The Golden Age of Hollywood
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Goylake Publishing
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Picture credits: all pictures are in the public domain, or are from the Goylake Publishing archive, except where stated.
Publishing
Copyright © 2022 Goylake
Credits Starring
Gene Tierney
Clara Bow
Eva Marie Saint Myrna Loy
Corrine Griffith Sidney Poitier Joseph Cotten
Burt Lancaster Gilbert Roland Tippi Hedren Jean Arthur Jennifer Jones Jeanne Crain Florence Lawrence Peg Entwistle
Art Director: Rhys Jones
Writer: Hannah Howe Director: Mansel Jones
Producer: Daniela Jones
Welcome
Welcome to The Golden Age of Hollywood, a celebration of motion pictures, and the people involved in those pictures, from the 1920s through to the 1960s.
It’s our intention to publish this eMagazine quarterly: winter, spring, summer, autumn, etcetera. Our Winter 2022 superstar is Gene Tierney. In our article on Gene you can read about her movies, her personal life, and her struggles with her mental health. Gene’s courage, fortitude and candour in discussing her mental health issues is to be admired, and we hope our feature does justice to the actress and the person.
In this issue you will also find features on leading actresses and actors, highest grossing movies, classic movies, movie posters, and so much more!
We hope that you will enjoy the content.
Pen Portraits
Clara Bow
Clara Bow was born into poverty in Brooklyn on 29 July 1905. Her father was an alcoholic while her mother suffered from severe mental health problems; she died in an asylum when Clara was a teenager.
Just before her mother’s death, Clara entered an acting competition. One of the prizes was a small part in a movie. Clara won that competition and was so impressive in the small part that she won further roles, and a contract in the newly-developing Hollywood.
Clara’s great ‘skill’ was to cry on demand. She later said that she only had to think of her home life and it reduced her to tears. She became the leading star of the silent era and made the transition into talkies.
In total, Clara made 46 silent films and 11 talkies. However, the strain of Hollywood and her bohemian lifestyle meant that she retired from movies in 1933 to live on a ranch in Nevada.
Must see Clara Bow movie: It, 1927, a movie that made Clara the leading symbol of the Roaring Twenties.
Eva Marie Saint
Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924. Her ancestors were Quakers. In a career spanning over 70 years, she won numerous awards and appeared in countless movie, television and theatre productions.
Eva often rejected prominent movie roles. Instead, she preferred to focus on her family – she and her husband Jeffrey Hayden were married for 64 years – and roles she found creatively satisfying.
One of Eva’s most notable roles was Eve Kendall in North by Northwest. Alfred Hitchcock, director of North by Northwest, reckoned that Eva should have concentrated on ‘glamorous’ roles, not ‘kitchen sink’ roles.
Eva could certainly do glamour, but I think she found the down to earth roles more satisfying. A personal favourite of mine is her performance as Anna Hedler in 36 Hours, a psychological World War Two drama, which also starred James Garner.
Now aged 98, Eva Marie Saint can be regarded as the last link with the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Must see Eva Marie Saint movie, On The Waterfront, 1954, her stunning debut starring opposite Marlon Brando.
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy (born August 2, 1905) was a highly gifted film, television and stage actress. Trained as a dancer, Myrna’s breakthrough in movies arrived with the role of Nora Charles in The Thin Man, 1934.
In The Thin Man, Myrna played opposite William Powell. The banter between them was the highlight of this and subsequent Thin Man movies. William Powell credited Myrna with that banter and her ability to listen, a gift not all actors are blessed with.
Myrna’s ‘screen test’ for The Thin Man was somewhat unusual – at a Hollywood party director W.S. Van Dyke pushed her into a swimming pool to test her reaction, a situation she handled with great aplomb. Van Dyke reckoned that Nora Charles would behave in that manner, so Myrna landed the part.
Away from acting, Myrna was active in social issues, especially regarding housing and race discrimination. During the Second World War she focused much of her time and energy working for the Red Cross. She was so fiercely outspoken against Adolf Hitler that he placed her on a blacklist and banned her films in Germany.
Corinne Griffith
Corinne Griffith (November 21, 1894 – July 13, 1979) was widely regarded as one of the most beautiful actresses of the silent era. Also an author, producer and businesswoman, she was known as ‘The Orchid Lady of the Screen.’
After tasting success in a beauty contest, Corinne climbed the Hollywood ladder through bit parts, 1916 – 1920, before establishing herself at First National Pictures where she became one of the studio’s biggest stars.
In the mid-1920s, Corrine moved into producing, often starring in these movies as well. By 1932, with talkies taking centrestage, she struggled to land leading roles, so she retired from acting and became a successful author, businesswoman, and real-estate developer.
Three-times married, Corrine wrote a memoir in 1952. A film based on this memoir was released in 1963; it focused on her relationship with her father. Corrine died in 1979. She left an estate of $150 million, which made her one of the wealthiest women in the world at that time.
Classic Movie Posters
Often voted the greatest movie of all time, Citizen Kane, 1941.
“In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God.” - Orson Welles
A favourite movie, and a favourite movie poster. Normally, the artist was not identified on a film poster and, in many cases, remained anonymous. A shame because they produced great works of art.
“Wealth, beauty and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need to be useful.” - Gene Tierney
Another classic from the 1940s, This Gun For Hire, 1942
.
Classic movie quotes: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” - Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951.
Casablanca, 1942. This poster was created by William Gold (January 3, 1921 – May 20, 2018). Gold created thousands of film posters during his seventy–year career. His first poster was for Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1942, and his final work was for J. Edgar, 2011.
Behind the Camera
Hollywood, the beginning…1911, Al Christie (pictured) born in Ontario, Canada, was making Westerns in New Jersey. Tired of the landscape, he wanted to film in California. His producer, David Horsley, preferred Florida. They flipped a silver dollar – it came down heads, for California.
"The stuff that dreams are made of." - Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, 1941.
In the early days of moviemaking, Thomas Edison (pictured) tried to block independent filmmakers. He hired thugs to pose as cameramen and destroy independent cameras. When someone yelled “shoot” back then it meant “put a hole in the camera.” This became the favoured method of disruption.
“I foresee no possibility of venturing into themes showing a closer view of reality for a long time to come. The public itself will not have it. What it wants is a gun and a girl.” - Pioneering film director D.W. Griffith.
Two women who arrived in Hollywood as extras, living in tents, and in the hope that the casting director will look favourably upon them again.
Hollywood extras. “Thousands wait (over 15,000) day after day, hungry but ever hopeful that a casting director will call for them.” –Photoplay, November 1934.
Picture credit: Both pictures, Photoplay
Classic Movies
Released in 1934, The Thin Man was based on a Dashiell Hammett novel. The movie, a comedy-mystery, starred William Powell and Myrna Loy. Made pre-code, some of the scenes and banter would have fallen foul of the censor in later decades.
The main highlight of The Thin Man –forget the plot, this is a banter movie – was the natural interaction between William Powell and Myrna Loy. Scenes were often ad-libbed and shot in one take, which added to the belief that Powell and Loy were a real couple, deeply in love.
Of Myrna Loy, William Powell said, “When we did a scene together, we forgot about technique, camera angles, and microphones. We weren’t acting. We were just two people in perfect harmony. Myrna, unlike some actresses who think only of themselves, has the happy faculty of being able to listen while the other fellow says his lines. She has the give and takes of acting that brings out the best.”
“I think that carrying on a life that is meant to be private in public is a breach of taste, common sense, and mental hygiene.” - Myrna Loy
Released in 1962, To Kill a Mockingbird was based on Harper Lee’s 1960 novel and starred Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch. In 2003, the American Film Institute named Atticus Finch as the greatest movie hero of the twentieth century.
In a foreword to the paperback version, Gregory Peck wrote, “I think perhaps the great appeal of the novel is that it reminds readers everywhere of a person or a town they have known. It is to me a universal story –moving, passionate and told with great humour and tenderness.”
In the liner notes written for the film’s DVD re-release Harper Lee wrote, “When I learned that Gregory Peck would play Atticus Finch in the film production of To Kill a Mockingbird, I was of course delighted: here was a fine actor who had made great films – what more could a writer ask for? The years told me his secret. When he played Atticus Finch, he had played himself, and time has told all of us something more: when he played himself, he touched the world.”
“Making millions is not the whole ball game, fellows. Pride of workmanship is worth more. Artistry is worth more.” - Gregory Peck
Leading Men
Sidney Poitier (1927 – 2022)
Must-see movie: In the Heat of the Night, 1967, a mystery-drama. Poitier played Virgil Tibbs, a detective from Philadelphia drawn into a murder investigation in a small town in Mississippi. At the 40th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for seven Oscars, winning five.
Relationships: Sidney Poitier married Juanita Hardy on April 29, 1950. The marriage lasted until 1965. In 1959, he began a nine-year affair with actress Diahann Carroll. After that affair he married Joanna Shimkus, a Canadian actress who starred with him in The Lost Man, in 1969. The couple remained married until his death. Poitier fathered six daughters: four with his first wife, two with his second.
The person: In April 1997, Sidney Poitier was appointed ambassador from the Bahamas to Japan, a position he held until 2007. From 2002 to 2007, he was also the Bahaman ambassador to UNESCO.
Quote: “If the fabric of the society were different, I would scream to high heaven to play villains and to deal with different images of Negro life that would be more dimensional. But I'll be damned if I do that at this stage of the game (1967).”
Joseph Cotten (1905 – 1994)
Must-see movie: The Third Man, a 1949 film noir set in post-war Vienna, and widely regarded as the best British film of all-time. Written by Graham Greene, the movie also starred Orson Welles and Trevor Howard.
Relationships: Joseph Cotten’s first wife, Lenore Kipp, died at the beginning of 1960. Later that year he married British actress Patricia Meding in Beverly Hills at the home of producer David O. Selznick and his actress-wife Jennifer Jones. With Patricia, Cotton bought a historic 1935 home in the Mesa neighborhood of Palm Springs, California. The couple lived there from 1985 to 1992.
The person: Joseph Cotten was born in 1905 in Petersburg, Virginia to Cheshire Cotten, Sr., an assistant postmaster, and Sally Willson Cotten. His parents financially supported his early acting career and he paid them back by playing professional football on Sundays, for $25 a quarter, and by serving as a lifeguard at Wilcox Lake. Small theatre performances in Miami led to modelling, acting in industrial films, radio and Broadway. He made his Broadway debut in 1932 in Absent Friends, which ran for 88 performances.
Quote: “My wife told me one of the sweetest things one could hear: ‘I am not jealous. But I am truly sad for all the actresses who embrace you and kiss you while acting, for with them, you are only pretending’.”
Burt Lancaster (1913 – 1994)
Must-see movie: Judgment at Nuremberg, a 1961 epic courtroom drama directed and produced by Stanley Kramer. Along with Burt Lancaster, the film also starred Spencer Tracy and Richard Widmark. Set in Nuremberg, Germany in 1948, the movie offered a fictionalised version of the Judges Trial of 1947, one of the twelve Nuremberg Military Tribunals.
Relationships: Burt Lancaster was married three times and fathered five children. He also had a number of affairs. His first wife was June Ernst, a trapeze acrobat. His second wife was Norma Anderson, an advocate for the League of Women Voters. Lancaster fathered all five of his children with Norma Anderson. The couple separated in 1966, and finally divorced in 1969. After a tempestuous relationship with hairdresser Jackie Bone, Lancaster married Susan Martin, a marriage that lasted from September 1990 until his death in 1994. Rumours of an affair with Deborah Kerr, during the filming of From Here to Eternity in 1953, circulated. However, Kerr insisted that their relationship was purely platonic.
The person: Burt Lancaster was a vocal supporter of progressive and liberal causes. He supported minorities, opposed the Vietnam War, opposed the death penalty, and became involved in the fight against AIDS.
Quote: Actor and Screen Actors Guild president Ed Asner said that Burt Lancaster showed everybody in Hollywood "how to be a liberal with balls”.
Gilbert Roland (1905 - 1994)
Must-see movie: The Bad and the Beautiful, a 1952 melodrama centred on a film producer who alienates everyone around him. The all-star cast included Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Gloria Grahame and Gilbert Roland. In 1952, The Bad and the Beautiful won five Academy Awards out of six nominations.
Relationships: Gilbert Roland married actress Constance Bennett on April 20, 1941 in Yuma, Arizona. Their marriage lasted five years and he fathered two daughters. Bennett won custody of their daughters. His second marriage to Guillermina Cantú in 1954 lasted until his death 40 years later. In the 1920s Roland was engaged to Clara Bow for a short period, during her ‘engagement phase’.
The person: Born Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso in Mexico, Gilbert Roland’s career spanned seven decades from the 1920s until the 1980s. In 1952 and 1964 he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. Roland originally intended to become a bullfighter, like his father and his paternal grandfather. However, when Pancho Villa gained control of their town, Roland and his family fled to the United States. They lived in Texas and from there, aged fourteen, Roland boarded a freight train and travelled to Hollywood.
Quote: “Gilbert Roland was a wonderful husband. In one room of the house.” - ex-wife, Constance Bennett.
In Depth: Gene Tierney
Born on November 19, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, to a wealthy insurance broker and a socialite mother, Gene Tierney enjoyed a privileged upbringing, an upbringing that included exclusive schools, extensive travel and glamorous parties. Aged seventeen, she met Anatole Litvak, an influential Hollywood director, and he invited the debutante to make a screen test for Warner Brothers. Impressed by her looks and potential, the studio offered her a contract. However, her parents were not pleased.
Obeying her parents, Gene Tierney returned to Connecticut where she endured a mind-numbing season of debutante parties. At the close of the season, she informed her parents of her desire to carve out a career as an actress. On this occasion, her parents offered their support. Her father, Howard, secured mentoring and schooling, and he formed a company, to assist Gene in her ambitions.
Gene Tierney’s early theatre performances attracted the attention of Warner Brothers who, once again, offered her a contract. However, she turned them down; instead, she signed a six month deal with Columbia.
With Gene Tierney’s star on the rise, eccentric movie mogul Howard Hughes entered the picture. He was besotted with her beauty. However, as she later pointed out, “Cars, furs and gems were not my weakness.” And she rebuffed Hughes.
Despite the rebuff, Howard Hughes remained friends with Gene Tierney, one of many influential and powerful people she encountered during her life. At this stage, she was a contract actress with a major studio, reduced to roles dependant on her looks, rather than her acting ability. Then she caught the eye of Darryl Zanuck, of Twentieth Century Fox. Later, Zanuck stated that Gene Tierney was, “the most beautiful woman in movie history.”
In 1940, Gene Tierney played Eleanor Stone in The Return of Frank James. The reviews for the movie, and Gene’s performance, were unkind. Indeed, Gene endured a number of unfavourable reviews throughout her career, and while some of those reviews were merited, you have to wonder if jealousy, over her looks and privileged upbringing, was also at play.
Also in 1940, Gene Tierney’s private life changed direction. She met fashion designer Oleg Cassini and within months the couple were married. Once again, her parents were not pleased and a rift developed within the family. Over time, that rift widened until Gene was cut off financially, and from Connecticut high society.
Stressed, and enduring a string of dubious movies and poor reviews, Gene fell ill. Nevertheless, she remained in Hollywood and continued to work, landing the lead role in the 1943 movie, Heaven Can Wait.
In June 1943, a pregnant Gene Tierney contracted rubella. On October 14, 1943, she went into premature labour and soon after her daughter, Daria, was born. Tragically, the rubella affected Daria’s development and she suffered from a number of impediments.
With professional help, Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini raised Daria at their Hollywood home. While adjusting to her maternal responsibilities, Gene landed the title role in Laura, in 1944, arguably the highpoint of her acting career. Although the film received mixed reviews – a consistent thread throughout Gene’s career – it did well at the box office, netting over a million dollars, and now is regarded as a cinema classic. As Vincent Price, one of her co-stars in Laura, said, “No one but Gene Tierney could have played Laura. There was no other actress around with her particular combination of beauty, breeding and mystery.”
The success of Laura should have brought Gene Tierney great happiness. However, Oleg Cassini could not cope with his daughter’s disability and, in 1946, he walked out of the family home.
Before that, in 1945, Gene Tierney starred in Leave Her to Heaven, and received an Oscar nomination for her performance. In 1946, she co-starred with Vincent Price in Dragonwyck and during the filming she met J.F. Kennedy. A relationship developed, but was not pursued because of J.F.K.’s political ambitions.
In 1947, Gene Tierney made The Ghost and Mrs Muir. However, unhappy with her personal life, she decided to leave Hollywood and returned to Connecticut. In 1948, while constantly crying tears for Daria, Gene went through a whirlwind of emotions with Oleg Cassini – they divorced, Gene became pregnant, she gave birth to a second daughter, Christina, on November 19, 1948 her 28th birthday, and later remarried Cassini.
Unable to cope with Daria’s health problems, Gene bowed to Oleg’s insistence and placed her daughter in an institution. At this point, Gene’s health faltered and she slipped into deep depression. Mood swings ensued. A lack of understanding from the medical profession and the stigma from an uncaring society added to Gene’s problems. She threw herself into her work and later wrote, “As long as I was playing someone else, everything was fine. It was when I had to be myself that the problems began.” She added, with great insight, “Depression is only a temporary thing. I’ve often thought that if people who committed suicide could wake up the
next morning they’d ask themselves, ‘Now why in the world did I do that?’”
In the early 1950s, Gene divorced Oleg Cassini for a second time. Her career, personal life and health were in crisis.
In 1955, while working with Humphrey Bogart on The Left Hand of God, Bogart noted that Gene had problems. He alerted the executives at Fox studios, but they dismissed his concerns in flippant fashion. As Gene Tierney later wrote, “It was the fashion at the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.”
On the set, Gene continued to work to a high standard, while at home she struggled to cope with the basic tasks of life. In despair, Gene entered a sanatorium. Within the sanatorium, she received electroconvulsive-therapy, a degrading and barbaric practice, now considered inappropriate by many mental health professionals.
In the spring of 1957, Gene Tierney contemplated suicide. In New York, she walked on to the ledge of her mother’s 14th floor high-rise apartment. She later wrote, “I felt serene…totally without fear.” However, she didn’t jump because vanity took hold. She confessed, “I thought of what I’d look like when I hit the ground – like a scrambled egg. That didn’t appeal to me.”
More treatment followed, but thankfully treatment of a saner, helpful variety. Gene entered the Menninger Clinic in Kansas. There, in an atmosphere of peace and quiet, she was encouraged to talk. With support, she developed skills and coping strategies, until she reached the stage where she felt more in control of her illness. Today, even though drugs and other treatments are available, talking often remains the best cure.
While on holiday in 1958, Gene met W. Howard Lee, a Texas oilman. A year later, she resumed her acting career in Holiday for Lovers, but the strain proved too much, and she dropped the part. However, on July 11, 1960, she did marry W. Howard Lee and stated, “The only time I was really happy was in my childhood – and now.”
After continued treatment at the Menninger Clinic, small acting roles followed, along with greater insight into Gene’s problems. She
later wrote, “If you break an arm or a leg it takes months for it to really heal, and years for it to be the same again. So you can imagine the problems with a broken mind.” And, “More than anything, I learned that the mind is the most beautiful part of the body and I am grateful to have mine back.”
In 1962, Gene suffered a miscarriage. Bouts of depression and periods of mania followed, but when they faded she was able to reflect on them with humour, often joking with her new husband.
Although not reaching the heights of Laura, Gene appeared in movies and television series, until 1969 when she quit Hollywood and television for good.
W. Howard Lee died in February 1981, and from that point on, after years in the spotlight, Gene Tierney decided to live a life of seclusion.
Gene died on November 6, 1991, of emphysema, a condition brought on through chain-smoking; at the start of her acting career, and showing no regard for the individual, the studio suggested that Gene should take up smoking, to make her voice huskier.
Gene Tierney wrote, “Wealth, beauty and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need to be useful.” And she served that statement well by writing her autobiography, SelfPortrait, in 1979. Through her frank and honest account of her life, Gene Tierney helped to break down the stigma of mental illness, and along with her numerous movies, that stands as her greatest legacy.
Leading Ladies Tippi Hedren (1930 - )
Must-see movie: Marnie, a 1964 psychological thriller, also starring Sean Connery, based on a novel by Winston Graham (although the endings vary considerably).
Relationships: Tippi Hedren married three times, first in 1951 to future advertising executive Peter Griffith. They divorced in 1960. Second to her then agent Noel Marshall, in 1964. They divorced in 1982 when Hedren secured a restraining order forbidding Marshall from coming within twenty feet of her. In 1985, she married steel manufacturer Luis Barrenechea, but they divorced in 1992. According to Hedren, Barrenechea "was everything I wanted in a man, except that he was an alcoholic, and that was unbearable."
The person: Tippi Hedren has a strong commitment to animal rescue, which began in 1969 while she was shooting two films in Africa. She has also set up relief programs worldwide following earthquakes, hurricanes, famine and war.
Quote: “I consider my acting, while not necessarily being method acting, but one that draws upon my own feelings. I thought Marnie was an extremely interesting role to play and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Jean Arthur (1900 – 1991)
Must-see movie: The Saturday Night Kid, 1929, not the greatest movie, but in it Jean Arthur outshone the brightest star of the era, Clara Bow, who was “generous and wonderful to me.”
Relationships: Jean Arthur's first marriage, to photographer Julian Anker in 1928, was annulled after one day. She married producer Frank Ross Jr in 1932. They divorced in 1949. She had no children by either union.
The person: Jean Arthur was famous in Hollywood for her retiring nature. She hated publicity, rarely signed autographs and was reluctant to grant interviews. In 1940, Life Magazine said, “Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood's reigning mystery woman."
In 1973, while living in North Carolina, Jean Arthur was arrested and jailed for trespassing on a neighbour’s property. She wandered on to the property to console a dog that she felt was being mistreated. She was convicted, fined $75 and given three years' probation. An animal lover her entire life, Jean Arthur stated that she trusted animals more than people.
Quote: “I don't think Hollywood is the place to be yourself. The individual ought to find herself before coming to Hollywood. On the stage I found myself to be in a different world. The individual counted. The director encouraged me and I learned how to be myself.”
Jennifer Jones (1919 – 2009)
Must-see movie: Duel in the Sun, nicknamed Lust in the Dust, a 1946 psychological western, which tells the story of a half-Native American girl who encounters prejudice, and forbidden love. Joseph Cotten and Gregory Peck co-starred. Jennifer Jones was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Relationships: Jennifer Jones married three times. At sea, on July 13, 1949, en route to Europe, she married producer/studio executive David O. Selznick. The couple had been involved in a relationship over the previous five years. Jennifer appeared in numerous films Selznick produced over the following two decades. Their marriage lasted until his death in 1965.
The Person: Jennifer Jones suffered from mental health issues and in 1967 she survived a suicide attempt when she jumped from a cliff in Malibu Beach. Her daughter took her own life in 1976. After that tragedy, Jennifer founded the Jennifer Jones Simon Foundation for Mental Health and Education. She enjoyed a quiet retirement and lived the last six years of her life in Malibu, California. She died in 2009, of natural causes, aged 90.
Quote: “If you could choose one characteristic that would get you through life, choose a sense of humour. My mother told me never explain, never complain. Even as a young actress, I determined I would never give personal interviews, since they made me so uncomfortable.”
Jeanne Crain (1925 – 2003)
Must-see movie: Leave Her to Heaven, a 1945 psychological thriller which also starred Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde. The story centres on a socialite who marries a prominent novelist. This leads to violence, obsession and jealousy.
Relationships: On December 31, 1945, Crain married Paul Brinkman, a former contract player at RKO Pictures. He was also known as Paul Brooks. Brinkman later became an executive with an arms manufacturing company. Crain’s marriage to Brinkman was blighted by accusations of unfaithfulness on both sides. Nevertheless, the couple had seven children. In the mid-1950s, Crain obtained an interlocutory divorce decree, alleging abuse. The couple reconciled on December 31, 1956. They remained married, but lived separately in Santa Barbara until Brinkman’s death in October 2003.
The Person: At the height of her stardom in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Crain was known as "Hollywood's Number One party girl". She stated that she was invited to at least 200 parties a year.
Quote: “I loved being at the studio (20th Century-Fox). After all, I started at 15, and I grew up there. But there comes a time when an actress stays too long in the same place. People get used to having you around, and they can’t think of you in a different light.”
Scandals and Sad Stories
Florence Lawrence
Florence Lawrence, born January 2, 1886, was Hollywood’s first movie star. In the early days of filmmaking actors were not named, for fear that they would demand higher salaries. However, Florence received a credit for her acting, and her popularity soared. She made close to 300 films during her career.
Florence married three times, first to screenwriter and director Harry Solter. That marriage lasted from 1908 until Solter’s death in 1920. Her marriage to automobile salesman Charles Byrne Woodring lasted eleven years, from 1921 to 1932.
Florence and Woodring opened a cosmetics store in Los Angeles, called Hollywood Cosmetics. She also designed the first auto signalling arm, and the first mechanical brake signal. However, she did not patent these inventions, which meant no creative credit or profit from subsequent developments and sales.
In 1933, Florence married Henry Bolton, an alcoholic and physical abuser. That marriage lasted five months.
Sadly, Florence badly injured her back while filming and, several years and a number of operations later, killed herself when she swallowed ant poison. It would appear that the poison was a cry for help that went tragically wrong. Medical staff tried to save her, but within two hours she died.
Peg Entwistle
Peg Entwistle (February 5, 1908 – September 16, 1932) was born in Port Talbot, Wales (a stone’s throw from where we are based). She appeared in only one film, Thirteen Women, which was released posthumously.
Peg’s father, Robert Symes Entwistle, was an actor. He divorced Peg’s mother. Father and daughter then emigrated to America. Robert appeared in a number of plays. Sadly, he died in December 1922, the victim of a hit-and-run accident on Park Avenue and 72nd Street in New York City.
In April 1927, Peg married actor Robert Keith. However, she divorced him in May 1929 on the grounds of cruelty, and that he had concealed a previous marriage and family.
On September 18, 1932, a hiker found a woman's shoe, purse, and jacket below the Hollywood sign. Inside the purse, the hiker discovered a suicide note. “I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain.”
The police surmised that Peg made her way to the southern slope of Mount Lee, then to the foot of the Hollywoodland sign. There, she climbed a workman's ladder to the top of the "H" and jumped to her death. One of Hollywood’s greatest tragedies.
The picture shows Peg at her Hollywood home several days before her tragic death.
Magazines Moving Picture World
Founded in 1907, Moving Picture World was an influential early trade journal for the American movie industry. An independent publication, the magazine reflected the trends in movie making, creative styles and fashionable stories. By 1914, it’s circulation reached 15,000 readers. In the late 1920s and early 1930s the magazine merged with other publications.
Motion Picture
Motion Picture was a monthly fan magazine devoted to film. Published from 1911 to 1977, Motion Picture was the first non-trade movie magazine, and therefore it is regarded as the first magazine aimed at film goers.
The early years were successful with an initial run of 50,000 copies, which climbed to 200,000 copies by 1914. The magazine's most successful column was entitled "The Answer Man", which was written by a woman. An innovation at the time, readers submitted questions about the film world.
Renamed Motion Picture Magazine in 1914, the magazine branched out from fiction and information about how to become involved in the film industry to celebrities. This switch attracted a larger female readership and the circulation climbed to 400,000 copies.
Did you know…“Here’s looking at you, kid” wasn’t in the original script. The line was something Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman off the top of his head while he was teaching her to play poker during the filming of Casablanca.
Photoplay
Founded in 1911 in Chicago, Photoplay was one of the earliest movie fan magazines. In 1921 Photoplay established the first significant annual movie award, the Photoplay Magazine Medal of Honor. Readers of the magazine, predominantly women, voted for their favourite film. Later, the Academy Awards overshadowed the Medal of Honor, and the award was discontinued in 1939.
Photoplay started life as a short fiction magazine. It focused on movie plots and characters, and served as a promotional tool for contemporary films. In 1915 the magazine shifted its emphasis towards the private lives of celebrities and thus created the template for all future celebrity magazines.
Along with features on the stars, Photoplay included health and beauty advice, and a gossip column. By 1918 Photoplay’s circulation had exceeded 200,000 copies. Artists Earl Christy and Charles Sheldon attracted many of those readers with their cover portraits of contemporary film stars. However, with the advancement of colour photography, Photoplay switched to photographs.
King Kong (1933). Police Lieutenant: “Well, Denham, the airplanes got him.” Denham: “Oh, no, it wasn’t the airplanes - it was beauty killed the beast.”
Screenland
Screenland was a monthly movie magazine, established in September 1920 in Los Angeles, California. The magazine attracted notoriety in 1923 when it reported a love affair between Evelyn Brent and Douglas Fairbanks. Legal threats led to a retraction.
Cover: Joan Blondell
Planet of the Apes (1968). George: “I can’t help thinking that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man…has to be.”
Highest Grossing Movies
1920: Way Down East
A silent romantic drama, directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lilian Gish, Way Down East is best remembered for its climatic scene in which Lillian Gish's character, Anna, is rescued from doom on an icy river (pictured).
Way Down East was heavily censored. The Pennsylvania film board demanded over sixty cuts, rendering the story meaningless. The mock marriage and honeymoon between Lennox and Anna had to go, along with any hints of her pregnancy. Other cuts included scenes where society women smoked cigarettes and an intertitle, which featured the words “wild oats”.
1921: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
A silent epic war film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is widely regarded as the first true anti-war movie. The film catapulted Rudolph Valentino to superstardom. It also inspired a tango craze and a fashion for gaucho pants.
Based on a 1916 novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, the film-script was written by June Mathis. The movie’s success ensured that she became one of the most powerful women in 1920s Hollywood.
"You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.” - Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, On the Waterfront, 1954.
1922: Robin Hood
A silent adventure film starring Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, Robin Hood was the first motion picture to receive a Hollywood premiere, held at the Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on October 18, 1922.
The castle and twelfth century village sets were constructed at the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio in Hollywood. Wood, wire and plaster constituted the castle with wood also covering the concrete floor.
The story was adapted for the screen by Fairbanks (as "Elton Thomas"), Kenneth Davenport, Edward Knoblock, Allan Dwan and Lotta Woods. Fairbanks also played a major role in the movie’s production and distribution.
This version of the Robin Hood legend established the elements that served later filmmakers. Indeed, the popular modern perception of Robin Hood is largely due to Fairbanks’ film.
1923: The Covered Wagon
A silent western, The Covered Wagon charted the adventures of a group of pioneers as they travelled through the Old West, from Kansas to Oregon. Along the way they experienced desert heat, snow, hunger and an Indian attack (Native Americans who appeared in this movie included the Northern Arapaho Nation from Wyoming and Chief Thunderbird, in an uncredited role).
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Lois Wilson played the heroine, Molly Wingate. In a career spanning 1915 - 1952 she appeared in 150 movies, including the coveted role of Daisy Buchanan in the 1926 silent film version of The Great Gatsby
1924: The Sea Hawk
The Sea Hawk was a silent adventure movie about an English noble sold into slavery. Upon his escape, he becomes a pirate. Directed by Frank Lloyd, the movie premiered on June 2, 1924 in New York.
Frank Lloyd sensed that moviegoers would not accept miniature models so, at a cost of $200,000, he created full-sized ships. The ocean scenes were filmed off the coast of Catalina Island, California. Lloyd established a mini-village to shoot these scenes, which included 150 tents, 1,000 extras, 21 technicians, 14 actors, and 64 sailors.
The film was so well made that Warner Bros used some of its battle scenes in a 1940 Errol Flynn movie of the same name. Furthermore, the studio used the life-sized replica ships in later nautical films.
1925 (Joint): The Big Parade
The Big Parade was a silent war drama directed by King Vidor. It starred John Gilbert and Renée Adorée. Written by World War One veteran Laurence Stallings, the movie has been praised for its realistic depiction of warfare. Furthermore, it heavily influenced a great many subsequent war films, especially All Quiet on the Western Front.
Regarded as one of the great World War One movies, The Big Parade told the story of an idle rich boy who joined the US Army’s Rainbow Division. Sent to France to fight in the war, he befriends two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl, played by Renée Adorée.
Tula
I never wanted to be a star. I just wanted to act in movies. I just wanted to get away from the impoverished streets of Brooklyn and live in relative comfort.
Now, at the close of the 1920s, I was the biggest name in Hollywood. My movies were the highest grossing in the business. Investors depended on me, producers depended on me, my fellow actors depended on me, and maybe the strain of that dependence triggered my emotional collapse.
Actually, I knew what trigged my emotional collapse - my father’s death. I found myself in an asylum, in the care of Dr Brooks. Along with my fiancé, fellow actor Gregory Powell, Dr Brooks was convinced that an underlying issue triggered my collapse, and he wanted me to record my life story, so that he could identify that issue.
Gregory had faith in me. He said he’d wait for me, and that he knew I’d make a full recovery. But to make that recovery, I had to address the underlying issue that had placed me in the asylum.
So, I offer you the notes that I prepared for Dr Brooks. To the best of my ability and memory, I recorded the important events that made up the first twenty-five years of my life. And within these notes I discovered the true reason for my emotional breakdown.
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