Born On This Day- August 19th... Malcolm Forbes

The personality trait I most deplore in others? Entitlement. Here is a little tale:

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes probably means nothing to anyone under 40 today. Yet when he died 21 years ago at the age of 70, he was one of the most famous men in America, the result of his shameless, showy smarts at self-promotion.

Forbes inherited Forbes Magazine from his father, its founder, B.C. Forbes, in the late 1950s when he was 38. The magazine had long been a successful business magazine with a strong personality identification with B.C. Forbes. By the early 1970s, Malcolm Forbes, now sole owner, turned it into a hugely successful business monthly magazine. One of his great sensations was the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 Richest.

In the 1970s & 1980s, Forbes lived a luminous, lavish lifestyle, separate from his sedate base on his inherited estate & his large family. In those years he became more prominent & took to the bright lights of NYC.

That was also his public image, although mainly because of his large yachts, his private jets, his residences around the world, & his planeloads of famous, powerful friends.

In late August of 1989, on a weekend, from the 18th to the 20th, Malcolm Forbes gave himself a 70th birthday party in Tangier, Morocco where he owned a palace, the Palais Mendoub. 800 guests were flown in on a chartered Concorde: famous friends, wealthy associates , USA governors, CEOs of multinational corporations, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Robert Maxwell, & Forbe's “date” for the event-Elizabeth Taylor.

It was a party of glitter, glamour & guise, comparable to Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball 23 years earlier. It was well publicized in the fashion & society pages, with a big whack of fairy-dust in the daily papers. It was good for business, mingling advertisers & potential advertisers with the elite of London & Manhattan & his “date” Elizabeth Taylor. It was good for his social reputation, transporting & taking care his very rich friends for free & in style in an exotic country with a Mediterranean climate. The party entertainment was on a grand scale: 600 drummers, acrobats & dancers, a fantasy with a cavalry charge which ended with the firing of muskets into the air by 300 Berber horsemen. The cost of this shindig was more than $3 million.

Forbes died less than 6 months after his party, at home on his estate in Far Hills, NJ. Shortly after he died, he was “outed” as by gay journalist Michelangelo Signorile. Forbes was long known as gay by some & unknown to many. In his later years he became quite the partyer, making up for lost time. The “outing” was a shock, especially to his friends who were not aware, or chose not to believe, that he was gay. Signorile published the story more with intention of showing how acceptable a gay man is without the predictable pale of prejudice. In this case, the band did not play on…

When Forbes died, he was held up by many conservatives as a great American capitalist. Signorile felt that the historical record also needed to show that he was homosexual; he interviewed many people who knew Forbes as gay, some of them men who’d been intimately involved with Forbes.

Highlighting how heated it was at that time to report on the undeclared homosexuality of a public figure who was dead, let alone living, many newspapers viewed Signorile's Forbes story as shocking & scandalous, & it took months for some papers to report on it. The NY Times ran the story 4 months after the fact in a story about outing, & still would not identify Forbes by name, saying that a 'recently deceased businessman' had been 'outed'. Years later, the NY Times would finally report that Forbes was gay, in a story about his son Steve Forbes’ run for the presidency. Steve Forbes has courted the Conservative Christian Right & has come out publicly against gay rights & same sex marriage while campaigning.

Bust Up

Shirley Eaton

In 1964, Goldfinger briefly made a sensation out of Shirley Eaton, whose nude, spray-painted body remains an iconic screen image. With typical British reserve, Miss Eaton gave her opinions of her fellow sex symbols to columnist Earl Wilson. Hollywood's bombshells must have been eager to send this bundle back to Britain after hearing these cheerful little earfuls:

"I don't want to be a sex symbol, or anything stupid like that...I mean perfectly terrible symbols like...Jayne Mansfield. [She's] laughed at."

"Anita Ekberg's even worse... She has a hard, brittle face -- and I don't think she's conspicuously talented."

"Carroll Baker? If that's going to be the new American sex symbol, I feel sorry for the American woman!...She wears a low dress and a big fur, but she's like a little housewife."

"People have been...saying really terrible things about Elizabeth Taylor. How she shouldn't wear bikinis, things like that. I can't bear people who are always downing people, can you?"

Born On This Day- September 17th... Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall

I ran into him 2 times. The 1st time was at the 50th Anniversary of MGM Ball at the Beverley Wilshire Hotel in 1973 (which I crashed). He was there as Elizabeth Taylor’s date. He could not have been more gracious & friendly. He was better looking in person than I had ever found him to be in films. The 2nd time was at a coke fueled all boy party at the home of a famous producer in the Hollywood Hills. He couldn’t have been more gracious & friendly. From his films I would never have guessed; McDowell was profoundly well endowed.

Roddy McDowall was thought to be one of the nicest people in show biz ever, & an especially good friend who was known to be able to keep a confidence.

After winning an acting prize in a school play, he was able to secure film work in Britain, beginning at age 10 with 1938's Scruffy. He appeared in 16 roles before his family were evacuated to the U.S. during the 1940 Battle of Britain. McDowall’s arrival in Hollywood coincided with the desire of 20th Century-Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck to create a "new Freddie Bartholomew." He tested for the juvenile lead in Fox's How Green Was My Valley (1941), winning both the role, great reviews & a long contract. Roddy McDowall was cast with the then unknown Elizabeth Taylor, in her screen debut, in 1943's Lassie Come Home. Elizabeth & Roddy became life long close friends. Elizabeth's selection for this movie was an absolute fluke. The director wanted a young girl with an English accent.

McDowall's 1st adult role was as Malcolm in Orson Welles' 1948 film version of Macbeth. Basically, McDowall left films in the 1950s, preferring TV & stage work; among his Broadway credits were No Time for Sergeants, Compulsion, (working with fellow former child star Dean Stockwell) & Lerner & Loewe's Camelot (as Mordred, a role I played in summer stock a decade later). McDowall won a 1960 Tony Award for his work in the short run of the play- The Fighting Cock (by coincidence a chapter title in my memoir- Jockstraps & Vicodin: The Early Years). he spent the early 1960s playing Octavius in the mammoth production Cleopatra, with longtime friend guess who?

An accomplished & original photographer, McDowall’s photos of Taylor & other celebrities were frequently published in the leading magazines of the era. He was briefly an advising photographic editor of Harper's Bazaar, & in 1966 published the first of several collections of his camerawork- Double Exposure.

McDowall went ape shit for his acting gigs between 1968 & 1975, in elaborate simian makeup as Cornelius in the Planet of the Apes films & TV series. He did an occasional film role & play into the 1990s. McDowall served on the executive boards of the Screen Actors Guild & the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

A lifelong movie collector, in 1974 (around the time I met him briefly) the FBI raided the home of McDowall & seized his collection of films & television series during an investigation of movie piracy & copyright infringement. His collection consisted of 160 16 mm prints & more than 1,000 video cassettes. McDowall had purchased Errol Flynn's home movies & the prints of his own directorial debut Tam-Lin (1970) starring Ava Gardner, and transferred them all to tape for archival storage. McDowall was forthcoming about those who dealt with him: Rock Hudson, Dick Martin & Mel Tormé were just a few of the celebrities interested in his film reproductions. No charges were brought against McDowall. McDowall has also worked diligently with the National Film Preservation Board. In August, 1998, he was elected president of the Academy Foundation.

McDowall was one of the Hollywood golden age’s much loved stars, famed for his kindness, generosity & loyalty. McDowall's announcement that he was suffering from terminal cancer a few weeks before he died rocked the film community, & many of his friends visited the ailing actor in his Studio City home. Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, McDowall had provided the voiceover for Disney/Pixar's animated feature- A Bug's Life. A few days prior to McDowall's passing, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences named its photo archive after him.

Roddy McDowall graduated from University High School in Santa Monica. Christopher Isherwood wrote in a volume of his memoir that Tom Maddox told him, that he was having an affair with the Roddy, then 17 years old.

Tab Hunter mentions Roddy in his autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential : The Making of a Movie Star : "While making shakes at the Rexall drugstore at Hollywood & Highland, I met my first bona fide movie star. It was the night of the big 1948 Christmas parade...Dick Clayton brought along Roddy McDowall. Roddy was only 20, but he'd been in pictures his whole life.... We hit it off, gabbing and laughing....". Several years later, Tab & Roddy posed shirtless for a fan magazine spread entitled "Calling All Girls".

Farley Granger talks of McDowall in his autobiography Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway. He knew McDowell prior to Farley's enlistment in the Navy at age 18. Granger: "It was 1953. I found an apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan... My old pal Roddy McDowall & Monty Clift lived on the same block" Roddy & Montgomery were very close. During this period he also had an affair with Marlon Brando.

Eddie Fisher, in his autobiography Been There, Done That mentions
McDowall & the years of hatred he had for him. Eddie had first met Elizabeth Taylor at a party that Merv Griffin & Roddy threw in an apartment they were then sharing in one of my favorite NY structures- The Dakota. Fisher: "She spent most of the evening in a corner with her close friend Montgomery Clift... She was recently divorced from her first husband Nicky Hilton...."

Lauren Bacall in her memoir By Myself & Then Some: "He was someone I looked forward to being with, loved seeing, loved hearing from."

Roddy was with Bette Davis during the last part of her life. When Julie Andrews asked Roddy why he didn't write a book about his life, he said, "I have too many friends, I know too much, I couldn't."

Roddy McDowall has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6632 Hollywood Blvd, & there is an honorary rose garden at the Woodland Hills grounds of the Motion Picture & Television Fund with a statue of him in costume from the Planet of the Apes. I think that I would have really liked to have been friends with him. Really good friends are to be treasured.

The Fabulous Forties

The ideal American beauty, circa 1941

The great screen beauties of the 1940's are a peculiar bunch: for the most part, their stardom (which, in some cases, was extraordinary) failed to outlast the decade. The wartime sirens didn't become warhorse troupers, unlike those whose fame came to the fore in the 1930's, chief among them, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Rosalind Russell, and Olivia de Havilland -- all of whom continued their careers with their stardom undimmed well into the future decades. And even the newer stars that followed in the 1950's, as television encroached and the studio system crumbled, seemed to have greater staying power: witness the longevity of Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day, Sophia Loren.

Timeless faces, top to bottom: Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn

The number one box office attraction of the 1940's, Betty Grable, despite remaining a beloved star and icon of her time, was washed up in pictures by 1953. The decade's reigning musical star, Judy Garland, became an even greater legend by the 1950's and 1960's, but largely on the basis of her concert performances and personal triumphs and tragedies -- Garland only acted in four more films after 1950. Only Lana Turner emerged from the 1940's with her movie stardom intact -- and even that was badly waning throughout the entire 1950's, until a potentially damning scandal gave the former Sweater Girl such notoriety that her box office appeal suddenly went into a third act revival.

Lana Turner, a legend in three acts: superstar (1947), on the skids (1950), resurrection (1959)

Most of the celluloid goddesses of the 1940's are frozen in amber, forever shrouded in the shadows of film noir, or enshrined in the nobility of wartime pluck and determination. Unlike their supercharged 1930's predecessors, their glamour wasn't a fantastical illusion, but somehow more realistic -- while still more remote, moody and less approachable than those who inherited the mantle in the 1950's. Over the next few weeks, we shall showcase some of our favorites from the fabulous, fleeting, Forties. Most made films before and after, but the basis of their stardom is contained in that one unique decade. We inaugurate this series with the Most Beautiful Girl in the World...

Born On This Day- July 19th... Malcolm Forbes, The Capitalist Tool

The personality trait I most deplore in others? Entitlement. Here is a little tale:

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes probably means nothing to anyone under 40 today. Yet when he died 21 years ago at the age of 70, he was one of the most famous men in America, the result of his shameless, showy smarts at self-promotion.

Forbes inherited Forbes Magazine from his father, its founder, B.C. Forbes, in the late 1950s when he was 38. The magazine had long been a successful business magazine with a strong personality identification with B.C. Forbes. By the early 1970s, Malcolm Forbes, now sole owner, turned it into a hugely successful business monthly magazine. One of his great sensations was the magazine’s annual Forbes 400 Richest.

In the 1970s & 1980s, Forbes lived a luminous, lavish lifestyle, separate from his sedate base on his inherited estate & his large family. In those years he became more prominent & took to the bright lights of NYC.

That was also his public image, although mainly because of his large yachts, his private jets, his residences around the world, & his planeloads of famous, powerful friends.

In late August of 1989, on a weekend, from the 18th to the 20th, Malcolm Forbes gave himself a 70th birthday party in Tangier, Morocco where he owned a palace, the Palais Mendoub. 800 guests were flown in on a chartered Concorde: famous friends, wealthy associates , USA governors, CEOs of multinational corporations, Henry Kissinger, Barbara Walters, Robert Maxwell, & the birthday boy's “date” for the event-Elizabeth Taylor.

It was a party of glitter, glamour & guise, comparable to Truman Capote’s Black & White Ball 23 years earlier. It was well publicized in the fashion & society pages, with a big whack of fairy-dust in the daily papers. It was good for business, mingling advertisers & potential advertisers with the elite of London & Manhattan & his “date” Elizabeth Taylor. It was good for his social reputation, transporting & taking care his very rich friends for free & in style in an exotic country with a Mediterranean climate. The party entertainment was on a grand scale: 600 drummers, acrobats & dancers, a fantasy with a cavalry charge which ended with the firing of muskets into the air by 300 Berber horsemen. The cost of this shindig was more than $3 million.

Forbes died less than 6 months after his party, at home on his estate in Far Hills, NJ. Shortly after he died, he was “outed” as gay by journalist Michelangelo Signorile. Forbes was long known as gay by some & unknown to many. In his later years he became quite the partyer, making up for lost time. The “outing” was a shock, especially to his friends who were not aware, or chose not to believe, that he was gay. Signorile published the story more with intention of showing how acceptable a gay man is without the predictable pale of prejudice. In this case, the band did not play on…

When Forbes died, he was held up by many conservatives as a great American capitalist. Signorile felt that the historical record also needed to show that he was homosexual; he interviewed many people who knew Forbes as gay, some of them men who’d been intimately involved with Forbes.

Highlighting how heated it was at that time to report on the undeclared homosexuality of a public figure who was dead, let alone living, many newspapers viewed Signorile's Forbes story as shocking & scandalous, & it took months for some papers to report on it. The NY Times ran the story 4 months after the fact in a story about outing, & still would not identify Forbes by name, saying that a 'recently deceased businessman' had been 'outed'. Years later, the NY Times would finally report that Forbes was gay, in a story about his son Steve Forbes’ run for the presidency. Steve Forbes has courted the Conservative Christian Right & has come out publicly against gay rights & same sex marriage while campaigning.

Everyone's Invited...

...to a birthday party!

JUDY GARLAND
June 10, 1922 - June 22, 1969

I Want To Be Rich When I Am Dead

I admire the way dead celebrities continue to make more money than ever. Elvis Presley was one of the highest paid entertainers of 2010, & he has been gone for 24 years, yet he made $60 million last year.

Andy Warhol knew that he would one day be the stuff of legend. Warhol: “Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”

Last week, another dead celebrity was the toast of NYC. At Phillips de Pury & Company, Elizabeth Taylor stole the show. The 1963 painting, one of 13 made of Elizabeth Taylor in various colors, was titled-Liz #5 (Early Colored Liz), & it sold to the bidder for $24 million, or $26.9 million including Phillips fees.

The price was not far off the $23.5 million that the actor Hugh Grant got for his turquoise Liz at Christie’s in 2007.

How much can I get for my old jockstrap?

Tuesday Taylor Trailer Trash

Welcome...

...to the 20th reunion of Metro's little red school house.

Blonde Alley

Gypsies, Tramps and...

Lush Life

Elizabeth Taylor, photographed by Henry Clarke for Vogue, 1967

This is one of our favorite photos of La Liz: well past the ingenue stage; into her uber-glam Jet Set period; but not yet at the "I'm only 36 but act 56, I'm sauced by 10 a.m. and, yea, why not have another helping of Peach Melba?" (as the brilliant JungleRed put it) crisis mode. She looks grown up, assured and lovely here; and doesn't she remind you all of a certain gorgeous lioness over at Stella's Roar? Have a glamorous weekend, darlings!

Because

Photo by Beaton

It Is A Sad Day At Post Apocalyptic Bohemia

She was a voluptuous violet eyed actress who lived a life of luxury & love, heartbreak & hurt, & for 6 decades she was one of world's most well known women with 50+ films, 2 Academy Awards, 8 marriages, ravaging illnesses & work raising money for HIV research, when doing so was a career risk.

When she had the chance & when the piece was her equal, she was mesmerizing, holding the screen like so few can.

She is my mother's favorite Hollywood star. I met her once.  This happened in the early 1970s, & she was a stunning beauty in her 40s. She was warm, open & funny. I have been a very lucky man.