Born On This Day- July 16th... Barbara Stanwyck

When asked my favorite male & female stars of Hollywood's 1st golden age; I have no problem in announcing Barbara Stanwyck as my female choice.

Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in Brooklyn. She had an unusual beauty & distinctive husky voice & was an extremely versatile actor, easily moving between, melodrama, thrillers, westerns & comedies. The buzz was that she was wonderful to work with, professional, fun on the set, & never acted like the star that she was.

Stanwyck was nominated for 4 Oscars, but never won. In 1982, Stanwyck was awarded an honorary Oscar for "superlative creativity & unique contribution to the art of screen acting". Later in her career Stanwyck found work in TV, starring in the series The Big Valley & the miniseries The Thorn Birds (kissing the very gay Richard Chamberlain).

Stanwyck left a legacy of 93 films including one of my top 10 of all time- Ball Of Fire, with my male choice for best of the golden age- Gary Cooper. Stanwyck married twice, the first time to vaudevillian Frank Fay & the second time to Robert Taylor. Although she rebuffed any questions about her sexuality or her marriages, most of the Hollywood community believed that neither Stanwyck nor either of her husbands was straight.

In my research, I don’t find many names named for Stanwyck’s lovers. She seems to have been both discreet & well loved by those in the industry. There were the usual suspects- Joan Crawford & Tallulah Bankhead, not all that impressive as they both fucked me.

"Career is too pompous a word. It was a job, & I have always felt privileged to be paid for what I love doing."

Born On This Day- July 7th... George Cukor

I just am crazy for the scene in one of my favorite films- Gods & Monsters: director James Whale brings his hot gardener stud to a party at George Cukor's home, with Princess Margaret as a honored guest. So well filmed & telling, director Bill Condon claims he shot the budget wad on that scene, but it was worth it.

George Cukor's private life was well known in Hollywood. His Sunday afternoon pool parties were legendary in gay circles, having been described at lurid detail by some of the party guests, including writer John Rechy. His home, decorated by actor-turned interior designer William Haines, was the spot for Hollywood homosexuals to gather. The close knit group included Haines & his partner Jimmie Shields, Alan Ladd, Somerset Maugham, James Vincent, screenwriter Rowland Leigh, costume designers Orry-Kelly & Robert Le Maire, & actors John Darrow, Robert Walker, Anderson Lawler, Robert Seiter & Tom Douglas. Frank Horn- secretary to Cary Grant, was a frequent guest. Cukor & his sophisticated & artistic friends socialized with their boyfriends- often hustlers, rough trade, actor wannabes, or ambitious artists & writers who saw his parties as way into the exclusive Hollywood life.

My favorite anecdote: Hunky, young Forrest Tucker, who was straight, would show up at Cukor's Sunday afternoon parties & swim naked in the pool for the viewing pleasure of Cukor's famous gay guests: W. Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton & other assorted influential gays in the art, literature, & movies. Tucker realized these men were important contacts & was one of many up & coming young studs who were willing to make a naked appearance for the sake of their careers. Among them was handsome, hunk, hairy Aldo Ray, whom Cukor seemed to like well enough to cast him in Pat & Mike& The Marrying Kind with Judy Holliday.

Cukor's personal reputation has suffered somewhat from these anecdotes. Rechy: “Cukor was a catty, sometimes cruel queen who was as gifted at separating his private & public personas as he was at making films.” Yet among his close friends, those important enough to him to have his home filled with their photographs: Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lauren Bacall & Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier & Vivien Leigh, Stanley Holloway, Judy Garland, Gene Tierney, Noël Coward, Cole Porter, James Whale, Edith Head, Norma Shearer, Irving Thalberg, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Aldous Huxley, Ferenc Molnár, Christopher Isherwood & Don Bachardy, & close friend Somerset Maugham.

As a semi-closeted gay artist in Hollywood, one of Cukor's constant themes was how to reconcile a double life, an outsider or artist always at war with his or her own demons & the limits imposed by relationships & society. In other films, there is the meeting of 2 sides. For Cukor this seemed to represent true happiness. In Holiday (1938), Cary Grant rejects his rich, stuffy fiancée in favor of her spinster sister, played by Katharine Hepburn. who turns out to be a dreamer like himself.

Cukor is often given the title. “women’s director”, but he was the 1st to show Cary Grant as a romantic comedian in Sylvia Scarlett, & he launched the careers of Jack Lemmon, Aldo Ray, Tom Ewell & Anthony Perkins as well as Katharine Hepburn & Angela Lansbury. He directed W. C. Fields, Lew Ayres, Spencer Tracy & James Mason to performances that should have won Oscars, & James Stewart, Ronald Colman & Rex Harrison to performances that did. Plus: Max Carey in What Price Hollywood?, John Barrymore in Dinner at Eight, Cary Grant in Holiday& The Philadelphia Story, Ronald Colman in A Double Life, Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib, & Laurence Olivier in Love Among The Ruins. All these actors discovered new dimensions to their screen personalities under Cukor's smart, shrewd & sympathetic direction.

Among his most personal films: Little Women, The Marrying Kind, Pat & Mike& A Star Is Born. None of them is glossy, & none of them started as theatre.

Cukor usually filmed from the viewpoint of his female main character. This is evident in his Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy romantic comedy Pat & Mike & as it is in more obviously female-centered stories such as Little Women, & Gaslight . His concentration on strong women, along with Clark Gable's "ick factor"over Cukor's homosexuality, were the reasons for the director's firing from Gone With the Wind byproducer David O. Selznick.

All of his life Cukor fought an inferiority complex based on his ugliness, weight & life in an anti-Semitic America. His biggest secret was his active homosexuality. Among the major directors of the golden years of Hollywood, only he & James Whale were, more or less, basically openly gay. He died in 1983, 2 years after his last film- Rich & Famous. Cukor is buried in an unmarked grave at Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery.

My favorite Cukor Film: Philadelphia Story. My Favorite Cukor moment: Cary Grant's speech on kindness to haughty Katherine Hepburn as haughty Tracy Lord.

What is your favorite Cukor moment? I really want to know.

Born On This Day- May 22nd... Alla Nazimova

She wasn’t in therapy, didn’t wear a fanny pack, had never sang along with the Indigo Girls & she didn’t play on a softball league, but Alla Nazimova was one luscious lesbian.

Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon, in the Ukraine, on this day in 1879. She studied with Stanslavski at the Moscow Arts Theatre. Nazimova was a mjor star in Moscow, Berlin & London by the time she arrived in NYC in 1905. She became an acclaimed actress & the toast of Broadway in the first deacde of the 20^th Century with success performing the works of Chekov, Turgenev & Ibsen.  

In 1918, Nazimova began producing, writing, & starring in films of her stage triumphs. Her film adaptations, her own film making techniques, & her acting style were considered daring at the time.  

In 1920s Hollywood, she counted as her many lovers: Patsy Ruth Miller, Anna Mae Wong, both of Rudolph Valentino's wives- Jean Acker & Natacha Rambova, Eva Le Gallienne, director- Dorothy Azner, & writer- Mercedes de Acosta. She coined the term "sewing circle" as code for her lesbian group of gal pals.  

Her private lifestyle was the topic of widespread rumors of decadent & debauched parties at her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood known as The Garden of Allah. The Moorish palace was built in 1919. 


In 1927, Nazimova converted her estate into a 3.5 acre semi tropical trysting resort. She retained a private apartment upstairs in her former mansion, with the bottom story converted into a café & bar. The property became a complicated colorful collection of Spanish style bungalows & detached apartments, 25 villas were constructed around the pool, designed with drama & dash; the pool was shaped like the Black Sea.

The Garden Of Allah went bankrupt within a year & was bought by a developer who raised the rent. Nazimova stayed & among those who chose to live there: Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Clara Bow, Buster Keaton, Ramon Navarro, Harpo Marx, Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Ernest Hemingway, Lillian Hellman, Joe E. Lewis, Artie Shaw, Marlene Dietrich, George Kaufman, F Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Benchley & Laurence Olivier.  

Sham marriages, fights, feuds, egos, liquor during Prohibition, spoiled celebrities, recreational sex, drugs, drunken rages, loach liaisons, writer’s block, orgies, money problems, sudden changes of plans, the Garden Of Allah was a true Post Apocalyptic Bohemia. 

At the corner of Sunset & Crescent Heights, The Garden Of Allah is now a strip mall. The Joni Michell Song- Big Yellow Taxi is about the destruction of the site. Nazimova died in 1945, at the age of 66. She is buried at Forest Lawn.

If you should find yourself in LA & you desire the expert attention of a true insider, I recommend my blogger friend Felix & his World Class Tour Of Hollywood... take his tour!

Head Was Born On This Day In 1887

Edith Head believed modesty was unbecoming & that you should have anything you wanted in life, but you had to be dressed for it. Edith head knew about dressing. The legendary designer saw all the Hollywood greats stripped down to their underwear or less. As the stars gazed upon themselves in the studio wardrobe mirrors, Head was the woman standing behind them, making them look impossibly glamorous while carefully avoiding glamour herself.

 

Hollywood's most famous & influential costume designer, as well as its most prolific, Head had a career that lasted 6 decades. She designed clothes for 1,131 films , an average of 35 a year, she dressed virtually every star who shimmered on screen in the golden age of movie making. Head was the last costume designer to be under contract to a major studio, Paramount. She was a woman who succeeded in a world, which in her day, was dominated by men.

Head wrote a pair of books: The Dress Doctor & How to Dress for Success, & played herself, giving a fashion show commentary in the 1955 film- Lucy Gallant, with Charlton Heston & Jane Wyman.

She could be a bit playful with the truth, taking credit for designs she had not created: Audrey Hepburn's little black dress in Sabrina & the Newman/Redford wardrobe for The Sting, for which she won an Oscar. Always discreet about the size & shape of the stars' bodies, she knew about all the skeletons in their closets, but she was never one to gossip.

Head knew about the intimate secrets of Mae West's vast bosom, Gloria Swanson's wide waist & tiny feet (size 2 1/2), & swan necked Audrey Hepburn's broad shoulders. She often boasted that she was a magician: “I accentuated the positive & camouflaged the rest".

Head would make the stars, with all their flaws, look a million dollars, & she influenced the way millions of women dressed too, as a designer for Vogue patterns at a time when home dressmaking was all the rage, although Head could not sew herself.

Her costume designs for films went global. The sarong she fashioned for Dorothy Lamour in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, Head had her stitched into it, made the actress a star & was copied by every swimwear manufacturer in the US. It is still copied today.

For Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun (1951), Head accentuated the teenage star's bosom & tiny waist with a strapless, bouffant-skirted white ballgown, scattered with violets. It became the prom dress for American teenagers when it was copied by all the leading department stores. According to Head, Taylor had the most beautiful shoulders in Hollywood, so she created dresses for her to show them off.

Bette Davis: "Edith Head’s life was all about glamour, 60 years of it, in the most glamorous place in the world- Hollywood," Head designed the brown silk, sable trimmed cocktail dress Davis wore as Margo Channing in All About Eve, warning everyone as she swept down the staircase for the big party scene to fasten their seat belts because it was going to be a bumpy night. Davis tried on the finished gown the bodice & neckline were way too big. Head was horrified, but Davis pulled it off her shoulders & shook one shoulder sexily: “Doesn't it look better like this anyway?" Head won one of her 8 Oscars for that film. Davis later bought the dress for herself, because she loved it so much. Head: "There were 8 important men in my life, & they were all named Oscar."

Head was working as a language teacher at the Hollywood School for Girls in 1932 when she bluffed her way into Paramount's wardrobe department. She already had a B.A. from Berkeley & a master's from Stanford, but then went to study art at the Otis Art Institute & the Chouinard School. She was hired by the studio as a sketch artist, although the fashion drawings.

By 1938, she was head designer, working on every prestigious production the studio made, and left only in 1967, when she joined up with Universal. Head spent the remainder of her career here, thanks to her friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, including Tippi Hendren's smart green suit made of textured tweed that would snag easily during an avian attack.

Head's career was not without controversy. After winning her Oscar for The Sting, she was sued by the illustrator who really designed Redford & Newman's clothes. The truth about her design of Audrey Hepburn's little black dress emerged only after her death, when the Paris couturier Hubert de Givenchy quietly admitted that he'd come up with the frock that was copied everywhere & worn by a generation of women; Head had designed all the other costumes in the film.

Head also adored Grace Kelly & was upset when the actress slighted her by not inviting her to design the wedding dress when she got married to Prince Rainier of Monaco. She did create Princess Grace's grey going-away suit, though.

Head: "I regret never having dressed Marilyn Monroe, never designing uniforms for the Chicago Cubs, & being alone. It is much easier being remembered than trying to remember." It was an open secret in Hollywood that Edith Head was a lesbian.

In the Pixar film- The Incredibles, the personality & mannerisms of the film's fictional superhero costume designer- Edna Mode’s sense of style, round glasses, & assertive no-nonsense character are very are a direct homage to Head's legendary accomplishments & personality.

I am so in Junior High School, & I, of course, think it was fun to write the word- HEAD 24 times.

 

From Edith Head's HOW TO DRESS FOR SUCCESS:

 

How to attreact & keep a man:

1. Decide want kind of man you want.

2. Find out what kind of girls he likes.

3. Know what kind of fashions pleases him.

4. Don’t masquerade in clothes you hate just to attract a man. Be sure you are really, deep down inside, this kind of girl. If not, find another man!

5. Learn all you can about him: his hobbies, his interests, his likes, his dislikes.

6. Be interested in his interests.

7. Choose your wardrobe to please him & suit his way of life.

8. After you get him, stay the way you were & don’t relax into a post-marriage slump of careless marriage.

9. Look reasonably enticing in the morning & better at nightFrom her book- Dress for Success, Edith Head’s Success Formula For Dressing To Get A Man & Keep Him:

Born On This Day- September 17th... Star & Friend To The Stars- Roddy 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. He was profoundly better endowed than I would have ever thought from his films.


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 Elizabeth Taylor.

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 Roddy in his autobiography Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway. He knew Roddy 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 Roddy McDowall & the years of hatred he had for Roddy. Eddie had first met Elizabeth 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.

Born On This Day- August 10th... Forgotten Star- Norma Shearer

I was so callow as a youth, that in Film Theory class, all that I could muster for the work of Norma Shearer was cynical comments about about her crossed eyes & unusual mannered performances. I would later come to appreciate her talent. Now mostly forgotten, unlike the other ladies of MGM's Golden Years, she had a career that lasted less than 20 years, yet made 100+ films (in 1927 alone, she made 13 silent movies), almost all of them hits & well reviewed. She was Oscar nominated 6 times, winning for The Divorcee (1930). Norma Shearer was just the perfect personality for her era, & she made a series of highly successful "Pre-Code" adult oriented films: Let Us Be Gay (1930), Strangers May Kiss (1931), A Free Soul (1931), Private Lives (1931) & Riptide (1934). All of these were box-office hits, placing Shearer in competition with Joan Crawford & Greta Garbo as MGM's top actress through the remainder of the 1930s.



Norma Shearer was dubbed “The Queen of MGM” & indeed she was married to studio head- Irving Thalberg. Shearer's marriage to Thalberg gave the sort of power in Hollywood that was resented by other stars. Joan Crawford: "How can I compete with Norma when she's sleeping with the boss." Although she was devastated by the early death of Thalberg, she did enjoy liaisons with the then married actors George Raft, Mickey Rooney, & the unmarried actor James Stewart.


Shearer retired from films in 1942 & married ski instructor Martin Arrougé, 10 years younger than the star. Shearer withdrew from the glamor of Hollywood & preferred anonymity. They were still married at the time of her death in 1983 from Alzheimer's disease at 80 years old, although in her declining years she reportedly called Martin "Irving”. She is entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in a crypt marked "Norma Shearer Arrouge", along with Irving Thalberg. Her friend Jean Harlow is in the crypt next door. Thalberg's crypt was engraved "My Sweetheart Forever" by Shearer.

Norma Shearer was one of the muses of the great photographer- George Hurrell.