19]
1931	Millie	Angie Wickerstaff	^[19]
1931	Illicit	Helen Dukie Childers	^[19]
1931	God’s Gift to Women	Fifi	^[19]
1931	The Public Enemy	Mamie	^[19]
1931	My Past	Marian Moore	^[19]
1931	Big Business Girl	Pearl	^[19]
1931	Night Nurse	Maloney	^[19]
1931	The Reckless Hour	Myrtle Nichols	^[19]
1931	Blonde Crazy	Ann Roberts	^[19]
1932	Union Depot	Ruth Collins	^[19]
1932	The Greeks Had a Word for Them	Schatze Citroux	^[19]
1932	The Crowd Roars	Anne Scott	^[19]
1932	The Famous Ferguson Case	Maizie Dickson	^[19]
1932	Make Me a Star	Flips Montague	^[19]
1932	Miss Pinkerton	Miss Adams	^[19]
1932	Big City Blues	Vida Fleet	^[19]
1932	Three on a Match	Mary Keaton	^[19]
1932	Central Park	Dot	^[19]
1933	Lawyer Man	Olga Michaels	^[19]
1933	Broadway Bad	Tony Landers	^[19]
1933	Blondie Johnson	Blondie Johnson	^[19]
1933	Gold Diggers of 1933	Carol King	^[19]
1933	Goodbye Again	Anne Rogers	^[19]
1933	Footlight Parade	Nan Prescott	^[19]
1933	Havana Widows	Mae Knight	^[19]
1933	Convention City	Nancy Lorraine	Lost film^[19]
1934	I’ve Got Your Number	Marie Lawson	^[19]
1934	He Was Her Man	Rose Lawrence	^[19]
1934	Smarty	Vickie Wallace	^[19]
1934	Dames	Mabel Anderson	^[19]
1934	Kansas City Princess	Rosie Sturges	^[19]
1935	Traveling Saleslady	Angela Twitchell	^[19]
1935	Broadway Gondolier	Alice Hughes	^[19]
1935	We’re in the Money	Ginger Stewart	^[19]
1935	Miss Pacific Fleet	Gloria Fay	^[19]
1936	Colleen	Minnie Hawkins	^[19]
1936	Sons o’ Guns	Yvonne	^[19]
1936	Bullets or Ballots	Lee Morgan	^[19]
1936	Stage Struck	Peggy Revere	^[19]
1936	Three Men on a Horse	Mabel	^[19]
1936	Gold Diggers of 1937	Norma Perry	^[19]
1937	The King and the Chorus Girl	Dorothy Ellis	^[19]
1937	Back in Circulation	Timmy Blake	^[19]
1937	The Perfect Specimen	Mona Carter	^[19]
1937	Stand-In	Lester Plum	^[19]
1938	There’s Always a Woman	Sally Reardon	^[19]
1939	Off the Record	Jane Morgan	^[19]
1939	East Side of Heaven	Mary Wilson	^[19]
1939	The Kid from Kokomo	Doris Harvey	^[19]
1939	Good Girls Go to Paris	Jenny Swanson	^[19]
1939	The Amazing Mr. Williams	Maxine Carroll	^[19]
1940	Two Girls on Broadway	Molly Mahoney	^[19]
1940	I Want a Divorce	Geraldine Brokaw	^[19]
1941	Topper Returns	Gail Richards	^[19]
1941	Model Wife	Joan Keathing Chambers	^[19]
1941	Three Girls About Town	Hope Banner	^[19]
1942	Lady for a Night	Jenny Blake	^[19]
1942	Cry ‘Havoc’	Grace Lambert	^[19]
1945	A Tree Grows In Brooklyn	Aunt Sissy	^[19]
1945	Don Juan Quilligan	Margie Mossrock	^[19]
1945	Adventure	Helen Melohn	^[19]
1947	The Corpse Came C.O.D.	Rosemary Durant	^[19]
1947	Nightmare Alley	Zeena	^[19]
1947	Christmas Eve	Ann Nelson	^[19]
1950	For Heaven’s Sake	Daphne	^[19]
1951	The Blue Veil	Annie Rawlins	Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress^[19]
1956	The Opposite Sex	Edith Potter	^[19]
1957	Lizzie	Aunt Morgan	^[19]
1957	Desk Set	Peg Costello	^[19]
1957	This Could Be the Night	Crystal	^[19]
1957	Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?	Violet	^[19]
1961	Angel Baby	Mollie Hays	^[19]
1964	Advance to the Rear	Easy Jenny	^[19]
1965	The Cincinnati Kid	Lady Fingers	National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture^[19]
1966	Ride Beyond Vengeance	Mrs. Lavender	^[19]
1967	Waterhole #3	Lavinia	^[19]
1967	Winchester ’73	Larouge	TV movie
1967	The Spy in the Green Hat	Mrs. “Fingers” Steletto
1968	Stay Away, Joe	Glenda Callahan	^[19]
1968	Kona Coast	Kittibelle Lightfoot	^[19]
1969	Big Daddy		^[19]
1970	The Phynx	Ruby	^[19]
1971	Support Your Local Gunfighter!	Jenny	^[19]
1975	The Dead Don’t Die	Levinia	TV movie
1976	Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood	Landlady	^[19]
1976	Death at Love House	Marcella Geffenhart
1977	The Baron
1977	Opening Night	Sarah Goode	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture^[19]
1978	Grease	Vi	^[19]
1979	Battered	Edna Thompson	NBC TV movie
1979	The Champ	Dolly Kenyon	^[19]
1979	The Glove	Mrs. Fitzgerald
1981	Feud	Aunt Coll

Short films

Year	Title	Notes
1929	Broadway’s Like That	Vitaphone Varieties release 960 (December 1929) Cast: Ruth Etting, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Philips^[20]^:50
1930	The Devil’s Parade	Vitaphone Varieties release 992 (February 1930) Cast: Sidney Toler^[20]^:52
1930	The Heart Breaker	Vitaphone Varieties release 1012–1013 (March 1930) Cast: Eddie Foy, Jr.^[20]^:53
1930	An Intimate Dinner in Celebration of Warner Bros. Silver Jubilee
1931	How I Play Golf, number 10, “Trouble Shots”	Vitaphone release 4801 Cast: Bobby Jones, Joe E. Brown, Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.^[20]^:226
1933	Just Around the Corner
1934	Hollywood Newsreel
1941	Meet the Stars #2: Baby Stars
1965	The Cincinnati Kid Plays According to Hoyle

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1961	The Untouchables	Hannah ‘Lucy’ Wagnall	Episode: “The Underground Court”
1963	The Virginian	Rosanna Dobie	Episode: “To Make This Place Remember”
1963	Wagon Train	Ma Bleecker	Episode: “The Bleecker Story”
1964	The Twilight Zone	Phyllis Britt	Episode: “What’s in the Box”
1964	Bonanza	Lillian Manfred	Episode: “The Pressure Game”
1965	Petticoat Junction season 5 episode 22	Florabelle Campbell
1965	My Three Sons	Harriet Blanchard	Episode: “Office Mother”
1968–70	Here Come the Brides	Lottie Hatfield	52 episodes^[21]^[22] Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (1969–70)
1971	McCloud – ″Top of the World, Ma!″	Ernestine White	Episode: “Top of the World, Ma”
1972–73	Banyon	Peggy Revere	8 episodes
1979	The Rebels	Mrs. Brumple	TV movie

Radio broadcasts

Year	Program	Episode/source
1946	Hollywood Star Time	The Lady Eve^[23]

References

^ Obituary Variety, December 26, 1979.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e “Joan Blondell, Actress, Dies at 70; Often Played Wisecracking Blonde”. The New York Times. December 26, 1979. Archived from the original on November 20, 2015. Retrieved August 30, 2015.
^ “[Unknown]”. The Republic. Columbus, Indiana. October 7, 1971. p. 26. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018. The Katzenjammer Kids will be presented in Franklin this evening, the company having passed through here this morning on the way to that place. “Eddie Blondell’s true name is Levi Bluestein, and he was a resident of Columbus many years ago, living with his father at the foot of Washington street
^ “[Unknown]”. The Republic. Columbus, Indiana. January 29, 1906. p. 1. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018. No allowance was made for alimony, but Mrs. Blondell seemed to be satisfied. The Blondells, who in private life were Mr. and Mrs. Levi Bluestein, have been annoyed by a case of incompatibility of temper for a long time. They were formerly a member of Katzenjammer Kids’ company….
^ “Blondell and Fennessy’s hurricane of fun and frolic, The Katzenjammer Kids”. loc.gov. United States Library of Congress. Archived from the original on February 16, 2018. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
^ “[Unknown]”. Variety. November 1916. Archived from the original on March 18, 2017. Rowland & Clifford, a western producing firm, have also a production in preparation under the title of ‘The Katzenjammer Kids’, securing the rights from Blondell & Fennessy. Both shows are scheduled to play over the International, with the Hill production to be ready by Jan. 1.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d Kennedy, Matthew (September 28, 2009). “Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes”. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781628461817 – via Google Books.
^ “Grave Spotlight – Joan Blondell”. cemeteryguide.com. Archived from the original on January 2, 2016. Retrieved May 5, 2018.
^ Rathbun, Joe (December 10, 1944). “Joe’s Radio Parade”. Sunday Times Signal. p. 23. Archived from the original on May 4, 2015. Retrieved May 1, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^ Punahou School Alumni Directory, 1841–1991. White Plains, New York: Harris Publishing Company, 1991.
^ Santa Monica High School Yearbook, 1925
^ “Page 68”. The Yucca. North Texas State Teacher’s College. 1927. Retrieved December 2, 2019 – via texashistory.com.
^ “Lights! Camera! University of North Texas!: Joan Blondell (1906 – 1979)”. library.unt.edu. University of North Texas. Retrieved December 2, 2019.
^ Joan Blondell at the Internet Broadway Database
^ “The Train and Lucy Tutaine on Death Valley Days“. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved February 28, 2019.
^ “Joan Blondell”. iobdb.com.
^ “Hollywood Walk of Fame – Joan Blondell”. walkoffame.com. Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved November 21, 2017.
^ Wilson, Scott (2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons (3rd ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-7864-7992-4. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y ^z ^aa ^ab ^ac ^ad ^ae ^af ^ag ^ah ^ai ^aj ^ak ^al ^am ^an ^ao ^ap ^aq ^ar ^as ^at ^au ^av ^aw ^ax ^ay ^az ^ba ^bb ^bc ^bd ^be ^bf ^bg ^bh ^bi ^bj ^bk ^bl ^bm ^bn ^bo ^bp ^bq ^br ^bs ^bt ^bu ^bv ^bw ^bx ^by ^bz ^ca ^cb ^cc ^cd ^ce ^cf ^cg ^ch ^ci ^cj “Joan Blondell”. AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Retrieved August 30, 2015.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d Liebman, Roy (2003). Vitaphone Films: A Catalogue of the Features and Shorts. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0786446971.
^ Here Come the Brides – ‘The Complete 2nd Season’: Shout!’s Street Date, Cost, Packaging Archived November 12, 2011, at the Wayback MachineTVShowsonDVD.com November 7, 2001
^ Here Come the Brides – Official Press Release, Plus Rear Box Art & Revised Front Art Archived November 14, 2011, at the Wayback MachineTVShowsonDVD.com March 7, 2006
^ “Joan Blondell In ‘Lady Eve’ On WHP ‘Star Time‘“. Harrisburg Telegraph. September 21, 1946. p. 17. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved October 7, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.

External links

Joan Blondell at the Internet Broadway Database
Joan Blondell on IMDb
Joan Blondell at the TCM Movie Database
Joan Blondell at AllMovie
Photographs of Joan Blondell
Joan Blondell Q&A with Biographer Matthew Kennedy

Actors, Articles, Home, Pre Code Films

Kay Francis

February 2, 2020 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Kay Francis (January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star at the Warner Brothers studio and the highest-paid American film actress. Some of her film-related material and personal papers are available to scholars and researchers in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives.

Early life

Francis was born Katherine Edwina Gibbs in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1905. Her parents, Joseph Sprague Gibbs and his actress wife Katharine Clinton Francis, had been married in 1903; however, by the time their daughter was four, Joseph had left the family. Francis inherited her unusual height from her father, who stood 6 feet 4 inches, she was to become Hollywood’s tallest leading lady (5 ft 9 in) in the 1930s.

Young Kay Francis

While she never discouraged the assumption that her mother was the pioneering American businesswoman who established the “Katharine Gibbs” chain of vocational schools, Francis was actually raised in the hardscrabble theatrical circuit of the period. In reality, her mother had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, and eventually became a moderately successful actress and singer under the stage name Katharine Clinton.

Kay Francis’ mother Catherine Clinton

Young Kay was often out on the road with her mother, and attended Catholic schools when it was affordable, becoming a student at the Institute of the Holy Angels at age five.

After also attending Miss Fuller’s School for Young Ladies in Ossining, New York (1919) and the Cathedral School (1920), she enrolled at the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City. At age 17, Kay became engaged to a well-to-do Pittsfield, Massachusetts man, James Dwight Francis.

James Dwight Francis

Their December 1922 marriage at New York’s Saint Thomas Church ended in divorce. Kay and her husband lived in Pittsfield in a house next to and now owned by St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, 1304 North St. 01201.

Stage career

In the spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a divorce. While there, she was courted by a former Harvard athlete and member of the Boston Bar Association, Bill Gaston. Kay and Bill saw each other only on occasion; he was in Boston and Kay had decided to follow her mother’s footsteps and go on the stage in New York.

She made her Broadway debut as the Player Queen in a modern-dress version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in November 1925. Francis claimed she got the part by “lying a lot, to the right people”. One of the “right” people was producer Stuart Walker, who hired Kay to join his Portmanteau Theatre Company, and she soon found herself commuting between Dayton, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, playing wisecracking secretaries, saucy French floozies, walk-ons, bit parts, and heavies.

By February 1927, Francis returned to Broadway in the play Crime. Sylvia Sidney, although a teenager at the time, had the lead in Crime but would later say that Kay stole the show.

After Kay’s divorce from Gaston, she became engaged to a society playboy, Alan Ryan Jr. She promised Alan’s family that she would not return to the stage – a promise that lasted only a few months before she was back on Broadway as an aviator in a Rachel Crothers play, Venus.

Kay Francis in Mandalay (1934)

Francis was to appear in only one other Broadway production, a play called Elmer the Great in 1928. Written by Ring Lardner and produced by George M. Cohan, the play starred Walter Huston. He was so impressed by Francis that he encouraged her to take a screen test for the Paramount Pictures film Gentlemen of the Press(1929). Francis made this film and the Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts (1929) at Paramount’s Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, New York.

Elmer the Great – Theatre Booklet (1928)

Gentlemen of the Press (1929)

Article on Kay Francis by Leonard Hall

Kay Francis in Gentlemen of the Press (1929)

Kay Francis in The Cocoanuts (1929)

Kay Francis and the Cast in The Cocoanuts (1929)

Kay Francis in The Cocoanuts (1929)

Film career

William Powell and Kay Francis in Street of Chance (1930)

By that time, major film studios, which had formerly been based in New York, were already well-established in California, and many Broadway actors had been enticed to travel west to Hollywood to make sound films, including Ann Harding, Aline MacMahon, Helen Twelvetrees, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, and Leslie Howard. Francis, signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures, also made the move and created an immediate impression. She frequently costarred with William Powell and appeared in as many as six to eight movies a year, making a total of 21 films between 1929 and 1931.

Francis’s career flourished in spite of a slight but distinctive speech impediment (she pronounced the letters “r” and “l” as “w”) that gave rise to the nickname “Wavishing Kay Fwancis.”

Kay Francis in Mandalay (1934)

Francis’ career at Paramount changed gears when Warner Bros. promised her star status at a better salary. She appeared in George Cukor‘s Girls About Town (1931) and Twenty-Four Hours (1931). After Francis’ career skyrocketed at Warner Bros., she would return to Paramount for Ernst Lubitsch‘s Trouble in Paradise (1932).

Girls About Town (1931) Poster

Girls About Town (1931) Lobby Card

Kay Francis in Girls About Town (1931)

Joel McCrea and Kay Francis in Girls About Town (1931)

Premiere of Girls About Town (1931)

Joel McCrea and Kay Francis in Girls About Town (1931)

24 Hours AKA The Hours Between (1931) Poster

24 Hours AKA The Hours Between (1931) Lobby Card

24 Hours AKA The Hours Between (1931) Poster

24 Hours AKA The Hours Between (1931) Lobby Cards

24 Hours AKA The Hours Between (1931) Poster

Kay Francis in 24 Hours AKA The Hours Between (1931)

Clive Brook and Kay Francis in 24 Hours AKA The Hours Between (1931)

Trouble in Paradise (1932) Poster

Herbert Marshall and Kay Francis in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis and Ernst Lubitsch on the set of Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall and Kay Francis in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

In 1932, Warner Bros. persuaded both Francis and Powell to join the ranks of Warners stars, along with Ruth Chatterton. In exchange, Francis was given roles that allowed her a more sympathetic screen persona than had hitherto been the case—in her first three featured roles she had played a villainess. For example, in The False Madonna (1932), she played a jaded society woman nursing a terminally ill child who learns to appreciate the importance of hearth and home. On December 16, 1931, Francis and her co-stars opened the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California with a gala preview screening of The False Madonna.

Ruth Chatterton

Cheated AKA The False Madonna AKA The False Idol (1931) Poster

William Boyd and Kay Francis in Cheated AKA The False Madonna AKA The False Idol (1931)

Conway Tearle and Kay Francis in Cheated AKA The False Madonna AKA The False Idol (1931)

William Boyd, Kay Francis and Conway Tearle in Cheated AKA The False Madonna AKA The False Idol (1931)

Kay Francis in Cheated AKA The False Madonna AKA The False Idol (1931)

Kay Francis and Conway Tearle in Cheated AKA The False Madonna AKA The False Idol (1931)

Kay Francis in Cheated AKA The False Madonna AKA The False Idol (1931) Magazine Article

Mainstream successes

From 1932 through 1936, Francis was the queen of the Warners lot and increasingly her films were developed as star vehicles. By the mid-thirties, Francis was one of the highest-paid people in the United States. From the years 1930 to 1937, Francis appeared on the covers of 38 film magazines, the most for any adult performer and second only to Shirley Temple who appeared on 138 covers during that period.

She had married writer-director John Meehan in New York, but soon after her arrival in Hollywood, she consummated an affair with actor and producer Kenneth MacKenna, whom she married in January 1931. When MacKenna’s Hollywood career foundered, he found himself spending more time in New York, and they divorced in 1934.

John Meehan

Kay Francis and Kenneth MacKenna

She frequently played long-suffering heroines, in films such as I Found Stella Parish, Secrets of an Actress, and Comet Over Broadway, displaying to good advantage lavish wardrobes that, in some cases, were more memorable than the characters she played—a fact often emphasized by contemporary film reviewers.

Francis’ clotheshorse reputation often led Warners’ producers to concentrate resources on lavish sets and costumes, designed to appeal to Depression-era female audiences and capitalize on her reputation as the epitome of chic, rather than on scripts.

I Found Stella Parish (1935) Poster

Kay Francis in I Found Stella Parish (1935)

Kay Francis and Sybil Jason in I Found Stella Parish (1935)

Kay Francis in I Found Stella Parish (1935)

Secrets of an Actress (1938) Poster

Secrets of an Actress (1938) Poster and Lobby Cards

Ian Hunter and Kay Francis in Secrets of an Actress (1938)

George Brent and Kay Francis in Secrets of an Actress (1938)

Kay Francis on the set of Secrets of an Actress (1938)

Gloria Dickson and George Brent in Secrets of an Actress (1938)

Secrets of an Actress (1938) Lobby Card

Comet Over Broadway (1938) Poster

Comet Over Broadway (1938) Lobby Card

Kay Francis and Ian Hunter in Comet Over Broadway (1938)

Comet Over Broadway (1938) Poster

Kay Francis and Ian Hunter in Comet Over Broadway (1938)

Eventually, Francis herself became dissatisfied with these vehicles and began openly to feud with Warners, even threatening a lawsuit against them for inferior treatment. This in turn led to her demotion to programmers such as Women in the Wind (1939) and, in the same year, to the termination of her contract.

Women in the Wind (1939) Poster

Eve Arden and Kay Francis in Women in the Wind (1939)

Kay Francis and Eve Arden in Women in the Wind (1939)

Women in the Wind (1939) Lobby Card

Kay Francis in a promo photograph for Women in the Wind (1939)

“Box Office Poison” and revival

The Independent Theatre Owners Association paid for an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter in May 1938 that included Francis, along with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn and others, on a list of stars dubbed “box office poison“.

After her release from Warners, Francis was unable to secure another studio contract. Carole Lombard, one of the most popular stars of the late 1930s and early 1940s (and who had previously been a supporting player in Francis’ 1931 film, Ladies’ Man) tried to bolster Francis’ career by insisting Francis be cast in In Name Only (1939).

In Name Only (1939) Poster

In Name Only (1939) Lobby Card

Carole Lombard, Cary Grant and Kay Francis in In Name Only (1939)

Cary Grant and Kay Francis in In Name Only (1939)

In Name Only (1939) Poster

Cary Grant, Carole Lombard and Kay Francis in In Name Only (1939)

In Name Only (1939) Lobby Card

In Name Only (1939) Poster

In this film, Francis had a supporting role to Lombard and Cary Grant, but recognized that the film offered her an opportunity to engage in some serious acting. After this, she moved to character and supporting parts, playing catty professional women – holding her own against Rosalind Russell in The Feminine Touch, for example – and mothers opposite rising young stars such as Deanna Durbin. Francis did have a lead role in the Bogart gangster film King of the Underworld, released in 1939.

The Feminine Touch (1941) Poster

Van Heflin, Rosalind Russell and Don Ameche in The Feminine Touch (1941)

Kay Francis and Van Heflin in The Feminine Touch (1941)

Don Ameche and Rosalind Russell in The Feminine Touch (1941)

The Feminine Touch (1941) Poster

King of the Underworld (1939) Poster

Humphrey Bogart and Kay Francis in King of the Underworld (1939)

King of the Underworld (1939) Lobby Card

King of the Underworld (1939) Lobby Card

Kay Francis and Humphrey Bogart in King of the Underworld (1939)

King of the Underworld (1939) Lobby Card

World War II era

With the start of World War II, Francis did volunteer work, including extensive war-zone touring, which was first chronicled in a book attributed to fellow volunteer Carole Landis, Four Jills in a Jeep, which became a popular 1944 film of the same name, with a cavalcade of stars and Martha Raye and Mitzi Mayfair joining Landis and Francis to fill out the complement of Jills.

Four Jills in a Jeep (1944) Poster

Four Jills in a Jeep (1944) Lobby Card

Mitzi Mayfair, Carole Landis and Martha Raye in Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)

Kay Francis promoting Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)

Kay Francis on the set of Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)

John Harvey and Carole Landis in Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)

Despite the success of Four Jills, the end of the war found Francis virtually unemployable in Hollywood. She signed a three-film contract with Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures that gave her production credit as well as star billing.

The results – the films Divorce, Wife Wanted, and Allotment Wives – had limited releases in 1945 and 1946.

Divorce (1945) Poster

Divorce (1945) Lobby Card

Bruce Talbot and Kay Francis in Divorce (1945) Lobby Card

Wife Wanted AKA Shadow of Blackmail (1946) Poster

Wife Wanted AKA Shadow of Blackmail (1946) Lobby Card

Wife Wanted AKA Shadow of Blackmail (1946) Poster

Allotment Wives AKA Woman in the Case (1945) Poster

Kay Francis in Allotment Wives AKA Woman in the Case (1945)

Kay Francis and Otto Kruger in Allotment Wives AKA Woman in the Case (1945)

Teala Loring and Kay Francis in Allotment Wives AKA Woman in the Case (1945) Poster

Francis spent the remainder of the 1940s on the stage, appearing with some success in State of the Union and touring in various productions of plays old and new, including one, Windy Hill, backed by former Warners colleague Ruth Chatterton. Declining health, aggravated by an accident in 1948 in which she was badly burned by a radiator, hastened her retirement from show business.

State of the Union (1947) Programme

Personal life

“”My life? Well, I get up at a quarter to six in the morning if I’m going to wear an evening dress on camera. That sentence sounds a little ga-ga, doesn’t it? But never mind, that’s my life…As long as they pay me my salary, they can give me a broom and I’ll sweep the stage. I don’t give a damn. I want the money…When I die, I want to be cremated so that no sign of my existence is left on this earth. I can’t wait to be forgotten.” – From Kay Francis’s private diaries, c. 1938.

Francis married five times. Her diaries, preserved in an academic collection at Wesleyan University, paint a picture of a woman whose personal life was often in disarray. She regularly socialized with homosexual men, one of whom, Anderson Lawler, was reportedly paid $10,000 by Warner Bros. to accompany her to Europe in 1934.

Kay Francis in Mandalay (1934)

In 1966, Francis was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, but the cancer had spread and proved fatal. Having no living immediate family members, Francis left more than $1,000,000 to The Seeing Eye, which trains guide dogs for the blind. She died in 1968, aged 63, and her body was immediately cremated; her ashes were scattered.

Partial filmography

Features

The Cocoanuts (1929)
Gentlemen of the Press (1929)
Dangerous Curves (1929)
Behind the Make-Up (1930)
Street of Chance (1930)
Paramount on Parade (1930)
A Notorious Affair (1930)
For the Defense (1930)
Raffles (1930)
Let’s Go Native (1930)
The Virtuous Sin (1930)
Passion Flower (1930)
Ladies’ Man (1931)
Transgression (1931)
Guilty Hands (1931)
24 Hours (1931)
Girls About Town (1931)
The False Madonna (1931)
Man Wanted (1932)
Jewel Robbery (1932)
One Way Passage (1932)
Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Street of Women (1932)
Cynara (1932)
The Keyhole (1933)
Storm at Daybreak (1933)
Mary Stevens, M.D. (1933)
I Loved a Woman (1933)
The House on 56th Street (1933)
Mandalay (1934)
Wonder Bar (1934)
Dr. Monica (1934)
British Agent (1934)
Living on Velvet (1935)
Stranded (1935)
The Goose and the Gander (1935)
I Found Stella Parish (1935)
The White Angel (1936)
Give Me Your Heart (1936)
Stolen Holiday (1937)
Another Dawn (1937)
Confession (1937)
First Lady (1937)
Women Are Like That (1938)
My Bill (1938)
Secrets of an Actress (1938)
Comet Over Broadway (1938)
King of the Underworld (1939)
Women in the Wind (1939)
In Name Only (1939)
It’s a Date (1940)
When the Daltons Rode (1940)
Little Men (1940)
Play Girl (1941)
The Man Who Lost Himself (1941)
Charley’s Aunt (1941)
The Feminine Touch (1941)
Always in My Heart (1942)
Between Us Girls (1942)
Four Jills in a Jeep (1944)
Divorce (1945)
Allotment Wives (1945)
Wife Wanted (1946)

Short subjects

Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 3 (1936)
Show Business at War (1943)

References

Notes

Jump up^ Obituary Variety, August 28, 1968, page 63.
Jump up^ Osborne, Robert. Introduction to King of the Underworld, Turner Classic Movies(18 September 2008)
Jump up^ “The Wesleyan Cinema Archives”. Wesleyhan.edu. Retrieved 8 September2010.
Jump up^ The 1910 census lists 1905 as her birth year.
Jump up^ enumerated on May 28, 1910 (Ancestry.com)
Jump up^ Kay Francis at the Internet Broadway Database
Jump up^ Hamlet at the Internet Broadway Database
Jump up^ Crime at the Internet Broadway Database
Jump up^ Venus at the Internet Broadway Database
Jump up^ Elmer the Great at the Internet Broadway Database
Jump up^ Slide, Anthony (2010). Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi. p. 131. ISBN 978-1-60473-413-3.
Jump up^ “Box-office Busts”. Life. p. 13. Retrieved September 8, 2012.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “The Kay Francis Papers”. Wesleyan Cinema Archives. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
Jump up^ Mann, William J. (2001). Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969. New York: Viking. pp. 83–84. ISBN 0670030171.

Bibliography

Callahan, Dan, Kay Francis: Secrets of an Actress, Bright Lights Film Journal, May 2006. Retrieved December 4, 2006
Kear, Lynn; Rossman, John (2006). Kay Francis: A Passionate Life and Career. McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-2366-8.
‘Kay Francis: A Passionate Life & Career’ by Lyn Kear & John Rossman. (Limited view at Google Books)
O’Brien, Scott (2006). Kay Francis: I Can’t Wait to Be Forgotten. BearManor Media. ISBN 1-59393-036-4.
1910 United States Federal Census, Fort Lee, Bergen County, New Jersey, Election District 1

Actors, Articles, Home, Pre Code Films

Miriam Hopkins

January 27, 2020 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Ellen Miriam Hopkins

^{(October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an American film and TV actress known for her versatility.}

She first signed with Paramount in 1930, working with Ernst Lubitsch and Joel McCrea, among many others. Her long-running feud with Bette Davis was publicized for effect.

Later she became a pioneer of TV drama. Hopkins was a distinguished Hollywood hostess, who moved in intellectual and creative circles.

Miriam Hopkins in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Early life

Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia^{to Homer Hopkins and Ellen Cutler}^{and raised in}Bainbridge^{, near the Alabama border. She had an older sister, Ruby (1900-1990).}^{Her maternal great-grandfather, the fourth mayor of Bainbridge, helped establish St. John’s Episcopal Church, in}Bainbridge^,^{^{where Hopkins sang in the choir.}}

In 1909, she briefly lived in Mexico. After her parents separated, she moved as a teen with her mother to Syracuse, New York^{, to be near her uncle, Thomas Cramer Hopkins, head of the Geology Department at Syracuse University.}

She attended Goddard Seminary in Barre, Vermont (which later became Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont) and Syracuse University^{(in New York).}^{^{She became estranged from her father, and when in 1922 at the age of 19 she applied for a passport in preparation for a theatrical tour of South America, she listed his address as “unknown.”}}

Career

At age 20, Hopkins became a chorus girl in New York City. In 1930, she signed with Paramount Pictures, and made her official film debut in Fast and Loose. Her first great success was in the 1931 horror drama film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which she portrayed the character Ivy Pearson^{, a prostitute who becomes entangled with Jekyll and Hyde. Hopkins received rave reviews, but because of the potential controversy of the film and her character, many of her scenes were cut before the official release, reducing her screen time to approximately five minutes.}

Fast and Loose (1930) Poster

Miriam Hopkins in Fast and Loose (1930)

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) Poster

gettyimages-1137101068-612x612 — Dr. Jekyll And Mr Hyde, lobby card. Dr. Jekyll And Mr Hyde, from left, Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March, Rose Hobart, 1931. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) Lobby Card

Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Fredric March Rose Hobart and Miriam Hopkins in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Fredric March Rose Hobart and Miriam Hopkins in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Fredric March Rouben Mamoulian and Miriam Hopkins on the set of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931)

Nevertheless, her career ascended swiftly thereafter and in 1932 she scored her breakthrough in Ernst Lubitsch‘s Trouble in Paradise, where she proved her charm and wit as a beautiful and jealous pickpocket. During the pre-code Hollywood of the early 1930s, she appeared in The Smiling Lieutenant, The Story of Temple Drake and Design for Living, all of which were box office successes and critically acclaimed.

Trouble in Paradise (1932) Poster

Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall and Kay Francis in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Miriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Trouble in Paradise (1932) Lobby Card

Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins in Trouble in Paradise (1932)

The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) Lobby Card

On the set of The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)

The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) Press Book

The Story of Temple Drake (1933) Poster

The Story of Temple Drake (1933) Lobby Card

Miriam Hopkins and Jack La Rue in The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

Miriam Hopkins in The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

Miriam Hopkins and Jack La Rue in The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

Miriam Hopkins in The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

The Story of Temple Drake (1933) Press Sheet

Miriam Hopkins in The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

Design for Living (1933) Poster

Design for Living (1933) Lobby Card

Gary Cooper and Fredric March in Design for Living (1933)

Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins and Gary Cooper in Design for Living (1933)

Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins in Design for Living (1933)

Design for Living (1933) Lobby Card

Her pre-Code films were considered risqué at the time, with The Story of Temple Drake depicting a rape scene and Design for Living featuring a ménage à trois with Fredric March and Gary Cooper.

She also had success during the remainder of the decade with the romantic comedy The Richest Girl in the World (1934), the historical udrama Becky Sharp (1935), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, Barbary Coast (1935), These Three (1936) (the first of four films with director William Wyler) and The Old Maid (1939).

The Richest Girl in the World (1934) Poster

Miriam Hopkins in The Richest Girl in the World (1934)

Joel McCrea and Miriam Hopkins in The Richest Girl in the World (1934)

Miriam Hopkins in The Richest Girl in the World (1934)

Becky Sharp (1935) Poster

Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935)

Becky Sharp (1935) Poster

Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935) Production Still

Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935)

Becky Sharp (1935) Magazine Cover

Barbary Coast (1935) Poster

Barbary Coast AKA Port of Wickedness (1935) Lobby Card

Barbary Coast AKA Port of Wickedness (1935) Poster

Barbary Coast AKA Port of Wickedness (1935) Lobby Card

Miriam Hopkins in Barbary Coast AKA Port of Wickedness (1935)

These Three (1936) Poster

These Three (1936) Production Still

These Three (1936) Poster

These Three (1936) Lobby Cards

These Three (1936) Poster

The Old Maid (1939) Poster

Bette Davis, George Brent and Miriam Hopkins in The Old Maid (1939)

The Old Maid (1939) Poster

The Old Maid (1939) Lobby Card

The Old Maid (1939) Poster

Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins in The Old Maid (1939)

Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins and George Brent in The Old Maid (1939)

The Old Maid (1939) Poster

Hopkins was one of the first actresses approached to play the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934). However, she rejected the part, and Claudette Colbert^{was cast instead.}^{She did audition for the role of}Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, having one advantage none of the other candidates had: she was a native Georgian. But the part went to Vivien Leigh. Interestingly, both Colbert and Leigh won Oscars for their performances.

Hopkins had well-publicized fights with her arch-enemy Bette Davis (Hopkins believed Davis was having an affair with Hopkins’ husband at the time, Anatole Litvak), when they co-starred in their two films The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance^(1943).

^{Davis admitted to enjoying very much a scene in}Old Acquaintance in which she shakes Hopkins forcefully during a scene where Hopkins’ character makes unfounded allegations against Davis’s. There were even press photos taken with both divas in a boxing ring with gloves up and director Vincent Sherman between the two. Davis described Hopkins as a “terribly good actress” but also “terribly jealous” in later interviews.

Old Acquaintance (1943) Poster

Miriam Hopkins in Old Acquaintance (1943)

Old Acquaintance (1943) Poster

Miriam Hopkins and Bette Davis in Old Acquaintance (1943)

Old Acquaintance (1943) Lobby Card

Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins in Old Acquaintance (1943)

Old Acquaintance (1943) Lobby Card

After Old Acquaintance, Hopkins did not work again in films until The Heiress (1949), where she played the lead character’s aunt. In Mitchell Leisen‘s 1951’s comedy The Mating Season, she gave a comic performance as Gene Tierney‘s character’s mother. She also acted in The Children’s Hour, which is the theatrical basis of her film These Three (1936). In the remake, she played the aunt to Shirley MacLaine, who took Hopkins’ original role.

The Heiress (1949) Poster

The Heiress (1949) Lobby Card

The Heiress (1949) Lobby Cards

The Mating Season (1951) Poster

Gene Tierney and Miriam Hopkins in The Mating Season (1951)

The Children’s Hour (1961) Poster

Hopkins was a television pioneer, performing in teleplays in three decades, spanning the late 1940s through the late 1960s, in such programs as The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre (1949), Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (1951), Lux Video Theatre (1951–1955), The Outer Limits (1964) and even an episode of The Flying Nun in 1969.

She has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures at 1701 Vine Street, and one for television at 1708 Vine Street.

Miriam Hopkins

The Playhouse Theatre Programme

Private life

Hopkins was married and divorced four times: first to actor Brandon Peters, second to aviator, screenwriter Austin Parker, third to the director Anatole Litvak, and fourth to war correspondent Raymond B. Brock. In 1932, Hopkins adopted a son, Michael T. Hopkins (March 29, 1932 – October 5, 2010).

Brandon Peters

Austin Parker

Anatole Litvak

Miriam Hopkins and Anatole Litvak

She was known for hosting elegant parties. John O’Hara, a frequent guest, noted that

^{most of her guests were chosen from the world of the intellect…Miriam knew them all, had read their work, had listened to their music, had bought their paintings. They were not there because a secretary had given her a list of highbrows.}

She was a staunch Democrat who strongly supported the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt^.

Death

Hopkins died in New York City from a heart attack nine days before her 70th birthday. She is buried in Oak City Cemetery in Bainbridge, Georgia.

Miriam Hopkins Grave

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1930	Fast and Loose	Marion Lenox	Hopkins’s film debut
1931	The Smiling Lieutenant	Princess Anna	The first of three films Hopkins made with Lubitsch
1931	24 Hours	Rosie Duggan
1931	Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Ivy Pearson
1932	Two Kinds of Women	Emma Krull
1932	Dancers in the Dark	Gloria Bishop
1932	The World and the Flesh	Maria Yaskaya
1932	Trouble in Paradise	Lily	Second film directed by Lubitsch and starring Hopkins
1933	The Story of Temple Drake	Temple Drake
1933	The Stranger’s Return	Louise Starr
1933	Design for Living	Gilda Farrell	Third and final film Hopkins and Lubitsch made together
1934	All of Me	Lydia Darrow
1934	She Loves Me Not	Curly Flagg
1934	The Richest Girl in the World	Dorothy Hunter	First of five films Hopkins and McCrea made together
1935	Becky Sharp	Becky Sharp	Nominated – Academy Award for Best Actress The first feature film made in the three strip Technicolor process
1935	Barbary Coast	Mary ‘Swan’ Rutledge	Second film starring Hopkins and McCrea
1935	Splendor	Phyllis Manning Lorrimore	Third film starring Hopkins and McCrea
1936	These Three	Martha Dobie	The film was adapted from the 1934 play The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman. Fourth film starring Hopkins and McCrea
1936	Men Are Not Gods	Ann Williams
1937	The Woman I Love	Madame Helene Maury	Hopkins married director Anatole Litvak shortly after this film was made. It is the only film Hopkins made with Paul Muni
1937	Woman Chases Man	Virginia Travis	Final film Hopkins and McCrea made together
1937	Wise Girl	Susan ‘Susie’ Fletcher
1939	The Old Maid	Delia Lovell Ralston	The first of two films Hopkins made with Bette Davis
1940	Virginia City	Julia Hayne	Hopkins co-starred with Errol Flynn
1940	Lady with Red Hair	Mrs. Leslie Carter
1942	A Gentleman After Dark	Flo Melton
1943	Old Acquaintance	Millie Drake	Second of two films Hopkins made with Bette Davis.
1949	The Heiress	Lavinia Penniman	Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture
1951	The Mating Season	Fran Carleton
1952	The Outcasts of Poker Flat	Mrs. Shipton/’The Duchess’
1952	Carrie	Julie Hurstwood
1961	The Children’s Hour	Lily Mortar	Hopkins had starred in the original film adaptation of the play The Children’s Hour entitled These Three in the role of Martha Dobie. In this film Shirley MacLaine played Martha and Miriam Hopkins played her Aunt Lily.
1964	Fanny Hill	Mrs. Maude Brown
1966	The Chase	Mrs. Reeves	Hopkins played the mother of Robert Redford’s character
1970	Savage Intruder	Katharine Parker	Hopkins’s last film

Short Subjects:

“The Home Girl” (1928)
“Hollywood on Parade No. B-1” (1933)

References

Jump up^ Obituary Variety, October 11, 1972, p. 71.
Jump up^ Virginia, Marriage Records 1936-2014
Jump up^ 1910 United States Federal Census
Jump up^ http://www.episcopalchurch.org/parish/st-johns-episcopal-church-bainbridge-ga
Jump up^ “Miriam Hopkins (1902-1972)”. Georgiaencyclopedia.org. August 28, 2013. Retrieved October 17, 2015.
^ Jump up to:^a^b Profile, archives.syr.edu; accessed June 27, 2015.
Jump up^ [Ancestry.com] U.S. Passports Applications, 1795-1925, “Meriam Hopkins, Passport Issue Date 30 January 1922”
Jump up^ Profile, allanellenberger.com; accessed June 27, 2015.
Jump up^ Profile, imdb.com; accessed June 27, 2015.
Jump up^ Wiley, Mason; Damien Bona (1987). Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards. Ballantine Books. p. 54. ISBN0-345-34453-7.
Jump up^ Soares, Andre (December 3, 2006). “Miriam Hopkins Biography in the Works”. Alternative Film Guide.
Jump up^ “TimesMachine”. Timesmachine.nytimes.com. Retrieved October 17, 2015.
Jump up^ Michael Janeway (August 22, 2009). The Fall of the House of Roosevelt: Brokers of Ideas and Power from FDR to LBJ. Books.google.com. Retrieved October 17,2015.

Actors, Articles, Home, Pre Code Films

Carole Lombard

November 28, 2019 Film Dialogue

Prepared by Daniel B Miller

Carole Lombard (born Jane Alice Peters, October 6, 1908 – January 16, 1942) was an American film actress. She was particularly noted for her energetic, often off-beat roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s. She was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s. She was the second wife of actor Clark Gable.

Lombard was born into a wealthy family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but was raised in Los Angeles by her single mother. At 12, she was recruited by the film director Allan Dwan and made her screen debut in A Perfect Crime (1921). Eager to become an actress, she signed a contract with the Fox Film Corporation at age 16, but mainly played bit parts.

Carole Lombard in A Perfect Crime (1921)

She was dropped by Fox after a car accident left a scar on her face. Lombard appeared in 15 short comedies for Mack Sennett between 1927 and 1929, and then began appearing in feature films such as High Voltage and The Racketeer. After a successful appearance in The Arizona Kid (1930), she was signed to a contract with Paramount Pictures.

Paramount quickly began casting Lombard as a leading lady, primarily in drama films. Her profile increased when she married William Powell in 1931, but the couple divorced after two years.

A turning point in Lombard’s career came when she starred in Howard Hawks‘ pioneering screwball comedy Twentieth Century (1934). The actress found her niche in this genre, and continued to appear in films such as Hands Across the Table (1935) (forming a popular partnership with Fred MacMurray), My Man Godfrey (1936), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Nothing Sacred (1937).

At this time, Lombard married “the King of Hollywood”, Clark Gable, and the supercouple gained much attention from the media. Keen to win an Oscar, at the end of the decade, Lombard began to move towards more serious roles. Unsuccessful in this aim, she returned to comedy in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and Ernst Lubitsch‘s To Be or Not to Be (1942) — her final film role.

Lombard’s career was cut short when she died at the age of 33 in an aircraft crash on Mount Potosi, Nevada while returning from a war bond tour. Today, she is remembered as one of the definitive actresses of the screwball comedy genre and American comedy, and ranks among the American Film Institute‘s greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Early years

Childhood

Lombard was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908 at 704 Rockhill Street.

Christened with the name Jane Alice Peters, she was the third child and only daughter of Frederick Christian Peters (1875–1935) and Elizabeth Jayne “Bessie” (Knight) Peters (1876–1942). Her two older brothers, to each of whom she was close, both growing up and in adulthood, were Frederick Charles (1902–1979) and John Stuart (1906–1956).

Lombard’s parents both descended from wealthy families and her early years were lived in comfort, with the biographer Robert Matzen calling it her “silver spoon period”.

The marriage between her parents was strained, however, and in October 1914, her mother took the children and moved to Los Angeles. Although the couple did not divorce, the separation was permanent. Her father’s continued financial support allowed the family to live without worry, if not with the same affluence they had enjoyed in Indiana, and they settled into an apartment near Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles.

At age 12, Lombard had a small role in the film A Perfect Crime (1921).

Described by her biographer Wes Gehring as “a free-spirited tomboy“, the young Lombard was passionately involved in sports and enjoyed watching movies.

At Virgil Junior High School, she participated in tennis, volleyball, and swimming, and won trophies for her achievements in athletics. At the age of 12, this hobby unexpectedly landed Lombard her first screen role. While playing baseball with friends, she caught the attention of the film director Allan Dwan, who later recalled seeing “a cute-looking little tomboy … out there knocking the hell out of the other kids, playing better baseball than they were. And I needed someone of her type for this picture.”

With the encouragement of her mother, Lombard happily took a small role in the melodrama A Perfect Crime (1921). She was on set for two days, playing the sister of Monte Blue. Dwan later commented, “She ate it up”.

Aspiring actress, Fox (1921–26)

A Perfect Crime was not widely distributed, but the brief experience spurred Lombard and her mother to look for more film work. The teenager attended several auditions, but none was successful.

While appearing as the queen of Fairfax High School‘s May Day Carnival at the age of 15, she was scouted by an employee of Charlie Chaplin and offered a screen test to appear in his film The Gold Rush (1925). Lombard was not given the role, but it raised Hollywood’s awareness of the aspiring actress.

Her test was seen by the Vitagraph Film Company, which expressed an interest in signing her to a contract. Although this did not materialize, the condition that she adopt a new first name (“Jane” was considered too dull) lasted with Lombard throughout her career. She selected the name “Carol” after a girl with whom she played tennis in middle school.

In October 1924, shortly after these disappointments, 16-year-old Lombard was signed to a contract with the Fox Film Corporation. How this came about is uncertain: in her lifetime, it was reported that a director for the studio scouted her at a dinner party, but more recent evidence suggests that Lombard’s mother contacted Louella Parsons, the gossip columnist, who then got her a screen test.

According to the biographer Larry Swindell, Lombard’s beauty convinced Winfield Sheehan, head of the studio, to sign her to a $75-per-week contract.

The teenager abandoned her schooling to embark on this new career. Fox was happy to use the name Carol, but unlike Vitagraph, disliked her surname. From this point, she became “Carol Lombard”, the new name taken from a family friend.

The majority of Lombard’s appearances with Fox were bit parts in low-budget Westerns and adventure films. She later commented on her dissatisfaction with these roles: “All I had to do was simper prettily at the hero and scream with terror when he battled with the villain.” She fully enjoyed the other aspects of film work, however, such as photo shoots, costume fittings, and socializing with actors on the studio set. Lombard embraced the flapper lifestyle and became a regular at the Coconut Grove nightclub, where she won several Charleston dance competitions.

In March 1925, Fox gave Lombard a leading role in the drama Marriage in Transit, opposite Edmund Lowe. Her performance was well received, with a reviewer for Motion Picture News writing that she displayed “good poise and considerable charm.”

Despite this, the studio heads were unconvinced that Lombard was leading lady material, and her one-year contract was not renewed. Gehring has suggested that a facial scar she obtained in an automobile accident was a factor in this decision. Fearing that the scar — which ran across her cheek — would ruin her career, the 17-year-old had an early plastic surgery procedure to make it less visible. For the remainder of her career, Lombard learned to hide the mark with make-up and careful lighting.

Breakthrough

Sennett and Pathé (1927–29)

Lombard in the comedy short Run, Girl, Run (1928), from her time as a “Mack Sennett girl”

After a year without work, Lombard obtained a screen test for the “King of Comedy” Mack Sennett. She was offered a contract, and although she initially had reservations about performing in slapstick comedies, the actress joined his company as one of the “Sennett Bathing Beauties“.

She appeared in 15 short films between September 1927 and March 1929, and greatly enjoyed her time at the studio. It gave Lombard her first experiences in comedy and provided valuable training for her future work in the genre. In 1940, she called her Sennett years “the turning point of [my] acting career.”

Sennett’s productions were distributed by Pathé Exchange, and the company began casting Lombard in feature films. She had prominent roles in Show Folks and Ned McCobb’s Daughter (both 1928), where reviewers observed that she made a “good impression” and was “worth watching”.

The following year, Pathé elevated Lombard from a supporting player to a leading lady. Her success in Raoul Walsh‘s picture Me, Gangster (also 1928), opposite June Collyer and Don Terry on his film debut, finally eased the pressure her family had been putting on her to succeed. In Howard Higgin‘s High Voltage (1929), her first talking picture, she played a criminal in the custody of a deputy sheriff, both of whom are among bus passengers stranded in deep snow.

Her next film, the comedy Big News (1929), cast her opposite Robert Armstrong and was a critical and commercial success. Lombard was reunited with Armstrong for the crime drama The Racketeer, released in late 1929. The review in Film Daily wrote, “Carol Lombard proves a real surprise, and does her best work to date. In fact, this is the first opportunity she has had to prove that she has the stuff to go over.”

Paramount, Powell marriage (1930–33)

Lombard returned to Fox for a one-off role in the western The Arizona Kid (1930). It was a big release for the studio, starring the popular actor Warner Baxter, in which Lombard received third billing. Following the success of the film, Paramount Pictures recruited Lombard and signed her to a $350-per-week contract (gradually increasing to $3,500 per week by 1936). They cast her in the Buddy Rogers comedy Safety in Numbers (also 1930), and one critic observed of her work, “Lombard proves [to be] an ace comedienne.”

For her second assignment, Fast and Loose (also 1930) with Miriam Hopkins, Paramount mistakenly credited the actress as “Carole Lombard”. She decided she liked this spelling and it became her permanent screen name.

Lombard appeared in five films released during 1931, beginning with the Frank Tuttle comedy It Pays to Advertise. Her next two films, Man of the World and Ladies Man, both featured William Powell, Paramount’s top male star.

Lombard had been a fan of the actor before they met, attracted to his good looks and debonair screen persona, and they were soon in a relationship.

The differences between the pair have been noted by biographers: she was 22, carefree, and famously foul-mouthed, while he was 38, intellectual, and sophisticated. Despite their disparate personalities, Lombard married Powell on June 6, 1931, at her Beverly Hills home. Talking to the media, she argued for the benefits of “love between two people who are diametrically different”, claiming that their relationship allowed for a “perfect see-saw love”.

With William Powell, her husband from June 1931 to August 1933

The marriage to Powell increased Lombard’s fame, while she continued to please critics with her work in Up Pops the Devil and I Take this Woman (both 1931).

In reviews for the latter film, which co-starred Gary Cooper, several critics predicted that Lombard was set to become a major star. She went on to appear in five films throughout 1932. No One Man and Sinners in the Sun were not successful, but Edward Buzzell‘s romantic picture Virtue was well received.

After featuring in the drama No More Orchids, Lombard was cast as the wife of a con artist in No Man of Her Own. Her co-star for the picture was Clark Gable, who was rapidly becoming one of Hollywood’s top stars. The film was a critical and commercial success, and Wes Gehring writes that it was “arguably Lombard’s finest film appearance” to that point.

It was the only picture that Gable and Lombard, future husband and wife, made together.

There was no romantic interest at this time however, as she recounted to Garson Kanin: “[we] did all kinds of hot love scenes … and I never got any kind of tremble out of him at all”. In August 1933, Lombard and Powell divorced after 26 months of marriage, although they remained very good friends until the end of Lombard’s life. At the time, she blamed it on their careers, but in a 1936 interview, she admitted that this “had little to do with the divorce. We were just two completely incompatible people”.

She appeared in five films that year, beginning with the drama From Hell to Heaven and continuing with Supernatural, her only horror vehicle. After a small role in The Eagle and the Hawk, a war film starring Fredric March and Cary Grant, she starred in two melodramas: Brief Moment, which critics enjoyed, and White Woman, where she was paired with Charles Laughton.

Hollywood star

Screwball beginnings (1934–35)

Lombard made four comedies with Fred MacMurray, beginning with Hands Across the Table (1935).

The year 1934 marked a high point in Lombard’s career. She began with Wesley Ruggles‘s musical drama Bolero, where George Raft and she showcased their dancing skills in an extravagantly staged performance to Maurice Ravel‘s “Boléro“.

Before filming began, she was offered the lead female role in It Happened One Night, but turned it down because of scheduling conflicts with this production. Bolero was favorably received, while her next film, the musical comedy We’re Not Dressing with Bing Crosby, was a box-office hit.

Lombard was then recruited by the director Howard Hawks, to star in his screwball comedy film Twentieth Century which proved a watershed in her career and made her a major star. Hawks had seen the actress inebriated at a party, where he found her to be “hilarious and uninhibited and just what the part needed”, and she was cast opposite John Barrymore.

In Twentieth Century, Lombard played an actress who is pursued by her former mentor, a flamboyant Broadway impresario.

Hawks and Barrymore were unimpressed with her work in rehearsals, finding that she was “acting” too hard and giving a stiff performance. The director encouraged Lombard to relax, be herself, and act on her instincts.

She responded well to this tutoring, and reviews for the film commented on her unexpectedly “fiery talent” — “a Lombard like no Lombard you’ve ever seen”. The Los Angeles Times‘ critic felt that she was “entirely different” from her formerly cool, “calculated” persona, adding, “she vibrates with life and passion, abandon and diablerie”.

The next films in which Lombard appeared were Henry Hathaway‘s Now and Forever (1934), featuring Gary Cooper and the new child star Shirley Temple, and Lady by Choice (1934), which was a critical and commercial success.

The Gay Bride (1934) placed her opposite Chester Morris in a gangster comedy, but this outing was panned by critics.

After reuniting with George Raft for another dance picture, Rumba (1935), Lombard was given the opportunity to repeat the screwball success of Twentieth Century. In Mitchell Leisen‘s Hands Across the Table (1935), she portrayed a manicurist in search of a rich husband, played by Fred MacMurray.

Critics praised the film, and Photoplay’s reviewer stated that Lombard had reaffirmed her talent for the genre. It is remembered as one of her best films, and the pairing of Lombard and MacMurray proved so successful that they made three more pictures together.

Continued success (1936–37)

Lombard’s first film of 1936 was Love Before Breakfast, described by Gehring as “The Taming of the Shrew, screwball style”.

In William K. Howard‘s The Princess Comes Across, her second comedy with MacMurray, she played a budding actress who wins a film contract by masquerading as a Swedish princess. The performance was considered a satire of Greta Garbo, and was widely praised by critics.

Lombard’s success continued as she was recruited by Universal Studios to star in the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936).

William Powell, who was playing the eponymous Godfrey, insisted on her being cast as the female lead; despite their divorce, the pair remained friendly and Powell felt she would be perfect in the role of Irene, a zany heiress who employs a “forgotten man” as the family butler.

The film was directed by Gregory LaCava, who knew Lombard personally and advised that she draw on her “eccentric nature” for the role. She worked hard on the performance, particularly with finding the appropriate facial expressions for Irene. My Man Godfrey was released to great acclaim and was a box office hit.

It received six nominations at the 9th Academy Awards, including Lombard for Best Actress. Biographers cite it as her finest performance, and Frederick Ott says it “clearly established [her] as a comedienne of the first rank.”

By 1937, Lombard was one of Hollywood’s most popular actresses, and also the highest-paid star in Hollywood following the deal which Myron Selznick negotiated with Paramount that brought her $450,000, more than five times the salary of the U.S. President.

As her salary was widely reported in the press, Lombard stated that 80% of her earnings went in taxes, but that she was happy to help improve her country. The comments earned her much positive publicity, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her a personal letter of thanks.

Her first release of the year was Leisen’s Swing High, Swing Low, a third pairing with MacMurray. The film focused on a romance between two cabaret performers, and was a critical and commercial success. It had been primarily a drama, with occasional moments of comedy, but for her next project, Lombard returned to the screwball genre. Producer David O. Selznick was eager to make a comedy with the actress, impressed by her work in My Man Godfrey, and hired Ben Hecht to write an original screenplay for her.

Nothing Sacred, directed by William Wellman and co-starring Fredric March, satirized the journalism industry and “the gullible urban masses”, with Lombard playing a small-town girl who pretends to be dying and finds her story exploited by a New York reporter. Marking her only appearance in Technicolor, the film was highly praised and was one of Lombard’s personal favorites.

Lombard continued with screwball comedies, next starring in what Swindell calls one of her “wackiest” films, True Confession (1937). She played a compulsive liar who wrongly confesses to murder. Lombard loved the script and was excited about the project, which reunited her with John Barrymore and was her final appearance with MacMurray. Her prediction that it “smacked of a surefire success” proved accurate, as critics responded positively and it was popular at the box office.

Gable marriage, dramatic efforts

True Confession was the last film Lombard made on her Paramount contract, and she remained an independent performer for the rest of her career.

Her next film was made at Warner Bros., where she played a famous actress in Mervyn LeRoy‘s Fools for Scandal (1938). The comedy met with scathing reviews and was a commercial failure, with Swindell calling it “one of the most horrendous flops of the thirties”. Fools for Scandal was the only film Lombard made in 1938.

By this time, she was devoted to a relationship with Clark Gable. Four years after their teaming on No Man of Her Own, the pair had reunited at a Hollywood party and began a romance early in 1936. The media took great interest in their partnership and frequently questioned if they would wed. Gable was separated from his wife, Rhea Langham, but she did not want to grant him a divorce.

As his relationship with Lombard became serious, Langham eventually agreed to a settlement worth half a million dollars. The divorce was finalized in March 1939, and Gable and Lombard eloped in Kingman, Arizona, on March 29.

The couple — both lovers of the outdoors — bought a 20-acre ranch in Encino, California, where they kept barnyard animals and enjoyed hunting trips. Almost immediately, Lombard wanted to start a family, but her attempts failed; after two miscarriages and numerous trips to fertility specialists, she was unable to have children. In early 1938, Lombard officially joined the Bahá’í Faith, of which her mother had been a member since 1922.

While continuing with a slower work-rate, Lombard decided to move away from comedies and return to dramatic roles.

She appeared in a second David O. Selznick production, Made for Each Other (1939), which paired her with James Stewart to play a couple facing domestic difficulties. Reviews for the film were highly positive, and praised Lombard’s dramatic effort; financially, it was a disappointment.

Lombard’s next appearance came opposite Cary Grant in the John Cromwellromance In Name Only (1939), a credit she personally negotiated with RKO Radio Pictures upon hearing of the script and Grant’s involvement.

The role mirrored her recent experiences, as she played a woman in love with a married man whose wife refuses to divorce. She was paid $150,000 for the film, continuing her status as one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses, and it was a moderate success. Lombard was eager to win an Academy Award, and selected her next project — from several possible scripts — with the expectation that it would bring her the trophy.

Vigil in the Night (1940), directed by George Stevens, featured Lombard as a nurse who faces a series of personal difficulties.

Although the performance was praised, she did not get her nomination, as the sombre mood of the picture turned audiences away and box-office returns were poor. Despite the realization that she was best suited to comedies, Lombard completed one more drama: They Knew What They Wanted (1940), co-starring Charles Laughton, which was mildly successful.

Final roles (1941–1942)

Accepting that “my name doesn’t sell tickets to serious pictures”, Lombard returned to comedy for the first time in three years to film Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), about a couple who learns that their marriage is invalid, with Robert Montgomery.

Lombard was influential in bringing Alfred Hitchcock, whom she knew through David O. Selznick, to direct one of his most atypical films. It was a commercial success, as audiences were happy with what Swindell calls “the belated happy news … that Carole Lombard was a screwball once more.”

It was nearly a year before Lombard committed to another film, as she focused instead on her home and marriage. Determined that her next film be “an unqualified smash hit”, she was also careful in selecting a new project.

Through her agent, Lombard heard of Ernst Lubitsch‘s upcoming film: To Be or Not to Be (1942), a dark comedy that satirized the Nazi takeover of Poland.

The actress had long wanted to work with Lubitsch, her favorite comedy director, and felt that the material — although controversial — was a worthy subject. Lombard accepted the role of actress Maria Tura, despite it being a smaller part than she was used to, and was given top billing over the film’s lead, Jack Benny. Filming took place in the fall of 1941, and was reportedly one of the happiest experiences of Lombard’s career.

Death

When the U.S. entered World War II at the end of 1941, Lombard traveled to her home state of Indiana for a war bond rally with her mother, Bess Peters, and Clark Gable’s press agent, Otto Winkler.

Lombard was able to raise over $2 million ($35 million in 2016) in defense bonds in a single evening. Her party had initially been scheduled to return to Los Angeles by train, but Lombard was anxious to reach home more quickly and wanted to fly by a scheduled airline.

Her mother and Winkler were both afraid of flying and insisted they follow their original travel plans. Lombard suggested they flip a coin; they agreed and Lombard won the toss.

In the early morning hours of January 16, 1942, Lombard, her mother, and Winkler boarded a Transcontinental and Western Air Douglas DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport) aircraft to return to California.

After refueling in Las Vegas, TWA Flight 3 took off at 7:07 p.m. and around 13 minutes later, crashed into “Double Up Peak” near the 8,300-foot (2,530 m) level of Potosi Mountain, 32 statute miles (51 km) southwest of Las Vegas. All 22 aboard, Lombard and her mother included, plus fifteen army servicemen, were killed instantly.

Aftermath

Gable was flown to Las Vegas after learning of the tragedy to claim the bodies of his wife, mother-in-law, and Winkler, who aside from being his press agent, had been a close friend.

Lombard’s funeral was January 21 at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. She was interred beside her mother under the name of Carole Lombard Gable.

Despite remarrying twice following her death, Gable chose to be interred beside Lombard when he died in 1960.

Lombard’s final film, To Be or Not to Be (1942), directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Jack Benny, a satire about Nazism and World War II, was in post-production at the time of her death.

The film’s producers decided to cut part of the film in which Lombard’s character asks, “What can happen on a plane?” out of respect for the circumstances surrounding her death.

When the film was released, it received mixed reviews, particularly about its controversial content, but Lombard’s performance was hailed as the perfect send-off to one of 1930s Hollywood’s most important stars.

At the time of her death, Lombard had been scheduled to star in the film They All Kissed the Bride; when production started, she was replaced by Joan Crawford.

Crawford donated all of her salary for the film to the Red Cross, which had helped extensively in the recovery of bodies from the air crash. Shortly after Lombard’s death, Gable, who was inconsolable and devastated by his loss, joined the United States Army Air Forces.

Lombard had asked him to do that numerous times after the United States had entered World War II. After officer training, Gable headed a six-man motion picture unit attached to a B-17 bomb group in England to film aerial gunners in combat, flying five missions himself.

In December 1943, the United States Maritime Commission announced that a Liberty ship named after Carole Lombard would be launched. Gable attended the launch of the SS Carole Lombard on January 15, 1944, the two-year anniversary of Lombard’s record-breaking war bond drive.

The ship was involved in rescuing hundreds of survivors from sunken ships in the Pacific and returning them to safety.In 1962, Mrs. Jill Winkler Rath, widow of publicist Otto Winkler, filed a $100,000 lawsuit against the $2,000,000 estate of Clark Gable in connection with Winkler’s death in the plane crash with Carole Lombard.

The suit was dismissed in Los Angeles Superior Court. Mrs. Rath, in her action, claimed Gable promised to provide financial aid for her if she would not bring suit against the airline involved.

Mrs. Rath stated she later learned that Gable settled his claim against the airline for $10. He did so because he did not want to repeat his grief in court and subsequently provided her no financial aid in his will.

Assessment and legacy

Author Robert D. Matzen has cited Lombard as “among the most commercially successful and admired film personalities in Hollywood in the 1930s”, and feminist writer June Sochen believes that Lombard “demonstrated great knowledge of the mechanics of film making”.

George Raft, her co-star in Bolero, was extremely fond of the actress, remarking “I truly loved Carole Lombard. She was the greatest girl that ever lived and we were the best of pals. Completely honest and outspoken, she was liked by everyone”.

Lombard was particularly noted for the zaniness of her performances, described as a “natural prankster, a salty tongued straight-shooter, a feminist precursor and one of the few stars who was beloved by the technicians and studio functionaries who worked with her”.

Life magazine noted that her film personality transcended to real life, “her conversation, often brilliant, is punctuated by screeches, laughs, growls, gesticulations and the expletives of a sailor’s parrot”.

Graham Greene praised the “heartbreaking and nostalgic melodies” of her faster-than-thought delivery. “Platinum blonde, with a heart-shaped face, delicate, impish features and a figure made to be swathed in silver lamé, Lombard wriggled expressively through such classics of hysteria as Twentieth Century and My Man Godfrey.”

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Lombard 23rd on its list of the 25 greatest American female screen legends of classic Hollywood cinema, and she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6930 Hollywood Blvd. Lombard received one Academy Award for Best Actress nomination, for My Man Godfrey.

Actresses who have portrayed her in films include Jill Clayburgh in Gable and Lombard (1976), Sharon Gless in Moviola: The Scarlett O’Hara War (1980), Denise Crosby in Malice in Wonderland (1985), Anastasia Hille in RKO 281 (1999) and Vanessa Gray in Lucy (2003).

Lombard’s Fort Wayne childhood home has been designated a historic landmark. The city named the nearby bridge over the St. Mary’s River the Carole Lombard Memorial Bridge.

Filmography

References

Notes

Jump up^ The automobile accident happened in 1925; Lombard was in a car with a friend, stopped at a red light, when the car in front of them rolled backward, hit their car, and caused the windshield to shatter.^[21]
Jump up^ In her lifetime, the media reported that Lombard added the extra “e” to Carol at the advice of a numerologist.^[37] She denied this to Garson Kanin, saying, “That’s a lot of bunk.”^[38] Some of the Mack Sennett shorts had already used the spelling “Carole”, but this is thought to have been an accident.^[37] Her name was not consistently billed and reported with this spelling until 1930.^[39] She legally changed her name to “Carole Lombard” in 1936.^[40]
Jump up^ At the time, Lombard was married to Powell (and told Kanin she was “on my ear about a different number at that time”)^[51] while Gable was married to Rhea Langham and having an affair with Joan Crawford.^[52]
Jump up^ It Happened One Night went on to be a major success and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Claudette Colbert in the role that Lombard would have played.^[58]
Jump up^ Hawks recalled, “She acted like a schoolgirl … and she was stiff, she would try to imagine a character and then act according to her imaginings instead of being herself.” When he felt that Lombard had overcome this in a scene, he said to Barrymore, “you’ve just seen a girl that’s probably going to be a big star, and if we can just keep her from acting, we’ll have a hell of a picture.”^[64]
Jump up^ At the Academy Awards ceremony, Lombard was announced as the nominee with the second-highest number of votes. The award went to Luise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld.^[76]
Jump up^ Gable had to give Langham $350,000 in cash plus additional property, leading to a total settlement worth more than half a million.^[97] The expense of the divorce contributed to Gable’s agreement to portray Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind.^[98]
Jump up^ Rumors at this time stated that Gable and Lombard were experiencing marital difficulties; in 1941, they put their home up for sale, but soon took it off the market, which was taken as evidence that they had separated and then reconciled. Lombard was also eager to get pregnant, but had difficulty conceiving.^[116]
Jump up^ The Douglas DST or Douglas Sleeper Transport was an airliner with either 24 passenger seats in daytime operation or fitted out with 16 sleeper bunks in the cabin.^[120]

Citations

Jump up^ Indiana, Birth Certificates, 1907-1940
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 19.
Jump up^ Matzen 1988, p. 1; Gehring 2003, p. 19.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gehring 2003, p. 23.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ott 1972, p. 16.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 25.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 20.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gehring 2003, pp. 27–28.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 17.
Jump up^ Matzen 1988, p. 5.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 29.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 39–41.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Matzen 1988, p. 6.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 44–45.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 40.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gehring 2003, p. 46.
Jump up^ Matzen 1988, p. 6; Gehring 2003, p. 47.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, pp. 18; 49.
Jump up^ Matzen 1988, p. 6; Ott 1972, p. 19.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 48–50.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 49.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 53–54.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, pp. 55–60.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 20; Gehring 2003, p. 53.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 57–58; Ott 1972, p. 20.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 59.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 61.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, pp. 65–66.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 65.
Jump up^ “Carole Gets Her Own Way”. Silver Screen. May–October 1934. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 22.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 65; Ott 1972, p. 22.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 72.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 68–69.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 23.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 77.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Gehring 2003, pp. 78–79.
Jump up^ Kanin 1974, p. 59.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 46.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 205.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gehring 2003, p. 83.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gehring 2003, p. 85.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 83; Matzen 1988, p. 11.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gehring 2003, p. 87.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ott 1972, p. 24.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 90–91.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 91.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ott 1972, p. 25.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 197; Gehring 2003, p. 98.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 97–100; 102 (for quote).
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Kanin 1974, p. 61.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 101.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 92–93.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 102; 105.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gehring 2003, p. 110.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 26.
Jump up^ MacBride 2000, p. 303.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 103.
Jump up^ Hawks 2005, p. 147.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 26; Gehring 2003, p. 111.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 121, 123; Ott 1972, p. 28.
Jump up^ Bogdanovich 2012, p. 466.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 118.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ott 1972, p. 27.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, pp. 120–121.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 117.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 122–123.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ott 1972, p. 28.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 133; Gehring 2003, p. 127.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 127.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 135.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 136–137.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 132, 93–95.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 133, 137, 139.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 140.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 168.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 29; Gehring 2003, pp. 140–142.
Jump up^ Haver 1980, p. 214; Swindell 1975, p. 220.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 201.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 9.
Jump up^ Haver 1980, p. 214.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 232.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 153.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 154–156.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 158.
Jump up^ Haver 1980, pp. 214–215.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, pp. 30, 148–149.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 154, 161–162.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 226.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 163–166; Swindell 1975, pp. 225, 228.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, p. 30.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 237; Gehring 2003, pp. 174–175.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, pp. 236–237; Gehring 2003, pp. 173.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, pp. 191–194.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, pp. 200, 205; Gehring 2003, pp. 168.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, pp. 199, 213.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 238.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 180.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, p. 184.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, pp. 31–32.
Jump up^ E. J. Manning: The Fixers – Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine, p. 200. Retrieved November 8, 2014.
Jump up^ Matzen, Robert. “The Weaver”. Retrieved September 6, 2015.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 175, 181.
Jump up^ Ott 1972, pp. 158–159.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 246; Gehring 2003, pp. 181–183; 189; Ott 1972, p. 160.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, pp. 252–253.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 188–189; Swindell 1975.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, pp. 258, 260.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 261.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 190, 200; Swindell 1975, p. 261, 271.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 272.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 274.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 279.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 280.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, p. 283.
Jump up^ Swindell 1975, pp. 284–287.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Swindell 1975, pp. 290–291.
Jump up^ Gehring 2003, pp. 215–216.
Jump up^ Kulzer, Dina-Marie. “Carole Lombard: Lovable Madcap.” Classic Hollywood Bios.
Jump up^ “Sleeping Car of the Air Has Sixteen Sleeping Berths”. Popular Mechanics, January 1936.
Jump up^ Cohen 1991, p. 347.
Jump up^ “Clark Gable joins search for plane wreckage holding fate of Carole Lombard and 21 others”. Spokane Daily Chronicle. (Washington). United Press. January 17, 1942. p. 1.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Carole Lombard”. findagrave.com, December 30, 2012.
Jump up^ Brooks Brooks 2006, p. 104.
Jump up^ Ford 2011, p. 41.
Jump up^ “Tribute to Carole Lombard” (December 29, 1943).The Stars and Stripes, p. 4.
Jump up^ “WIDOW GETS ZERO”. Variety 226.10 (May 2, 1962): 5.
Jump up^ “Woman Suing Gable Estate For $100,000”. The Hartford Courant. August 18, 1961.
Jump up^ Matzen 1988.
Jump up^ Sochen 1999, p. 95.
Jump up^ Yablonsky 2000, p. 95.
Jump up^ Balio 1995, p. 276; Mitchell 2001, p. 16.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b Gordon, Jim (May 1, 2005). “Fort Wayne home to ‘Profane Angel'”. The Post-Tribune, accessed via HighBeam Research (subscription required). Retrieved April 4, 2014.
Jump up^ LIFE. Time Inc. October 17, 1938. p. 50. ISSN 0024-3019.
Jump up^ Koenig, Rhoda (June 24, 2005). “The Queen of Comedy”. The Independent. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
Jump up^ “America’s greatest legends” (PDF). American Film Institute. Retrieved April 4,2014.
Jump up^ Shearer 2006, p. 533.
Jump up^ Erens 1988, p. 361.
Jump up^ Gallo, Phil (May 1, 2003). “Review:’Lucy'”. Variety. Retrieved April 4, 2014.

Bibliography

Balio, Tino (1995). Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-20334-1.
Bogdanovich, Peter (May 30, 2012). Who the Devil Made It: Conversations with …Random House Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-81745-7.
Brooks, Patricia; Brooks, Jonathan (2006). Laid to Rest in California: A Guide to the Cemeteries and Grave Sites of the Rich and Famous. Globe Pequot Press. ISBN 978-0-7627-4101-4.
Carman, Emily (2015). Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-1477307816.
Carr, Larry (1979). More Fabulous Faces: The Evolution and Metamorphosis of Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Dolores del Río, Carole Lombard and Myrna Loy. Doubleday and Company. ISBN 0-385-12819-3.
Cohen, Stan (October 1, 1991). V for victory: America’s home front during World War II. Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-929521-51-0.
Erens, Patricia (January 1, 1988). The Jew in American Cinema. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-20493-3.
Ford, Peter (May 12, 2011). Glenn Ford: A Life. Univ of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-28153-3.
Gehring, Wes D. (2003). Carole Lombard: The Hoosier Tornado. Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana Historical Society Press. ISBN 978-0-87195-167-0.
Haver, Ronald (1980). David O. Selznick’s Hollywood. London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. ISBN 0-394-42595-2.
Hawks, Howard (2005). Howard Hawks: Interviews. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-57806-833-3.
Kanin, Garson (1974). Hollywood. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0-670-37575-2.
Matzen, Robert D. (1988). Carole Lombard: A Bio-bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-26286-9.
MacBride, Joseph. (2000). Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin. ISBN 978-0-312-26324-9.
Mitchell, Deborah C. (July 26, 2001). Diane Keaton: Artist and Icon. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-1082-8.
Ott, Frederick W. (1972). The Films of Carole Lombard. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. ISBN 978-0-8065-0278-6.
Shearer, Benjamin F. (September 1, 2006). Home Front Heroes [Three Volumes]. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-04705-3.

Adam, Beverly Two Lovers: the love story of Carole Lombard and Russ Columbo. Createspace, November, 2016. ISBN 9781532756719

Sochen, June (1999). From Mae to Madonna: Women Entertainers in Twentieth-century America. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2112-4.
Swindell, Larry (1975). Screwball: The Life of Carole Lombard. New York: William Morrow & Company. ISBN 978-0-688-00287-9.
Yabonsky, Lewis (July 1, 2000). George Raft. iUniverse. ISBN 978-0-595-01003-5.

Dixiana (1930)

January 22, 2018 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Dixiana (1930)

Director: Luther Reed

Cast: Bebe Daniels, Everett Marshall, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Joseph Cawthorn, Jobyna Howland, Dorothy Lee, Ralf Harolde, Bill Robinson

100 min

Dixiana (1930) is a lavish American pre-code comedy, musical film directed by Luther Reed and produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures.

The final twenty minutes of the picture were photographed in Technicolor. The film stars Bebe Daniels, Everett Marshall, Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Joseph Cawthorn, Jobyna Howland, Ralf Harolde, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (in his film debut) and Dorothy Lee.

The script was adapted by Luther Reed from a story by Anne Caldwell. The Technicolor sequences were considered lost for years but were re-discovered in 1988 and subsequently included in the restored DVD. At the end of 1958, the film entered the public domain (in the USA) due to RKO’s failure to renew their copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.^[3]

This is the film in which composer Max Steiner received his first screen credit for orchestration. Additionally, it was Wheeler & Woolsey‘s third film; however, as they were not yet an official “team”, they were still billed separately.

Plot

Dixiana Caldwell and her friends, Peewee and Ginger, are circus performers in the antebellum South. When Dixiana falls in love with a young Southern aristocrat, Carl Van Horn, she leaves the circus where she is employed and, with Peewee and Ginger, accompanies Carl to his family’s plantation in order to meet Van Horn’s family. At first thrilled with the news of their impending nuptials, Carl’s father and stepmother, Cornelius and Birdie Van Horn, throw a lavish party for the couple. However, Peewee and Ginger inadvertently disclose Dixiana’s background as a circus performer, creating a scandal for the elder Van Horns.

Asked by the stepmother to leave in disgrace, Dixiana and her friends return to New Orleans, seeking to gain re-employment from her former employer at the Cayetano Circus Theatre, but they are regretfully refused by him, due to way she had departed. Desperate, she takes employment at a local gambling hall, run by Royal Montague, who also has personal designs on Dixiana. As part of his plan, he intends to financially ruin Carl and his family and use Dixiana to accomplish that purpose.

Things come to a head when Dixiana is crowned Queen of the Mardi Gras. When Montague absconds with her, Carl challenges him to a duel, but, when a disguised Dixiana shows up in his stead, she tricks Montague into revealing his nefarious plans. Carl and Dixiana are reunited.^[4]

Cast

Bebe Daniels as Dixiana Caldwell
Everett Marshall as Carl Van Horn
Bert Wheeler as Peewee
Robert Woolsey as Ginger Dandy
Joseph Cawthorn as Cornelius Van Horn
Jobyna Howland as Birdie Van Horn
Dorothy Lee as Poppy
Ralf Harolde as Royal Montague
Edward Chandler as Blondell
George Herman as Contortionist
Raymond Maurel as Cayetano
Bruce Covington as Company porter
Bill Robinson as Specialty Dancer
Eugene Jackson as Cupid

(Cast list as per AFI database)^[1]

Reception

Reviewer Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times wrote of the singing, “…one wishes there was more of it and less of the somewhat futile attempt at a story” and noted that Bill Robinson “…gives an excellent exhibition of tap dancing, which won a genuine round of applause” and concluded, “The early glimpses of the circus theatre … lead one to expect more than one is apt to get out of this production.”^[5]

The film reunited the director and most of the cast of RKO’s most successful film of the year before, Rio Rita, but lackluster performances and direction, as well as a glut of movie musicals led to the film being one of RKO’s biggest disappointments of 1930. The film lost an estimated $300,000.^[2]^[6]

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Dixiana: Detail View”. American Film Institute. Archived from the original on August 6, 2014. Retrieved September 20, 2016.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Richard Jewel, ‘RKO Film Grosses: 1931-1951’, Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, Vol 14 No 1, 1994 p57
Jump up^ Pierce, David (June 2007). “Forgotten Faces: Why Some of Our Cinema Heritage Is Part of the Public Domain”. Film History: An International Journal. 19 (2): 125–43. doi:10.2979/FIL.2007.19.2.125. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 25165419. OCLC 15122313.
Jump up^ Bradley, Edwin M. (January 1, 2004). “Chapter 7: 1929-1930”. The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 through 1932. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp. 192–195. Retrieved 2015-02-08.
Jump up^ Mordaunt Hall (September 5, 1930). “The Screen: Dixiana (1930)”. New York Times.
Jump up^ Jewell, Richard B.; Harbin, Vernon (1982). The RKO Story. New York: Arlington House. p. 29. ISBN 0-517-546566.

Color end sequence in Dixiana (1930)

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Double Harness (1933)

October 2, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Double Harness (1933)

Director: John Cromwell

Cast: Ann Harding, William Powell, Lucille Browne, Henry Stephenson, Lilian Bond, George Meeker, Reginald Owen, Kay Hammond, Leigh Allen, Irving Bacon, Lila Chevret, Wong Chung, Jean Malin

69 min

Double Harness (1933) is an American Pre-Code film starring Ann Harding and William Powell. It was based on the play of the same name by Edward Poor Montgomery. A young woman maneuvers a lazy playboy into marrying her.

This was one of several films, all produced by Merian C. Cooper at RKO, that were out of distribution for more than 50 years as a result of a legal settlement that gave Cooper complete ownership of the films. Turner Classic Movies eventually acquired the rights to the films.

Plot

When spoiled younger sister Valerie Colby (Lucile Browne) becomes engaged to be married to Dennis Moore (George Meeker), a more level-headed Joan (Ann Harding) decides to do the same, not because she is in love, but in order to make something of herself. She chooses unambitious, wealthy playboy John Fletcher (William Powell), who owns a troubled shipping line.

She eventually spends the night in his apartment. To Joan’s annoyance, over the following months, she finds herself falling in love. When John shows no interest in marrying her, Joan forces the issue. She arranges for her father, Colonel Sam Colby (Henry Stephenson), to find them in a compromising position. John graciously agrees to do the honorable thing and marry Joan. However, on their honeymoon cruise, he lets her know that he expects her to grant him a divorce after a decent interval. They settle on six months.

Joan prods her husband into taking an interest in his family business. To his surprise, he finds that he enjoys it. As the new Postmaster General (Wallis Clark) is a good friend of her father’s, Joan invites him to dinner, hoping to land a government contract for John’s company.

Meanwhile, Valerie goes into debt due to her extravagant spending habits and borrows from her big sister over and over again. Joan gives Valerie all she can afford without touching John’s money. Finally, she pawns a ring for half the latest sum Valerie needs, but tells her that it is the last time.

That same day, John finally realizes that he loves his wife. However, when he goes home, Valerie goes to John behind Joan’s back and cons him into giving her a check. Joan finds out and tears up the check. In her anger, Valerie blurts out how Joan trapped John into marriage.

Disillusioned, he turns to his former paramour, Mrs. Monica Page (Lilian Bond). Joan follows them to Monica’s apartment and confesses all, including the fact that she has fallen in love with him, to no avail. She then tries to salvage her dinner party. To her delight, John shows up and makes it clear that he believes and forgives her.

Cast

Ann Harding as Joan Colby
William Powell as John Fletcher
Lucile Browne as Valerie Colby
Henry Stephenson as Colonel Sam Colby
Lilian Bond as Monica Page
George Meeker as Dennis Moore
Reginald Owen as Freeman, John’s butler
Kay Hammond as Eleanor Weston, Joan’s friend
Leigh Allen as Leonard Weston
Hugh Huntley as Farley Drake, an acquaintance who offers to give Valerie money, but expects something in return
Wallis Clark as Postmaster General Oliver Lane
Gene Malin was cut from the film at the producer’s request.

Preservation status

This is one of the “lost RKO films” owned by Merian C. Cooper and only re-released in April 2007 when Turner Classic Movies acquired the rights and showed all six films on TCM.

Cooper accused RKO of not paying him all the money contractually due for the films he produced in the 1930s. A settlement was reached in 1946, giving Cooper complete ownership of six RKO titles:

Rafter Romance (1933) with Ginger Rogers
Double Harness
The Right to Romance (1933) with Ann Harding and Robert Young
One Man’s Journey (1933) with Lionel Barrymore
Living on Love (1937)
A Man to Remember (1938)

According to an interview with a retired RKO executive, shown as a promo on TCM, Cooper withdrew the films, only allowing them to be shown on television in 1955–1956 in New York City.

TCM, which had acquired the rights to the six films after extensive legal negotiations, broadcast them on TCM in April 2007, their first full public exhibition in over 70 years. TCM, in association with the Library of Congress and the Brigham Young University Motion Picture Archive, had searched many film archives throughout the world to find copies of the films in order to create new 35mm prints.^[2]^[3]^[4]

Reception

According to RKO records, the film made $10,000 in profit.^[1]

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c Richard Jewel, ‘RKO Film Grosses: 1931-1951’, Historical Journal of Film Radio and Television, Vol 14 No 1, 1994 p39
Jump up^ Fristoe, Roger. “Rafter Romance” (TCM article)
Jump up^ Osborne, Robert. Turner Classic Movies broadcast on April 4 and 11, 2007.
Jump up^ Eder, Bruce “Rafter Romance” (AMG review)

Double Harness 9

Double Harness 10

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Four Frightened People (1934)

August 2, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Four Frightened People (1934)

Director: Cecil B DeMille

Cast: Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, Mary Boland, William Gargan, Leo Carillo, Nella Walker, Tetsu Komai, Delmar Costello

78 min

Four Frightened People is a 1934 American Pre-Code adventure film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, Mary Boland, and William Gargan. It is based on the novel by E. Arnot Robertson.

Plot

The film tells the story of two men (Marshall and Gargan) and two women (Colbert and Boland), who leave from a plague-ridden ship and reach the Malayan jungle. The relationships between the four people before they enter the jungle are examined and are transformed as they interact with natural phenomena and the natives who populate the jungle. The film also relates how each of the four people carried on in life after they emerged from the jungle.

Cast

Claudette Colbert as Judy Jones
Herbert Marshall as Arnold Ainger
Mary Boland as Mrs. Mardick
William Gargan as Stewart Corder
Leo Carrillo as Montague
Nella Walker as Mrs. Ainger
Tetsu Komai as Native Chief
Chris-Pin Martin as Native Boatman
Joe De La Cruz as Native
Minoru Nishida as Native
Teru Shimada as Native
E.R. Jinedas as Native
Delmar Costello as Sakais
Ethel Griffies as Mrs. Ainger’s Mother

Filming locations

Waialua, O`ahu, Hawaii

Production crew

Executive producer (uncredited) – Emanuel Cohen
Art Direction – Roland Anderson
Production Manager (uncredited) – Roy Burns
Assistant Director (uncredited) – Cullen Tate, James Dugan
Sound Mixer (uncredited) – Harry Lindgren
Double (uncredited) – Mildred Mernie as Claudette Colbert, Bruce Warren as Herbert Marshall, Leota Lorraine as Mary Boland, Carl Mudge as William Gargan, Curley Dresden as Leo Carrillo

Reception

The film was a box office disappointment for Paramount.^[1]

Home Video Release

This film, along with The Sign of the Cross, Cleopatra, The Crusades and Union Pacific, was released on DVD in 2006 by Universal Studios as part of The Cecil B. DeMille Collection.

References

Jump up^ By, D. W. (1934, Nov 25). TAKING A LOOK AT THE RECORD. New York Times (1923-Current File) Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.sl.nsw.gov.au/docview/101193306?accountid=13902

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I Cover the Waterfront (1933)

August 2, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

I Cover the Waterfront (1933)

Director: James Cruze

Cast: Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, Hobart Cavanaugh, Maurice Black, Purnell Platt, Harry Beresford, Wilfred Lucas, Rosita Marstini

75 min

I Cover the Waterfront is a 1933 American Pre-Code romantic drama film directed by James Cruze and starring Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, and Hobart Cavanaugh.

Based on the book of the same name by Max Miller, the film is about a reporter who investigates a waterfront smuggling operation, and becomes romantically involved with the daughter of the man he is investigating.

Plot

San Diego Standard reporter H. Joseph Miller (Ben Lyon) has been covering the city’s waterfront for the past five years and is fed up with the work. He longs to escape the waterfront life and land a newspaper job back East so he can marry his Vermont sweetheart. Miller is frustrated by the lack of progress of his current assignment investigating the smuggling of Chinese people into the country by a fisherman named Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence). One morning after wasting a night tracking down bad leads, his editor at the Standard orders him to investigate a report of a girl swimming naked at the beach. There he meets Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert), the daughter of the man he’s been investigating.

Meanwhile, Eli Kirk and his crew are returning to San Diego with a Chinese passenger when the Coast Guard approaches. Not wanting to be caught with evidence of his smuggling operation, Kirk orders his men to weigh down the Chinaman and lower him overboard to his death. The Coast Guard, accompanied by Miller, board the boat but find nothing. The next day, Miller discovers the Chinaman’s body which was carried in with the tide, and takes it as evidence to his editor, who still remains skeptical of Kirk’s guilt. To get conclusive evidence, Miller tells him he plans to romance Kirk’s daughter Julie in order to break the smuggling operation.

When Kirk returns, he informs Julie that they will need to move on soon—maybe to Singapore—as soon as he can put together enough money for the voyage. One night, Julie discovers her father drunk at a boarding house. Miller, who was there investigating Kirk, helps Julie take her father home. Julie does not discourage Miller’s flirtations, and during the next few weeks they fall in love. She is able to help Miller see the beauty of the waterfront, and inspires him to improve the novel he’s been working for the past five years. While visiting an old Spanish galleon on a date, he playfully restrains her in a torture rack and kisses her passionately—and she returns his passion.

Julie and Miller spend a romantic evening together on the beach, where she reveals that she and her father will be sailing away in the next few days. After spending the night in Miller’s apartment, Julie announces the next morning that she’s decided to stay, hoping that he will stay with her. When Miller learns from her that her father is due to dock at the Chinese settlement that night, he notifies the Coast Guard. At the dock, while the Coast Guard searches the vessel, Miller discovers a Chinaman hidden inside a large shark. When the Coast Guard attempt to arrest Kirk, he flees the scene but is wounded during his escape.

The next morning, Miller’s breaking story is published on the Standard’s front page. When a wounded Kirk makes his way back home, Julie learns that it was Miller who helped the Coast Guard uncover her father’s smuggling operation (of which she was unaware), and that she unknowingly revealed to him his landing location. Soon after, Miller, feeling guilty over the story’s impact to Julie’s life, arrives at her home and apologizes for the hurt he’s caused her, and announces that he loves her. Feeling used by his actions, an angry Julie sends him away.

Later that night, Miller locates Kirk, who shoots him in the arm. Julie arrives to help her father escape, and seeing Miller wounded, she tells her father she cannot leave Miller to die. Seeing that she loves him, Kirk helps her take Miller to safety, after which Kirk dies. Later from his hospital bed, Miller acknowledges in his newspaper column that Kirk saved his life before he died. Sometime later, Miller returns to his apartment, where Julie is waiting to greet him. Noticing that she cleaned and transformed his place into a cozy home, he tells her he finally wrote the ending to his novel, “He marries the girl”. Julie acknowledges, “That’s a swell finish”, and the two embrace.

Cast

Ben Lyon as H. Joseph Miller
Claudette Colbert as Julie Kirk
Ernest Torrence as Eli Kirk, Julie’s father
Hobart Cavanaugh as McCoy
Maurice Black as Ortegus, Kirk’s first mate
Purnell Pratt as John Phelps, Miller’s editor
Harry Beresford as Old Chris, the salvage man
Wilfred Lucas as Randall, the Coast Guard officer

Production

Screenplay

Rights to the novel were bought by Edward Small and his partner Harry Goets in 1932. They made it through the Reliance Picture Corporation as the first of a six-film deal with United Artists.^[2] Reliance co-produced the film with Joseph Schenck’s Art Cinema Corporation.^[1]

Filming

I Cover the Waterfront was filmed from mid-February to early March 1933.^[1]

Soundtrack

The film’s title song, “I Cover the Waterfront“, appears in the film only as an instrumental.^[3] Written by Johnny Green and Edward Heyman, the song went on to become a jazz standard recorded by many artists, including Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, The Ink Spots, and Ella Fitzgerald, among others.^[4]

Critical response

In his review for The New York Times, film critic Mordaunt Hall called the film “a stolid and often grim picture”.^[5] While Hall felt the drama was not as good as some of director James Cruze’s previous work, the “clever acting of the principals”—especially that of Ernest Torrence—offset some of the film’s shortcomings.^[5]

Hall found some of the scenes “more shocking than suspenseful” and felt a broader adaptation of Max Miller’s book may have been more interesting than the focus on the melodramatic series of incidents related to a sinister fisherman.^[5]

While acknowledging that “Colbert does well as Julie”, Hall did not find her convincing as a fisherman’s daughter because she does not look the type.^[5] Hall reserved his highest praise for Ernest Torrence in his final screen performance.^[5] Torrence died on May 15, 1933, shortly after the film was completed.

John Mosher of The New Yorker described the adaptation as a “commonplace screen romance,” but also praised the performance of the late Torrence, writing that he “was at the height of his power … One can foresee that many pictures will be empty things for lack of him.”^[6] Variety called it “a moderately entertaining picture … The late Ernest Torrence has the meat part and his performance is in keeping with the standard he had set for himself. A pretty tough assignment they gave him, one in which it was necessary to capture sympathy in face of the worst sort of opposition from the script. He’ll be sorely missed on the screen.”^[7]

Remakes

I Cover the Waterfront was remade in 1961 by Edward Small as Secret of Deep Harbor.^[3]

References[edit]

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c “I Cover the Waterfront”. American Film Institute. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
Jump up^ Babcock, Muriel (September 24, 1932). “Notable Novel to be Filmed”. The New York Times. p. A7.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “I Cover the Waterfront: Notes”. Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved May 18, 2014.
Jump up^ “I Cover the Waterfront”. Discogs. Retrieved May 18, 2014.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Hall, Mordaunt (May 18, 1933). “The Late Ernest Torrence in His Last Picture…”. The New York Times. Retrieved May 18, 2014.
Jump up^ Mosher, John (May 27, 1933). “The Current Cinema”. The New Yorker. New York: F-R Publishing Corp. p. 49.
Jump up^ “I Cover the Waterfront”. Variety. New York: Variety, Inc. May 23, 1933. p. 15.

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Big Pond, The (1930)

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The Big Pond (1930)

Director: Hobart Henley

Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, George Barbier, Marion Ballou, Andree Corday, Frank Lyon, Nat Pendleton, Elaine Koch

72 min

The Big Pond is a 1930 American Pre-Code romantic comedy film based on a 1928 play of the same name by George Middleton and A.E. Thomas.^[1] The film was written by Garrett Fort, Robert Presnell Sr. and Preston Sturges, who provided the dialogue in his first Hollywood assignment, and was directed by Hobart Henley.

The film stars Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert, and features George Barbier, Marion Ballou, and Andrée Corday, and was released by Paramount Pictures.

The Big Pond was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Maurice Chevalier, and also provided Chevalier with his first American hit song “Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight” written by Al Sherman and Al Lewis.^[2]

Plot

Pierre Mirande (Maurice Chevalier), is a Venetian tour guide from a poor French family who falls in love with Barbara Billings (Claudette Colbert), a wealthy American tourist whose father (George Barbier). Although Barbara loves Pierre as well, her suitor, Ronnie (Frank Lyon) and her father see him as a fortune-hunter. Barbara’s mother (Marion Ballou) persuades her husband to give Pierre a job in his chewing-gum factory in the States. Despite living in a dingy boardinghouse and being given the hardest job in the plant, he manages to captivate his landlady (Andrée Corday) and the maid (Elaine Koch) with his humorous songs. Unfortunately, he falls asleep on the night he is to attend Barbara’s party, and is then fired when he is wrongly accused of spilling rum on some chewing gum samples. He wins back his job, and is promoted as well, when he sells liquor-coated chewing gum as a sales gimmick. Barbara disapproves, and plans to marry Ronnie, but Pierre whisks her away in a speedboat.

Cast

Maurice Chevalier as Pierre Mirande
Claudette Colbert as Barbara Billings
George Barbier as Mr. Billings
Marion Ballou as Mrs. Billings
Andrée Corday as Toinette
Frank Lyon as Ronnie
Nat Pendleton as Pat O’Day
Elaine Koch as Jennie

Songs

“Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight” by Al Sherman and Al Lewis
“This Is My Lucky Day” by Lew Brown, B. G. DeSylva and Ray Henderson
“Mia Cara” and “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me” by Irving Kahal, Pierre Norman and Sammy Fain^[5]

Production

The Big Pond and its French language version La grande mare^[6] were shot simultaneously at the Paramount Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, New York City.^[7]^[8]Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, Andrée Corday and Nat Pendelton played the same roles in both versions.^[6]

Awards

Maurice Chevalier was nominated for a 1930 Academy Award for “Best Actor in a Leading Role” for his performance in The Big Pond as well as his performance in The Love Parade (1929).^[8]

French version

The French language version of The Big Pond, which was filmed simultaneously with the English version, was called La grande mare. The cast was:

Maurice Chevalier as Pierre Mirande
Claudette Colbert as Barbara Billings
Henry Mortimer as Mr. Billings
Maude Allen as Mrs. Billings
Andrée Corday as Toinette
William B. Williams as Ronnie
Nat Pendleton as Pat O’Day
Loraine Jaillet as Jennie

Writer Preston Sturges was fluent in French, but additional dialogue was provided by Jacques Bataille-Henri. The technical credits for the two versions are the same, except the editing for the French version was done by Barney Rogan.^[6]

Notes

Jump up^ The Big Pond at the Internet Broadway Database
Jump up^ Sherman, Robert B. Walt’s Time: from before to beyond, Santa Clarita: Camphor Tree Publishers, 1998.
Jump up^ Erickson, Hal Plot synopsis (Allmovie)
Jump up^ TCM Full synopsis
Jump up^ TCM Music
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c La Grande Mare on IMDb
Jump up^ IMDB Filming locations
^ Jump up to:^a ^b TCM Notes

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Safety In Numbers (1930)

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Safety In Numbers (1930)

Director: Victor Schertzinger

Cast: Charles Buddy Rogers, Kathryn Crawford, Josephine Dunn, Carole Lombard, Roscoe Karns, Richard Tucker, Francis McDonald, Raoul Paoli, Virginia Bruce, Tom London

80 min

Safety in Numbers is a 1930 American Pre-Code musical comedy film. Directed by Victor Schertzinger, it stars Buddy Rogers, and features Kathryn Crawford, Josephine Dunn, and Carole Lombard (in one of her early roles).

Plot

William Butler Reynolds, a 20-year-old San Franciscan with a penchant for dancing and song-writing, is about to inherit a sizable fortune.

His guardian uncle decides to send him to New York to be educated in the “ways of the world” by three lady friends–Jacqueline, Maxine, and Pauline, Follies girls, who agree not to vamp him though he falls for Jacqueline and is jealous of her admirer, Phil Kempton.

Bill’s inept attempt to promote a song with a producer results in the firing of all three girls; and when Jacqueline then resists his advances, he picks up Alma, a telephone operator, and becomes attentive to Cleo, a Follies vamp, but the girls save him from her wiles. Luckily, the producer accepts the song and rehires the girls; Jacqueline, realizing the sincerity of the boy’s love for her, embarks for Europe with Phil; but Phil realizes the appropriateness of the match and sees to it that the lovers are united.

Cast

Buddy Rogers as William Butler Reynolds
Kathryn Crawford as Jacqueline
Josephine Dunn as Maxine
Carole Lombard as Pauline
Roscoe Karns as Bertram Shapiro
Richard Tucker as F. Carstair Reynolds
Francis McDonald as Phil Kemptom
Raoul Paoli as Jules
Virginia Bruce as Alma McGregor
Geneva Mitchell as Cleo Carewe
Louise Beavers as Messalina
Lawrence Grant as Commander Brinker (uncredited)
Tom London as Motorist (uncredited)
Russ Powell as Doorman (uncredited)
Charles Sullivan as Taxicab Driver (uncredited)

Reception

The reviewer for the Motion Picture Herald wrote, “Here’s that rare combination of intelligent direction, brilliant dialogue, and rich humor. The result is a picture that is entertainment plus.” Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times was less enthusiastic, but praised the musical numbers.^[1]

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b Ott, Frederick W. (1972). The Films of Carole Lombard. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. pp. 75–77. ISBN 978-0806502786.

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White Woman (1933)

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White Woman (1933)

Director: Stuart Walker

Cast: Carole Lombard, Charles Laughton, Charles Bickford, Kent Taylor, Percy Kilbride, James Bell, Charles Middleton, Claude King, Ethel Griffies

68 min

White Woman is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Stuart Walker and starring Carole Lombard, Charles Laughton, and Charles Bickford.^[1] A young widow remarries and accompanies her husband to his remote jungle rubber plantation. The film was based on the Broadway play Hangman’s Whip by Norman Reilly Raine and Frank Butler.^[2]

One of hundreds of Paramount films held in limbo by Universal Studios. Universal gained ownership of Paramount features produced between 1929 and 1949. Paramount remade the film in 1939 as Island of Lost Men, with Anna May Wong, J. Carrol Naish and Broderick Crawford in the roles originated by Lombard, Laughton and Bickford. It was directed by Kurt Neumann.^[3]

Plot

Judith Denning, a beautiful cafe singer in Malay, has been forced to leave town after town because of gossip that says her husband’s suicide was on account of her infidelity. Upright British lawyer C. M. Chisholm accuses Judith of being a “loose white woman” who is tempting the natives and forces her to leave town by getting her fired.

Horace H. Prin, “King of the Jungle,” then offers to marry her. Prin takes Judith to his jungle home on the river, where he has been running a trading outfit for twenty years. Prin’s white management crew consists largely of criminal exiles whose secret pasts he uses as leverage to get them to remain under his ruthless tyranny.

When Hambly, who runs a station up the river, insists that the poor diet Prin has been feeding the native workers is breeding insurrection among them, Prin has him killed. Overseer David von Elst, who has not seen a white woman in ten years, quickly falls in love with Judith. A month after Judith’s arrival, she and David decide to run away, but when they confront Prin, he refuses to give them a boat and sends David up the river to take Hambly’s place at Gubar.

David, meanwhile, has told Judith he deserted his regiment after natives decapitated his partner and threw his head through David’s window. Since then he has lacked the courage to fight Prin and return to society. Ballister, the new tough overseer, then arrives and immediately asks Judith for a “tumble,” undaunted by Prin’s eccentric tyranny. When two tribal chiefs request the right to deal with other traders, Prin foolishly refuses them, and they prepare for war against him.

The natives kill Connors, one of Prin’s men, and throw his head through David’s window, after which David finally regains his nerve and travels through the dangerous jungle to warn Judith. David and Judith prepare to leave, but Prin drains their boat of gas. Ballister, sympathetic to the lovers, warns them to take another boat. When Prin shoots his pet baby ape, “Duke,” Jakey, Prin’s most faithful white servant, throws his machine guns in the river and leaves with David and Judith. Ballister and Prin play poker and drink as the natives approach, armed with spears. After Ballister is killed, Prin declares he is forever king of the jungle and walks out into the onslaught of spears.

Cast

Carole Lombard as Judith Denning
Charles Laughton as Horace H. Prin
Charles Bickford as Ballister
Kent Taylor as David von Elst
Percy Kilbride as Jakey
James Bell as Hambly
Charles Middleton as Fenton (as Charles B. Middleton)
Claude King as C. M. Chisholm
Ethel Griffies as Mrs. Chisholm
Marc Lawrence as Connors

References

Jump up^ The American Film Institute Catalog Feature Films: 1931-40 published by The American Film Institute c.1993
Jump up^ Hangman’s Whip, St. James Theatre, February 24, 1933, IBDb.com; accessed August 5, 2015.
Jump up^ The American Film Institute Catalog Feature Films: 1931-40 published by The American Film Institute, c. 1993

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Before Morning (1933)

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Before Morning (1933)

Director: Arthur Hoerl

Cast: Leo Carillo, Lora Baxter, Taylor Holmes, Blaine Cordner, Louise Prussing, Russell Hicks, Louis Jean Heydt, Jules Epailly

56 min

Before Morning is a 1933 American Pre-Code crime drama directed by Arthur Hoerl, and starring Leo Carrillo, Lora Baxter, and Taylor Holmes. The film was adapted for the screen by Arthur Hoerl, from the 1933 Broadway play of the same name by Edward and Edna Riley.^[1]

Synopsis

Actress Elsie Manning (Lora Baxter) is engaged to Horace Baker (Blaine Cordner), but has also been in a romantic relationship with James Nichols (Russell Hicks) who has named her as the beneficiary in his will. Not knowing about her engagement, Nichols asks his wife for a divorce and is refused. Nichols dies in Manning’s apartment after she tells him she’s engaged to Baker. When Baker arrives on the scene, he agrees to help her dispose of the body by having Nichols moved to a sanitarium. The owner, Dr. Gruelle (Leo Carrillo), tells them Nichols was murdered by poison and attempts to extort money from Manning for his statement that the death was of natural causes. Gruell tries the same scam on the widow of Nichols (Louise Prussing), who eventually agrees when the poison is found in her purse. It is revealed that Gruell is really a corrupt police inspector named Mr. Maitland.^[2]

Cast

Leo Carrillo – Dr. Gruelle/Mr. Maitland
Lora Baxter as Elsie Manning
Taylor Holmes as Leo Bergman
Blaine Cordner as Horace Baker
Louise Prussing as Mrs. Nichols
Russell Hicks as James Nichols
Louis Jean Heydt as Neil Kennedy
Jules Epailly as Ben Ayoub
Constance Bertrand as Diane
Terry Carroll as Doris
Victor Kilian as House Detective (uncredited)

References

Before Morning at the Internet Broadway Database
Jump up^ “Before Morning”. AFI Catalog of Feature Films. AFI. Retrieved July 20, 2015.

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Lena Rivers (1932)

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Lena Rivers AKA The Sin Of Lena Rivers (1932)

Director: Phil Rosen

Cast: Charlotte Henry, Morgan Galloway, Beryl Mercer, James Kirkwood, John St Polis, Betty Blythe, Joyce Compton, Russell Simpson, Clarence Muse, The Kentucky Singers

67 min

Lena Rivers, aka The Sin of Lena Rivers, is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Phil Rosen based on the 1856 novel by Mary Jane Holmes. Filmed on several occasions throughout the silent era.^[1]

Plot

Lena Rivers’ mother dies in childbirth, and the child is left to be reared by her grandparents. Years later, her grandfather is reported lost at sea, and Lena and her grandmother go to live in Canterville, Kentucky with John Nichols, Lena’s uncle, despite the objections of John’s wife Mathilda and his daughter Caroline, who think that Lena is illegitimate.

Henry R. Graham, the owner of the plantation next to the Nichols’, seems bothered when he meets Lena. One day, Lena plays with a bunny on the Graham property, and she is horrified when Graham’s ward, Durrie Belmont, shoots it. Although she calls him a murderer, Durrie, who is courting Caroline, becomes attracted to Lena.

Graham takes a personal interest in Lena because she reminds him of a woman with whom he was in love, but who died while he was away, believing he had deserted her. When Lena shows a gift for calming the excitable horse Brimstone, Graham gives her the horse. After Graham introduces her to Durrie, the boy promises never to shoot another bunny and walks her home. Graham throws a party at his manor, but Lena does not come because she does not have a fancy dress, so Durrie goes to her house.

They take a walk, and he kisses her before she goes in. Caroline sees them together and calls Lena an “ungrateful sneak,” then says she takes after her mother, who never married. Lana slaps her and runs crying to her grandmother, who assures her that her mother was married, but that her father left her to die. Graham enters Brimstone in the races for Lena because she has made astonishing progress with the previously unmanageable horse.

When Lena’s grandmother has an attack, Graham, worried about the effect her possible death might have on Lena, mentions to Durrie that he would like to adopt her. Durrie’s jealousy is aroused, as Caroline had earlier implied that Graham and Lena were having an illicit affair. In reality, Graham is Lena’s father. He had married her mother in secret because of his tyrant father, using his middle name “Rivers” as their surname.

His father “shanghaied” Graham to Europe, and when he returned, he learned that his wife had died. Until Lena recently appeared, he had been unaware that he had a daughter. Brimstone wins the race, and Lena is awarded $5,000, but Durrie discovers that Graham told the jockey of his competing horse to let Brimstone win.

Still unaware of Graham’s real relationship to Lena, Durrie, jealous, angry and drunk, proposes to Caroline, who agrees to marry him. Lena’s grandmother dies after realizing that Lena now has enough money to support herself. Shaken by the death, Lena learns about Durrie and Caroline’s elopement and leaves town to make a new life for herself elsewhere after forgiving Graham, who has revealed his secret to her.

Meanwhile, Durrie drives recklessly and his car goes over an embankment. When Graham finds out that Durrie and Caroline are in the hospital, he sends for Lena. While Caroline flirts with a doctor, Durrie learns that Graham is Lena’s father and leaves the hospital to find her and marry her. He gets into a car to find Lena inside, and they hug and kiss.

Cast

Charlotte Henry – Lena Rivers
Morgan Galloway – Durrie Belmont
Beryl Mercer – Grandmother Nichols
James Kirkwood – Henry R. Graham
John St. Polis – John Nichols
Betty Blythe – Mrs. Mathilda Nichols
Joyce Compton – Caroline Nichols
Russell Simpson – Grandfather Nichols
Clarence Muse – Curfew
John Larkin – Lucifer ‘Lucy’ Jones
The Kentucky Singers – Choir Singers (*Kentucky Jubilee Singers)

References

Jump up^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films:..Lena Rivers

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Millie (1931)

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Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Millie (1931)

Director: John Francis Dillon

Cast: Helen Twelvetrees, Lilyan Tashman, Robert Ames, James Hall, John Halliday, Joan Blondell, Anita Louise, Edmund Breese, Frank McHugh, Charlote Walker, Franklin Parker, Marie Astaire, Carmelita Geraghty

85 min

Millie (1931) is a pre-Code drama film directed by John Francis Dillon from a screenplay by Charles Kenyon and Ralph Morgan, based on a novel of the same name by Donald Henderson Clarke. The film was an independent production by Charles R. Rogers, distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, after their acquisition of Pathé Exchange. It starred Helen Twelvetrees in one of her best roles, with a supporting cast which included Lilyan Tashman, James Hall, Joan Blondell, John Halliday and Anita Louise.

Plot

Millie (Helen Twelvetrees) is a naive young woman who marries a wealthy man from New York, Jack Maitland (James Hall). Three years later, unhappy in her marriage due to her husband’s continued infidelity, she asks for and receives a divorce. Because of her pride, she does not want his money, but she also does not want to deprive her daughter of a comfortable lifestyle. She allows Jack and his mother (Charlotte Walker) to retain custody of Millie’s daughter Connie (Anita Louise).

Focusing on her career, she rises through the hierarchy of the hotel where she is employed, shunning the attention of the rich banker Jimmy Damier (John Halliday), preferring the attentions of the reporter Tommy Rock (Robert Ames), although, due to her prior sour relationship, she refuses to marry him. Eventually, Millie is promoted to the head of operations for the hotel.

At the same time, Tommy is offered a lucrative position at the bank by Damier as a favor to Millie. However, at the celebration party, Millie discovers that Tommy, just like Maitland, is cheating on her.

Betrayed a second time, Millie becomes very bitter. With her female cohorts, Helen and Angie (Lilyan Tashman and Joan Blondell, respectively), she becomes a woman who loves a good time, floating from man to man. This goes on for several years, until she hears that Damier has taken an interest in her teen-age daughter, Connie, who bears a striking resemblance to her.

Millie warns Damier to leave her daughter alone, but, although he promises to stay away from Connie, he ignores Millie’s warning and takes Connie to a remote lodge to seduce her. Millie is tipped off, goes to the lodge with a gun, confronts Jimmy and kills him.

In the ensuing murder trial, Millie tries to keep her daughter’s name out of the press and claims not to remember why she shot Jimmy. She says that another woman ran out of the lodge after the shot, but claims that she did not see who the woman was and has no idea as to her identity.

The prosecution thus claims that Millie’s motive was jealousy of Jimmy’s romantic relationship with this unknown other woman. Millie’s friends, however, help to bring out the truth, and when the jury finds out that Millie’s true motive was to protect her daughter from Jimmy’s lascivious intentions, they acquit her. In the end, Millie is reunited with her daughter and her estranged husband’s family.

Cast

Helen Twelvetrees as Millie Blake Maitland
Lilyan Tashman as Helen Riley
Robert Ames as Tommy Rock
James Hall as Jack Maitland
John Halliday as Jimmy Damier
Joan Blondell as Angie Wickerstaff
Anita Louise as Connie Maitland
Edmund Breese as Bob O’Fallon
Frank McHugh as Johnny Holmes
Charlotte Walker as Mrs Maitland
Franklin Parker as Spring
Charles Delaney as Mike
Harry Stubbs as Mark Marks

(Cast as per AFI‘s database)^[2]

Production

Donald Henderson Clarke finished his novel, Millie, during summer 1930.^[4] The novel was first offered to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who passed on it due to its racy content.^[5] In August of that year, it was reported that Charles R. Rogers had purchased the film rights to the novel, and had signed Charles Kenyon to adapt it into a screenplay, as well as selecting John Francis Dillon to direct.^[6]

Although Rogers had signed an agreement to distribute his independent films through RKO, it was reported that he would be overseeing the production on the Universal lot.^[7] Even though he was incorrectly identified as “Ralph Murphy”, Ralph Morgan was signed to collaborate with Kenyon on the screenplay adaptation in September.^[8]

Less than a week later, Helen Twelvetrees signed on for the titular role;^[9] and it was reported that the screenplay adaptation had been completed.^[5] Rogers would choose Ernest Haller to shoot the film and sign him for the project in the beginning of October.^[10]

In January RKO announced the film would be released in February,^[11] and it was released on February 8, 1931.^[2]

Notes

The film was an independent production by Charles Rogers, but became the property of RKO when he agreed to become their production chief.^[12]

The theme song, “Millie”, had words and music by Nacio Herb Brown.^[2]

In 1959, the film entered the public domain in the USA due to the copyright claimants failure to renew the copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.^[13]

The film’s tagline was “Torn From Her Arms … Child Of Love A Woman Can Give But Once.”^[1]

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Millie: Technical Details”. theiapolis.com. Retrieved August 11, 2014.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g “Millie: Detail View”. American Film Institute. Archived from the original on September 20, 2015. Retrieved December 30, 2016.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Millie, Credits”. Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on August 11, 2014. Retrieved August 11, 2014.
Jump up^ Daly, Phil M. (April 17, 1930). “Along the Rialto”. The Film Daily. p. 5.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Rogers Chances “Millie””. Variety. September 24, 1930. p. 5.
Jump up^ “Hollywood Flashes”. The Film Daily. August 30, 1930. p. 3.
Jump up^ “Don Clarke’s Story To Be First Rogers Film”. Motion Picture News. August 23, 1930. p. 26.
Jump up^ “Hollywood Activities”. The Film Daily. September 21, 1930. p. 29.
Jump up^ “Hollywood Happenings”. The Film Daily. September 24, 1930. p. 6.
Jump up^ Wilk, Ralph (October 12, 1930). “A Little from “Lots””. The Film Daily. p. 4.
Jump up^ “”Cimarron” and “Millie” Releases”. The Film Daily. January 22, 1931. p. 3.
Jump up^ Jewell, Richard B.; Harbin, Vernon (1982). The RKO Story. New York: Arlington House. p. 32. ISBN 0-517-546566.
Jump up^ Pierce, David (June 2007). “Forgotten Faces: Why Some of Our Cinema Heritage Is Part of the Public Domain”. Film History: An International Journal. 19 (2): 125–43. ISSN 0892-2160. JSTOR 25165419. OCLC 15122313. doi:10.2979/FIL.2007.19.2.125. See Note #60, pg. 143.

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Topaze (1933)

July 27, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Topaze (1933)

Director: Harry D’Abbadie D’Arrast

Cast: John Barrymore, Myrna Loy, Reginald Mason, Jobyna Howland, Jackie Searl, Albert Conti, Frank Reicher, Luis Alberini, Lowden Adams

78 min

Topaze is a 1933 American Pre-Code film based on the French play of the same name by Marcel Pagnol. Another film version of Topaze, this one made in the original French was also released that year, starring Louis Jouvet in the title role. Subsequently Pagnol himself directed a 1936 adaptation.

Plot

Prof. Auguste A. Topaze (John Barrymore), an honest, naive chemist and schoolteacher at the – Stegg Academy in Paris, loses his job when he refuses to accede to a demand by the Baroness de La Tour-La Tour to alter the grades of her bratty son, Charlemagne.

On the same day, Friday the 13th, Topaze calls on the Baron de La Tour-La Tour’s mistress, Coco (Myrna Loy), who is looking for a tutor for her sister’s son, Alphonse, and had gotten Topaze’s name from La Tour. Upon meeting and listening to the sincere remarks of Topaze, the baron, head of the La Tour Chemical Works, decides to employ him as a scientific front for his phony curative water.

After an encounter at a cafe, where the Baron narrowly avoids a scene with his wife by calling Coco “Madame Topaze”, Coco reveals the true nature of her relation to the Baron to the naive Professor. When they arrive late back to Coco’s apartment, the Baron is jealous, but soon realizes Topaze is entirely innocent.

Unaware that the water, “Sparkling Topaze,” which is being sold all over Paris, does not contain the medicinal formula he invented for it, Topaze is shocked when Dr. Bomb (who had turned down the “honor” of having the fradulent water named for him) shows up, demanding 100,000 francs from the Baron or he will expose the fradulent product. But the Baron blackmails him in return with information about his previous identity, and Bomb is dragged out.

After confirming for himself, in the lab and in a local restaurant, that “Sparkling Topaze” is in fact phony, a dazed Topaze returns to Coco’s apartment the next morning, where Coco fusses over him. At first, he is ready to be arrested, but the men who are shown in are instead a delegation from the Bureau of Awards and Merits, who award him the Academic Palms. All are friends and business associates of the Baron, and the scales begin to fall from Professor Topaze’s eyes.

His naivete thoroughly destroyed, declaring “Topaze lies dead in an alley”, Topaze decides to fight back by becoming more corrupt than his mentors. He remakes his image and, with Bomb as his assistant, he opens his own office, where he makes dignitaries wait to see him. One is Dr. Stegg, who now wants Topaze to preside at the graduation at the school. Topaze succeeds in blackmailing the Baron into a partnership in his company with a complete account of his relationship with Coco, which he threatens to show to the Baroness, whose name the shares in the company are in.

At the Stegg Academy graduation, Topaze, who has also garnered the romantic attention of Coco, is to distribute the prize, which he is told is to go to his former nemesis, Charlemagne de La Tour-La Tour. He gives a little speech about his experiences in the great world, that honesty isn’t always rewarded and that villainy often receives more applause than virtue. Declaring that he will not reward wrongdoers, he shows up Charlemagne’s ignorance relative to all his classmates, then awards the prize to them instead.

He is last seen escorting Coco into the cinema.

Cast

John Barrymore as Professor Auguste A. Topaze
Myrna Loy as Coco
Reginald Mason as Baron Philippe de La Tour-La Tour
Jobyna Howland as Baroness Hortense de La Tour-La Tour
Jackie Searl as Charlemagne de La Tour-La Tour
Albert Conti as Henri de Fairville
Frank Reicher as Dr. Stegg
Luis Alberni as Dr. Bomb

Reception

Topaze won the 1933 National Board of Review Award for Best Film.

Mordaunt Hall said “[I]t is an agreeable and effective film, and Mr. Barrymore lends no little artistry to the rôle of the benign Professor Auguste Topaze, a part played with rare skill on the stage by Frank Morgan.”^[1]

In 1935, a planned reissue was rejected by Joseph Breen as the Production Code was now being strictly enforced and the relationship between Coco and Philippe lacked compensating moral values.^[2]

References

Jump up^ New York Times review by Mordaunt Hall
Jump up^ The Dame in the Kimono by Leonard Leff and Jerold Simmons (Weidenfeld and Nicolson: 1990)

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Ten Cents a Dance (1931)

July 25, 2017 Film Dialogue 1 Comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Ten Cents a Dance (1931)

Directors: Lionel Barrymore, Edward Buzzell

Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Ricardo Cortez, Monroe Owsley, Sally Blane, Blanche Friderici, Phyllis Crane, Olive Tell, Victor Potel, Al Hill, Jack Byron

75 min

Ten Cents a Dance is a 1931 American pre-Code romance-drama film directed by Lionel Barrymore and starring Barbara Stanwyck as a married taxi dancer who falls in love with one of her customers. The film was inspired by the popular song of the same name, which is sung over the title sequence.^[1]

Plot

A beautiful streetwise taxi dancer named Barbara O’Neill (Barbara Stanwyck) works at a New York City dance hall called Palais de Dance. One of the dance hall’s wealthy patrons, Bradley Carlton (Ricardo Cortez), comes to the hall and gives Barbara $100.

Concerned about her unemployed friend and neighbor Eddie Miller (Monroe Owsley), Barbara asks Bradley to give him a job, and he agrees. That night they have dinner together.

When Barbara gets home, Eddie is in the process of packing his bags; he can no longer afford to pay his rent. Barbara gives him the $100 she received from Bradley and tells him about his new job. Later, Eddie and Barbara meet in the park and realize that they are in love.

The next night at the dance hall, Barbara receives a gift of a new dress, but is disappointed when she sees that it was sent by Bradley. Eddie arrives at the dance hall and asks Barbara to marry him. Barbara accepts his proposal and soon quits her job.

Five months later, Eddie meets an old friend Ralph Sheridan and his sister Nancy, and does not reveal that he is now married. They play cards together and Eddie loses $240, something he does not tell his wife.

He claims to be at a convention, but in fact he meets a woman named Nancy. Later, Eddie returns to find the rent and utilities past due because he has spent his pay gambling. Meanwhile, Barbara returns to work at the dance hall, where she sees Bradley occasionally.

Later, Barbara returns home and discovers Eddie packing his bags. Admitting that he stole $5,000 from Bradley’s office safe, he tells her that he lost that money playing the stock market. Barbara is able to talk him into staying, and she visits Bradley and asks him for a $5,000 loan. Bradley agrees because he is in love with her.

The next morning, Barbara presents the money to Eddie who accepts it immediately. When Eddie returns from work, he and Barbara engage in a jealous fight. Soon after, she packs her belongings and returns to the dance hall, where she is met by Bradley who has two tickets for the Ile de France, where Barbara can obtain a divorce and marry him.

Cast

Barbara Stanwyck as Barbara O’Neill
Ricardo Cortez as Bradley Carlton
Monroe Owsley as Eddie Miller
Sally Blane as Molly
Blanche Friderici as Mrs Blanchard
Martha Sleeper as Nancy Clark
David Newell as Ralph Sheridan
Victor Potel as Smith
Sidney Bracey as Wilson
Abe Lyman and His Orchestra
Aggie Herring as Mrs Carney
Harry Todd as Mr Carney
Phyllis Crane as Eunice
Olive Tell as Mrs Carlton
Al Hill as Jones
Pat Harmon as Casey

(Cast list as per AFI‘s database^[2])

References[edit]

Jump up^ Hall, Mordaunt (March 7, 1931). “The $10,000 Kiss. Strange Temperaments. In a Dance Hall. Screen Notes.”. The New York Times. Retrieved February 13, 2014.
Jump up^ “Ten Cents a Dance: Detail View”. American Film Institute. Retrieved December 15, 2014.

Ten Cents a Dance 10

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Ten Cents a Dance 14

Ten Cents a Dance 15

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Borrowed Wives (1930)

July 25, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Borrowed Wives (1930)

Director: Frank R Strayer

Cast: Rex Lease, Vera Reynolds, Nita Martan, Paul Hurst, Robert Livingston, Charles Sellon, Dorothea Wolbert, Sam Hardy, Harry Todd, Tom London

62 min

Borrowed Wives is a 1930 American Pre-Code film directed by Frank R. Strayer.

Plot summary

Peter Foley (Rex Lease) is a beneficiary of his grandfather, who leaves him $800,000 in his will. The condition for Peter getting the money is that he gets married. Peter is very interested in getting the money, especially since he has debts, and plans to marry Alice Blake (Vera Reynolds) as soon as she arrives from Kansas City.

He plans to take her to his Uncle Henry’s (Charles Sellon) home before midnight to actually get the inheritance. The uncle needs to see the girl whom Peter is about to marry before he releases the money.

Alice’s airplane is delayed, though. The man to whom Peter is in debt, Parker (Sam Hardy), insists that his own girl friend, Julia (Nita Martan), pose as Peter’s wife in the meantime. Alice is informed by Joe Blair (Robert Livingston), a man who is secretly interested in marrying Alice himself, that Peter is actually married to Julia. Alice agrees to marry Joe if this is true.

Peter and Julia are pursued by Bull (Paul Hurst), a motorcycle policeman who loves Julia. Further complications arise at Uncle Henry’s, when Lawyer Winstead (Harry Todd), who is found bound and gagged, agrees to marry them. The uncle, revealed to be posing as a paralytic, is exposed as a villain, but Peter and Alice are ultimately married before the last hour appointed in the will.^[1]

Cast

Rex Lease as Peter Foley
Vera Reynolds as Alice Blake
Nita Martan as Julia Thorpe
Paul Hurst as Bull Morgan
Robert Livingston as Joe Blair
Charles Sellon as Uncle Henry
Dorothea Wolbert as Aunt Mary
Sam Hardy as G.W. Parker
Harry Todd as Lawyer Winstead
Tom London as Mac – the Cop
Eddy Chandler as Police Sergeant

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Sensation Hunters (1933)

July 24, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Sensation Hunters (1933)

Director: Charles Vidor

Cast: Arline Judge, Preston Foster, Marion Burns, Kenneth MacKenna, Juanita Hansen, Creighton Hale, Cyril Chadwick, Nella Walker, Harold Minjir, Finis Barton, Zoila Conan

73 min

Sensation Hunters is a 1933 American Pre-Code B-movie directed by Charles Vidor and released by Monogram Pictures.

Plot

Dale Jordon is on her way to Panama with Trixie Snell and Her Hotcha Girls to be a cabaret singer at the Bull Ring Cafe. Traveling by ship, Dale meets and falls in love with Tom Baylor, who owns copper interests near Panama. Baylor is concerned about Dale and they quarrel after he asks her to promise not to start drinking. Baylor sends Dale a bracelet with a note saying that they should part.

After three months, Dale, who is rooming with friend and fellow singer Jerry Royal, is tired and frustrated with her job. She attracts the attention of a wealthy flier, Jimmy Crosby, who wants a more permanent relationship, but Dale is still in love with Baylor and refuses. After a fight with Trixie, Dale asks Crosby to take her away and promises to marry him. Crosby agrees and Dale spends her savings on a hotel room and clothes.

Baylor returns to Panama and, meeting Dale in the hotel lobby, assumes that she is Crosby’s mistress. Dale, angered by his assumption, pretends it is true and Baylor leaves for San Francisco. Before they can leave for New York, Crosby makes a last test run. His wife has refused to give him a divorce to marry Dale, and, distraught, he commits suicide in a plane crash.

Trixie refuses to give Dale her old job back and also fires Jerry when she tries to intercede. The girls go to work in a seedy saloon to earn enough money for passage home. They almost have enough when Jerry is stabbed in a barfight. Dale spends all their money for Jerry’s medical expenses but still desperately short, prepares to become a prostitute; instead, Baylor arrives, summoned by a telegram from Jerry, and he and Dale reconcile.

Cast

Arline Judge as Jerry Royal
Preston Foster as Tom Baylor
Marion Burns as Dale Jordan
Kenneth MacKenna as Jimmy Crosby
Juanita Hansen as Trixie Snell
Creighton Hale as Fred Barrett
Cyril Chadwick as Upson
Nella Walker as Mrs. Grayson
Walter Brennan as Stuttering Waiter

Soundtrack

Arline Judge and chorus – “If It Ain’t One Man” (Written by Bernie Grossman and Harold Lewis)
Marion Burns – “There’s Something In the Air” (Written by Bernie Grossman and Harold Lewis)

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Trouble in Paradise (1932)

July 24, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Trouble in Paradise (1931)

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charles Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton, C Aubrey Smith, Robert Greig, Luis Alberini

83 min

Trouble in Paradise is a 1932 American Pre-Code romantic comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, and Herbert Marshall and featuring Charles Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton.

Based on the 1931 play The Honest Finder (A Becsületes Megtaláló) by Hungarian playwright László Aladár,^[2] the film is about a gentleman thief and a lady pickpocket who join forces to con a beautiful perfume company owner.

In 1991, Trouble in Paradise was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.^[3]

Plot

In Venice, Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall), a master thief masquerading as a baron, meets Lily (Miriam Hopkins), a beautiful thief and pickpocket also pretending to be of the nobility, and the two fall in love and decide to team up.

They leave Venice for Paris, and go to work for the famous perfume manufacturer Madame Mariette Colet (Kay Francis), with the intention of stealing a great sum of money from her safe, which Monescu, as her secretary, arranges to be diverted there. In the course of things, Colet begins to flirt with Monescu, and he begins to have feelings for her.

Unfortunately, the plan develops a hitch when François Filiba (Edward Everett Horton), one of Colet’s suitors, sees Monescu at a garden party. He is unable to remember where he knows him from, but when another of Colet’s suitors, The Major (Charles Ruggles), tells Filiba that he once mistook Monescu for a doctor, Filiba suddenly remembers that he knows Monescu from Venice, where the thief robbed him, pretending to be a doctor. Monescu and Lily plan an immediate getaway that night, after they take all the money in the safe.

Colet prepares to leave for a dinner party given by the Major, but cannot decide whether to go or to stay and have sex with Monescu. Eventually she goes, but not before Lily catches on that Monescu has fallen for her rival, and wants to back out of the plan – so she robs the safe herself after confronting her partner.

At the Major’s, Filiba tells Colet about Monescu, but she refuses to believe it’s true. She returns home and suggestively probes Monescu, who admits that the safe has been cleaned out, but claims that he himself took the cash. He also tells her that the manager of her business, Adolph J. Giron (C. Aubrey Smith), who has been suspicious of Monescu all along, has stolen millions of dollars from the firm over the years.

Lily then confronts Colet and Monescu, reporting that it was she who stole the money from the safe. An argument ensues, in which, eventually, Colet allows the two thieves to leave together. As a parting shot, Monescu steals a necklace from Colet that Lily had her eye on, and, in turn, Lily steals it from him, displaying it to him as the taxi takes them away, hugging each other.

Cast

Herbert Marshall as Gaston Monescu / Gaston Lavalle
Miriam Hopkins as Lily Vautier
Kay Francis as Madame Mariette Colet
Edward Everett Horton as François Filiba
Charlie Ruggles as The Major
C. Aubrey Smith as Adolph J. Giron
Robert Greig as Jacques, Mariette’s butler
Leonid Kinskey as the irate Communist

Production

Working titles for Trouble in Paradise included “The Honest Finder,” “Thieves and Lovers,” and “The Golden Widow”; the latter was publicly announced to be the intended release title.^[4] As with all the Lubitsch-Raphaelson collaborations, Lubitsch contributed to the writing and Raphaelson contributed ideas to the directing.^[5]

Lubitsch did not receive screen credit for his writing, and Grover Jones, who was credited with the adaptation, did not contribute significantly:^[5] although he was in the room, his credit was based on a contractual obligation, and he did little more than tell stories.^[5]^[6]

Further, although supposedly based on László Aladár’s 1931 play The Honest Finder, Lubitsch suggested that Raphaelson not read the play, and instead the main character, Herbert Marshall’s master thief, was based on the exploits of a real person, George Manolescu, a Romanian con man whose memoir was published in 1905, and became the basis for two silent films.^[5]

Made before effective enforcement of the Production Code, the film is an example of pre-code cinema containing adult themes and sexual innuendo that was not permitted under the Code. In 1935, when the Production Code was being enforced, the film was not approved for reissue^[4] and was not seen again until 1968.^[7]Paramount was again rejected in 1943, when the studio wanted to make a musical version of the film.^[4]

The Art Deco sets for Trouble in Paradise were designed by the head of Paramount’s art department, Hans Dreier, and the gowns were designed by Travis Banton.^[5]

Reception

Trouble in Paradise was the film that first had people talking about “the Lubitsch touch,” and it was, in fact, one of the director’s favorites.^[5] Critic Dwight Macdonaldsaid of the film that it was “as close to perfection as anything I have ever seen in the movies.”^[5]

The New York Times named the film as one of the ten best films of 1932. In 1998, Roger Ebert added it to his Great Movies collection.^[8] Wes Anderson and Ralph Fiennes both said the movie was an inspiration for The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). Review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes reports 91% approval based on 23 critics.^[9]

Awards and honors

Trouble in Paradise was named by the National Board of Review as one of the top ten films of 1932.^[3]^[10]

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Trouble in Paradise” at Kay Francis Films. Accessed 16 March 2014
Jump up^ “Screenplay info” on TCM.com. Accessed=August 24, 2012
^ Jump up to:^a ^b “Awards”. Allmovie.com. Retrieved August 24, 2012.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c “Notes”. TCM.com. Retrieved August 24, 2012.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Nixon, Rob. “Trouble in Paradise (article)”. TCM.com. Retrieved August 24, 2012.
Jump up^ Raphaelson, Samson. Three Screen Comedies Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. ISBN 0-299-08780-8
Jump up^ Osborne, Robert. Outro to the Turner Classic Movies showing of Trouble in Paradise (March 31, 2011)
Jump up^ Ebert, Roger. “Trouble in Paradise”. Retrieved July 30, 2013.
Jump up^ “Trouble in Paradise (1932)”. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 23, 2016.
Jump up^ “Awards”. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved August 24, 2012.

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Stolen Jools, The (1931)

July 22, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

The Stolen Jools AKA The Slippery Pearls (1931)

Directors:

William C. McGann John G. Adolfi…(uncredited)Thomas Atkins…(uncredited)Harold S. Bucquet…(uncredited)Victor Heerman…(uncredited)Russell Mack…(uncredited)

Cast:


	Wallace Beery	…	Police Sergeant
	Buster Keaton	…	Policeman
	Jack Hill	…	Policeman
	J. Farrell MacDonald	…	Policeman
	Edward G. Robinson	…	Gangster (as Edward Robinson)
	George E. Stone	…	Gangster
	Eddie Kane	…	Inspector Kane
	Stan Laurel	…	Policeman
	Oliver Hardy	…	Police Driver
	Allen ‘Farina’ Hoskins	…	Farina (as Farina)
	Matthew ‘Stymie’ Beard	…	Stymie (as Stymie)
	Norman ‘Chubby’ Chaney	…	Chubby (as Chubby)
	Mary Ann Jackson	…	Mary Ann Jackson
	Shirley Jean Rickert	…	Shirley Jean
	Dorothy DeBorba	…	Echo (as Echo)
	Bobby ‘Wheezer’ Hutchins	…	Wheezer (as Wheezer)
	Pete the Dog	…	Pete (as Pete the Pup)
	Polly Moran	…	Norma Shearer’s Maid
	Norma Shearer	…	Owner of Stolen Jewels
	Hedda Hopper	…	Hedda – Norma’s Friend
	Joan Crawford	…	Joan Crawford
	William Haines	…	Bill Haines
	Dorothy Lee	…	Autograph Signer
	Victor McLaglen	…	Sergeant Flagg
	Edmund Lowe	…	Sergeant Quirt
	El Brendel	…	Swedish Waiter
	Charles Murray	…	Kelly (as Charlie Murray)
	George Sidney	…	Cohen
	Winnie Lightner	…	Winnie
	Fifi D’Orsay	…	Fifi D’Orsay
	Warner Baxter	…	Cisco Kid Character
	Irene Dunne	…	Irene Dunne
	Bert Wheeler	…	Bert Wheeler
	Robert Woolsey	…	Robert Woolsey
	Richard Dix	…	Richard Dix
	Claudia Dell	…	Claudia Dell
	Lowell Sherman	…	Movie Director
	Eugene Pallette	…	Reporter
	Stuart Erwin	…	Reporter
	Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher	…	Reporter (as Skeets Gallagher)
	Gary Cooper	…	Newspaper Editor
	Wynne Gibson	…	Reporter
	Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers	…	‘Buddy’ Rogers (as Buddy Rogers)
	Maurice Chevalier	…	Maurice Chevalier
	Douglas Fairbanks Jr.	…	Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
	Loretta Young	…	Loretta Young
	Richard Barthelmess	…	Richard Barthelmess
	Charles Butterworth	…	Claiming to Be Louise Frazenda
	Bebe Daniels	…	Mrs. Ben Lyon
	Ben Lyon	…	Ben Lyon
	Barbara Stanwyck	…	Mrs. Frank Fay
	Frank Fay	…	Frank Fay
	Jack Oakie	…	Jack Oakie
	Fay Wray	…	Fay Wray
	George ‘Gabby’ Hayes	…	Projectionist (as George Hayes)
	‘Little Billy’ Rhodes	…	Film Delivery Boy (as Little Billy)
	Mitzi Green	…	Little Mitzi – Mystery Solver
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
	Joe E. Brown	…	Robbery Suspect
	Robert Ames	…	Robert Ames (uncredited)
	Bert Lytell	…	Bert Lytell (uncredited)

The Stolen Jools (1931) is a short comedy film produced by the Masquers Club of Hollywood, featuring many cameo appearances by film stars of the day. The stars appeared in the film, distributed by Paramount Pictures, to raise funds for the National Vaudeville Artists Tuberculosis Sanitarium. The UCLA Film and Television Archive entry for this film says—as do the credits—that the film was co-sponsored by Chesterfield cigarettes to support the “fine work” of the NVA sanitarium.

When the film was shown in theaters in 1931, a person would appear after the film to ask the audience for donations. Because the film was made for charity, it has an unusually large cast of actors from various studios in addition to Paramount, such as Warner Bros., RKO, MGM, and Hal Roach Studios.

This film was retitled The Slippery Pearls in the United Kingdom. It was thought to have been lost until a print was found in the UK in the 1990s. Another print was later found in the US under the alternative title.

Plot

At the “Screen Stars Annual Ball”, Norma Shearer‘s jewels are stolen. The police must find them and return them to her.

Cast, as listed in end credits

At the Police Station

The Law

Eddie Kane
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy

At the Victim’s House

Our Gang: Farina, Stymie, Chubby,
Mary Ann Jackson, Shirley Jean Rickert,
Echo, Wheezer, Pete the Pup
Polly Moran
Norma Shearer
Hedda Hopper

Tete-a-Tete

On the Porch Swing

Dorothy Lee

At Breakfast

In the Hotel

At Lunch

Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey

In the Movie Studio

The Newsmen

The Detective

Maurice Chevalier

Under the Tree

Couples at Home

Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon
Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay

In a Movie Scene

Jack Oakie and Fay Wray

Projectionist

George “Gabby” Hayes

The Midget

Little Billy (Billy Rhodes)
Mitzi Green solves the mystery.^[1]

(Uncredited)

References

1. Transcribed from the DVD Best of Laurel & Hardy, Volumes 2–3. Brentwood Home Video, 2004.

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Tangled Destinies (1932)

July 22, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Tangled Destinies AKA Who Killed Harry Forbes? (1932)

Director: Frank R Strayer

Cast: Gene Morgan, Doris Hill, Glen Tryon, Vera Reynolds, Ethel Wales, Moanei Lindley, Syd Saylor, Sidney Bracey

Tangled Destinies is a 1932 American film directed by Frank R. Strayer.

The film is also known as Who Killed Harvey Forbes? in the United Kingdom.

Plot summary

When a transcontinental airplane is forced to land in the desert in a thick fog, the crew and ten passengers find refuge in a deserted house, where they start up an electric generator and turn on the lights.

After the lights go out unexpectedly, one of the passengers is killed. Another passenger, a detective, claims he was guarding the deceased, who was carrying valuable diamonds, which are then discovered to be paste. Later, another person is murdered. Eventually, the murderer is found in the guise of a clergyman.

Cast

Gene Morgan as Capt. Randall “Randy” Gordon
Doris Hill as Doris
Glenn Tryon as Tommy Preston, the Co-pilot
Vera Reynolds as Ruth, the Airline Stewardess
Ethel Wales as Prudence Daggott
Monaei Lindley as Monica van Buren
Syd Saylor as Buchanan, the Prizefighter
Sidney Bracey as McGinnis, posing as Professor Marmont
Lloyd Whitlock as Floyd Martin
James B. Leong as Ling
William P. Burt as Harvey Forbes
Henry Hall as Dr. Wingate, the Parson
William Humphrey as Professor Hartley

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Framed (1930)

July 22, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Framed (1930)

Director: George Archainbaud

Cast: Evelyn Brent, Regis Toomey, Ralf Harolde, William Holden, Maurice Black, Robert Emmet O’Connor, Eddie Kane

65 min

Framed is an 1930 American pre-Code crime action film, directed by George Archainbaud, based on a screenplay by Paul Schofield and Wallace Smith. It starred Evelyn Brent, William Holden (no relation to the Oscar-winning actor, William Holden), Regis Toomey and Ralf Harolde.

Plot summary

When Rose Manning’s father is killed during a robbery by Inspector McArthur, Manning vows to avenge his death. Five years elapse, and Rose is now the owner of a nightclub, and her liquor supplier, the bootlegger Chuck Gaines is interested in her. Still plotting her revenge, she meets Jimmy McArthur, who she does not realize is the son of the inspector. Spurning Gaines’ advances, Rose becomes romantically involved with Jimmy. Her motivations waver as her emotional attachment to the young McArthur grows, until her relationship takes precedence over her revenge.

Chuck, jealous of the growing relationship between Rose and Jimmy, plots with his cohort, Bing Murdock, to murder both the inspector and his son. Uncovering the plan, Rose is attempting to warn Jimmy, when his father raids her club. In the ensuing chaos, Jimmy kills Gaines in order to protect Rose, after Gaines attacked her in a fit of jealous rage. When the inspector finally realizes that what Rose and Jimmy have is real affection for one another, he removes any objections over their relationship.

Cast

Evelyn Brent – Rose Manning
Regis Toomey – Jimmy McArthur
Ralf Harolde – Chuck Gaines
William Holden – Inspector ‘Butch’ McArthur
Maurice Black – Bing Murdock
Robert Emmett O’Connor – Sergeant Schultze
Eddie Kane – Headwaiter
Frank Mills – Waiter (uncredited)

References

^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c “Framed: Detail View”. American Film Institute. Retrieved June 7, 2014.

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Money Means Nothing (1934)

July 22, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Money Means Nothing (1934)

Director: Christy Cabanne

Cast: Wallace Ford, Edgar Kennedy, Gloria Shea, Vivien Oakland, Maidel Turner, Betty Blythe, Eddie Tamblyn, Richard Tucker, Tenen Holtz, Ann Brody

70 min

Plot

When Julie Ferris, a wealthy young woman searching for excitement, goes slumming at Joe’s Roadside Inn, she notices a group of shady men and follows them in her car. After trailing them for a distance, Julie crashes into their car as they are hijacking two trucks carrying tires. In the ensuing scuffle, the thieves shoot one of the trucks’ drivers, Red Miller, and threaten Julie. Ken McKay, the other driver, protects and rescues Julie, and she immediately falls in love with him. Although her sister Helen and rich brother-in-law George disapprove, Julie marries Ken and moves to Brooklyn.

While determined to make the marriage work, Julie is nonetheless unprepared for her new neighbors, the boorish, nosy Greens. After the Greens crash Julie’s birthday dinner, Herbert Green, who is Ken’s boss at the auto parts store, is told by his overbearing wife that Julie’s snobbish family insulted him. As revenge, Herbert lies to his district manager that Ken has been tipping off the still active hijackers.

Fired, Ken has no luck in finding another job and contemplates making the now pregnant but devoted Julie return to her family when Red Miller, who has opened his own tire store, hires him. In cahoots with the hijackers, Red forces an unsuspecting Ken to help him steal more tire shipments, but Herbert, on a tip from Julie, figures out the plan and calls the police. In the end, the thieves are caught, and a repentant Herbert promises Ken a new job. Thus saved, the newlyweds reaffirm their belief that money means nothing.

Cast


	Wallace Ford	…	Kenneth ‘Kenny’ McKay
	Gloria Shea	…	Julie Ferris McKay
	Edgar Kennedy	…	Herbert Green
	Vivien Oakland	…	Helen Whitney (as Vivian Oakland)
	Maidel Turner	…	Mrs. Kerry Green
	Betty Blythe	…	Mrs. Ferris
	Eddie Tamblyn	…	Robert ‘Robby’ Ferris (as Edward Tamblyn)
	Richard Tucker	…	George Whitney
	Tenen Holtz	…	Mr. Silverman
	Ann Brody	…	Mrs. Silverman
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
	Irving Bacon	…	Navy Secretary (scenes deleted)
	Ernie Adams	…	Lead Hijacker (uncredited)
	Sam Flint	…	Police Sergeant (uncredited)
	Douglas Fowley	…	Red Miller (uncredited)
	Olaf Hytten	…	Parsons – the Butler (uncredited)
	Jack Kenney	…	Hijacker-Driver (uncredited)
	Jack Norton	…	Jack – Hijacker (uncredited)
	Lee Phelps	…	Chauffeur (uncredited)
	Harry Semels	…	Toy Vendor (uncredited)
	Bert Young	…	Jim – Driver Shot in Leg (uncredited)

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Reaching for the Moon (1930)

July 19, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Reaching for the Moon (1930)

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Bebe Daniels, Edward Everett Horton, Claud Allister, Jack Mulhall, Walter Walker, June MacCloy, Bing Crosby

91 min

Reaching for the Moon is a 1930 American Pre-Code black and white musical film. Originally released at 91 minutes; surviving versions are usually cut to 62 minutes. A 74-minute version aired in 1998 on USA cable channel AMC. The DVD version runs just under 72 minutes. The film’s working title was Lucky Break and is known as Para alcanzar la Lunain Spain. It is not to be confused with the Fairbanks silent film, Reaching for the Moon (1917).

Background

The film was originally intended to be a musical with songs written by Irving Berlin but problems soon developed. From the start, Berlin found Edmund Goulding, the director, difficult to work with. Also by mid-1930 the studio realized that the public’s demand for musicals had disappeared. So Goulding jettisoned many of Berlin’s songs from the score.

Although just five Berlin songs had been recorded, the film, even in its scaled-down form, proved very expensive to make. By the time the filming was complete, the costs had come to about a million dollars, a huge budget for the times, and one that virtually ruled out the possibility of the film returning a profit.^[1]

The one song that was retained was “When the Folks High Up Do the Mean Low Down” introduced by Bing Crosby who had filmed it late at night after completing his work at the Cocoanut Grove.^[2] Variety commented on this song specifically, saying: “None of the Berlin songs is left other than a chorus of hot numbers apparently named “Lower Than Lowdown” [sic]. Tune suddenly breaks into the running in the ship’s bar when Bing Crosby, of the Whiteman Rhythm Boys, gives it a strong start for just a chorus which, in turn, is ably picked up by Miss Daniels, also for merely a chorus, and then in an exterior shot to the deck where June MacCloy sends the lyric and melody for a gallop of half a chorus.^[3]

Plot

Wall Street wizard, Larry Day, new to the ways of love, is coached by his valet. He follows Vivian Benton on an ocean liner, where cocktails, laced with a “love potion”, work their magic. He then loses his fortune in the market crash and feels he has also lost his girl.

Cast

Douglas Fairbanks as Larry Day
Bebe Daniels as Vivien Benton
Edward Everett Horton as Roger
Claud Allister as Sir Horace Partington Chelmsford
Jack Mulhall as Jimmy Carrington
Walter Walker as James Benton
June MacCloy as Kitty
Helen Jerome Eddy as Larry’s Secretary
Bing Crosby as Bing

Soundtrack

“When the Folks High-Up Do the Mean Low-Down”

Written by Irving Berlin

Sung by Bing Crosby, Bebe Daniels, June MacCloy and chorus.

“Reaching for the Moon“

Written by Irving Berlin

(heard instrumentally over the opening credits, as background music for a love scene, then briefly at the end)

References

Jump up^ Bergreen, Laurence (1990). As Thousands Cheer. London: Hodder and Stoughton. pp. 291–293. ISBN 0-340-53486-9.
Jump up^ Giddins, Gary (2001). A Pocketful of Dreams. New York: Little, Brown and Company. p. 233. ISBN 0-316-88188-0.
Jump up^ “Variety”. Variety. January 7, 1931.

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Middle years

Final years and death

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Personal life

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Feature films

Short films

Television

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Early life

Stage career

Film career

Mainstream successes

“Box Office Poison” and revival

King of the Underworld (1939) Lobby Card

Kay Francis and Humphrey Bogart in King of the Underworld (1939)

World War II era

Personal life

Partial filmography

Features

Short subjects

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Contents

Early life

Career

Private life

Death

Filmography

References

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Contents

Early years

Childhood

Aspiring actress, Fox (1921–26)

Breakthrough

Sennett and Pathé (1927–29)

Paramount, Powell marriage (1930–33)

Hollywood star

Screwball beginnings (1934–35)

Continued success (1936–37)

Gable marriage, dramatic efforts

Final roles (1941–1942)

Death

Aftermath

Assessment and legacy

Filmography

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

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Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Dixiana (1930)

Contents

Plot

Cast

Reception

References

Film Collectors Corner