Ginger and Jimmy in VIVACIOUS LADY: The Backstory Was Even Crazier and Sexier Than the Movie
Vivacious Lady may be a fabulous screwball comedy, but what went on behind the scenes was even loopier.
A year before the film was made, Ginger Rogers and director George Stevens had an affair while filming Swing Time, which, as these things tend to do, wrapped when the picture did. Then she started dating an up-and-comer named James Stewart—and pushed for RKO to borrow him from MGM for her next project. Guess who was directing it?
But just two weeks into filming on Vivacious Lady, Stewart got sick—and by the time he was well again, MGM had him booked for Of Human Hearts. So RKO shelved the project until he was available.
Rogers, by the way, was free only because Fred Astaire hankered to do his next picture for Stevens, A Damsel in Distress, without his six-time screen partner. But in a classic case of “careful what you wish for,” he quickly regretted it. After failing to land either Jessie Matthews or Carole Lombard as his leading lady, the studio settled on a 19-year-old newcomer who, it soon became clear, wasn’t up to the job—especially for a notorious taskmaster like Astaire. “[RKO boss] Pandro [Berman] and Freddie came down to the set and said, ‘Can we talk to you? We are very disturbed about Joan Fontaine. We’ve got to make a change… we’ve got to replace her,’” Stevens recalled in his journal.
They suggested that (yikes) Ruby Keeler step in—and what happened next tells you everything you need to know about Stevens, who stood up to his boss and the studio’s biggest male star in defense of a real-life damsel in distress. “I said, ‘If we take this girl out of the picture she’ll probably kill herself,’” he wrote. “They said that was an exaggeration and I said ‘It probably is but I’m going to stay here and you’re not going to do it. You can’t do it. We all made the decision.’ They were right. She was the wrong girl in the wrong spot. But she never knew that they wanted to take her out of the picture, or she would have collapsed.”
While Astaire fumed, his erstwhile dancing partner spent a blissful summer in Big Bear, filming Having Wonderful Time with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. while waiting to work with her current beau and her former lover on Vivacious Lady. (Oh and as an added plot twist, Stevens was called up the mountain to shoot a scene with Rogers and Fairbanks when director Alfred Santell briefly fell ill.)
When Stewart was finally free, Berman seized on the narrow window in his schedule to resume filming. Which left Stevens running all over the lot—working with Rogers on one soundstage, Astaire on another, and Katharine Hepburn, with whom he’d had a fling during Alice Adams, on a third, in Quality Street.
All of which makes the plot of Vivacious Lady—nerdy scientist goes to the big city to rescue a relative from the clutches of a showgirl, falls in love and weds her himself, and brings her home without telling his stuffy family they’re married—seem like pretty tame stuff by comparison.
As our story opens, botany professor Peter Morgan (Stewart) has been dispatched from the staid college town of Old Sharon to Manhattan by his frantic family to retrieve his wayward cousin Keith (James Ellison), who’s fallen for a cabaret singer. He tracks him down at the club where she works and tries to talk sense to him, all while fending off the waggling tail feathers of a dancer in the floor show.
Then Peter dutifully calls home to tell his pompous, overbearing father (Charles Coburn) that he’s bagged his prey. (In a scene that could have been shot yesterday, he yells into the phone over the din of the crowd, so wrapped up in his own conversation he’s oblivious to how irritating he is to everyone around him.)
But what’s that lovely cooing sound off in the distance? Why, it’s the siren herself, Francey (Rogers)! Only Peter doesn’t realize that. He only knows he’s being drawn back toward the dance floor, stumbling and clattering over a cooler as he gazes at her—finally nearly collapsing into a chair at Keith’s table. (His cousin, meanwhile, is hiding in the men’s room.)
After her number, Francey drops by the table to look for Keith, and Peter realizes—in that halting, stammering way only Jimmy Stewart can—that this is the girl. She teases him about the commotion he caused (“Say, what were you trying to do—break me up?”), and before long, they’re laughing… and talking… and slipping out into the night together. Leaving poor Keith, who was trying to give Peter the slip, on the other end of the raw deal. (In a small role as the maÎtre d’, Jack Carson dryly delivers the bad news that his cousin and his girl have vamoosed.)
Thus begins a whirlwind New York night of open-air double-decker buses, walks along the water, and eating corn on the cob (!) from a street cart. (When did that stop being a thing? And when is it coming back?) As morning breaks—yes, that’s the milkman on his way!—Peter and Francey circle dizzily back to her front door, but aren’t even ready to say goodnight, let alone goodbye.
“Do you, uh, do you always think things out carefully?” he asks her, practically proposing right there in the doorway.”Well if they’re small things, I never do,” she confides, “but if they’re important things, I never do either…” Hanging on by a thread to what’s left of their senses, they kiss, first softly, then hard, before she dreamily drifts upstairs. Then Peter bolts for the payphone across the street and invites her to breakfast— where, now that a respectable amount of time has passed, he asks her to marry him.
Waiting for the newlyweds back in Old Sharon—oh boy!—are Peter’s father, the president of the college where his son teaches, and his mother (who else but Beulah Bondi, in one of five turns as Stewart’s mom), who’s prone to fainting spells. And oh, yes—his utterly humorless fiancée, Helen (Frances Mercer), who really should see about having that pole removed.
Because he’s a damn good sport, Keith is there too, and even puts Francey up until Peter has a chance to explain everything. This is the rare case where the third wheel isn’t some eminently dumpable stooge—the kind of guy who makes you wonder, “And she was with him why, exactly?” He’s funny and loosey-goosey and altogether a fabulous fallback should Peter weasel out and let Francey down. (How Ellison broke into movies was also pretty nifty: while working at Warner’s film lab, he was offered a screen test—which he developed himself, hated, and promptly hid. But a producer unearthed it and signed him to a contract.)
Of course, breaking the news of the marriage turns out to be a long, arduous process. To make matters worse, Francey and Peter have yet to spend a night together, and their frustration is palpable. (So is the chemistry between Rogers and Stewart. And for a guy with such a wholesome screen rep, no one is better at simmering, unholy lust than Jimmy.) In the meantime, Francey poses as one of Peter’s botany students, convincing exactly no one.
Mr. Morgan knows something’s going on, but has no idea what. All he knows is that his once reliably bland son, who always fell into line before, is suddenly a bit… wobbly. And least happy of all is Helen, who may be a stiff, but she’s no dummy.
Peter’s mother doesn’t much care who Francey is—she’s just happy to have someone she can relax with, who doesn’t have ivy stuck up her… nose. At the college formal, the two unlikely allies bond over where to buy the best stockings as they sneak a smoke in the ladies’ lounge.
Helen, though, is in no mood to make nice. When she heads out to the veranda to warn Francey to back off, the tension builds deliciously. Finally she asks, “Now are you going to mind your own business or must I really give you a piece of my mind?” Smiling demurely, her rival responds, “Oh I couldn’t take the last piece!”
That tears it: Helen lets loose with the first slap… which leads to a counter-slap… and finally an all-out sequin-and-satin brawl. Harking back to his days with Laurel and Hardy, Stevens stages it to perfection, cutting between close-ups and medium shots, capturing every ounce of outrage amid the hair pulling, kicking and yes, even biting.
(Rogers fought at something of a disadvantage: RKO, which had insured her legs for half a million dollars, insisted they be strapped to boards and padded during the melee.)
The brawl also tells us everything we need to know about these two ladies: Francey is honest and direct, even loosening up like a prizefighter before putting up her dukes. Helen, on the other hand, opts for sneaky maneuvers like a stickpin to the caboose.
You wanna see class struggle? Skip the sociology books and watch these two go at it.
But that’s not even the best number in the film. Because later on, Keith pops home to show Francey a new dance he’s learned called The Big Apple. And who should be there but his aunt… who’s coaxed into cutting the rug with them. Thus giving us the rare opportunity to see Beulah Bondi shake her moneymaker.
And this isn’t one of those tiresome scenes where “grandma does something wacky.” Stevens was a master at using musical numbers to move the story along, and here it’s clear that Mrs. Morgan is sick of this suffocating town, tired of her tyrannical husband, and ready to shake loose. It’s great to see Bondi, who easily holds her own with Rogers and Ellison, break free as more than just somebody’s mother.
In fact everything about this movie is pretty great. Deservedly, and despite all the screwball drama that preceded it, Vivacious Lady turned out to be one of RKO’s biggest hits. Oh and soon after, Rogers and Astaire were reunited for Carefree, bringing the universe back into balance.
STREAMING SATURDAY! An All-Star Cast Discovers WE’RE NOT MARRIED!
Welcome to another edition of Streaming Saturdays, where we embed a free, fun film for you to watch right here every week!
This week: Edmund Goulding’s 1952 anthology, We’re Not Married! The premise borrows (okay steals) a page from Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith: five couples discover that through a technical error—in this case a Justice of the Peace who jumped the gun before his license was valid—they’re not legally married. (The bumbling clerk secured the job through his shady, politically powerful family named… wait for it… Bush.) In various stages of wedded bliss or lack thereof, the couples are:
- A squabbling husband-and-wife radio team who bill and coo only when their mikes are on (Ginger Rogers and Fred Allen);
- A genial millionaire and his gold-digging wife, who’s trying to frame and fleece him for a tidy settlement (Louis Calhern and Zsa Zsa Gabor);
- A bored suburban couple with nothing to talk about but the Book of the Month Club (Eve Arden and Paul Douglas);
- A young soldier on the verge of being shipped overseas and his pregnant wife (Eddie Bracken and Mitzi Gaynor); and
- A beauty queen who’s just been crowned Miss Mississippi and her doting husband (Marilyn Monroe and David Wayne, who are oddly adorable together).
The snappy script was penned by Nunnally Johnson, whose credits covered the waterfront from searing dramas (The Grapes of Wrath, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) and noirs (The Woman in the Window) to action-adventures (The Dirty Dozen) and musical comedies (How to Marry a Millionaire, which reunited Monroe and Wayne). But 1952 was clearly his year for anthologies, which were all the rage at the time: that same year, he wrote the screenplays for Phone Call from a Stranger and O. Henry’s Full House.
Rogers and Allen’s vignette was adapted from a skit he did on his radio show in 1946, where he played half of a bickering breakfast team with Tallulah Bankhead as his wife; the two revived the routine for her show in 1950. Allen also turned up with Oscar Levant in the hilarious Ransom of Red Chief chapter of O. Henry’s Full House.
Oh and by the way, the ten actors who make up the five couples were very much married—a total of 32 times. Allen, Bracken, Gaynor and Wayne were wed only once, but Zsa Zsa was something of a curve-buster, with nine trips to the altar. Rogers and Douglas were no slouches either though, with five each. When Douglas married his last wife, the fabulous Jan Sterling, he sighed, “If you go to bat often enough, you’re bound to get a hit.”
STREAMING SATURDAYS is a regular feature on Sister Celluloid, bringing you a free, fabulous film every weekend! You can catch up on movies you may have missed by clicking here! And why not bookmark the page to make sure you never miss another?
Beatrice Lillie Lets Her Farce Flag Fly in Clive Brook’s ON APPROVAL
Work, family, social obligations… we’ve all got pressures. But they’re weak tea compared with what Beatrice Lillie was up against.
She was dubbed the funniest woman in the world.
Fortunately for her, she pretty much was. But sadly for us, she made just a handful of films. Why leave the stage when Noel Coward and Cole Porter are writing shows for you?
Born in 1894 to a Canadian government minister and an opera singer, Lillie spent most of her childhood being trotted around the provinces as part of a family musical revue. But much as Judy Garland outshone the other Gumm sisters, Bea was clearly destined for bigger things. So her ambitious mother took the teenager to London—where at 20, she made her solo debut on the West End, weaving songs, skits and monologues into an evening of sparkling satire.
With stick-straight solemnity, Lillie affectionately parodied the flowery, overblown performing styles of the turn of the century, feigning obliviousness to the double entendre in numbers like Mother Told Me So and There Are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden. As the country plunged deeper into the Great War, Londoners poured into the music hall to escape back to the Victorian age even as they howled at Lillie’s lampooning of it.
Lillie spent the next thirty years or so working in London and on Broadway, even forming something of a Rat Pack with the equally flamboyant Gertrude Lawrence and Tallulah Bankhead, also doing tons of radio and later television. “With one dart of her eyes,” said critic George Nathan, “she can spare a skit writer a dozen lines.”
All her powers of satire and sarcasm were put to brilliant use in perhaps her best film, 1944’s On Approval.
The movie took a long and winding road to completion, but boy, was it worth it: Clive Brook, who stars as a down-at-heel duke hunting for a rich wife, also produced the film, after adapting it from Frederick Lonsdale’s popular play. He moved the setting from the 1920s to the late Victorian era, when the subject matter—a trial marriage that eventually ropes in four wildly mismatched people—would have been much more shocking.
In the wrong hands, this comedy of manners could have turned sloppily broad or queasily coy—and the original director and his team just weren’t getting the right feel for it. So Brook, who’d also logged countless hours as a stage manager, fired the lot of them and grabbed the reins himself. The result of his lone effort behind the camera was what filmmaker Lindsay Anderson called “the funniest British light comedy ever made.”
The movie opens with newsreel footage of aerial battles and car chases. “Oh dear, is this another war picture?” intones Brook as the droll narrator.
Not quite, but “this is the age of speed and sound so much like war you hardly know the difference!”
With that, he beckons us to a simpler time… “Let’s go back to Grandmama’s day… don’t you think it was so much nicer? So much more stately and dignified? Women were women and they knew it! When they had finished their embroidery and needed a thrill of excitement, they could always unpick it and start again…”
The women, in this case, are Helen (Googie Withers), a winsome heiress (her father is a pickle magnate), and Maria (Lillie), a wealthy widow whose glances could wither a 40-foot oak. (Oh and her name is suitably pronounced “Mar-EYE-a.” As in “They call the wind…”)
The men—of “the very highest breeding and the very lowest income”—are George (Brook), the 10th Duke of Bristol, who’s leased his only asset, a sprawling manor, to Helen for the season, and his hapless friend Richard, who’s been carrying a sad little torch for Maria for years now but can’t buck up the nerve to do anything about it. Helen, meanwhile, is smitten with her outlandishly arrogant landlord. (This early scene sets the stage.)
When Richard finally downs enough brandy to propose, Maria suggests a month-long trial at her country home, tucked away on a remote Scottish island. George and Helen join them, to chaperone and keep the peace, but nothing resembling peace ensues…
And so begin the romantic adventures of two of the prickliest people you’ll ever meet and two of the most soothing and accommodating—at least initially. As it turns out, the meek are very much a match for their mates. As Maria’s prospective husband, Culver is all wide-eyed wistfulness, until his eyes are opened even wider. And the luminous Withers, whom Michael Powell once described as “strange and provocative,” is wry perfection as she gradually realizes that her beloved isn’t merely striking a haughty pose; that’s who he actually is. (In a witty dream sequence, Withers is imagined as a Greek statue; the goddesses should be so lucky.)
Brook is hilariously irascible; he has the look of a man who smells something awful and takes it quite personally. And as the director of this fleet-footed farce, he generously gives everyone, especially Lillie, plenty of room to be brilliant. (This is an odd comparison, but it reminds me of Charles Laughton with Night of the Hunter; both he and Brook made one terrific film and never directed again.)
In something of a preview of his work on My Fair Lady, Cecil Beaton dresses Withers and Lillie in one fabulous Victorian confection after another. Lillie, especially, looks very much at home in her high collars and poufy sleeves. When she plants herself at the piano, elbows flying as she sails across the keys, and lets loose with a little number called I’m Just Seventeen, you get a sense of what she may have been like on the stage. She’s so lost in rapturous nostalgia, you can practically picture her rolling a hoop across Eaton Square.
On Approval also served as something of a tonic for Lillie, who was still reeling from the worst blow of her life. In April 1942, she was backstage waiting to entertain the troops when she got word that her only child, Robert, was killed when the Japanese bombed his destroyer. But with an audience of soldiers much like her son eager to see her perform, the heartbroken mother refused to let them down. Just before she took the stage, she turned and said, “I’ll cry tomorrow.”
TINTYPE TUESDAY: Ann Miller, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball and Judy Garland Hit the Town to Do the Charleston!
Welcome to another edition of TINTYPE TUESDAY!
You’re Ann Miller. You’ve been hoofin’ your heart out all day long, and your dogs are barkin’ like there’s someone at the door. It’s a lovely spring night in Hollywood—perfect for parking your tired tootsies on a nice warm veranda somewhere. So what do you do?
You call up your friend Ginger and you say, “Let’s go dancing!”
Meanwhile, Lucy is phoning Judy with the same idea…
The Mocambo—once Hollywood’s most glamorous nightclub—hosted a Charleston contest every Monday night. And pity the poor, hopeful couples who strapped on their dancing shoes and showed up on May 13, 1950, only to find themselves flat up against…
and…
Could it get any more fabulous than this? I’m so glad you asked! You see the band behind them—the guys in the fireman’s helmets? They’re animators, musicians and writers from Walt Disney’s studio, who used to jam along to jazz records on their lunch break. Then one fateful day, the phonograph broke, and they realized they were good enough to go it alone—and hey, kids, they started a band!
The only cheap vehicle they could find that was big enough to haul them and their instruments was an old 1914 fire truck. So bandleader/trombonist Ward Kimball (one of Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” his key animators) went out and hunted down genuine helmets and uniform shirts to complete the theme, and called the band Firehouse Five Plus Two. (The “plus two” were a trumpeter and banjo player who joined shortly afterward.)
The group played together from 1949 to 1972, recording 13 albums—but they never gave up their day jobs.
So get in the car, kids, we’re goin’ dancin’!
TINTYPE TUESDAY is a weekly feature on Sister Celluloid, with fabulous classic movie pix (and backstory!) to help you make it to Hump Day! For previous editions, just click here—and why not bookmark the page, to make sure you never miss a week?
STREAMING SATURDAY! Melvyn Douglas and Burgess Meredith Give Merle Oberon THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING
Welcome to another edition of Streaming Saturdays, where we embed a free, fabulous film for you to watch right here every week!
Settling in to watch That Uncertain Feeling, there are some things you can be certain of. With Ernst Lubitsch at the helm, you know it’ll be witty and sophisticated. And you assume Melvyn Douglas will elegantly knock your socks off, while Burgess Meredith will be quirkily brilliant.
You know what you don’t necessarily expect? Merle Oberon to be hilarious. But she is.
Oberon plays Jill Baker, the wife of a career-crazed insurance executive (Douglas)—and when he regales her with tales of his actuarial conquests, her eyes somehow manage to flash stupefying boredom and blinding rage at the same time. Her husband’s lack of attention to anything but business—he’s much more interested in wooing Hungarian mattress salesmen than winning his wife—drives Jill to develop a recurring case of hiccups so forceful they send her tiny frame flying backwards, as if she’s been struck by a bullet. And she can’t shake them off for love or sugar cubes.
So Jill heads off to an analyst (the delicious Alan Mowbray) in search of a cure. But it’s in his waiting room where she thinks she’s found the real answer to her problems: an idiosyncratic concert pianist (Meredith) who’s convinced he’s too brilliant for any of the philistines around him to appreciate. (“I’m against anything and anybody—I hate my fellow man and he hates me!”) Ah, but she understands him…
I’ll say no more; with Lubitsch in the driver’s seat, you really just need to sit back and go where the movie takes you.
My only qualm about the whole affair is that Baker’s secretary (Eve Arden), who’s crazy about her boss and fed up with his wife, gets caught in the middle of the love quadrangle. (Would it have killed Hollywood to realize that the funny, whip-smart and by the way gorgeous Arden deserved to get the guy a little more often and get kicked around a little less?)
Oberon, who did far too few comedies, remembered That Uncertain Feeling as “the happiest picture I ever made.” Even if she already had a clear idea of how to do a scene, she always asked Lubitsch to demonstrate it first, because he was so outrageous.
“I don’t know when I had a better time in my whole career than during that period,” Meredith agreed. “He’d act everything out for you because he loved the part, and he’d act it out so funny, so definitely, that I’d stand there as an audience… he would give you the idea of what he wanted, and he would stop in the middle of acting my lines and make some crack about my brother, who I was having trouble with then, or some purely personal thing, which in some psychic way he knew I was undergoing. He was a very psychic man. And he knew I’d come over and say, ‘How did you know about that?’ and he’d say, ‘I have ways of knowing!'”
Douglas was also thrilled to be re-teamed with Lubitsch and Ninotchka writer Walter Reisch (who would go on to pen a little number called Gaslight). Reisch’s collaborator on That Uncertain Feeling was Donald Ogden Stewart, who’d adapted The Philadephia Story, co-written Dinner at Eight and Kitty Foyle, and written Holiday and Love Affair.
And yet here it is, languishing in the public domain. What’s a fabulous Lubitsch movie doing in a place like this? Credit the lunkheaded movie audiences of 1941. The director formed his own company to produce the film—but just as quickly dissolved it when it bombed, losing more than a quarter of a million dollars. So the copyright on the now-orphaned movie was never renewed.
STREAMING SATURDAYS is a regular feature on Sister Celluloid, bringing you a free, fabulous film every weekend! You can catch up on movies you may have missed by clicking here! And why not bookmark the page to make sure you never miss another?
Hollywood Gets Drunk on Itself in SOULS FOR SALE
In the early 1920s, Hollywood was in for a good spanking. And not the fun kind.
Director William Desmond Taylor had been murdered. Wallace Reid, known as “the screen’s most perfect lover,” was lost to the embrace of morphine. And Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle had endured three sordid trials before finally being cleared of murder, but his reputation and the industry’s took a brutal beating in the process.
The tongue-clucking among church groups, women’s auxiliaries, and various legions of decency was growing downright deafening, and the studios were running out of ideas for damage control. Until they hit upon the most obvious one: a movie.
Enter Souls for Sale. This wildly lavish apologia for all things Hollywood started life as a novel by Rupert Hughes (uncle of Howard), who produced and directed his own adaptation for the screen in 1923.
Our story—and what a story it is!—begins innocently enough: A new bride, Remember “Mem” Steddon (Eleanor Boardman), is wending west on a gently rocking train with her husband, Owen Scudder (Lew Cody), by her side. What could be more charming? But even before the rice is out of her hair, she’s having second thoughts, as the title card bleats:
“A SUDDEN REVULSION SEIZED HER. THE LOVER WHO HAD SWEPT HER OFF HER FEET IN A WHIRLWIND COURTSHIP TERRIFIED HER AS A HUSBAND.”
When her oily new mate leans in and kisses her hand, pressing his pencil-thin mustache against her trembling fingers, she feels downright violated. And so, kinda, do we.
Minutes later, when Mem is left alone and the train slows up a little, she climbs over the railing and leaps off into the night. But now what? She’s stranded in the middle of a dark, cold desert…
Ah, but as the dawn breaks, what’s that off in the distance? Why, it’s a sheik cresting over the hill on his camel! It’s literally Hollywood riding to the rescue!
“ARE YOU REAL OR… A MIRAGE?”
“NEITHER—I’M A MOVIE ACTOR!”
The shiek, as it turns out, is matinee idol Tom Holby (Frank Mayo), who’s shooting his latest over-the-top adventure film nearby. He bundles Mem onto his mount and carries her back to the set on the other side of the hill. Eventually, she follows the troupe back to Hollywood.
And just like that… Mem breaks into the movies! And all it took was marrying a creep and jumping off a moving train!
Thus begins Mem’s (and our) whirlwind tour of Tinseltown. We see Erich Von Stroheim directing Jean Hersholt in Greed. Charlie Chaplin, who was working on A Woman of Paris at the time, setting up a scene (or perhaps pretending to). Frank Niblo shooting The Famous Mr. Fair. Marshall Neilan filming The Eternal Three. (The latter two are considered lost films, so this is likely the only glimpse we’ll ever have of them.) Oh and who’s that in the commissary? Why, it’s ZaSu Pitts!
Mem’s first screen test, though, is awful; her “clowning” drives everyone to near tears. But in a scene that became a Hollywood staple—I’m lookin’ at you, Warner Baxter in 42nd Street—director Frank Claymore (Richard Dix) seizes her by the shoulders and swears, “I’ll make you an actress if I have to break your heart and every bone in your body!”
And by God, he does! Make her an actress, that is. Then, when a monstrously large lamp comes crashing down on the cranium of the studio’s biggest star (Mae Busch), Mem moves to center stage.
In the meantime, we’ve learned a thing or two about the scoundrel Mem married and fled from. It turns out her instincts were eerily on the mark: Scudder’s a Bluebeard who woos and weds women, then insures and kills them. The cops capture him, but he escapes—and soon finds another trusting victim (Dale Fuller). This one, a lonely spinster, is much more receptive to his advances: when he kisses her hand, she rolls her eyes in such rapture you half-expect her to light a cigarette afterward. She’s lucky enough to be merely fleeced and left alive.
When next we see our villian, he’s after bigger game in… Egypt! (The boy gets around.) When he takes his latest mark to the movies, who should appear on screen but The Wife Who Got Away! And this is where the action really begins… culminating in a spectacular circus fire scene, complete with dramatic rescues, noble self-sacrifice, and of course, romance. But I’ll say no more; you have to see it all, and feel it all, for yourself.
Souls for Sale celebrates Hollywood’s cinematic excesses even as it sends them up. But whatever their foibles may be, these noble kids are doing it all for you!
“FROM THE GIGANTIC LOOMS OF THE STUDIOS, THOUSANDS OF SPOOLS OF ROMANCE ARE SPUN TO WARM THE HEARTS AND BRIGHTEN THE LIVES OF THE BILLIONS.”
A quick check reveals that the world population in 1923 was roughly 1.94 billion, so apparently those looms were so magical, they were warming the hearts of people who weren’t even born yet. To hear Rupert Hughes tell it, movie folks were three or four steps up from missionaries and medics. And while they liked a little good clean fun, moderation was the watchword:
“STARS DANCE UNTIL THE HEATHENISH HOUR OF 11:30 UNLESS THEY ARE TOO TIRED TO STAY AWAKE THAT LONG.”
Yes, kids, everything you’ve ever heard about the stars whooping it up till all hours—the booze, the sex, the drugs—it’s all a damn dirty lie! Because:
“HOWEVER GORGEOUS OR TROUBLED, THE MOVIE FOLK MUST RISE EARLY AND WORK LATE AND FACTORY HARD.”
Honestly, you half-expect to hear Sam Cooke singing, “That’s the sound of the men working on the boom… mi-i-i-ke…”
Perhaps the film’s most ironic ambassador for Hollywood wholesomeness is Barbara LaMarr, who plays Leva Lamaire, a Theda Bara-style diva with a heart of gold. Dubbed “The Girl Who Is Too Beautiful” by columnist Adela Rogers St. John, LaMarr was married and divorced five times, succumbing to nephritis and tuberculosis complicated by drug and alcohol abuse at 29.
Souls for Sale was the spirited Boardman’s first leading role after being discovered in Goldwyn Pictures’ “New Faces of 1921” contest; she went on to star in films such as The Circle, Bardelys the Magnificent, and husband King Vidor’s heartbreaker, The Crowd. We also get an early glimpse not only of Richard Dix but William Haines, whose high-wattage charisma is evident even in a small part. And the overworked casting director is none other than Roy Atwell, who later voiced Doc in Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The film owes its luscious look to art director Cedric Gibbons, who was credited with designing the Oscar statuette and went on to be nominated for the award an astonishing 38 times, winning 11.
Once considered lost, Souls for Sale—or most of it anyway—was found in a Czech film archive in 2006. (It seems like about 90% of all rediscovered films are found in vaults somewhere in Eastern Europe.) Restored with its original tinting, reconstructed title cards and a lovely score, the new version premiered on TCM and was released on DVD by Warner Archive in 2009.
A few scenes, such as Mem’s discovery of Scudder’s criminal past, are still missing from the film, but let’s face it, you don’t watch this because you crave logic. You watch it because you love movies. Souls for Sale is a wild, exhilarating glimpse into the early days of filmmaking, when hearts ruled heads and dreams knew no bounds. If it were really possible to jump from your theater seat into a movie, I’d jump into this one.
Much as Mem was rescued by her gallant cinema sheik, prepare to be swept away.
One of Alan Rickman’s Last Roles Is Saving Lives—And You Can Help
We all woke up to awful, heartbreaking news this morning. Is there anyone who didn’t love this man in something, or ten or twenty things? Reading just some of the tributes from his friends and colleagues, I was struck by how they were so much deeper than the usual “great talent… thoughts and prayers with his family” stuff. Alan Rickman was much more than a brilliant actor; he was a kind, loyal, wonderful man who was deeply loved.
One of the last projects he donated his time and his incredible voice to was a video to aid refugees, but, typically, he does it in a very droll way. And all you need to do to help is to click on it. Obviously if you are in a position to send along a donation to Save the Children or the Refugee Council, that would be great. But just clicking on the video helps. Think of it as your personal tribute to an amazingly gifted, compassionate man who gave so much to his fans and friends, and who left a lasting mark on the world.
If I embed the video, it won’t count as a “view” on YouTube, so here’s the link to paste into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkiMz-e2ZcE
Please also share the link with your friends.
Godspeed, wonderful Alan. And thank you for everything.
“A film, a piece of theatre, a piece of music or a book can make a difference.
It can change the world.”
TINTYPE TUESDAY: Teresa Wright, the Anti-Pin-Up Girl
Welcome to another edition of TINTYPE TUESDAY!
We’ve all heard of unusual clauses in actors’ contracts. But Teresa Wright’s—written when she was just starting out at 23—takes the cake. (And that cake does not have a scantily clad starlet popping out of it):
The aforementioned Teresa Wright shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in the water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: In shorts, playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding skyrockets for the Fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at a turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf; assuming an athletic stance while pretending to hit something with a bow and arrow.
In short, Miss Wright had already seen enough—apparently including every campy pin-up shot ever published. But she managed to be both indignant and hilarious about it. (With a wit like that, it’s no wonder writers loved her; she married Niven Busch and Robert Anderson.)
While Wright managed to escape the bunny ears and bathing suits, she was held hostage for at least a couple of semi-cheesecake sessions. And judging from the look on her face, the ransom couldn’t be paid fast enough:
Wright earned Oscar nods for her first three films—The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver and The Pride of the Yankees—taking home the trophy for Mrs. Miniver. Even her Academy Award was unglamorous—made of painted plaster, as metals were set aside for the war effort. (And today, most actresses wear more makeup in the shower than she wore to the ceremony.)
Wright followed up with films like Shadow of a Doubt and The Best Years of Our Lives—confiding to friends that in William Wyler’s post-war drama, she was thrilled to finally shed her wholesome image and play an aspiring homewrecker. But even then, she led with her heart, trying to rescue the man she loved from a viper. Damning her with the kind of faint praise she didn’t deserve, Wyler called her “the best cryer in the business.” Her boss, producer Sam Goldwyn, agreed—and kept casting her as dewy, vulnerable young lovelies. (This was the same man who once barked to her, during filming on The Little Foxes, “Teresa, let your breasts flow in the breeze!”)
In 1948, Wright—now a 30-year-old mother of two—was once again cast as an innocent waif, this time complete with an evil stepsister. And while she was unhappy with Enchantment, the critics weren’t. Newsweek said she “glows as the Cinderella who captivated three men,” while The New York Times said she “plays with that breathless, bright-eyed rapture which she so remarkably commands.” Tired of glowing breathlessly, Wright declined to embark on a long publicity tour for the film—leading Goldwyn to cancel her $5,000-a-week contract and publicly criticize her as “uncooperative.”
Wright responded:
I would like to say that I never refused to perform the services required of me; I was unable to perform them because of ill health. I accept Mr. Goldwyn’s termination of my contract without protest—in fact, with relief. The types of contracts standardized in the motion picture industry between players and producers are archaic in form and absurd in concept. I am determined never to set my name to another one… I have worked for Mr. Goldwyn seven years because I consider him a great producer, and he has paid me well, but in the future I shall gladly work for less if by doing so I can retain my hold upon the common decencies without which the most glorified job becomes intolerable.
Wright went on to have a much more interesting and varied, if lesser-paying, career than Goldwyn had in mind for her—working with Matt Damon almost fifty years after she co-starred with Marlon Brando. And she never lost her sense of humor. “I was going to be Joan of Arc,” she once noted wryly, “and all I proved was that I was an actress who would work for less money.” But with much more integrity.
“I only ever wanted to be an actress, not a star,” Wright once said. But her Mrs. Miniver co-star Greer Garson saw it as inevitable, whether she sought it or not: “Very bright. Fantastically beautiful. Very much the lady. She was a great Irish wit. There are actors who work in movies. And then there are movie stars. She was a movie star.”
Here’s to Teresa Wright, who was so radiantly gifted, honest and genuine you almost forgot she was gorgeous. She wouldn’t have had it any other way.
TINTYPE TUESDAY is a weekly feature on Sister Celluloid, with fabulous classic movie pix (and backstory!) to help you make it to Hump Day! For previous editions, just click here—and why not bookmark the page, to make sure you never miss a week?
TINTYPE TUESDAY: Start the New Year Right with Gloria Swanson!
Happy New Year, my dear friends! And welcome to another edition of TINTYPE TUESDAY!
Need a little help making this year a bit healthier than the last? Sure, you could turn to a personal trainer or a gym coach. But wouldn’t you rather take your inspiration from Gloria Swanson?
Here she is merrily camping it up in her Manhattan apartment when she was 73. Yes, the Glamazon makeup’s a bit much… but good heavens, look at that complexion! To quote a song from the season just passed, you could even say it glows! And she still had the perfect figure for crushed velvet gowns and gold lamé pumps. Which you get the feeling she wore even when the cameras weren’t looking.
Swanson was decades ahead of the healthy-eating curve. In 1929, after producing the financially disastrous Queen Kelly, she went to her doctor complaining of stomach pains. “I thought I had ulcers because if you are a producer, you are supposed to have ulcers,” she joked. He asked for a quick inventory of what she’d been subjecting her system to—rich, gooey foods, sugary snacks, decadent cocktails—and told her to stop treating her body “like a garbage pail.” A much more obedient patient than most, she immediately swore off meat, poultry, sugar and alcohol and adhered faithfully to a macrobiotic diet.
A true evangelist, Swanson would sometimes confront people on the streets of New York—a much more dangerous move than eating sugar—and chastise them about the junk they were scarfing down at the corner hot dog stand. She even brown-bagged it to glamorous parties, where the buffet tables were groaning with deadly delicacies.
She drank only spring water from France, made her own flour from brown rice and her own sweetener from boiled organic raisins, and frequently fasted. “After one fast I was on for 10 days I swore I’d never eat again,” she said. “I was just going to eat petals of flowers…”
Okay maybe she was a little over the top.
But Swanson was right about sugar—and campaigned against chemicals and pesticides in foods before it was popular. She also created some recipes that didn’t involve making your own flour and sweeteners or eating the daisies—and I’m sure she’d forgive you if the water you use is domestic. Here’s a recipe to get your new year off to a healthy start:
GLORIA SWANSON’S POTASSIUM BROTH
8 cups spring water, bottled water or purified water
1 cup Swiss chard or kale
1 cup zucchini
1 cup fresh string beans
1 cup celery
However much or however little garlic you like
Wash all vegetables thoroughly, preferably with a veggie brush, and then chop them well. Finely mince the garlic. Pour water into a large pot and add everything. Cover and simmer about 40 minutes, or until the celery is tender. Serve immediately, or turn off the heat and allow the broth to cool on the stove, pour into covered containers and refrigerate. Reheat to serve later.
Okay, a confession: I added the garlic to Gloria’s recipe. I am a total garlic hound. When I recently ordered pasta with garlic and oil from the local pizzeria, this was my plaintive cry: “Extra garlic, please. And then if you look at it and say, whoa, that was too much garlic, just add more garlic.” (My husband was away at the time.)
In this recipe, the garlic not only adds much-needed flavor, but tons of nutrition—and packs a wallop against winter cold and flu germs. If you’re not a garlic fan, you can add any herbs (or other vegetables) you like, or perk it up with chili powder, paprika, curry powder or other spices. Take it in any direction you choose!
This is a great way to start a meal or to serve as a little something to tide you over in middle of the afternoon. And if you close your eyes and use a little imagination, it will make you feel like a movie star prepping for a glamorous role, getting ready for your close-up…
Wear the new year well, my dears!
TINTYPE TUESDAY is a weekly feature on Sister Celluloid, with fabulous classic movie pix (and backstory!) to help you make it to Hump Day! For previous editions, just click here—and why not bookmark the page, to make sure you never miss a week?
TINTYPE TUESDAY: Coop, Clark, Claudette and Other Classic Stars Go Shushing Through the Snow in Sun Valley!
Happy Holidays, my dears! And welcome to another edition of TINTYPE TUESDAY!
Okay, kids, pull on your best winter woolies—we’re heading to chic and trendy… Idaho! Sun Valley, to be precise. Where classic film stars showed us just how fabulous they could look in ski togs. And where some of them actually skied. No really. I have proof.
The place was something of a Hollywood concoction itself: In 1936, the owners of the Union Pacific Railroad wanted to boost traffic along some of the more remote corridors, so they hired a cash-poor Count by the name of… wait for it… Felix Schaffgtosch to scout out a place to build a glamorous ski resort. (How did no one make a movie out of this story? I see Edward Arnold and Walter Connolly as the bigwigs and Melvyn Douglas as the Count.)
Once they settled on a spot in the Sawtooth Mountains, the railroad men hired promotor Steve Hannigan, who’d helped lure the rich and famous to Miami Beach, to do the same for this snowy little speck on the map. They christened it Sun Valley to dispel fears among the hothouse flowers of Hollywood that it would be too cold to vacation there. Because, you know, if you put “sun” in the name, no one will notice the blizzards.
Imagine their suprise when some stars actually took to the wintry weather! Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper, for instance, were regulars on the mountainside.
And shortly after filming For Whom the Bell Tolls, Cooper, his wife Rocky, and co-star Ingrid Bergman set out for the slopes with Ernest Hemingway’s brother Jack and Clark Gable. (Hemingway wrote the novel in his suite at the Sun Valley Lodge, which he called Glamour House.)
Not everyone was a natural, though, and novices like Lucille Ball and Jane Russell were happy for the help of their handsome instructors…
…while Norma Shearer married hers! Six years after losing Irving Thalberg, she wed Martin Arrouge, who had taught her and her children to ski. (And a few years later, while vacationing with her husband at a lodge in California, she discovered 18-year-old Jeanette Morrison, who became Janet Leigh.)
Sun Valley also served as the backdrop for several films, including I Met Him in Paris, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Tall Men, Bus Stop—and of course Sun Valley Serenade. And its renowned jazz festival, which still runs every year, drew the best in the business, including Louis Armstrong!
The scenery was so stunning that even Errol Flynn was lured out of the lodge when he was in town for the premiere of Santa Fe Trail.
These days, Sun Valley is still a magnet for skiers and celebrities, but of course, all the old glamour is long gone. Still, these pictures remain…
Happy trails, my friends!
TINTYPE TUESDAY is a weekly feature on Sister Celluloid, with fabulous classic movie pix (and backstory!) to help you make it to Hump Day! For previous editions, just click here—and why not bookmark the page, to make sure you never miss a week?
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