Hollywood History

Charlie Chaplin’s Brother
(Motion Pictur Magazine, 1916)

It must have been a slow news week when the industrious reporters at MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE opted to write this piece about Sydney Chaplin (1885 – 1965),businessman, aviator, actor,(thirty-four films between 1914 and 1928) and occasional business partner to his younger super-star brother, Charlie:

Charlie Chaplin is small and thin. Sidney is tall and husky. Charlie is dark, with curly hair like a boy. His big brother is light, and looks like a big lumberman. Here is contrast indeed. Their natures are as different as the natures of a flee and a bee. To see them together one would not take them brothers…

Three years after this article was published, Syd Chaplin would started the first domestic airline company in the United States: The Syd Chaplin Airline, Co., which he saw fit to close when the U.S. government began to regulate pilots and all commercial flight ventures.

Her Instincts on Men
(Screenland Magazine, 1952)

Seeing that Marilyn Monroe was married as many as three times, I think we can all assume that her instincts on men are probably not really worth remembering. Happily, however, this piece is about her friendships with men, and she wrote it as an explanation as to why, in matters of good fellowship, she always preferred men over women.

A Mosaic of Marilyn Monroe
(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

The editors of CORONET MAGAZINE approached the five male luminaries who were working alongside Marilyn Monroe during the making of The Misfits and asked each of them to comment on the Monroe character riddle as he alone had come to view it. These men, John Huston, Eli Wallach, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and her (soon to be estranged) husband, Arthur Miller, who had written the script, did indeed have unique insights as to who the actress was and what made her tick.

The Inter-Sound System
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1930)

Rudy Vallee: ‘Vagabond Lover’
(Film Spectator, 1929)

It is not surprising to think that one of the first sound movies to be made had to consist of a plot that involved a musical number, and when put to the task of writing his review of VAGABOND LOVER (1929: RKO Pictures) the well respected film critic Welford Beaton dished-out some lukewarm opinions concerning it’s star, crooner/teen-idol Rudy Vallee (1901 – 1986):

The laddie’s face is set in a sort of perpetual sorrow which, added to the fact that he seldom looks the camera in the eye, makes him seem like the wraith of some calamity walking through the scenes. Only the voice is virile…

The Year of Sound
(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1929)

The oddballs who read old Hollywood magazines from the year 1929 seem to all be in agreement that these magazines all shared the same frenzied, enthusiastic energy; something new and wonderful and unpredictable had been introduced and it was going to cause an enormous shake up in every movie capitol under the sun: sound.

But it was in the past year that the newest art, that of the silent drama, like prehistoric Man, stood up on it’s hind legs and began to talk. Like prehistoric man, it talked badly at first. But soon it’s words came a shade more fluently, and gradually they began, when arranged, to make a small degree of sense.

Read about the first talkie movie star: Mickey Mouse…

Charlie Chaplin’s Brother(Motion Pictur Magazine, 1916)

Her Instincts on Men(Screenland Magazine, 1952)

A Mosaic of Marilyn Monroe(Coronet Magazine, 1961)

The Inter-Sound System(Pathfinder Magazine, 1930)

Rudy Vallee: ‘Vagabond Lover’(Film Spectator, 1929)

The Year of Sound(Theatre Arts Magazine, 1929)