The Irish playwright St John Ervine (1883 – 1971) wrote this article for VANITY FAIR in an attempt to understand Charlie Chaplin’s broad appeal; rich and poor, highbrow and lowbrow, all enjoyed his movies.
Mr. Chaplin is the small boy realizing his ambitions.
Pulled from the business section of a 1940 issue of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE was this list of Hollywood statistics that should be of interest to all you old movie fans. If you’ve ever wondered how the Dream Factory fared following the Great Depression, you can stop scratching your head bone – herein you will learn how many souls were on Hollywood’s payroll, how many movies did the town make each year (give or take), what percentage of global film production was turned out by Hollywood and how many American movie theaters were there in 1940.
A 1938 magazine article pertains to a brawl that once existed between movie exhibitors and movie producers involving the Hollywood practice known as block-booking, which required theater owners to commit to movies they have never seen. The article refers to how Hollywood employed their biggest stars to fight legislation in Washington designed to overturn this scheme.
The bill was defeated.
Click here to read about Marilyn Monroe and watch a terrific documentary about her life.
More about the American film business in the 1940s can be read here…
Here is a 1937 article that reminds us that there wasn’t anything left to chance or improvisation under the old studio system:
One of the oldest newspaper publicity devices is the ‘leg display’. Resorted to chiefly by actresses whose press agents want them to break into print, it consists of nothing more than arriving in New York aboard an ocean liner and letting news photographers do the rest.
The adoration of the Feminine Leg began some twenty yeras earlier with the flappers; click here to read more on this topic…
The attached article was first seen during a time when a Palm Award, granted by the editors of Stage Magazine, was a reliable form of social currency and would actually serve the highly favored recipients in such a grand manner as to allow them brief respites at dining tables found at swank watering holes as New York’s Twenty-One Club and El Morocco.
Today, a Palm Award, plus four dollars, will get you a medium-sized cappuccino at Starbucks. Walt Disney was awarded a Palm in 1938 for his achievement in producing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
More articles about Disney films can be read here – KEY WORDS: Cinderella 1950 movie review,Cinderella by walt disney newspaper
More articles about Disney films can be read here – KEY WORDS: Mickey Mouse Trivia 1951,Walt Disney Trivia,Mickey Mouse’s Tail,evolution
Due to a highly involved and convoluted Mickey Mouse comic strip plot that we can’t possibly begin to understand in the least – but in 1937 managed to offend the crowned heads of the Karađorđević Dynasty in far-off Yugoslavia, all matters Mickey (films, books, comics, etc) were soon banned from the kingdom.
The introduction of Donald Duck in Silly Symphony Number Thirteen had’em rolling in the isles, to be sure – and if you don’t think so, here’s proof from STAGE MAGAZINE’s Helen G. Thompson:
If you didn’t see him in The Orphan’s Benefit, you missed the performance of the generation. Like Bergner’s show, it ran for Donald the whole gamut of his emotions. Voted the toughest duck of the season, Long Island included, and now crashing Europe, a breathless American public awaits his acclaim. Will his fare be raspberries or chuckle-berries? Donald says whatever the decision, he’ll fight.
A bitter article written by a Hollywood veteran concerning what was at the time recognized as a growing cottage industry: recreational law suits that lay claim to falsified violations of movie plagiarism.
Robert Lord (b. 1902, Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1932) penned this two page article and outlined it all quite clearly as to how the plagiarism game was played in 1930s Hollywood.
Karen Morley (né Mildred Linton: 1909 – 2003) was an American movie actress whose last moment before the cameras was when she refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the early Winter of 1952.
Back in the day, he was responsible for casting 91,000 film actors each year, he was,
Hollywood’s No. 1 casting director, Billy Grady: broad-shouldered, open-faced Irishman, a terror to counterfeits, a down-right softy when he encounters an honest man – or woman.
This article tells much of his life story and provides a blow-by-blow as to what his days were like. One of the more interesting aspects of the article addressed the charities that were designed to aid and comfort those many souls who worked as extras in the movies. Today, extra players (also known as ‘atmosphere) are extended benefits through the Screen Actors Guild – but this was not always the case.
A swell article that truly catches the spirit of the time. You will read about the war-torn Hollywood that existed between the years 1941-1945 and the movie shortage, the hair-pin rationing, the rise of the independent producers and the ascent of Van Johnson and Lauren Becall:
Lauren, a Warner Brothers property, is a blonde-haired chick with a tall, hippy figure, a voice that sounds like a sexy foghorn and a pair of so-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it eyes
Mention is also made of the hiring of demobilized U.S. combat veterans to serve as technical assistants for war movies in such films as Objective Burma.
Earl Blackwell and Ted Strong
Today America has more celebrities than it can keep track of and Celebrity Services aims, simply, to keep track of them.
Celebrity Services’ office is a busy hodge-podge of files, cross-files, indices, cards folders, stuffed pigeonholes, telephones, confidential memos address books, private dossiers and fat envelopes – all pertaining to the lives of 50,000 celeb-utopians.
It was called the Universal-International School of Motion Picture Drama and it was established in 1948 (the year of it’s closing is not so easy to find). The school’s young students were all Universal contract players who had been chosen by legendary casting agent Robert Palmer; a few illustrious names from the alumni list include Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Shelley Winters, Jeff Chandler and Piper Laurie.
Although he is not listed as a student in that program, Clint Eastwood can clearly be seen in the center of the attached class photo.
A late Thirties article by Teet Carle (the old publicist for MGM) on how the brothers Marx figured out which gag created the biggest laughs; a few words about how the movies were tested in various cities prior to each release and how assorted jokes were recited to all manner of passersby for their effect.
Click here to read a 1951 article that Harpo Marx wrote about Groucho.
This article, I’m an Adopted Mother, by Hollywood movie actress Joan Crawford (1905 – 1977) rambles on column after column about her four adopted children and the tremendous fulfillment they brought to her life. It was all a bunch of hooey, and we might have ended up believing it all, if it weren’t for her daughter Christine, who, in 1978, published a bestselling memoir testifying to the beatings that the movie star could be depended upon to deliver regularly; a first edition of the book is available at Amazon – it was titled Mommy Dearest
Illustrated with a photo of L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen and his wife, this short column from 1949 summarizes one of the many shake-down schemes that the thug would employ to blackmail Hollywood actors during their weaker moments.
