Category: Memoir

May 14, 2013 /
May 12, 2013 /

FADE OUT . His memories shifted to his second wife Gerda, a striking woman twenty years his senior, a woman, suffice to say, with “connections” in the industry. Another woman with a great belief in him, another woman who he had loved, but used. Yet, it was different with Gerda,…

May 11, 2013 /

FADE OUT Jake Toper looked into the mirror and watched himself disintegrate. Still recognizable as the handsome, virile matinee idol of the ’30s and ’40s he may have been but the features that always leaned toward cragginess had long since begun to crumble. In a way, Toper was glad. Here…

May 9, 2013 /

Doris: I was such an awful mother… what if you had a mother like Joan Crawford or Lana Turner? Suzanne: These are the options? You, Joan or Lana?

May 9, 2013 /

Some of Joan Crawford’s friends disputed the version of events presented in Mommie Dearest. Among them Van Johnson, Cesar Romero, Bob Hope, Barbara Stanwyck, Sydney Guilaroff, Ann Blyth, Gary Gray, and in particular Myrna Loy, Joan’s friend since 1925, became staunch defenders. While acknowledging that Joan Crawford was highly ambitious…

May 7, 2013 /

“I’m a storyteller – that’s the chief function of a director. And they’re moving pictures, let’s make ’em move!” Howard Hawks “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (based on the novel by Anita Loos) has been called Hawks’ only female “buddy picture”. Howard Hawks on the set of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” with Marilyn…

May 7, 2013 /

A friend asked me in the comments (http://skepperson.com/) if there were any similarities between the chapters of the novel I was posting and the real story of Bogart and Bacall. She asking if a story element, “sympathy as an aphrodisiac”, came into play with Bacall’s feeling for Bogart. I thought…

May 7, 2013 /

I understand Howard Hawks enjoyed talking to young people: And, mentoring talent: “We discovered Bacall was a little girl who, when she becomes insolent, becomes rather attractive. That was the only way you noticed her, because she could do it with a grin. So I said to Bogey, “We are…

May 3, 2013 /
May 3, 2013 /

Ever wonder what people look like while they’re blogging? Behold, that slightly glazed expression proofing our text, or going through our photo files. And then, the Kid calls up the stairs and cracks you up, or the Mister coaxes you away from the computer with promises of coffee and suddenly…