Bette Davis, Dangerous!

Bette Davis, Legend, Star and one of the most famous names even today when you think of Hollywood.

Universal Pictures signed her to a contract and in 1930 Davis and her mother went to Hollywood. Her first film was BAD SISTER (1931), which also featured Humphrey Bogart. Appearances in five more lackluster films discouraged the young actress, until George Arliss, who was to remain her mentor, persuaded Warner Bros. to hire her to play opposite him in THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD (1932). It proved to be her breakthrough film. Warner Bros. then signed her to a longterm contract, beginning her stormy relationship with a studio more accustomed to promoting its tough male stars.

Over the next three years, Davis made 14 more films for Warner Bros., most of them forgettable. But her career took a dramatic turn in 1934 when she was lent to RKO to play the slatternly Mildred opposite Leslie Howard in OF HUMAN BONDAGE. This unsympathetic role gave Davis an opportunity to cut loose and her riveting performance garnered much critical acclaim. Now Warner Bros. took notice of her, and she began to get better parts. The following year, she made DANGEROUS (1935), for which she won her first Oscar, and in 1936 she and Howard reteamed in THE PETRIFIED FOREST.

That same year, Davis’s long-standing resentment against the strictures of the studio contract system came to a head when she defied Warner Bros. and went to London to make pictures with a British company. After Warner Bros. successfully sued her, she returned to Hollywood, where she was treated with newfound respect: Warner Bros. signed her to a new contract and offered her even better roles. Thus began the peak period of her career, a series of memorable roles that started with her fiery Southern belle in JEZEBEL (1938), for which she won her second Oscar. 1939 alone saw Davis appearing in four classic films: DARK VICTORY, JUAREZ, THE OLD MAID and THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX.

A Sweep

Director Frank Capra took home every Oscar® in the book (well, okay, all the major ones) for this seminal 1934 comedy starring Clark Gable as a hard-bitten reporter who stays close to a runaway heiress (Claudette Colbert) rather than lose a good story. Funny and sexy, the film is full of memorable scenes often referred to in other films, such as the “walls of Jericho” (a mere bedcover hung on a line down the middle of a room so opposite-sex roommates can get undressed), the doughnuts-dunking lesson, the hitchhiking scene and Colbert’s famous flash of thigh to stop a speeding car in its tracks, the night-time scene on a haystack in a deserted barn, and the dramatic wedding scene. Capra’s brisk, urbane brand of wit was a perfect complement to his populist faith in the common man (in this case, Gable’s character), and that inspired combination makes this film both a spirited entertainment and an uplifting experience. It beat out other great films, such as The Thin Man, The Barrets of Wimpole Street, The Gay Divorcee and Imitation of Life to win the coverted Best Picture Oscar.

Dark Side of the Moon

Born, Lily Claudette Chauchoin in Paris, France and raised in New York City, Claudette Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, and with the advent of talking pictures progressed to film. She joined Paramount Pictures, and became noted for her versatility. She was acclaimed for her performances in several screwball comedies as well as dramatic roles and she received Academy Award nominations in both film genres.
From the mid 1930s until the late 1940s, she was one of the most successful and highly paid performers in American cinema. During the 1950s she continued to act in films and appeared in a number of television productions but concentrated mainly on her work in theater, remaining active until the late 1980s. In her later years, she retired to her home in Barbados, where she died at the age of 92, following a series of small strokes.

Colbert was reluctant to appear in the Frank Capra romantic comedy, It Happened One Night (1934), opposite Clark Gable. Filming began in a tense atmosphere; Colbert and Gable agreed that the script was below standard, but soon established a friendly working relationship and found that the script was no worse than those of many of their earlier films. She however continued to show her displeasure on the set.
Capra recalled Colbert’s dissatisfaction with the part, commenting, “Colbert fretted, pouted and argued about her part… she was a tartar, but a cute one”
Upon completion of the film, commenting later in her life, “I left wondering how the movie would be received. It was right in the middle of the Depression. People needed fantasy, they needed splendor and glamour, and Hollywood gave it to them. And here we were, looking a little seedy and riding on our bus”.
Colbert then starred in Imitation of Life (1934). Of the four films Colbert made in 1934, three of them – Cleopatra, Imitation of Life and It Happened One Night were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture, with the last winning the award.

Colbert was the last choice for the role of Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934). Myrna Loy was originally offered the roles, but she felt that the script was poor, and Loy described it is one of the worst she had ever read, later noting that the final version bore little resemblance to the script she was offered. Miriam Hopkins, Constance Bennett and Margaret Sullavan had each rejected the part,Bette Davis was unavailable, and Carole Lombard turned Ellie down.

Colbert was very particular regarding the way she appeared on screen. She believed that her face was difficult to light and photograph, and was obsessed with not showing her “bad” side, the right, to the camera, because of a small bump from a nose broken in childhood. The vast majority of movie shots taken of Claudette Colbert were of her left profile. Thus dubbing her “the dark side of the moon”.

King of Hollywood

It Happened One Night for the first time in Oscar History, all top Oscar awards went for the same film, and this was the year, and It Happened One Night was the film, and Clark Gable was it’s leading man.

Born in Cadiz, Ohio. The former blue-collar worker from Ohio became the “King of Hollywood,” a title based on his being the leading male box-office attraction throughout the 1930s. The dashing, mustachioed image of Rhett Butler in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) remains indelibly associated with the name Clark Gable, but before his “I don’t give a damn” made screen history Gable (with the aid of his MGM publicist Howard Strickland) had already established a distinctive screen persona as the virile, lovable rogue whose gruff facade only thinly masked a natural charm and goodness.

Following his marriage to actress Josephine Dillon, Gable played bit parts in several silent Hollywood features but he first achieved fame as a leading man on Broadway in the late 20s. With the flourishing of sound films, Gable joined the new generation of movie actors who made the move from New York to Hollywood in the early 30s. On the advice of director/actor Lionel Barrymore MGM granted him a screen test and, after a talkie debut in a Pathé western (THE PAINTED DESERT, 1931), Gable signed a contract with the prestigious Metro, where he remained until 1954. In his first year alone, Gable appeared in a dozen features, quickly rising from supporting player to romantic lead. He was teamed with all of MGM’s leading ladies, most notably opposite Norma Shearer in A FREE SOUL (1931), Greta Garbo in SUSAN LENOX: HER FALL AND RISE (1931) and Joan Crawford in THE POSSESSED (1931) — though he proved equally adept in male-oriented action sagas (THE SECRET SIX, 1931, SPORTING BLOOD, 1931, HELL DIVERS, 1932).

Despite his rising popularity, Gable balked at having to play gangsters and overly callous characters. In a now legendary act of studio disciplining, Louis B. Mayer “punished” Gable by loaning him out to lowly Columbia for a role in a minor romantic comedy. The project, Frank Capra’s IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), unexpectedly became the first film to sweep the five major Oscars (for best actor, actress, director, writer, and picture) and vaulted Gable to new prominence in the industry. His sensational appearance sans undershirt in the film’s bedroom scene went down in Hollywood legend as the event that caused American males to make fewer trips to the haberdasher. While its effect on undershirt purchases may be purely apochryphal, the publicity from the event no doubt led to Gable’s next major role, that of the bare-chested Fletcher Christian in MGM’s MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935), another Oscar-winner for Best Picture.

With such success under his belt, Gable commanded even greater star treatment at Metro and began appearing in fewer films each year, although his range of genre vehicle expanded. He continued his string of romantic comedies with Jean Harlow (RED DUST, 1932, HOLD YOUR MAN, 1933, CHINA SEAS, 1935, WIFE VS. SECRETARY, 1936, and SARATOGA, 1937), but also made offbeat musical appearances (SAN FRANCISCO, 1936, CAIN AND MABEL, 1936, IDIOT’S DELIGHT, 1939, in which he sang “Puttin’ on the Ritz”), action dramas (CALL OF THE WILD, 1935, TEST PILOT, 1938) and romances (LOVE ON THE RUN, 1936). With MGM even promoting his image in its other feature films (Judy Garland singing “Dear Mr. Gable –You Made Me Love You” in BROADWAY MELODY OF 1938 and Mickey Rooney doing Gable impressions in BABES IN ARMS, 1939) Clark Gable remained King of the Hollywood box office throughout the decade, culminating in his highly publicized and memorable performance in GONE WITH THE WIND. Only his ill-conceived biopic PARNELL (1937) interrupted a string of popular successes.

Gable’s reign at the top of Hollywood stardom in 1939 was enhanced by his storybook romance and marriage to actress Carole Lombard. Her untimely death in a plane crash in January 1942 marked a tragic downturn in Gable’s life. He turned his back on his film career and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. After two years of decorated combat service, Gable returned to the screen in 1945 with his macho hero’s image only further amplified. But despite much studio publicity for his return in ADVENTURE (“Gable’s Back and Garson’s Got Him”) and some box-office success, Gable’s post-war film career consisted mostly of routine, undistinguished vehicles. He consistently starred in one film a year, but never regained his status of 30s. Still, there were no pretenders to the throne. When MGM remade RED DUST in 1953 as MOGAMBO, Ava Gardner was in for Harlow, Grace Kelly played the Mary Astor role, and Gable’s part? Only Gable could fill Gable’s shoes, even twenty-one years later.

After a short-lived marriage (Lady Sylvia Ashley) and an unsuccessful attempt at independent production in the 1950s, Gable proved himself the King one last time, romancing the fragile Marilyn Monroe in John Huston’s THE MISFITS (1961). His performance was greatly praised, but Gable had insisted on performing his own stunts, including breaking a horse. Doctors had warned him about an already weakened heart and the exertion proved too much (this would be Monroe’s last completed film as well). He widowed his fifth wife, the former Kay Spreckles, in 1960, shortly before she gave birth to John Clark Gable, the son Gable had always longed for.

Cavalcade

Cavalcade is a 1933 film that takes a historical view of English life from New Year’s Eve 1899 through New Years Day 1933. It is told from the point of view of well-to-do Londoner residents Jane and Robert Marryot (played by Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook). The film chronicles events including the Second Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic and the Great War. It used the tagline “The march of time measured by a mother’s heart!” The film was directed by Frank Lloyd; Reginald Berkeley wrote the screenplay based on the original play by Noel Coward. Fox Movietone newsreel cameramen were sent to London to record the original stage production as a guide for the film version, which may account in part for the faithfully stagy nature of the final film.

Despite being a Best Picture Oscar winner and widely spoken of as one of the finest films ever made at the time, as well as being influential on later Upstairs, Downstairs-type dramas including Forever and a Day and Coward’s own This Happy Breed, the film version of Cavalcade has fallen into obscurity.

Morning Glory

Morning Glory is the story of a naive and pretentious aspiring actress, starring Katharine Hepburn in only her third film. This RKO film, directed by Lowell Sherman and adapted from a stage play by Zoe Akins, is notable since it helped to launch the actress’ successful career, and provided her with the first (of four) Best Actress Oscars – the film’s only nomination. Many critics have noted that Hepburn should have won an Oscar for her first screen appearance in A Bill of Divorcement (1932) a year earlier. This film, as already mentioned was the first of four wins for Katherine, the leading lady of leading ladies, and the holder of more Oscar wins and nominations than any other Actress or Actor. The American Film Institute ranked Hepburn as the top female star in their Greatest American Screen Legends list.

born in Hartford, Connecticut, to Dr. Thomas Norval Hepburn, a successful urologist from Virginia, and Katharine Martha Houghton. Hepburn’s father was a staunch proponent of publicizing the dangers of venereal disease in a time when such things were not discussed. Hepburn’s mother campaigned for equal rights for women, and co-founded Planned Parenthood with birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. The Hepburns demanded frequent familiar discussions on these topics and more, and as a result the Hepburn children were well versed in social and political issues. The Hepburn children were never asked to leave a room no matter what the topic of conversation was. Once a very young Katharine Hepburn even accompanied her mother to a suffrage rally. The Hepburn children, at their parents’ encouragement, were unafraid of expressing frank views on various topics, including sex. “We were snubbed by everyone, but we grew quite to enjoy that,” Hepburn later said of her unabashedly liberal family, who she credited with giving her a sense of adventure and independence.

Some of what has made Hepburn greatly beloved today — her unconventional, straightforward, anti-Hollywood attitude — at the time began to turn audiences sour. Outspoken and intellectual with an acerbic tongue, she defied the era’s “blonde bombshell” stereotypes, preferring to wear pantsuits and disdaining makeup. She also had a famously difficult relationship with the press, turning down most interviews, which did not help her exposure to the public. When she did speak with the press, occasionally she fed them lies to amuse herself. On her first outing with the Hollywood press corps after the success of A Bill of Divorcement, Hepburn talked with reporters who had invaded her and her husband’s cabin aboard the ship City of Paris. A reporter asked if they were really married; Hepburn responded, “I don’t remember.” Following up, another reporter asked if they had any children; Hepburn’s answer: “Two white and three colored.” Hepburn’s aversion to media attention did not thaw until 1973, when she appeared on The Dick Cavett Show for an extended two-day interview.

On June 29, 2003, Hepburn died of natural causes at Fenwick, the Hepburn family home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96 years old. In honor of her extensive theater work, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for an hour. The Morning Glory though, was never to fade, thanks to her tremendous work on film, she would live forever.

Adventures in Excessiveness ~ Charles Laughton

Laughton received his only Academy Award for his flamboyant portrayal of England’s famous, much-married monarch, Henry VIII. It was the first time that a performer in a British-made film won the best actor statuette. Laughton made King Henry an endearing but larger-than-life character by sitting lewdly, posing majestically, and dominating each shot by positioning himself at the center of the action. In the film’s most famous scene, he rips apart a capon, eats it with his fingers, and tosses the bones aside, then belches loudly. Laughton earned international acclaim in Alexander Korda’s irreverent biopic and soon found himself in demand as a Hollywood actor. He was nominated for best actor Oscars twice more (1935 and 1957).

Born at Victoria Hotel, Scarborough, Yorkshire, Englad. Following in his hotelman father’s footsteps, he started out as a hotel clerk, but after returning from WWI service, found himself drawn to the stage and joined an amateur group. He later enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and as a gold-medal-winning student he appeared in several of the school’s productions in 1925. The following year he made his professional debut on London’s West End. In the cast of one of his first plays was a young actress, Elsa Lanchester, who was also appearing in a series of two-reel comedy films. He teamed with her in two of these in 1928, and in the following year they married. It was also in 1929 that he made his debut in feature films. His parallel stage career brought Laughton (and Lanchester) to New York in 1931 with the play Payment Deferred. The following year he launched his lengthy and remarkable career as a Hollywood character star.

Although Laughton gave some of his finest performances in British films, notably in THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII (1933), for which he won the Academy Award, and REMBRANDT (1936), the bulk of his films were made in the United States, and in 1950 he became an American citizen. Rotund and boisterous, Laughton was a brilliant performer with an astonishing range. He played sadists and kind men, butlers and rulers of state, murderers and jurists, artists and gray, prosaic men with the same convincing strength and insatiable relish. At times, when his roles were thankless or the films unimportant, he tended to “ham it up,” frivolously carrying a part to its ludicrous extreme; but audiences rarely minded and seemed to savor the feast along with him.

He had a long and resilient marriage to actress Elsa Lanchester, although, in her autobiography, Lanchester revealed that Laughton was homosexual. According to her own account, she was shocked to learn about this, but eventually decided to remain married to him. However, she claims as a result of this, she decided not to have children with him. The decision caused him great grief, as he longed to become a father, as many friends of Laughton, among them Maureen O’Hara and Stanley Cortez, have stated. In her autobiographical book, Lanchester tells that one night, after they had been married for two years, the police stopped Laughton at the door of his London flat; they had a young boy in custody who had been loitering outside the house, presumably to get money after Laughton had approached him in Hyde Park. When her husband, in tears, confessed, Miss Lanchester told him not to worry about it, that it didn’t matter. That’s why he cried . . . when I told him it didn’t matter.

The Grand Hotel

The film opens and closes with Lewis Stone’s totally unaware statement : “Grand Hotel. People come and go. Nothing ever happens”. The comment turns out to be ironic during the few days in which the plot unfolds, because everything seems to be happening at the hotel, from romance to robbery to an accidental death.

This Academy Award winner for Best Picture is a sweeping soap opera about the guests at the Grand Hotel. Several plots intertwine, but mostly it’s about Stars! Stars! Stars! Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and both Barrymore brothers head up the cast. Garbo is luminous as Grusinskaya, the neurotic and famous-but-slipping dancer and, yes, she “vonts to be alone.” John Barrymore is a cat burglar with blue blood and a heart of gold, and Lionel Barrymore happily caroms off him as Mr. Kringelein, a dying man who wants to live out the time he has left with the rich. Joan Crawford is perhaps the biggest surprise of the movie: as Flaemmchen, a young career girl trying to decide between secretary and tart, she is uncharacteristically funny, vivacious, and downright bubbly. Along the way we discover that money, fame, and titles don’t guarantee happiness, and being a jewel thief doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. The nicest touch is the hint that other, minor plots swirl around the edges of the film, suggesting that we’ve only seen a small chapter of the hotel’s story. Grand Hotel is a great deal of fun and an excellent chance to see some famous faces in their prime.

Grand Hotel won the Best Picture Oscar. It is the only film to have won the Award without winning any others and without being nominated in any other categories. The award was presented to Irving Thalberg, with no mention of Paul Bern. In addition, Garbo’s line “I want to be alone” was #30 in the list of AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Movie Quotes.

"First Lady of the American Theater"

Helen Hayes was one of the greatest stage actresses of all time, and as movies became more and more prevelant, Helen was able to transform herself into one of the greatest film stars of all time as well. She began a stage career at an early age. By the age of ten, she had made a short film called Jean and the Calico Doll, but only moved to Hollywood when her husband, playwright Charles MacArthur, signed a Hollywood deal.

Her sound film debut was The Sin of Madelon Claudet, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She followed that with starring roles in Arrowsmith (with Myrna Loy), A Farewell to Arms (with actor Gary Cooper whom Hayes admitted to finding extremely attractive), The White Sister, What Every Woman Knows (a reprise from her Broadway hit), and Vanessa: Her Love Story. However, she never became a fan favorite and Hayes did not prefer film to the stage.

Hayes and MacArthur eventually returned to Broadway. She returned to Hollywood in the 1950s, and her film star began to rise. She starred in My Son John (1952) and Anastasia (1956), and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as an elderly stowaway in the disaster film Airport (1970). She followed that up with several roles in Disney films such as Herbie Rides Again, One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing and Candleshoe. Anastasia was considered a comeback having not acted for several years due to her daughter, Mary’s death and her husband’s failing health. Hayes died on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1993 from congestive heart failure, aged 92, not long after the death of her friend Lillian Gish, with whom she had been friends for many decades. Gish made Hayes the beneficiary of her estate, but Hayes only survived her by a month. Hayes was interred in the Oak Hill Cemetery, Nyack, New York.

1932 Best Actor Tie

Wallace Beery is mostly identified with the character of Richard, the Lion-Heartcd, which he played in “Robin Hood” and also in a picture of the same name. He is a brother of Noah was also a great character actor in the 30’s & 40’s. Wallace was the first husband of Gloria Swanson.

But what I remember Beery for was his portrayal in the 1931 film, The Champ. I watched this film a few weeks after I had saw the re-make with Jon Voight and Ricky Schroeder. I must say the original was much better. Beery was a powerful presence on the screen, and he made you feel his pain and passion.

Beery plays the alcoholic father, ex-heavyweight champion Andy “Champ” Purcell and despite his frequent binges, his frequent gambling and their squalid living conditions his son, Dink (Jackie Cooper) still adores his father and would do anything for him. Enter the long lost mother, who is now married and has money. Dink goes to live with his mother, but misses his father immensely. Andy, wanting to prove his worth to his son enters one more time in a boxing match.

Directed by one of the best director of the day, King Vidor was beautifully shot, and the intimate closing scenes were by far some of the best directing and acting on screen. Wallace Beery went on that year to tie for the Best Acting Oscar with Fredrick March and Frances Marion won a writing Oscar.

After watching this film, anytime I would see an old Wallace Beery film on TV I would have to sit down and watch it. He was one of the great under-rated actors of his time.

Fredric March;

Born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel, Fredric March was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actor. Born in Racine, Wisconsin, he attended the Winslow Elementary School (established in 1855), Racine High School, and the University of Wisconsin where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi. He began a career as a banker, but an emergency appendectomy caused him to reevaluate his life, and in 1920 he began working as an extra in movies made in New York City, using a shortened form of his mother’s maiden name, Marcher. He appeared on Broadway in 1926, and by the end of the decade signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures.

March won an Oscar nomination in 1930 for The Royal Family of Broadway, in which he played a role based upon John Barrymore. He tied for the Oscar for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and again in 1946 for The Best Years of Our Lives. In 1954, March hosted the 26th Annual Academy Awards.

March was one of the few actors to resist signing long-term contracts with the studios, and was able to freelance and pick and choose his roles, in the process also avoiding typecasting. By this time, he was working on Broadway as often as in Hollywood, and his screen career was not as prolific as it had been.

March, however, won two Best Actor Tony Awards: in 1947 for the play Years Ago, written by Ruth Gordon; and in 1957 for a Broadway production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. A friend of playwright Arthur Miller, he was favored by the writer to inaugurate the part of Willy Loman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman (1949). Director Elia Kazan cast Lee J. Cobb, however, as Willy Loman, and Arthur Kennedy as his son Biff Loman, two men that the director had worked with in the film Boomerang! (1947). March later played Willy Loman in Columbia Pictures’s 1951 film version of the play, directed by Laslo Benedek. Perhaps March’s greatest late-in-life role was in Inherit the Wind (1960), opposite Spencer Tracy.

When March underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1972, it seemed his career was over, yet he managed to give one last great performance in The Iceman Cometh (1973), as the complicated Irish bartender, Harry Hope. Ironically, co-star Robert Ryan was entering the final stages of lung cancer, so the film was the last for both March and Ryan.

Fredric March died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 77 from cancer. He was married to actress Florence Eldridge from 1927 until his death; they had 2 adopted children.

Throughout his life, he and his wife were supporters of the Democratic Party and liberal political causes. His support for the Republican (Second Spanish Republic) side during the Spanish Civil War was particularly controversial.