Darryl Zanuck, the studio head of 20th Century Fox studio, did not engage Ms. Channing for the 1952 movie. The plum role went instead to you-know-who — a huge gamble for Zanuck. Jack Cole’s coaching of Monroe in her first beefy song-and-dance role brought it all home for the studio. [I wrote this story in the Los Angeles Times in 2009.]

On a television program in 1953 Channing struts her stuff in “A Little Girl from Little Rock” and “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.”

Next up, Marilyn and Jane Russell vamp in the film. You can find interesting borrowings by Jack Cole for the film version.  In Channing’s  “Diamonds” version, the men call out the jewelers’ names; in the film, this is transferred to Monroe. She delivers the words on a Jack Cole bump-and-grind. [Cole loved strippers.]

Thank you for pointing us to the historic Carol Channing video, Dancers Over 40!

Like this? Read more:

• Marilyn gets her own Russian ballet
• Jack Cole coaching Monroe
• Don Murray held Monroe close in “Bus Stop”

The world is one-one-one-two today. That is 1/1/12!
Happy birthday world.

Like this? Read more:

• 0ne-one-one-one

The seamstresses — part of Ye Olde Hollywoode.

_{Quel photo! Thank you, curcumperficio.net}

Hey, we liked it anyway! Pictured below, you’ll find:

• your humble, hard-working arts·meme correspondents, Debra and Larry, enjoying the evening;
• groovy audience participation in the pageant — a pretty girl in the lobby, a derriere-challenged “Iris” cast member seeks her seat … um, in a manner of speaking.
• Hollywood Boulevard’s dearly departed denizens rising from the sidewalk to join in the fun.

[[Show as slideshow]]

Photographer/writer Iris Schneider contributes this to arts·meme:

“Isn’t there some millionaire out there who can save all this?” The question hung in the air as hundreds of ordinary people, film buffs with their kids, designers and lookie-loos lined up to ogle the astounding array of costumes and props collected over the years by Debbie Reynolds and now, sadly, being put up for auction.

The collection is on display for preview before Saturday’s auction [June 18, 2011] at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills. A visit is a jaw-dropping experience. So many costumes from so many landmark films, it simply boggles the mind that no one has stepped forward to save the collection before it’s dispersed in a diaspora of Ben Hur-ish proportions.

As I worked my way through the crowd, I overheard again and again that same lament: “Why couldn’t this be saved?” Apparently not for lack of trying, as Reynolds has found out. She has finally given up her dream of creating a museum in Los Angeles to house her vast collection of some 5,000 costumes and sets after a failed attempt to open one in Las Vegas in the 80′s. Now she is ready to move on.

Walking through the rooms of pristine costumes, each accompanied by a loop of the scene from its movie, I was awestruck at the tenacity of Reynolds, who attempted to save all this history. Where did she keep it all? And how did she keep them in such good condition? Every gown looked pristine.

“They all came folded in plastic tubs,” said a Paley Center employee, “We were shocked at how perfect everything was.” Everything from Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor’s vaudeville suits from “Singin’ in the Rain” to Marlon Brando’s uniforms in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” Audrey Hepburn’s gown from “My Fair Lady,” Katherine Hepburn’s from “Mary Queen of Scots,” and Marilyn Monroe’s iconic white dress from “The Seven Year Itch,” displayed next to the photograph that froze it in our memory as she famously stepped over a subway grate and tried to maintain some modesty. There is Grace Kelly’s pink appliquéd dress and Cary Grant’s sports coat, come to life as they picnicked on fried chicken in “To Catch a Thief.” Even one of Austin Powers’ 60′s suits made the cut. All the greats are there: Hepburn (Kate and Audrey), Kelly (Gene and Grace), Donald O’Connor, Barbra Streisand, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, la Liz, Brando.

Joanne Paull let her daughter Elizabeth miss a day of school (“They were cleaning out their desks, so I decided it was okay”) to come and view the collection with her mom Holly Margulies in tow. It was as worthy an experience as any museum had to offer.

Erica Enders, who works with Profiles in History, the auction house Reynolds chose to sell the collection, says she has met the actress several times. “She’s got a sad face,” she said. “This is hard for her.” No doubt. My condolences to Debbie.

In my opinion, she deserves not only a museum, but her own special Oscar for trying so hard to preserve Hollywood’s history.

This story is reprinted with permission from laobserved where it was originally published.

Like this? Read more:

• Auction coverage from Cari Beauchamp for Thompson on Hollywood.
• Lots listed here. Wow.

At the Bowl, the Los Angeles Philharmonic will play Bernstein’s electrifying orchestral score while the newly re-mastered film is shown in high definition on the Bowl’s big screen, original vocals and dialog intact. 

Chakiris now channels his significant creative energy into The George Chakiris Collections, several elegant lines of artful silver jewelry. He modestly displays his wares and cruises memory lane in the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOjHXqDI4XU

West Side Story night | The Hollywood Bowl | Friday, July 8

Like this? Read more:

• Movie Musical Talk w/George Chakiris, artsmeme
• TCM Fest Celebrates Dance in Film, Los Angeles Times
• Jack Cole & Marilyn Monroe reunite at Jacob’s Pillow, youtube

Wilder shot the sequence on on the beach outside San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado — 90 miles south of Segerstrom Hall in Orange County — some 50 years ago.

Eifman may be no Billy Wilder, but … nobody’s perfect!

Choreography: Boris Eifman.
Music: “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin and “The Minor Goes Muggin’ ” by Sy Oliver, Marvin Hamlisch, arranger.

Tour de Force II | Segerstrom Center for the Arts | Costa Mesa | Thursday April 28 7:30 pm

If you asked the average Joe on the street he probably wouldn’t know the name. The better-than-average fellow with a yen for trivia might conjure that she had platinum blonde hair; that there was a scandal related to one of her husbands; and that she died young because her Christian Scientist mother refused medical help for “Baby,” as her friends called her — the sort of sensationalized bio that makes lives lived large seem somehow petty and mean.

Jean Harlow made movies, but there were fewer than a handful of truly great ones. Like Theda Bara, Rudolph Valentino and Marilyn Monroe, Harlow survives in the popular imagination as a series of  glamorous studio portraits — that capture an essence that was certainly part of what she was, but only part. The character on the screen is the “blonde bombshell” of the still photos, but there’s more — funny, sensitive underneath a leather-tough exterior, and down to earth in a way that seems out of step with the seductress in the stills.

Beyond her screen image Harlow  was a living, breathing human being. And as the world — or Hollywood at least — pauses ever so briefly to acknowledge the 100th anniversary of her birth, she’s getting more than the tabloid treatment from some folks ‘out there in the dark’ who took notice of the girl on the screen and sought the person behind the iconic façade.

Two of them, Darrell Rooney, an animation director/ Harlow collector  and Mark Vieira, an historian/portrait photographer  have joined forces to  honor Harlow’s life with a dazzling new book: Harlow in Hollywood – The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, 1928-1937 that captures Harlow’s life in pictures and words. And they’ve joined forces with the Hollywood Museum to celebrate Jean Harlow with the largest display of Harlow memorabilia ever assembled.

As it turns out, most of what most people know about Jean Harlow is wrong — or at least not entirely true — and the real Jean Harlow is so much more interesting than the legend.

Jean Harlow at 100 | Hollywood Museum | thru August

Click on the photo for a better view.

If you examine Cole’s head and shoulders, and Marilyn’s, you’ll see the difference between a trained dancer and not.

The photo shows Cole’s much vaunted skill to “become” the woman on whom he was choreographing. It’s fabulous how he juts out his hip; it’s a totally womanish movement created for a dancer with an infamous derriere. Cole otherwise didn’t use the hips in this soft manner, he preferred bump and grind … hard, percussive actions. Think Gwen Verdon.

One can guess that last minute run-throughs were necessary since, unlike her painstaking voluntary rehearsing for “‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,”  Monroe totally lapsed and flaked out on rehearsals for this film.

For three weeks, Cole waited for her day after day in a rented Carnegie Hall studio in New York getting more and more pissed off.

To the right, Marilyn rehearses with Cole’s teaching assistant, Verdon, behind her. That was in 1954, better days for the actress.

I just watched “Let’s Make Love,” a grippingly terrible movie; George Cukor really lost his touch on that one.

Only Yves Montand escapes the torpor in one piece. But, off the set, he had a blonde distraction . . .

_{top photo: john bryson}