As you get to be my age, and for those of you who are curious that age is 55, you begin to feel the reach of time. You begin to feel a deep connection to those who have come before, and those who will follow who you have never met,…
Tag: Marlene Dietrich
She sizzled onscreen with the hottest leading men in Hollywood—Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Charles Boyer, Robert Donat, James Stewart, Ronald Colman—but Marlene Dietrich’s most memorable co-star may have been a balding, jowly, irascible middle-aged man. While entertaining the troops during World War II, she ventured within a mile of the German…
McBean (1904-1990) might seem to belong entirely to the past, and yet he created one – or rather two – of the best-known group portraits of modern times, that are still in record shops, on websites, in your memory. In 1963 the man who had once photographed Ivor Novello leaning…
Angus McBean was born in 1904 in Newport, South Wales, England. As a youth he was a devotee of the cinema, spending hours watching the early silent films and experimenting with photography… McBean shot his photographs directly onto glass plates, using what was already considered old-fashioned equipment. Each photograph took…
Was he a good portraitist? By the naturalistic lights of our day, no. Edith Evans, appalled that a photographer had turned up unannounced at her dressing room door, calmed down when she heard it was McBean. “He will retouch me out of all recognition,” trilled the relieved actress. “It’s simple,”…
Bette Davis and John Garfield decided something had to be done for the enlisted men who passed through Southern California… They secured a building at 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard and opened a USO club to be staffed by movies stars and entertainers. That’s Dezi Arnaz: That’s co-founder Bette Davis preparing to…