Time, Katherine Hepburn and Walter Winchell

Sheila O'Malley's blog is quite becoming my favourite. But I wonder how she does it? So many posts, and so many books read and then reviewed - a new one every day it seems. How does she find the time? And she reviews them so intelligently and eloquently. I may never have to read an actual book again. Sheila's reviews are enough.

How I wish I had Ms O'Malley's puissance. When I read her piece on Katharine Hepburn today, not to mention yesterday's article, I figured she and Kate must have plenty in common. Relentless drive and energy.

(My door knocks. Brian-next-door has brought me some Day Lilies he's dug from his garden. The sun's actually shining today, so I'll get them into my border after breakfast. Yesterday, Joan-across-the-road, let me have a pile of 78s for my new gramophone only . I only mentioned I was a little down after my break up and it's been nothing but cake and plants ever since. Bless them.)

Now, I've been reading Neal Gabler's book on Walter Winchell for almost a year now. Little snatches here and there, and enjoying it immensely. But could I write a coherent review? Gabler does such a fabulous job of describing a difficult man without judging him. Winchell was clearly a monster, and yet like most of the cruellest bullies he was driven, not by a dark and evil heart, but by fear. Winchell had peered into the abyss early in his life, and like all who have, never forgot it was there, waiting to suck him in if he should ever slow down, or stumble or stop running from it for a minute. His bullying, his cruelty, his obsession with success and money and power was simply his way of trying to feel safe. And the irony is that I don't think he ever did feel safe. Not for an instant. He ruined lives and loves, and for what? He is a lesson in why we should love our children and make them feel safe. They will hunger less when they are adults and the world will be a softer place.

Supporting Actors

As soon as I saw this photo on Roadshow's blog I felt a delicious twinge of nostalgia.

I did most of my old film watching as a teen and in my twenties before life got busy and serious. Nowadays, I have only an hour before bed to cram in part of a flick - any more and I would be crippled by paroxysms of guilt, (thank you, Protestant Work Ethic and endless over-parenting programmes) so I'd completely forgotten about Oscar Levant. I loved any film he starred in.

One of his best lines: "I'm going to memorize your name and throw my head away."

His female equivalent, and on a par, is Eve Arden.

So here are three cheers for supporting actors - their magic was not that they could carry a film, but they would always, always enrich one. I love their caustic asides, their dour cynicism. Think how much Ruth Hussey added to the Philadelphia Story - her fabulous line when Katherine Hepburn gushes girlishly, "Aren't men wonderful!" Without missing a beat Hussey sighs to no one in particular: "The little dears." Perfection.

Who's that girl?

I know I should recognise this actress, but blondes tend to all look the same to me. Carole Lombard?

I found it it Sheila's post on Howard Hawks and have been trying to put a name to the faces ever since. Can you help?

Ernest Bachrach (RKO)

Katherine Hepburn

Ernest Bachrach was one of the most influential and admired of all the Hollywood portrait photographers. He headed the photographic department at RKO from its inception in 1929 until his retirement in the late 1950’s.

Constance Bennett

While there he controlled every aspect of the department, from publicity and advertising to hiring and training upcoming still and portrait photographers like Alex Kahle, Gaston Longet, and Robert Coburn as his assistants.


Ava Gardner

He also shot and custom printed most of the portraits of the stars employed by RKO during these decades, among them Dolores Del Rio, Fred Astaire, and Katharine Hepburn.


Fred Astaire

Bachrach was also a frequent contributor to American Cinematographer and International Photographer.


Carole Lombard

For Gloria Swanson, who had been photographed by everybody, “there was no other photographer in the world,” recalled Bob Coburn. She first met Bachrach after having left Hollywood for Paramount’s Astoria studio in New York in 1923, and he became the still photographer on the films she made there. When Swanson formed her own company in 1926 and moved back to Hollywood, Bachrach went with her and shot the stills and the portraits for those films, among them Sadie Thompson and Queen Kelly (both 1928) and The Trespasser (1929).


Gloria Swanson

Bachrach explains that, as a rule, it is advantageous to know his sitters relatively well. Like a director, he plays upon their emotions and induces the mood and expressions he desires.


Rita Hayworth

Perhaps the most difficult subject of great photography is the person who is recognized and admired for his or her perfect beauty. There exist many photographs of classically beautiful women – such as Hedy Lamarr and Dolores Del Rio – whose flawless skin and perfectly balanced features left not only their generation but also their photographers speechless.


Mary Astor

The way to photograph them was to keep the face expressionless; animating the face distorted the perfection. Dolores Del Rio quickly became reduced to the clothes she wore and the sets she decorated, like any other extraordinary but inanimate object. Her career in America was restricted because of her kind of beauty. How rare, then, to find portraits like the ones Bachrach took of her in the years she worked at RKO. These photographs convey a near-mystical quality and reveal a glimpse into a quiet but decisive Latin temperament.


Dolores Del Rio

In Bachrach’s words: “Portraiture is very closely akin to cinematography. The cinematographer has very little need for accessories in the making of close-ups; all he needs is a face and some lights and shadows. And that is all the portrait artist needs. Occasionally – but only occasionally – minor props are useful.”

Sharing

I love anyone who shares stuff. Nothing annoys me more than saving a delicious image from a Flickr photostream and having "spaceball.gif" appear in the Save box. It just seems so mean. I am an open source kinda gal. This is why I adore Orlando for sending me this link, not to mention the blogger who created it.

There is only one thing I hate to share - Wotsits.

Ramon Novarro

He is just GORGEOUS. And of course Orlando, my own Philip Marlowe has sent me links which I will investigate as soon as I get a spare moment.

Dr Macro of course
A piece about his good friend Pancho Barnes
and
A fan site, of course

Later

OK, I've investigated Ramon and now I'm sad. He was a lovely man but all memories of his life are tainted by the manner of his death. Poor, dear Ramon.

Tallulah Bankhead - 10 Facts, 14 Photos, 10 Quotes

I knew nothing bout Tallulah except her name. I've never seen a movie with her in it. (She only made a handful of movies, found it boring and preferred the stage)
So why's she so famous?
A five minute google and I know why. Wow! I could spend years on the details of her life. But here is a brief glimpse because life is too short to live someone else's.

The following facts come from the best Tallulah site (the pictures are from all over the net)



She was the youngest member of the Algonquin Round Table.



Tallulah Bankhead was her real name. She was named after her paternal grandmother, who, in turn, was named after the town of Tallulah Falls in Georgia.



While living in London in the '20s Tallulah bought herself a Bentley, which she loved to drive. She wasn't that good with directions, however, and constantly found herself lost in the London streets. She would telephone a taxi-cab and pay the driver to drive to her destination while she followed behind in her car.


Tallulah as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes

When Tallulah first met Garbo, the first thing she did was walk up to her and pull her eyelash. Garbo said "Ouch!" and Tallulah told her that she just wanted to see if they were real.



In 1936 she tested for the part of Scarlett in Gone With the Wind. She wanted the part desparately. Tallulah was heartbroken when, nearly two years later, Vivien Leigh won the role. She wrote in her autobiography, "I'll go to my grave convinced that I could have drawn the cheers of Longstreet and Beauregard and Robert E. Lee had I been permitted to wrestle with Rhett Butler".



In the late 40s Tallulah bought a Tudor-style country house in Bedford Village, New York. She named it "Windows" (it had 75 of them!) and spent a fortune decorating, re-modeling, landscaping and installing a huge swimming pool. Life was a constant party at Windows and Tallulah was able to run around in the nude as she liked. She adopted a menagerie of pets and people to share the house with her.



By the 1950s, the name "Tallulah" was so analogous with her that she took legal action when Prell shampoo used a jingle with her name in it for an advertisement. Tallulah was victorious and the company stopped using the ad.

Tallulah had a pet lion called Winston Churchill. She bought him at a circus while staying in Reno. Winston toured with Tallulah during The Second Mrs. Tanqueray and took curtain calls with her. She eventually gave him to the Bronx Zoo when his size and appetite became too much for her to handle.

Victory Red was the only shade of lipstick (manufactured by Elizabeth Arden) that Tallulah wore.

Tallulah Bankhead told a friend that her doctor had advised her to eat an apple every time she had the urge to drink. She arched an eyebrow and added, "But really, dahlings, sixty apples a day!" (from The Hollywood Reporter by Tichi Wilkerson)

And finally, a piece from The Observer by Chloe Diski:

"It would be a shame to whittle down silver-screen actress Tallulah Bankhead's vices to an unexceptional drink problem. She was an accomplished drinker, famed for being able to polish off a bottle of bourbon in under 30 minutes ... but in the same amount of time she could also plough through 100 Craven As, inhale a cloud of cocaine, while flirting the pants off any male or, more likely, female that she could see through her intoxicated haze. And she was probably doing all this in her preferred state of dress: stark naked. Bankhead stood out from her friends at New York's Algonquin round table and Hollywood's drinking elite because she revelled in debauchery: 'The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.' In 1968, aged 66, after uttering her last words, 'codeine, bourbon', she died in New York of pneumonia, caught by wandering nude around her dressing room in a Philadelphia theatre."

10 Quotes (allegedly)

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.

Say anything about me, dahling, as long as it isn't boring.

I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late, start without me.

Codeine...bourbon... (her last words)