Icy Gene Tierney in blazing Technicolor 1
Apr
26
2010
We enjoyed the restored LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945) the Technicolor/noir-esque soap opera starring Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde, a top-grossing 20th Century-Fox film of the 1940s that had kind of gone missing. The love story-turned-sour reminds us of the negative trajectory of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary or, frankly, of the many noir potboilers in which a ...
Luise Rainer @ 100 1
Apr
25
2010
Yesterday at TCM Fest, I met a handsome, well dressed actor named Vincent DePaul who was still glowing after his luncheon with Luise Rainer. The 100-year old German-born actress is being honored at today’s TCM Classic Film Fest screening of The Good Earth (1937). Vincent shared this photo with me.
Pavlova’s “Dumb Girl,” her sole Hollywood hurrah
We recently wrote about Anna Pavlova’s foray to Hollywood in 1915 to star in “The Dumb Girl of Portici” at Universal Pictures under female director Lois Weber. That’s Pavlova getting manhandled on the left. At the far right stands Weber, megaphone in her hand. Espying the chaos, bedecked in jodphurs and kneeboots, is Weber’s husband, Philips ...
Anna Pavlova visits Hollywood 3
It was standard practice at Universal Studios in the silent film era to have observers on the set. We wrote about this in a previous post. One movie star proved the exception to this rule. Not an actor, but a dancer. And not just any dancer, but ballet’s first superstar, Anna Pavlova, the great globe-trotting ballerina ...
Uncle Carl Laemmle’s two-bit boxed lunch 1
Feb
23
2010
From the get-go — for Universal Pictures that would be 1909 — film industry pioneer “Uncle” Carl Laemmle, a keen entrepreneur, allowed visitors on film sets. In the early days of Los Angeles film making, shooting took place in open air. Who needed lights? Indoor production came later. To accommodate curiosity seekers, Laemmle erected a ...
Rambova’s Aztec costume for Kosloff 2
Ballets Russes dancer Theodore Kosloff and his protegee Natacha Rambova pose at left, costumed for their Aztec dance number on the Keith Orpheum vaudeville circuit. Kosloff brought to the stage the role in which he made his cinematic debut — Guatemoco, the Aztec prince, in Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Woman God Forgot” in 1917. Here’s a ...
Say a dance prayer for Gene Kelly in Pittsburgh 2
Come on, home town! What’s this I hear about twenty years of fruitless effort to erect a statue of dancer Gene Kelly — in a city where bridges, steel mills, skyscrapers, and sports stadia get built with ease? In a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, retired entertainment columnist Barbara Cloud gripes that she’s grown despondent waiting ...
Before Hollywood came Edendale 2
This rustic boulevard, photographed at the turn of the twentieth century, occupied a Los Angeles neighborhood with the aspirational name of Edendale. One hundred years later, it’s called Echo Park. The street was then Allesandro. Now it’s Glendale Boulevard, or more accurately, a two-mile suction tube for automobiles hurtling toward downtown Los Angeles. On this ...
Red hair, red shoes 2
I recently attended a screening of The Red Shoes, the 1948 Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger classic lovingly restored by UCLA Film and Television Archive, Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, British Film Institute, and others. This film’s huge blast of technicolor transforms red-headed Moira Shearer into an unspeakably firey, unearthly creature … her neat figure, fair complexion, and carrot top ...
Ballerina’s beautiful beach birthday bash 1
Last year I wrote an article about former New York City Ballet ballerina Yvonne Mounsey coaching a young dancer, Melissa Barak, in the lead role of George Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son.” Mounsey danced the role in the early 1950s. By all accounts, she was an amazing, full-blooded dancer. She went on to become a great ballet ...