Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 42
August 9, 2024
Robert Cummings
Robert ‘Bob’ Cummings (1910-1990) was an effective light comedian of 1930s and '40s films and 1950s and '60s TV series. He was renowned for his eternally youthful looks which he attributed to a strict vitamin and health-food diet. Cummings acted mainly in comedies but also played in dramas and the Hitchcock thrillers Saboteur (1942) and Dial M for Murder (1954). His career would span five decades and he appeared in nearly 70 films.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. PC 270. Photo: Universal. Robert Cummings and Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls (Henry Koster, 1936).
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 275. Photo: Universal. Robert Cummings and Nan Grey in Three Smart Girls Grow Up (Henry Koster, 1939).
A marvellous comedy talent and also a romantic quality
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings was born in 1910 in Joplin, Missouri. His father, Dr. Charles Clarence Cummings Sr., was a surgeon. He was part of the original staff of St. John's Hospital in Joplin, Missouri. He was the founder of the Jasper County Tuberculosis Hospital in Webb City, Missouri. His mother, Ruth Annabelle Kraft, was an ordained minister of the Science of Mind. Aviation pioneer Orville Wright, an old family friend, was his godfather. After completing high school, he studied briefly at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri before transferring to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bob studied aeronautical engineering for a year before being forced to drop out for financial reasons. His family had lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash. Cummings next decided to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, as male actors there were paid $14 a week. Deciding that Broadway producers would be more interested in an upper-crust Englishman than a kid from Joplin, Missouri, Cummings passed himself off as Blade Stanhope Conway, a British actor. The ploy was successful. He later assumed the identity of a rich Texan named Bruce Hutchens and appeared under this name in ‘The Ziegfeld Follies of 1934’. In this production, he met het his second wife, Vivi Janiss.
Cummings decided that if a false identity worked on Broadway, it would work in Hollywood. So in 1935, he journeyed to Los Angeles and the plan worked once more. He began securing small parts in films and soon reverted to his real name. He got his first substantial part in King Vidor 's Civil War-era romance So Red the Rose (1935) alongside Margaret Sullavan and Randolph Scott . In their review, The New York Times said that Cummings "does a fine bit" and "has the only convincing accent in the whole film." He then made a long series of now-forgotten B-movies in which he played leading roles. He had a small role in You and Me (1938) directed by Fritz Lang .
Cummings broke through as a film actor with Three Smart Girls Grow Up (Henry Koster, 1939), in which he was the romantic lead for Deanna Durbin . Koster called Cummings "brilliant, wonderful… I made five pictures with him. I thought he was the best leading man I ever worked with. He had that marvellous comedy talent and also a romantic quality." Another big hit was their comedy It Started with Eve (Henry Koster, 1941) with Deanna Durbin and Charles Laughton . While making this film at Universal, Cummings was also making the drama Kings Row (Sam Wood, 1942) with Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan , at Warner Bros. He was rushing from one studio to the other to play two completely different types of roles. In dramatic films he was credited as Robert Cummings; in lighter fare, he was often billed as Bob Cummings.
This was followed by numerous film comedies including The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood, 1941) with Jean Arthur , Moon over Miami (Walter Lang, 1941) starring Don Ameche and Betty Grable , and Princess O'Rourke (Norman Krasna, 1943) with Olivia de Havilland . In these light comedies, he usually played well-meaning, pleasant but somewhat bumbling young men. Cummings also starred in the Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller Saboteur (1942), made at Universal, with Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd. He played Barry Kane, an aircraft worker wrongfully accused of espionage, trying to clear his name. From 1938 to 1945, he also appeared on a successful radio serial, ‘Those We Love’, opposite Richard Cromwell , Francis X. Bushman and Nan Grey.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1068a. Photo: Universal.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London no. W 330. Photo: United Artists.
The notorious ‘Dr. Feelgood’
In 1942 Robert Cummings joined the United States Army Air Force and was made a flight instructor. He had worked in that capacity for many years before enlisting. After the war, Cummings served for a time as a pilot in the United States Air Force Reserve. Beginning in 1946, he became executive producer of United World Productions. That year, he starred in the comedy The Bride Wore Boots (Irving Pichel, 1946) with Barbara Stanwyck . He also starred in the Film Noir Sleep, My Love (1948), directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Mary Pickford .
In the 1950s, Cummings achieved success on television. Cummings starred in his first regular television series in the comedy My Hero (1952–1953), playing a bumbling real estate salesman. He also wrote and directed some episodes. He was the star of the initial production of Twelve Angry Men (Franklin Schaffner, 1954), filmed live for CBS's TV drama series Studio One. He received an Emmy Award for his part as Juror Number Eight, the role later made famous by Henry Fonda in Sidney Lumet's 1957 film version. That same year, he also starred with Grace Kelly and Ray Milland in the classic thriller Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). It was a big hit.
The next year, Cummings starred in his own television series, The Bob Cummings Show (1955-1959) for which he also worked as a director. He played studio photographer Bob Collins, a bachelor who photographed and dated the world's most beautiful models. The Bob Cummings Show was succeeded by The New Bob Cummings Show (1962-1963), which however only ran for only one season. He played a charter pilot, often playing amateur detective. In a third series, My Living Doll (1964-1965), he played a psychiatrist who is given care of a lifelike sophisticated but naïve android, played by Julie Newmar , who eventually learns how human society works.
His later films included Beach Party (William Asher, 1963), The Carpetbaggers (Edward Dmytryk, 1964), and the remake Stagecoach (Gordon Douglas, 1966). His final film appearance was in Five Golden Dragons (Jeremy Summers, 1967) with Margaret Lee . His last major television appearance was the television film Partners in Crime (Jack Smight, 1973) with Lee Grant. After guest-starring on The Love Boat (1977), he retired from acting at age 69.
Cummings was a great advocate of a healthy diet and natural foods. He even wrote a book ‘Stay Young and Vital’(1960) which sold millions of copies. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he came under the influence of doctor Max Jacobson, the notorious ‘Dr. Feelgood’, who gave him masses of amphetamines and eventually meth to supposedly improve his performance. Cummings became addicted to drugs for the rest of his life, which hurt both his career and many personal relationships from the 1960s onwards. Robert Cummings died of kidney failure in 1990 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, at the age of 80. He was also suffering from Parkinson's Disease at the time of his death. He was interred at the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. Robert Cummings married five times and divorced four times. His wives were Emma Myers (1931-1933), Vivi Janiss (1935-1943), Mary Elliott (1945-1970, 5 children), Regina Fong (1971-1987, 2 children) and Martha ‘Jane’ Burzynski (1989-1990; his death). His son Tony Cummings is a former soap actor best known for Another World (1981).
West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 107. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Vintage postcard, no. 3391. Photo: Paramount.
Sources William Bjornstad (Find A Grave), Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and .
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. PC 270. Photo: Universal. Robert Cummings and Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls (Henry Koster, 1936).
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 275. Photo: Universal. Robert Cummings and Nan Grey in Three Smart Girls Grow Up (Henry Koster, 1939).
A marvellous comedy talent and also a romantic quality
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings was born in 1910 in Joplin, Missouri. His father, Dr. Charles Clarence Cummings Sr., was a surgeon. He was part of the original staff of St. John's Hospital in Joplin, Missouri. He was the founder of the Jasper County Tuberculosis Hospital in Webb City, Missouri. His mother, Ruth Annabelle Kraft, was an ordained minister of the Science of Mind. Aviation pioneer Orville Wright, an old family friend, was his godfather. After completing high school, he studied briefly at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri before transferring to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bob studied aeronautical engineering for a year before being forced to drop out for financial reasons. His family had lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash. Cummings next decided to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, as male actors there were paid $14 a week. Deciding that Broadway producers would be more interested in an upper-crust Englishman than a kid from Joplin, Missouri, Cummings passed himself off as Blade Stanhope Conway, a British actor. The ploy was successful. He later assumed the identity of a rich Texan named Bruce Hutchens and appeared under this name in ‘The Ziegfeld Follies of 1934’. In this production, he met het his second wife, Vivi Janiss.
Cummings decided that if a false identity worked on Broadway, it would work in Hollywood. So in 1935, he journeyed to Los Angeles and the plan worked once more. He began securing small parts in films and soon reverted to his real name. He got his first substantial part in King Vidor 's Civil War-era romance So Red the Rose (1935) alongside Margaret Sullavan and Randolph Scott . In their review, The New York Times said that Cummings "does a fine bit" and "has the only convincing accent in the whole film." He then made a long series of now-forgotten B-movies in which he played leading roles. He had a small role in You and Me (1938) directed by Fritz Lang .
Cummings broke through as a film actor with Three Smart Girls Grow Up (Henry Koster, 1939), in which he was the romantic lead for Deanna Durbin . Koster called Cummings "brilliant, wonderful… I made five pictures with him. I thought he was the best leading man I ever worked with. He had that marvellous comedy talent and also a romantic quality." Another big hit was their comedy It Started with Eve (Henry Koster, 1941) with Deanna Durbin and Charles Laughton . While making this film at Universal, Cummings was also making the drama Kings Row (Sam Wood, 1942) with Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan , at Warner Bros. He was rushing from one studio to the other to play two completely different types of roles. In dramatic films he was credited as Robert Cummings; in lighter fare, he was often billed as Bob Cummings.
This was followed by numerous film comedies including The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood, 1941) with Jean Arthur , Moon over Miami (Walter Lang, 1941) starring Don Ameche and Betty Grable , and Princess O'Rourke (Norman Krasna, 1943) with Olivia de Havilland . In these light comedies, he usually played well-meaning, pleasant but somewhat bumbling young men. Cummings also starred in the Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller Saboteur (1942), made at Universal, with Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd. He played Barry Kane, an aircraft worker wrongfully accused of espionage, trying to clear his name. From 1938 to 1945, he also appeared on a successful radio serial, ‘Those We Love’, opposite Richard Cromwell , Francis X. Bushman and Nan Grey.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1068a. Photo: Universal.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London no. W 330. Photo: United Artists.
The notorious ‘Dr. Feelgood’
In 1942 Robert Cummings joined the United States Army Air Force and was made a flight instructor. He had worked in that capacity for many years before enlisting. After the war, Cummings served for a time as a pilot in the United States Air Force Reserve. Beginning in 1946, he became executive producer of United World Productions. That year, he starred in the comedy The Bride Wore Boots (Irving Pichel, 1946) with Barbara Stanwyck . He also starred in the Film Noir Sleep, My Love (1948), directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Mary Pickford .
In the 1950s, Cummings achieved success on television. Cummings starred in his first regular television series in the comedy My Hero (1952–1953), playing a bumbling real estate salesman. He also wrote and directed some episodes. He was the star of the initial production of Twelve Angry Men (Franklin Schaffner, 1954), filmed live for CBS's TV drama series Studio One. He received an Emmy Award for his part as Juror Number Eight, the role later made famous by Henry Fonda in Sidney Lumet's 1957 film version. That same year, he also starred with Grace Kelly and Ray Milland in the classic thriller Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). It was a big hit.
The next year, Cummings starred in his own television series, The Bob Cummings Show (1955-1959) for which he also worked as a director. He played studio photographer Bob Collins, a bachelor who photographed and dated the world's most beautiful models. The Bob Cummings Show was succeeded by The New Bob Cummings Show (1962-1963), which however only ran for only one season. He played a charter pilot, often playing amateur detective. In a third series, My Living Doll (1964-1965), he played a psychiatrist who is given care of a lifelike sophisticated but naïve android, played by Julie Newmar , who eventually learns how human society works.
His later films included Beach Party (William Asher, 1963), The Carpetbaggers (Edward Dmytryk, 1964), and the remake Stagecoach (Gordon Douglas, 1966). His final film appearance was in Five Golden Dragons (Jeremy Summers, 1967) with Margaret Lee . His last major television appearance was the television film Partners in Crime (Jack Smight, 1973) with Lee Grant. After guest-starring on The Love Boat (1977), he retired from acting at age 69.
Cummings was a great advocate of a healthy diet and natural foods. He even wrote a book ‘Stay Young and Vital’(1960) which sold millions of copies. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he came under the influence of doctor Max Jacobson, the notorious ‘Dr. Feelgood’, who gave him masses of amphetamines and eventually meth to supposedly improve his performance. Cummings became addicted to drugs for the rest of his life, which hurt both his career and many personal relationships from the 1960s onwards. Robert Cummings died of kidney failure in 1990 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, at the age of 80. He was also suffering from Parkinson's Disease at the time of his death. He was interred at the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. Robert Cummings married five times and divorced four times. His wives were Emma Myers (1931-1933), Vivi Janiss (1935-1943), Mary Elliott (1945-1970, 5 children), Regina Fong (1971-1987, 2 children) and Martha ‘Jane’ Burzynski (1989-1990; his death). His son Tony Cummings is a former soap actor best known for Another World (1981).
West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 107. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Vintage postcard, no. 3391. Photo: Paramount.
Sources William Bjornstad (Find A Grave), Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and .
August 8, 2024
Gabrielle Dorziat
Elegant, imperious French stage and film actress Gabrielle Dorziat (1880–1979) was a fashion trendsetter in Paris and helped popularise the designs of Coco Chanel. From 1936 onwards, she appeared in over 70 films often as strong-willed women.
French postcard by Editions S.I.P., no. 1458. Sent by mail in 1906. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by Editions S.I.P., no. 1607. Sent by mail in 1907. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by Editions S.I.P. Sent by mail in 1911. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
A great lover of fashion
Gabrielle Dorziat was born Marie Odile Léonie Gabrielle Sigrist in Epernay, France, in 1880.
She was a student at the Lycée Racine in Paris. Dorziat made her stage début in 1898 at the Théâtre Royal du Parc in Brussels. Her stage name was inspired by the name of a character in a novel by Georges Ohnet: Doziat, to which she added an r.
Dorziat moved the same year to Paris and appeared in Alfred Capus' 'La Bourse ou la vie' (1900), but it was her performance as Thérèse Herbault in 'Chaîne anglaise' (1906) that brought her to public attention. In the following decades, she was particularly successful in plays by Sacha Guitry , several times under his direction.
She became known for her off-stage life as well, becoming romantically involved with actors Lucien Guitry and Louis Jouvet . She had close friendships with Jean Cocteau , Jean Giraudoux, Coco Chanel, Paul Bourget and Henri Bernstein.
A great lover of fashion, Gabrielle Dorziat was one of the first to wear the Chanel hat in 1912. During World War I Dorziat left France to tour the United States where she raised money for war refugees. After the war, she toured Canada, South America and the rest of Europe.
French postcard in the Collection Reutlinger, Série no 6, no. 72, by * Paris (Étoile Paris). Photo: Reutlinger.
French postcard, no. 2247. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
The Countess of Zogheb
In the silent era, Gabrielle Dorziat appeared in her first film, L'infante à la rose/The Infanta with a Rose (Henry Houry, 1923). Thirteen years later, she had her breakthrough in the cinema as Empress Elisabeth in Mayerling (Anatole Litvak, 1936) with Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux.
She went on to play in over sixty films including Les parents terribles/The Storm Within (Jean Cocteau, 1948) starring Jean Marais and Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1949) with Serge Reggiani and Cécile Aubry . In 1949, she was awarded the Prix féminin du cinéma for best actress.
She published her memoirs 'Côté cour, côté jardin' in 1968. She paid tribute to those who accompanied her in one of the highlights of her career, Jean Cocteau 's 'Les parents terribles' with Yvonne de Bray and Jean Marais : "During five hundred performances, I had the time to get to know and appreciate my author and we became great friends."
Dorziat married Count Michel de Zogheb in Cairo in 1925. The count, who died in 1964, was a cousin of King Fouad of Egypt.
Gabrielle Dorziat died in 1979 in Biarritz, France, less than two months before her hundredth birthday. The 'Countess of Zogheb' is buried in the old cemetery of Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine. The Théâtre Gabrielle-Dorziat in Épernay, France is named for her.
French postcard in the Series Collection Artistique du Vin Désiles by S.I.P. Photo: Jean Reutlinger, Paris. Caption: Patience and le Vin Désiles lead to everything. Gabrielle Dorziat.
French postcard in the Collection Reutlinger, Série no 6, no. 62, by * Paris (Étoile Paris). Sent by mail in 1907. Photo: Reutlinger.
French postcard, no. 569. Photo: Studio Lorelle.
Sources: Wikipedia (English, French and German) and .
French postcard by Editions S.I.P., no. 1458. Sent by mail in 1906. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by Editions S.I.P., no. 1607. Sent by mail in 1907. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by Editions S.I.P. Sent by mail in 1911. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
A great lover of fashion
Gabrielle Dorziat was born Marie Odile Léonie Gabrielle Sigrist in Epernay, France, in 1880.
She was a student at the Lycée Racine in Paris. Dorziat made her stage début in 1898 at the Théâtre Royal du Parc in Brussels. Her stage name was inspired by the name of a character in a novel by Georges Ohnet: Doziat, to which she added an r.
Dorziat moved the same year to Paris and appeared in Alfred Capus' 'La Bourse ou la vie' (1900), but it was her performance as Thérèse Herbault in 'Chaîne anglaise' (1906) that brought her to public attention. In the following decades, she was particularly successful in plays by Sacha Guitry , several times under his direction.
She became known for her off-stage life as well, becoming romantically involved with actors Lucien Guitry and Louis Jouvet . She had close friendships with Jean Cocteau , Jean Giraudoux, Coco Chanel, Paul Bourget and Henri Bernstein.
A great lover of fashion, Gabrielle Dorziat was one of the first to wear the Chanel hat in 1912. During World War I Dorziat left France to tour the United States where she raised money for war refugees. After the war, she toured Canada, South America and the rest of Europe.
French postcard in the Collection Reutlinger, Série no 6, no. 72, by * Paris (Étoile Paris). Photo: Reutlinger.
French postcard, no. 2247. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
The Countess of Zogheb
In the silent era, Gabrielle Dorziat appeared in her first film, L'infante à la rose/The Infanta with a Rose (Henry Houry, 1923). Thirteen years later, she had her breakthrough in the cinema as Empress Elisabeth in Mayerling (Anatole Litvak, 1936) with Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux.
She went on to play in over sixty films including Les parents terribles/The Storm Within (Jean Cocteau, 1948) starring Jean Marais and Manon (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1949) with Serge Reggiani and Cécile Aubry . In 1949, she was awarded the Prix féminin du cinéma for best actress.
She published her memoirs 'Côté cour, côté jardin' in 1968. She paid tribute to those who accompanied her in one of the highlights of her career, Jean Cocteau 's 'Les parents terribles' with Yvonne de Bray and Jean Marais : "During five hundred performances, I had the time to get to know and appreciate my author and we became great friends."
Dorziat married Count Michel de Zogheb in Cairo in 1925. The count, who died in 1964, was a cousin of King Fouad of Egypt.
Gabrielle Dorziat died in 1979 in Biarritz, France, less than two months before her hundredth birthday. The 'Countess of Zogheb' is buried in the old cemetery of Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine. The Théâtre Gabrielle-Dorziat in Épernay, France is named for her.
French postcard in the Series Collection Artistique du Vin Désiles by S.I.P. Photo: Jean Reutlinger, Paris. Caption: Patience and le Vin Désiles lead to everything. Gabrielle Dorziat.
French postcard in the Collection Reutlinger, Série no 6, no. 62, by * Paris (Étoile Paris). Sent by mail in 1907. Photo: Reutlinger.
French postcard, no. 569. Photo: Studio Lorelle.
Sources: Wikipedia (English, French and German) and .
August 7, 2024
Jane Wyatt
Petite brunette actress American actress Jane Wyatt (1910-2006) starred in several Hollywood films, such as Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). She is best known for her role as homemaker and mother Margaret Anderson in the television comedy series Father Knows Best (1954-1960) and as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock on the Science-Fiction television series Star Trek (1966-1969). Wyatt was a three-time Emmy Award winner.
Italian postcard by Tip. Ed. Taurinia, Torino (TET). Photo: Columbia.
Italian postcard by Vecchioni & Guadagno, Roma. Photo: Columbia EIA. Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt in Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, 1937).
Lost Horizon
Jane Waddington Wyatt was born in 1910 in Campgaw (now part of Mahwah), New Jersey, but grew up in New York. Her father, Christopher Billop Wyatt Jr. worked on Wall Street as an investor; her mother was the drama critic Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington.
She was directly descended, on her mother's side, from the van Rensselaer family, one of the earliest Dutch families to settle in the Colonies, as early as 1638, and which at one time owned most of what is now New York City. Jane attended the fashionable Chapin School and later Barnard College.
After two years of college, she left to join the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where she played an assortment of roles for six months. One of her first jobs on Broadway was as an understudy to Rose Hobart in a production of 'Trade Winds'.
Her career move cost her her slot on the New York Social Register. Wyatt made the transition from stage to screen and was placed under contract at Universal.
There she made her film debut in director James Whale 's courtroom drama One More River (1934) starring Diana Wynyard . She went back and forth between Universal and Broadway. Her most famous film role was as Ronald Colman 's lover in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937).
Italian postcard by Vecchioni & Guadagno, Roma. Photo: Columbia EIA. Ronald Colman , Jane Wyatt and Margo in Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, 1937). Art director Stephen Goosson won an Academy Award in 1938 for this film. The convent of Shangri-La was built in Streamline Moderne style at the Columbia lot in Burbank.
Italian postcard by Vecchioni & Guadagno, Roma. Photo: Columbia EIA. Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt in Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, 1937).
Father Knows Best
During the 1940s, Jane Wyatt starred in the films None but the Lonely Heart (Clifford Odets, 1944) with Cary Grant , Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947) with Gregory Peck , and the Film Noir Boomerang! (Elia Kazan, 1947) with Dana Andrews . She also starred in the Film Noirs Pitfall (André De Toth, 1948) with Dick Powell and House by the River (Fritz Lang, 1950) with Louis Hayward .
Her film career suffered due to her outspoken opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the chief figure in the anti-Communist investigations of that era. She was temporarily derailed for having assisted in hosting a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet during the Second World War, though it was at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Wyatt returned to her roots on the New York stage for a time and appeared in such plays as Lillian Hellman's 'The Autumn Garden', opposite Fredric March . Many people remember her best for her role as Margaret Anderson, the mother in the TV comedy series Father Knows Best (1954-1960), with Robert Young as her husband. The classic sitcom chronicled the life and times of the Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield. Wyatt won three consecutive Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Margaret Anderson.
She played Spock's mother in a 1967 episode of the original Star Trek series. 20 years later, she appeared in a feature film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Nimoy, 1986). In between, she remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (Jeannot Szwarc, 1973) and Amelia Earhart (George Schaefer, 1976).
Jane Wyatt died in 2006 at home, in Bel-Air, California. She was 96 years old. Her funeral was at the Church of St Martin of Tours in Brentwood, California. She married investment broker Edgar Bethune Ward in 1935 and they remained together till his death in 2000. They had two sons, Christopher and Michael Ward. With her husband, she was interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, CA.
American Arcade Card.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1125. Photo: Universal.
Dutch postcard. Robert Young , Lauren Chapin, Billy Gray, Elinor Donahue and Jane Wyatt in Father Knows Best (1954-1960). The Dutch title was Vader weet het beter.
Sources: (IMDb), AllMovie, Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and .
Italian postcard by Tip. Ed. Taurinia, Torino (TET). Photo: Columbia.
Italian postcard by Vecchioni & Guadagno, Roma. Photo: Columbia EIA. Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt in Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, 1937).
Lost Horizon
Jane Waddington Wyatt was born in 1910 in Campgaw (now part of Mahwah), New Jersey, but grew up in New York. Her father, Christopher Billop Wyatt Jr. worked on Wall Street as an investor; her mother was the drama critic Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington.
She was directly descended, on her mother's side, from the van Rensselaer family, one of the earliest Dutch families to settle in the Colonies, as early as 1638, and which at one time owned most of what is now New York City. Jane attended the fashionable Chapin School and later Barnard College.
After two years of college, she left to join the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where she played an assortment of roles for six months. One of her first jobs on Broadway was as an understudy to Rose Hobart in a production of 'Trade Winds'.
Her career move cost her her slot on the New York Social Register. Wyatt made the transition from stage to screen and was placed under contract at Universal.
There she made her film debut in director James Whale 's courtroom drama One More River (1934) starring Diana Wynyard . She went back and forth between Universal and Broadway. Her most famous film role was as Ronald Colman 's lover in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937).
Italian postcard by Vecchioni & Guadagno, Roma. Photo: Columbia EIA. Ronald Colman , Jane Wyatt and Margo in Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, 1937). Art director Stephen Goosson won an Academy Award in 1938 for this film. The convent of Shangri-La was built in Streamline Moderne style at the Columbia lot in Burbank.
Italian postcard by Vecchioni & Guadagno, Roma. Photo: Columbia EIA. Ronald Colman and Jane Wyatt in Lost Horizon (Frank Capra, 1937).
Father Knows Best
During the 1940s, Jane Wyatt starred in the films None but the Lonely Heart (Clifford Odets, 1944) with Cary Grant , Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947) with Gregory Peck , and the Film Noir Boomerang! (Elia Kazan, 1947) with Dana Andrews . She also starred in the Film Noirs Pitfall (André De Toth, 1948) with Dick Powell and House by the River (Fritz Lang, 1950) with Louis Hayward .
Her film career suffered due to her outspoken opposition to Senator Joseph McCarthy, the chief figure in the anti-Communist investigations of that era. She was temporarily derailed for having assisted in hosting a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet during the Second World War, though it was at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Wyatt returned to her roots on the New York stage for a time and appeared in such plays as Lillian Hellman's 'The Autumn Garden', opposite Fredric March . Many people remember her best for her role as Margaret Anderson, the mother in the TV comedy series Father Knows Best (1954-1960), with Robert Young as her husband. The classic sitcom chronicled the life and times of the Anderson family in the Midwestern town of Springfield. Wyatt won three consecutive Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Margaret Anderson.
She played Spock's mother in a 1967 episode of the original Star Trek series. 20 years later, she appeared in a feature film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Leonard Nimoy, 1986). In between, she remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (Jeannot Szwarc, 1973) and Amelia Earhart (George Schaefer, 1976).
Jane Wyatt died in 2006 at home, in Bel-Air, California. She was 96 years old. Her funeral was at the Church of St Martin of Tours in Brentwood, California. She married investment broker Edgar Bethune Ward in 1935 and they remained together till his death in 2000. They had two sons, Christopher and Michael Ward. With her husband, she was interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, CA.
American Arcade Card.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1125. Photo: Universal.
Dutch postcard. Robert Young , Lauren Chapin, Billy Gray, Elinor Donahue and Jane Wyatt in Father Knows Best (1954-1960). The Dutch title was Vader weet het beter.
Sources: (IMDb), AllMovie, Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and .
August 6, 2024
Directed by King Vidor
American film director King Vidor (1894-1982) initially worked as a cameraman for the newsreel. As a director, he made his breakthrough with the war film The Big Parade (1926). His next films The Crowd (1928) and Hallelujah (1929) also showed craftsmanship. At first, he produced his films himself, but later commercial pressure forced him to give up this independent position. Of his later work, War and Peace (1956) is particularly significant. During his career, Vidor was nominated five times for the Oscar for best director and received an honorary Oscar for his entire oeuvre in 1979.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 393. Photo: Ruth Harriet Louise / MGM. John Gilbert in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925).
Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F.), no. 199. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn, Roma (MGM). Lillian Gish in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 71. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper in The Champ (King Vidor, 1931).
Spanish postcard, 1953. Photo: Procines S.A. Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946).
One of the most commercially successful films of the entire silent film era
King Wallis Vidor was born in 1894 in Galveston, Texas. He was the son of Charles Shelton Vidor, a wealthy timber merchant and mill owner and Kate Lee Vidor (née Wallis). The 'King' in King Vidor is no sobriquet, but his given name in honor of his mother's favourite brother, King Wallis. As a child, he survived the great Galveston hurricane of 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people. In 1980 Vidor recalled the horrors of the hurricane's effects: "All the wooden structures of the town were flattened ... [t]he streets were piled high with dead people, and I took the first tugboat out. On the boat I went up into the bow and saw that the bay was filled with dead bodies, horses, animals, people, everything."
Vidor attended grade school at the Peacock Military Academy, located in San Antonio, Texas. At the age of sixteen Vidor dropped out of a private high school in Maryland and returned to Galveston to work as a nickelodeon ticket taker. Fascinated by the new medium of cinema from an early age, he worked as a volunteer projectionist in his home town and made a few amateur films, including the short documentary Hurricane in Galveston (King Vidor, 1913). He sold footage from a Houston army parade to a newsreel outfit, The Grand Military Parade (King Vidor, 1913) and made his first fictional film concerning a local automobile race, In Tow (King Vidor, 1913).
King Vidor married the aspiring film actress Florence Arto in 1915. They went to Hollywood, where his young wife quickly became a star, known as Florence Vidor , in films by Frank Lloyd and Cecil B. DeMille . King worked in various positions before signing a contract with Universal as a director. David W. Griffith was his role model. His first full-length feature film was The Turn in the Road (King Vidor, 1919), for which he also wrote the screenplay. It was a film presentation of a Christian Science evangelical tract sponsored by a group of doctors and dentists affiliated as the independent Brentwood Film Corporation. Vidor would make three more films for the Brentwood Corporation, all of which featured as yet unknown comedienne Zasu Pitts, who the director had discovered on a Hollywood streetcar.
Shortly afterwards, he founded his own studio, Vidor Village, funded by First National. He made a series of inexpensive melodramas, often starring his wife. Vidor Village went bankrupt in 1922 and Vidor, now without a studio, offered his services to the top executives in the film industry. Louis B. Mayer engaged Vidor to direct Broadway actress Laurette Taylor in a film version of her famous juvenile role as Peg O'Connell in Peg o' My Heart. The success of Peg o' My Heart (King Vidor, 1922) landed him a contract with the old Metro Studios, which merged to form MGM in 1924. At MGM, he began a regular collaboration with star John Gilbert. Their first film together was His Hour (King Vidor, 1924), based on Elinor Glyn). In 1925, Vidor became one of Hollywood's most famous film directors with the war film The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925), also starring John Gilbert . The film was not only a success with critics, but also one of the most commercially successful films of the entire silent film era. The Big Parade addressed the horrors of the First World War like no other film before it.
A year later, Vidor was chosen to direct Lillian Gish 's debut at MGM, the opulent film version of La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926), in which John Gilbert again played the male lead. Both Gilbert and Vidor were in love with Gish at the time, but 'the Duse of the screen' did not follow up, as she recounted in her memoirs 'The Cinema, Mr. Griffith and Me'. Vidor established himself as one of the industry's innovative filmmakers with The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928), which was released in 1928 after a long filming period. The film tells the sad story of a married couple whose attempt to realise the American dream falls short of their expectations and threatens to fail.
Dutch postcard by M. Bonnist & Zonen, no. 115. Renée Adorée and John Gilbert in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 192. Photo: R. Harriet Louise / Gaumont-Metro-Goldwyn. Karl (or Carl) Dane in the WWI drama The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925).
Italian postcard by Fotocelere, no. 129. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Lillian Gish and John Gilbert in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).
French postcard, no. 510. Photo: Gaumont Metro Goldwyn. John Gilbert in Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926).
American Arcade card by Ex. Sup. Co. Chicago. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. James Murray in The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928).
A completely free hand in choosing his sound film debut
King Vidor made three comedies with 'the queen of the jet set', Marion Davies . Cosmopolitan Pictures, a subsidiary of MGM and controlled by influential newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, insisted that Vidor direct Davies – Hearst's longtime mistress – in these Cosmopolitan-supervised films, to which Vidor acquiesced. Though not identified as a director of comedies, Vidor filmed three screwball-like comedies that revealed Davies comedy talents. The Patsy (King Vidor, 1928) brought Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson, veterans of the Mack Sennett comedies, out of retirement to play Davies' farcical upper-class parents. Davies performs a number of amusing celebrity imitations of Gloria Swanson , Lillian Gish , Pola Negri and Mae Murray.
The most enduring picture of the Vidor–Davies collaborations is Show People (King Vidor, 1928), one of Vidor's biggest commercial successes. The scenario was inspired by the glamorous Gloria Swanson , who began her film career in slapstick. Davis' character Peggy Pepper, a mere comic, is elevated to the high-style star Patricia Pepoire. Vidor also spoofs his own recently completed Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926), an over-the-top swashbuckling costume drama featuring romantic icon John Gilbert . Some of the best-known film stars of the silent era appeared in cameos, as well as Vidor himself.
Vidor's prestige was now so great that studio boss Louis B. Mayer gave him a completely free hand in choosing his sound film debut. With Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929), Vidor chose a picture about rural black American life incorporating a musical soundtrack and explored numerous innovative possibilities that sound opened up in dramaturgy. Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect. Hallelujah enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929. Hallelujah is now regarded as the first film by a major Hollywood studio with an all African-American cast, but atb the time the film was a commercial flop.
Vidor's second sound film was his third and final film with Marion Davies , Not So Dumb (King Vidor, 1930), adapted from the 1921 Broadway comedy 'Dulcy' by George S. Kaufman. The limitations of early sound, despite recent innovations, interfered with the continuity of Davies' performance that had enlivened her earlier silent comedies with Vidor.
Vidor went on to make several less artistically ambitious but financially successful films. These included The Champ (King Vidor, 1931), about the friendship between an old alcoholic and washed-up boxer ( Wallace Beery ) who starts a comeback for the sake of a young boy (child star Jackie Cooper ) and ends up dying in the ring. Wallace Beery earned an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role and it propelled him to top-rank among MGM stars. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Vidor for Best Director.
Promotion card for Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 2017. Photo: Marion Davies (middle), Jane Winton, Orville Caldwell, Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson in The Patsy (King Vidor, 1928).
Italian postcard by Fotocelere no. 12. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Jackie Cooper in The Champ (King Vidor, 1931). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 161/3. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Jackie Cooper and Irene Rich in The Champ (King Vidor, 1931).
Dutch postcard by M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam, no. B 206. Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn. Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea in Bird of Paradise (King Vidor, 1932).
British postcard in the Film Weekly series. Photo: United Artists. Ronald Colman and Kay Francis in Cynara (King Vidor, 1932), a romantic drama film about a British lawyer (Colman) who pays a heavy price for an affair. Francis plays his wife.
A south seas romance
King Vidor was loaned to Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) to make a 'South Seas' romance for producer David Selznick filmed in the US territory of Hawaii. Starring Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea, the tropical location and mixed-race love theme in Bird of Paradise (King Vidor, 1932) included nudity and sexual eroticism. During production Vidor began an affair with script assistant Elizabeth Hill that led to a series of highly productive screenplay collaborations and their marriage in 1937. Vidor divorced his second wife, actress Eleanor Boardman shortly after Bird of Paradise was completed.
The Stranger's Return (King Vidor, 1933) and Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934) are Depression era films that present protagonists who flee the social and economic perils of urban America, plagued by high unemployment and labour unrest to seek a lost rural identity or make a new start in the agrarian countryside. Vidor's expressed enthusiasm for the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's exhortation in his first inaugural in 1933 for a shift of labour from industry to agriculture. Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934), a blazing appeal in favour of the New Deal with its depiction of an ideal community that renounces all approaches to capitalism in order to derive its values from communal property. The picture is the second film of a trilogy he referred to as 'War, Wheat and Steel'. His 1925 film The Big Parade was 'war' and his 1944 An American Romance was 'steel'.
During the 1930s Vidor, though under contract to MGM, made four films under loan-out to independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, formerly with the Goldwyn studios that had amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924. Goldwyn's insistence on fidelity to the prestigious literary material he had purchased for screen adaptations imposed cinematic restraints on his film directors, including Vidor. Cynara (King Vidor, 1932), a romantic melodrama of a brief, yet tragic affair between a British barrister and a shopgirl, was Vidor's second sound collaboration with Goldwyn. Starring Ronald Colman and Kay Francis , the story by Francis Marion is a cautionary tale concerning upper- and lower-class sexual infidelities set in England.
In his third collaboration with Goldwyn, Vidor was tasked with salvaging the producer's huge investment in Soviet-trained Russian actress Anna Sten . Goldwyn's effort to elevate Sten to the stature of Dietrich or Garbo had thus far failed despite his relentless promotion when Vidor directed her in The Wedding Night (King Vidor, 1935). Despite good reviews the picture did not establish Sten as a star among film-goers and she remained 'Goldwyn's Folly'. The director was now mainly occupied with commercial material and his works from this period, such as his final and most profitable picture with Samuel Goldwyn, Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) , were intelligently staged, perfectly choreographed films at a high level, which brought sophisticated material to the screen in a way that was also acceptable to broader social classes.
In 1939, Vidor would direct the final three weeks of primary filming for the classic film The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939). He directed the cyclone scene in Kansas. Although he was not credited in the credits and the scene was almost cut, he directed an unforgettable moment in the history of American cinema: the sequence in Kansas where Judy Garland sings the mythical song 'Over the Rainbow'.
British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: MGM. Miriam Hopkins , Stuart Erwin, Franchot Tone and Lionel Barrymore in The Stranger's Return (King Vidor, 1933).
Dutch postcard by Loet C. Barnstijn. Photo: United Artists. Barbara Pepper, Tom Keene and Karen Morley in Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934).
Latvian postcard. Anna Sten and Gary Cooper in The Wedding Night (King Vidor, 1935).
Belgian postcard by Kwatta, no. C. 99 (Serie C. 99-196). Photo: M.G.M. Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940).
Lust in the dust
In 1944, King Vidor was able to realise his pet project An American Romance (King Vidor, 1944), which describes the success story of an immigrant to the USA. The film had a record budget of three million dollars and lasted 140 minutes. MGM needed to increase the number of screenings and cut more than half an hour from the film on their own authority. The resulting film was a huge failure and marked the end of Vidor's collaboration with MGM. When he recalled this failure in his memoirs, Vidor seemed deeply affected by the experience.
In 1946, he directed the lavish and star-studded Western Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946) for producer David O. Selznick. Filming dragged on for almost a year and was followed by endless arguments with the censor. The 'unbridled sexuality' portrayed by Vidor between Pearl ( Jennifer Jones ) and Lewt ( Gregory Peck ) created a furor that drew criticism from the US Congressmen and film censors, which led to the studio cutting several minutes before its final release. Selznick launched Duel in the Sun in hundreds of theaters, backed by a multiple-million dollar promotional campaign. Despite the film's poor critical reception (termed 'Lust in the Dust' by its detractors) the picture's box office returns rivaled the highest-grossing film of the year, The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946).
In the following years, Vidor made films for various studios, but his career increasingly sank into mediocrity. An exception is his best-known film from this period, The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949) with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal , based on Ayn Rand's best-selling novel, a fictionalised version of the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This lyrical and flamboyant film is one of the filmmaker's masterpieces and one of Gary Cooper 's greatest performances.
He made more melodramas, such as the Film Noir Beyond the Forest (King Vidor, 1949) starring Bette Davis and Ruby Gentry (King Vidor, 1952) with Jennifer Jones . Then independent Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis offered him to create a screen adaption of Leo Tolstoy's vast historical romance of the late-Napoleonic era, 'War and Peace' (1869). His intelligent and epic War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956), starring Henry Fonda , Audrey Hepburn and Anita Ekberg , regained him the respect of critics.
War and Peace garnered Vidor further offers to film historical epics, but he chose the lavish biblical adaptation Solomon and Sheba (King Vidor, 1959), with Tyrone Power and Gina Lollobrigida tapped as the star-crossed monarchs. The shooting of the film was overshadowed by the sudden death of 45-year-old star Tyrone Power . Six weeks into production, Power suffered a heart attack during a climatic sword fight scene. He died within the hour. The entire film had to be re-shot, with the lead role of Solomon now recast with Yul Brynner . Solomon and Sheba was Vidor's last feature film.
Spanish postcard, no. 5292, 1953. Photo: Procines S.A.. Gregory Peck , Jennifer Jones , and Joseph Cotten in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946).
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2248. Photo: United Artists. Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
Spanish postcard, no. 348. Photo: Warner Bros. Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 429. Photo: R.K.O. Ruth Roman in Lightning Strikes Twice (King Vidor, 1951).
Spanish postcard by Ed. Raker, Barcelona. Gina Lollobrigida in Solomon and Sheba (King Vidor, 1959).
The American director with the longest directing career
At the beginning of the 1960s, King Vidor largely retired from the screen and began teaching film theory at UCLA. He had already published his autobiography 'A Tree is a Tree' in 1953. In 1964, he won a special prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival. In 1979, he was finally awarded an honorary Oscar for his complete works, having been nominated five times for an Oscar himself. In the same year, he also released the documentary The Metaphor, which was his last directorial work.
In old age, he wrote the screenplay 'The Actor', inspired by the life of James Murray, the lead actor in The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928), whose alcoholism ruined his promising career and led to his early death. Robert De Niro and Ryan O'Neal were interested in the lead role, but Vidor was no longer able to realise the film. He last appeared in front of the camera for the comedy Love & Money (James Toback, 1981) and received much praise for his supporting role as the senile grandfather.
Vidor was married three times and worked together professionally with all three wives. He made numerous films with Florence Vidor during their marriage from 1915 to 1924. Their child Suzanne (1918-2003) was later adopted by Florence's new husband Jascha Heifetz. Vidor was married to actress Eleanor Boardman from 1926 to 1931; their daughters were Antonia (1927-2012) and Belinda (1930). Boardman played the female lead in The Crowd, among others. The later custody disputes over the two daughters were to accompany Vidor for a good two decades.
In 1932, he married Elizabeth Hill, who worked as a screenwriter on some of his films and with whom he remained together until her death in 1978. Vidor devoted the last 25 years of his life to painting. King Vidor died of heart disease at his ranch in Paso de Robles, California, in 1982 at the age of 88. After his death his ashes were scattered on the grounds of his ranch.
King Vidor's career as a director spanned a total of 67 years from 1913 to 1980, which even earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the American director with the longest directing career. Critics find it difficult to discern a clearly recognisable style in Vidor's work: He frequently oscillated between his own dream projects and routine productions for the major Hollywood studios. Like many Hollywood directors of his time, he directed films from almost all genres, but he was also an experimental director who sought a certain narrative style based on the subject matter and not the other way round.
Sources: Wikipedia (German, and English), and .
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 393. Photo: Ruth Harriet Louise / MGM. John Gilbert in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925).
Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F.), no. 199. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn, Roma (MGM). Lillian Gish in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 71. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper in The Champ (King Vidor, 1931).
Spanish postcard, 1953. Photo: Procines S.A. Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946).
One of the most commercially successful films of the entire silent film era
King Wallis Vidor was born in 1894 in Galveston, Texas. He was the son of Charles Shelton Vidor, a wealthy timber merchant and mill owner and Kate Lee Vidor (née Wallis). The 'King' in King Vidor is no sobriquet, but his given name in honor of his mother's favourite brother, King Wallis. As a child, he survived the great Galveston hurricane of 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people. In 1980 Vidor recalled the horrors of the hurricane's effects: "All the wooden structures of the town were flattened ... [t]he streets were piled high with dead people, and I took the first tugboat out. On the boat I went up into the bow and saw that the bay was filled with dead bodies, horses, animals, people, everything."
Vidor attended grade school at the Peacock Military Academy, located in San Antonio, Texas. At the age of sixteen Vidor dropped out of a private high school in Maryland and returned to Galveston to work as a nickelodeon ticket taker. Fascinated by the new medium of cinema from an early age, he worked as a volunteer projectionist in his home town and made a few amateur films, including the short documentary Hurricane in Galveston (King Vidor, 1913). He sold footage from a Houston army parade to a newsreel outfit, The Grand Military Parade (King Vidor, 1913) and made his first fictional film concerning a local automobile race, In Tow (King Vidor, 1913).
King Vidor married the aspiring film actress Florence Arto in 1915. They went to Hollywood, where his young wife quickly became a star, known as Florence Vidor , in films by Frank Lloyd and Cecil B. DeMille . King worked in various positions before signing a contract with Universal as a director. David W. Griffith was his role model. His first full-length feature film was The Turn in the Road (King Vidor, 1919), for which he also wrote the screenplay. It was a film presentation of a Christian Science evangelical tract sponsored by a group of doctors and dentists affiliated as the independent Brentwood Film Corporation. Vidor would make three more films for the Brentwood Corporation, all of which featured as yet unknown comedienne Zasu Pitts, who the director had discovered on a Hollywood streetcar.
Shortly afterwards, he founded his own studio, Vidor Village, funded by First National. He made a series of inexpensive melodramas, often starring his wife. Vidor Village went bankrupt in 1922 and Vidor, now without a studio, offered his services to the top executives in the film industry. Louis B. Mayer engaged Vidor to direct Broadway actress Laurette Taylor in a film version of her famous juvenile role as Peg O'Connell in Peg o' My Heart. The success of Peg o' My Heart (King Vidor, 1922) landed him a contract with the old Metro Studios, which merged to form MGM in 1924. At MGM, he began a regular collaboration with star John Gilbert. Their first film together was His Hour (King Vidor, 1924), based on Elinor Glyn). In 1925, Vidor became one of Hollywood's most famous film directors with the war film The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925), also starring John Gilbert . The film was not only a success with critics, but also one of the most commercially successful films of the entire silent film era. The Big Parade addressed the horrors of the First World War like no other film before it.
A year later, Vidor was chosen to direct Lillian Gish 's debut at MGM, the opulent film version of La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926), in which John Gilbert again played the male lead. Both Gilbert and Vidor were in love with Gish at the time, but 'the Duse of the screen' did not follow up, as she recounted in her memoirs 'The Cinema, Mr. Griffith and Me'. Vidor established himself as one of the industry's innovative filmmakers with The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928), which was released in 1928 after a long filming period. The film tells the sad story of a married couple whose attempt to realise the American dream falls short of their expectations and threatens to fail.
Dutch postcard by M. Bonnist & Zonen, no. 115. Renée Adorée and John Gilbert in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 192. Photo: R. Harriet Louise / Gaumont-Metro-Goldwyn. Karl (or Carl) Dane in the WWI drama The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925).
Italian postcard by Fotocelere, no. 129. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Lillian Gish and John Gilbert in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).
French postcard, no. 510. Photo: Gaumont Metro Goldwyn. John Gilbert in Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926).
American Arcade card by Ex. Sup. Co. Chicago. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. James Murray in The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928).
A completely free hand in choosing his sound film debut
King Vidor made three comedies with 'the queen of the jet set', Marion Davies . Cosmopolitan Pictures, a subsidiary of MGM and controlled by influential newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, insisted that Vidor direct Davies – Hearst's longtime mistress – in these Cosmopolitan-supervised films, to which Vidor acquiesced. Though not identified as a director of comedies, Vidor filmed three screwball-like comedies that revealed Davies comedy talents. The Patsy (King Vidor, 1928) brought Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson, veterans of the Mack Sennett comedies, out of retirement to play Davies' farcical upper-class parents. Davies performs a number of amusing celebrity imitations of Gloria Swanson , Lillian Gish , Pola Negri and Mae Murray.
The most enduring picture of the Vidor–Davies collaborations is Show People (King Vidor, 1928), one of Vidor's biggest commercial successes. The scenario was inspired by the glamorous Gloria Swanson , who began her film career in slapstick. Davis' character Peggy Pepper, a mere comic, is elevated to the high-style star Patricia Pepoire. Vidor also spoofs his own recently completed Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926), an over-the-top swashbuckling costume drama featuring romantic icon John Gilbert . Some of the best-known film stars of the silent era appeared in cameos, as well as Vidor himself.
Vidor's prestige was now so great that studio boss Louis B. Mayer gave him a completely free hand in choosing his sound film debut. With Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929), Vidor chose a picture about rural black American life incorporating a musical soundtrack and explored numerous innovative possibilities that sound opened up in dramaturgy. Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect. Hallelujah enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929. Hallelujah is now regarded as the first film by a major Hollywood studio with an all African-American cast, but atb the time the film was a commercial flop.
Vidor's second sound film was his third and final film with Marion Davies , Not So Dumb (King Vidor, 1930), adapted from the 1921 Broadway comedy 'Dulcy' by George S. Kaufman. The limitations of early sound, despite recent innovations, interfered with the continuity of Davies' performance that had enlivened her earlier silent comedies with Vidor.
Vidor went on to make several less artistically ambitious but financially successful films. These included The Champ (King Vidor, 1931), about the friendship between an old alcoholic and washed-up boxer ( Wallace Beery ) who starts a comeback for the sake of a young boy (child star Jackie Cooper ) and ends up dying in the ring. Wallace Beery earned an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his role and it propelled him to top-rank among MGM stars. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Vidor for Best Director.
Promotion card for Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, 2017. Photo: Marion Davies (middle), Jane Winton, Orville Caldwell, Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson in The Patsy (King Vidor, 1928).
Italian postcard by Fotocelere no. 12. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Jackie Cooper in The Champ (King Vidor, 1931). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 161/3. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Jackie Cooper and Irene Rich in The Champ (King Vidor, 1931).
Dutch postcard by M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam, no. B 206. Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn. Dolores Del Rio and Joel McCrea in Bird of Paradise (King Vidor, 1932).
British postcard in the Film Weekly series. Photo: United Artists. Ronald Colman and Kay Francis in Cynara (King Vidor, 1932), a romantic drama film about a British lawyer (Colman) who pays a heavy price for an affair. Francis plays his wife.
A south seas romance
King Vidor was loaned to Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) to make a 'South Seas' romance for producer David Selznick filmed in the US territory of Hawaii. Starring Dolores del Río and Joel McCrea, the tropical location and mixed-race love theme in Bird of Paradise (King Vidor, 1932) included nudity and sexual eroticism. During production Vidor began an affair with script assistant Elizabeth Hill that led to a series of highly productive screenplay collaborations and their marriage in 1937. Vidor divorced his second wife, actress Eleanor Boardman shortly after Bird of Paradise was completed.
The Stranger's Return (King Vidor, 1933) and Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934) are Depression era films that present protagonists who flee the social and economic perils of urban America, plagued by high unemployment and labour unrest to seek a lost rural identity or make a new start in the agrarian countryside. Vidor's expressed enthusiasm for the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's exhortation in his first inaugural in 1933 for a shift of labour from industry to agriculture. Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934), a blazing appeal in favour of the New Deal with its depiction of an ideal community that renounces all approaches to capitalism in order to derive its values from communal property. The picture is the second film of a trilogy he referred to as 'War, Wheat and Steel'. His 1925 film The Big Parade was 'war' and his 1944 An American Romance was 'steel'.
During the 1930s Vidor, though under contract to MGM, made four films under loan-out to independent producer Samuel Goldwyn, formerly with the Goldwyn studios that had amalgamated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924. Goldwyn's insistence on fidelity to the prestigious literary material he had purchased for screen adaptations imposed cinematic restraints on his film directors, including Vidor. Cynara (King Vidor, 1932), a romantic melodrama of a brief, yet tragic affair between a British barrister and a shopgirl, was Vidor's second sound collaboration with Goldwyn. Starring Ronald Colman and Kay Francis , the story by Francis Marion is a cautionary tale concerning upper- and lower-class sexual infidelities set in England.
In his third collaboration with Goldwyn, Vidor was tasked with salvaging the producer's huge investment in Soviet-trained Russian actress Anna Sten . Goldwyn's effort to elevate Sten to the stature of Dietrich or Garbo had thus far failed despite his relentless promotion when Vidor directed her in The Wedding Night (King Vidor, 1935). Despite good reviews the picture did not establish Sten as a star among film-goers and she remained 'Goldwyn's Folly'. The director was now mainly occupied with commercial material and his works from this period, such as his final and most profitable picture with Samuel Goldwyn, Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) , were intelligently staged, perfectly choreographed films at a high level, which brought sophisticated material to the screen in a way that was also acceptable to broader social classes.
In 1939, Vidor would direct the final three weeks of primary filming for the classic film The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939). He directed the cyclone scene in Kansas. Although he was not credited in the credits and the scene was almost cut, he directed an unforgettable moment in the history of American cinema: the sequence in Kansas where Judy Garland sings the mythical song 'Over the Rainbow'.
British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: MGM. Miriam Hopkins , Stuart Erwin, Franchot Tone and Lionel Barrymore in The Stranger's Return (King Vidor, 1933).
Dutch postcard by Loet C. Barnstijn. Photo: United Artists. Barbara Pepper, Tom Keene and Karen Morley in Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934).
Latvian postcard. Anna Sten and Gary Cooper in The Wedding Night (King Vidor, 1935).
Belgian postcard by Kwatta, no. C. 99 (Serie C. 99-196). Photo: M.G.M. Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940).
Lust in the dust
In 1944, King Vidor was able to realise his pet project An American Romance (King Vidor, 1944), which describes the success story of an immigrant to the USA. The film had a record budget of three million dollars and lasted 140 minutes. MGM needed to increase the number of screenings and cut more than half an hour from the film on their own authority. The resulting film was a huge failure and marked the end of Vidor's collaboration with MGM. When he recalled this failure in his memoirs, Vidor seemed deeply affected by the experience.
In 1946, he directed the lavish and star-studded Western Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946) for producer David O. Selznick. Filming dragged on for almost a year and was followed by endless arguments with the censor. The 'unbridled sexuality' portrayed by Vidor between Pearl ( Jennifer Jones ) and Lewt ( Gregory Peck ) created a furor that drew criticism from the US Congressmen and film censors, which led to the studio cutting several minutes before its final release. Selznick launched Duel in the Sun in hundreds of theaters, backed by a multiple-million dollar promotional campaign. Despite the film's poor critical reception (termed 'Lust in the Dust' by its detractors) the picture's box office returns rivaled the highest-grossing film of the year, The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946).
In the following years, Vidor made films for various studios, but his career increasingly sank into mediocrity. An exception is his best-known film from this period, The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949) with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal , based on Ayn Rand's best-selling novel, a fictionalised version of the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This lyrical and flamboyant film is one of the filmmaker's masterpieces and one of Gary Cooper 's greatest performances.
He made more melodramas, such as the Film Noir Beyond the Forest (King Vidor, 1949) starring Bette Davis and Ruby Gentry (King Vidor, 1952) with Jennifer Jones . Then independent Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis offered him to create a screen adaption of Leo Tolstoy's vast historical romance of the late-Napoleonic era, 'War and Peace' (1869). His intelligent and epic War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956), starring Henry Fonda , Audrey Hepburn and Anita Ekberg , regained him the respect of critics.
War and Peace garnered Vidor further offers to film historical epics, but he chose the lavish biblical adaptation Solomon and Sheba (King Vidor, 1959), with Tyrone Power and Gina Lollobrigida tapped as the star-crossed monarchs. The shooting of the film was overshadowed by the sudden death of 45-year-old star Tyrone Power . Six weeks into production, Power suffered a heart attack during a climatic sword fight scene. He died within the hour. The entire film had to be re-shot, with the lead role of Solomon now recast with Yul Brynner . Solomon and Sheba was Vidor's last feature film.
Spanish postcard, no. 5292, 1953. Photo: Procines S.A.. Gregory Peck , Jennifer Jones , and Joseph Cotten in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946).
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2248. Photo: United Artists. Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
Spanish postcard, no. 348. Photo: Warner Bros. Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper in The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 429. Photo: R.K.O. Ruth Roman in Lightning Strikes Twice (King Vidor, 1951).
Spanish postcard by Ed. Raker, Barcelona. Gina Lollobrigida in Solomon and Sheba (King Vidor, 1959).
The American director with the longest directing career
At the beginning of the 1960s, King Vidor largely retired from the screen and began teaching film theory at UCLA. He had already published his autobiography 'A Tree is a Tree' in 1953. In 1964, he won a special prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival. In 1979, he was finally awarded an honorary Oscar for his complete works, having been nominated five times for an Oscar himself. In the same year, he also released the documentary The Metaphor, which was his last directorial work.
In old age, he wrote the screenplay 'The Actor', inspired by the life of James Murray, the lead actor in The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928), whose alcoholism ruined his promising career and led to his early death. Robert De Niro and Ryan O'Neal were interested in the lead role, but Vidor was no longer able to realise the film. He last appeared in front of the camera for the comedy Love & Money (James Toback, 1981) and received much praise for his supporting role as the senile grandfather.
Vidor was married three times and worked together professionally with all three wives. He made numerous films with Florence Vidor during their marriage from 1915 to 1924. Their child Suzanne (1918-2003) was later adopted by Florence's new husband Jascha Heifetz. Vidor was married to actress Eleanor Boardman from 1926 to 1931; their daughters were Antonia (1927-2012) and Belinda (1930). Boardman played the female lead in The Crowd, among others. The later custody disputes over the two daughters were to accompany Vidor for a good two decades.
In 1932, he married Elizabeth Hill, who worked as a screenwriter on some of his films and with whom he remained together until her death in 1978. Vidor devoted the last 25 years of his life to painting. King Vidor died of heart disease at his ranch in Paso de Robles, California, in 1982 at the age of 88. After his death his ashes were scattered on the grounds of his ranch.
King Vidor's career as a director spanned a total of 67 years from 1913 to 1980, which even earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the American director with the longest directing career. Critics find it difficult to discern a clearly recognisable style in Vidor's work: He frequently oscillated between his own dream projects and routine productions for the major Hollywood studios. Like many Hollywood directors of his time, he directed films from almost all genres, but he was also an experimental director who sought a certain narrative style based on the subject matter and not the other way round.
Sources: Wikipedia (German, and English), and .
August 5, 2024
Jettchen Geberts Geschichte (1918)
Jettchen Geberts Geschichte/Jettchen Gebert's Story (Richard Oswald, 1918) ia a lost film. Set in mid-19th century Berlin, the plot deals with the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant's family, who falls in love with a delicate but penniless writer. Her family will not accept him and forces her to marry another merchant. The film was released in two parts, Jettchen Gebert and Henriette Jacoby. Mechtildis Thein starred as Jettchen, later named Henrietta and Conrad Veidt played her beloved.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 550/4. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Publicity still for Jettchen Gebert (Richard Oswald, 1918), starring Mechtildis Thein as the title character and Conrad Veidt as her beloved. The two other men are Max Gülstorff (sitting) as Uncle Eli and Leo Connard as Jettchen's father, Salomon Gebert.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 550/6. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Max Gülstorff and Helene Rietz as Uncle Eli and Aunt Minchen in Jettchen Gebert (Richard Oswald, 1918).
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 220. Photo: A. Binder, Berlin. Richard Oswald .
Not accepted by her Jewish family
Georg Hermann (1871-1943) was one of the most successful German authors of his time. Particularly his double novel 'Jettchen Geberts Geschichte' (1906/1908) was broadly acclaimed by critics, regardless of confessional, political or regional boundaries. The public also loved it and a screen version followed ten years after the novel's publication.
Austrian-born director Richard Oswald adapted the novels by Georg Hermann for the screen. Max Faßbender was the cameraman. Richard Oswald 's Berlin film company produced the film. Jettchen Geberts Geschichte/Jettchen Gebert's Story was made in two parts. The first episode was called Jettchen Gebert and the second was called Henriette Jacoby, just like the novels.
Set in mid-19th century Berlin, Jettchen Geberts Geschichte/Jettchen Gebert's Story (Richard Oswald, 1918) tells the story of Jettchen (Mechtildis Thein), the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant's family. She falls in love with Doktor Friedrich Köstling ( Conrad Veidt ), a delicate but penniless writer. Her family will not accept him and forces her to marry another merchant.
In her article 'Durchaus ein jüdischer Roman?', Franca Marquardt writes about the novel: "While antisemitism does not seem to pose a problem for the assimilated Jews of Berlin populating Hermann's novels, their fellows from the East are portraited as stereotypical 'Ostjuden', despised by the 'Western' Jews as much as by the narrator. While other forms of 'Jewishness' are hardly depicted, antisemitism appears as an attitude only of Jews towards each other." Marquardt argues that precisely this recurring pattern could appeal to both Jews and non-Jews at the beginning of the last century, but seems an unbridgeable gap to readers today.
And what about Richard Oswald 's film version? Oswald was the son of a wealthy merchant and his father was also a devout Jew. Oswald had moved to Germany after anti-Semitic hostility in Austria. It would be interesting to see his view on the novel. But we will never know, while his film is considered lost. We only have the postcards with film scenes. Berlin Publisher Rotophot., the precursor of Ross Verlag, produced in the Film Sterne series two series of six sepia cards for the film.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 551/1. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Max Gülstorff and Helene Rietz in Henriette Jacoby/Jettchen Geberts Geschichte, II (Richard Oswald, 1918).
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 551/3. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Mechtildis Thein as the title character, Leo Connard as her father Salomon Gebert and Conrad Veidt (right) as her beloved in JHenriette Jacoby (Richard Oswald, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 551/4. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Mechtildis Thein and Conrad Veidt in Henriette Jacoby/Jettchen Geberts Geschichte, II (Richard Oswald, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 551/5. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Publicity still for Henriette Jacoby/Jettchen Geberts Geschichte, II (Richard Oswald, 1918), starring Conrad Veidt , here with Leo Connard as Jettchen's father, Salomon Gebert, rejecting his daughter's suitor.
Sources: Franca Marquardt (JSTOR), Filmportal, Wikipedia (English) and IMDb.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 550/4. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Publicity still for Jettchen Gebert (Richard Oswald, 1918), starring Mechtildis Thein as the title character and Conrad Veidt as her beloved. The two other men are Max Gülstorff (sitting) as Uncle Eli and Leo Connard as Jettchen's father, Salomon Gebert.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 550/6. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Max Gülstorff and Helene Rietz as Uncle Eli and Aunt Minchen in Jettchen Gebert (Richard Oswald, 1918).
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 220. Photo: A. Binder, Berlin. Richard Oswald .
Not accepted by her Jewish family
Georg Hermann (1871-1943) was one of the most successful German authors of his time. Particularly his double novel 'Jettchen Geberts Geschichte' (1906/1908) was broadly acclaimed by critics, regardless of confessional, political or regional boundaries. The public also loved it and a screen version followed ten years after the novel's publication.
Austrian-born director Richard Oswald adapted the novels by Georg Hermann for the screen. Max Faßbender was the cameraman. Richard Oswald 's Berlin film company produced the film. Jettchen Geberts Geschichte/Jettchen Gebert's Story was made in two parts. The first episode was called Jettchen Gebert and the second was called Henriette Jacoby, just like the novels.
Set in mid-19th century Berlin, Jettchen Geberts Geschichte/Jettchen Gebert's Story (Richard Oswald, 1918) tells the story of Jettchen (Mechtildis Thein), the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish merchant's family. She falls in love with Doktor Friedrich Köstling ( Conrad Veidt ), a delicate but penniless writer. Her family will not accept him and forces her to marry another merchant.
In her article 'Durchaus ein jüdischer Roman?', Franca Marquardt writes about the novel: "While antisemitism does not seem to pose a problem for the assimilated Jews of Berlin populating Hermann's novels, their fellows from the East are portraited as stereotypical 'Ostjuden', despised by the 'Western' Jews as much as by the narrator. While other forms of 'Jewishness' are hardly depicted, antisemitism appears as an attitude only of Jews towards each other." Marquardt argues that precisely this recurring pattern could appeal to both Jews and non-Jews at the beginning of the last century, but seems an unbridgeable gap to readers today.
And what about Richard Oswald 's film version? Oswald was the son of a wealthy merchant and his father was also a devout Jew. Oswald had moved to Germany after anti-Semitic hostility in Austria. It would be interesting to see his view on the novel. But we will never know, while his film is considered lost. We only have the postcards with film scenes. Berlin Publisher Rotophot., the precursor of Ross Verlag, produced in the Film Sterne series two series of six sepia cards for the film.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 551/1. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Max Gülstorff and Helene Rietz in Henriette Jacoby/Jettchen Geberts Geschichte, II (Richard Oswald, 1918).
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 551/3. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Mechtildis Thein as the title character, Leo Connard as her father Salomon Gebert and Conrad Veidt (right) as her beloved in JHenriette Jacoby (Richard Oswald, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 551/4. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Mechtildis Thein and Conrad Veidt in Henriette Jacoby/Jettchen Geberts Geschichte, II (Richard Oswald, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 551/5. Photo: Richard Oswald Film Ges., Berlin. Publicity still for Henriette Jacoby/Jettchen Geberts Geschichte, II (Richard Oswald, 1918), starring Conrad Veidt , here with Leo Connard as Jettchen's father, Salomon Gebert, rejecting his daughter's suitor.
Sources: Franca Marquardt (JSTOR), Filmportal, Wikipedia (English) and IMDb.
August 4, 2024
Irene Castle a.k.a. Mrs Vernon Castle
Irene Castle (1893-1969) and her husband Vernon Castle (1887-1918) were a well-known American dance couple in the early 20th century. The couple celebrated big international successes. Irene starred solo in a dozen silent films between 1917 and 1922. She was often credited as Mrs Vernon Castle.
British postcard in the Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. series. Photo: Pathé.
British postcard in the Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. series. Photo: Pathé.
The Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear
Irene Castle was born Irene Foote in 1893 in New Rochelle, New York, USA. Irene was the second daughter of physician Dr Hubert Townsend Foote and Annie Elroy (Thomas) Foote, whose father was the press spokesman for the Barnum and Bailey Circus.
An energetic youth, Irene rode horses and belonged to the swim team. As a child, she studied dancing with Rosetta O'Neill, who taught a generation of children ballroom dancing. When she was a teenager Irene appeared in amateur productions, often singing 'The Yama-Yama Man', a song made popular by Bessie McCoy in the Broadway show 'The Three Twins' (1908).
As a young woman, she began to model her appearance and body language on McCoy. In 1910, she met Vernon Castle at the New Rochelle Rowing Club in New York, a popular meeting place for people in the entertainment business. Vernon arranged an audition for Irene with Lew Fields, who hired her as a replacement dancer for 'The Summer Widowers', her first professional appearance.
Despite her father's doubts about welcoming an actor into the family, the two were married in Irene's hometown, New Rochelle in 1911. After their wedding, Irene joined Vernon in 'The Hen-Pecks' (1911), a production in which he was a featured player. The Castles returned to Europe in 1912 because Vernon was to appear in a French revue, performing the barbershop sketch from 'The Hen-Pecks'.
The revue also included a dance for the Castles set to the music of the young Irving Berlin's 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.' The show closed quickly, but the couple was then hired as a dance act by the Café de Paris. They performed the latest American ragtime dances, such as the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear. The Castles projected their delight in dancing with each other and made the new dances look easy. Soon, they were the rage of Paris.
British postcard in the Lilywhite Photographic series, no. C.M. 122. Photo: Shadow Stage. Caption: Mrs. Vernon Castle, well known picture player.
New York went dance crazy
The success of the Castles was widely reported in the United States, preparing their way for a triumphant return to New York in 1912. They were booked by Louis Martin for his fashionable Café de l'Opera. In the period after 1910, the dance and musical style of African Americans started to become a popular part of American life. The Castles were considered the first white entertainers to hire African American musicians.
New York went 'dance crazy' over the Castles. They also became staples of Broadway with their show 'The Sunshine Girl' (1913). Irene and Vernon Castle contributed significantly to spreading new ballroom dances such as foxtrot, tango, and waltz. The couple operated a dance school across from the Ritz in New York, the 'Castle House', the nightclub 'Castles by the Sea' in Long Beach, and the supper club 'Sans Souci'.
They toured the country dancing and could charge as much as a thousand dollars an hour for lessons. In 1914, the Castles appeared in a newsreel called Social and Theatrical Dancing and wrote a bestselling instructional book, 'Modern Dancing'. They appeared in the Irving Berlin musical 'Watch Your Step' (1914) in which they refined and popularised the Foxtrot, and in the film The Whirl Of Life (Oliver D. Bailey, 1915) as themselves.
They also made a series of short films of their dances. Irene Castle was also a major trendsetter in fashion. She initiated the vogue for shorter, fuller skirts and loose, elasticised corsets. "The best-dressed woman in America" is also credited with introducing American women in 1913 or 1914 to the bob – the short, boyish hairstyle favoured by flappers in the 1920s. She endorsed fashion designs and sewing patterns through the Ladies Home Journal and Butterick Patterns.
When World War I broke out, Vernon (born Vernon Blyth in the UK) joined the Royal Flying Corps and was sent to France as a fighter pilot. After shooting down two German planes he was sent back to the US. When the US entered the war, he was transferred to an American airbase in Texas to train US pilots. In 1918, he was killed in a plane crash near Fort Worth during a training flight shortly before the war's end. Irene continued to perform solo in Broadway, Vaudeville and films over the next decade.
British postcard. Photo: Pathé.
Possessive and physically violent
Irene Castle made her film acting debut opposite Milton Sills in the silent propaganda serial Patria (Leonard & Theodore Wharton, Jacques Jaccard, 1917). She was credited as Mrs. Vernon Castle. The fifteen-part serial was about Japanese spies trying to invade the US but whose plans are foiled by a rich heiress and a Secret Service agent.
After that, she starred in various films by Astra Films, distributed by Pathé Exchange, such as Convict 993 (William Parke, 1918), The Hillcrest Mystery (George Fitzmaurice, 1919), and The First Law (Lawrence McGill, 1919). After the First World War, she worked for Paramount/Famous Players-Lasky.
In 1919, Irene married Robert Treman, an Ithaca NY businessman. In 1922 she stopped her film acting career. Irene had married him for his money but he invested and lost her money in the stock market. When he also proved to be possessive and physically violent. They divorced in 1923. That same year, she married Frederic McLaughlin, a man sixteen years older than her. In 1925, they had a daughter, Barbara McLaughlin Kreutz. In 1928, Castle founded 'Orphans of the Storm', an animal shelter in Deerfield, Illinois. Irene's son, William McLaughlin, was born in 1929. During her marriage to "Major" McLaughlin, the founding owner of the Chicago Blackhawks, she is credited with designing the original sweater for the Blackhawks Hockey Club. Her husband died in 1944.
Her fourth and final husband was George Enzinger an advertising executive from Chicago. They married in 1946 and remained together till his death in 1959. Irene's memoir 'Castles in the Air' served as the basis for the musical The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (H.C. Potter, 1939), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers . Castle served as a technical advisor on the film but clashed with Rogers, who refused to wear Castle's trademark short bob or darken her hair. She objected to Rogers' inauthentic wardrobe demands, although several of Castle's original Lucile gowns were copied for the film. Castle also protested the hiring of white actor Walter Brennan to play their faithful friend and manservant Walter, who was black.
She spent the later years of her life championing animal rights. Irene Castle died in 1969 in Eureka Springs, Arkansas at 75. She was interred with Vernon at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.
British postcard by Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. Photo: Pathé.
British postcard in the Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. series. Photo: Pathé.
Sources: (IMDb), Encyclopedia of World Biography, Wikipedia (English and German) and .
British postcard in the Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. series. Photo: Pathé.
British postcard in the Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. series. Photo: Pathé.
The Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear
Irene Castle was born Irene Foote in 1893 in New Rochelle, New York, USA. Irene was the second daughter of physician Dr Hubert Townsend Foote and Annie Elroy (Thomas) Foote, whose father was the press spokesman for the Barnum and Bailey Circus.
An energetic youth, Irene rode horses and belonged to the swim team. As a child, she studied dancing with Rosetta O'Neill, who taught a generation of children ballroom dancing. When she was a teenager Irene appeared in amateur productions, often singing 'The Yama-Yama Man', a song made popular by Bessie McCoy in the Broadway show 'The Three Twins' (1908).
As a young woman, she began to model her appearance and body language on McCoy. In 1910, she met Vernon Castle at the New Rochelle Rowing Club in New York, a popular meeting place for people in the entertainment business. Vernon arranged an audition for Irene with Lew Fields, who hired her as a replacement dancer for 'The Summer Widowers', her first professional appearance.
Despite her father's doubts about welcoming an actor into the family, the two were married in Irene's hometown, New Rochelle in 1911. After their wedding, Irene joined Vernon in 'The Hen-Pecks' (1911), a production in which he was a featured player. The Castles returned to Europe in 1912 because Vernon was to appear in a French revue, performing the barbershop sketch from 'The Hen-Pecks'.
The revue also included a dance for the Castles set to the music of the young Irving Berlin's 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.' The show closed quickly, but the couple was then hired as a dance act by the Café de Paris. They performed the latest American ragtime dances, such as the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear. The Castles projected their delight in dancing with each other and made the new dances look easy. Soon, they were the rage of Paris.
British postcard in the Lilywhite Photographic series, no. C.M. 122. Photo: Shadow Stage. Caption: Mrs. Vernon Castle, well known picture player.
New York went dance crazy
The success of the Castles was widely reported in the United States, preparing their way for a triumphant return to New York in 1912. They were booked by Louis Martin for his fashionable Café de l'Opera. In the period after 1910, the dance and musical style of African Americans started to become a popular part of American life. The Castles were considered the first white entertainers to hire African American musicians.
New York went 'dance crazy' over the Castles. They also became staples of Broadway with their show 'The Sunshine Girl' (1913). Irene and Vernon Castle contributed significantly to spreading new ballroom dances such as foxtrot, tango, and waltz. The couple operated a dance school across from the Ritz in New York, the 'Castle House', the nightclub 'Castles by the Sea' in Long Beach, and the supper club 'Sans Souci'.
They toured the country dancing and could charge as much as a thousand dollars an hour for lessons. In 1914, the Castles appeared in a newsreel called Social and Theatrical Dancing and wrote a bestselling instructional book, 'Modern Dancing'. They appeared in the Irving Berlin musical 'Watch Your Step' (1914) in which they refined and popularised the Foxtrot, and in the film The Whirl Of Life (Oliver D. Bailey, 1915) as themselves.
They also made a series of short films of their dances. Irene Castle was also a major trendsetter in fashion. She initiated the vogue for shorter, fuller skirts and loose, elasticised corsets. "The best-dressed woman in America" is also credited with introducing American women in 1913 or 1914 to the bob – the short, boyish hairstyle favoured by flappers in the 1920s. She endorsed fashion designs and sewing patterns through the Ladies Home Journal and Butterick Patterns.
When World War I broke out, Vernon (born Vernon Blyth in the UK) joined the Royal Flying Corps and was sent to France as a fighter pilot. After shooting down two German planes he was sent back to the US. When the US entered the war, he was transferred to an American airbase in Texas to train US pilots. In 1918, he was killed in a plane crash near Fort Worth during a training flight shortly before the war's end. Irene continued to perform solo in Broadway, Vaudeville and films over the next decade.
British postcard. Photo: Pathé.
Possessive and physically violent
Irene Castle made her film acting debut opposite Milton Sills in the silent propaganda serial Patria (Leonard & Theodore Wharton, Jacques Jaccard, 1917). She was credited as Mrs. Vernon Castle. The fifteen-part serial was about Japanese spies trying to invade the US but whose plans are foiled by a rich heiress and a Secret Service agent.
After that, she starred in various films by Astra Films, distributed by Pathé Exchange, such as Convict 993 (William Parke, 1918), The Hillcrest Mystery (George Fitzmaurice, 1919), and The First Law (Lawrence McGill, 1919). After the First World War, she worked for Paramount/Famous Players-Lasky.
In 1919, Irene married Robert Treman, an Ithaca NY businessman. In 1922 she stopped her film acting career. Irene had married him for his money but he invested and lost her money in the stock market. When he also proved to be possessive and physically violent. They divorced in 1923. That same year, she married Frederic McLaughlin, a man sixteen years older than her. In 1925, they had a daughter, Barbara McLaughlin Kreutz. In 1928, Castle founded 'Orphans of the Storm', an animal shelter in Deerfield, Illinois. Irene's son, William McLaughlin, was born in 1929. During her marriage to "Major" McLaughlin, the founding owner of the Chicago Blackhawks, she is credited with designing the original sweater for the Blackhawks Hockey Club. Her husband died in 1944.
Her fourth and final husband was George Enzinger an advertising executive from Chicago. They married in 1946 and remained together till his death in 1959. Irene's memoir 'Castles in the Air' served as the basis for the musical The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (H.C. Potter, 1939), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers . Castle served as a technical advisor on the film but clashed with Rogers, who refused to wear Castle's trademark short bob or darken her hair. She objected to Rogers' inauthentic wardrobe demands, although several of Castle's original Lucile gowns were copied for the film. Castle also protested the hiring of white actor Walter Brennan to play their faithful friend and manservant Walter, who was black.
She spent the later years of her life championing animal rights. Irene Castle died in 1969 in Eureka Springs, Arkansas at 75. She was interred with Vernon at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.
British postcard by Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. Photo: Pathé.
British postcard in the Pathé Frères Cinema Ltd. series. Photo: Pathé.
Sources: (IMDb), Encyclopedia of World Biography, Wikipedia (English and German) and .
August 3, 2024
Leslie Howard
English stage and film actor, director, and producer Leslie Howard (1893-1943) is best known for his role as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). Other popular films were The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), and Intermezzo (1939). During the Second World War, he was active in anti-Nazi propaganda. In 1943 his airliner was shot down, and this sparked modern conspiracy theories regarding his death.
British postcard by Real Photogravure, London, no. 64. Photo: Warner Brothers / First National. Publicity still for The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series by Real Photograph, London, no. 1101. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity photo for Romeo and Juliet (1936).
British postcard in the Film Kurier Series, London, no. 64. Photo: Warner Brothers & Vitaphone Pictures.
British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 103. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Publicity photo for Romeo and Juliet (1936) with Norma Shearer .
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 346. Photo: David O'Selznick Production / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Gone with the Wind (1939) with Vivien Leigh .
Shell shock
Leslie Howard Steiner was born to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg) and a Hungarian father, Ferdinand Steiner, in London, UK in 1893. His father was Jewish, and his mother was the granddaughter of a Jewish immigrant from East Prussia who had married into the English upper classes. Arthur, Howard's younger brother, was also an actor, primarily in British comedies. Leslie initially grew up in Vienna, returning to London when his father joined a City stockbroking firm. He was educated at Alleyn's School and Dulwich College, London. He wrote his first play and was producing musical comedies with family and friends by the age of 14. In support of her artistically inclined children and their chums, Howard's mother started the Upper Norwood Dramatic Club to showcase their talents.
Like many others around the time of the First World War, the family changed their name, using Stainer as less German-sounding. Intending Leslie to follow in his footsteps, his father secured him a job as a bank clerk, but the acting bug had already bitten thanks to his mother's fondness for amateur dramatics, and Leslie would take on her adopted maiden name as his own. Leslie Howard made his first short silent film for Clarendon, The Heroine of Mons (1914) directed by his uncle, director-producer Wilfred Noy. Shortly after that, he naively joined the 20th Hussars (although he had never ridden a horse) and served on the Western Front. The Somme disaster of 1916 triggered shell shock, which led to his relinquishing his commission in May 1916. The doctor advised to take up acting as part of his medical treatment.
That same year he married and began his acting career in earnest, his matinee-idol looks helping him to success. Starting out with small roles in the touring companies of 'Peg O' My Heart', 'Charley's Aunt' and the juvenile lead in the road version of Matheson Lang 's 'Under Cover', Howard made his London stage debut in 1918 in a small role in Arthur Pinero's 'The Freaks'.
He also appeared in such British silent films as the sports drama The Happy Wanderer (F. Martin Thornton, 1917) and The Lackey and the Lady (Thomas Bentley, 1919). In 1920 Howard and his friend Adrian Brunel founded the short-lived company Minerva Films in London, which produced on a shoestring budget. Howard was the producer and/or actor, and Brunel was the director.
Their films include the comedies The Bump (Adrian Brunel, 1920) starring C. Aubrey Smith , Five Pound Reward (Adrian Brunel, 1920), and Bookworms (Adrian Brunel, 1920), all written by A. A. Milne. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute. However, Minerva Films soon went belly up leaving investors like H.G. Wells without a penny. It took some ten years more and the coming of sound that Howard's screen career really would take off, thanks to Hollywood's need to recruit actors with good stage-trained voices, the better to cope with the primitive early recording equipment.
British postcard in the Collector-Cinema Famous Oldies series by Collector card, Croydon, no. C9003. Photo: The National Film Archive. Leslie Howard in Bookworms (Adrian Brunel, 1920).
Italian postcard by Cinema-Illustrazione, no. 23 11. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro in Never the Twain Shall Meet (W.S. Van Dyke, 1931).
British postcard by Film Weekly in the Film Shots Series. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Smilin' Through (Sidney Franklin, 1932) with O.P. Heggie.
British postcard. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Secrets (Frank Borzage, 1933) with Mary Pickford .
British postcard in the Film Shots series by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner. Leslie Howard and Paul Lukas in Captured! (Roy Del Ruth, 1933).
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 123. Photo: Fox. Publicity still for Berkeley Square (Frank Lloyd, 1933) with Heather Angel .
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 150. Photo: London Films. Publicity still for The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934) with Merle Oberon .
Bad timing
In 1920 after the Minerva debacle, Leslie Howard headed off to the US for his Broadway debut in Just Suppose. Although the comedy-drama was hailed as a success by critics, Howard's performance was not. Undaunted, he appeared in several different types of plays on Broadway such as 'Aren't We All?' (1923), the strange and provocative drama 'Outward Bound' (1924), and his first Broadway smash 'The Green Hat' (1925). He became an undisputed Broadway star with the bedroom farce 'Her Cardboard Lover' (1927). Besides acting, he always seemed to find time to write stories and articles for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Reader's Digest and script plays he hoped to produce one day. His dream came true when he starred in the Broadway productions of his own plays 'Murray Hill' (1927) and 'Out of a Blue Sky' (1930).
After his success as time traveller Peter Standish in 'Berkeley Square' (1929), he launched his Hollywood career. First Howard starred opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in his first sound film, the film version of Outward Bound (Robert Milton, 1930), though in a different role than the one he portrayed on Broadway. Then he repeated the Standish role in the film version of Berkeley Square (Frank Lloyd, 1933), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. The stage, however, continued to be an important part of his career and Howard frequently juggled acting, producing, and directing duties in the Broadway productions in which he starred. However, he was always best known for his acting, enjoying triumphs in 'The Animal Kingdom' (1932) and 'The Petrified Forest' (1935). He repeated both roles later in films.
But he had the bad timing to open on Broadway in William Shakespeare 's 'Hamlet' (1936) just a few weeks after John Gielgud launched a rival production of the same play that was far more successful with both critics and audiences. Howard’s production, his final stage role, lasted only 39 performances. In Hollywood, he became known as the perfect Englishman - slim, tall, intellectual and sensitive. It was a part that he played in many films and a part women would dream about. Howard co-starred with Bette Davis in The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, 1936) and reportedly insisted that Humphrey Bogart appeared in the film as gangster Duke Mantee. Howard and Bogart had previously appeared in the play together on Broadway and became lifelong friends. The Bogarts named their daughter Leslie after him.
Howard had earlier co-starred with Bette Davis in the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's book Of Human Bondage (John Cromwell, 1934) and later again in the romantic comedy It's Love I'm After (Archie Mayo, 1937), also co-starring Olivia de Havilland . He played the title character in the British smash hit The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934) opposite Merle Oberon . In the UK he also appeared as Professor Henry Higgins opposite Wendy Hiller in the film version of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, 1938). It was another hit. Pygmalion earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and it was his directorial debut.
In Hollywood, Howard starred with up-and-comer Ingrid Bergman in Intermezzo (Gregory Ratoff, 1939) and with Norma Shearer in a film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936). As he became more successful, he also became quite picky about which roles he would do, and usually performed in only two films a year."In 1939, he played against-his-will the character that will always be associated with him, that of Ashley Wilkes, the honour-bound disillusioned intellectual Southern gentleman in Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939). TCM : Although it is hard to understand why the passionate, stubborn Scarlett O'Hara ( Vivien Leigh ) would ever choose Howard's dull, whiny Ashley over Clark Gable 's charming, devilish Rhett, Howard did make the ideal symbol of chivalry and Old South gallantry."
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 203. Photo: MGM. Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1234. Photo: Gabriel Pascal Prod. Publicity still for Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, 1938) with Wendy Hiller .
British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, London, no. C 363. Photo: Selznick International. Leslie Howard in Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 345. Photo: David O'Selznick Production / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) with Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh . Caption: Bridal scene from Gone with the Wind.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 348. Photo: David O'Selznick Production / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) with Olivia de Havilland .
West German postcard by Schneider-Junior, Neunkirchen/Saar, no. 60. Photo: Constantin-Film. Ingrid Bergman and Leslie Howard in Intermezzo (Gregory Ratoff, 1939).
Returning home
A few days before war broke out Leslie Howard became uncomfortable with Hollywood and returned to England. He could easily have stayed in Hollywood for the duration of the war, but he was one of the first British stars to make a point of returning home. He devoted all his energy on behalf of the war effort. He directed films, wrote articles and made radio broadcasts. Howard starred in such Second World War films as 49th Parallel (Michael Powell, 1941) about a Nazi U-boat crew stranded in Canada with Laurence Olivier , Pimpernel Smith (Leslie Howard, 1941) - a World War II update of the Scarlet Pimpernel story, and The First of the Few/Spitfire (Leslie Howard, 1942) with David Niven , the latter two of which he directed and also co-produced. The First of the Few, a moving wartime biopic of R.J. Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire, was to be his last major screen role.
He stayed behind the camera on The Gentle Sex (Leslie Howard, 1943), contributing only narration, as he felt his onscreen presence would have distracted from the film's main aims, to portray and celebrate the contribution of women to the war effort. In private life, Howard was widely known as a ladies' man. He married Ruth Martin in 1916 and they had two children. His son Ronald Howard (1918) became an actor and is noted for portraying the title character in the television series Sherlock Holmes (1954). However, Leslie Howard is reported to have had an affair with Tallulah Bankhead when they appeared on stage in the UK in 'Her Cardboard Lover' (1927), with Merle Oberon while filming The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), and with Conchita Montenegro , with whom he appeared in the film Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931). Towards the end of his life, with the full knowledge of his wife, he did take a mistress, Violette Cunningham. The actress who appeared in Pimpernel Smith and First of the Few in minor roles acted as his secretary, but died in 1942 of pneumonia in her early 30s, six months before Howard's death.
Leslie Howard died in 1943 when flying to Bristol, UK, from Lisbon, Portugal. The KLM aircraft, a Douglas DC-3, was shot down by a Luftwaffe maritime fighter aircraft over the Bay of Biscay. Howard was among the 17 fatalities, together with 4 crew members and 12 other passengers. The aircraft had been operating on a scheduled Lisbon–Whitchurch route throughout 1942-1943 that did not pass over what would commonly be referred to as a war zone. By 1942, however, the Germans considered the region an ‘extremely sensitive war zone.’ On 1 June 1943, the aircraft came under attack by eight Nazi maritime fighters, and the DC-3's last radio message indicated it was being fired upon.
According to German documents, the DC-3 was shot down, some 800 km from Bordeaux, France, and 320 km northwest of Coruña, Spain. A long-standing hypothesis states that the Germans believed that UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had been in Algiers, was on board the flight. Two books focusing on the final flight, 'Flight 777' (Ian Colvin, 1957) and 'In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard' (Ronald Howard, 1984), concluded that the Germans shot down Howard's DC-3 for the specific purpose of killing him. Howard had been travelling through Spain and Portugal, ostensibly lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allied cause. The chance to demoralise Britain with the loss of one of its most outspokenly patriotic figures may have motivated the Luftwaffe attack.
Ronald Howard was convinced the order to shoot down his father’s airliner came directly from Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who had been ridiculed in one of Howard's films and who believed Howard to be the most dangerous British propagandist. The 2010 biography by Estel Eforgan, 'Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor', examined currently available evidence and concluded that Howard was not a specific target, corroborating the claims by German sources that the shootdown was ‘an error in judgement’. At the time of his death, Leslie Howard was 50. The shockingly sudden death of this quintessentially English film star was a national tragedy. In 1959, his daughter, Leslie Ruth Howard (1924), also published a memoir of her father, 'A Quite Remarkable Father: A Biography of Leslie Howard'.
British cigarette card in the Second Film Stars series by John Player & Sons, no. 26. Photo: Radio. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.
British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 97. Photo: First National Films.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series by Real Photograph, London, no. 651.
British postcard by Art Photo, no. 97. Photo: Warner Bros & Vitaphone Pictures.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 651a. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 884. Photo: Radio.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1101a. Photo: Gabriel Pascal Prod.
Sources: Michael Brooke (BFI Screenonline), Hal Erickson (AllMovie - page now defunct), Dan van Neste (Films of the Golden Age), (IMDb), TCM (page now defunct), Wikipedia, and .
British postcard by Real Photogravure, London, no. 64. Photo: Warner Brothers / First National. Publicity still for The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series by Real Photograph, London, no. 1101. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity photo for Romeo and Juliet (1936).
British postcard in the Film Kurier Series, London, no. 64. Photo: Warner Brothers & Vitaphone Pictures.
British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 103. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. Publicity photo for Romeo and Juliet (1936) with Norma Shearer .
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 346. Photo: David O'Selznick Production / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Gone with the Wind (1939) with Vivien Leigh .
Shell shock
Leslie Howard Steiner was born to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg) and a Hungarian father, Ferdinand Steiner, in London, UK in 1893. His father was Jewish, and his mother was the granddaughter of a Jewish immigrant from East Prussia who had married into the English upper classes. Arthur, Howard's younger brother, was also an actor, primarily in British comedies. Leslie initially grew up in Vienna, returning to London when his father joined a City stockbroking firm. He was educated at Alleyn's School and Dulwich College, London. He wrote his first play and was producing musical comedies with family and friends by the age of 14. In support of her artistically inclined children and their chums, Howard's mother started the Upper Norwood Dramatic Club to showcase their talents.
Like many others around the time of the First World War, the family changed their name, using Stainer as less German-sounding. Intending Leslie to follow in his footsteps, his father secured him a job as a bank clerk, but the acting bug had already bitten thanks to his mother's fondness for amateur dramatics, and Leslie would take on her adopted maiden name as his own. Leslie Howard made his first short silent film for Clarendon, The Heroine of Mons (1914) directed by his uncle, director-producer Wilfred Noy. Shortly after that, he naively joined the 20th Hussars (although he had never ridden a horse) and served on the Western Front. The Somme disaster of 1916 triggered shell shock, which led to his relinquishing his commission in May 1916. The doctor advised to take up acting as part of his medical treatment.
That same year he married and began his acting career in earnest, his matinee-idol looks helping him to success. Starting out with small roles in the touring companies of 'Peg O' My Heart', 'Charley's Aunt' and the juvenile lead in the road version of Matheson Lang 's 'Under Cover', Howard made his London stage debut in 1918 in a small role in Arthur Pinero's 'The Freaks'.
He also appeared in such British silent films as the sports drama The Happy Wanderer (F. Martin Thornton, 1917) and The Lackey and the Lady (Thomas Bentley, 1919). In 1920 Howard and his friend Adrian Brunel founded the short-lived company Minerva Films in London, which produced on a shoestring budget. Howard was the producer and/or actor, and Brunel was the director.
Their films include the comedies The Bump (Adrian Brunel, 1920) starring C. Aubrey Smith , Five Pound Reward (Adrian Brunel, 1920), and Bookworms (Adrian Brunel, 1920), all written by A. A. Milne. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute. However, Minerva Films soon went belly up leaving investors like H.G. Wells without a penny. It took some ten years more and the coming of sound that Howard's screen career really would take off, thanks to Hollywood's need to recruit actors with good stage-trained voices, the better to cope with the primitive early recording equipment.
British postcard in the Collector-Cinema Famous Oldies series by Collector card, Croydon, no. C9003. Photo: The National Film Archive. Leslie Howard in Bookworms (Adrian Brunel, 1920).
Italian postcard by Cinema-Illustrazione, no. 23 11. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro in Never the Twain Shall Meet (W.S. Van Dyke, 1931).
British postcard by Film Weekly in the Film Shots Series. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Smilin' Through (Sidney Franklin, 1932) with O.P. Heggie.
British postcard. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Secrets (Frank Borzage, 1933) with Mary Pickford .
British postcard in the Film Shots series by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner. Leslie Howard and Paul Lukas in Captured! (Roy Del Ruth, 1933).
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 123. Photo: Fox. Publicity still for Berkeley Square (Frank Lloyd, 1933) with Heather Angel .
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 150. Photo: London Films. Publicity still for The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934) with Merle Oberon .
Bad timing
In 1920 after the Minerva debacle, Leslie Howard headed off to the US for his Broadway debut in Just Suppose. Although the comedy-drama was hailed as a success by critics, Howard's performance was not. Undaunted, he appeared in several different types of plays on Broadway such as 'Aren't We All?' (1923), the strange and provocative drama 'Outward Bound' (1924), and his first Broadway smash 'The Green Hat' (1925). He became an undisputed Broadway star with the bedroom farce 'Her Cardboard Lover' (1927). Besides acting, he always seemed to find time to write stories and articles for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Reader's Digest and script plays he hoped to produce one day. His dream came true when he starred in the Broadway productions of his own plays 'Murray Hill' (1927) and 'Out of a Blue Sky' (1930).
After his success as time traveller Peter Standish in 'Berkeley Square' (1929), he launched his Hollywood career. First Howard starred opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in his first sound film, the film version of Outward Bound (Robert Milton, 1930), though in a different role than the one he portrayed on Broadway. Then he repeated the Standish role in the film version of Berkeley Square (Frank Lloyd, 1933), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. The stage, however, continued to be an important part of his career and Howard frequently juggled acting, producing, and directing duties in the Broadway productions in which he starred. However, he was always best known for his acting, enjoying triumphs in 'The Animal Kingdom' (1932) and 'The Petrified Forest' (1935). He repeated both roles later in films.
But he had the bad timing to open on Broadway in William Shakespeare 's 'Hamlet' (1936) just a few weeks after John Gielgud launched a rival production of the same play that was far more successful with both critics and audiences. Howard’s production, his final stage role, lasted only 39 performances. In Hollywood, he became known as the perfect Englishman - slim, tall, intellectual and sensitive. It was a part that he played in many films and a part women would dream about. Howard co-starred with Bette Davis in The Petrified Forest (Archie Mayo, 1936) and reportedly insisted that Humphrey Bogart appeared in the film as gangster Duke Mantee. Howard and Bogart had previously appeared in the play together on Broadway and became lifelong friends. The Bogarts named their daughter Leslie after him.
Howard had earlier co-starred with Bette Davis in the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's book Of Human Bondage (John Cromwell, 1934) and later again in the romantic comedy It's Love I'm After (Archie Mayo, 1937), also co-starring Olivia de Havilland . He played the title character in the British smash hit The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, 1934) opposite Merle Oberon . In the UK he also appeared as Professor Henry Higgins opposite Wendy Hiller in the film version of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, 1938). It was another hit. Pygmalion earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, and it was his directorial debut.
In Hollywood, Howard starred with up-and-comer Ingrid Bergman in Intermezzo (Gregory Ratoff, 1939) and with Norma Shearer in a film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936). As he became more successful, he also became quite picky about which roles he would do, and usually performed in only two films a year."In 1939, he played against-his-will the character that will always be associated with him, that of Ashley Wilkes, the honour-bound disillusioned intellectual Southern gentleman in Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939). TCM : Although it is hard to understand why the passionate, stubborn Scarlett O'Hara ( Vivien Leigh ) would ever choose Howard's dull, whiny Ashley over Clark Gable 's charming, devilish Rhett, Howard did make the ideal symbol of chivalry and Old South gallantry."
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 203. Photo: MGM. Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer in Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1234. Photo: Gabriel Pascal Prod. Publicity still for Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, 1938) with Wendy Hiller .
British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, London, no. C 363. Photo: Selznick International. Leslie Howard in Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 345. Photo: David O'Selznick Production / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) with Olivia de Havilland and Vivien Leigh . Caption: Bridal scene from Gone with the Wind.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 348. Photo: David O'Selznick Production / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) with Olivia de Havilland .
West German postcard by Schneider-Junior, Neunkirchen/Saar, no. 60. Photo: Constantin-Film. Ingrid Bergman and Leslie Howard in Intermezzo (Gregory Ratoff, 1939).
Returning home
A few days before war broke out Leslie Howard became uncomfortable with Hollywood and returned to England. He could easily have stayed in Hollywood for the duration of the war, but he was one of the first British stars to make a point of returning home. He devoted all his energy on behalf of the war effort. He directed films, wrote articles and made radio broadcasts. Howard starred in such Second World War films as 49th Parallel (Michael Powell, 1941) about a Nazi U-boat crew stranded in Canada with Laurence Olivier , Pimpernel Smith (Leslie Howard, 1941) - a World War II update of the Scarlet Pimpernel story, and The First of the Few/Spitfire (Leslie Howard, 1942) with David Niven , the latter two of which he directed and also co-produced. The First of the Few, a moving wartime biopic of R.J. Mitchell, designer of the Spitfire, was to be his last major screen role.
He stayed behind the camera on The Gentle Sex (Leslie Howard, 1943), contributing only narration, as he felt his onscreen presence would have distracted from the film's main aims, to portray and celebrate the contribution of women to the war effort. In private life, Howard was widely known as a ladies' man. He married Ruth Martin in 1916 and they had two children. His son Ronald Howard (1918) became an actor and is noted for portraying the title character in the television series Sherlock Holmes (1954). However, Leslie Howard is reported to have had an affair with Tallulah Bankhead when they appeared on stage in the UK in 'Her Cardboard Lover' (1927), with Merle Oberon while filming The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), and with Conchita Montenegro , with whom he appeared in the film Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931). Towards the end of his life, with the full knowledge of his wife, he did take a mistress, Violette Cunningham. The actress who appeared in Pimpernel Smith and First of the Few in minor roles acted as his secretary, but died in 1942 of pneumonia in her early 30s, six months before Howard's death.
Leslie Howard died in 1943 when flying to Bristol, UK, from Lisbon, Portugal. The KLM aircraft, a Douglas DC-3, was shot down by a Luftwaffe maritime fighter aircraft over the Bay of Biscay. Howard was among the 17 fatalities, together with 4 crew members and 12 other passengers. The aircraft had been operating on a scheduled Lisbon–Whitchurch route throughout 1942-1943 that did not pass over what would commonly be referred to as a war zone. By 1942, however, the Germans considered the region an ‘extremely sensitive war zone.’ On 1 June 1943, the aircraft came under attack by eight Nazi maritime fighters, and the DC-3's last radio message indicated it was being fired upon.
According to German documents, the DC-3 was shot down, some 800 km from Bordeaux, France, and 320 km northwest of Coruña, Spain. A long-standing hypothesis states that the Germans believed that UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had been in Algiers, was on board the flight. Two books focusing on the final flight, 'Flight 777' (Ian Colvin, 1957) and 'In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard' (Ronald Howard, 1984), concluded that the Germans shot down Howard's DC-3 for the specific purpose of killing him. Howard had been travelling through Spain and Portugal, ostensibly lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allied cause. The chance to demoralise Britain with the loss of one of its most outspokenly patriotic figures may have motivated the Luftwaffe attack.
Ronald Howard was convinced the order to shoot down his father’s airliner came directly from Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, who had been ridiculed in one of Howard's films and who believed Howard to be the most dangerous British propagandist. The 2010 biography by Estel Eforgan, 'Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor', examined currently available evidence and concluded that Howard was not a specific target, corroborating the claims by German sources that the shootdown was ‘an error in judgement’. At the time of his death, Leslie Howard was 50. The shockingly sudden death of this quintessentially English film star was a national tragedy. In 1959, his daughter, Leslie Ruth Howard (1924), also published a memoir of her father, 'A Quite Remarkable Father: A Biography of Leslie Howard'.
British cigarette card in the Second Film Stars series by John Player & Sons, no. 26. Photo: Radio. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.
British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 97. Photo: First National Films.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series by Real Photograph, London, no. 651.
British postcard by Art Photo, no. 97. Photo: Warner Bros & Vitaphone Pictures.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 651a. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 884. Photo: Radio.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1101a. Photo: Gabriel Pascal Prod.
Sources: Michael Brooke (BFI Screenonline), Hal Erickson (AllMovie - page now defunct), Dan van Neste (Films of the Golden Age), (IMDb), TCM (page now defunct), Wikipedia, and .
August 2, 2024
Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee (1940-1973) was a Chinese-American martial artist, actor, director, martial arts choreographer and kung fu teacher He is regarded as one of the greatest oriental martial arts actors of the 20th century. He starred in American and Hong Kong films and series. For many people, he was an inspiration and became a cultural pop icon.
American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 105-685. Photo: Universal Studios.
American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 132-426. Photo: Universal Studios.
Vintage postcard, no. 1047.
British postcard, no. C100. Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973). Caption: Bruce Lee - Mirrors.
British postcard by London Postcard Company, Leeds, no. CP 653 (Series 1 (Set 1 of 9). Photo: Canal + Image (UK) LTD. Caption: Martial Arts Meister.
The Kato Show
Bruce Lee was born in a hospital in the Chinatown section of San Francisco in 1940, the year of the Dragon according to Chinese astrology. Lee's parents were opera actors on tour in the United States during his birth. They gave several Cantonese opera performances, attended mainly by the Chinese community in the United States. His parents named him Lee Yun Fan, but the nurse recorded on his US birth certificate ‘Bruce Lee’. After three months, his parents returned with him to Hong Kong, where Lee would spend his childhood. Lee's father was called Hoi Chuen and was known in Hong Kong as both a film and opera actor. His mother Grace Ho was the adopted daughter of Ho Kom Tong, who belonged to one of Hong Kong's richest clans. His mother had a half-European half-Chinese appearance, but it is not known who Bruce Lee's mother's biological parents were.
Bruce was the second youngest of five children. His brother Peter Lee became a fencing champion and taught Bruce its basics. His younger brother Robert became a musician. Lee's first introduction to kung fu came through his father, who taught him the basics of Wu-style tai chi chuan when he was still young. Bruce Lee appeared in some Chinese films as a child thanks to his father's connections with the Hong Kong film world. As a baby, he debuted in Golden Gate Girl (Esther Eng, 1941). As a nine-year-old, he starred with his father in the film Xi lu xiang/The Kid (Fung Fung, 1950), based on a cartoon character. It was his first leading role. By the age of 18, he had played in about 20 Chinese films. None of them were martial arts films.
After attending Tak Sun School, Lee entered the prestigious Catholic La Salle College at 12. The city of Hong Kong, where Lee grew up, was then a colony of the United Kingdom. Hong Kong was a busy city and was regularly plagued by street gangs. In 1953, Bruce was beaten up by a street gang and Lee decided to take kung fu lessons. His friend William Cheung introduced him to his master Yip Man, who taught the wing chun style of kung fu. Bruce Lee became an avid practitioner, quickly progressing and becoming better than most senior students. From 1954 to 1958, he trained under Yip Man and continued training under Yip Man's senior student Wong Shun-leung. In 1956, he was transferred to St Francis Xavier's College, where he would be mentored by Brother Edward, a teacher and coach of the school's boxing team. In 1957, Bruce became the champion of the Hong Kong Amateur Boxing Championships. Lee was also a talented chachacha dancer. At a 1958 Hong Kong ballroom dancing competition, he became the champion in chachacha.
In 1959, Bruce Lee left Hong Kong for the United States with only $100 in his pocket. His US birth certificate gave him entry to the country. Lee went to study at Edison Technical School, a high school in Seattle and at the University of Washington. To support himself, Lee started teaching kung fu. At university, he met his future wife Linda C. Emery, who was one of his students in his kung fu school. After completing university, he became a full-time kung fu teacher. He soon opened a training centre in Seattle, the Jun Fan Kung Fu (Bruce Lee's Kung fu). Lee began to explore how to develop a fluid and practical martial art which allowed its practitioners to express themselves freely in choosing their preferred fighting techniques. He created a new fighting style, which he called 'jeet kune do' (method of the intercepting fist). In his fighting style, he introduced modern training methods from boxing such as fitness training, weight training and punching bag training. Lee even designed special boxing gloves for his fighting style. In 1966, Lee moved with his family to Los Angeles and opened another kung fu school there. This school was often attended by celebrities such as actors Steve McQueen and James Coburn.
Film producer William Dozier offered Lee a role in the television series The Green Hornet (1966). In this series, Lee played the character Kato, who was the sidekick of the Green Hornet (Van Williams). During the filming, Bruce Lee had to perform his fighting techniques more slowly than usual, otherwise, the camera could not capture it properly on film. The Green Hornet lasted only one season (30 episodes) beginning in the year 1966. Lee in a supporting role became more popular than the lead actor. In Hong Kong, the series aired under the name The Kato Show. Lee played some minor roles in other TV series. In 1969, Lee was involved as a martial arts choreographer in the film The Wrecking Crew (Phil Karlson, 1968), where he asked his friend Chuck Norris to act in it. Lee made his American film debut opposite James Garner in Marlowe (Paul Bogart, 1969), as a kung fu expert in the service of a gangster boss. He played a kung fu teacher in a few episodes of the series Longstreet (1971), who teaches his martial art jeet kune do to the main character, blind private eye James Franciscus. In 1971, he came up with the idea for a TV series called The Warrior, in which a Shaolin monk flees to America from China in the 19th century and has various adventures. Warner Brothers was interested, but they did not consider him suitable for the lead role. His Asian appearance would not appeal to Western viewers and this would make the series commercially unsuccessful. In the series, Kung Fu (1972), the lead role went to actor David Carradine, who had no martial arts experience and received a quick course in Shaolin kung fu for his role.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 283. French affiche by René Chateau for The Green Hornet (William Beaudine, Norman Foster, E. Darrell Hallenbeck, 1974), which had the French title Le Retour du Dragon. Several episodes of the TV series The Green Hornet (1966-1967) were edited together and released as a feature.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 282. French affiche by René Chateau for Tang shan da xiong/The Big Boss (Wei Lo, Chia-Hsiang Wu, 1971), which had the French title Big Boss.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 256. French affiche by René Chateau for Jing wu men/Fist of Fury (Wei Lo, 1972), which had the French title La furieux de vaincre.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 262. French affiche by René Chateau for Game of Death (Robert Clouse, Bruce Lee, 1978), which had the French title Le jeu de la mort.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 281. French affiche by René Chateau for the documentary Li Xiao Long De Sheng Yu Si/Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend (Shih Wu, 1973), which had the French title Bruce Lee Story: L'homme et sa légende.
Bruceploitation
Having failed to secure a film role in the United States, Bruce Lee tried his luck in the Asian film world. He moved to Hong Kong with his family. There, he met film producer Raymond Chow, who had just founded the Golden Harvest film company. At Golden Harvest, Lee began making the films that would bring him his eventual fame. He successively starred in the films Tang shan da xiong/The Big Boss (Lo Wei, Chia-Hsiang Wu, 1971), Jing wu men/Fist of Fury (Lo Wei, 1972) and Meng long guo jiang/The Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, 1972), which became huge hits in Hong Kong. In these films, actress Nora Miao plays an important role. Lee often had disagreements with director Lo Wei on the film set about how some fight scenes should be shot. Lee wanted more realistic fights and decided to direct his films from now on.
Together with Raymond Chow, he founded the Concord Production Company. His first self-directed, written and produced film was Meng long guo jiang/The Way of the Dragon (1972), shot in Rome, Italy. Chuck Norris played his antagonist in this film. Their fight in Rome's Colosseum is now one of the highlights of kung fu film history. His next film was Game of Death with Ji Han-jae, the grandmaster of Hapkido, and his students Dan Inosanto and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
He had already filmed some fight scenes for the film when he unexpectedly received an offer from Warner Brothers to star in the film Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973). Lee accepted this offer and temporarily stopped filming Game of Death to work on the new film. In Enter the Dragon, Lee co-starred with John Saxon and Jim Kelly, but he was also put in charge of the martial arts choreography. The film was eventually produced jointly by Warner Brothers, Golden Harvest and Concord Production Company. The film became a huge success in the United States and started the kung fu craze in the 1970s. However, Lee would not live to see it, as he would die three weeks before the film's premiere. Due to the great commercial success of Enter the Dragon, Lee's earlier films, which had only been released in Hong Kong, were now released internationally.
On 10 May 1973, while recording the sound for Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee suddenly fell. Unconscious, he was transferred to Hong Kong Baptist Hospital where a doctor diagnosed Lee as suffering from swelling in the brain and gave him medication for this. A small amount of the drug cannabis was also removed from his stomach. The next day, Lee confirmed that he sometimes chewed cannabis from Nepal and that he had chewed cannabis on the day he passed out. His doctor warned him to stop doing this. Later, after the filming of Enter the Dragon was completed, Lee wanted to resume Game of Death. On 20 July 1973, he and film producer Raymond Chow met with co-stars Betty Ting Pei and George Lazenby. During his visit to Pei, Lee suffered from a headache. He was offered a painkiller by her. After taking the pill, he lay down for a while to get some rest. Chow left earlier to arrange dinner with Lazenby at a restaurant. When Chow was waiting with Lazenby at the restaurant and Lee kept not showing up, he decided to call Pei. She said that she could not wake Lee up. Chow rushed to Pei's house and a doctor was called in. Lee was found to be in a coma. Lee was transferred by ambulance to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong. Arriving at the hospital, Bruce Lee had already died. The cause of his death is still controversial. The official explanation describes it as an allergic reaction to painkillers. When his body was autopsied, cannabis was found in his stomach, after which his wife Linda admitted, Bruce Lee occasionally used cannabis. However, doctors argued that the amount of cannabis found did not affect Lee's death.
A symbolic funeral ceremony was held in Hong Kong on 25 July 1973, where his body was put on display. Besides his family and friends, some 30,000 fans attended this funeral ceremony. Afterwards, his body was flown to Seattle and a small ceremony was held in Lakeview Cemetery on 30 July 1973. After James Coburn gave a short speech, Bruce Lee was buried. Lee's death was followed by 'Bruceploitation'. Hong Kong film companies started looking for a replacement for their biggest star and cast actors with stage names such as Bruce Li, Bruce Le, and Dragon Lee in many low-budget films. Robert Clouse, the director of Enter the Dragon, completed the unfinished film Game of Death (Robert Clouse, Bruce Lee, 1978). The original screenplay was completely rewritten. Clouse used only 15 minutes of the already shot film material and with the help of actor Kim Tai Chung, who resembled Bruce Lee, the rest of the scenes were filmed. Many fans considered the film a laughable and commercial exploitation of Lee's legacy. The documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (John Little, Bruce Lee, 2000) reconstructed how Lee had originally intended the film Game of Death. The documentary showed the full scenes of the film, which had never been shown to the public before.
Vintage postcard, no. 1049.
Vintage postcard.
Thai postcard by Suwan Studio / Starpics.
French postcard by Pierron Impremerie, no. 25.
British postcard. Bruce and his son Brandon Lee .
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and .
American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 105-685. Photo: Universal Studios.
American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 132-426. Photo: Universal Studios.
Vintage postcard, no. 1047.
British postcard, no. C100. Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973). Caption: Bruce Lee - Mirrors.
British postcard by London Postcard Company, Leeds, no. CP 653 (Series 1 (Set 1 of 9). Photo: Canal + Image (UK) LTD. Caption: Martial Arts Meister.
The Kato Show
Bruce Lee was born in a hospital in the Chinatown section of San Francisco in 1940, the year of the Dragon according to Chinese astrology. Lee's parents were opera actors on tour in the United States during his birth. They gave several Cantonese opera performances, attended mainly by the Chinese community in the United States. His parents named him Lee Yun Fan, but the nurse recorded on his US birth certificate ‘Bruce Lee’. After three months, his parents returned with him to Hong Kong, where Lee would spend his childhood. Lee's father was called Hoi Chuen and was known in Hong Kong as both a film and opera actor. His mother Grace Ho was the adopted daughter of Ho Kom Tong, who belonged to one of Hong Kong's richest clans. His mother had a half-European half-Chinese appearance, but it is not known who Bruce Lee's mother's biological parents were.
Bruce was the second youngest of five children. His brother Peter Lee became a fencing champion and taught Bruce its basics. His younger brother Robert became a musician. Lee's first introduction to kung fu came through his father, who taught him the basics of Wu-style tai chi chuan when he was still young. Bruce Lee appeared in some Chinese films as a child thanks to his father's connections with the Hong Kong film world. As a baby, he debuted in Golden Gate Girl (Esther Eng, 1941). As a nine-year-old, he starred with his father in the film Xi lu xiang/The Kid (Fung Fung, 1950), based on a cartoon character. It was his first leading role. By the age of 18, he had played in about 20 Chinese films. None of them were martial arts films.
After attending Tak Sun School, Lee entered the prestigious Catholic La Salle College at 12. The city of Hong Kong, where Lee grew up, was then a colony of the United Kingdom. Hong Kong was a busy city and was regularly plagued by street gangs. In 1953, Bruce was beaten up by a street gang and Lee decided to take kung fu lessons. His friend William Cheung introduced him to his master Yip Man, who taught the wing chun style of kung fu. Bruce Lee became an avid practitioner, quickly progressing and becoming better than most senior students. From 1954 to 1958, he trained under Yip Man and continued training under Yip Man's senior student Wong Shun-leung. In 1956, he was transferred to St Francis Xavier's College, where he would be mentored by Brother Edward, a teacher and coach of the school's boxing team. In 1957, Bruce became the champion of the Hong Kong Amateur Boxing Championships. Lee was also a talented chachacha dancer. At a 1958 Hong Kong ballroom dancing competition, he became the champion in chachacha.
In 1959, Bruce Lee left Hong Kong for the United States with only $100 in his pocket. His US birth certificate gave him entry to the country. Lee went to study at Edison Technical School, a high school in Seattle and at the University of Washington. To support himself, Lee started teaching kung fu. At university, he met his future wife Linda C. Emery, who was one of his students in his kung fu school. After completing university, he became a full-time kung fu teacher. He soon opened a training centre in Seattle, the Jun Fan Kung Fu (Bruce Lee's Kung fu). Lee began to explore how to develop a fluid and practical martial art which allowed its practitioners to express themselves freely in choosing their preferred fighting techniques. He created a new fighting style, which he called 'jeet kune do' (method of the intercepting fist). In his fighting style, he introduced modern training methods from boxing such as fitness training, weight training and punching bag training. Lee even designed special boxing gloves for his fighting style. In 1966, Lee moved with his family to Los Angeles and opened another kung fu school there. This school was often attended by celebrities such as actors Steve McQueen and James Coburn.
Film producer William Dozier offered Lee a role in the television series The Green Hornet (1966). In this series, Lee played the character Kato, who was the sidekick of the Green Hornet (Van Williams). During the filming, Bruce Lee had to perform his fighting techniques more slowly than usual, otherwise, the camera could not capture it properly on film. The Green Hornet lasted only one season (30 episodes) beginning in the year 1966. Lee in a supporting role became more popular than the lead actor. In Hong Kong, the series aired under the name The Kato Show. Lee played some minor roles in other TV series. In 1969, Lee was involved as a martial arts choreographer in the film The Wrecking Crew (Phil Karlson, 1968), where he asked his friend Chuck Norris to act in it. Lee made his American film debut opposite James Garner in Marlowe (Paul Bogart, 1969), as a kung fu expert in the service of a gangster boss. He played a kung fu teacher in a few episodes of the series Longstreet (1971), who teaches his martial art jeet kune do to the main character, blind private eye James Franciscus. In 1971, he came up with the idea for a TV series called The Warrior, in which a Shaolin monk flees to America from China in the 19th century and has various adventures. Warner Brothers was interested, but they did not consider him suitable for the lead role. His Asian appearance would not appeal to Western viewers and this would make the series commercially unsuccessful. In the series, Kung Fu (1972), the lead role went to actor David Carradine, who had no martial arts experience and received a quick course in Shaolin kung fu for his role.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 283. French affiche by René Chateau for The Green Hornet (William Beaudine, Norman Foster, E. Darrell Hallenbeck, 1974), which had the French title Le Retour du Dragon. Several episodes of the TV series The Green Hornet (1966-1967) were edited together and released as a feature.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 282. French affiche by René Chateau for Tang shan da xiong/The Big Boss (Wei Lo, Chia-Hsiang Wu, 1971), which had the French title Big Boss.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 256. French affiche by René Chateau for Jing wu men/Fist of Fury (Wei Lo, 1972), which had the French title La furieux de vaincre.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 262. French affiche by René Chateau for Game of Death (Robert Clouse, Bruce Lee, 1978), which had the French title Le jeu de la mort.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 281. French affiche by René Chateau for the documentary Li Xiao Long De Sheng Yu Si/Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend (Shih Wu, 1973), which had the French title Bruce Lee Story: L'homme et sa légende.
Bruceploitation
Having failed to secure a film role in the United States, Bruce Lee tried his luck in the Asian film world. He moved to Hong Kong with his family. There, he met film producer Raymond Chow, who had just founded the Golden Harvest film company. At Golden Harvest, Lee began making the films that would bring him his eventual fame. He successively starred in the films Tang shan da xiong/The Big Boss (Lo Wei, Chia-Hsiang Wu, 1971), Jing wu men/Fist of Fury (Lo Wei, 1972) and Meng long guo jiang/The Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, 1972), which became huge hits in Hong Kong. In these films, actress Nora Miao plays an important role. Lee often had disagreements with director Lo Wei on the film set about how some fight scenes should be shot. Lee wanted more realistic fights and decided to direct his films from now on.
Together with Raymond Chow, he founded the Concord Production Company. His first self-directed, written and produced film was Meng long guo jiang/The Way of the Dragon (1972), shot in Rome, Italy. Chuck Norris played his antagonist in this film. Their fight in Rome's Colosseum is now one of the highlights of kung fu film history. His next film was Game of Death with Ji Han-jae, the grandmaster of Hapkido, and his students Dan Inosanto and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
He had already filmed some fight scenes for the film when he unexpectedly received an offer from Warner Brothers to star in the film Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973). Lee accepted this offer and temporarily stopped filming Game of Death to work on the new film. In Enter the Dragon, Lee co-starred with John Saxon and Jim Kelly, but he was also put in charge of the martial arts choreography. The film was eventually produced jointly by Warner Brothers, Golden Harvest and Concord Production Company. The film became a huge success in the United States and started the kung fu craze in the 1970s. However, Lee would not live to see it, as he would die three weeks before the film's premiere. Due to the great commercial success of Enter the Dragon, Lee's earlier films, which had only been released in Hong Kong, were now released internationally.
On 10 May 1973, while recording the sound for Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee suddenly fell. Unconscious, he was transferred to Hong Kong Baptist Hospital where a doctor diagnosed Lee as suffering from swelling in the brain and gave him medication for this. A small amount of the drug cannabis was also removed from his stomach. The next day, Lee confirmed that he sometimes chewed cannabis from Nepal and that he had chewed cannabis on the day he passed out. His doctor warned him to stop doing this. Later, after the filming of Enter the Dragon was completed, Lee wanted to resume Game of Death. On 20 July 1973, he and film producer Raymond Chow met with co-stars Betty Ting Pei and George Lazenby. During his visit to Pei, Lee suffered from a headache. He was offered a painkiller by her. After taking the pill, he lay down for a while to get some rest. Chow left earlier to arrange dinner with Lazenby at a restaurant. When Chow was waiting with Lazenby at the restaurant and Lee kept not showing up, he decided to call Pei. She said that she could not wake Lee up. Chow rushed to Pei's house and a doctor was called in. Lee was found to be in a coma. Lee was transferred by ambulance to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong. Arriving at the hospital, Bruce Lee had already died. The cause of his death is still controversial. The official explanation describes it as an allergic reaction to painkillers. When his body was autopsied, cannabis was found in his stomach, after which his wife Linda admitted, Bruce Lee occasionally used cannabis. However, doctors argued that the amount of cannabis found did not affect Lee's death.
A symbolic funeral ceremony was held in Hong Kong on 25 July 1973, where his body was put on display. Besides his family and friends, some 30,000 fans attended this funeral ceremony. Afterwards, his body was flown to Seattle and a small ceremony was held in Lakeview Cemetery on 30 July 1973. After James Coburn gave a short speech, Bruce Lee was buried. Lee's death was followed by 'Bruceploitation'. Hong Kong film companies started looking for a replacement for their biggest star and cast actors with stage names such as Bruce Li, Bruce Le, and Dragon Lee in many low-budget films. Robert Clouse, the director of Enter the Dragon, completed the unfinished film Game of Death (Robert Clouse, Bruce Lee, 1978). The original screenplay was completely rewritten. Clouse used only 15 minutes of the already shot film material and with the help of actor Kim Tai Chung, who resembled Bruce Lee, the rest of the scenes were filmed. Many fans considered the film a laughable and commercial exploitation of Lee's legacy. The documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey (John Little, Bruce Lee, 2000) reconstructed how Lee had originally intended the film Game of Death. The documentary showed the full scenes of the film, which had never been shown to the public before.
Vintage postcard, no. 1049.
Vintage postcard.
Thai postcard by Suwan Studio / Starpics.
French postcard by Pierron Impremerie, no. 25.
British postcard. Bruce and his son Brandon Lee .
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and .
August 1, 2024
Marcelle Yrven
Marcelle Yrven or simply Yrven (1877-1954), was a French stage and screen actress and operetta singer. She was popular in spicy plays such as 'Le Jumeau' (1903) and 'Nuit de Noces' (1904). In the 1930s she played supporting roles in several films.
French postcard by ND. Photo: H. Manuel. Marcelle Yrven in the play 'La Nuit de Noces' ('The Wedding Night', 1904) by Henri Kéroul and Albert Barré.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 920/... Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by L.O.D., no. 248. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard. Photo: Henri Manuel. Caption: Folies Dramatiques.
Spicy plays
Marcelle Yrven was born Marthe Marie Aglaé Wary in 1877 in Paris.
She started her stage career at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 'La Poudre de Perlinpinpin' (brothers Cogniard, 1898) and the operetta 'Le Petit Chaperon rouge' (Little Red Riding Hood, 1900).
Between 1903 and 1907 she was popular at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques in spicy plays such as 'Le Jumeau' (1903) and 'Nuit de Noces' (1904) by Henri Kéroul and Albert Barré in whose plays she often performed. She also acted in 'Volcan d' Amour' (1905) by Michel Carré who would become a prolific film director at Pathé.
In 1907 Yrven moved to the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, where she acted in plays by George Berr and others. In the early 1910s, she worked at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and Théâtre de la Renaissance.
Yrven would continue to act on stage in the 1920s and 1930s, though less frequently.
French postcard. Caption: Folies-Dramatiques. Urven is wearing a liotard.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 854-14. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris. Caption: (Théâtre de l') Athénée. Sent by mail in Besançon in 1905.
French postcard by ND Phot., no. 210. Photo: H. Manuel. Caption: Folies-Dramatiques.
Actress and feminist
Marcelle Yrven was visible as herself in Henri Diamant-Berger's actualities compilation film Paris pendant la guerre (1916). In the 1920s, she acted in Un fil à la patte (1925) by Robert Saidreau.
IMDb and Wikipedia confuse her with Marcelle Irven, who with her sister Geneviève had a popular (nude) dance act in the 1920s, performing as Les Soeurs Irvin. and both performed in the silent films J'ai tué (Roger Lion, 1924) and Le Tourbillon de Paris (Julien Duvivier, 1928). The sisters already performed in films when they were young.
From 1935 to 1937, Marcelle Yrven had nine supporting parts in French sound cinema, when she was in her fifties. Examples are Train de plaisir (Léo Joannon, 1936), starring Frédéric Duvallès , and La Belle Équipe (Julien Duvivier, 1936) starring Jean Gabin and Charles Vanel . She had her last parts in the Italo-French coproduction Angélica/Rosa di sangue (Jean Choux, 1939), starring Viviane Romance and Georges Flamant , and Fièvres (Jean Delannoy, 1942), starring Tino Rossi .
In the latter film, Yrven played an old actress, something she had become in real life too. Marcelle Yrven died in 1954 in Paris. She was the wife of songwriter and playwright Charles-Alexis Carpentier (1879-1929).
In 1914 Yrven published the book 'La comédienne et le féminisme', in which she pleaded for a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre. Bernard Quaritch: "Stage and film actress Marcelle Yrven (1877–1954) here argues that an actress’s beauty and education are not mutually exclusive. For Yrven, feminism is ‘when women want to rise up, not to be inferior to men but to equal or even surpass them, drawing upon their intelligence, their education, their individual qualities, their activity, and their curiosity’ (p. 9 trans.). Citing Colette as a prime example of a femme de lettres who achieved great success on the stage, she urges young women to swap cloak-and-dagger tales and feuilletons for Moliere, Racine, Corneille, and Hugo. Once the work of these ‘cardinal authors’ has been mastered, the aspiring actress should read widely, turning to anthologies for a variety of poetry and prose and subsequently turning to masterpieces of French drama."
French postcard. Photo: Manuel.
French postcard by V.P., Paris. Caption: Folies Dramatiques.
French postcard. Photo: H. Manuel, Paris. Caption: Folies Dramatiques.
French postcard by MVB, no. 1978. Caption: Folies-Dramatiques.
Sources: Les Archives du spectacle, Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (French), Wikipedia (French) and . With additional information by Marlene Pilaete.
French postcard by ND. Photo: H. Manuel. Marcelle Yrven in the play 'La Nuit de Noces' ('The Wedding Night', 1904) by Henri Kéroul and Albert Barré.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 920/... Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by L.O.D., no. 248. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard. Photo: Henri Manuel. Caption: Folies Dramatiques.
Spicy plays
Marcelle Yrven was born Marthe Marie Aglaé Wary in 1877 in Paris.
She started her stage career at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 'La Poudre de Perlinpinpin' (brothers Cogniard, 1898) and the operetta 'Le Petit Chaperon rouge' (Little Red Riding Hood, 1900).
Between 1903 and 1907 she was popular at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques in spicy plays such as 'Le Jumeau' (1903) and 'Nuit de Noces' (1904) by Henri Kéroul and Albert Barré in whose plays she often performed. She also acted in 'Volcan d' Amour' (1905) by Michel Carré who would become a prolific film director at Pathé.
In 1907 Yrven moved to the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, where she acted in plays by George Berr and others. In the early 1910s, she worked at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin and Théâtre de la Renaissance.
Yrven would continue to act on stage in the 1920s and 1930s, though less frequently.
French postcard. Caption: Folies-Dramatiques. Urven is wearing a liotard.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 854-14. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris. Caption: (Théâtre de l') Athénée. Sent by mail in Besançon in 1905.
French postcard by ND Phot., no. 210. Photo: H. Manuel. Caption: Folies-Dramatiques.
Actress and feminist
Marcelle Yrven was visible as herself in Henri Diamant-Berger's actualities compilation film Paris pendant la guerre (1916). In the 1920s, she acted in Un fil à la patte (1925) by Robert Saidreau.
IMDb and Wikipedia confuse her with Marcelle Irven, who with her sister Geneviève had a popular (nude) dance act in the 1920s, performing as Les Soeurs Irvin. and both performed in the silent films J'ai tué (Roger Lion, 1924) and Le Tourbillon de Paris (Julien Duvivier, 1928). The sisters already performed in films when they were young.
From 1935 to 1937, Marcelle Yrven had nine supporting parts in French sound cinema, when she was in her fifties. Examples are Train de plaisir (Léo Joannon, 1936), starring Frédéric Duvallès , and La Belle Équipe (Julien Duvivier, 1936) starring Jean Gabin and Charles Vanel . She had her last parts in the Italo-French coproduction Angélica/Rosa di sangue (Jean Choux, 1939), starring Viviane Romance and Georges Flamant , and Fièvres (Jean Delannoy, 1942), starring Tino Rossi .
In the latter film, Yrven played an old actress, something she had become in real life too. Marcelle Yrven died in 1954 in Paris. She was the wife of songwriter and playwright Charles-Alexis Carpentier (1879-1929).
In 1914 Yrven published the book 'La comédienne et le féminisme', in which she pleaded for a thorough literary and cultural education for women in theatre. Bernard Quaritch: "Stage and film actress Marcelle Yrven (1877–1954) here argues that an actress’s beauty and education are not mutually exclusive. For Yrven, feminism is ‘when women want to rise up, not to be inferior to men but to equal or even surpass them, drawing upon their intelligence, their education, their individual qualities, their activity, and their curiosity’ (p. 9 trans.). Citing Colette as a prime example of a femme de lettres who achieved great success on the stage, she urges young women to swap cloak-and-dagger tales and feuilletons for Moliere, Racine, Corneille, and Hugo. Once the work of these ‘cardinal authors’ has been mastered, the aspiring actress should read widely, turning to anthologies for a variety of poetry and prose and subsequently turning to masterpieces of French drama."
French postcard. Photo: Manuel.
French postcard by V.P., Paris. Caption: Folies Dramatiques.
French postcard. Photo: H. Manuel, Paris. Caption: Folies Dramatiques.
French postcard by MVB, no. 1978. Caption: Folies-Dramatiques.
Sources: Les Archives du spectacle, Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (French), Wikipedia (French) and . With additional information by Marlene Pilaete.
July 31, 2024
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (1941) is an American singer-songwriter, author, visual artist and incidental actor who has been a major figure in popular culture for more than fifty years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when songs such as 'Blowin' in the Wind' (1963) and 'The Times They Are a-Changin'' (1964) became anthems for the civil rights movement and anti-war movement. His lyrics during this period incorporated a wide range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defied pop-music conventions, and appealed to the burgeoning counterculture. Dylan has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 1266A. Photo: CBS.
German postcard by Sony Music. Photo: Elliott Landy.
Like a Rolling Stone
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. Dylan's father was Abram Zimmerman, who was an electric-appliance shop owner ( Wikipedia ) or worked for the Standard Oil Co. (IMDb) and his mother was Beatrice 'Beatty' Stone. He has a brother named David Zimmerman. The family was part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six when his father had polio. The family returned to his mother's hometown, Hibbing, often called the coldest place in the US. There they lived for the rest of Dylan's childhood. Bob taught himself piano and guitar. In his early years he listened to the radio—first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later, when he was a teenager, to rock and roll. Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley .
In 1959, Dylan moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music. Dylan began to perform at the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit. In 1961, he travelled to New York City to perform there and visit his musical hero Woody Guthrie, who was ill and in hospital. In clubs around Greenwich Village, he befriended folk singers and picked up material from them. Producer John Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records. His debut album 'Bob Dylan' (1962) mainly comprised traditional folk songs. The following year, Dylan made his breakthrough as a singer-songwriter with the release of 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' (1963). The album featured 'Blowin' in the Wind' and the thematically complex 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall'. For many of these songs, he adapted the tunes and phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically charged 'The Times They Are a-Changin'' and the more lyrically abstract and introspective 'Another Side of Bob Dylan' (1964).
In the following years, Dylan toured with singer Joan Baez and encountered controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation. In the space of 15 months, he recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: 'Bringing It All Back Home' (1965), 'Highway 61 Revisited' (1965) and 'Blonde on Blonde' (1966). The six-minute single 'Like a Rolling Stone' (1965), peaked at number two in the U.S. chart. Magazine Rolling Stone : "No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time." In July 1966, Bob Dylan withdrew from touring after being injured in a motorcycle accident. Dylan later in his autobiography: "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. The truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race." Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years. Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker's film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television, which rejected it as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. The film was subsequently titled Eat the Document on bootleg copies, and it has been screened at a handful of film festivals.
During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of The Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative album 'The Basement Tapes' in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes in 'John Wesley Harding' (1967), 'Nashville Skyline' (1969), and 'New Morning' (1970). Critics charged that Dylan's output was varied and unpredictable. In 1972, Dylan worked on the Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973) starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. He provided songs and backing music and played Alias, a member of Billy's gang with some historical basis. Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' became one of Dylan's most covered songs. In 1975, he released 'Blood on the Tracks', which many saw as a return to form. Dylan wrote a ballad championing boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote 'Hurricane', presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its length - over eight minutes - the song was released as a single, peaking at 33 on the U.S. Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue.
The Rolling Thunder Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara (Bob Dylan, 1978), a mix of concert footage, documentary interviews and bizarre improvised character scenes. After poor reviews, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released. In November 1976, Dylan appeared at The Band's 'farewell' concert. Martin Scorsese's documentary, The Last Waltz (1978), included about half of Dylan's set. In the late 1970s, Bob Dylan became a born-again Christian and released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. In 1985 Dylan sang on USA for Africa's famine relief single 'We Are the World.' He also joined Artists United Against Apartheid providing vocals for their single 'Sun City'. In 1987, Dylan starred in the film Hearts of Fire (Richard Marquand, 1987), in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation played by Rupert Everett . Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack, 'Night After Night', and 'I Had a Dream About You, Baby', as well as a cover of John Hiatt's 'The Usual.' The film was a critical and commercial flop.
American postcard by Fotofolio, N.Y., N.Y., no. Z308. Photo: Elliott Landy. Caption: Bob Dylan, Woodstock, New York, 1968. He turned down an offer to headline the legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969 (Jimi Hendrix ultimately headlined), even though he had been living on a farm in Woodstock for many years at that point.
American postcard by Fotofolio. Photo: Elliott Landy. Caption: Bob Dylan, 1969.
No Direction Home
Since the late 1980s, Bob Dylan and a changing lineup of musicians toured steadily on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. Major works of his later career include 'Time Out of Mind' (1997), 'Love and Theft' (2001), 'Modern Times' (2006) and 'Tempest' (2012). In 2001, Dylan won his first Oscar for his song 'Things Have Changed', written for the film Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2000) starring Michael Douglas . Dylan's most recent recordings have comprised versions of traditional American standards, especially songs recorded by Frank Sinatra .
The cover of Dylan's album 'Self Portrait' (1970) was a reproduction of a painting by Dylan. Another of his paintings was reproduced on the cover of the 1974 album 'Planet Waves'. In 1994, Random House published 'Drawn Blank', a book of Dylan's drawings. Since then, Bob Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings, 'The Drawn Blank Series', opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany. It showcased more than 200 watercolours and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of 'Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series', which included 170 reproductions from the series. From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, 'The Brazil Series'.
In 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, 'Chronicles: Volume One'. The book reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award. No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film biography of Dylan was first broadcast in 2005. The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, and Dylan himself.
Dylan's career as a radio presenter commenced in 2006, with his weekly radio program, 'Theme Time Radio Hour' for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections revolving around chosen themes. In 2007, the award-winning film biography of Dylan, I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released. The film used six different actors to represent different aspects of Dylan's life: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere , Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." In 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Dylan a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House. At the ceremony, Obama praised Dylan's voice for its "unique gravelly power that redefined not just what music sounded like but the message it carried and how it made people feel". In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
Netflix released Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese, 2019), describing the film as "part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream". Bob Dylan had romantic relationships with artist Suze Rotolo and singer Joan Baez. He was married twice. In 1965 he married model and secretary Sara Lownds, with whom he had four children, Jesse Byron Dylan (1966), Anna Lea (1967), Samuel Isaac Abram (1968), and Jakob Luke (1969). Jakob Dylan became well known as the lead singer of the band the Wallflowers in the 1990s. Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds (later Maria Dylan, 1961). Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced in 1977. In 1986, Dylan married his backup singer Carolyn Dennis. Their daughter Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan was born in 1986. The couple divorced in 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes' biography 'Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan' (2001). When not touring, Bob Dylan is believed to live primarily in Point Dume, a promontory on the coast of Malibu, California, though he also owns property around the world.
French collector card by Panini, no. 97. Photo: CBS.
French postcard by PSG, no. 1266 A, offered by Corvisart, Epinal. Photo: CBS.
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 1266A. Photo: CBS.
German postcard by Sony Music. Photo: Elliott Landy.
Like a Rolling Stone
Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota. Dylan's father was Abram Zimmerman, who was an electric-appliance shop owner ( Wikipedia ) or worked for the Standard Oil Co. (IMDb) and his mother was Beatrice 'Beatty' Stone. He has a brother named David Zimmerman. The family was part of a small, close-knit Jewish community. They lived in Duluth until Dylan was six when his father had polio. The family returned to his mother's hometown, Hibbing, often called the coldest place in the US. There they lived for the rest of Dylan's childhood. Bob taught himself piano and guitar. In his early years he listened to the radio—first to blues and country stations from Shreveport, Louisiana, and later, when he was a teenager, to rock and roll. Dylan formed several bands while attending Hibbing High School. In the Golden Chords, he performed covers of songs by Little Richard and Elvis Presley .
In 1959, Dylan moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. His focus on rock and roll gave way to American folk music. Dylan began to perform at the Ten O'Clock Scholar, a coffeehouse a few blocks from campus and became involved in the Dinkytown folk music circuit. In 1961, he travelled to New York City to perform there and visit his musical hero Woody Guthrie, who was ill and in hospital. In clubs around Greenwich Village, he befriended folk singers and picked up material from them. Producer John Hammond signed Dylan to Columbia Records. His debut album 'Bob Dylan' (1962) mainly comprised traditional folk songs. The following year, Dylan made his breakthrough as a singer-songwriter with the release of 'The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan' (1963). The album featured 'Blowin' in the Wind' and the thematically complex 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall'. For many of these songs, he adapted the tunes and phraseology of older folk songs. He went on to release the politically charged 'The Times They Are a-Changin'' and the more lyrically abstract and introspective 'Another Side of Bob Dylan' (1964).
In the following years, Dylan toured with singer Joan Baez and encountered controversy when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation. In the space of 15 months, he recorded three of the most important and influential rock albums of the 1960s: 'Bringing It All Back Home' (1965), 'Highway 61 Revisited' (1965) and 'Blonde on Blonde' (1966). The six-minute single 'Like a Rolling Stone' (1965), peaked at number two in the U.S. chart. Magazine Rolling Stone : "No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time." In July 1966, Bob Dylan withdrew from touring after being injured in a motorcycle accident. Dylan later in his autobiography: "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. The truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race." Dylan withdrew from public and, apart from a few appearances, did not tour again for almost eight years. Once Dylan was well enough to resume creative work, he began to edit D. A. Pennebaker's film of his 1966 tour. A rough cut was shown to ABC Television, which rejected it as incomprehensible to a mainstream audience. The film was subsequently titled Eat the Document on bootleg copies, and it has been screened at a handful of film festivals.
During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of The Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were released as the collaborative album 'The Basement Tapes' in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes in 'John Wesley Harding' (1967), 'Nashville Skyline' (1969), and 'New Morning' (1970). Critics charged that Dylan's output was varied and unpredictable. In 1972, Dylan worked on the Western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973) starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. He provided songs and backing music and played Alias, a member of Billy's gang with some historical basis. Despite the film's failure at the box office, the song 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' became one of Dylan's most covered songs. In 1975, he released 'Blood on the Tracks', which many saw as a return to form. Dylan wrote a ballad championing boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter, imprisoned for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966. After visiting Carter in jail, Dylan wrote 'Hurricane', presenting the case for Carter's innocence. Despite its length - over eight minutes - the song was released as a single, peaking at 33 on the U.S. Billboard chart, and performed at every 1975 date of Dylan's tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue.
The Rolling Thunder Revue provided the backdrop to Dylan's nearly four-hour film Renaldo and Clara (Bob Dylan, 1978), a mix of concert footage, documentary interviews and bizarre improvised character scenes. After poor reviews, a two-hour edit, dominated by the concert performances, was more widely released. In November 1976, Dylan appeared at The Band's 'farewell' concert. Martin Scorsese's documentary, The Last Waltz (1978), included about half of Dylan's set. In the late 1970s, Bob Dylan became a born-again Christian and released a series of albums of contemporary gospel music before returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. In 1985 Dylan sang on USA for Africa's famine relief single 'We Are the World.' He also joined Artists United Against Apartheid providing vocals for their single 'Sun City'. In 1987, Dylan starred in the film Hearts of Fire (Richard Marquand, 1987), in which he played Billy Parker, a washed-up rock star turned chicken farmer whose teenage lover (Fiona) leaves him for a jaded English synth-pop sensation played by Rupert Everett . Dylan also contributed two original songs to the soundtrack, 'Night After Night', and 'I Had a Dream About You, Baby', as well as a cover of John Hiatt's 'The Usual.' The film was a critical and commercial flop.
American postcard by Fotofolio, N.Y., N.Y., no. Z308. Photo: Elliott Landy. Caption: Bob Dylan, Woodstock, New York, 1968. He turned down an offer to headline the legendary Woodstock Festival in 1969 (Jimi Hendrix ultimately headlined), even though he had been living on a farm in Woodstock for many years at that point.
American postcard by Fotofolio. Photo: Elliott Landy. Caption: Bob Dylan, 1969.
No Direction Home
Since the late 1980s, Bob Dylan and a changing lineup of musicians toured steadily on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour. Major works of his later career include 'Time Out of Mind' (1997), 'Love and Theft' (2001), 'Modern Times' (2006) and 'Tempest' (2012). In 2001, Dylan won his first Oscar for his song 'Things Have Changed', written for the film Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson, 2000) starring Michael Douglas . Dylan's most recent recordings have comprised versions of traditional American standards, especially songs recorded by Frank Sinatra .
The cover of Dylan's album 'Self Portrait' (1970) was a reproduction of a painting by Dylan. Another of his paintings was reproduced on the cover of the 1974 album 'Planet Waves'. In 1994, Random House published 'Drawn Blank', a book of Dylan's drawings. Since then, Bob Dylan has published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. In 2007, the first public exhibition of Dylan's paintings, 'The Drawn Blank Series', opened at the Kunstsammlungen in Chemnitz, Germany. It showcased more than 200 watercolours and gouaches made from the original drawings. The exhibition coincided with the publication of 'Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series', which included 170 reproductions from the series. From September 2010 until April 2011, the National Gallery of Denmark exhibited 40 large-scale acrylic paintings by Dylan, 'The Brazil Series'.
In 2004, Dylan published the first part of his autobiography, 'Chronicles: Volume One'. The book reached number two on The New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction best seller list in December 2004 and was nominated for a National Book Award. No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's acclaimed film biography of Dylan was first broadcast in 2005. The documentary focuses on the period from Dylan's arrival in New York in 1961 to his motorcycle crash in 1966, featuring interviews with Suze Rotolo, Liam Clancy, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, and Dylan himself.
Dylan's career as a radio presenter commenced in 2006, with his weekly radio program, 'Theme Time Radio Hour' for XM Satellite Radio, with song selections revolving around chosen themes. In 2007, the award-winning film biography of Dylan, I'm Not There, written and directed by Todd Haynes, was released. The film used six different actors to represent different aspects of Dylan's life: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere , Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw. The Pulitzer Prize Board in 2008 awarded him a special citation for "his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power." In 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama awarded Dylan a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House. At the ceremony, Obama praised Dylan's voice for its "unique gravelly power that redefined not just what music sounded like but the message it carried and how it made people feel". In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
Netflix released Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese, 2019), describing the film as "part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream". Bob Dylan had romantic relationships with artist Suze Rotolo and singer Joan Baez. He was married twice. In 1965 he married model and secretary Sara Lownds, with whom he had four children, Jesse Byron Dylan (1966), Anna Lea (1967), Samuel Isaac Abram (1968), and Jakob Luke (1969). Jakob Dylan became well known as the lead singer of the band the Wallflowers in the 1990s. Dylan also adopted Sara's daughter from a prior marriage, Maria Lownds (later Maria Dylan, 1961). Bob and Sara Dylan were divorced in 1977. In 1986, Dylan married his backup singer Carolyn Dennis. Their daughter Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan was born in 1986. The couple divorced in 1992. Their marriage and child remained a closely guarded secret until the publication of Howard Sounes' biography 'Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan' (2001). When not touring, Bob Dylan is believed to live primarily in Point Dume, a promontory on the coast of Malibu, California, though he also owns property around the world.
French collector card by Panini, no. 97. Photo: CBS.
French postcard by PSG, no. 1266 A, offered by Corvisart, Epinal. Photo: CBS.
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
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