Our Gang Follies of 1938

This is the best thing I've seen in a long time! I adore the Little Rascals...

Rest in peace, Norma Jean.

6/1/26 - 8/5/62

Photo of the Day

I just watched the wonderfully weepy 1944 movie Since You Went Away and even though Guy Madison was only in it for a few scenes, he left such an impression that the film studio was inundated with letters wanting to know who he was. He sure was handsome!!!

R.I.P. Tura Satana

From The New York Times:

February 5, 2011, 5:53 PM

Tura Satana, Cult Actress, Is Dead
By DAVE ITZKOFF

Tura Satana, the actress whose authoritative presence, exotic looks and buxom frame commanded the attention of viewers of Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult movie “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, died on Friday evening in Reno, Nev.

The death was announced by her longtime manager, Siouxzan Perry, who said the cause of death was believed to be heart failure. Ms. Perry said Ms. Satana was 72 when she died, though other sources listed her birth year as 1935.

Read the rest of the article here.

R.I.P. June Havoc

Rest in peace, Baby June!

From The Los Angeles Times:

June Havoc dies at 97; child vaudeville star and sister of Gypsy Rose Lee

Her early life was portrayed in the Broadway hit 'Gypsy.' Havoc played showgirl Gladys Bumps in the hit musical comedy 'Pal Joey' and starred in TV's 'The June Havoc Show.'

By Dennis McLellan
March 29, 2010 | 6:48 p.m.

June Havoc, an actress and former child vaudeville star whose early life with her sister -- future burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee -- and their ambitious stage mother was portrayed in the hit Broadway musical "Gypsy," has died. She was 97.

Havoc died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Stamford, Conn., said her caregiver, Tana Sibilio.

"Gypsy," the "musical fable" based on Lee's memoir, opened on Broadway in 1959. It starred Ethel Merman as the overbearing stage mother, Mama Rose.


Read the rest of the article here.

R.I.P. Jean Simmons

Old Hollywood lost another one yesterday. :(

From Telegraph:

Jean Simmons remembered: tributes to the demure, doe-eyed British beauty of film

Actress Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, seemed destined for stardom from the moment she was plucked at 14 from a London dance troupe to make her first film.

by Olga Craig
Published: 10:45PM GMT 23 Jan 2010

With her demure, doe-eyed beauty and sultry allure, Simmons - who died of lung cancer - made her debut on the silver screen in the 1944 film, Give Us the Moon.

But bizarrely the teenage Simmons, who won wave reviews for her part as Margaret Lockwood's sister, had altogether loftier ambitions in the world of academia. Though she was to go on to conquer Hollywood - playing Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, singing alongside Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls and co-starring with Gregory Peck, Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas - she was, initially, reluctant to become an actor, believing that her true talent was for teaching.

Val Guest, the movie director who discovered her when he chanced upon her dance troupe practising routines in a back street theatre, begged her to drop her ambitions to study. But Simmons insisted she wanted to give teaching a go, turning her back on the movie world.

Though she qualified as a teacher the lure of movie screen stardom proved just too tantalising. She accepted parts in several major British films - Caesar and Cleopatra, Black Narcissus and Great Expectations - but it was her role in Hamlet, for which she won an Oscar nomination, that took Hollywood by storm. Overnight a star was born. She appeared several times on the cover of the prestigious Time magazine and became the sweetheart of the American press. Finally won over by the movie world, she ditched her second name Merilyn in 1950, packed her suitcases, bought a one way ticket and sailed across the Atlantic where she became one of tinsel town's most popular and sought after actors.

Though hugely talented - she won an Emmy Award for her role in the 1980s mini series The Thorn Birds, a Golden Globe and a second Oscar nomination - Simmons' appeal was her tantalising mix of the wanton seductress and the vulnerable ingenue.

As writer and film historian Alan K Rode said when her agent announced she had died on Friday at her Santa Monica home after a long illness: ''Jean's jaw-dropping beauty often obscured a formidable acting talent.''

Paying tribute to Ms Simmons actor Edward Fox said: ''She was one of my pin ups when I was young. She was simply gorgeous, a real str, a true English girl and a very fine actress. She was particularly wonderful in Great Expectations. She might not always have got the more heavyweight roles she wanted, as the studios controlled everythng and they hired people for their eyelashes back then. But she made her mark alongside some of the finest actors of her generation.''

Actor and screenwriter Julian Fellowes described Ms Simmons as being "among the last of that tier of movie stars who left Britain for Hollywood in the Fifties.'' She belonged, he said, to that "gentler generation of players, those who were well bred. Personally I mourn their passing. She was up there among the greats along with Audrey Hepburn and Deborah Kerr. I fear there ilk has not been replaced.''

Terry O'Neill, the celebrity photographer, pictured Ms Simmons many time in the heyday of her career. ''She was a stunning beautiful young woman and a lovely, lovely, gentle lady,'' he said. "The camera absolutely adored her and she had tremendous patience. The thing that always stuck in my mind about Jean was her dignity. She belonged to that illustrious band of British actresses who were utter stars and were so very ladylike. Her death will bring great sadness to her many fans.''

When legendary film maker David Lean cast her as the mischievous but aloof young Estella, companion to the reclusive Miss Haversham in Great Expectations, a nation of schoolboys quivered with anticipation when she shyly proffered her cheek to a wide-eyed Pip, primly telling him: ''You may kiss me if you like.'' Similarly, when she appeared naked from the back as the sultry slave girl in Spartacus, a generation of male movie-goers swooned.

Simmons had a second reason for moving to America however. On the set of Caesar and Cleopatra she had met and fallen in love with fellow British actor Stewart Granger. The pair eloped to Tuscon, Arizona where the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes (who in later life revealed he had always been in love with Simmons) arranged their secret marriage.

Wily Hughes, all too keenly aware that Simmons would never have feelings for him, had an ulterior motive. If he could not have Simmons herself, he would instead keep steely control of her movie career. He would ruin her reputation he told her if she tried to work for anyone else. As Simmons herself was to admit: ''When I returned from the honeymoon I learned that Hughes owned me. He had bought me from J Arthur Rank (the British producer) like a piece of meat.''

It was one battle the notorious Hughes was not to win. Simmons, for all her seeming fragility, possessed a backbone of steel and a tenacity to match. She was determined to win her independence. She made only four films for him before successfully suing the billionaire mogul for the right to make more prestigious pictures with other studios. The result was Young Bess, in which she played Queen Elizabeth 1, The Robe, The Actress, The Egyptian and the big box office success Desiree in 1954 in which she played the title role opposite Brando's Napoleon. In The Robe she played opposite Richard Burton which won rave reviews. Simmons was scathing about the part however, complaining that all it required of her was ''to look pretty and dignified.'' In a memorable Time magazine article she described it as ''a poker up the arse part.''

In 1955 she teamed up again with Brandon in Guys and Dolls, the Samuel Goldwyn-produced musical, in which she played Sarah Brown, a Salvation Army-style reformer conned into a weekend fling in Havana by gambler Sky Masterson.

Her enormous work lode, however, took a heavy toll on her marriage. Though she and Granger had a daughter Tracy, they divorced in 1960. The newly single Simmons continued to complain that she was overlooked for meaty roles, finally getting her opportunity to prove her mettle as the psychopathic Angel Face, alongside Robert Mitchum, and with Gregory Peck in The Big Country.

By 1960 Simmons was at the peak of her career, starring in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, The Grass is Greener and Elmer Gantry. The latter was directed by Richard Brooks, who became her second husband.

The 1967 Dean Martin film, Rough Night in Jericho, brought Simmons fresh acclaim for her performance as the hard-nosed businesswoman, and she secured her second Oscar nomination for the role of alienated housewife Mary Wilson in The Happy Ending. Simmons career dipped in the next two decades. She found refuge in a number of television movies and mini series before admitting in the Eighties that she was an alcoholic.

After treatment she made a triumphant comeback in 1995, starring alongside Winona Ryder, Ellen Burstyn and Anne Bancroft in How to Make an American Quilt. In the 2003 New Year Honours List Simmons was awarded an OBE. She and Brooks had a daughter Kate, although that marriage, too, ended in divorce in 1977.

She continued to do voice over work into her Seventies until she was diagnosed with lung cancer. In recent years she had become something of a recluse. ''In her final years she spent a lot of time in her Hollywood home watching her old movies over and over,'' one friend said yesterday. ''It didn't depress her, seeing herself on screen as the great beauty she once was. It gave her enormous pleasure. Just as she gave cinema-goers enormous pleasure throughout her entire career.''

LANA: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies

I just received LANA: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies in the mail today and although I haven't read it yet, I flipped through it and I am more than happy with my purchase. It's filled with beautiful and rarely scene photos of Lana Turner, as well as many personal memories by Cheryl Crane, Lana's daughter and the co-author. It was published at $35.00, but it's been marked down to $11.55 on Amazon.com, which is a GREAT price for such an impressive biography on one of the most gorgeous ladies ever to grace the silver screen.

New Marilyn Monroe Photos Before She Was Famous

In honor of what would have been Marilyn Monroe's 83rd birthday on June 1st, LIFE.com has posted never-before-seen photos of a 24-year-old Marilyn taken by LIFE photographer Ed Clark in Griffith Park. Click on this link to see the rest of the photos or scroll through the gallery below.

R.I.P. Ollie Johnston

From: Reuters

Last of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men" dies
Tue Apr 15, 2008 7:31pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The last of Walt Disney's original team of animators, known as the Nine Old Men, has died at the age of 95, a Walt Disney Co spokesman said on Tuesday.

Ollie Johnston worked for Disney for 43 years, drawing characters for animated Mickey Mouse short films before contributing to such classics such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Pinocchio", "Peter Pan" and "The Jungle Book."

Johnston died of natural causes in a long-term care facility in Sequim, Washington on Monday.

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1912, Johnston showed early artistic promise and attended Chouinart Art Institute in Los Angeles. During his final year of college in 1935, Disney approached Johnston to join his fledgling animation studio.

Starting with "Song of the South" in 1946, Johnston became directing animator and served in that capacity in nearly every subsequent film. He retired in 1978 after completing some work on his final film, "The Fox and the Hound."

Johnston devoted his retirement to writing, lecturing and consulting and to model trains, of which he was considered one of the world's foremost experts.

In 2005, he became the first animator awarded a National Medal of the Arts, and he and his lifelong friend and fellow Disney animator, Frank Thomas, were profiled in the 1995 documentary "Frank and Ollie."

Disney Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, who pioneered computer animated films such as "Toy Story" and "Cars," considered Johnston and Thomas as mentors.

"He taught me to always be aware of what a character is thinking, and we continue to make sure that every character we create at Pixar and Disney has a thought process and emotion that makes them come alive," Lasseter said in a statement.

Johnston is survived by two sons.

(Reporting by Gina Keating, editing by Dan Whitcomb and Sandra Maler)

Pier 1 Imports Hayworth Collection

I never would have though that Pier 1 Imports would carry something so glamorous & old Hollywood looking as the Hayworth Collection, but they do!!! God, I would love to own all these pieces... Prices range from $79 to $499.

The Star Machine

If you're as obsessed about old Hollywood as I am, then I recommend reading The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger. I'm reading it right now and I'm finding it wonderfully fascinating. The Star Machine offers a glimpse into what movie studios did to break up-and-coming stars. It didn't always work though and the author provides examples of both successful and non-successful results.

$35.00 (on sale right now for $23.10!!) @ Amazon.com

Frances Spears

I am not ashamed to admit that I have been following the Britney Spears meltdown, just like everyone else on this planet. One thing that really bugs me with the Britney commentary are the comparisons to Marilyn Monroe. I am a huge fan of Marilyn (I used to like Britney too. Actually I really like her new record...) and I just don't see similarities between the two, except for the fact that they're both blondes and both allegedly were/are pill poppers. Marilyn had a whole different set of psychological issues. The Anna Nicole comparisons I can sort of understand, because she does have a svengali Howard K. Stern type in her life (hello Osama Bin Lutfi!), but was Anna Nicole mentally unstable like Britney? I never got that impression from her. She seemed way too high all the time to even show signs of schizophrenia or whatever.

So the one person that keeps popping up in my head everytime I see all the Britney drama on tv (especially the whole hospital thing a couple days ago) is the late actress Frances Farmer. And apparently, I'm not the only one! I found this really interesting article from The Canadian Press that briefly compares the two:

Some observers have drawn parallels between Spears and Hollywood actress Frances Farmer.

Farmer was a beautiful but rebellious and outspoken actress of the late 1930s and early '40s who clashed with both her mother and Paramount Studios, resisting their attempts to dictate to her how she should conduct her private life. She was also a heavy drinker who was said to be unconcerned about her physical appearance, spurning the latest fashions despite pleas from Paramount.

By the mid-1940s, with her career in a shambles and in trouble with the law for driving offences and assault charges, Farmer's family, unable to cope with her behaviour, had her involuntarily institutionalized. She was treated with electro-shock therapy, although allegations she was lobotomized - something portrayed in the 1982 film "Frances" - were vehemently denied by the hospital that treated her. Farmer died in anonymity in 1970 at age 56.

I hope Britney gets the right kind of help, and soon. Very soon.

The Busby Berkeley DVD Collection

This incredible collection of Busby Berkeley movies retails for $47.99 USD at Amazon.com. The six dvds are remastered and include Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, Gold Diggers of 1935, and 42nd Street. The 6th dvd is called the Busby Berkeley Disc, and is mostly made up of Busby Berkeley-directed musical sequences from nine of his movies.