Hollywood History

Second Oscar for Tom and Jerry (The Lion’s Roar, 1946)

All told, the animated cartoon series Tom and Jerry would be awarded seven (7) Academy Awards before Oscar’s attention turned elsewhere.


This 1946 article sings the praises of Fred Quimby (1886 – 1965), the animation producer who ran the shop at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio between the years 1937 and 1954:

Doff the cap to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Fred Quimby, producer of Tom and Jerry’, the only cartoon stars to have copped the coveted Oscar for two consecutive years. Even the distinguished Donald Duck has only been Oscarized once.

‘Tom and Jerry‘ reflect in broad comedy the faults and foibles of human beings, even as you and I. Here we have a thoroughly egotistical cat and a very shrewd mouse… a cartoon representation of the eternal conflict between HERO and VILLAIN. Toma always hopes to outwit Jerry who symbolizes the underdogs of the world.

This short notice appeared in The Lion’s Roar, which was the monthly publicity rag for M.G.M. Studio.

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Some British Opinions About the First Talking Movies (Literary Digest, 1929)

Attached are excerpts from a few 1929 British newspapers that condemned all efforts made in Hollywood to produce talking pictures; one snide reviewer went so far as to insist that rather than calling the films talkies, they should be referred to as dummies:

The majority of films in the future will be made stupidly for stupid people, just has been the case with the silent movies for twenty years…


•Read About the First Talkie Movie Star•

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The Ronald Reagan-Jane Wyman Crack-Up (Photoplay Magazine, 1948)

A printable article from a 1948 Hollywood fan magazine that illustrated quite clearly how much easier Ronald Reagan had it with the Soviet Union, when compared to his failings with his first bride, Jane Wyman (1917 – 2007). The PHOTOPLAY journalist, Gladys Hall, outlined nicely how busy the couple had been up to that time yet remarked that they had had a difficult time since the war ended, breaking-up and reconciling as many as three times. In 1948 Wyman, who had been married twice before, filed for divorce on charges of mental cruelty; the divorce was finalized in ’49 and the future president went on to meet Nancy Davis in 1951 (marrying in ’52); click here if you wish to read a 1951 article about that courtship.


Historically, Ronald Reagan was the first divorced man to ascend the office of the presidency. Shortly after his death in 2004, Wyman remarked:

America has lost a great president and a great, kind, and gentle man.


Click here read an article about Hollywood’s war on monogamy.

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Various Remarks About the First Talkies (Photoplay Magazine, 1930)

Assorted quotes addressing some aspects of the 1930 Hollywood and the entertainment industry seated there. Some are prophets who rant-on about the impending failure of talking pictures, others go on about the obscene sums of money generated in the film colony; a few of the wits are well-known to us, like Thomas Edison, George M. Cohan and Walter Winchell but most are unknown – one anonymous sage, remarking about the invention of sound movies, prophesied:

In ten years, most of the good music of the world will be written for sound motion pictures.


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Natalie Wood (Coronet Magazine, 1960)

This is one of the first profiles of Hollywood beauty and former child star Natalie Wood (1938 – 1981).

The journalist went into some details explaining how she was discovered at the age of five by the director Irving Pichel (1891 – 1954) and how it all steadily snowballed into eighteen years of semi-steady work that provided her with a invaluable Hollywood education (and subsequently creating a thoroughly out-of-control teenager).

At sixteen, Natalie co-starred with the late James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and the resulting Dean hysteria swept her forward with him… She cannot bear to be alone. She is full of reasonless fears. Of airplanes. Of snakes. Of swimming in the ocean.

Natalie Wood (Coronet Magazine, 1960) Read More »

Jane Russell Sur la Plage… (Pic Magazine, 1941)

When these eight pictures of Hollywood actress Jane Russell (1921 – 2012) were snapped in the spring of 1941, she wasn’t up to much. She was studying acting at Max Reinhardt’s Theatrical Workshop in Los Angeles and more than likely waiting for her seven year contract with Howard Hughes to expire. The film that she’d made with him the previous year, The Outlaw, would not [be widely] distributed for some time and so we imagine that she jumped at the chance to put on a bathing suit and clown around on the beach when she got the call from the boys at PIC MAGAZINE. With the onslaught of the Second World War, she would be doing much of the same sort of posing for the pin-up photographers.


In the attached photo-essay, the PIC editors went out on a limb and called her one of America’s greatest beauties.

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‘The Plainsman” by Cecil B. DeMille (Stage Magazine, 1937)

Why should a director risk it all with some anonymous film critic when a he is given the chance to review his own movie? With this thought in mind, Cecil B. DeMille (1883 – 1959) typed up his own thoughts concerning all his hard work on the 1937 film, The Plainsman, which starred Gary Cooper:

I think ‘The Plainsman’ differs from any Western we have ever seen for many reasons


– it is at this point in the article that DeMille rattles-off an extended laundry list
of reasons that illustrate the unique qualities of his Western. One of the unique aspects of the film mentioned only by publicists concerned the leading man Garry Cooper, who, being a skilled horseman from his Montana youth, chose to do most of his own riding stunts in the film, including the shot where he rode hanging between two horses.


Click here to read a 1927 review of Cecil B. De Mille’s silent film, King of Kings.

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