Tag: Old Hollywood

February 28, 2013 /

This is Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926. I believe she’s covered in grease as insulation against the cold water… Here she is cleaned up and coaching movie stars… “SWIM, GIRL, SWIM.” Record entries in the trans-Derwent swimming races and interest in the picture,…

February 27, 2013 /

February 23rd, 1952. Nancy Davis, and her soon to be husband, Ronald Reagan, at Ciro’s celebrating with Jeanne and Dean Martin. The menu: . .

February 24, 2013 /

Via my friend Martin: Sat, February 23, 2013 2:31:06 PM Sunset Boulevard – At Oscar time I thought we could use a Billy Wilder comment! Martin In Hollywood, Paramount arranged a private screening for the various studio heads and specially invited guests. ” Louis B. Mayer berated Wilder before the…

February 22, 2013 /

As seen in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and ROCKETEER and too many movies to list — the fabulous observatory designed by the architectural firm of John C. Austin and Frederic M. Ashley — completed 1935: . . . . . . Physicist Leon Hall explaining the Cosmochron Clock of the…

February 22, 2013 /

Hermes Pan choreographed everything from “Swing Time” in 1936 to Elizabeth Taylor’s “Cleopatra” (including the spectacle – dancers, warriors, witch doctor’s, elephants, and zebras – that was Cleopatra’s procession into Rome). Pictured above with Ginger Rogers, he was a soft-spoken gregarious man who was loved by his dancers. Recently a…

February 22, 2013 /

Player? Serial monogamist? Peter Pan? Lothario? Why label? Some people’s libido does not wane with the years. Let’s just say a charming actor confided to me over lunch he absolutely loves women. I’ll say. After dating a cavalcade of beauties, and entering his fifth decade, his ardor remains fierce. While…

February 21, 2013 /

That’s the director, lurking in the background, with his trademark owl framed spectacles. When I was a tyke my father took me to a retrospective screening at the DGA of SOME LIKE IT HOT – a then elderly Billy Wilder and Tony Curtis presided. The screening was packed and the…

February 18, 2013 /

From inspection at the fabricators: To Oscar’s big night out: