Quantcast
Channel: Lady Eve's Reel Life
Viewing all 188 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

POWER-MAD, the Tyrone Power Centenary Blogathon

May 4, 2014, 5:46 pm
$
0
0

He rose to movie stardom at the ripe young age of 22 and remained an international star for another 22 years, until his sudden death in 1958. During those two-plus decades, Tyrone Power was top-billed in hit films of many genres, from romantic comedy to disaster epic, musical, costume drama, western, adventure, wartime drama, swashbuckler, prestige literary adaptation, biopic, courtroom drama and even film noir. He also made time to serve as a pilot in the Marine Corps during World War II and to carve out a stage career for himself after the war. His wedding in Rome to his second wife, Linda Christian, caused a near-riot. When he collapsed and died, at age 44, while filming a King Vidor-directed biblical epic in Spain, it was headline news around the world. His private funeral in Hollywood was attended by filmdom's great luminaries and his burial was a mob scene of frenzied fans.

May 5th, 2014, marks the 100th anniversary Tyrone Power’s birth, and my co-host, Patti of They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To, and I are celebrating with this blogathon honoring of his life and career.

Click on the links below for contributions from participating bloggers. And thanks to everyone who is taking part for joining in to pay tribute to one of the true legends of Hollywood's Golden Age.

 
↧
Search

Tyrone Power and Loretta Young: The Romantic Comedies of 1937

May 4, 2014, 11:17 pm
$
0
0

Once upon a time there was a feudal kingdom known as 20th Century Fox and in it lived a handsome prince and a beautiful princess… 

A too-fanciful opening? Maybe not, given that the prince and princess in this particular tale are Tyrone Power and Loretta Young. Talented, in the blossom of youth and blessed with storybook good looks, the two were becoming the American equivalent of royalty – Hollywood movie stars - when they first began working together in the 1930s. Under contract to Fox, the pair first shared the screen (along with Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, Don Ameche and Paul Lukas), if just barely, in Ladies in Love (1936), a Budapest-set precursor to 1953’s Bacall/Monroe/Grable vehicle How to Marry a Millionaire. The movie was a success, the studio deemed Power and Young a matched set, and in 1937 starred them opposite each other in three lighthearted screwball comedies in rapid succession.

Young, who began in pictures as a toddler, was being cast in adult roles by the time she was in her mid-teens. A seasoned leading lady when Fox teamed her with Power, she was nearing the end of her contract and looking forward to saying goodbye to Darryl F. Zanuck. Tyrone Power’s rise to stardom had just begun when he and Loretta Young became an above-the-title couple. His brief appearance in Girls’ Dormitory (1936) had created a stir and he was, soon after, cast as one of the male leads – the least featured but most notable – in Ladies in Love. On the recommendation of director Henry King, Power was quickly moved into a starring role on Lloyd’s of London (1936). The movie and its fourth-billed leading man were a hit and the studio could rest assured that it had a hot property in Tyrone Power.

Tyrone Power makes an impression in Girls' Dormitory

He was top-billed for the first time in Love is News, the first of his three 1937 pictures opposite Young. Tay Garnett (China Seas, The Postman Always Rings Twice) directed the high-speed comedy, a “brash reporter vs. spoiled heiress” romance in the vein of It Happened One Night and Libeled Lady. Power is the smart-aleck newspaperman and Young the pampered socialite whose first-reel animosity blossoms, despite countless obstacles, into third-reel love.

Tyrone Power (left) as Steve Leyton, news reporter, plays checkers in Love is News

Steve Leyton (Power), hotshot reporter, tricks “tin can” heiress Tony Gateson (Young) into revealing details of her love life that provide him with a “scoop.” She gets even by inventing a scoop of her own by announcing to the press that Steve is her new fiancé and that she is gifting him with $1,000,000. Steve now experiences what Tony intended, that he is treated as “a public freak,” just as he has been treated. Complications begin to pile up, one on top of the other, from this point until the final clinch.

Steve and Tony realize the game has gone too far

Love is News was made quickly on a modest budget, but it’s a breezy, well-paced romp that works most of the time. Power and Young carry the leads easily, both surprisingly at home in the screwball genre, with the added appeal of their obvious rapport. They play slightly older than their years (he was 23 at the time, she was 24) – sophistication was in vogue then – and both have the self-possession and skill to carry it off. The script hits a pothole or two but is, most of the time, smart and smile-inducing. The supporting cast is solid and put to good use: Don Ameche as Power’s on again-off again boss/pal/antagonist, George Sanders as a European fortune hunter, Slim Summerville as a country judge, Dudley Digges as Young’s tycoon uncle, Elisha Cook, Jr., as a drunken cub reporter. 

Three months after Love is News was released, Café Metropole arrived in theaters. This time out, Power would portray a Princeton grad adrift in Paris. He has lost what remained of his inheritance at Baccarat and is coerced by a scheming restaurateur into pretending to be a Russian prince and wooing an American heiress. Adolphe Menjou as the manager of the Café Metropole, has a the plum role and the wittiest lines; Young is the high-strung heiress who’s mad for the fake prince - and more stunning than ever in a collection of fairytale gowns designed by Gwen Wakeling. The glamorous Parisian setting and urbane patter, along with a gossamer gloss that seems to dust the screen, all hint at an intention to suggest a touch of Lubitsch.

Loretta Young and Tyrone Power in Café Metropole

Café Metropole is as delectable an indulgence as fresh strawberries with a dollop of mascarpone and a glass of champagne. The viewer is treated to a daydream world of romantic fantasy and fun created around the impossibly beautiful and elegant young couple Power and Young portray. There’s very little not to enjoy and much to like - including Menjou at his most suave, adding mischief as the rascally restaurateur, Charles Winninger and Helen Westley lending gleeful comedic support as Young’s father and aunt, and Gregory Ratoff elbowing his way into the fray as the real Russian prince.

Café Metropole and Love is News are above-average examples of the old studio practice of keeping their stars busy – and visible – on moderately budgeted pictures in between larger-scale productions.  Films like these gave actors the opportunity to hone their craft, develop their style and gain confidence in front of the camera as their careers continued to be guided and developed. 

The Power-Young duo became immensely popular with audiences, perhaps enhanced by rumors and press reports that they were romantically involved; Young confessed decades later that she had been crazy about him and it has been written that Zanuck warned Power away from her.  For whatever reason, Zanuck next cast Power (as a real prince) opposite skating star Sonja Henie in the musical trifle Thin Ice before reuniting him with Young. The Hollywood rumor mill would soon link Power to Henie; it seems he had a habit of romancing his leading ladies – and ladies in bit parts and ladies among the extras, but little came of these liaisons until 1938.

Second Honeymoon (1937), hmmmmm...

Second Honeymoon was the fourth Power-Young pairing in less than a year, their last romantic comedy, and maybe Fox should’ve given the formula a rest while they were ahead. Directed by Walter Lang, best known for his colorful Fox musicals of the ‘40s and ‘50s and for directing three of the later Shirley Temple vehicles, the picture is – well, chaos. Poorly scripted and lacking a cohesive structure, it is also overstuffed with characters, some of them annoying. Briefly, it’s the story of a divorced couple (Power and Young) who run into each other in Miami not long after she has remarried (Lyle Talbot).  He (a wealthy playboy) wants her back and, in the end, after endless lunatic hi-jinks, he gets her back. Had Second Honeymoon been better written, directed, and cast (Stuart Irwin is insufferable, Marjorie Weaver isn’t much easier to take and Claire Trevor’s great talent is wasted), it might’ve achieved the underrated gem status of Love is News and Café Metropole. But no. Young is shrill and not especially sympathetic through most of it. Power is… gorgeous – unbelievably so - and charming. And that’s all there is to say about Second Honeymoon.

Loretta Young as Eugénie and Tyrone Power as Ferdinand de Lesseps in Suez (1938)

Power need not have worried too much, he had gained self-assurance and experience and was about to move on to bigger and better things; his next film would be the disaster epic In Old Chicago (1937), nominated for six Oscars and winner of two. It was the hit film that introduced the team of Tyrone Power and his next serial co-star, Alice Faye, to the public. 

In 1938 Tyrone Power and Loretta Young would star in their final film together, Suez, an opulent historical fiction about the building of the Suez Canal, directed by Alan Dwan.  Power was cast as Ferdinand de Lesseps, the engineer who conceived and constructed the canal, and Young was cast as Countess (later Empress) Eugénie. Also featured, as the tomboy granddaughter of a French soldier in Egypt, was the French actress, Annabella. She and Power became passionately involved during filming and would marry, much to Darryl Zanuck's horror, in 1939.

In the years that Power and Young were Fox co-stars, they also posed together for many studio portraits. Theirs are some of the most glamorous and evocative Hollywood portraits of the 1930s and were shot by some of the best of the studio photographers. These dramatic photographs served to fuel and reinforce the admiration and fantasies of fans for the great stars of the age. Decades later, Young admitted that these sessions had fulfilled some of her own fantasies.

Tyrone Power and Loretta Young by Hurrell

Though their careers took them in different directions, Tyrone Power and Loretta Young remained lifelong friends. At the time of his death in 1958, she was at work on her popular long-running TV anthology, "The Loretta Young Show." As it happened, Power's funeral was held on a day when she was in production on the series. She hurried from the set once her scenes were finished and attended the service in the Oriental costume she'd been wearing while shooting.

On May 31, 1937, Tyrone Power and Loretta Young had their hand and footprints commemorated in cement during a joint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood
 ~

This post is my entry in POWER-MAD, a blogathon celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tyrone Power's birth. Click here for links to all participating blogs.
↧
↧

Giveaway: Signed Centennial Limited Edition of Romina Power's "Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power"

May 13, 2014, 3:20 pm
$
0
0


Update: A drawing was held Tuesday morning, May 20, at 7:00am, and winners names were drawn at random. Dennis, who lives in Washington, won the autographed copy of Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power and Dominique, of Texas, won the signed "Zorro" poster by Rob Kelly. Thanks to all who participated in this giveaway, it was by far the most popular of the many held here at Reel Life - and thanks to Evelyn Eman Delmar and Romina Power for their generosity...

Soon after I posted the announcement for our Power-Madblogathon on Reel Life, I heard from a woman named Evelyn Eman Delmar who conducts interviews with authors and reviews newly released books on an internet program called Book·ed. She is also a good friend of Tyrone Power's children, is involved in events celebrating his centennial and has been working with Romina, Tyrone's eldest, on the updated and expanded English-language edition of her book, Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power. More than 25 years went into researching and writing the book, Evelyn told me, and revisiting stories and memories of her father while working on it was an emotional experience for Romina. The book takes a candid look at Tyrone Power's life and also tells of his children, who lost their world-famous father when they were very young, and how they came to terms with their loss. 1,000 Limited First Edition copies have been printed in honor of Tyrone Power's centennial and as an homage to his passion for collecting First Edition books. Searching for My Father also contains more than 80 photographs, many that haven't appeared in print before.

Romina Power
Several months ago I read an e-book version of Romina's memoir of her father. Evelyn has since told me that that version was produced by someone who had access to an early draft but didn't have Romina's permission to publish; it has since been removed from circulation. Though it was rough, the e-book was fascinating and I can't wait to read Romina's final edition. 

Certain that interest in Searching for My Father would be high among classic film buffs, I mentioned to Evelyn that I was interested in hosting a giveaway, a random drawing, for a copy of the centennial First Edition. She and Romina liked my idea and agreed to provide a copy for the contest - a copy signed by Romina...

And so, on Tuesday, May 20, I will hold a random drawing. First prize will be a First Edition copy of Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power signed by Romina Power. Second prize will be this 11" x 14" poster by illustrator/graphic designer Rob Kelly - signed by the artist:

Artwork by Rob Kelly
Interested? Of course you are! To enter, please send an email to ladyevesidwich@gmail.com and be sure to include the title of your favorite Tyrone Power film - that's a requirement to be entered in the drawing. One entry per household, please. Winner names will be drawn at 7:00am PDT on the 20th and the winners will be notified immediately. 

Tyrone, Taryn and Romina Power in the mid-1950s
↧

FABULOUS FILMS OF THE '50S: THE PAJAMA GAME (1957)

May 24, 2014, 11:36 pm
$
0
0

The Classic Movie Blog Association is hosting a Fabulous Films of the '50s blogathon from May 22 - 26. This is my entry for the event - click here for links to all participating member blogs.
~
 
Doris Day began to make her way as a big band singer in 1939. She scored several million-selling records during her singing career, beginning with "Sentimental Journey," her hit with Les Brown’s band in 1945. Her next million-seller came in 1948 with “It’s Magic,” but her biggest hits were songs from two of her popular mid-‘50s films, “Secret Love” from Calamity Jane (1953) and “Que Sera, Sera” from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955). Day’s last hit single, Everybody Loves a Lover was released in 1959. Coincidentally, Pillow Talk, a frothy sex comedy, and a new direction in type for her, was also released in 1959 and it would change the course of her career. For the next four years she would reign as queen of the box office starring in bubbly romcoms, most often opposite Rock Hudson.

While she was still churning out hit records in the '50s, Day starred in a movie that was all but forgotten once her screen persona shifted and she became the super-feminine, stylishly gowned and bouffantly coiffed icon of the early ‘60s. The Pajama Game (1957) is an overlooked and underappreciated pièce de résistance of a musical that contains one of Day’s most captivating performances – along with 11 songs, quite a few of them show-stoppers…and more.

The story revolves around labor-management tensions at the Sleeptite Pajama Factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where union members are pushing for a 7½ cent per hour raise while management is steadfastly ignoring them. Brand-new and hunky factory superintendent Sid Sorokin (John Raitt) arrives just as workers are becoming more vocal about the wage increase. He and the head of the employee’s grievance committee, “Babe” Williams (Doris Day), first glimpsed as a long, cool woman in a blue smock, become smitten. The labor dispute comes between them until Sid’s ingenuity paves the way for a compromise. That’s the story, but it’s in the telling that the tale comes to life.

"Babe" bites into the apple - and goes on singing "I'm Not at All in Love."

And this yarn is spun with verve and style, highlighted by a superb score and inventive, energetic dance numbers. 

The Pajama Game opened on Broadway in 1954. A Tony-winning smash co-directed by George Abbott and Jerome Robbins and, blessed with a score by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross that included several songs destined for the Hit Parade, it was 27-year-old Bob Fosse’s first choreography assignment on the Great White Way. The show made his reputation and brought him the first of 13 Tony Awards. When the musical was adapted to the screen under the co-direction of Abbott and Stanley Donen, Fosse was tapped to choreograph his first film. The jazzy/sexy style, distinctive moves and costuming touches that are well known today as Fosse trademarks were introduced in a Carol Haney showcase, “Steam Heat,” a number that takes place at a gathering of Sleeptite's union members.

Signature Fosse in show-stopping "Steam Heat," angular moves with knees turned in - plus bowler hats. The song was a hit for '50s recording star Patti Page ("the singing rage") during the spring and summer of 1954.

Making their movie debuts with Fosse were leading man John Raitt and supporting actress/featured dancer and all-around dynamo Carol Haney who had originated their roles on Broadway. Haney, as Gladys, a Sleeptite secretary, became a stage star and won a Tony for her performance. Raitt, who may have lacked some of the onscreen ease of his contemporary, Gordon MacRae, seems to me perfectly cast as dedicated and sincere, he-manly but slightly unsure Sid. Just as crucial, his sweet baritone is a match for Day's sunny tones. Their duet on "There Once Was a Man," a rollicking ode to falling madly in love, is sheer joy for its exuberance -



That's two show-stoppers...and counting. There's another Carol Haney showcase, this one a long measure tango, "Hernando's Hideaway"...

Just knock three times
and whisper low
that you and I
were sent by Joe

Then strike a match
and then you'll know
you're at
Hernando's Hideaway

Olé! 

...and there's the wistful ballad, "Hey There," sung first by Raitt and later reprised by Day, that became a pop standard.

Sleeptite's colorful factory floor

Oscar-winning (My Fair Lady, The Picture of Dorian Gray)cinematographer Harry Stradling, Sr., deserves much credit for The Pajama Game’s visual dazzle. Stradling got his start through his uncle Walter, one-time Mary Pickford cameraman, and worked his way up behind the camera, first in Hollywood and then in Europe. He returned to the U.S. and built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s top cinematographers, noted for his fluid camera work, emphasis on high style and facility with color. Stradling’s 1950s films are emblematic of the glorious use of Technicolor during that decade, and he was Oscar-nominated for his work on both Guys and Dolls (1955) and Auntie Mame (1958).

Setting The Pajama Game’s scene and creating its rich, vivid look is the handiwork of art director Malcolm Bert. Oscar-nominated for A Star is Born (1954) and Auntie Mame, Bert’s other memorable projects of the ‘50s include East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, both in 1955.

Sleeptite's secretarial offices
 
Hernando's Hideaway

Sleeptite workers hold a rally to demand their 7½ cents

Though The Pajama Game spawned three breakout songs, none were hits for Doris Day – the popular versions had been recorded by others while the show was still on Broadway, long before the movie went into production. Patti Page’s “Steam Heat” rose to #8 on the Billboard charts, Archie Bleyer’s “Hernando’s Hideaway” reached #2 and Rosemary Clooney’s version of “Hey There” climbed to #1.

What Doris Day brought to the movie was bigger than her apple pie sex appeal and a buttery voice capable of producing hit records. In his new book, Dangerous Rhythm (Oxford University Press, 2014), author Richard Barrios writes, “The Pajama Game gave definitive proof that movie-star casting can sometimes be the best thing to happen to a filmed version of a Broadway show…Day’s natural physicality enabled her to move from speaking to singing not only smoothly, but with a uniquely vigorous conviction…” She lights up the screen, delivering one of her best performances as strong, confident - and sexy - "Babe."

"there once was a woman..."

Had The Pajama Gamebeen filmed just two years earlier, it might well have been a bigger box office success for, by 1957, Hollywood musicals were on the wane. No matter, it survives and endures, a charming musical snapshot of high-spirited post-war America in the fabulous ‘50s.
~

↧

"Platinum Blonde and Beyond" Revisited for MGM's 90th Birthday

June 25, 2014, 10:00 pm
$
0
0

From June 26 - 28, in honor of the 90th anniversary of the founding of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Silver Scenes is hosting the MGM Blogathon.This post, originally published in 2011, has been updated and re-published as my contribution for the blogathon. Click here for links to all participating blogs. 

~  


It was her trademark, her calling card and, in 1931, the name of a film for which she received third billing. Platinum Blonde was originally intended as a vehicle for top-billed star Loretta Young but, by the time the film was released, its title had changed and changed again until it was an outright reference to pale-haired co-star Jean Harlow. It was not Harlow's breakout picture, that came in 1930 with Hell's Angels, nor is it among her well-known classics, but Platinum Blondewas pivotal - it proclaimed her stardom.

Cagney and Harlow, The Public Enemy
In 1931, the 20-year-old starlet was still under an oppressive five-year contract with Howard Hughes, producer/director of Hell's Angels. She had proven her appeal in the film, but Hughes had no projects in the works for her and most Hollywood insiders believed he was mismanaging her career. Harlow's then-friend/future husband Paul Bern arranged for her loan to MGM for The Secret Six (1931), an underworld drama with Wallace Beery and not-yet-famous Clark Gable. Immediately after, she was loaned out to Universal for an unsympathetic role in The Iron Man(1931), a boxing drama with Lew Ayres. While still on that project, she went back to MGM for retakes on The Secret Six and began work on her next film, this time on loan to Warner Brothers for the gangster classic The Public Enemy (1931), with James Cagney. Her fourth film in five months was for Fox, Goldie(1931), a comedy with Spencer Tracy. Of these films only The Public Enemy was an unqualified hit, and it was a blockbuster, but it was Cagney who became the overnight star...Harlow's allure was noted, but her performance was widely panned.

With an assist from New Jersey mobster Abner Zwillman, who was involved with Harlow, a two-picture deal with Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures was secured. Zwillman made sure the actress earned quite a bit more than what she eked out from Howard Hughes. Harlow's first film for Columbia was to be called Gallagher and was one of several films of the emerging "newspaper" genre. It was a romantic comedy about an everyman reporter who falls for and marries a high living socialite, but is blind to the love of his best friend and fellow reporter, a gal pal named Gallagher.
 
Loretta Young
Contracted to star as Gallagher, was luminous Loretta Young, already a movie veteran at only 18. She'd started in pictures at age four with an uncredited bit part as a "Fairy" in The Primrose Ring (1917) starring Mae Murray. At eight she'd appeared as an "Arab Child" in Valentino's The Shiek(1921) and at 15 co-starred with silent screen legend Lon Chaney in Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928). In 1929 she, along with her sister Sally Blane, Jean Arthur and others, was named one of Hollywood's "WAMPAS Baby Stars." By the time she came to Gallagher Young had already appeared in more than 30 films.

Gallagherhad begun as an assignment for director Edward Buzzell (At the Circus, Go West, Song of the Thin Man, Neptune's Daughter) and development of the project was nearly complete by the time Frank Capra, then a promising director at Columbia, took over.

Columbia studio head Harry Cohn with director Frank Capra
Capra was on his way up in 1931, but still a few years away from the streak of Oscar nominations and wins that would mark his career. He had been scheduled to make Forbidden with Barbara Stanwyck, but that project was shelved for the time being and he moved on to Gallagher.Considering the filmographies of Buzzell and Capra, this was fortuitous.

On loan to Columbia from RKO-Pathé to co-star in Forbidden was recent Broadway-to-Hollywood transplant Robert Williams. With that film on the shelf, Williams was cast as the male lead, a down to earth newspaperman and charmer named Stew Smith, in Gallagher.

Jean Harlow and Robert Williams
Williams had been on the New York stage for nearly ten years when Hollywood beckoned. He'd starred in the great hit of the era, "Abie's Irish Rose," the longest running play (1922 - 1927) in Broadway history up to that time. In 1930 he was cast in Donald Ogden Stewart's "Rebound," which was a moderate success. But sound had  permanently arrived, and Hollywood was desperate for stage plays, actors and writers. When RKO-Pathé bought the film rights to the play, Williams repeated his role in Rebound(1931) opposite Ina Claire. He was quickly cast in two more productions, The Common Law (1931) with Constance Bennett and Joel McCrea and Devotion(1931) with Ann Harding and Leslie Howard. At the time he was tapped to co-star in Gallagher, Williams was being called "a new comedy sensation."

Another noteworthy contributor on the film was screenwriter Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can't Take it With You, Lost Horizon) who, though credited only with dialogue, reportedly penned the script that had captured Capra's attention early on. The combination of an appealing cast (shimmery, sexy, pre-code Harlow is an eyeful), an up-and-coming director, along with a sharp script, delivered a box office hit - a film that has been called Capra's most underrated.

By the time the picture was screened for its final preview audience, it had been retitled The Gilded Cage, referring to protagonist Stew Smith's predicament and shifting focus from the Gallagher character. At the same time, a PR-fueled craze for peroxide-blonde hair swept the country and further heightened interest in bombshell Jean Harlow, recently tagged "the platinum blonde." Within a week of its final preview, the film had a new and lasting title, Platinum Blonde, though the plot had nothing to do with hair color and Harlow was still billed third, behind Young and Williams.

Red-headed Woman (1932)
With Platinum Blonde, Jean Harlow became a star. A few months later, The Beast of the City (1932) brought her first consistently good reviews and in April 1932, aided by the maneuvering of Paul Bern and Irving Thalberg, she signed a seven-year contract with MGM. Her first film for Hollywood's preeminent movie studio was Red-Headed Woman (1932), and it was tailored to her style and personality with some added emphasis on humor to soften the perception of her overt sexuality. Jean Harlow made 13 more films for MGM, all of them popular, several of them classics, and was a top movie star for the rest of her very short life.

Loretta Young's acting career covered more than 75 years, but her ascent to stardom only began in earnest when she signed with 20th Century Fox in the mid-'30's. She won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance in RKO's The Farmer's Daughter(1947) and later won three Best Actress Emmys for her long-running (1953 - 1961) anthology series on TV.

Capra and Riskin went on to make a string of classics together. It's significant that the primary characters and themes of Platinum Blondewould be revisited by the pair. The two men next worked on American Madness (1932) and then came Lady for a Day(1933) bringing Oscar nods to each of them. It was the following year, with It Happened One Night(1934), that Capra's and Riskin's reputations were made. The film won five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Writing/Adaptation. In his career, Riskin was nominated for a total of five Oscars, all were for Capra films. Capra was nominated for six Oscars and won three; all winning films were those on which he'd collaborated with Riskin. Their first success working together had been Platinum Blonde...

Robert Williams
Watching Platinum Blonde for the first time, I quickly realized that the male lead delivered the standout performance and provided the heart of the film. I wondered who Robert Williams was and why I hadn't seen his name before. He was clearly talented, charismatic and at ease in front of a camera - yet I'd never heard of him. There was a very good reason.

When Platinum Blondepremiered Williams received glowing reviews. He must have realized that his career was about to soar, but he had little time to enjoy his new cachet. Just as the film was opening, Williams took a trip to Catalina Island, a popular getaway for movie folk in those days. While he was there, his appendix ruptured and by the time he managed to return to the mainland and get into a hospital, he'd developed peritonitis. He underwent surgery but died on November 3, four days after Platinum Blonde's release and on the same day Variety singled out his performance and predicted a promising Hollywood future.

Loretta Young, Robert Williams and, in the background, Jean Harlow in Platinum Blonde
↧
↧

LIGHTS, CAMERA, MUSIC!

June 30, 2014, 12:00 am
$
0
0

 SF SYMPHONY ANNOUNCES 2014/2015 FILM SERIES

Last year the San Francisco Symphony launched its first film series, film nights at Davies Symphony Hall where the classics played onscreen while the orchestra performed their scores live. It was a runaway success, with sold-out screenings and glowing reviews (one of those rave reviews was mine). Thus, the way was paved for another series, and the symphony has just announced the schedule of films set for its 2014/2015 season,"From ruby slippers to Brando at his best, cinematic greats are made even greater when accompanied live by the San Francisco Symphony...":

Scarecrow, Lion, Dorothy and Tin Man

On September 27, the symphony's 2014/2015 film series will kick off with a celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz (1939). The orchestra will accompany the beloved classic, led by conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos.

The Godfather, Part I, Connie'swedding

January 10, 1915, brings the U.S. premiere of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) with live orchestral accompaniment. Conductor Justin Freer will lead the symphony in Nino Rota's masterful, unforgettable - and Oscar-winning - score.

Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain:What a glorious feelin'

"Gotta Dance" will be the theme on March 28, when clips from the musicals An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952) andBrigadoon (1954) will be featured as well as the ballroom scene from Madame Bovary (1949) and "the waltz with spaceships" from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Joshua Gersen will conduct.

Stanley Kubrick's 2001

The final series event will showcase the film scores of Oscar and Grammy-winning composer Tan Dun for three martial arts films, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002) and Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet (2006). Scenes from the films will play on the big screen while Damian Iorio leads the symphony in performing their scores.

Zhang Yimou's Hero

The symphony will also host a special Halloween film night on October 31 this year, with the 1920 silent version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, starring John Barrymore. Todd Wilson will provide live organ accompaniment.
 
Barrymore as Mr. Hyde

For more information about the the SF Symphony's 2014/2015 Film Series, click here.

↧

About Memory, Movies, More...

July 13, 2014, 8:39 am
$
0
0

I’ve been noticing lately that my mind has developed a stubborn habit of drifting, and one of the places it seems to wander most often is into that vast mental warehouse where my memories are kept. I would say that this “mind drift” is worrisome except that it is so frequently pleasurable.

For example, the other day I found myself remembering Strawberries Romanoff.

When I was in my 20s and harbored aspirations to be quite a bit more sophisticated than I was, I mastered a few snazzy recipes, simple but compliment-inducing dishes I’d whip up for small dinners or buffet/potluck occasions. My default dessert for a while was Strawberries Romanoff. I haven’t made the dish for decades but, when the thought of it popped into my head recently, so did distinct memories of berries drenched in Grand Marnier being whirled into a mixture of softened ice cream and whipped cream…and served with chilled champagne.

Champagne.  Also the title of one of Hitchcock's late silent films, a comedy about a headstrong “champagne heiress” who has to get a job. But not for too long.

Champagne (1928)

And in Casablanca, Rick and Ilsa fall in love in Paris, sharing more than a few glasses of the fizzy stuff during their brief romance.  At La Belle Aurore, when the Nazi army is about to occupy the city, Sam plays As Time Goes By and Rick pours a glass of champagne for Ilsa: "Henri wants us to finish this bottle, and then three more. He says he'll water his garden with champagne before he'll let the Germans drink it."

Casablanca (1942)

13 years later, in Manhattan, “The Girl” who sets her neighbor’s imagination - and his pulse - racing in Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch had a yen for champagne…with potato chips.

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar-winning Gigi (1958) even featured a song about “The Night They Invented Champagne.”



And then there's James Bond. As well-known as 007 is for drinking his vodka Martinis “shaken, not stirred,” he has been equally fond of champagne and it has been noted that at least 22 Bond films show the man drinking champagne some 35 times, usually Bollinger but not infrequently, Dom Perignon.

Goldfinger (1964)

A Benedictine monk, Dom Pierre Perignon was a cellar master at an abbey near Epernay during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. He didn’t invent champagne, but he did much to upgrade its production. In the beginning, the bubbles in the wine were considered a flaw in the fermenting process. When he couldn’t eliminate the fizz, Dom Perignon found a way to regulate it.  He also implemented the use of thicker glass bottles that better tolerated pressure (champagne bottles were notoriously prone to burst then, and when one exploded, a chain reaction often followed) and rope snares to keep the corks in. Owing to the volatility of champagne bottles in the early days of its popularity, prices rose. By the time improved production practices solved the pressure problem, champagne had developed its reputation as a luxury - and remained luxuriously priced.

"There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is champagne" - Bette Davis

To return to Strawberries Romanoff, the inspiration (which may or may not ever have been featured in a film) for this ramble, the dish's history has been disputed, but the most widely circulated story places its beginnings near Hollywood in a restaurant belonging to "a rogue of uncertain origin."

Mike Romanoff

"Prince" Michael Romanoff (born Hershel Geguzin in 1890 in Lithuania) was a colorful celebrity-restaurateur during Hollywood's glory years. He opened Romanoffs on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills in 1939, bankrolled in part by the likes of Bogart, Cagney, Chaplin, Zanuck, Robert Benchley and Joe Schenk.

Romanoffs became one of the great supper clubs to the stars of the era, along with The Brown Derby, Chasen's and Perino's. As much as the restaurant was a haunt for the legends of the silver screen, it was also a spot where deals were hammered out by agents and studio moguls of the time. It is even said that dueling gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons finally made their peace at Romanoffs.

Romanoffs 1957: Gable, Heflin, Cooper and Stewart

Bogart, who would forever occupy the establishment's Table #1, is reported to have ordered the same lunch there daily: two Scotch & sodas, an omelet and French toast followed by coffee and a brandy. Errol Flynn supposedly hosted lavish feasts of suckling pig at the restaurant. And this memorable photo was snapped when two popular sex symbols of the 1950s were seated next to each other at Romanoffs one night.

Sophia and Jayne at Romanoffs,circa 1958

Mike Romanoff had been a member of Bogart's original "Rat Pack" and remained a part of the group when it transformed following Bogie's death and Frank Sinatra took up the mantle as leader of "The Clan." By 1962, when Romanoffs closed, Prince Mike was rarely at the restaurant, often traveling with Sinatra and company on film shoots or to Las Vegas.


Mike Romanoff (left) with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra

As for the origins of the recipe for Strawberries Romanoff, some say that French culinary genius Escoffier actually created the dessert (as "Strawberries Americaine Style") while he was chef at London's Carlton Hotel at the turn of the century. The implication is that Mike Romanoff simply appropriated the recipe and changed its name. Others suggest the dish may have originated with another French master chef, Marie Antoine Careme, a proponent of grande cuisine who lived 100 years before Escoffier and was, at different times, chef to Napoleon, England's Prince Regent (later George IV), one of the Rothschilds and Tsar Alexander I of Russia, a Romanoff.

~
 
Strawberries Romanoff
 The Recipe

Wash, stem and slice 2 pints of fresh strawberries and combine them with 1/4 cup sugar and 1/4 cup Grand Marnier. Chill for an hour or so. Put a pint of vanilla ice cream in the refrigerator to soften and whip one cup of heavy cream until soft peaks form. Fold the softened ice cream into the whipped cream and gently add the berry mixture. Serve instantly. And don't forget the champagne. Yum.
↧

SPELLBINDER: The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

August 4, 2014, 9:12 pm
$
0
0

Hollywood films about Hollywood behind the scenes didn’t begin or end with Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), but none has painted a more glamorous/gimlet-eyed portrait or better mirrored the town’s notion of itself at a particular moment. It was mid-20th century, just as the old order - the studio system - was about to collapse. David Raksin, composer of the film’s sinuous score, characterized this cinematic self-reflection as “…an affirmative appraisal, one that captures the spirit of the time and place with cunning eloquence; and when it looks at the scars and wrinkles, it is with a lover’s eye. In 1952 we were still infatuated with our little world…”

"Some of the best movies are made by people working together who hate each other's guts." - Jonathan Shields

A phone rings insistently as Raksin’s brassy, bluesy theme recedes and the film opens. Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), formerly a major Hollywood player now relocated in Paris, is reaching out, through a transatlantic operator, to those who were once his closest collaborators, three people he mentored and exploited on his way up. None will listen to him, not his ex-partner, director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), nor his one-time lover, leading lady Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), or James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), the novelist he brought to Hollywood to adapt his best-selling book to film.

After a string of box office flops, Shields is down - and in exile - but not quite out. He’s hatched a new idea for a film but, as his aide, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), tells all three when they gather in his studio lot office much later that night, “On the name Jonathan Shields, it's impossible to raise five cents, but on Fred Amiel, Georgia Lorrison, James Lee Bartlow, I can raise two million dollars by tomorrow noon.” No one is swayed. But Pebbel goes on, repeating that he knows they’ll never agree to work with Shields again, adding, “You've done enough for him already, then, vice versa maybe."

A series of three extended, individual flashbacks begins with Fred Amiel’s recollection of meeting Jonathan 18 years earlier at the funeral of his father, Hugo Shields, a ruined movie mogul. The reminiscences end more recently, when James Lee Bartlow discovered that it was Shields who set in motion events that inadvertently led to the death of his wife.  Returning to the present, the transatlantic call connects. Though all three stand up and file out of the room, they pause at an extension phone in an outer office and begin to eavesdrop as Jonathan starts pitching his idea to Harry.

"They're gone. Yeah, I'm sure it's a great idea, but Jonathan..." - Harry Pebbel

When Vincente Minnelli read Charles Schnee’s script, he was immediately taken with the story, observing that “All that one loved and hated about Hollywood was distilled in the screenplay.” He found it“harsh and cynical,” but also "strangely romantic."  Lavishly mounted and meticulously detailed, the films of Vincente Minnelli are a testament to his grasp and mastery of mise-en-scène. For The Bad and the Beautiful, he conceived a bustling company town drenched in gloss and deep shadows (courtesy of Robert Surtees). With the story covering a historical period of 18 years as well as depicting on-the-set movie production, 110 sets were used, 10 of them for scenes within scenes.

"If you dream, dream big" - Jonathan Shields

An impressive cast was assembled to portray an array of characters meant to intentionally resemble real-life Hollywood movers and shakers. Producer John Houseman later admitted that everyone involved with the project was amused by “so much ‘inside’ material full of private and not so private jokes and references.” Jonathan Shields, the brash “genius boy,” recalls David O. Selznick, whose once enviable movie career had already gone into steep decline, but also nods in the direction of Darryl F. Zanuck, who had decamped to Europe by this time, and Orson Welles, Houseman's one-time collaborator. Georgia Lorrison is loosely modeled on Diana Barrymore, John Barrymore’s wayward daughter. Harry Pebbel may be patterned after MGM exec Harry Rapf. Rosemary Bartlow (Gloria Grahame) bears passing resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s high-maintenance Southern belle wife, Zelda. Henry Whitfield (Leo G. Carroll) and his assistant (Kathleen Freeman) spoof Alfred and Alma Hitchcock. Even minor incidents suggest real-life people and events. Minnelli devised a party scene to include a girl (Peggy King) sitting next to the pianist; she is singing a song but no one notices. This bit of business alludes to something his wife, Judy Garland, was known to do - regularly - at Hollywood parties. The more climactic scene in which James Lee Bartwell climbs the side of a mountain to the site of the wreckage where his wife’s plane has crashed also echoes history; Clark Gable did the same when his wife Carole Lombard’s plane crashed on a mountainside.

Screening The Bad and the Beautiful: Vincente Minnelli, far left, and John Houseman, far right

According to Houseman, a palpable “atmosphere of success” existed on the set of The Bad and the Beautiful from the day shooting began.  Success would follow the film through its previews (only 1 negative review in 160), its premiere and beyond.  It would become one of the top grossing films of 1952 and was the year’s big winner on Oscar night, winning five of its six nominations. The awards won were for supporting actress (Gloria Grahame), screenplay (Charles Schnee), cinematography (Robert Surtees), art/set decoration (Cedric Gibbons, et al) and costume design (Helen Rose). Only Kirk Douglas, who was nominated for Best Actor, did not win. Bizarrely, the film was not so much as nominated for Best Picture, the only film to win so many awards and not be nominated for the top prize. Just as odd, neither director Vincente Minnelli nor composer David Raksin garnered nominations. Oscar politics, no doubt, for without Minnelli and Raksin the film would likely possess too much Bad and not enough Beautiful.

Raksin not only composed but also arranged, orchestrated and conducted his score for The Bad and the Beautiful. Early on, when he had completed his composition, he played it on piano for his friend Andre Previn. Previn was puzzled, later writing that when he first heard the tune it seemed to him that “the harmonies tumbled over one another, and the melody was a snake.” When Raksin later presented the piece to Houseman and Minnelli, he took care to play a recording made with a studio orchestra to better convey the full effect of his music. They didn’t know what to make of it but, fortunately for Raksin, Betty Comden and Adoph Green happened to be in the room at the time and both were dazzled (as was Previn when he heard the orchestral version). Houseman and Minnelli instantly came around.

Composer David Raksin

John Houseman had charged Raksin with composing a “siren song,” a theme that would evoke the special charms of Machiavellian Jonathan Shields along with the dissonant allure of Hollywood itself. Raksin reconstructs and repeats his main theme throughout the picture, and the result is endlessly intriguing. Not only is the music a siren song par excellence, but it also underscores and enhances the bittersweet mood of the entire tale as well as each of the three flashback vignettes within it.

There is more to Raksin’s score for The Bad and the Beautiful than its bewitching main theme, and certain of these musical interludes provide a glimpse into the history of movie music. During Fred Amiel’s flashback, the film follows his and Jonathan’s early assignments on quickie Westerns and B-horror fare, and Raksin offers clever takes on the musical cliches of ‘30s cowboy movies and ‘40s horror films (Roy Webb for Val Lewton, in particular). He also crafted an homage to Max Steiner’s Gone with the Wind score during the James Lee Bartwell flashback. 

The Bad and the Beautiful ends with a legendary and ambiguous final shot: Amiel, Lorrison and Bartlow listen silently and intently as Jonathan explains his movie concept to Harry Pebbel.  This scene leaves it very much to Raksin’s music to indicate an answer to the question the entire audience is mulling at this instant, “Will they work with him again or not?” Raksin thought this a brave gamble on the part of Houseman and Minnelli and considered that this was the moment where the siren song he devised “…either works, or the film ends on an indeterminate note. But together, the image and the music combine to leave us wondering whether the three skeptics are not once again hooked...” Raksin titled this final variation on the main theme "The Spellbinder."


"Look, folks, you've got to give the Devil his due." - Harry Pebbel

David Raksin’s score for the Bad and the Beautiful is one of the most mesmerizing and identifiable movie themes ever. In fact, so intimately intertwined are imagery and music that it's impossible not to be reminded of the score at the mere mention of the movie's title. Raksin scored several other popular films in the course of his long career, including another enduring classic with an equally haunting and recognizable theme, Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944).  Raksin was Oscar-nominated for Forever Amber(1944) and Separate Tables (1958), nevertheless, the Academy badly bungled the music category in 1944 and 1952 when it overlooked two film score masterpieces.

"There are no great men, buster! There's only men." - Lila, bit actress

Georgia Lorrison is one of the two best roles of Lana Turner’s career (the other is Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice). Under the director’s steady hand(“Minnelli knew exactly what he wanted,” she would remember), Turner gave a fine, emotionally resonant performance as volatile, talented Georgia Lorrison. For the finale of Georgia’s flashback, Minnelli came up with a stunning sequence that put an operatic exclamation point to the end of her relationship with Jonathan Shields. Minnelli shot the scene in which Georgia speeds away from Jonathan’s mansion and into a rainstorm, growing more hysterical and erratic by the second, in a single take.

The staging for the shot was complicated and took weeks to set up. In the end, a car’s chassis was attached to huge springs fastened to a plank platform. Some of the crew handled buckets of water and hoses to simulate rain, others were assigned to push the platform around and set the car in motion. The camera was positioned on a dolly that would provide enough mobility to capture Georgia’s breakdown from many angles.  Lana Turner knew this was her big scene and was surprised when Minnelli, rather than give her specific direction as he normally did, told her, “It’s in your hands.” Drawing on her rocky personal life, at 31 she’d already discarded three husbands and been unceremoniously dumped by Tyrone Power, Turner poured all of it into the scene.

 "Someday, you'll learn to love 'em and leave 'em." - Fred Amiel to Jonathan Shields



Kirk Douglas gained a firm foothold on the Hollywood A-list thanks to The Bad and the Beautiful,and there he remained for the better part of the next two decades. He and Minnelli had worked beautifully together (“I was the teacher’s pet,” he told author Mark Griffin 50+ years later) on their first outing and would collaborate on two more films, Lust for Life in 1956 and Two Weeks in Another Town in 1962. Minnelli, Douglas believed, “was a genius and for whatever reason, that has never been properly recognized.”

~

The Classic Film & TV Café is hosting a Build Your Own Blogathon,featuring 20 bloggers over 20 days. Each successive post links to the previous through a common element. My post on The Bad and the Beautiful links to Rick’s post at the Caféon Jubal(1956) through composer David Raksin.  Next up is Christian of Silver Screen Modes, who explores Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956). Our posts are linked by actor Kirk Douglas.


Notes: 

The Bad and the Beautiful is included on every list ever compiled of the top movies about Hollywood. It also bears the distinction of being included among Martin Scorsese’s 85 Films You Need to See to Know Anything About Film. 

Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth by Lana Turner (E.P. Dutton, 1982) 
The Ragman’s Son by Kirk Douglas (Simon and Schuster, 1988)
“The Bad and the Beautiful – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack,” liner notes by David Raksin (MGM/Turner Classic Movies, 1996)
A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli by Mark Griffin (Da Capo Press, 2010)
↧
Search

Hair-raising Tales

September 29, 2014, 5:56 pm
$
0
0

THE POUF

Léonard Autié (Monsieur Léonard) was the imaginative 18thcentury hairdresser responsible for creating the wildly elaborate coiffures of Marie Antoinette. The rococo hairstyles he concocted during her heyday were called poufs, and several of the fantastical coifs he whipped up for her rose 36 inches or more from the top of her head.  In her offbeat and whimsical Encyclopedia of the Exquisite, Jessica Kerwin Jenkins describes one of Autié’s first important hairstyles for Marie Antoinette, the pouf d’ inoculation - a celebration of Louis XIV’s vaccination: “a rising sun and a serpent holding a club as he shimmied up an olive tree nestled into her hair. The sun symbolized the king. The olive tree stood for peace. The slinky serpent represented medicine, with its club to clobber disease.”

A Léonard Autié confection

Autié had been a young barber from the provinces who found his way to Paris with not much more than a shell comb to his name. He quickly made a reputation for himself as a stylist working in the theater.  By the end of his life he could look back with satisfaction, having been the premier hairdresser in France before the overthrow of the monarchy, establishing a hairdressing academy and studio, operating the first theater in the country to produce Italian operas year-round, and, no less an accomplishment, having gotten out of France with his head intact once the revolution came.

Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette

In 1938, MGM released the extravagant historical epic Marie Antoinette, a big-budget film planned and prepared for his wife, Norma Shearer, by Irving Thalberg. The task of crafting hairstyles for Shearer in the title role fell to Sydney Guilaroff, MGM’s foremost hairdresser, the man who took over coiffing many of the studio’s top leading ladies beginning in 1934.  Guilaroff studied French history in preparation for the project and, in the course of working on the film, supervised the creation of over 2,000 court wigs and made use of practically all of MGM’s supply of hairpieces.  Nearly 60 years later he would recall in his memoir that at the premiere of Marie Antoinette he heard gasps ripple through the audience during certain close-ups and that “many uttered the words “beautiful” and “marvelous” during a scene in which an actor wore a wig dressed with a birdcage at the top, with what appeared to be a live bird inside. When the actor secretly pulled a hidden cord, the bird chirped!”

Sydney Guilaroff at work on Marie Antoinette (1938)

It was following Marie Antoinette’s release that Guilaroff finally began to receive what he had originally been promised by MGM, a screen credit for every film he worked on - a first for Hollywood’s hairstylists.

Another Guilaroff coiffure for Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette

In the late 1950s a soignée updo that known as the "French twist" or "French roll" emerged and started a trend. By no means as exaggerated as the original pouf at first, the look became increasingly "bouffant" over time, finally transforming into a towering upswept mass called the "beehive."

One version of the "French Twist," circa 1957
Audrey Hepburn's ultra-chic "twist"/"beehive" in 1961's Breakfast
 at Tiffany's  (hairstyles supervised by Nellie Manley)
Sydney Guilaroff styled an elegant "beehive"
 for Natalie Wood for Gypsy (1962)


'60s super-model Jean Shrimpton wears a "butterfly" updo
 Marie Antoinette herself would have envied

THE BOB

It is iconic rebel Louise Brooks who most often comes to mind when contemplating the origins of bobbed hair, and Sydney Guilaroff claimed to be the man behind Brooks's modish cut. As he remembered it, he was a youthful stylist - still in his teens - at the time, and was the hairdresser to whom the young dancer/starlet was assigned when she came to the salon in New York's Hotel McAlpin for a new 'do. Guilaroff recalled that Brooks asked for "something different." What she got was a coiffure with the back snipped short to match the sides that came to be known as the "shingle."

Louise Brooks

There has been some dispute among classic film fans about which actress popularized the bob on the silver screen. Colleen Moore aficionados assert that Brooks had the cut first but that Moore, the bigger star then, launched the bob's popularity. Others point out that Mary Thurman was the actress who brought the look to the screen before anyone else in Leap Year (1921). However, that film went unseen in the U.S. for decades because its star/director, Fatty Arbuckle, had just become embroiled in the scandal that ultimately destroyed his career.

Colleen Moore
Jessica Kerwin Jenkins also probes the origins of bobbed hair in her encyclopedia/"anecdotal history of elegant delights." Beginning with a passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 short story, "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," she next makes reference to an earlier decade and "eurhythmic dancer" Caryathis (nee Elisabeth Toulemont), a young woman who "lopped off her tresses in a fit of heartbreak in 1913." Designer Coco Chanel was a student of the French dancer, and Jenkins suggests that she was prompted by her instructor's dramatic act to crop her own mane. It's possible, though, that Chanel may also have been inspired by the "Castle" bob...

In 1915 famed ballroom dancer Irene Castle snipped
her long hair up to her ears for the sake of convenience
 - and created a  sensation with the "Castle" bob
Coco cuts her hair: styled traditionally at left, bobbed at right

The classic bob also enjoyed a revival during in the 1960's. Barbara Streisand was one of several singers of the time (many of them "British Invasion" stars) who popularized the updated look... 

Barbra Streisand's "poufy" bob
(photo by Milton Greene)

Vidal Sassoon's severely modern "five-point" cut of the mid-'60s recalled the "shingle" of the 1920s.

'60s model Peggy Moffitt was synonymous with Sassoon's "five-point" cut

When Liza Minnelli was cast in the star-making role of Sally Bowles for Bob Fosse's soon-to-be-Oscar-laden Cabaret in 1972, she initially thought of Marlene Dietrich as a possible model for her character, a Weimar-era Berlin chanteuse. But Liza's father, Vincente Minnelli, told her there had been others who were as fabulous as Dietrich back in the day, and mentioned Louise Brooks. Liza "looked at the pictures and he explained to me about wanting to be different."

Liza's Cabaret "shingle"

SYDNEY

In 1996, Sydney Guilaroff's as-told-to autobiography (with Cathy Griffin), Crowning Glory, was published by the GPG Group. In his book, Guilaroff presents himself not only as the pioneering hair stylist he was, but also as an intimate of both moguls and stars, a force to be reckoned with and, at times, something of a prophet. Eventually, after noticing a factual error here and there, the reader begins to take some of his recollections with a grain of salt...

The moment I saw the rushes for 1960's Tall Story, her first film, I whispered to her, "Jane, don't worry dear, you might even turn out bigger than your father. Just wait."

Jane Fonda, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), hair by Sydney Guilaroff

I learned that Fox was searching for a new Marc Antony. I advised Elizabeth to take a close look at the work of a Welsh actor named Richard Burton. "Take my advice," I urged, "he's the one."

Elizabeth Taylor, Butterfield 8 (1960), hair by Sydney Guilaroff

On Saturday night, August 4, 1962, exactly eight weeks after Fox fired her, Marilyn telephoned me in despair...As I tried to calm her, it never occurred to me that I would be one of the last people to speak with her that fateful night.

Marilyn Monroe, Something's Got to Give (1962), hair by Sydney Guilaroff

Whether the reader believes everything Guilaroff reports in his chronicle (passionate, more than casual love affairs with Greta Garbo and Ava Gardner?!?!) about his life in Hollywood, there's no denying his creative genius or his talent with a comb and scissors. From poufs to bobs and everything in between, he was a master stylist who fashioned countless unforgettable coiffures during his 400+ film career, and it was to him Grace Kelly turned when she wanted her hair perfectly styled for her wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956.

Hair Designs by Sydney Guilaroff:


Crawford, Shearer, Russell: The Women (1939)
Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind (1939)
Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Lucille Ball, Dubarry was a Lady (1943)
Marilyn Monroe, The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Jean Hagen, Debbie Reynolds, Singin' in the Rain (1952)
,
Leslie Caron, Gigi (1958)
Eva Marie Saint, North by Northwest (1959)
Anne Bancroft, The Graduate (1968)
Liza Minnelli, New York, New York (1977)
Sources:
  • Encyclopedia of the Exquisite by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2010)
  • Crowning Glory by Sydney Guilaroff, as told to Cathy Griffin (CPG Group, 1996)
  • Elle.com

Grace Kelly becomes Princess Grace, her hair styled by Sydney Guilaroff
↧
↧

'TIS THE SEASON - OF GIVING...AND IT'S HAPPENING HERE!

December 16, 2013, 3:00 am
$
0
0
BOOKS AND DVDS IN YOUR STOCKING THIS YEAR?

One of the things I love most about the holidays is giving gifts. This year I happen to have presents for a few classic film buffs and I'll be giving them this week.

Literally the biggest gift to be given - at 1,000+ pages - is Victoria Wilson's long-awaited, long in-process  biography, A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907 - 1940. Detailed, thorough and fascinating, Wilson traces Stanwyck's family history back to long before the future star came into the world as Ruby Stevens. The hefty tome also covers Stanwyck's show business beginnings, at a very tender age, as a dancer, her rapid rise to Broadway and Hollywood stardom, two marriages and 88 films. As well-written as it is meticulously researched, Steel-True is impossible to put down once picked up. Fifteen years in the writing, this reader only hopes Wilson's volume covering the rest of Stanwyck's life and career, from 1941 to 1990, won't take quite so long to make its way to print.

Here, Victoria Wilson talks about Stanwyck's appeal for her and the writing of Steel-True:


The by-invitation-only funeral of Orson Welles, who died in October 1985, took place in a downtown Los Angeles slum. His eldest daughter, Chris, who flew in from New York to attend, thought the rundown building seemed more like a "hot-sheets motel" than a funeral parlor. She was told by her stepmother, Welles's last wife from whom he had been long separated, that there was "no money" for anything more.

The one-time wunderkind's career as a filmmaker had collapsed years earlier, though he never stopped working - writing and struggling to get financing for his projects.  In his final years, one friend who stood by him and tried to both help find support for his work and bolster his confidence was independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom. The two lunched often at Hollywood's fabled Ma Maison (the bistro that made Wolfgang Puck's name) and one day Welles suggested Jaglom record their mealtime conversations. From 1983 until 1985, Jaglom did just that. Film historian Peter Biskind (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls) learned of the tapes Jaglom had made with Welles and eventually edited the content - published earlier this year as My Lunches With Orson.

The Jaglom/Welles-"unplugged" chats are intriguing and quite often dishy. And then there's the "dancing bear show," the larger-than-life persona Welles donned as occasion required. Jaglom must've felt, at times, like he was front row/center for the greatest show on earth...




Two of the most celebrated leading ladies/movie stars of the 1950s were Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. Very different types - one dark, voluptuous and mercurial, the other a cool and stunning blonde - they are nonetheless considered two of the most beautiful and talented actresses of their era.

My final gift is a celebration, in two parts, of these mid-century icons. First, TCM's Greatest Classic Legends: Elizabeth Taylor DVD collection. The set features Vincente Minnelli's sparkling romantic comedy, Father of the Bride (1950), with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett; the Richard Brooks production of the Tennessee Williams classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), co-starring Paul Newman; Butterfield 8 (1960), the drama that brought Taylor her first Oscar, directed by Daniel Mann and co-starring Laurence Harvey; and Vincente Minnelli's 1965 melodrama set in Big Sur, The Sandpiper, co-starring Richard Burton and Eva Marie Saint.  Paired with the Taylor DVD collection is Gina McKinnon's recently published What Would Grace Do?, a style guide/mini-biography of Grace Kelly (aka/Princess Grace). Lots of pointers here - useful in a world some would find lacking in classic taste and timeless style.

~

A random drawing will be held Saturday, December 21, at 5:00pm PST. I will select three winners from the names entered and the first chosen will have first pick, the second name drawn will choose next and the third winner will receive the remaining gift. All winners will be notified immediately.

UPDATE: The random drawing was held, winners were selected and congratulations to Bob in Illinois (Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True), Christina in Ontario, Canada (My Lunches with Orson) and Lindsey in Michigan (TCM's Classic Legends:Elizabeth Taylor DVD collection and What Would Grace Do?). Thanks to all who entered and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

(Congratulations to Marsha in New York, winner of the recent random drawing for TCM's Greatest Classic Films: Astaire & Rogers, Vol. 1, DVD collection - she tells me the set has already arrived)

↧

A YEAR OF SPECIAL ANNIVERSARIES

November 8, 2014, 8:29 am
$
0
0

2014 has been jam-packed with anniversaries significant to classic film lovers. The year has marked not only the on-screen centennial of Chaplin's "Little Tramp," but also the centenary birth dates of many silver (and Technicolor) screen luminaries including Alec Guinness, Hedy Lamarr, Ida Lupino, Tyrone Power, Jane Wyman and Richard Widmark. 2014 also marks the diamond anniversary of the premiere of Gone with the Wind 75 years ago in December, 1939. And 70 years ago On the Town, the musical that catapulted the writing team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green to fame, made its much-heralded debut on Broadway in December, 1944. The pair went on to script its 1949 screen adaptation as well as screenplays for Singin' in the Rain (1952), Auntie Mame (1958) and more.

There's been much to celebrate, and the revelry continues.

IN HOLLYWOOD


Beginning November 14 theHollywood Museum in the fabled Max Factor Building pays tribute to "Tyrone Power: Man, Myth & Movie Idol," a celebration of Power's centennial year. The exhibit will feature a wide-ranging assortment of never before shown items collected by family, friends, private collectors and the Hollywood Museum. Exhibit highlights include costumes Power wore in some of his best-known films, including the matador "suit of lights" from Blood and Sand (1941) and a pair of embroidered pants from The Mark of Zorro (1940); costumes worn by his leading ladies and co-stars, including pieces from In Old Chicago (1937), Marie Antoinette (1938), Nightmare Alley (1947) and The Long Gray Line (1955). Personal mementos and photos will also be on display as well as copies of Power's scripts - from his own collection - for Love is News (1937), In Old Chicago (1937), Blood and Sand (1941) and The Razor's Edge (1946), along with lobby cards, posters, press kits, press books and sheet music from songs from his many films. Check the museum website or call 323.464.7776 for more information.


As the Hollywood Museum launches its Power exhibit, the Movie Memories Foundation is set present two of Tyrone Power's most popular films - Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) on Friday, November 14, and Captain from Castile (1947) on Saturday, November 15 - in celebration of his centennial year at Hollywood's Barnsdall Gallery Theater. Click here for ticket information.

For more on the life and career of Tyrone Power, see Remembering Tyrone Power. If you happened to miss the blogathon I co-hosted on Ty's 100th birthday, May 5, check out Power-Mad.

IN NEW YORK

On the Town, original Broadway cast performance, 1945

On the Town, Broadway 2014

Just about exactly 75 years after On the Town debuted on Broadway, a revival - the third since the original production - is lighting up the Great White Way once more. Boasting book and lyrics by Comden & Green, music by Leonard Bernstein, choreography by Jerome Robbins and directed by George Abbott, On the Town opened to jubilant raves in 1944. Revivals in 1971 and 1998 weren't especially well-received, but Ben Brantley of The New York Times has greeted the 2014 production with a five-star review, rejoicing, in part, "Designed in a spectrum of jelly-bean hues that makes vintage Technicolor look pallid, this is a parallel-universe New York in which hectic urban life acquires the pace and grace of a storybook ballet. It's a bustling, jostling cartoon that also floats like a swan..." Even Adolph Green's son, Adam, thinks that director "John Rando's new On the Town...seems to have gotten it just right."

On the Town is at the Lyric Theatre in Manhattan now through May 2015. Planning to be in New York, New York (it's a helluva town) during the musical's run? Click here for ticket information. If not, watching the Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly film adaptation one more time seems a fine way to observe On the Town's 70th birthday.

On the Town onscreen, 1949
↧

What a Character: Cecil Kellaway

November 18, 2014, 11:58 am
$
0
0

Cecil Kellaway is among a handful of older character actors active during Hollywood's heyday who brought to the screen a delectable combination of warmth, kindliness and good cheer that I call "old guy charm." Other members of this twinkly-eyed pack of golden boys include the likes of sweet and snuggly S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, shyly unassuming Henry Travers, rascally Charles Ruggles and spry ol' Harry Davenport.

Kellaway, who seemed to personify the very essence of "classic Irishman" on the screen - he was Oscar-nominated for his role as a leprechaun in The Luck of the Irish (1948) and for his portrayal of Monsignor Ryan in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - was born in Capetown, South Africa in 1890 and schooled in both his native country and in England. Though he studied and briefly practiced engineering, young Cecil was drawn to the footlights. After leaving his profession to go on the stage he toured through Asia, other parts of Africa and Europe before returning home and gaining recognition as a comedian. Then he was off to Australia in 1921 and there, over the next 16 years, the actor built his reputation in the theater.

Cecil Kellaway as Horace (a leprechaun) with Tyrone Power, The Luck of the Irish
 
Katharine Hepburn with Cecil Kellaway as Monsignor Ryan in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 
Following appearances in a few Australian films of the late '30s, Kellaway was offered a contract by RKO Pictures. His first credited Hollywood movie would be a crime film, Everybody's Doing It (1938), starring Preston Foster. He made a total of 10 unremarkable movies in 1938, but was luckier the following year: his first two films of 1939, Gunga Din for RKO and Wuthering Heights for Goldwyn, were hits that became enduring classics. Cecil Kellaway would perform in more than 75 Hollywood films, classics ranging from The Letter (1940), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Portrait of Jennie (1948) and Harvey (1950) to The Shaggy Dog (1959) and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). He also worked in television during its gilded age, appearing in live dramas and on such series as Perry Mason ("The Case of the Glittering Goldfish"), Rawhide, The Twilight Zone ("Elegy"), Burke's Law and That Girl. Kellaway's years as an actor spanned more than five decades and he even managed to find time to appear on Broadway late in his career.

He was cherubic-looking, with what seemed a barely suppressed chuckle in his voice - no wonder that his screen roles were usually genial and often lovable. He is so charming as Dr. Chumley in Harvey that it would have surprised no one (including Elwood P. Dowd) if the towering rabbit had taken up with him permanently.

Cecil Kellaway as Dr. Chumley and James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey
Kellaway's Nick Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice is a most amiable and hospitable fellow.  But it's hard to imagine that Nick's decades-younger wife, Cora (knockout-in-white Lana Turner), could have been so desperate and unable to make her way beyond a remote stretch of California highway that her only option was to marry him. And so it's no wonder at all that she wanted to be rid of Nick when brooding young drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) arrived at their seaside burger joint and she finally warmed (heated?) up to him. But to murder bighearted, unsuspecting (if loopy) Nick/Cecil...how could they?!?

Frank and Cora confirm their reservations at the Hotel Hades in The Postman Always Rings Twice
Much less grim circumstances await Harry Wilson, the Lloyd's of London insurance investigator Kellaway portrayed in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, a mid-'60s biddie-horror genre picture in which he co-starred with Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead and Mary Astor. Cast to type, Kellaway's soft-spoken Wilson is but a bystander - albeit a mystery-solving bystander - to the mayhem that takes place inside a crumbling Louisiana mansion.

 Who killed John Mayhew? Mary Astor and Cecil Kellaway inHush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte
It's reported that Cecil Kellaway was Fox's original choice to play Kris Kringle in a holiday movie that went on to become a yuletide classic, Miracle on 34th Street (1947). But he balked and refused the role, remarking to one of his sons, "Americans don't go for whimsy." The Santa Claus role ultimately went to his cousin, Edmund Gwenn, who also possessed a good amount of "old guy charm"...
~

This is my entry in the "What a Character" blogathon hosted by Paula of Paula's Cinema Club, Kellee of Outspoken and Freckled, and Aurora of Once Upon a Screen. Please check out their sites to learn more.

 
↧

The Shape of Things to Come...in 2015

December 28, 2014, 5:00 am
$
0
0

2014, a busy year in my world, seems to have passed in a about a half-hour or less, and now 2015 is at the door. Here's what my crystal ball predicts may be in store for me on the classic film front in the new year...
 

Film Noir

Noir City 13 (the 13th annual film noir festival) in San Francisco is set to begin on January 16th and run through the 25th. This year's theme is 'Til Death do us Part  and 25 noir/near-noir/noirish films "depicting the darker side of marriage" will screen at the city's historic Castro Theatre. Check the full program here to find out what's on the bill for San Francisco - and get a glimpse of what films will screen at Noir City events in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago and elsewhere later in 2015. This entertaining promotional trailer - made earlier this year - will show you what the Noir festival is all about:



Film Series at the Symphony

In June the San Francisco Symphony announced a new season series, its second, of film screenings.  The films presented are shown with scores performed live by the symphony. Having attended the symphony's presentations of Casablanca and Vertigo, I can tell you it's an amazing experience.


In just two weeks, on January 10, the symphony will introduce the U.S. premiere of Francis Coppola's The Godfather, Part I with live orchestral accompaniment. To watch Coppola's great masterpiece once again and to hear Nino Rota's magnificent score performed by the San Francisco symphony is an experience I wouldn't miss.

For more information on the San Francisco Symphony's 2014/2015 film series, click here. 


TCM Classic Film Festival 2015

Spanning four days, March 26 - 29, and held "in the heart of Hollywood,"this year's ultimate classic film festival will focus on History According to Hollywood. Through this theme the festival aims to "explore how cinema has shaped how we view, and remember, history." Everything there is to know about the event can be found here.

The 2014 festival was one of the highlights of my year, far exceeding very high expectations.  There were the films - many of them recent restorations, the stars-in-person (Maureen O'Hara, Shirley Jones, Kim Novak, Jerry Lewis), Club TCM, where countless special events were held, and the classic film community itself, people from all over the world who deeply love and know the classics. It was wonderfully overwhelming. TCMFF, I discovered, is more than an annual event, it's an annual pilgrimage.

Comic-Con 2015, July 9 - 12

Comic-Con International 2015

Honestly,  until a year or so ago I had no idea what "Comic-Con" was other than some sort of comic book-related convention. And since I haven't read a comic book for a few decades, I paid little attention. However...

I recently learned that writer/director/producer Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone), a Comic-Con favorite, will be in San Diego this summer to promote his upcoming thriller, Crimson Peak. The film, described as "half turn-of-the-century romance, half Gothic nightmare" is inspired in part, they say, by classics like Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), two genre favorites of my own. Del Toro's new dark, sexy tale of terror stars some of the very best actors of a new generation - and it's rumored they'll be at Comic-Con with him: Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain. The film is scheduled for release in October 2015.

Comic-Con sells out instantaneously so I may miss out, but even if I do, I'll be closely following reports on the event and news about Del Toro's enthusiastically awaited Crimson Peak.


The Blog

Plans for other posts-in-the-works here at Reel Life for 2015 are a little more sketchy, though I'm toying with changing the blog's name to Reel Happiness (what do you think?). I'm hoping to do a series on film composers and to finally follow up with a second installment in the Roman à clef series I began in March with All About Eve...and Margo (much gratitude and many thanks to Classic Movie Blog Assn. members for voting it a CiMBA Award for "best drama review" this year). I'm also in the early planning stages with my friend and much-admired fellow blogger Christian Esquevin of Silver Screen Modeson a blogathon we'll be co-hosting sometime in the new year.

↧
↧

Music in Film, Part I: Film with Live Orchestra

January 25, 2015, 6:00 am
$
0
0

The night sky was clear and the air a bit chilly on Friday, January 9, typical early winter weather in San Francisco. But the evening would be unusual for reasons other than the climate. It was the night that, at 8 pm, the San Francisco Symphony would premiere Francis Coppola's The Godfather (1972) with live orchestral accompaniment. It was also the night that, at midnight, the Golden Gate Bridge was to shut down - through the weekend - for the first time in its 77 year history. The evening would prove to be eventful in more ways than one for those of us attending the three-plus hour symphony performance who also live north of "the Gate."

~

The Godfather, #2 on the American Film Institute's 2007 list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time," was a blockbuster on release, became the highest grossing film of 1972 and won the year's Academy Award for Best Picture. Adapted from Mario Puzo's best-selling Mafia tale by the author and Francis Coppola, who shared an Oscar for their screenplay, the film was also a ground-breaker. For starters, Coppola was willing to gamble - and battle the studio - when he cast the lead roles. Only one actor in the film's large ensemble was
Diane Keaton and Al Pacino in The Godfather
 then well-known: Marlon Brando, whose career had been in decline for some time and had negligible "box office clout" by the early '70s. Brando would win, and notoriously refuse, the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Vito Corleone and go on to see his career revived. Most of the "unknowns" in the film's other lead and featured roles would gain immediate cachet, and some - Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton and Al Pacino - would eventually win Oscars for their work in later films.

The cinematography of Gordon Willis (Klute, All the President's Men, Annie Hall) was instrumental in establishing and reinforcing The Godfather's atmosphere and style. Though the studio had been nervous about Willis's chiaroscuro-heavy approach, his expressive photography and lighting stand as hallmarks of the film.

Setting the tone: the stunning cinematography of Gordon Willis

And there is Nino Rota's acclaimed musical score. Rota, born in Milan, Italy, in 1911, was an established film composer before he scored The Godfather, best known for his work with Federico Fellini (La Strada, The Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8½, etc.). Rota's lengthy collaboration with Fellini has been compared to Bernard Herrmann's with Hitchcock, so perfectly did the two mesh creatively. Rota also scored films for Luchino Visconti (Le Notti Bianchi, Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard), Franco Zeffirelli, King Vidor and others, but he is most associated with the films of Fellini and the Godfather trilogy. As with so many aspects of the production of The Godfather, the studio was at odds with director Coppola about who should compose its music. While Paramount wanted Henry Mancini, Coppola was determined to have Rota. Interestingly, Rota was not particularly keen on the project but, when Coppola agreed to his exacting terms, he set to work. In addition to Rota's score, the film includes other music - popular songs of the era in which the film is set, classical pieces and source music by Coppola's father, conductor/composer Carmine.

Nino Rota
James M. Keller, author and program annotator for San Francisco's symphony and New York's philharmonic orchestra, writes of the director/composer collaboration: "What Coppola requested and got from Rota was a score that didn't so much parallel the film's action as to reinforce its psychological undercurrents and to suggest its locales, specifically its scenes in Sicily and the importing of that essence to an Italian-American context." The music Rota developed was - and remains - intrinsic to the film's ultimate triumph. The American Film Institute ranks the score #5 on its 2005 list of "The 25 Greatest Film Scores of All Time" and Rota had initially been Oscar-nominated for his work. However, he was disqualified when it was learned that a section of the music he composed for a specific sequence was a reworking of something he'd done on one of his previous films, Fortunella for director Eduardo De Filippo, in 1958. Curiously, though The Godfather, Part II (1974) used elements of that score again, the Academy didn't object and Rota won an Oscar for his Godfather II score.

~

You may wonder how it is done - the screening of a film, minus its recorded score, with live concert performance of the missing music.

To begin with, the film's score is digitally scrubbed (or stripped) from the soundtrack. It is the process of  reconstructing the score for live performance that can become complicated. Conductor/composer Justin Freer, who prepared and conducted the San Francisco Symphony's Godfather presentation, discovered that though much of Rota's score, archived in Paramount's music library, was intact, not all of it was in fully orchestrated form. Freer also worked from lead sheets where they were all that existed but, as he told James Keller, the project "involved a great deal of transcription and taking down musical lines from the film itself. Even when cues are fully fleshed out, that isn't necessarily what appears in the film. It's very common that edits are made on the stage during recording sessions, but that edits aren't recorded by hand by anyone in the sound booth." With Francis Coppola involved and cooperative throughout, Freer worked hard to make sure the score was, as Coppola hoped it would be, faithful to the original 1972 film version. 

The obvious challenge for conductor and orchestra in performance is to synchronize the music with the film, especially when there are changes in movement or tempo. From our birds-eye-view orchestra seats in Davies Hall, we were able to see that Freer was following a monitor on his lectern that displayed the film with a fast-paced series of moving-bar and flashing-dot cues superimposed onto it. The monitor also indicated running time in one upper corner of its screen and, in the other, what appeared to be a time code that corresponded with numbers written in the musicians' score.

Quite a process, quite a result. To watch, onscreen, a film of The Godfather's power while listening to its evocative score performed live in a world-class symphony hall is thrilling.


The house lights dim...
...and go down

In the darkened hall, the full-house audience falls silent. Slowly, a solo trumpet plays a spare melody, a forlorn tune that seems from a faraway place and a time long ago. More silence, more darkness. Then comes the sound of a man's voice, heavy with an immigrant's accent. "I believe in America..." he says, and the ageless saga begins.

~

The Godfather is currently touring concert halls around the U.S. and the world. Click here for the schedule.

To learn more about the San Francisco's Symphony's film series, click here.


Tickets for this film series performance were provided by the San Francisco Symphony. Many thanks to that fine organization.

~

You might also like:


 
↧

Now Playing in San Francisco: Noir City XII

January 28, 2014, 11:01 pm
$
0
0

San Francisco's annual Noir City film noir festival is in progress now at the city's iconic movie palace, the Castro Theatre.

This year the festival theme is international and features noir from Argentina, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Spain and - of course - Hollywood. Though the festival is at its mid-point, many great classics have yet to be screened:

  

For more on the Film Noir Foundation's Noir City XII, click here.
 
↧
Search

Welcome back, Christian!

January 30, 2014, 5:03 pm
$
0
0

A week or so ago Silver Screen Modiste, the website of my dear blogger friend Christian Esquevin, was hi-jacked. When he discovered that he was no longer in possession of his site's domain name, Christian also discovered it would now cost him an arm and a leg to try to get it back. Instead, he has reconstituted it as Silver Screen Modes and, as of today, Christian is back online with more fascinating insights on classic film costume design.

Click here to visit Silver Screen Modes and enjoy Christian's assessment of the costume design nominees for the 2013 Academy Awards.

Zhang Ziyi in Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster, Oscar-nominated for Best Costume Design
↧

Reel San Francisco Stories

February 17, 2014, 11:22 am
$
0
0
Christopher Pollock's annotated filmography of the San Francisco Bay Area

While visiting Northern California, evangelist Billy Graham once commented, "The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I'm here." Not only lovely, the region is also uniquely photogenic, and many, many films - more than 600 - have been shot in San Francisco and the surrounding area over the past nearly 90 years.

My interest in local film locations and history dates back to the 1990s when I worked in offices located at 170 Maiden Lane, a building that had, years earlier, been part of Ransohoffs, a high-end San Francisco department store. The offices were posh, with lofty ceilings, wide archways and other elegant touches. Notably, the archway motif was echoed by tall arched mirrors that adorned several walls. I learned that the floor had once housed Ransohoffs' dress salon. And then one day an architect (the company I worked for was a design firm specializing in destination resorts and hotels) told me that a classic scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo had taken place within our walls. This bit of information motivated me to do some research and I learned that though the sequence in which Scottie Ferguson takes Judy Barton shopping for a new wardrobe had not actually been filmed on site, Hitchcock had replicated the setting - precisely - on a Hollywood sound stage, just as he had recreated the Podesta Baldocchi florist shop and Ernie's restaurant for the film.
"Ransohoffs"Vertigo (1958)
Note the arched mirror detail behind Kim Novak
30+ years on, a Christmas tree graced the dress salon area depicted in Vertigo
A few years later I came across a book that boosted my interest in Bay Area film locations to a new level: Jeff Kraft and Aaron Levinthal's singular Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco. Within its covers I found a trove of detail on the locations used not only in Vertigo, but also Shadow of a Doubt, The Birds, Psycho and more. Once I started blogging, I began to make use of some of what I'd learned in that book and others and online, becoming something of a film location geek in the process and eventually making a 6-minute video I called San Francisco Movie Locations, a Mini-Tour. 

Then, just last week, Christopher Pollock's new book Reel San Francisco Stories arrived in the mail and I've been perusing it intently ever since, filling its pages with small green post-its to mark tidbits of interest, like:
  • The farm depicted in The Farmer's Daughter (1947, Loretta Young and Joseph Cotten) was the Scott Ranch on Adobe Road in Penngrove, California (in Sonoma County, North of San Francisco) and the two-story Victorian home, outbuildings and silo shown in the film were all demolished long ago; all that remains of the ranch today is the "rolling landscape."
  • Aunt Polly (Jane Wyman), the chilly spinster who took in her niece Pollyanna(1960, Hayley Mills), lived in one of the Bay Area's most idyllic locations, the Wine Country. The film's locations were shot in towns like Napa and St. Helena in Napa County and Santa Rosa, the county seat of Sonoma County. Lucky Pollyanna! 
When I discovered that Storm Center (1956, Bette Davis) was shot in Santa Rosa and that the town's Carnegie Library was a pivotal location, I realized why that ivy-draped library building and the trees enclosing it had always seemed so familiar to me. Alfred Hitchcock had used the same library in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) for the scene in which Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) rushes to its doors just at closing time.

Santa Rosa's Carnegie Library, Shadow of Doubt (1943)

Bette Davis in Storm Center (1956)
Pollock catalogs the hundreds of films set in the Bay Area from the early 20th century (Behind That Curtain, Fox, 1929) to very recent times (Blue Jasmine, Paramount, 2013, Cate Blanchett). Each entry includes release year, studio, director, stars, some behind-the-camera crew, a brief synopsis of the plot and a list of locations featured (addresses included). But this book is more than a lengthy film index. On most pages, adjacent to one or two films, is supplemental background on persons or places or events related to the particular movie(s). For example, accompanying the entry on This Earth is Mine (1959, Rock Hudson, Jean Simmons) is a brief history of the Napa Valley's Inglenook Vineyard, a site featured in the film, from its beginnings in 1879 to its present status as the award-winning winery of director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather series, Apocalypse, Now), who has become an accomplished vintner as well as filmmaker.
 
Francis Coppola's Inglenook (once known as Niebaum-Coppola and, later, Rubicon Estate) in Rutherford

And there is more. By way of an introduction, Pollock provides concise but wide-ranging historical background on film in the Bay Area. Going back to the inception of moving pictures, he tells of the Muybridge-Stanford "experiments" of the 1870s in which Mr. Muybridge took serial photographs of a horse belonging to his patron, former California governor Leland Stanford, at Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm. The photos of the running horse were copied to a disc in the form of silhouettes and projected onto a screen by a machine Muybridge had invented. As these images appeared in quick succession, the horse seemed to gallop. As one Muybridge biographer has noted, these images held "the primal DNA" of movies, TV and video games - not to mention the moving pictures that so fascinate those of us who regularly roam the Internet...

THE PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHY OF EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE
 
Among the many Bay Area notables Pollock mentions who have made appearances in locally filmed movies was the San Francisco Chronicle's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Herb Caen (1916 - 1997), who had a bit part as a reporter in Nora Prentiss (1947, Ann Sheridan). The oft-quoted wag, who was besotted with the City by the Bay, memorably quipped, "One day...if I go to heaven, I'll look around and say, 'It ain't bad, but it ain't San Francisco.'" Clearly, I agree. But I have to admit that my interests extend beyond the San Francisco Bay Area and, in the past, I've happily explored historic locales in New York and Hollywood as well as a tiny island just off the coast of Southern California.

~

Many thanks to Christopher Pollock for a review copy of Reel San Francisco Stories, an essential resource and valued addition to my library of books on film.


San Francisco's Spreckels Mansion in Pal Joey (1957, Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Rita Hayworth)
The Spreckels Mansion in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, 2013

↧
↧

National Classic Movie Day - May 16, 2015

May 16, 2015, 11:58 pm
$
0
0

A special day is about to come to a close and I haven't much time to put together a tribute to one of my true passions, classic film. Meanwhile, Rick and friends over at The Classic Film & TV Cafe have been hosting a day-long blogathon in honor of this first National Classic Movie Day, and 60+ illustrious bloggers have chimed in on the subject of My Favorite Classic Movie.

Many films rush to mind when I consider which might be my own favorite...

From the 1930's, I think of the six films Marlene Dietrich and Josef von Sternberg made for Paramount in the U.S. following the breakout success of The Blue Angel, made for Ufa in Germany. My current favorite from this collection is The Devil is a Woman (1935), the sixth and last of their collaborations. Sternberg intended to title the film  Capriccio Espagnol (Spanish Fantasy) and fashioned it as his "final tribute to the lady I had seen lean against the wings of a Berlin stage" and "an affectionate salute to Spain and its traditions."
 
Marlene Dietrich from Josef von Sternberg's The Devil is a Woman (1935)
Marlene Dietrich, The Devil is a Woman (1935)
However, Paramount's production head Ernst Lubitsch had his own ideas about the title and, according to Sternberg, "altering the sex of the devil was meant to aid in selling the picture" - thus, The Devil is a Woman.  This new title couldn't save the film from a devastating turn of events; it was banned by the Spanish government and Spain's diplomatic complaints to the U.S. resulted in the film being withdrawn from circulation for nearly 25 years. Dietrich was soon labeled "box office poison" and it wasn't until 1939's Destry Rides Again that her career got back on track. Sternberg's run as a Hollywood wunderkind came to an end and his best work was now behind him.

The Devil is a Woman is less a romance than a reflection on grinding frustration. The Dietrich character (Concha) is entirely capricious and destructive, and the men she encounters are mostly fools.  Her older lover/patron, Captain Don Pasqual (Lionel Atwill), may be unable to break from her but he is unsentimental, even fatalistic, about their relationship. The film has been called Sternberg's "coldest" film if, perhaps, his most perfectly realized. As with all of the pair's work together, The Devil is a Woman is beautifully made, an intentionally mannered and fanciful journey - and irresistible to me. It was Dietrich's favorite of her films. Interestingly, many years later Luis Bunuel would reference the same source material for his That Obscure Object of Desire (1977).

But I don't have a favorite film, per se. Even among the Dietrich/Sternberg films I waver between The Devil is a Woman and Shanghai Express(1932). And I go back and forth between Ford's Stagecoach (1939) and his The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) when it comes to "favorite Western."

John Wayne, the Ringo Kid, in John Ford's Stagecoach (1939)
John Wayne, Stagecoach (1939)

Favorite comedy is easier:
Some Like It Hot. My favorite movie. Ever. #1. Ever. Did I mention that this is my favorite movie ever? <3 <3 <3
Billy Wilder's Some Like it Hot (1959)
Favorite rom-com:

@Catherine Walker @Anna RM @Naz Deyhim I want a photo like this and instead of the cat, I want it to be with Vida. I wish I looked like this when I sleep.
Audrey Hepburn (and Orangey) in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
 Favorite Preston Sturges film:

The Lady Eve (1941). Barbara Stanwyck. Oh how she plays Hoppsy! Oh, my how fast does Hoppsy fall in love with Jean or was it Eve? Silly man he is so confused isn't he? Ha ha!
Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck, The Lady Eve (1941)

And on it goes. For those interested in even more, I've got a board dedicated to Classic Screen Images on Pinterest, a work in progress that features scenes from a few hundred films (so far) that I admire from the 1920s to present.

References:
Fun in a Chinese Laundry by Josef von Sternberg (MacMillan Co., 1965)
The Films of Josef von Sternberg by Andrew Sarris (The Museum of Modern Art, 1966)
↧

Celebrating One of Hollywood's Legendary Talents

July 6, 2015, 7:21 pm
$
0
0

Let's ponder for a moment what Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) might have in common beyond having been voted the two finest films in cinema history*.  The particular feature they share that I have in mind is also shared with, to name just a few films, Mankiewicz’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), the Ray Harryhausen “Dynamation” hit, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad(1958), the Gregory Peck/Robert Mitchum thriller Cape Fear (1962), Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976). Canny classic movie buffs have determined by now that Bernard Herrmann, composer of the score for each of these films, is the common denominator.

Welles and Herrmann
Herrmann first collaborated with Orson Welles during the 1930s, when the two were working in radio. Welles was involved with programs like the Columbia Workshop, his Mercury Theatre and the Campbell Playhouse, and Herrmann was a music director/conductor/arranger for the CBS radio network.  When Welles undertook Citizen Kane,he tagged Herrmann to create its score; Kanewould be the first feature film for both men. Herrmann also provided the score for Welles’s second feature, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and for Jane Eyre (1943), in which Welles starred.

Herrmann and Hitchcock
But it is with Alfred Hitchcock that Bernard Herrmann’s career as a film composer is most intimately linked. Beginning with The Trouble with Harry in 1955, the two collaborated on seven films, two of them Hitchcock’s – and Herrmann’s – great masterpieces: Vertigo in 1958 and Psycho in 1960. And two very different scores they are; Vertigo, with its nod to Tristan and Isolde, is lushly orchestral, even operatic, while Psycho is spare, modern, jarring.   Both scores have had long-lasting impact. In fact, in 2011 the filmmakers of The Artist, winner of five Oscars including Best Picture, inserted Herrmann’s love theme from Vertigo into their own film's score.

Steven Smith, Herrmann’s biographer, reflecting on Herrmann’s special gift as a film composer, noted that “…the thing that Herrmann did again and again, especially in Hitchcock's films, was that he forced the viewer to feel what the characters on screen were feeling. He considered film music, in his phrase, the `communicating link' between the filmmaker and the viewer."

From 1941 until 1975, Bernard Herrmann created the music for 50+ original film and TV works and now he is soon to be celebrated with a new feature-length documentary, Lives of Bernard Herrmann. The film, currently in production under the supervision of New York City-based director Brandon Brown, will feature interviews with Herrmann’s oldest daughter, with actor and former TCM host Alec Baldwin and other notables, and will explore at length the legendary composer’s life and work. Lives of Bernard Herrmann is slated for release in Summer 2016. 


The San Francisco Symphony recently announced its 2015 – 2016 season and its “wildly popular” film series is again part of the schedule.  This series consists of popular classics presented on the big screen while the orchestra performs the score live. I can attest, having attended a few of these events, that these movie-with-live-orchestra performances are an out-of-this-world experience. And this season, good news for Hitchcock/Herrmann fans, Vertigo, which was first presented during the 2013 - 2014 season, will once more be showcased at Davies Hall.

The complete San Francisco Symphony 2015 - 2016 film series:
  • Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), score by Danny Elfman, on Fri. and Sat., Nov. 27 and 28
  • Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), score by Dimitri Tiomkin, on Fri. and Sat., Dec. 11 and 12
  • Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), score by Bernard Herrmann, on Fri. and Sat., Feb. 12 and 13
  • Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), score by John Williams, Fri. and Sat., Mar. 25 and 26
I enthusiastically recommend this series to those who live in or will be visiting the Bay Area during the 2015 - 2016 symphony season.

Vertigo (1958)

For more information on Brandon Brown’s Lives of Bernard Herrmann, click here 

Click here and scroll down to learn more about the San Francisco Symphony’s 2015 – 2016 film series

Steven Smith is quoted from an October 2000 interview on NPR, Bernard Herrmann’s Score to Psycho

*Sight & Soundcritics poll

Bernard Herrmann
↧

Beginning this Spring - Classic Film Nights in California’s Wine Country

March 10, 2014, 6:00 am
$
0
0

The historic Napa Valley Opera House on Main Street in Napa, California, first opened its doors in 1880 with a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. Those doors closed in 1914, the theater having sustained damage from San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake and changing times - vaudeville was in decline and movies were growing ever more dominant. The historic building was saved from the wrecking ball in the 1970s when it was added to the National Registry of Historic Places and, a few years later, due largely to a challenge grant from the Mondavi family, money was raised for its restoration. In 2003, the theater’s doors opened once more.

Late in 2013, the Opera House entered into a long-term lease with Michael Dorf, founder and CEO of the City Winery organization. City Winery establishments – now in New York and Chicago - combine music venue, events space, restaurant and urban winery. At the venues in Manhattan and the Windy City winemakers crush and ferment grapes on site but because Napa is in the very heart of California’s wine country and surrounded on all sides by wineries large and small, winemaking won’t be among this location’s offerings. However, City Winery Napa will feature many wines on tap - and of the 35 wines to be offered, 30 will be from local wineries.


$2.3 million in upgrades are in progress now at the historic landmark and a “soft launch” of the venue is set to take place in April, May and June.

Along with live entertainment events, Napa’s City Winery will also present a monthly “Tuesday Night Flicks” program. So far, three legendary classics are on the schedule and I can't wait to see them at the redesigned opera house and report back...
 

 
↧
Viewing all 188 articles
Browse latest View live
Search