arts•meme arts•meme
11 March 2011

Happy 100th Birthday, Jean Harlow

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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 she is more–funny, sensitive underneath a leather-tough exterior and down to earth in a way that seems out of step with seductress in the stills. [...]

11 December 2010

Proud Hollywood Boulevard survivor: Larry Edmunds Book Shop

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For over 70 years and through three locations, Larry Edmunds Book Shop has been a Hollywood institution, known the world over as the place to go for books related to the movies as well as stills, posters and other film-related memorabilia. Few today even remember that it wasn’t always so. [...]

23 February 2010

Uncle Carl’s two-bit boxed lunch

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Carl Laemmle, the entrepreneur/founder of Universal Pictures, was not just a pioneer of filmmaking. He augmented studio revenues by allowing spectators to filmmaking, which had great appeal in Los Angeles in the ‘teens. [...]

18 October 2009

Before Hollywood came Edendale

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On this modest strip, from 1909 to 1928, prospered a genial group of filmmakers who flocked to southern California to make moving pictures. Edendale wasn’t a random happening. At its height it was a beehive of integrated film activity. [...]