Rogers & Hammerstein Go West
(Click Magazine, 1943)
Following their enormous Hollywood hit, OKLAHOMA, composers Rogers and Hammerstein headed West in 1943 to make more films.Read more …
Hollywood History
‘The Plainsman” by Cecil B. DeMille
(Stage Magazine, 1937)
Why should a director risk it all with some anonymous film critic when a he is given the chance to review his own movie? With this thought in mind, Cecil B. DeMille (1883 – 1959) typed up his own thoughts concerning all his hard work on the 1937 film, The Plainsman, which starred Gary Cooper:
I think ‘The Plainsman’ differs from any Western we have ever seen for many reasons
– it is at this point in the article that DeMille rattles-off an extended laundry list
of reasons that illustrate the unique qualities of his Western. One of the unique aspects of the film mentioned only by publicists concerned the leading man Garry Cooper, who, being a skilled horseman from his Montana youth, chose to do most of his own riding stunts in the film, including the shot where he rode hanging between two horses.
Click here to read a 1927 review of Cecil B. De Mille’s silent film, King of Kings.
Laurel and Hardy
(Photoplay Magazine, 1930)
An interview with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy:
They are the comedy sensations of the season. And all because they have learned, by a lucky stroke, that the public likes to see itself caricatured on the screen; that the public can laugh at the maunderings of a fat man who shakes a warning pudgy forefinger at a sensitive simpleton who is prone to weep
Lana Turner
(Quick Magazine, 1949)
When this Hollywood profile first appeared on paper, actress Lana Turner (1921 – 1995) was all of twenty-nine years of age and about to begin working on A Life of Her Own
it was her thirtieth movie; her last four films had nearly grossed a record-breaking $20 million, and her smiling mug was on each and every Hollywood fan magazine that could be found.
Today, the sleek, gray-eyed Lana has shed the plumpness of two years ago, keeps her weight between to 118 and 127 lbs… Now Lana is as shapely as she was in those early days. She has the ‘perfect’ figure: 5 ft. 3 in., 34-in. bust, 24-in. waist, 34.5 in. hips.
The article is illustrated with photographs from eight of her pre-’49 movies and lists all the husbands that she’d collected up to that same period (she had acquired eight husbands before she was through).
The High and the Mighty and the Movies They Loved(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)
Royalty and rulers of the world are movie fans. The cinema tastes of the great are disclosed for the first time in this article.
Listed in the attached 1937 Hollywood fan magazine article are the names of the favorite movies of Gandhi, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hirohito, Roosevelt and many more.
Click here to read about happy Hollywood’s discovery of plastic surgery…
Edwige Feuillère Gets Liberated
(Collier’s, 1946)
A 1946 article in which the beloved French actress Edwige Feuillère (1907 – 1998) is personified as the epitome of wounded French Glamor returned to it’s rightful place following the hasty retreat of those nasty Huns from the boulevards of lovely Paris:
Edwige Feuillère, France’s Number One actress, is wearing evening clothes again – and all fashionable Paris rejoices. It is a sort of symbol, the blooming of the lovely Edwige into full-panoplied formality. For she, along with most women of France, abstained from festivities and the clothes that go with them throughout the war.
A Screenwriter’s Progress
(Ken Magazine, 1938)
Yardley, a cartoonist from KEN MAGAZINE, made this four panel yuk-yuk about Depression era screenwriters and the shoe being on the other foot. Truth be told, the story it tells is as fitting in our own time as it was in the Thirties. Nicely rendered, too.
Click here to read about feminine conversations overheard in the best New York ladies rooms of 1937.
The High and the Mighty and the Movies They Loved(Photoplay Magazine, 1937)
Royalty and rulers of the world are movie fans. The cinema tastes of the great are disclosed for the first time in this article.
Listed in the attached 1937 Hollywood fan magazine article are the names of the favorite movies of Gandhi, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco, Hirohito, Roosevelt and many more.
Click here to read about happy Hollywood’s discovery of plastic surgery…
One Cartoonist’s View of Depression Era Hollywood…(Ken Magazine, 1939)
A full page drawing of the sound stage-spangled Hollywood landscape picturing all the usual suspects – the Hollywood glory girls, studio yes-men and sub-literate European starlets -all sweltering beneath the intense heat of the occidental sun.
Click here to see cartoons about the silent movie culture.
Click here to read historic magazine articles about American animated films.
Boris Karloff: Gentle Monster
(Collier’s Magazine, 1941)
Adorned with photos of the famous movie-monster-actor mowing his lawn and kissing his wife, this COLLIER’S MAGAZINE article tells the tale of how an English boy named William Henry Pratt became a famous Hollywood actor named Boris Karloff (1887 – 1969). This piece was originally conceived in order to promote the actor’s appearance on Broadway in the roll of Jonathan in Arsenic and Old Lace. The writer makes it quite clear to all that the show-biz career did not in any way come easily to Karloff and involved years of truck driving and traveling about performing in summer-stock theaters throughout the whole of North America before he was able to make a name for himself as a bit actor in the silent films of Hollywood.
Click here to read about the vulgar side of Erroll Flynn.
3-D Movies Arrive
(Quick Magazine, 1953)
This article confirms that the 3-D film format was brought into existence in 1952 for the same reasons it exists today: to get TV audiences off of their wallets and into the theaters.
If 3-D didn’t work, the producers could always attract audiences with this…
Cedric Gibbons: Production Designer
(Creative Art Magazine, 1932)
Throughout film history there have been many men and women who have toiled in the Hollywood vineyards as art directors, but none have ever matched the level of high productivity as Cedric Gibbons (1893 – 1960). Indeed, he is remembered as the dean of art directors who stood head and shoulders above all others during Hollywood’s Golden Age; between 1912 and 1956 there were hundreds movies that bore his thumbprint – winning Oscars for 39 of them (he was also one of the aesthetes who designed that award).
Illustrated by four photographs of his sets from the early Thirties, the attached article appeared mid-way through his career:
At the Metro-Goldwyn studios in Culver City, just a few short miles from Hollywood, Mr. Gibbons rules supreme as art director. He is at the head of an intricately organized group of technical experts and artisans, numbering nearly two thousand individuals, and is responsible for the artistic investiture and pattern of some fifty or more feature films per annum.
David Niven Returns to Hollywood
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1946)
After six years of war British actor David Niven (1910 – 1983) came back to resume his rightful place among the anointed swells of Hollywood. This single page article is interesting and not only touches upon his war years but also his earliest days in North America toiling-away on a series of menial jobs.
He isn’t talkative about what happened to him during that dark period [during the war]. He says his outlook has changed some. Even the gayest and most lighthearted can’t participate in a ghastly war without some mark being left. The fight with the Nazis made David Niven conscious of other things than the drama pages.
Niven’s first post-war film roll was in the Hal Wallis production of THE PERFECT MARRIAGE, co-starring Loretta Young.
Emily Post on Manners in the Movies
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)
A 1939 magazine interview with America’s Mullah of manners, Emily Post (1872 – 1960) who was asked to give some criticism on the way etiquette is displayed on screen. She did not hold back; letting Hollywood have both barrels, La Post articulately opined about the poor choice of words the actors are required to spout, how humorously enormous so many of the living room sets always appear to be and how thoroughly inappropriate too many of the costumes are:
According to Miss Post, the worst offense committed against good manners is that of pretentiousness. She says, ‘Good manners are the outward expression of an inward grace. You can’t get them any other way. Probably that is why Shirley Temple, in that very first feature picture of hers, had charm that few can equal.’
Sometimes the mistakes Hollywood makes are not too serious, but usually they are ludicrous, and far too often they set bad examples for millions of ardent movie-goers.
Technicolor
(Film Daily, 1939)
Technicolor – conceived at Boston Tech and born in a rail way car in 1917, attained its majority, properly enough, 28 years later when Dr. Herbert Thomas Kalmus, president and founder, received the 1938 Progress Award from the Society of Motion Picture Engineers at its annual convention.
The story of Technicolor begins in 1915 when Dr. Kalmus and his associates became interested in a color process. Dr. Kalmus’ task was to find a suitable name, and, a Boston Tech man himself, he combined Technique, the engineering school’s class annual, and Color and so was born Technicolor.
Click here to read a about a particularly persuasive and
highly effective W.W. II training film…
The French Film Industry: 1940 – 1944
(Tricolor Magazine, 1944)
An article from TRICOLOR MAGAZINE explains how the French film industry fared under the German occupation.
Jimmy Stewart: Four Years in Hollywood
(Photoplay Magazine, 1939)
Hollywood scribe Wilbur Morse, Jr. wrote this 1939 magazine profile of Jimmy Stewart (1908 – 1997). At the time of this printing, Stewart had dozens of stage credits and had been working in films for only four years; one year later he would be awarded an Oscar for his performance in PHILADELPHIA STORY:
Booth Tarkington might have created Jim Stewart. He’s ‘Little Orvie and Billie Baxter’ grown up ‘Penrod’ with a Princeton diploma.
The appeal of James Stewart, the shy, inarticulate movie actor, is that he reminds every girl in the audience of the date before the last. He’s not a glamorized Gable, a remote Robert Taylor. He’s ‘Jim’, the lackadaisical, easy-going boy from just around the corner.