There can be no doubt that at some point between the appearance of this brief notice and the release of Gone with the Wind, culture critic Gilbert Seldes (1893 – 1970) was won-over to the side that believed sound-movies were the way to go- but in 1929, he wasn’t buy’n it.
American audiences came to know Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993) when she was teamed up with Gregory Peck for the 1953 William Wyler production Roman Holiday (Paramount) – but the king makers of Hollywood sat up and took notice of her a year earlier, when she appeared in the European comedy Monte Carlo Baby (briefly reviewed herein). This movie was pretty quickly forgotten – and today Monte Carlo Baby cannot be found on DVD or cassette, and the film’s producer, Ray Ventura (1908 – 1979), is primarily remembered for his talents as a jazz pianist.
The editors of STAGE MAGAZINE were dumbfounded when they considered that just ten years after audiences got an earful from the first sound movies, the most consistent characteristic to have been maintained throughout that decade was the box-office dominance of American movie stars, directors and writers. After naming the most prominent of 1930s U.S. movie stars the author declares with certainty that this could not have been an accident.
A sad article about the suicide-by-bottle choice that was made by actress Diana Barrymore in 1960.
As children, both John jr. and Diana were largely ignored by their famous father, John Barrymore, who preferred to simply pay their bills from afar and see them as rarely as possible. Young John, having abandoned all hope of ever playing a meaningful roll in the life of his father and seeing that the U.S. Navy valued him more, lied about his age and joined the Navy at 13. In later years he was much like his sister – he lead a life devoid of much meaning and drifted off into the bottle.
When this article went to press in 1960, Jane Fonda (b. 1937) was all of 22.
She had recently dropped out of Vassar to pursue modeling in Manhattan (unlike most college drop-out who quit campus to pursue modeling, Fonda’s smiling mug was placed on two VOGUE covers that year) and to study method acting with Lee Strasberg (1901 – 1982). She had her first taste of Broadway in a short-lived production titled There was a Little Girl and had not, as yet, taken up her interest in totalitarian communism.
Click here to read about Henry Fonda.
Attached you will be able to print the film review for Charlie Chaplin‘s movie, Shoulder Arms (1918). Printed in a popular humor magazine from the time, the flick (which had been re-released) was hailed by this one critic as the greatest comedy in movie history.
An article that celebrated the well-received performance of Diana Barrymore in her stage debut in the New York play, The Romantic Mr. Dickens:
The critics marshaled such adjectives as ‘vibrant,’ ‘vivid,’ ‘beautiful’, and ‘confident’ to describe the ‘best Barrymore debut in years.’
When LIFE MAGAZINE ran a cheese cake picture of Diana Barrymore (1921 – 1960) on the cover of their July 31, 1939 issue
PHOTOPLAY’s Frances Kish spent some time with the animators at Terry-Toon studios and filed this report detailing all the efforts that go into the production of just one Terry-Toon film:
The major animator begins begins the work. The thin white paper he uses for his drawings has holes punched at the top, like pages for a loose-leaf note book…The figures are about three inches high…
Attached is an article by One Take Woody (Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke, Jr. 1889 – 1943) on the topic of the two Thin Man films he had directed:
Looking back into the infinite past, I seem to recall that a certain motion picture was made and that I had something to do with it. It stirs restlessly in my memory, for it was immediately seized by the theater public as a new cycle in screen entertainment. In Hollywood, things are often done in cycles – gangster cycles, G-man cycles, historical romances, sea stuff,even Shakespeare. Somebody starts it and others fall in line to catch the shekels that bounce to the floor after the first jack pot.
Click here to read an article about Dashiell Hammett.
A single page article on the topic of Ginger Rogers (1911 – 1995) and her career as it had progressed up to the year 1939:
Virginia Katherine McMath is the real name of this famous star and she was born in Independence, Missouri, on July 16, but most of her childhood was spent in Fort Worth, Texas.
She is five feet, four inches tall and weighs 108 pounds. She never has to diet because dancing keeps her in perfect condition. Dancing is listed as her very favorite hobby, too.
She had her first taste of real success on the screen with the winning roles in ‘Gold Diggers of 1933′ and ’42nd Street’.
Click here to read about the young Lucile Ball.
Although Euro Disney would not be opening until 1990, this article by Hollywood costume designer Howard Greer implied that it would have done quite well had they opened eighty-six years earlier:
You know everyone in Hollywood? they asked. I blushed modestly and admitted that I did.
Don’t you want to know about the stars? I went on.Shall I tell you about Garbo?
‘A smile passed across their faces.’
‘Garbo? Yes, we like her. But the star we ‘d love to know everything about is – Mickey Mouse!’
Seven years after his film debut in Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse continued to pack the theaters of the world. Prior to the release of Disney’s animated film,William Tell, STAGE MAGAZINE correspondent Katherine Best was rightfully in awe over the world-wide popularity the rodent was enjoying and at the time this essay appeared in print, he had already been seen in over sixty cartoons.
Aren’t you tired of Hollywood’s socio-political rantings?
•Nuclear power…………….They’re against it (The China Syndrome).
•Antisemitism……………….They’re against it (Gentleman’s Agreement).
•Alcoholism………………….They’re against it (Lost Weekend).
•Racial segregation………..They’re against it, but in 1915 they were for it (Birth of a Nation).
One glance at this 1939 article and you’ll be able to blame it all on the poet Archibald McLeish (1892 – 1982) who clearly advocated for political posturing in American movies.
No doubt, McLeish must have been very happy when Warner Brothers released Confessions of a Nazi Spy in April of 1939; it was the first Hollywood film to take a swipe at the Nazi war machine.
The literati have all agreed: there is no doubt that if Shakespeare were alive today he would live in Beverly Hills, California. He would dwell in a 1930s split-level Persion-conversion, probably on Palm or Roxbury. As a well-compensated screenwriter he would churn-out the standard plots that were expected of him: fish-out-of-water dramadies, romcoms, and (under assorted pen names) a few reality shows; and like the poet whose work is attached, he would write about matters unique to Southern California -valet parking, Cobb Salads -and in this case the Hollywood agent.
This poem was written by Sydney King Russell (1898 – 1976), who, like Shakespeare, knew that if you’re going to write a poem about Hollywood agents, you’ll need to crack open the ol’ rhyming dictionary to see what rhymes with ten percent.
Shortly before this article went to press, that particular member of the Hollywood film crew called the director of photography (DP) was treated a wee-bit better than other crew members were likely to be treated (but not that much better). Granted, the director and producer knew his name and his body of work – but his screen credit was still mixed among all the other names of the crew (if listed at all) – and this article points out that much of that changed in the Thirties.
Published in a 1930 Hollywood fan magazine, this is the story of the earliest plastic surgeons and the rise of cosmetic surgery in Hollywood:
Telling the actual names of all the stars who have been to the plastic surgeons is an impossible task. They won’t admit it, except in a few isolated instances…It is only lately that a few of them are beginning, not only to to admit that they’ve had their faces bettered, but to even go so far as to publicly announce it.
Technologies change, power changes, tastes change, but if anything has remained a constant in the West coast film colony it has been the fickle romantic tastes of all the various performers, directors and producers who toil in the vineyards of Hollywood. An old salt once remarked that if a Hollywood marriage lasts longer than milk it can be judged a success; with this old saw in mind, a wise anthropologist sat down, put pen to paper and seriously attempted to understand mating habits of Hollywood, California.
Click here to read a 1938 memoir by a Los Angeles prostitute.
