June 30 B-Days

Lena Horne (1917-  ) singer, actress, The Wiz

Glenda Farrell (1904-1971) actress, Little Caesar

Nestor Paiva (1905-1966) actor, Mighty Joe Young, Creature From the Black Lagoon

Susan Hayward (1917-1975), actress, Oscar winner for I Want to Live!

Rita Hayworth, the Dancer

I am so surprised many don’t know Rita Hayworth was a dancer.  She started dancing from childhood.  On her father’s side were well-known flamenco dancers.  I read one of her uncles taught Gene Kelly some flamenco moves.  Hayworth also got dancing genes from her mother, a Ziegfeld dancer. She dances with Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and unknown man  in the videos below.

IMDB and Hollywood getting on my nerves

IMDB is the premier movie database.  WTF is up with them?  Gale Storm’s death isn’t prominent in the news headlines.  I found a piece posted below Jeff Goldblum’s faux death.  Jeff Goldblum isn’t even dead but he’s a headline over  dead singer and 1950s TV star Gale Storm.

IMDB doesn’t honor dead stars from the past.  It gave Betty Hutton a tiny blurb as big as the period at the end of this sentence.  It did the same with Don Ho and first Bond, Barry Nelson.  Absolutely no respect for the elderly and the pioneers.

I’m not a Jennifer Aniston fan but if we never hear from her in the next 40 years, then drops dead…well she’ll deserve a nice mention.  She was famous in the 90s.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pulls this crap too like leaving out the likes of  Dorothy McGuire, Brad Renfro, Ann Savage, and Mel Ferrer from it’s In Memoriam. And get this classic cinephiles, it left out f*@king ANITA PAGE in 2009!!!!!  How do you f*@king leave out Anita Page?  A BIG star from the silent era and early talkies who was in the 1930 Academy Award’s Best Picture, The Broadway Melody (1929).

I’m so so upset right now.

June 29 Birthdays and Marriages

CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Robert Evans (1930) producer, Chinatown, Marathon Man

Freida Inescort (1901) actress, Pride and Prejudice, A Place in the Sun

Nelson Eddy (1901) singer, actor, Naughty Marietta

Joan Davis (1907) comedienne, Thin Ice, Hold That Ghost

Katherine DeMille (1911) actress, The Call of the Wild

Cara Williams (1925) actress, The Defiant Ones, The Helen Morgan Story

CELEBRITY MARRIAGES

Errol Flynn and Lily Damita (1935)

Mariilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller (1956)

RIP Gale Storm

This has been a terrible week for celebrity passings. I’ve heard of Gale Storm.  I’ve heard of her famous TV show “My Little Margie.” I know she was a B actress in the 40s but a television star with her own series.  I even know what she looked like because I cut out her pictures for my movie scrapbooks but surprisingly I’ve never seen her on screen.  Maybe I’ve seen one of her B movies but I don’t remember.

I learned about her through my dad because when I saw a Jeanne Crain filmed titled Margie, he thought I was referring to “My Little Margie.”  Anyway I hope one day to see her on screen in order to give my proper respects to this television sitcom pioneer.

Youtube video link of her song

watch?v=4RopfQwkQCE&feature=related

Rain (1932)

Rain, a flop in it’s day,  is a visually beautiful film thanks to camera shots and angles by Oliver T. Marsh. Joan Crawford is at the height of her beauty dressed in tawdry makeup and baubles playing Miss Sadie Thompson a woman of questionable sexual morals.  Both she and underrated actor Walter Huston give powerful performances.  The first half can be slow but in the latter part of the film Huston upstages Crawford as a hypocritical Christian missionary whom the natives of Pago Pago call a witch doctor.

What makes this film special is it’s portrayal of the missionaries as the sinners; the prostitute as compromising and decent.  Crawford can see through his evil religious facade but eventually succumbs to his brainwashing in a very powerful robotic prayer scene.  Does she really convert or play for vengeance?

Happy Birthday!

Mel Brooks (1926-), actor, writer, producer, director, Oscar winner for The Producers, Oscar-nominated Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) composer, Oscar-winner for State Fair

Ian MacDonald (1914-1978), actor, High Noon, Johnny Guitar, Apache

Ruggero Maccari (1919-1989), writer, director, Oscar-nominated for Scent of A Woman

Pat Morita (1932-2005), actor, Oscar-nominated for The Karate Kid

Toshia Mori

The Bitter Tea of General Yen is in my Netflix queue but it’s availability is unknown.  The film interests me because Japanese-born American actress, Toshia Mori is 3rd billed. Her other roles in the late 20s and 30s were minor.

I learned about her after reviewing the list of WAMPAS Baby Stars.  WAMPAS stands for Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers.  It was an annual selection of 13 promising starlets.  In 1932, Mori was the only Asian and the only one of non-European descent to have ever been selected. Famous WAMPAS baby stars include Joan Crawford, Clara Bow, Dolores Del Rio, Fay Wray, Joan Blondell, Laura La Plante, Bessie Love, Ginger Rogers, Janet Gaynor, Mary Astor, Loretta Young, Marian Marsh, Gloria Stuart, Jean Arthur, Lupe Velez, Anita Louise, Anita Page, Colleen Moore, Frances Dee, and Rochelle Hudson

It’s very hard to find information on this actress but the mere fact she was an Asian  WAMPAS baby and achieved 3rd billing in a Frank Capra film starring Barbara Stanwyck is amazing. How was her WAMPAS selection received? How did the media describe her talents and beauty? I would love to discover any magazine articles, news reels, film reviews or fan mail on her.

A Free Soul (1931)

A Free Soul is the film that got Clark Gable recognized. A society girl played by Norma Shearer uses gangster Clark Gable as a boy toy.  Gable loves her and wants to marry. He didn’t seem like that bad of a character aside from his gangster career but towards the end he becomes a possessive brute capable of anything.  This change was too fast for me but most viewers consider Gable the bad guy from the beginning of the film.  Shearer not Gable was the abusive one in my opinion but my perspective is the minority.

It gets great reviews but I found it so-so.  One of my best friends idolizes Norma Shearer and he isn’t alone.  She’s got a big following.  I, on the other hand have never been fond of her.  I think I have issues with her early 30s films because she still acts like a silent actress.  I swear her performance in the silent The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg never bothered me but can’t say the same for her talkies.  Her bad posture also bothers me.  It was the style back then to hunch over.  Shearer stretches her arms a lot so we can see her armpits.  I’ve never been found of armpit shots.  Nevertheless her Adrian gowns are gorgeous.  I really like this one slitted skin-tight lame lounge dress that she wore as she waited for Gable. Lucky girl but then Carol Lombard said he wasn’t good in the sack.

My wonderful Lionel Barrymore received an Oscar for his portrayal of Shearer’s alcholic lawyer dad.  His early courtroom scene is reminiscent of OJ Simpson’s murder case.  Poor Leslie Howard plays the perfect gentleman but unfortunately viewers  forget he does something very bad toward the end. His character is unjustly called “boring.”

RIP Farrah Fawcett

Farrah Fawcett was my mom’s favorite Charlie’s Angel (mine was Jaclyn Smith). My mom was a member of her fan club too back in the 70s. I remember Fawcett from I Dream of Jeannie playing one of Major Roger Healey’s “friends.”  I then saw her in one of my 1970s sci-fi guilty pleasures, Logan’s Run, about a futuristic earth where humans are killed at age 30.  The Apostle is her only other film that I’ve seen.   As much as Smith is my favorite Angel, I must be honest, Fawcett’s acting talents were far superior to Smith’s.  Fawcett was a very good actress as well as an icon.