Our Blushing Brides (1930)
Plot Summary - "Why Marry a Millionaire?" - - About three working girls/roommates/gal pals and their relationships with three men/millionaires/heels. The girls all work at Jardine's department store where virtuous Jerry (played by Joan Crawford) models dresses and ladies lingerie, blonde and innocent Connie (Anita Page) works the perfume counter, and wisecracking, sarcastic Franky (Dorothy Sebastian) is stuck in blankets (where there's "not a male customer in a carload"). Franky finally does meet a man in the blanket department - he's loaded with free-flowing wads of cash, so she immediately agrees to go out with him. Meanwhile pretty Connie is having a love affair with the owner's son, David Jardine (played by Raymond Hackett, who looked to me like a cross between David and Ricky Nelson), and Jerry has a fancy for the other son, Tony Jardine (Robert Montgomery). Jerry thinks Tony is "different" from the other cads/men she meets - but she soon finds out he's not, as she ends up in his lair - a tree house complete with sunken couch, dim lights, mood music, and disappearing staircase. Oh brother! Review - This film is quite enjoyable, I like the interrelationships between the three girls - there's plenty of chemistry and camaraderie there. Robert Montgomery is a doll, his slim self handsomely decked out in tuxedo, white tie, and tails (ooh la la) - he plays his playboy-like part expertly. Joan Crawford acts up a storm in this, with a full range of emotions - and gets to show herself off in slinky outfits and barely-there lingerie as well (which she REALLY seems to enjoy doing!). The film includes a fun fashion show, complete with foppish Parisian dress designers, and lots of capes, drapes, ruffles, and deco look hats.
from SILENT MOVIE CRAZY
No More Ladies (1935)
Well-heeled Ladies Man Marries Glamour Queen - Star-power doesn't help this weak, poorly scripted film. With Joan Crawford as satin-gowned, glamourous Marcia of the shades of white/art deco bedroom, Robert Montgomery as the well-dressed ladies man/playboy/heel who marries Marcia but can't stop chasing the ladies, sexy Franchot Tone as Jim, whose wife was stolen by our ladies man, Edna May Oliver as highball drinkin', one-liner talkin' Grandma Fanny, and Charles Ruggles as the drunkard, plus a slick MGM look and feel - you would think this film would be smart, funny, terrific, all it should be - it's not. The problem here is the lousy script - the characters do things that make little sense or just seems dumb, and more importantly, the film is just BORING. I was pretty much thinking "when is this going to end" - that's not a good thing. I did *not* find the two main characters sympathetic, so could really care less what happened to them. I mean, the Robert Montgomery character is just a complete cad, he should have been thrown out by her right near the beginning. Joan Crawford's character just comes across as a pouty brat to me - so who cares what happens with her anyway. Even my handsome Franchot Tone is given so little to do here, he's just wasted. The acting here is fine, but with the story as it is, this film is just dull. Edna May Oliver is the only saving grace here, she *is* pretty funny.
Ohh.. But Cha AAH, Blanche, Ya AAH In That Chair!!!
by Sheila
Mar 2, 2009
In "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?" you really DO find out, indeed!But what horrors you have to endure to see the truth and consequences! With twists, turns, torture & anti-climactic scenes all played to the hilt by the Miss Hudsons (Bette Davis and Joan Crawford), respectively, you will never be able to look at your pet parakeet the same way again.
Miss Baby Jane Hudson, played with great, grotesque gusto by Davis who was once the belle of the ball. Kind of a Shirley Temple of her era. Baby Jane was daddy's girl and Jane, therefore, has quite an Electra complex that is and has been exhibited her entire life.
Her sister, Miss Blanche Hudson, played "aptly and sapply" by Crawford, has a long and lasting career as an adult movie star but is now wheelchair bound because of a little "accident" betwixt the sisters many years back. Jane is the caretaker of Blanche since the "accident" and they both live off of the residuals of Blanche's long and prosperous film career before she became crippled.
After a local California TV station decides to run summer afternoon, back to back Blanche Hudson films, Baby Jane gets that ol' jealous feeling brewing again and wants desparately to revitalize her childhood career. Baby Jane hires pianist from the classifieds, Mr. Edward Flagg, played in a great understated role by Victor Buono, who has his own Oedipal yearnings and problems. They make a great and perfect pair of drunks and crazies, let me tell ya.
Jane is certainly unstable and is likened to a gin and vodka guzzling 60 year old broad with a six year old spoiled brat mentality. SCARY combo, right there! Let alone Jane's guilt of the "accident", her shameless jealousy, and her expressions of the antithesis of "SISTERLY LOVE".
Filmed in glorious black and white, it lends itself to the dark, somber and horrific things that happen to Blanche vis-a-vis Jane...
"Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" is a cult classic and a true and genuine classic in it's own right.
by Sheila
Mar 2, 2009
In "What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?" you really DO find out, indeed!But what horrors you have to endure to see the truth and consequences! With twists, turns, torture & anti-climactic scenes all played to the hilt by the Miss Hudsons (Bette Davis and Joan Crawford), respectively, you will never be able to look at your pet parakeet the same way again.
Miss Baby Jane Hudson, played with great, grotesque gusto by Davis who was once the belle of the ball. Kind of a Shirley Temple of her era. Baby Jane was daddy's girl and Jane, therefore, has quite an Electra complex that is and has been exhibited her entire life.
Her sister, Miss Blanche Hudson, played "aptly and sapply" by Crawford, has a long and lasting career as an adult movie star but is now wheelchair bound because of a little "accident" betwixt the sisters many years back. Jane is the caretaker of Blanche since the "accident" and they both live off of the residuals of Blanche's long and prosperous film career before she became crippled.
After a local California TV station decides to run summer afternoon, back to back Blanche Hudson films, Baby Jane gets that ol' jealous feeling brewing again and wants desparately to revitalize her childhood career. Baby Jane hires pianist from the classifieds, Mr. Edward Flagg, played in a great understated role by Victor Buono, who has his own Oedipal yearnings and problems. They make a great and perfect pair of drunks and crazies, let me tell ya.
Jane is certainly unstable and is likened to a gin and vodka guzzling 60 year old broad with a six year old spoiled brat mentality. SCARY combo, right there! Let alone Jane's guilt of the "accident", her shameless jealousy, and her expressions of the antithesis of "SISTERLY LOVE".
Filmed in glorious black and white, it lends itself to the dark, somber and horrific things that happen to Blanche vis-a-vis Jane...
"Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?" is a cult classic and a true and genuine classic in it's own right.
Saint Joan and Baby Jane
Imagine this. You are a young, naïve gay boy recently arrived in San Francisco during the mid-70s. On one of your first dates you are invited to a screening of Robert Aldrich's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? at the Castro Theatre. The palatial moviehouse is filled with an unruly audience of hissing queens. You feel you have been thrown into a snakepit and have deep concerns about your safety. They seem to have no self-control and laugh at things you consider worthy of serious attention. But eventually you begin to understand. This is not just about politely watching a movie on a screen. This is about an interactive movie experience and a stellar example of audience reception. It all comes home when pitiable Joan Crawford whines: "You wouldn't be able to do these awful things to me if I weren't still in this chair!" Without missing a beat the entire audience shouts out in glee: "But ya ARE, Blanche! Ya ARE in that chair!" The ensuing raucous laughter is as thrilling as a hallucinogen.One of my most treasured cinematic memories! And among one of my most treasured cinematic paraphernalia is a hardbound first edition autographed copy of Joan Crawford's autobiography, A Portrait of Joan, published in 1962; the same year Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? shocked American audiences. Sadly, the last movie Joan mentions in her autobiography is the 1959 vehicle The Best of Everything—Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? hadn't been filmed yet—and just as unfortunately she doesn't even mention Robert Aldrich and their earlier collaboration Autumn Leaves (1956). So as ardently as I'd hoped to offer some key anecdotes by Crawford on Aldrich, the source is not forthcoming.Nor am I versed enough in Aldrich's oeuvre to offer much insight into his films. But I thought it would be fun to explore a bit why Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? has had such an impact on "gay sensibility" and why—even for Advocate editor Alonso Duralde—it required inclusion into his 101 Must-See Movies For Gay Men. Is it, as Alonso suggests, that gay men admire strong women or—"almost a necessary corollary"—that gay men like watching strong women fall on their face? Paraphrasing Alonso, when Joan Crawford or Bette Davis dream big and fail, they fail big and any self-respecting gay man wants to be in the front row.Why is that? Far be it for me to speak for such an unruly and diverse bunch as gay men, or to hazard essentiality by suggesting there is any such thing as a bona fide gay "sensibility", but—as far as stereotypes can help to define things—gays employ gossip as a form of social critique, which is to say as a form of entertainment against the forces that too often critique them. So as Alonso points out, "gay gossips know just how much Davis and Crawford always hated each other offscreen, so watching them humiliate and abuse each other in their only costarring film is always a hoot."Perhaps it's not all quite that sordid and cruel as it first appears. Perhaps—as David Thomson stated it more respectfully at a recent bookstore appearance—audiences appreciate that being a movie star is not always as glamorous as might be believed. It's a hard life after all. "Any fan of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford know they both ended up pretty wretched," he said, which is to understand that life itself is hard after all. If you don't believe me, consider how Aldrich had to shop the project around to various moguls who responded by asserting—according to Bette Davis's recollection—"We wouldn't give you a dime for those two washed-up old broads."Photographer, film historian and author Mark A. Viera's Bright Lights Film Journal essay on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? is possibly the definitive treatment of this film. Certainly, it's one of the most entertaining and informative; I highly recommend it. He astutely notes: "The script could have served any number of aging actresses—Myrna Loy and Rosalind Russell, Norma Shearer and Miriam Hopkins, even Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich—but they might have made it a psychological study, a melodrama, or a tragedy. What Crawford and Davis brought to it was a distillation of their own well-known personas." That distillation is the heady brew that gay gossips get drunk on. His tidbit that the wig worn by Bette's Baby Jane that "apes her childhood mop of curls" had originally been worn by Joan Crawford in Our Blushing Brides (1939) is priceless. As well as his recount of what happened on Oscars night. Matthew Kennedy has described the Davis/Crawford on and off-screen Baby Jane performances as "a sadomasochistic tango." "Cinema chicken" Bob Westal's own off-the-hip reaction to his first viewing of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? induced some wry chuckles.As an aside, Bright Lights Film Journal's editor Gary Morris has likewise written an excellent queer read of Aldrich's The Killing of Sister George, which I would also recommend.
IMPRESARIO The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan
Buy Impresario on Amazon
Excerpt f
rom:Chapter Six: Hollywood
(This chapter details Sullivan's life as a Hollywood gossip columnist and filmmaker; he moved from New York to Hollywood in 1937.)
Everything seemed bright that Saturday in September as Ed, Sylvia, and six-year-old Betty left New York to begin their new life in Hollywood. Ed was going out to cover the kingdom of glamour for the paper with the largest circulation in America; it was a plum assignment and at age thirty-five he was at the top of his game. The three of them boarded the deluxe Twentieth Century Line in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, carrying only the essentials for the three-day trip. Their belongings had been sent along to the house Ed had rented in Beverly Hills. The three-bedroom Spanish-style bungalow at 621 North Alta was modest by comparison to many in the elite neighborhood, but it allowed Ed proximity to the stars he would cover, not to mention the status of a Beverly Hills address.
Ed filed columns during the trip out, wiring them back to New York from cities along the way. As closely as he scoured the passengers for a scoop, he found nothing more substantial than a tidbit about Pandro Berman, a young RKO film producer in the next compartment who had just delivered the first print of Katherine Hepburn’s Stage Door to New York.
By the second day of the trip the inactivity was weighing on Ed, who was used to a non-stop schedule. He sat in the dining car and chatted with the chef, J.A. Day, whose trout and turkey dishes Ed raved about, but the banter didn’t stem the brooding: “As I devoured them, I recalled the time in 1918 when I ran away to Chicago to join the Marines and worked in Thompson’s Cafeteria in the daytime and the Illinois Central freight yards at night…Pass me another trout, please, Mr. Day, I’m feeling morbid.”
As Ed’s beat on Broadway had been the nightclubs and theaters of the Main Stem, on the coast he would haunt the movie sets and celebrity nightspots of the film colony. The studios, of course, were eager to give him access, knowing his column anecdotes would stimulate interest in upcoming pictures.
On his first few days on the job he received a whirlwind tour of the movie lots. On the Twentieth Century Fox lot, he met nine-year-old Shirley Temple, then in her second of three years as the country’s top box office draw, having charmed audiences with 1935’s The Littlest Rebel and 1936’s Poor Little Rich Girl. Ed reported that the “curly-haired youngster” took breaks from filming Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to satisfy the California state law requiring four hours of school a day. He said hello to composer Irving Berlin, having lunch in the Fox commissary while working on Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and on the MGM lot he watched a Christmas scene being filmed for Navy Blue and Gold, starring Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore.
On the RKO lot he visited the set of Bringing Up Baby, the Cary Grant-Katherine Hepburn comedy that featured a 165-pound leopard. Ed reported that one of the bit players had been on a drinking binge, so director Howard Hawks decided to play a practical joke, summoning the actor to the office, placing the sleeping leopard on a chair, then leaving the partially inebriated fellow alone with the big cat. The incident may or may not have happened (it sounds suspiciously pre-packaged for visiting reporters), but it’s exactly the kind of thing RKO hoped Ed would write; by giving him access and feeding him morsels they were generating free publicity.
By the end of his first week he had set up a Sunday golf date with Fred Astaire. The outings with Astaire at the Bel-Air Country Club would become a constant, with Ed and Fred typically joined for a foursome by other film colony members, like Douglas Fairbanks or David Niven. Ed often wrote about his matches with Astaire, as when he described the dancer’s golf technique: “’I am not envious generally,’ says Astaire, ‘but I do envy anyone who plays good golf.’ Later, on the course, he shows us how he hit those golf balls during his dance in ‘Carefree’ and after his preparatory dance he whaled a drive 250 yards straight down the middle. Can you imagine how nutty he’d drive an opponent if before every shot he did a jig?” And, after a later outing: “Fred Astaire and your correspondent are feeling very happy this bright February morning, incidentally…we teamed up at Bel-Air against Randy Scott and Tyrone Power, and beat them in a harrowing match that will go down in golf history (at least our golf history)…”
Also in his first week he visited the MGM lot to chat with Joan Crawford and director Frank Borzage, who stopped work on Mannequin for the publicity effort. Sullivan and Crawford had tangled in New York a few years earlier, when Ed tried to enlist her to appear in a charity event he was hosting and she refused. He had taken journalistic revenge, writing in his column, “One wonders how Joan Crawford has gotten this far in show business with so little talent.” Crawford had hit back, sending an open letter to a fan magazine decrying Sullivan’s efforts as “cheap, tawdry and gangster journalism.” But on the set of Mannequin, all was apparently well between the screen goddess and the new Hollywood columnist. Crawford, according to Ed, greeted him warmly: “’The nite we had dinner at 21 in New York I said you belong in Hollywood,’ remembers La Crawford, ‘And here you are…’” For Ed, who had so often attacked “phonies” in his column, his report of an affectionate meeting with Crawford was a remarkable about-face.
Buy Impresario on Amazon
Excerpt f
rom:Chapter Six: Hollywood(This chapter details Sullivan's life as a Hollywood gossip columnist and filmmaker; he moved from New York to Hollywood in 1937.)
Everything seemed bright that Saturday in September as Ed, Sylvia, and six-year-old Betty left New York to begin their new life in Hollywood. Ed was going out to cover the kingdom of glamour for the paper with the largest circulation in America; it was a plum assignment and at age thirty-five he was at the top of his game. The three of them boarded the deluxe Twentieth Century Line in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station, carrying only the essentials for the three-day trip. Their belongings had been sent along to the house Ed had rented in Beverly Hills. The three-bedroom Spanish-style bungalow at 621 North Alta was modest by comparison to many in the elite neighborhood, but it allowed Ed proximity to the stars he would cover, not to mention the status of a Beverly Hills address.
Ed filed columns during the trip out, wiring them back to New York from cities along the way. As closely as he scoured the passengers for a scoop, he found nothing more substantial than a tidbit about Pandro Berman, a young RKO film producer in the next compartment who had just delivered the first print of Katherine Hepburn’s Stage Door to New York.
By the second day of the trip the inactivity was weighing on Ed, who was used to a non-stop schedule. He sat in the dining car and chatted with the chef, J.A. Day, whose trout and turkey dishes Ed raved about, but the banter didn’t stem the brooding: “As I devoured them, I recalled the time in 1918 when I ran away to Chicago to join the Marines and worked in Thompson’s Cafeteria in the daytime and the Illinois Central freight yards at night…Pass me another trout, please, Mr. Day, I’m feeling morbid.”
As Ed’s beat on Broadway had been the nightclubs and theaters of the Main Stem, on the coast he would haunt the movie sets and celebrity nightspots of the film colony. The studios, of course, were eager to give him access, knowing his column anecdotes would stimulate interest in upcoming pictures.
On his first few days on the job he received a whirlwind tour of the movie lots. On the Twentieth Century Fox lot, he met nine-year-old Shirley Temple, then in her second of three years as the country’s top box office draw, having charmed audiences with 1935’s The Littlest Rebel and 1936’s Poor Little Rich Girl. Ed reported that the “curly-haired youngster” took breaks from filming Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to satisfy the California state law requiring four hours of school a day. He said hello to composer Irving Berlin, having lunch in the Fox commissary while working on Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and on the MGM lot he watched a Christmas scene being filmed for Navy Blue and Gold, starring Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore.
On the RKO lot he visited the set of Bringing Up Baby, the Cary Grant-Katherine Hepburn comedy that featured a 165-pound leopard. Ed reported that one of the bit players had been on a drinking binge, so director Howard Hawks decided to play a practical joke, summoning the actor to the office, placing the sleeping leopard on a chair, then leaving the partially inebriated fellow alone with the big cat. The incident may or may not have happened (it sounds suspiciously pre-packaged for visiting reporters), but it’s exactly the kind of thing RKO hoped Ed would write; by giving him access and feeding him morsels they were generating free publicity.
By the end of his first week he had set up a Sunday golf date with Fred Astaire. The outings with Astaire at the Bel-Air Country Club would become a constant, with Ed and Fred typically joined for a foursome by other film colony members, like Douglas Fairbanks or David Niven. Ed often wrote about his matches with Astaire, as when he described the dancer’s golf technique: “’I am not envious generally,’ says Astaire, ‘but I do envy anyone who plays good golf.’ Later, on the course, he shows us how he hit those golf balls during his dance in ‘Carefree’ and after his preparatory dance he whaled a drive 250 yards straight down the middle. Can you imagine how nutty he’d drive an opponent if before every shot he did a jig?” And, after a later outing: “Fred Astaire and your correspondent are feeling very happy this bright February morning, incidentally…we teamed up at Bel-Air against Randy Scott and Tyrone Power, and beat them in a harrowing match that will go down in golf history (at least our golf history)…”
Also in his first week he visited the MGM lot to chat with Joan Crawford and director Frank Borzage, who stopped work on Mannequin for the publicity effort. Sullivan and Crawford had tangled in New York a few years earlier, when Ed tried to enlist her to appear in a charity event he was hosting and she refused. He had taken journalistic revenge, writing in his column, “One wonders how Joan Crawford has gotten this far in show business with so little talent.” Crawford had hit back, sending an open letter to a fan magazine decrying Sullivan’s efforts as “cheap, tawdry and gangster journalism.” But on the set of Mannequin, all was apparently well between the screen goddess and the new Hollywood columnist. Crawford, according to Ed, greeted him warmly: “’The nite we had dinner at 21 in New York I said you belong in Hollywood,’ remembers La Crawford, ‘And here you are…’” For Ed, who had so often attacked “phonies” in his column, his report of an affectionate meeting with Crawford was a remarkable about-face.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet....Browning
New York is known for its garbage strikes and its' high crime levels. Certain New Yorkers found a clever way to rid themselves of their unwanted waste! Some folks left their garbage in Bloomingdale's shopping bags in plain sight in unlocked cars.
Gossip columnist Doris Lilly attests that her neighbor Joan Crawford claimed this of herself.
According to Lilly, during a massive longtime New York City sanitation strike, Crawford had her trash put out in Bergdorf Goodman complete with big purple bows before having them taken out. Can't you just picture the legend in a housedress and curlers taking the time to sort through and wrap up her garbage?
Joan Crawford, 1948It can't be easy being one of the most slandered and reviled dead actresses in Hollywood. It's no fun being the "poster parent" for the evils of child abuse. And it's certainly no walk in the park when your reputation as a power-hungry bitch diva succubus overshadows your tremendous contribution to film history in classics like "Grand Hotel," "The Women," and "Mildred Pierce" ("Trog" notwithstanding). Essentially, it sucks to be Joan Crawford.As we mark the 32nd anniversary of her passing this weekend, I'm moved to wonder if La Crawford didn't get a bad rap. If Charlotte Chandler's recent biography, "Not the Girl Next Door," is to be believed, Joan Crawford was more Donna Reed than Faye Dunaway. Refuting Christina Crawford's accounts of abuse and neglect in the sensationally lurid memoir and subsequent film, "Mommie Dearest," Chandler paints a kinder portrait of Joan the devoted mother, who suffered cruelly at the unfounded accusations of a bitter and competitive daughter. Even Bette Davis, a well-documented rival of Crawford's, came to her rescue: "I was not Miss Crawford's biggest fan, but, wisecracks to the contrary, I did and still do respect her talent. What she did not deserve was that detestable book written by her daughter. I've forgotten her name. Horrible...."We may never know for sure whether Joan Crawford was the type to beat her children with wire hangers or was simply the misunderstood and maligned mother of a disgruntled daughter out to make a buck. The truth is always a more complicated beast than meets the eye and the real story probably lies somewhere in between the two tellings. What we can be sure of is that Crawford was a first-class actress, an enduring entertainment icon, and an indisputable legend.
An Interview with Sydney Guilaroffby Jimmy Bangley
JB: Sydney, why did you write, "Crowning Glory, Reflections of Hollywood's Favorite Confidant"?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, my adoptive grandson José has encouraged me; and wonderful ladies like Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Ann-Margret, and the lovely and late Ava Gardner always suggested I sit down and do it. Also, I want to set the record straight and tell the truth as I saw the truth and lived it and felt it. I was so lucky to live and work and enjoy life in Hollywood during its golden age. You know that marvelous Angela Lansbury wrote a lovely intro for my book.
JB:Did you always love the movies?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, heavens, yes. I was going to the movies when I was quite, quite young. In the 1910s I would scrimp and save my pennies and nickels and go to the show. Later on in the 1920s my lovely sister Vera played the piano in the movie house, then later the organ, and she would get me in free. My wonderful Vera was quite talented musically. Later on she became a famous jazz singer and performer in Canada. We all loved the movies, my brother and sisters and I, but I loved them best. I remember seeing Intolerance and being quite moved and impressed. All of the D. W. Griffith films were wonderful. Of course, Chaplin was very popular -- him and his little stick for a cane. I always thought he was strange. Yes, definitely more strange than funny.
JB:I'm so interested in silent film and silent film players. Many of or readers are also very interested. Could you tell me who were some of your favorite leading ladies of the silent screen before you worked at MGM?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, I had so many favorites. In those golden silent film days there were so many diverse and fascinating film personalities. I was mad for Gloria Swanson -- she was unique, a true Hollywood film immortal. I loved the Talmadge sisters, Norma and Constance. I had and still have today the utmost admiration and respect for Lillian Gish. Miss Gish was a true artist on the screen and the stage. She's one of the very best acresses ever. I never dreamed I would work with her, and I'm so proud I did. I loved Barbara LaMarr and Marion Davies. They were both so very beautiful. Corinne Griffith was a true star and another beautiful lady.
My mother loved the Russian stars Nazimova and Olga Petrova. I guess her admiration rubbed off on me because I liked them too! I loved the Mae Murray movies because she danced so wonderfully, and she really possessed glamour. Going way back to the early silents in the teens again, I loved Pearl White and Mae Marsh and a very talented dramatic actress named Pauline Frederick. As I told you, Jimmy, I loved many screen personalities ... I went to the movies every week, sometimes every day. I know I've left out some of my favorites like Mary Astor, Louise Brooks, and I loved Pola Negri. She was really a grand star and linked romanticaly with Chaplin and Valentino!
JB:I'm doing a book with your friend and mine Margaret Burk on Barbara LaMarr, the girl who was too beautiful. Could you comment on Miss LaMarr.
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, Barbara LaMarr was a popular, world famous beauty. What made her such a successful star was not just her rare, vivid beauty, but her very unusual different kind of personality. Barbara was possessed with some of the most unique expressions. She was ... well, very emotional on film and vibrant, yes, so beautiful and vibrant. She was an exquisite looking creature. I realized that when I was just a little kid. Later on, people whom I worked with at Metro were always quite taken by her beauty. These were people who had worked with Barbara LaMarr at Metro in the '20s. A lot of them stayed and worked at Metro in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Yes, Barbara made quite an impression on those who saw her. She had the same type of beauty that Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Vivien Leigh, and Hedy Lamarr, who was named for her, possessed. I know Joan Crawford was a big Barbara LaMarr fan and admirer. It seems Miss LaMarr befriended Joan when Joan wa a starlet at Metro.
JB:I am presently doing research on a star you mentioned earlier, Corinne Griffith, for a future article. Could you please give me your impressions of Corinne Griffith, the Orchid Girl of the silver screen.
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Jimmy, ha ha, that's Orchid Lady of the silver screen. And she was a celluloid orchid. What a beautiful, beautiful lady she was. She came to the salon I worked in, Antoines in New York City. She was a huge film favorite in the teens and twenties. She had this, well, bigger than life, almost goddess-like mystique on the screen. In person she was warm and friendly, every inch a lady and beautiful, astonishingly beautiful. I'll tell you this, when she walked up the hall, the stairs of Antoines, every eye was upon her. She was always dressed so chic and really simply. Yes, simply and, oh, so elegant -- just black velvet and pearls -- or a simple silk dress. She, with all of her amazing beauty and fame, was sweet. Sweet and down-to-earth, with both feet planted firmly on the ground. She went on to write successful books, study art and become very prudent in the business world. What a star! What a woman, what an amazing title to have:"The Orchid Lady of the Screen." Well, she was like an orchid, she was very rare.!
JB:I'm so glad I asked you about Miss Griffith. Another silent film star who featured prominently in your life is that singular beauty, Louise Brooks. Do you remember first meeting Miss Brooks?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh yes, indeed I can remember the first time I laid my eyes on Louise Brooks. She was a lovely, whimsical, feminine creature. She was sporting a famous cut of the time, the Buster Brown hairdo, very similar to the hairdo the Flaming Youth Girl, Colleen Moore, had made so popular. (By the way, Colleen Moore was another film favorite of mine from my Canada silent movie days when I was quite young.)
She came into the hotel salon I worked in when I was only 16. She made no fuss about who she was at all. She just waltzed in and wanted a new hairdo. My young co-worker, the girl at the desk with the appointment book, said I was free for the next hour and that I was very young and talented and that I could do her hair right then.
She was really lovely like a little fawn, and she was very sweet. I asked her, "Would you dare to cut your Buster Brown bob a little shorter?" She said, "What do you think?" I told her, "I can make you look different. If you don't like it, it will grow back quickly." I cut on one side slowly. She trusted me. Then I told her to pick up the hand mirror and look at this one side I had cut. She looked and said, "Oh, that's good!" I cut a little bit shorter and cut in a "slant" fashion, the longest point of hair came to her ear lobe. I then shingled her hair very short in the back. I cut it very close on the neck.
The difference of this short, shingled helmet cut impressed her very much. It was almost a man's hairdo except for the part and the shingle look. This distinctive woman was elated with her new hairdo. This look was like no other that was being sported by the New York City beauties of the day. I was startled a few months later to see this beautiful Louise Brooks on the silver screen. Yes, she was wearing "my" haircut. I was thrilled. It was the first time a movie star had worn one of my creations on the motion picture screen. Even though at the time I gave Miss Brooks her hairdo I had no idea this would happen. Little did I know that one day many famous ladies would grace the screen with my creations.
JB:You said that you admired the great Russian screen star Alla Nazimova. I know you styled her hair in the 1940s' MGM hit "Escape" with Norma Shearer and Robert Taylor. What did you think of the great Nazimova?
Sydney Guilaroff:Nazimova, the very name contains magic, especially to people of my generation. I never dreamed I would meet her, let alone do her hair in the film Escape. I recall how much I loved her silent version of Camille with a young Rudolph Valentino. I thought her acting in Camille was simply wonderful. As I told you before she was my mother's very favorite actress. In silents she was a very big, big star. She was what people of that day thought of as an important prestige star, sort of in the same vein as Sarah Bernhardt and the way Garbo was eventually thought of. There was a real mystery that surrounded Nazimova -- a mystique, an almost unreal quality about her. But there she is! She was very arty in a good sense of that word.
I remember when I worked with her later on in 1940, she still had that thick accent. The older group at Metro still working there in 1940 still held for her a certain awe and great respect. I know for a fact Norma Shearer treated her like a queen and was very happy and excited to be working with her.
JB:Sydney, I know by reading your interesting book that the first movie star you ever styled a hairdo for (and knew she was a movie star looking for a better look for a film, not like Louise Brooks) was the late Claudette Colbert.
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, we lost Claudette this year [1996], a great talent and a great lady. She could play comedy as well as drama. She was a great star for over 70 years! She was my first star I styled and my last. I originally styled her hair at "Antoines" in New York City. She was filming in New York at The Astoria Studios. She was unhappy with her hairdo. She came to me, beautifully dressed and so smart looking. What a charming and sophisticated young woman, even in 1928.
I adored my long and enduring friendship with Claudette. I studied her lovely face and cut her hair very short. Then I gave her bangs. She kept the hairdo the rest of her life with small variations on it.
I also styled her hair for the wonderful tv movie The Two Mrs. Grenvilles with my beloved Ann-Margret. It was both my last film and Claudette's swan song. I won an Emmy for my contribution, but I can't get too excited about it because my beloved Ann-Margret hasn't won hers. They have cheated Ann out of many Emmys so I'm not too thrilled with the Television Academy.
JB: I have just completed an article on the beautiful Mary Astor. Could you comment on Miss Astor for our readers?
Sydney Guilaroff:With pleasure. I liked Mary Astor very much. I think just about everyone admired her. I saw her in many silent films when I was young. She was a fine actress and always gave a good account of herself in many varied film roles. She had a big doe-eyed innocent look. She was simply a most beautiful creature. She looked as if she stepped out of a classic painting. Her lovely profile was flawless. By the time I had the pleasure of styling Miss Astor's hair, Metro was giving her stories that weren't worthy of her proven talents. This is a real shame. She was getting older, and her star began to fade. Metro was stupid because she certainly showed what she could do in the Warner Bros. classics The Maltese Falcon and The Great Lie. Miss Astor was very gifted.
JB:Metro was ruled with an iron fist by Louie B. Mayer. Did you like Mayer?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, I don't know if "like" is the correct word here. Later on I had respect for him. We had it out earlier on. But he was dedicated to making fine films for the most part. He could be cruel. I thought his eventual treatment of Garbo and Joan Crawford was abominable.
JB:Speaking of Garbo and Crawford. I know they were both special in your life. Could you begin by telling me how Joan Crawford entered your life?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, Joan Crawford was a dear friend, and she opened an important door for me, the door to MGM. I was lucky to meet Joan. Her mother-in-law, Beth Sulley Fairbanks, was a very good client of mine. She wrote Joan and praised my work to Crawford. Joan telephoned Beth Fairbanks back and said, "Book me with Mr. Guilaroff." This was back in 1931. At this time Joan was a big star, and she was also the darling of the fan magazines. She entered into the salon with her dapper husband on her arm, Doug Fairbanks, Jr. A large crowd appeared and followed her all the way up to the appointment desk. I stepped out to meet and greet Joan. She was simply beautiful in an all black silk ensemble with a white blouse. Mr. Fairbanks was very polite and attentive to Joan. I escorted them both back to a private booth. Mr. Fairbanks asked how long I would be and then excused himself.
Joan and I broke the ice by talking about Beth Sulley Fairbanks, then her life in California, MGM, and her lovely home in Brentwood. Crawford and I really hit it off from the beginning. As I do with all of my first time clients, I asked Joan how she wanted her hair. She responded that I should do what I thought might be becoming to her. She completely trusted my judgment. I studied her beautiful face with her fantastic bone structure and gave her a sleek and smooth, top of her head hairdo with flowing waves, brushed back behind her ears. We continued laughing and talking. She confided in me that the world famous Mary Pickford, her step-mother-in-law, did not care for the celebrated marriage of Doug, Jr. and herself. We both joked, and I was wicked and called Mary Pickford "Mary Pitchfork." Joan laughed and laughed. When I finished her hair style, she was thrilled with her new look. Her husband, Doug Fairbanks, Jr., returned and loved her hair also.
Joan asked me if she could return to me the next day so I could repeat the new hairdo, and she would photograph her new look. She explained she wanted this exact look for her next character in her upcoming MGM film Letty Lynton. I was thrilled and readily agreed, plus, I would get to see Joan again and she, I felt, was already a new friend.
For the next three years Crawford would make the trek from Hollywood to New York City to have me design a new hair style for her upcoming films. She would photograph them (the hairdos) and watch me carefully. Then armed with her photos and knowledge, she would instruct the hairdressers at Metro how to style her new look. Finally, Louis B. Mayer complained about Joan always leaving Hollywood for New York City before she would start a new film and asked Joan why she insisted on me. Joan told Mayer I was young and talented and gave her the best hairdos. The next thing I knew I was aboard the old "Sunset Limited" in the late fall headed for MGM and a new life!
JB:How fascinating. Did you always dislike the first queen of movies, Mary Pickford?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, I was so loyal to Joan, and she was so good to me. I didn't really think about her that much. She was the first true superstar of the movies, but it bothered me that she made Crawford unhappy. Later in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the lovely Norma Shearer used to invite me to wonderful dinner parties at her Santa Monica Beach home. At one of these functions, she sat me beside Mary Pickford. I found her to be very charming and most delightful. Later Pickford and Crawford became sort of pals and learned to appreciate each other.
JB:Is it true that Joan Crawford disliked and resented Norma Shearer? What were your impressions of Miss Shearer?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, as for the latter part of your question, I adored Norma Shearer. She was a great star and one of the true queens of the movies. She was a study in good taste and elegance. Miss Shearer was marvelous to me.
Marie Antoinette was and is my favorite film. I worked so hard on that movie. The designer Adrian and I went to Paris for more than one week to study and research the fashion and hair styles of Marie Antoinette's time. Norma was brilliant as Marie Antoinette. She was a fine actress and a fine lady. The opening of Marie Antoinette was the biggest and best and most glittering premiere in all the film industry. Everybody from every major studio came. I remember Tyrone Power, Miss Shearer's leading man in Marie Antoinette escorted her that wonderful night. The beauty of that film is stunning. Of all the work I've ever done, my best and most challenging work was found in that film. The French version of the film, starring Michelle Morgan, could not compare to our MGM motion picture. I think the reason Norma Shearer was so popular was that she had this wonderful expressive face.
I remember seeing her face adorn a Firestone tire sign in Montreal, Canada. I remember thinking then, "I wonder who she is." She had this remarkable smile. She was sticking her lovely face through the center of the tire, and she had her hands around the tire which ran all around the world and they called Norma "Miss Lotta Miles."
Later on, when I recounted this remembrance to her, she smiled that wonderful smile of hers and said, "We have both come a long, long way, haven't we, Sydney!"
JB: Sydney, what about the so-called feud of Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Norma didn't feel like she feuded with anyone. The truth is Joan resented the fact that Norma got to pick the best scripts, and she resented Norma's treatment because she was married to that genius Irving Thalberg. Joan did act up on the set of the classic film The Women. She shouldn't have done that. In my opinion, Joan was too big of a star to engage herself in such antics and jealous actions. It's a pity. Miss Shearer was such a lovely person.
JB:I know from your book you also had a very close relationship with the great Greta Garbo. Sydney, what was Garbo's most endearing quality?
Sydney Guilaroff:Garbo possessed this most remarkable, quiet sense of humor. When she was amused and really laughed, her eyebrows came together! She would listen so intently and throw her head back in sheer abandon and just laugh. She had this wonderful laugh. I loved to hear Garbo or Gretala, as I called her, laugh. Garbo's pet name for me was Gilly. You know Garbo never really thought she was a star. She was so private, and she hated publicity and invasions of her very private life.
I had been on the Metro lot for almost a half a year, and I had not come face to face with the great Garbo yet. This was so distressing to me. She was my favorite actress on the screen. I finally glimpsed her, just once before we met formally. She darted out of her dressing room to her limosine. I remember thinking how classically beautiful she was. What a face. What magic. Everyone on the Metro lot was fascinated by Garbo. I was walking with Crawford on the lot one day, and there she was in front of us. Garbo, strolling by!
Joan wanted an excuse to chat with the reclusive legend. She recommended my hair styling services to Garbo. Just a couple of days later I was in the old Metro makeup department. The telephone rang, and this husky voice said, "Mr. Guilaroff, this is Miss Garbo." I thought it was someone joking with me so I replied, "Yes, this is John Gilbert." I instantly realized it was Garbo. She laughed and asked if I could come to her dressing room to discuss her next film, Camille.
I went to her dressing room. Her door was marked by a single G. When she opened the door, she was so lovely. She told me, "Oh, you are quite beautiful, Mr. Guilaroff." I was embarrassed. I had never been called beautiful before, and this was Garbo. I told her she was beautiful. She was so extraordinary looking. She looked completely different from anyone I had ever seen. So radiant, so mystical looking. She looked rather sad even when she smiled. We discussed the way her hair should look for Camille. The meeting went very smoothly.
JB:Sydney, I recently had a conversation with a mutual friend of ours, the sweet and lovely Marsha Hunt. Marsha told me you gave her a feathered haircut and Garbo had admired it. She (Miss Hunt) told me that she had been asked to go to Garbo's dressing room to show her your hair style. It was an unforgettable moment for Marsha Hunt. She said Garbo used the hairdo in her final film, "Two Faced Woman," and she remembers you being in the dressing room with Garbo and her. The critics attacked "Two Faced Woman" in 1941. Do you think the film was terrible?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Two Faced Woman and Garbo wanting to see Marsha Hunt's hairdo. That takes me back! By the way, I adore Marsha Hunt. She could wear clothes so well and almost any hair style. You know she (Marsha Hunt) was a Powers model. She now has her own fashion book titled "The Way We Wore."
But back to Two Faced Woman. Yes, the film was a mistake. With that film, well, that's when Garbo quit the movies. What a shame. She no longer cared. She told me, "Alas, Gilly, this is my last movie. I will never act again." It's interesting. The film should have been great. They tried to completely change Garbo, a big mistake -- strip away her mystery and try to Americanize her. Well, they made a big blunder. Garbo was a mystery and people loved the fact that she was not a typical American. It comes to mind now, something Norma Shearer once told me. She said, "George Cukor could be wonderful for you or he could be the kiss of death for you." Well, he directed Two Faced Woman and Shearer's last two films which were both box office failures, We Were Dancing and Her Cardboard Lover. I was proud of the blonde wig I devised for Miss Shearer in We Were Dancing, which, by the way, was based on a Noel Coward play. What a shame Garbo and Norma Shearer left the screen and never returned.
JB:Do you have anymore statements about the elusive Garbo?
Sydney Guilaroff:She and I were close, very close, closer than anyone knew for years and years. I was friends with her all over the world for many, many years. Garbo and I used to be entertained in people's homes. She used to say, "I wouldn't bother to talk to most people, people want to talk about themselves. No one is really interested in you!" Garbo's most outstanding trait or feature was just being Garbo. She was always singular in the world of movies.
JB: Margaret Sullavan is another Hollywood actress I admire greatly. I know she was at MGM in the late 1930s and early 1940s. You didn't speak of her in your book. Could you give our readers your thoughts on Miss Sullavan.
Sydney Guilaroff:I loved her. Maggie (yes, we who knew Margaret Sullavan always called her Maggie) was a wonderful, very special talent who came to Hollywood from the New York stage. I greatly admired her for never being held under long term contract. She had Universal, Paramount, and MGM sort of under her thumb. She was married to a very powerful agent, Leland Hayward so she could sort of take Hollywood or leave it. Mostly she left it (Hollywood). I think she considered MGM a big factory, and she didn't pay much mind to Louis B. Mayer. There was always a very sad quality about her. But she never talked about what was in her heart. I know she adored her family, and I think she enjoyed being a homemaker much more than a movie star. Everyone in the industry had enormous respect for her proven abilities. She had a very real and honest quality in her acting. Her voice was unforgettable. I loved her in Three Comrades. She was just tops in that.
Crawford made a film called The Shining Hour with Maggie. Joan had the utmost respect for Maggie's special art.
Her hair, like her acting, was very lovely and simple. She had a reputation for being temperamental as so many greats did like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Magnani and Barbra Streisand today. That group I just named should tell you something.
I only saw the famous Sullavan temper flare up one time, and I think to this very day she was completely justified and absolutely right. She was in a picture, a fine picture with Jimmy Stewart called The Mortal Storm. Her character in the picture was supposed to be Jewish. This film (The Mortal Storm, 1940, MGM) was a very serious and important picture about Germany and those evil Nazis and Hitler. Mayer, who was Jewish himself, did not want Maggie to be Jewish in the film. She was furious. She (Maggie) went to see L.B. and told him millions of Jews were being murdered and discriminated against. She was very angry and upset over this "Jewish situation" in Europe in 1940 and frustrated over not being able to say she was Jewish in this film. He told her he was sorry, but she (or rather the script) could not say she was Jewish in the film. L.B. told Maggie, "You can't be Jewish. You can only be sympathetic." Maggie was fit to be tied.
Back on the set Maggie was concentrating very hard on this delicate part, in this serious picture. Jimmy Stewart (who never appealed to me as an actor, even if he has always been a big star) was doing his same old routine, with vocal hesitations and famous stutter. Maggie and Jimmy went back a long way. But Maggie warned him to stop his personality performance and to really start acting the character and not playing stuttering Jimmy Stewart. She was mad. She told him you stop that kind of acting. This is a very serious picture about a drastic situation. Jimmy Stewart continued to play Jimmy Stewart. Well, finally Maggie had had enough. She was so unhappy and so angry. She hauled off and slapped the very surprised Jimmy Stewart across his face and yelled, "You be the character, not Jimmy Stewart, or I'll quit this picture." She walked off the set and stopped production. That's the only time I saw Maggie behave that way, but I understood her and respected her sensitivity.
JB: Sydney, this is so exciting to hear these great stories first hand. Another great MGM lady in residence was Jean Harlow. What did you think about Jean, and did you know just how ill she was in 1937?
Sydney Guilaroff:Beautiful Jean, everyone called her the Baby. She was so sweet and unspoiled. What a great comedienne she was. The public loved her movies. She could hold her own with Gable and Tracy. She played such a tart on the screen. She was nothing like the parts she played offscreen. I knew toward the end she was very ill. There was nothing anyone could do. She was so hung up on Bill Powell. She just adored him. She was so very young when she died, only 26 at the time. It was just dreadful. So young it's just too bad.
JB:Another MGM stunner was Hedy Lamarr. Can you speak a bit about Austria's finest and most beautiful export ever!
Sydney Guilaroff:I just spoke to Hedy Lamarr the other day. She lives in Florida. She said, "Sydney, where's my book. You promised me a book!" I've got to send her one! Hedy Lamarr was as richly beautiful as a polished jewel. American audiences gasped at her dark beauty -- her eyes, hair, and lips. Louis B. Mayer named her after Barbara LaMarr, so you know that was an incredible honor. I think Vivien Leigh and she looked like two gorgeous sisters. Hedy Lamarr was an instant hit, yes an instant sensation because of her famous beauty. She became a top star with her first American film, Algiers with Charles Boyer. Her face was almost unbelievable. I remember after Algiers premiered, we all went to the famous club Ciros. I was sitting between Hedy Lamarr and Constance Bennett. The thing I love the most about the beautiful Hedy is she was as down to earth and natural as anyone could be. She shared that wonderful trait with another great beauty, Ava Gardner. Yes, Hedy Lamarr never "went Hollywood."
JB:You just compared Hedy Lamarr to Vivien Leigh .. Did you ever work with this immortal star?
Sydney Guilaroff:I met the incredible Vivien Leigh while she was shooting Gone With the Wind. She was unhappy with some of the hairstyles they were designing for her at the Selznick studio. I helped her on my own time and designed hairdos to go with her numerous costume changes. We took stills of the hairdos and sent them back to the stylists on the movie set. I didn't get any screen credit, but I did not care because I liked Vivien so much.
Mr. Bangley:Did you ever do hairstyles for Tallulah Bankhead?
Sydney Guilaroff:I wish I did work with Tallulah, but I never did. I liked her very much on the screen.
Jimmy, you said an interesting statement about Miss Bankhead earlier. You said Tallulah Bankhead was like a cross between Bette Davis and Greta Garbo. That's one of the best descriptions of Tallulah I've ever heard. Of course, she had her very own distinct style and sound. Paramount was very lucky to sign her in the early 1930s. She was one of the very few extremely famous stage stars. She was always witty, filled with fun, and a favorite with the press. I saw her on stage in New York City in The Little Foxes and The Skin of Our Teeth. She had a certain power, a dramatic power on stage that was sheer magic. Bankhead was dynamic. You could feel her power in the back of the theatre. As marvelous as she was on the screen, she was even better on the stage. I thought she was sparkling and very, very funny.
JB:Miriam Hopkins had a varied and interesting career. Did you ever do her hairstyles?
Sydney Guilaroff:I styled Miriam Hopkins' hair when she was a young beautiful stage star on Broadway. She had gorgeous natural blonde hair, and she was every inch a Southern belle. She possessed a natural nervous energy and was a fine actress. She was quite popular on the screen in the 1930s. I seem to remember the two films she made with Bette Davis -- I can't remember those films' titles.
JB:"The Old Maid" (Warner Bros. 1939) and "Old Acquaintance" (Warner Bros. 1943).
Sidney Guilaroff:Oh yes, they were wonderful films. I think Miss Hopkins was quite jealous of Miss Davis who was enjoying an enormous popularity here in America and abroad. She (Bette Davis) was the Queen of Hollywood, not just Warner Bros., in the late 1930s and early 1940s. I loved Davis in Jezebel and Dark Victory.
JB: Bette Davis is a personal favorite of mine (and countless others). Sydney, did you ever style her hair? You spoke of the Hollywood Canteen in your book. But you did not elaborate on Davis. What did you think of her and did your paths ever cross in Hollywood after the Hollywood Canteen.
Sydney Guilaroff:Bette Davis was bigger than life. She was ... magic. This was a big, yes, a huge star. Everyone in Hollywood admired her. She was a great, great, emotional and dramatic actress and also a big star. She played a variety of parts and played them to perfection. She changed the course of acting in film. She dared to play unsympathetic characters as well as queens and martyrs. She was box office gold, and she used her power to fight for better films. All of us at Metro were awed and fascinated by her and her magnificent parts in films. The public always loved her, and they still do today. Young and old alike are drawn to her screen magic. I saw her on film in the early 1930s in a not-so-good film with Lois Wilson, who had been big in silent pictures. She leaned over to kiss her mother (Lois Wilson), and I remember thinking this girl has got something different. I know over at Metro Crawford, Garbo, and Shearer were big fans of hers. So were Lana Turner and Judy Garland.
How could you not help love this incredible talent? I first met her at the Hollywood Canteen which catered to and entertained the G.I.s with big stars dancing, entertaining, and serving them before they were shipped overseas. The Hollywood Canteen was Bette's idea, and I don't think she ever got the attention she deserved for founding this wonderful institution. Bette organized and ran things like a real pro. She had the biggest stars from every studio except Garbo to work and delight the service men. Bette was marvelous at the Hollywood Canteen. We became good friends. I adored her spunk and professionalism. She would dance with the G.I.s, and it wasn't beneath her to sweep the floor, make sandwiches, and work in the kitchen. She did all of this and worked hard during the day at Warner Bros., creating unforgettable films. What a woman!
Later in the mid-1950s she finally came to Metro to star in a film called The Catered Affair. I was lucky to style her hair in this movie. I remember my friend Debbie Reynolds portrayed her daughter. I felt so lucky to work with the talented Bette Davis. She was not demanding -- very easy to be with and such a great pro! She never complained, never demanded "the star bit" and was a complete joy to work with. She was a great and exceptional performer with an extraordinary gift, a natural gift that Hollywood professionals as well as the public picked up on and adored. She was truly set apart from all others and a real hardworker. Hollywood, me, and the public will never get over her and never forget or stop loving her.
JB: Sydney, what did you think of the cult classic "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, it's a real famous film, and Joan and Bette are forever linked in the public's eyes. I visited the set. Peggy Shannon, who is most talented, did the hairstyles and wigs. I can tell you this:Bette Davis and Joan Crawford never indulged in a feud during the filming of this famous production. They were both far too professional to engage in such activities.
JB:What do you think of the film "Mommie Dearest" and Faye Dunaway's portrayal of Joan Crawford?
Sydney Guilaroff:No comment.
JB:Sydney, we've mentioned Ava Gardner a few times. I know you were very fond of Miss Gardner. Let's talk about Ava ...
Sydney Guilaroff:I miss Ava the most. She was stunning, simply stunning. Poor Ava, she was just too young to die. I miss her every day. It's funny. I dream about Ava a lot. She's really the only star I dream about. Oh, I take that back. I used to dream about Garbo. I still dream about my lovely Ava. Ava was a great, great actress and such an individual. I felt like MGM did not appreciate her enough. Well, the public did, and they still do. The stupid Academy did not even nominate her for her brilliant performances in The Barefoot Contessa, Bhowani Junction, and, of course, The Night of the Iguana. She did get a well deserved best actress nomination for Mogambo. But, like I said before, she was a great actress who was underrated because of her incredible beauty.
Like Garbo, Ava hated the press. She loved her privacy. That's why she moved to Spain in the early 1950s and then eventually London. She wanted to get away from Hollywood and that fish bowl life. Even though Ava's beauty was a wonderment to all who ever saw it, she never thought she was beautiful. She was natural. Out of all of the stars I've ever met, she was the most natural and down-to-earth. I never saw her play the star. Ava was fun, and she knew how to have fun. She had a delicious sense of humor. In the 1950s she was really a party girl. But even in those days, she was sweet, loyal, and one of the most decent people I've ever encountered. She hated the sultry and sensual image Metro cultivated for her. The whole vamp thing bored her.
Ava was bright. Yes, she was very intelligent. Few people knew she had a high I.Q. She loved to read, and she was quick to learn. She was such a combination -- sweet, Southern country girl and elegant, gorgeous film goddess.
I'll never forget the first time I saw Ava. Her natural beauty floored me. She had natural curly hair, most people didn't know that. Her Southern accent was so thick you could cut it with a knife. She worked hard and turned out to be the most elegant star at Metro in the late '40s and '50s.
Metro didn't know what to do with Ava. They cast her in bits and lousy pictures. She became an important star on loanout from MGM. The movies that first made her were Whistle Stop, The Killers, and One Touch of Venus.
Ava and I were very close from 1941 on. I always listened to her, and she confided in me about her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra. We also discussed her career. After the first 20 years, I don't think Ava cared very much about her career.
I did Ava's and Elizabeth Taylor's hair (as well as Jane Fonda and Cecily Tyson) in The Blue Bird. The movie did not turn out very well. Ava didn't care for her part. George Cukor, who directed Blue Bird, and Ava were very close friends, but they did not get on during the shooting. She complained that George wanted her to be more actressy and more sensual. She dreaded making that film. I had only seen her unhappy like on one other film.
JB: Do tell, Sydney, what film was that?
Sydney Guilaroff:Seven Days In May was the film. The producer did not like the costume sketches. He insulted the gifted Orry-Kelly who was the fashion designer. Ava adored Orry-Kelly and loved his sketches. They had already worked twice before on One Touch of Venus and 55 Days In Peking. Also, in Ava's house in Spain she had paintings hung throughout the house by Orry-Kelly. He was a very talented artist.
Anyway, Orry-Kelly was a genius in film fashion design, and he was rightly insulted and walked off the picture. Ava was furious. She told Frankenhiemer he was an idiot and how dare he insult Orry-Kelly's wonderful work. She stormed off the set cursing and called her beloved Orry-Kelly from her dressing room.
I went on to dress Ava in that film as well as do her hair. After Orry-Kelly left the film, she, out of loyalty, refused to work with another designer. She and I picked out her wardrobe in New York City, and I believe she still wore an Orry-Kelly outfit in that film.
JB:Orry-Kelly was brilliant. Could you tell us, Sydney, some more comments on Mr. Orry-Kelly and some of the other top fashion designers?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Orry-Kelly was at the very top of his profession. I loved the way he dressed Bette Davis and his wardrobe for Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca is timeless. He was known in Hollywood for drawing the best skteches. He had written in his contract that the studios had to purchase his sketches or they go home with him. His sketches were real works of art. Adrian really understood glamor. I loved working with him. Our best collaboration was Marie Antoinette. Also, don't forget what Adrian did for the fashion industry with Joan Crawford and those shoulder pads. I enjoyed working with Adrian.
Edith Head's work was always fine. She was most dedicated and very hard working. Charles LeMaire and Travilla were wonderful. Walter Plunkett had a strange personality. I had respect for him. His period costume work was brilliant. Who could ever forget Gone With the Wind's lovely wardrobe as well as The Three Musketeers (1948) and Show Boat (1951). I love that green dress Ava wore in Show Boat. Yes, I had great respect for Walter Plunkett, but he was a cold man.
My favorite designer was Irene Gibbons, who went by the single name Irene. She was a genius, and I loved working with her. She brought out the very best in Dietrich, Ava, Elizabeth, Lana, Judy Garland, Crawford, Dolores Del Rio, Hedy Lamarr, and every other actress she ever designed for.
I always loved working with the makeup and costume people, well, except for Jack Dawn. Mr. Dawn was the makeup man at Metro. He hated me from the start and was jealous of my friendships with Garbo, Ava, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Lana Turner, and Hedy Lamarr. He did eventually have respect for my work in Marie Antoinette, but he was always silly and jealous.
JB:You've worked with so many immortals of the screen. I'm now going to ask you to make some brief comments on a variety of stars. Let's start out with some comments on Marlene Dietrich.
Sydney Guilaroff:Marlene invented glamour. No one on the screen before or since has worked so hard to appear glamorous. No matter where Marlene went, the glamour went with her. She was so much fun to go out in public with. I remember the press went crazy one time because Marlene and I got kicked out of a gambling casino in Monte Carlo. She was wearing this really daring skin tight black leather outfit. The pants and top were leather, and she also wore this beautiful blue Hermés scarf. In those days, the casino would not let any woman in that did not wear a gown. Marlene loved all of the photos and attention she got for getting kicked out. I loved Marlene. I'm proud of my work with her in Kismet, and I love the dark wig I designed for her for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
JB:Did you think Marilyn Monroe was a good actress?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, she was wonderful in The Misfits. She did that film to please Arthur Miller yet he was having an affair. This made poor Marilyn very unhappy. Clark Gable, whom I knew very well and always liked, admired Marilyn. Marilyn loved Clark Gable and was thrilled to work with him.
JB:Were you suprised at Lucille Ball's tv success?
Sydney Guilaroff:No, I wasn't and I was very happy for her. I knew Miss Ball when she came to MGM from RKO. Like Metro did with Ava at first, they just wasted Miss Ball. She was a success in a couple of pictures. I dyed Lucille's hair that famous golden red for The Ziegfeld Follies of 1946.
JB: Did you ever work with Anna Magnani?
Sydney Guilaroff:I never did, and I wish I had. She was one of the world's greatest actresses. Such passion and emotion. She has some of the same excitement and qualities one associates with Bette Davis.You could tell she was warm hearted. I especially loved The Rose Tattoo.
JB:How about Lana Turner?
Sydney Guilaroff:I liked Lana very much. She was a very beautiful girl. She had a kind of mystique about her. She looked so sad. She invented the pearls and sweater look. That is still with us today. Lana was a big box office star around the world and one of Metro's biggest attractions. I saw her in the morning that awful day that her lover, Johnny Stompanato was killed. Lana was coming out of a hardware store in Beverly Hills. She had just bought that infamous butcher knife that killed Stompanato. It's in my book.
JB:That is a real trip. I met Lana Turner. I was so excited and thrilled. How about Judy Garland?
Sydney Guilaroff:She really was a topnotch performer and possessed an outstanding talent. There was nothing outstanding about her looks. I must say she bothered me a little bit. Her behavior sometimes was unnecessary. To be difficult does not make me admire a person. She was always late on the set. I know she was having difficult times, and I truly felt for her. It's too bad about the drugs and alcohol. I have a trememdnous love and respect for Liza. She is a real talent and completely unique. I love Liza. She is like a daughter to me.
JB:Could you tell me your opinion of Angela Lansbury.
Sydney Guilaroff:Angela is such a big star now. She is a fine actress. Great on the stage, screen, television, or radio. She's kind and every inch a lady. A wonderful family person. Her husband is a wonderful man, and they have a wonderful marriage. I first met Angela with her actress mother, a Miss McGill. She made quite an impression with her first film, Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. I was so pleased that she wrote the introduction to my book.
JB:How about Greer Garson?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, she was such a lady to the tips of her toes. She had that beautiful skin and lovely, yes, really lovely hair. I used to speak to her every Sunday on the telephone.
JB: How about Katharine Hepburn?
Sydney Guilaroff:Katharine is one of my favorite people and a very, very great star and actress. It seems the whole world respects this fine woman and rightly so. The first time I did her hair was 1940 at Metro for the film The Philadelphia Story, which is such a wonderful film. She always tells me when I come to New York City that I can stay with her. She's a wonderful lady and a true friend.
JB: Sydney, Debbie Reynolds has a new film coming out around Christmas. What Do you think about that?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, that's just grand. I love Debbie, and I hope her film is a big hit. She's fun and talented, and I've known her since she was a girl.
JB:How about Shirley MacLaine?
Sydney Guilaroff:Shirley MacLaine is one of our very best actresses. She is so completely talented. Her genius extends to dancing on the stage and her successful books. I loved her gamine hairdo she wore in Some Came Running. She is such a versatile actress, just as good in comedy as in drama. Her stage shows have been very popular. I love Shirley, and I'm proud she's my friend.
JB:Could we chat a little about Elizabeth Taylor?
Sydney Guilaroff:Elizabeth is one of the most famous women on our planet. She was a star at 12 years old and will always remain a great star. She was a beautiful child and is still beautiful today. I'm very proud of the work I've done with Elizabeth. Cleopatra was a real challenge. I did her hair on dozens of films. She is a marvelous actress. I love and admire Elizabeth for her kind heart and her wonderful work for AIDS. I did a whole chapter on Elizabeth in my book.
JB:What about Ann-Margret?
Sydney Guilaroff:Ann was and is one of my very best friends. She is a great actress and deserves more credit for her brilliant work. My last film was The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, and I thought she was just fantastic in that. Ann is very sincere and sweet. I think she is one of the most beautiful women in the world.
JB: Did you do men's hair at MGM?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, yes. I did them all. I think my favorites were Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, and Tyrone Power.
JB:What is the difference between today's stars and yesterday's?
Sydney Guilaroff:There is a vast difference. The stars of the golden era had real magic. A lot of today's pictures are not made on star power. So much has to do with sex, violence, and special effects.
JB:Sydney, what is your favorie motion picture?
Sydney Guilaroff:I have three. Marie Antoinette, Quo Vadis, and Ben Hur, 1959.
JB:Whom do you consider the greatest director?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, well, I like many, but I would have to say William Wyler. I loved Ben Hur, Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, Roman Holiday, Funny Girl, The Letter, and The Best Years of Our Lives. I also admire John Huston, Billy Wilder, Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor, and Edmund Goulding.
JB:Who are your favorite stars of today?
Sydney Guilaroff:Only two. Barbra Streisand and Sharon Stone.
JB:Why those two?
Sydney Guilaroff:Sharon Stone has such elegance and wears such beautiful clothes. I like to watch her at award shows. She has real glamour. Barbra Streisand is a real genius of the motion picture industry. She is brilliant in every facet -- acting, singing, directing, writing, and producing. She is the star of today. My only career sadness is that I never worked with this glamorous and creative woman. I would love to discuss scenes with her. She is a perfectionist. She is the most gifted woman in the industry, maybe even the history of the industry. She possesses sheer magic. I loved the way she sang in Yentl. I saw her on tv when she won those Emmys for her concert. She was so elegant and beautiful in her empire gown. She reminds me of that famous bust of Nefertiti. Anyway, she is so elegant and beautiful. I know some people don't care for her looks, but I think she is extraordinarily beautiful. She is an absolute genius.
JB:Sydney, I agree with you. I'm a huge Streisand fan. Do you think there will be anymore books in the future?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, I hope and would like to do a coffee table picture book.
Author's Note:Sydney Guilaroff is now 90 years old. I have been a happy guest at his beautiful home three times now. God bless this wonderful man who has had so many great stars in his life. I wish him and his delightful book, "Crowning Glory," the best of luck and much success. Many thanks to the wonderful Margaret Burk of Round Table West Literary Society and the ever lovely Marsha Hunt.
solute genius.
JB:Sydney, I agree with you. I'm a huge Streisand fan. Do you think there will be anymore books in the future?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, I hope and would like to do a coffee table picture book.
Author's Note:Sydney Guilaroff is now 90 years old. I have been a happy guest at his beautiful home three times now. God bless this wonderful man who has had so many great stars in his life. I wish him and his delightful book, "Crowning Glory," the best of luck and much success. Many thanks to the wonderful Margaret Burk of Round Table West Literary Society and the ever lovely Marsha Hunt.
.
Copyright © 2009 Classic Images, Muscatine, IA.
JB: Sydney, why did you write, "Crowning Glory, Reflections of Hollywood's Favorite Confidant"?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, my adoptive grandson José has encouraged me; and wonderful ladies like Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Ann-Margret, and the lovely and late Ava Gardner always suggested I sit down and do it. Also, I want to set the record straight and tell the truth as I saw the truth and lived it and felt it. I was so lucky to live and work and enjoy life in Hollywood during its golden age. You know that marvelous Angela Lansbury wrote a lovely intro for my book.
JB:Did you always love the movies?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, heavens, yes. I was going to the movies when I was quite, quite young. In the 1910s I would scrimp and save my pennies and nickels and go to the show. Later on in the 1920s my lovely sister Vera played the piano in the movie house, then later the organ, and she would get me in free. My wonderful Vera was quite talented musically. Later on she became a famous jazz singer and performer in Canada. We all loved the movies, my brother and sisters and I, but I loved them best. I remember seeing Intolerance and being quite moved and impressed. All of the D. W. Griffith films were wonderful. Of course, Chaplin was very popular -- him and his little stick for a cane. I always thought he was strange. Yes, definitely more strange than funny.
JB:I'm so interested in silent film and silent film players. Many of or readers are also very interested. Could you tell me who were some of your favorite leading ladies of the silent screen before you worked at MGM?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, I had so many favorites. In those golden silent film days there were so many diverse and fascinating film personalities. I was mad for Gloria Swanson -- she was unique, a true Hollywood film immortal. I loved the Talmadge sisters, Norma and Constance. I had and still have today the utmost admiration and respect for Lillian Gish. Miss Gish was a true artist on the screen and the stage. She's one of the very best acresses ever. I never dreamed I would work with her, and I'm so proud I did. I loved Barbara LaMarr and Marion Davies. They were both so very beautiful. Corinne Griffith was a true star and another beautiful lady.
My mother loved the Russian stars Nazimova and Olga Petrova. I guess her admiration rubbed off on me because I liked them too! I loved the Mae Murray movies because she danced so wonderfully, and she really possessed glamour. Going way back to the early silents in the teens again, I loved Pearl White and Mae Marsh and a very talented dramatic actress named Pauline Frederick. As I told you, Jimmy, I loved many screen personalities ... I went to the movies every week, sometimes every day. I know I've left out some of my favorites like Mary Astor, Louise Brooks, and I loved Pola Negri. She was really a grand star and linked romanticaly with Chaplin and Valentino!
JB:I'm doing a book with your friend and mine Margaret Burk on Barbara LaMarr, the girl who was too beautiful. Could you comment on Miss LaMarr.
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, Barbara LaMarr was a popular, world famous beauty. What made her such a successful star was not just her rare, vivid beauty, but her very unusual different kind of personality. Barbara was possessed with some of the most unique expressions. She was ... well, very emotional on film and vibrant, yes, so beautiful and vibrant. She was an exquisite looking creature. I realized that when I was just a little kid. Later on, people whom I worked with at Metro were always quite taken by her beauty. These were people who had worked with Barbara LaMarr at Metro in the '20s. A lot of them stayed and worked at Metro in the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Yes, Barbara made quite an impression on those who saw her. She had the same type of beauty that Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Vivien Leigh, and Hedy Lamarr, who was named for her, possessed. I know Joan Crawford was a big Barbara LaMarr fan and admirer. It seems Miss LaMarr befriended Joan when Joan wa a starlet at Metro.
JB:I am presently doing research on a star you mentioned earlier, Corinne Griffith, for a future article. Could you please give me your impressions of Corinne Griffith, the Orchid Girl of the silver screen.
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Jimmy, ha ha, that's Orchid Lady of the silver screen. And she was a celluloid orchid. What a beautiful, beautiful lady she was. She came to the salon I worked in, Antoines in New York City. She was a huge film favorite in the teens and twenties. She had this, well, bigger than life, almost goddess-like mystique on the screen. In person she was warm and friendly, every inch a lady and beautiful, astonishingly beautiful. I'll tell you this, when she walked up the hall, the stairs of Antoines, every eye was upon her. She was always dressed so chic and really simply. Yes, simply and, oh, so elegant -- just black velvet and pearls -- or a simple silk dress. She, with all of her amazing beauty and fame, was sweet. Sweet and down-to-earth, with both feet planted firmly on the ground. She went on to write successful books, study art and become very prudent in the business world. What a star! What a woman, what an amazing title to have:"The Orchid Lady of the Screen." Well, she was like an orchid, she was very rare.!
JB:I'm so glad I asked you about Miss Griffith. Another silent film star who featured prominently in your life is that singular beauty, Louise Brooks. Do you remember first meeting Miss Brooks?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh yes, indeed I can remember the first time I laid my eyes on Louise Brooks. She was a lovely, whimsical, feminine creature. She was sporting a famous cut of the time, the Buster Brown hairdo, very similar to the hairdo the Flaming Youth Girl, Colleen Moore, had made so popular. (By the way, Colleen Moore was another film favorite of mine from my Canada silent movie days when I was quite young.)
She came into the hotel salon I worked in when I was only 16. She made no fuss about who she was at all. She just waltzed in and wanted a new hairdo. My young co-worker, the girl at the desk with the appointment book, said I was free for the next hour and that I was very young and talented and that I could do her hair right then.
She was really lovely like a little fawn, and she was very sweet. I asked her, "Would you dare to cut your Buster Brown bob a little shorter?" She said, "What do you think?" I told her, "I can make you look different. If you don't like it, it will grow back quickly." I cut on one side slowly. She trusted me. Then I told her to pick up the hand mirror and look at this one side I had cut. She looked and said, "Oh, that's good!" I cut a little bit shorter and cut in a "slant" fashion, the longest point of hair came to her ear lobe. I then shingled her hair very short in the back. I cut it very close on the neck.
The difference of this short, shingled helmet cut impressed her very much. It was almost a man's hairdo except for the part and the shingle look. This distinctive woman was elated with her new hairdo. This look was like no other that was being sported by the New York City beauties of the day. I was startled a few months later to see this beautiful Louise Brooks on the silver screen. Yes, she was wearing "my" haircut. I was thrilled. It was the first time a movie star had worn one of my creations on the motion picture screen. Even though at the time I gave Miss Brooks her hairdo I had no idea this would happen. Little did I know that one day many famous ladies would grace the screen with my creations.
JB:You said that you admired the great Russian screen star Alla Nazimova. I know you styled her hair in the 1940s' MGM hit "Escape" with Norma Shearer and Robert Taylor. What did you think of the great Nazimova?
Sydney Guilaroff:Nazimova, the very name contains magic, especially to people of my generation. I never dreamed I would meet her, let alone do her hair in the film Escape. I recall how much I loved her silent version of Camille with a young Rudolph Valentino. I thought her acting in Camille was simply wonderful. As I told you before she was my mother's very favorite actress. In silents she was a very big, big star. She was what people of that day thought of as an important prestige star, sort of in the same vein as Sarah Bernhardt and the way Garbo was eventually thought of. There was a real mystery that surrounded Nazimova -- a mystique, an almost unreal quality about her. But there she is! She was very arty in a good sense of that word.
I remember when I worked with her later on in 1940, she still had that thick accent. The older group at Metro still working there in 1940 still held for her a certain awe and great respect. I know for a fact Norma Shearer treated her like a queen and was very happy and excited to be working with her.
JB:Sydney, I know by reading your interesting book that the first movie star you ever styled a hairdo for (and knew she was a movie star looking for a better look for a film, not like Louise Brooks) was the late Claudette Colbert.
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, we lost Claudette this year [1996], a great talent and a great lady. She could play comedy as well as drama. She was a great star for over 70 years! She was my first star I styled and my last. I originally styled her hair at "Antoines" in New York City. She was filming in New York at The Astoria Studios. She was unhappy with her hairdo. She came to me, beautifully dressed and so smart looking. What a charming and sophisticated young woman, even in 1928.
I adored my long and enduring friendship with Claudette. I studied her lovely face and cut her hair very short. Then I gave her bangs. She kept the hairdo the rest of her life with small variations on it.
I also styled her hair for the wonderful tv movie The Two Mrs. Grenvilles with my beloved Ann-Margret. It was both my last film and Claudette's swan song. I won an Emmy for my contribution, but I can't get too excited about it because my beloved Ann-Margret hasn't won hers. They have cheated Ann out of many Emmys so I'm not too thrilled with the Television Academy.
JB: I have just completed an article on the beautiful Mary Astor. Could you comment on Miss Astor for our readers?
Sydney Guilaroff:With pleasure. I liked Mary Astor very much. I think just about everyone admired her. I saw her in many silent films when I was young. She was a fine actress and always gave a good account of herself in many varied film roles. She had a big doe-eyed innocent look. She was simply a most beautiful creature. She looked as if she stepped out of a classic painting. Her lovely profile was flawless. By the time I had the pleasure of styling Miss Astor's hair, Metro was giving her stories that weren't worthy of her proven talents. This is a real shame. She was getting older, and her star began to fade. Metro was stupid because she certainly showed what she could do in the Warner Bros. classics The Maltese Falcon and The Great Lie. Miss Astor was very gifted.
JB:Metro was ruled with an iron fist by Louie B. Mayer. Did you like Mayer?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, I don't know if "like" is the correct word here. Later on I had respect for him. We had it out earlier on. But he was dedicated to making fine films for the most part. He could be cruel. I thought his eventual treatment of Garbo and Joan Crawford was abominable.
JB:Speaking of Garbo and Crawford. I know they were both special in your life. Could you begin by telling me how Joan Crawford entered your life?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, Joan Crawford was a dear friend, and she opened an important door for me, the door to MGM. I was lucky to meet Joan. Her mother-in-law, Beth Sulley Fairbanks, was a very good client of mine. She wrote Joan and praised my work to Crawford. Joan telephoned Beth Fairbanks back and said, "Book me with Mr. Guilaroff." This was back in 1931. At this time Joan was a big star, and she was also the darling of the fan magazines. She entered into the salon with her dapper husband on her arm, Doug Fairbanks, Jr. A large crowd appeared and followed her all the way up to the appointment desk. I stepped out to meet and greet Joan. She was simply beautiful in an all black silk ensemble with a white blouse. Mr. Fairbanks was very polite and attentive to Joan. I escorted them both back to a private booth. Mr. Fairbanks asked how long I would be and then excused himself.
Joan and I broke the ice by talking about Beth Sulley Fairbanks, then her life in California, MGM, and her lovely home in Brentwood. Crawford and I really hit it off from the beginning. As I do with all of my first time clients, I asked Joan how she wanted her hair. She responded that I should do what I thought might be becoming to her. She completely trusted my judgment. I studied her beautiful face with her fantastic bone structure and gave her a sleek and smooth, top of her head hairdo with flowing waves, brushed back behind her ears. We continued laughing and talking. She confided in me that the world famous Mary Pickford, her step-mother-in-law, did not care for the celebrated marriage of Doug, Jr. and herself. We both joked, and I was wicked and called Mary Pickford "Mary Pitchfork." Joan laughed and laughed. When I finished her hair style, she was thrilled with her new look. Her husband, Doug Fairbanks, Jr., returned and loved her hair also.
Joan asked me if she could return to me the next day so I could repeat the new hairdo, and she would photograph her new look. She explained she wanted this exact look for her next character in her upcoming MGM film Letty Lynton. I was thrilled and readily agreed, plus, I would get to see Joan again and she, I felt, was already a new friend.
For the next three years Crawford would make the trek from Hollywood to New York City to have me design a new hair style for her upcoming films. She would photograph them (the hairdos) and watch me carefully. Then armed with her photos and knowledge, she would instruct the hairdressers at Metro how to style her new look. Finally, Louis B. Mayer complained about Joan always leaving Hollywood for New York City before she would start a new film and asked Joan why she insisted on me. Joan told Mayer I was young and talented and gave her the best hairdos. The next thing I knew I was aboard the old "Sunset Limited" in the late fall headed for MGM and a new life!
JB:How fascinating. Did you always dislike the first queen of movies, Mary Pickford?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, I was so loyal to Joan, and she was so good to me. I didn't really think about her that much. She was the first true superstar of the movies, but it bothered me that she made Crawford unhappy. Later in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the lovely Norma Shearer used to invite me to wonderful dinner parties at her Santa Monica Beach home. At one of these functions, she sat me beside Mary Pickford. I found her to be very charming and most delightful. Later Pickford and Crawford became sort of pals and learned to appreciate each other.
JB:Is it true that Joan Crawford disliked and resented Norma Shearer? What were your impressions of Miss Shearer?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, as for the latter part of your question, I adored Norma Shearer. She was a great star and one of the true queens of the movies. She was a study in good taste and elegance. Miss Shearer was marvelous to me.
Marie Antoinette was and is my favorite film. I worked so hard on that movie. The designer Adrian and I went to Paris for more than one week to study and research the fashion and hair styles of Marie Antoinette's time. Norma was brilliant as Marie Antoinette. She was a fine actress and a fine lady. The opening of Marie Antoinette was the biggest and best and most glittering premiere in all the film industry. Everybody from every major studio came. I remember Tyrone Power, Miss Shearer's leading man in Marie Antoinette escorted her that wonderful night. The beauty of that film is stunning. Of all the work I've ever done, my best and most challenging work was found in that film. The French version of the film, starring Michelle Morgan, could not compare to our MGM motion picture. I think the reason Norma Shearer was so popular was that she had this wonderful expressive face.
I remember seeing her face adorn a Firestone tire sign in Montreal, Canada. I remember thinking then, "I wonder who she is." She had this remarkable smile. She was sticking her lovely face through the center of the tire, and she had her hands around the tire which ran all around the world and they called Norma "Miss Lotta Miles."
Later on, when I recounted this remembrance to her, she smiled that wonderful smile of hers and said, "We have both come a long, long way, haven't we, Sydney!"
JB: Sydney, what about the so-called feud of Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Norma didn't feel like she feuded with anyone. The truth is Joan resented the fact that Norma got to pick the best scripts, and she resented Norma's treatment because she was married to that genius Irving Thalberg. Joan did act up on the set of the classic film The Women. She shouldn't have done that. In my opinion, Joan was too big of a star to engage herself in such antics and jealous actions. It's a pity. Miss Shearer was such a lovely person.
JB:I know from your book you also had a very close relationship with the great Greta Garbo. Sydney, what was Garbo's most endearing quality?
Sydney Guilaroff:Garbo possessed this most remarkable, quiet sense of humor. When she was amused and really laughed, her eyebrows came together! She would listen so intently and throw her head back in sheer abandon and just laugh. She had this wonderful laugh. I loved to hear Garbo or Gretala, as I called her, laugh. Garbo's pet name for me was Gilly. You know Garbo never really thought she was a star. She was so private, and she hated publicity and invasions of her very private life.
I had been on the Metro lot for almost a half a year, and I had not come face to face with the great Garbo yet. This was so distressing to me. She was my favorite actress on the screen. I finally glimpsed her, just once before we met formally. She darted out of her dressing room to her limosine. I remember thinking how classically beautiful she was. What a face. What magic. Everyone on the Metro lot was fascinated by Garbo. I was walking with Crawford on the lot one day, and there she was in front of us. Garbo, strolling by!
Joan wanted an excuse to chat with the reclusive legend. She recommended my hair styling services to Garbo. Just a couple of days later I was in the old Metro makeup department. The telephone rang, and this husky voice said, "Mr. Guilaroff, this is Miss Garbo." I thought it was someone joking with me so I replied, "Yes, this is John Gilbert." I instantly realized it was Garbo. She laughed and asked if I could come to her dressing room to discuss her next film, Camille.
I went to her dressing room. Her door was marked by a single G. When she opened the door, she was so lovely. She told me, "Oh, you are quite beautiful, Mr. Guilaroff." I was embarrassed. I had never been called beautiful before, and this was Garbo. I told her she was beautiful. She was so extraordinary looking. She looked completely different from anyone I had ever seen. So radiant, so mystical looking. She looked rather sad even when she smiled. We discussed the way her hair should look for Camille. The meeting went very smoothly.
JB:Sydney, I recently had a conversation with a mutual friend of ours, the sweet and lovely Marsha Hunt. Marsha told me you gave her a feathered haircut and Garbo had admired it. She (Miss Hunt) told me that she had been asked to go to Garbo's dressing room to show her your hair style. It was an unforgettable moment for Marsha Hunt. She said Garbo used the hairdo in her final film, "Two Faced Woman," and she remembers you being in the dressing room with Garbo and her. The critics attacked "Two Faced Woman" in 1941. Do you think the film was terrible?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Two Faced Woman and Garbo wanting to see Marsha Hunt's hairdo. That takes me back! By the way, I adore Marsha Hunt. She could wear clothes so well and almost any hair style. You know she (Marsha Hunt) was a Powers model. She now has her own fashion book titled "The Way We Wore."
But back to Two Faced Woman. Yes, the film was a mistake. With that film, well, that's when Garbo quit the movies. What a shame. She no longer cared. She told me, "Alas, Gilly, this is my last movie. I will never act again." It's interesting. The film should have been great. They tried to completely change Garbo, a big mistake -- strip away her mystery and try to Americanize her. Well, they made a big blunder. Garbo was a mystery and people loved the fact that she was not a typical American. It comes to mind now, something Norma Shearer once told me. She said, "George Cukor could be wonderful for you or he could be the kiss of death for you." Well, he directed Two Faced Woman and Shearer's last two films which were both box office failures, We Were Dancing and Her Cardboard Lover. I was proud of the blonde wig I devised for Miss Shearer in We Were Dancing, which, by the way, was based on a Noel Coward play. What a shame Garbo and Norma Shearer left the screen and never returned.
JB:Do you have anymore statements about the elusive Garbo?
Sydney Guilaroff:She and I were close, very close, closer than anyone knew for years and years. I was friends with her all over the world for many, many years. Garbo and I used to be entertained in people's homes. She used to say, "I wouldn't bother to talk to most people, people want to talk about themselves. No one is really interested in you!" Garbo's most outstanding trait or feature was just being Garbo. She was always singular in the world of movies.
JB: Margaret Sullavan is another Hollywood actress I admire greatly. I know she was at MGM in the late 1930s and early 1940s. You didn't speak of her in your book. Could you give our readers your thoughts on Miss Sullavan.
Sydney Guilaroff:I loved her. Maggie (yes, we who knew Margaret Sullavan always called her Maggie) was a wonderful, very special talent who came to Hollywood from the New York stage. I greatly admired her for never being held under long term contract. She had Universal, Paramount, and MGM sort of under her thumb. She was married to a very powerful agent, Leland Hayward so she could sort of take Hollywood or leave it. Mostly she left it (Hollywood). I think she considered MGM a big factory, and she didn't pay much mind to Louis B. Mayer. There was always a very sad quality about her. But she never talked about what was in her heart. I know she adored her family, and I think she enjoyed being a homemaker much more than a movie star. Everyone in the industry had enormous respect for her proven abilities. She had a very real and honest quality in her acting. Her voice was unforgettable. I loved her in Three Comrades. She was just tops in that.
Crawford made a film called The Shining Hour with Maggie. Joan had the utmost respect for Maggie's special art.
Her hair, like her acting, was very lovely and simple. She had a reputation for being temperamental as so many greats did like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Anna Magnani and Barbra Streisand today. That group I just named should tell you something.
I only saw the famous Sullavan temper flare up one time, and I think to this very day she was completely justified and absolutely right. She was in a picture, a fine picture with Jimmy Stewart called The Mortal Storm. Her character in the picture was supposed to be Jewish. This film (The Mortal Storm, 1940, MGM) was a very serious and important picture about Germany and those evil Nazis and Hitler. Mayer, who was Jewish himself, did not want Maggie to be Jewish in the film. She was furious. She (Maggie) went to see L.B. and told him millions of Jews were being murdered and discriminated against. She was very angry and upset over this "Jewish situation" in Europe in 1940 and frustrated over not being able to say she was Jewish in this film. He told her he was sorry, but she (or rather the script) could not say she was Jewish in the film. L.B. told Maggie, "You can't be Jewish. You can only be sympathetic." Maggie was fit to be tied.
Back on the set Maggie was concentrating very hard on this delicate part, in this serious picture. Jimmy Stewart (who never appealed to me as an actor, even if he has always been a big star) was doing his same old routine, with vocal hesitations and famous stutter. Maggie and Jimmy went back a long way. But Maggie warned him to stop his personality performance and to really start acting the character and not playing stuttering Jimmy Stewart. She was mad. She told him you stop that kind of acting. This is a very serious picture about a drastic situation. Jimmy Stewart continued to play Jimmy Stewart. Well, finally Maggie had had enough. She was so unhappy and so angry. She hauled off and slapped the very surprised Jimmy Stewart across his face and yelled, "You be the character, not Jimmy Stewart, or I'll quit this picture." She walked off the set and stopped production. That's the only time I saw Maggie behave that way, but I understood her and respected her sensitivity.
JB: Sydney, this is so exciting to hear these great stories first hand. Another great MGM lady in residence was Jean Harlow. What did you think about Jean, and did you know just how ill she was in 1937?
Sydney Guilaroff:Beautiful Jean, everyone called her the Baby. She was so sweet and unspoiled. What a great comedienne she was. The public loved her movies. She could hold her own with Gable and Tracy. She played such a tart on the screen. She was nothing like the parts she played offscreen. I knew toward the end she was very ill. There was nothing anyone could do. She was so hung up on Bill Powell. She just adored him. She was so very young when she died, only 26 at the time. It was just dreadful. So young it's just too bad.
JB:Another MGM stunner was Hedy Lamarr. Can you speak a bit about Austria's finest and most beautiful export ever!
Sydney Guilaroff:I just spoke to Hedy Lamarr the other day. She lives in Florida. She said, "Sydney, where's my book. You promised me a book!" I've got to send her one! Hedy Lamarr was as richly beautiful as a polished jewel. American audiences gasped at her dark beauty -- her eyes, hair, and lips. Louis B. Mayer named her after Barbara LaMarr, so you know that was an incredible honor. I think Vivien Leigh and she looked like two gorgeous sisters. Hedy Lamarr was an instant hit, yes an instant sensation because of her famous beauty. She became a top star with her first American film, Algiers with Charles Boyer. Her face was almost unbelievable. I remember after Algiers premiered, we all went to the famous club Ciros. I was sitting between Hedy Lamarr and Constance Bennett. The thing I love the most about the beautiful Hedy is she was as down to earth and natural as anyone could be. She shared that wonderful trait with another great beauty, Ava Gardner. Yes, Hedy Lamarr never "went Hollywood."
JB:You just compared Hedy Lamarr to Vivien Leigh .. Did you ever work with this immortal star?
Sydney Guilaroff:I met the incredible Vivien Leigh while she was shooting Gone With the Wind. She was unhappy with some of the hairstyles they were designing for her at the Selznick studio. I helped her on my own time and designed hairdos to go with her numerous costume changes. We took stills of the hairdos and sent them back to the stylists on the movie set. I didn't get any screen credit, but I did not care because I liked Vivien so much.
Mr. Bangley:Did you ever do hairstyles for Tallulah Bankhead?
Sydney Guilaroff:I wish I did work with Tallulah, but I never did. I liked her very much on the screen.
Jimmy, you said an interesting statement about Miss Bankhead earlier. You said Tallulah Bankhead was like a cross between Bette Davis and Greta Garbo. That's one of the best descriptions of Tallulah I've ever heard. Of course, she had her very own distinct style and sound. Paramount was very lucky to sign her in the early 1930s. She was one of the very few extremely famous stage stars. She was always witty, filled with fun, and a favorite with the press. I saw her on stage in New York City in The Little Foxes and The Skin of Our Teeth. She had a certain power, a dramatic power on stage that was sheer magic. Bankhead was dynamic. You could feel her power in the back of the theatre. As marvelous as she was on the screen, she was even better on the stage. I thought she was sparkling and very, very funny.
JB:Miriam Hopkins had a varied and interesting career. Did you ever do her hairstyles?
Sydney Guilaroff:I styled Miriam Hopkins' hair when she was a young beautiful stage star on Broadway. She had gorgeous natural blonde hair, and she was every inch a Southern belle. She possessed a natural nervous energy and was a fine actress. She was quite popular on the screen in the 1930s. I seem to remember the two films she made with Bette Davis -- I can't remember those films' titles.
JB:"The Old Maid" (Warner Bros. 1939) and "Old Acquaintance" (Warner Bros. 1943).
Sidney Guilaroff:Oh yes, they were wonderful films. I think Miss Hopkins was quite jealous of Miss Davis who was enjoying an enormous popularity here in America and abroad. She (Bette Davis) was the Queen of Hollywood, not just Warner Bros., in the late 1930s and early 1940s. I loved Davis in Jezebel and Dark Victory.
JB: Bette Davis is a personal favorite of mine (and countless others). Sydney, did you ever style her hair? You spoke of the Hollywood Canteen in your book. But you did not elaborate on Davis. What did you think of her and did your paths ever cross in Hollywood after the Hollywood Canteen.
Sydney Guilaroff:Bette Davis was bigger than life. She was ... magic. This was a big, yes, a huge star. Everyone in Hollywood admired her. She was a great, great, emotional and dramatic actress and also a big star. She played a variety of parts and played them to perfection. She changed the course of acting in film. She dared to play unsympathetic characters as well as queens and martyrs. She was box office gold, and she used her power to fight for better films. All of us at Metro were awed and fascinated by her and her magnificent parts in films. The public always loved her, and they still do today. Young and old alike are drawn to her screen magic. I saw her on film in the early 1930s in a not-so-good film with Lois Wilson, who had been big in silent pictures. She leaned over to kiss her mother (Lois Wilson), and I remember thinking this girl has got something different. I know over at Metro Crawford, Garbo, and Shearer were big fans of hers. So were Lana Turner and Judy Garland.
How could you not help love this incredible talent? I first met her at the Hollywood Canteen which catered to and entertained the G.I.s with big stars dancing, entertaining, and serving them before they were shipped overseas. The Hollywood Canteen was Bette's idea, and I don't think she ever got the attention she deserved for founding this wonderful institution. Bette organized and ran things like a real pro. She had the biggest stars from every studio except Garbo to work and delight the service men. Bette was marvelous at the Hollywood Canteen. We became good friends. I adored her spunk and professionalism. She would dance with the G.I.s, and it wasn't beneath her to sweep the floor, make sandwiches, and work in the kitchen. She did all of this and worked hard during the day at Warner Bros., creating unforgettable films. What a woman!
Later in the mid-1950s she finally came to Metro to star in a film called The Catered Affair. I was lucky to style her hair in this movie. I remember my friend Debbie Reynolds portrayed her daughter. I felt so lucky to work with the talented Bette Davis. She was not demanding -- very easy to be with and such a great pro! She never complained, never demanded "the star bit" and was a complete joy to work with. She was a great and exceptional performer with an extraordinary gift, a natural gift that Hollywood professionals as well as the public picked up on and adored. She was truly set apart from all others and a real hardworker. Hollywood, me, and the public will never get over her and never forget or stop loving her.
JB: Sydney, what did you think of the cult classic "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, it's a real famous film, and Joan and Bette are forever linked in the public's eyes. I visited the set. Peggy Shannon, who is most talented, did the hairstyles and wigs. I can tell you this:Bette Davis and Joan Crawford never indulged in a feud during the filming of this famous production. They were both far too professional to engage in such activities.
JB:What do you think of the film "Mommie Dearest" and Faye Dunaway's portrayal of Joan Crawford?
Sydney Guilaroff:No comment.
JB:Sydney, we've mentioned Ava Gardner a few times. I know you were very fond of Miss Gardner. Let's talk about Ava ...
Sydney Guilaroff:I miss Ava the most. She was stunning, simply stunning. Poor Ava, she was just too young to die. I miss her every day. It's funny. I dream about Ava a lot. She's really the only star I dream about. Oh, I take that back. I used to dream about Garbo. I still dream about my lovely Ava. Ava was a great, great actress and such an individual. I felt like MGM did not appreciate her enough. Well, the public did, and they still do. The stupid Academy did not even nominate her for her brilliant performances in The Barefoot Contessa, Bhowani Junction, and, of course, The Night of the Iguana. She did get a well deserved best actress nomination for Mogambo. But, like I said before, she was a great actress who was underrated because of her incredible beauty.
Like Garbo, Ava hated the press. She loved her privacy. That's why she moved to Spain in the early 1950s and then eventually London. She wanted to get away from Hollywood and that fish bowl life. Even though Ava's beauty was a wonderment to all who ever saw it, she never thought she was beautiful. She was natural. Out of all of the stars I've ever met, she was the most natural and down-to-earth. I never saw her play the star. Ava was fun, and she knew how to have fun. She had a delicious sense of humor. In the 1950s she was really a party girl. But even in those days, she was sweet, loyal, and one of the most decent people I've ever encountered. She hated the sultry and sensual image Metro cultivated for her. The whole vamp thing bored her.
Ava was bright. Yes, she was very intelligent. Few people knew she had a high I.Q. She loved to read, and she was quick to learn. She was such a combination -- sweet, Southern country girl and elegant, gorgeous film goddess.
I'll never forget the first time I saw Ava. Her natural beauty floored me. She had natural curly hair, most people didn't know that. Her Southern accent was so thick you could cut it with a knife. She worked hard and turned out to be the most elegant star at Metro in the late '40s and '50s.
Metro didn't know what to do with Ava. They cast her in bits and lousy pictures. She became an important star on loanout from MGM. The movies that first made her were Whistle Stop, The Killers, and One Touch of Venus.
Ava and I were very close from 1941 on. I always listened to her, and she confided in me about her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra. We also discussed her career. After the first 20 years, I don't think Ava cared very much about her career.
I did Ava's and Elizabeth Taylor's hair (as well as Jane Fonda and Cecily Tyson) in The Blue Bird. The movie did not turn out very well. Ava didn't care for her part. George Cukor, who directed Blue Bird, and Ava were very close friends, but they did not get on during the shooting. She complained that George wanted her to be more actressy and more sensual. She dreaded making that film. I had only seen her unhappy like on one other film.
JB: Do tell, Sydney, what film was that?
Sydney Guilaroff:Seven Days In May was the film. The producer did not like the costume sketches. He insulted the gifted Orry-Kelly who was the fashion designer. Ava adored Orry-Kelly and loved his sketches. They had already worked twice before on One Touch of Venus and 55 Days In Peking. Also, in Ava's house in Spain she had paintings hung throughout the house by Orry-Kelly. He was a very talented artist.
Anyway, Orry-Kelly was a genius in film fashion design, and he was rightly insulted and walked off the picture. Ava was furious. She told Frankenhiemer he was an idiot and how dare he insult Orry-Kelly's wonderful work. She stormed off the set cursing and called her beloved Orry-Kelly from her dressing room.
I went on to dress Ava in that film as well as do her hair. After Orry-Kelly left the film, she, out of loyalty, refused to work with another designer. She and I picked out her wardrobe in New York City, and I believe she still wore an Orry-Kelly outfit in that film.
JB:Orry-Kelly was brilliant. Could you tell us, Sydney, some more comments on Mr. Orry-Kelly and some of the other top fashion designers?
Sydney Guilaroff:Well, Orry-Kelly was at the very top of his profession. I loved the way he dressed Bette Davis and his wardrobe for Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca is timeless. He was known in Hollywood for drawing the best skteches. He had written in his contract that the studios had to purchase his sketches or they go home with him. His sketches were real works of art. Adrian really understood glamor. I loved working with him. Our best collaboration was Marie Antoinette. Also, don't forget what Adrian did for the fashion industry with Joan Crawford and those shoulder pads. I enjoyed working with Adrian.
Edith Head's work was always fine. She was most dedicated and very hard working. Charles LeMaire and Travilla were wonderful. Walter Plunkett had a strange personality. I had respect for him. His period costume work was brilliant. Who could ever forget Gone With the Wind's lovely wardrobe as well as The Three Musketeers (1948) and Show Boat (1951). I love that green dress Ava wore in Show Boat. Yes, I had great respect for Walter Plunkett, but he was a cold man.
My favorite designer was Irene Gibbons, who went by the single name Irene. She was a genius, and I loved working with her. She brought out the very best in Dietrich, Ava, Elizabeth, Lana, Judy Garland, Crawford, Dolores Del Rio, Hedy Lamarr, and every other actress she ever designed for.
I always loved working with the makeup and costume people, well, except for Jack Dawn. Mr. Dawn was the makeup man at Metro. He hated me from the start and was jealous of my friendships with Garbo, Ava, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Lana Turner, and Hedy Lamarr. He did eventually have respect for my work in Marie Antoinette, but he was always silly and jealous.
JB:You've worked with so many immortals of the screen. I'm now going to ask you to make some brief comments on a variety of stars. Let's start out with some comments on Marlene Dietrich.
Sydney Guilaroff:Marlene invented glamour. No one on the screen before or since has worked so hard to appear glamorous. No matter where Marlene went, the glamour went with her. She was so much fun to go out in public with. I remember the press went crazy one time because Marlene and I got kicked out of a gambling casino in Monte Carlo. She was wearing this really daring skin tight black leather outfit. The pants and top were leather, and she also wore this beautiful blue Hermés scarf. In those days, the casino would not let any woman in that did not wear a gown. Marlene loved all of the photos and attention she got for getting kicked out. I loved Marlene. I'm proud of my work with her in Kismet, and I love the dark wig I designed for her for Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.
JB:Did you think Marilyn Monroe was a good actress?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, she was wonderful in The Misfits. She did that film to please Arthur Miller yet he was having an affair. This made poor Marilyn very unhappy. Clark Gable, whom I knew very well and always liked, admired Marilyn. Marilyn loved Clark Gable and was thrilled to work with him.
JB:Were you suprised at Lucille Ball's tv success?
Sydney Guilaroff:No, I wasn't and I was very happy for her. I knew Miss Ball when she came to MGM from RKO. Like Metro did with Ava at first, they just wasted Miss Ball. She was a success in a couple of pictures. I dyed Lucille's hair that famous golden red for The Ziegfeld Follies of 1946.
JB: Did you ever work with Anna Magnani?
Sydney Guilaroff:I never did, and I wish I had. She was one of the world's greatest actresses. Such passion and emotion. She has some of the same excitement and qualities one associates with Bette Davis.You could tell she was warm hearted. I especially loved The Rose Tattoo.
JB:How about Lana Turner?
Sydney Guilaroff:I liked Lana very much. She was a very beautiful girl. She had a kind of mystique about her. She looked so sad. She invented the pearls and sweater look. That is still with us today. Lana was a big box office star around the world and one of Metro's biggest attractions. I saw her in the morning that awful day that her lover, Johnny Stompanato was killed. Lana was coming out of a hardware store in Beverly Hills. She had just bought that infamous butcher knife that killed Stompanato. It's in my book.
JB:That is a real trip. I met Lana Turner. I was so excited and thrilled. How about Judy Garland?
Sydney Guilaroff:She really was a topnotch performer and possessed an outstanding talent. There was nothing outstanding about her looks. I must say she bothered me a little bit. Her behavior sometimes was unnecessary. To be difficult does not make me admire a person. She was always late on the set. I know she was having difficult times, and I truly felt for her. It's too bad about the drugs and alcohol. I have a trememdnous love and respect for Liza. She is a real talent and completely unique. I love Liza. She is like a daughter to me.
JB:Could you tell me your opinion of Angela Lansbury.
Sydney Guilaroff:Angela is such a big star now. She is a fine actress. Great on the stage, screen, television, or radio. She's kind and every inch a lady. A wonderful family person. Her husband is a wonderful man, and they have a wonderful marriage. I first met Angela with her actress mother, a Miss McGill. She made quite an impression with her first film, Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. I was so pleased that she wrote the introduction to my book.
JB:How about Greer Garson?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, she was such a lady to the tips of her toes. She had that beautiful skin and lovely, yes, really lovely hair. I used to speak to her every Sunday on the telephone.
JB: How about Katharine Hepburn?
Sydney Guilaroff:Katharine is one of my favorite people and a very, very great star and actress. It seems the whole world respects this fine woman and rightly so. The first time I did her hair was 1940 at Metro for the film The Philadelphia Story, which is such a wonderful film. She always tells me when I come to New York City that I can stay with her. She's a wonderful lady and a true friend.
JB: Sydney, Debbie Reynolds has a new film coming out around Christmas. What Do you think about that?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, that's just grand. I love Debbie, and I hope her film is a big hit. She's fun and talented, and I've known her since she was a girl.
JB:How about Shirley MacLaine?
Sydney Guilaroff:Shirley MacLaine is one of our very best actresses. She is so completely talented. Her genius extends to dancing on the stage and her successful books. I loved her gamine hairdo she wore in Some Came Running. She is such a versatile actress, just as good in comedy as in drama. Her stage shows have been very popular. I love Shirley, and I'm proud she's my friend.
JB:Could we chat a little about Elizabeth Taylor?
Sydney Guilaroff:Elizabeth is one of the most famous women on our planet. She was a star at 12 years old and will always remain a great star. She was a beautiful child and is still beautiful today. I'm very proud of the work I've done with Elizabeth. Cleopatra was a real challenge. I did her hair on dozens of films. She is a marvelous actress. I love and admire Elizabeth for her kind heart and her wonderful work for AIDS. I did a whole chapter on Elizabeth in my book.
JB:What about Ann-Margret?
Sydney Guilaroff:Ann was and is one of my very best friends. She is a great actress and deserves more credit for her brilliant work. My last film was The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, and I thought she was just fantastic in that. Ann is very sincere and sweet. I think she is one of the most beautiful women in the world.
JB: Did you do men's hair at MGM?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, yes. I did them all. I think my favorites were Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, and Tyrone Power.
JB:What is the difference between today's stars and yesterday's?
Sydney Guilaroff:There is a vast difference. The stars of the golden era had real magic. A lot of today's pictures are not made on star power. So much has to do with sex, violence, and special effects.
JB:Sydney, what is your favorie motion picture?
Sydney Guilaroff:I have three. Marie Antoinette, Quo Vadis, and Ben Hur, 1959.
JB:Whom do you consider the greatest director?
Sydney Guilaroff:Oh, well, I like many, but I would have to say William Wyler. I loved Ben Hur, Jezebel, Wuthering Heights, Roman Holiday, Funny Girl, The Letter, and The Best Years of Our Lives. I also admire John Huston, Billy Wilder, Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor, and Edmund Goulding.
JB:Who are your favorite stars of today?
Sydney Guilaroff:Only two. Barbra Streisand and Sharon Stone.
JB:Why those two?
Sydney Guilaroff:Sharon Stone has such elegance and wears such beautiful clothes. I like to watch her at award shows. She has real glamour. Barbra Streisand is a real genius of the motion picture industry. She is brilliant in every facet -- acting, singing, directing, writing, and producing. She is the star of today. My only career sadness is that I never worked with this glamorous and creative woman. I would love to discuss scenes with her. She is a perfectionist. She is the most gifted woman in the industry, maybe even the history of the industry. She possesses sheer magic. I loved the way she sang in Yentl. I saw her on tv when she won those Emmys for her concert. She was so elegant and beautiful in her empire gown. She reminds me of that famous bust of Nefertiti. Anyway, she is so elegant and beautiful. I know some people don't care for her looks, but I think she is extraordinarily beautiful. She is an absolute genius.
JB:Sydney, I agree with you. I'm a huge Streisand fan. Do you think there will be anymore books in the future?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, I hope and would like to do a coffee table picture book.
Author's Note:Sydney Guilaroff is now 90 years old. I have been a happy guest at his beautiful home three times now. God bless this wonderful man who has had so many great stars in his life. I wish him and his delightful book, "Crowning Glory," the best of luck and much success. Many thanks to the wonderful Margaret Burk of Round Table West Literary Society and the ever lovely Marsha Hunt.
solute genius.
JB:Sydney, I agree with you. I'm a huge Streisand fan. Do you think there will be anymore books in the future?
Sydney Guilaroff:Yes, I hope and would like to do a coffee table picture book.
Author's Note:Sydney Guilaroff is now 90 years old. I have been a happy guest at his beautiful home three times now. God bless this wonderful man who has had so many great stars in his life. I wish him and his delightful book, "Crowning Glory," the best of luck and much success. Many thanks to the wonderful Margaret Burk of Round Table West Literary Society and the ever lovely Marsha Hunt.
.
Copyright © 2009 Classic Images, Muscatine, IA.
CLASS ACT
This one tells the story o
f Billy Haines, a silent movie matinee idol who was forced to choose between his MGM movie contract and his longtime partner, Jimmy Shields. He chose his partner and, having lost his livelihood as an actor, began a successful forty-year career as a self-taught interior decorator. Filled with entertaining anecdotes, famous quotes, and beautiful photographs, the book charts his illustrious career and classic design work. And if that isn't enough, there is enough Old Hollywood glamour to keep you occupied for days. His friendships and collaborations with Joan Crawford (a personal favorite of mine!), Marion Davies, and others were, like his all-too-brief film career, the stuff of legend. Speaking of, Axel Vervoordt: Timeless Interiors by Armelle Baron I absolutely love for its breathtaking collection of photographs documenting almost thirty of legendary designer Axel Vervoordt's projects
f Billy Haines, a silent movie matinee idol who was forced to choose between his MGM movie contract and his longtime partner, Jimmy Shields. He chose his partner and, having lost his livelihood as an actor, began a successful forty-year career as a self-taught interior decorator. Filled with entertaining anecdotes, famous quotes, and beautiful photographs, the book charts his illustrious career and classic design work. And if that isn't enough, there is enough Old Hollywood glamour to keep you occupied for days. His friendships and collaborations with Joan Crawford (a personal favorite of mine!), Marion Davies, and others were, like his all-too-brief film career, the stuff of legend. Speaking of, Axel Vervoordt: Timeless Interiors by Armelle Baron I absolutely love for its breathtaking collection of photographs documenting almost thirty of legendary designer Axel Vervoordt's projectsThe Artistry of Adrian: Hollywood's Celebrated Design Innovator
Noel Palomo-LovinskiGuest-Curator
The artistry of Adrian is displayed in the clean lines, dexterity with fabric and his consummate expression of imagination and humor that exists in every piece of clothing, costume, or creation. Adrian effortlessly combined garment construction skills, an understanding of the feminine image, and a graphic conception of the body to provide allure in wearable clothing. He shaped young Hollywood actresses into movie stars, transforming perceived figure faults into alluring assets. He galvanized the image of American women on the world stage by combining national feminine vitality with grace and sophistication.
Born in 1903 in Naugatuck Connecticut, Adrian's talents at drawing and his vivid imagination were revealed early on. Against his parents' reservations, Adrian enrolled in The New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (currently Parsons School of Design). After a rather lackluster year due to low grades, the school sent Adrian to the Paris affiliate in the hopes that the artistically rich surroundings would be enough to hold the young student's interests. While in Paris, Irving Berlin invited Adrian to create the costumes for his Music Box Review of 1921 after seeing a piece that Adrian had designed and made for a school friend. At the age of 18, less then one year after he started school in Paris, Adrian left school and sailed back to New York to start his costuming career. Natacha Rambova, the actress and wife of Rudolph Valentino, invited Adrian to Hollywood to design costumes for two of her husband's films. Once in Hollywood, Adrian soon began working for the famed movie director, Cecil B. DeMille. In 1928, DeMille merged his production company with MGM and brought Adrian along as costume designer. Adrian stayed with MGM, and quickly became their top costume designer working with the best of MGM actresses in over 200 films.
Adrian was responsible for creating and refining the images of actresses such as Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow and his favorite, Greta Garbo. Highlighting each woman's most appealing traits, he created the illusion of effortless perfection. Known for his extensive research and his understanding of character development, Adrian helped these actresses to explore and understand their character all while looking their most captivating.
By the late 1930s the Hollywood machine was reacting to WWII and the nation's slow recovery from the Great Depression. Gone were the big budgets for over the top dazzling costumes that Adrian was accustomed to and instead a call for more realistic and " down to earth" films and costumes reflecting the sober attitude of a country at war. Knowing that he needed all or nothing, Adrian decided to leave Hollywood and open a private retail business. For years stores had been copying Adrian gowns, such as the dress to the right from Letty Lynton, which is reported to have sold 50,000 units at the Macy's New York store alone. In 1942, Adrian opened his shop on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills and quickly arranged to sell to one store in every major city.
From 1942 to 1952 Adrian created gowns and smart suits that many women treasured years after they bought them. Adrian infused all his pieces with the charm that he learned in Hollywood with the practicality and design innovation that he perceived women needed and wanted. Adrian formed an impressive collection of garments that continue to influence and be seen in the work of today's designers.
Hollywood
Retail
WISECRACKER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF WILLIAM HAINES, HOLLYWOOD'S FIRST OPENLY GAY STAR
By Megan Harlan
WISECRACKER: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF WILLIAM HAINES, HOLLYWOOD'S FIRST OPENLY GAY STAR William J. Mann (Viking, $29.95) A silent- film heartthrob who made a successful transition to talkies, Billy Haines never hid his homosexuality from the public eye. In this trenchant, sensitive bio, journalist Mann details the sad price Haines paid for his quick-witted candor: Due to the conservative climate in 1933, Haines' studio demanded that he marry or lose his contract. He chose the latter fate -- and became an interior decorator. Haines' story might seem obscure, but Mann foregrounds it against an illuminating portrait of early Hollywood's gay underground and pointedly contrasts it with the experiences of Haines' friends, such as Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, and Barbara Stanwyck, who Mann asserts were ''wisecrackers'' (1920s slang for gay) who opted for the closet -- and stellar careers. B+
Casting Call Girl
Joan Crawford was once asked whether, in a bid to land a coveted role, she had ever made use of the casting couch. "Well," she replied, "it sure beat the hard, cold floor!"[In order to land the lead role in Our Dancing Daughters, Crawford tracked down the film's producer. After she had stripped in front of him, the man informed her that, much as he had enjoyed the show, the director was in charge of casting. Crawford promptly visited the director, repeated her performance - and got the role. She did the same thing as late as 1953 (when she landed her role in Torch Song).]
Thaaaaaanks!In 1969, Joan Crawford starred in the pilot episode of "Night Gallery" (as a wealthy woman who will stop at nothing to find a donor for her eye transplant). The performance, among her last, was also hailed as one of her best. Her appreciative director? Steven Spielberg, who gave Crawford a lovely gift: A single red rose in a Pepsi bottle.
What "gift" did Crawford give Spielberg in return? She taught him how to belch!
What "gift" did Crawford give Spielberg in return? She taught him how to belch!
One evening Joan Crawford attended a party at the home of producer Jerry Wald. The other guests could not help but notice that Crawford had a diamond pasted on her forehead above her left eye and assumed that she was attempting to launch a new fad. Finally curiosity got the better of director Jean Negulesco and he frankly asked her why. "Johnny, don't you see?" she replied. "Nobody has noticed the bags under my eyes!"
During World War II many film stars periodically worked at the Hollywood Canteen, dispensing coffee and doughnuts to soldiers and sailors stationed in (or passing through) Los Angeles. One evening a young sailor visited the canteen and found himself dancing with a glamorous woman, chewing gum and jitterbugging to "Cow Cow Boogie." "Say," he suddenly exclaimed, "you look just like Joan Crawford. Whatever happened to her?" His partner simply smiled and said, "I am Joan Crawford." "Yeah?" the sailor innocently replied. "Whatever happened to ya?"Crawford,
Joan Crawford left New York's "21" one day and, enjoying the sunny weather, elected to walk home. "But, madam," her chauffeur warned, "you'll be mobbed." Crawford's reply? "I should certainly hope so!"
Joan Crawford Quiz Facts
Average Score for this quiz:
57%
No of times this quiz has been taken:
19
No of people passing this quiz:
13
No of people failing this quiz:
6
Maximum score for this quiz:
92%
Coverage :Joan Crawford is ranked at number 10 on American Film Institutes Best Female Stars of all Time. She’s an iconic legend, who has acted in over a hundred films. With such a rich legacy behind, a quiz on her would be too difficult to attempt. See how many answers you know.
google_protectAndRun("ads_core.google_render_ad", google_handleError, google_render_ad);
Joan Crawford Discussion Forum
1.
Joan Crawford’s husband owned:
a.
Coke
b.
Pepsi
c.
MacDonald’s
d.
Wal-Mart
2.
Which was the first talkie film Joan Crawford starred in?
a.
Untamed
b.
Great Day
c.
Montana Moon
d.
Our Blushing Brides
3.
Who of the following costarred with Joan Crawford in her immensely popular Mildred Pierce?
a.
Lon Chaney
b.
Clint Eastwood
c.
Jack Carson
d.
Clark Gable
4.
How many films did Joan Crawford and Clark Gable do together?
a.
4
b.
8
c.
12
d.
16
5.
Which from the following list is the only film in which Clark Gable wasn’t her hero?
a.
Dancing Lady
b.
Possessed
c.
Above Suspicion
d.
Strange Cargo
6.
What was the name Joan Crawford was born with?
a.
Camille
b.
Lucille
c.
Sybil
d.
Avril
7.
After the success of which film did MGM double the salary they used to offer Joan Crawford?
a.
Our Dancing Daughters
b.
The Unknown
c.
The Law of the Range
d.
Rose-Marie
8.
In the very first silent movie Joan Crawford worked in, Lady of the Night, Joan Crawford was a double for:
a.
Greta Garbo
b.
Norma Shearer
c.
Grace Kelly
d.
Marilyn Monroe
9.
Joan Crawford’s last performance was in the television series:
a.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
b.
The Virginian
c.
The Name of the Game
d.
The Sixth Sense
10.
The only Academy Award for Best Actress that Joan Crawford got was for:
a.
Love on the Run
b.
Grand Hotel
c.
Mildred Pierce
d.
Sadie McKee
11.
MGM has an unfinished film starring Joan Crawford. What is the name of this film?
a.
Great Day
b.
Great Afternoon
c.
Great Evening
d.
Great Night
12.
At what age did Joan Crawford die?
a.
66 years
b.
69 years
c.
72 years
d.
75 years
13.
Which film did Joan Crawford never forgot was a flop?
a.
Grand Hotel (1932)
b.
Rain (1932)
c.
Our Blushing Brides (1930)
d.
The Women (1939)
August 12, 2005
Levantesque
Humoresque has been showing up a lot on the classic movie channel this summer, coinciding with the release of a new DVD set of Joan Crawford films. This movie's one of those that I'd always had a vague impression about but had never really watched all the way through until a few months ago.
The movie's title (and not too much else) comes from the short story by Fannie Hurst, about a child prodigy whose gift is nurtured by his immigrant mother. After achieving fantastic success as a world-renowned concert violinist, he enlists to fight in the Great War. The story ends with his brief visit home on leave. He plays "Humoresque" for his mother ("It's like life, son, that piece. Crying to hide its laughing and laughing to hide its crying."), and then a piece he's composed to accompany Alan Seeger's "I Have A Rendezvous with Death." He asks his childhood sweetheart to marry him, then leaves for Europe.
The movie attempts melodrama of its own (boy from the slums meets violin, boy with violin meets rich girl, rich girl wins boy [mama has a fit], boy loses girl, boy keeps violin and mama), not quite as successfully. The violinist in the movie needs to be more of a wunderkind with a streak of mama's boy, but there isn't a grain of innocence in the world-weary John Garfield (whose character as a boy is played by Robert Blake). He's merely penniless and defiant, and completely unbelievable as he mouths platitudes about How Much His Music Means To Him and How Much Joan Crawford Means To Him. (However, although John Garfield is somewhat short for a leading man, and not at all handsome in my book, he is inexplicably, um, hot.) The movie is, of course, famed for its music (even inspiring this tribute album from Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg), but the violin solos in the movie (although played ably by Isaac Stern's fingers and John Garfield's furrowed brow), are mostly of the histrionic diva genre, not so much my thing.
But I find this film worth returning to, for a couple of reasons. I'm not a particular fan of Joan Crawford, but she is so pretty (not haughty, not brittle) that it makes you want to stare at the screen here, even (or maybe even especially) in the scene when she's drunkenly warbling along to "Embraceable You". Her classic line, of course, is: "I'm tired of playing second fiddle to the ghost of Beethoven!" (Funny...I think I had that said to me too, around Day Three or so of The Beethoven Experience.)
And then there's Oscar Levant, who does double duty as a concert pianist and the movie's comic relief. I had one of those "You know you're getting old when..." moments when I first saw him in this movie: Oscar Levant looks like a kid to me here. They give his piano playing a fair amount of screen time (considering), and it is thrilling to watch his outsized hands on the keys. Not to be missed are his inspired non sequiturs, which seem to be his own way of turning to the fourth wall and saying "What am I doing in this movie?":
Did I ever tell you I was in love once? It took me two weeks to get over her. I played all the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas. It took exactly two weeks.
Are you sure there's nothing else I can do for you? Maybe you'd like to hear me play the Hammerklavier sonata—it only takes an hour, if I leave out the repeats.
I realized at some point that I've felt a presumptuous familiarity with Oscar Levant for years, although I've only seen him in one other movie (The Band Wagon), have never seen any vintage reruns of his television appearances, and, aside from my copy of Levant Plays Gershwin and the various versions of "Blame It On My Youth" dotted here and there in my jazz library, don't know all that much about him as a performer or composer. I was curious to see what he was like as a writer, so I tracked down his first book, A Smattering of Ignorance, written several years before he appeared in Humoresque. It's a collection of musings and anecdotes delivered with deadpan hilarity, based on his life to that point, as a concert pianist, conductor and composer in New York City, as a composition student of Schoenberg and Hollywood studio "cog in the wheel" in L.A., and as a grieving friend of the then recently deceased George Gershwin. The book is as meaty as it is entertaining, and its best chapters are those in which Levant gets serious about the future of American music: "The progress that had been made toward insinuating new American works into the program of symphony orchestras was arrested because the support of the orchestras was dwindling, and the conductors did not wish to alienate their audiences further by forcing difficult works on them. [....] A new generation of composers was emerging which inevitably would be subject to the same cycle of mild patronizing interest and essential indifference as that which preceded them." (Plus ça change...?) But I'm also happy to indulge in the guilty pleasure of laughing at this tale of a particular studio boor:
The level of musical perception among Holywood producers is, if anything, slightly lower than their perception of values associated with the other arts. [....] I recall the plight of one, whose social prestige decreed his presence at a certain Hollywood Bowl concert. It chanced that the important work of the evening was the C minor symphony of Beethoven, which he suffered in silence until the coda of the final movement. This has, as you will recall, what could be desribed as an 1805 Roxy finish, with the tonic and dominant chords repeated a dozen times, with flourishes. At each insistent recurrence of the tonic he half rose from his chair to facilitate his exit . . . also because he was bored. When the third series of tonic and dominant chords still left him short of the actual end of the movement he turned and muttered, "The rat fooled me again."
[....]
Perhaps his most searching bit of musical criticism was propounded when he said to me dictatorially, "In my opinion"—marking the words carefully to allow the full weight of his thought to rest on me—"the greatest piece of music ever written is 'Humoreske.'"
It was after such a characteristic demonstration that S. N. Behrman said of this producer, "Now I know why he can make those instantaneous decisions—he is never deflected by thought."
Oscar Levant, A Smattering of Ignorance. Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1942 (reissue ISBN 0848821521).
by The Bookish Gardener
Levantesque
Humoresque has been showing up a lot on the classic movie channel this summer, coinciding with the release of a new DVD set of Joan Crawford films. This movie's one of those that I'd always had a vague impression about but had never really watched all the way through until a few months ago.
The movie's title (and not too much else) comes from the short story by Fannie Hurst, about a child prodigy whose gift is nurtured by his immigrant mother. After achieving fantastic success as a world-renowned concert violinist, he enlists to fight in the Great War. The story ends with his brief visit home on leave. He plays "Humoresque" for his mother ("It's like life, son, that piece. Crying to hide its laughing and laughing to hide its crying."), and then a piece he's composed to accompany Alan Seeger's "I Have A Rendezvous with Death." He asks his childhood sweetheart to marry him, then leaves for Europe.
The movie attempts melodrama of its own (boy from the slums meets violin, boy with violin meets rich girl, rich girl wins boy [mama has a fit], boy loses girl, boy keeps violin and mama), not quite as successfully. The violinist in the movie needs to be more of a wunderkind with a streak of mama's boy, but there isn't a grain of innocence in the world-weary John Garfield (whose character as a boy is played by Robert Blake). He's merely penniless and defiant, and completely unbelievable as he mouths platitudes about How Much His Music Means To Him and How Much Joan Crawford Means To Him. (However, although John Garfield is somewhat short for a leading man, and not at all handsome in my book, he is inexplicably, um, hot.) The movie is, of course, famed for its music (even inspiring this tribute album from Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg), but the violin solos in the movie (although played ably by Isaac Stern's fingers and John Garfield's furrowed brow), are mostly of the histrionic diva genre, not so much my thing.
But I find this film worth returning to, for a couple of reasons. I'm not a particular fan of Joan Crawford, but she is so pretty (not haughty, not brittle) that it makes you want to stare at the screen here, even (or maybe even especially) in the scene when she's drunkenly warbling along to "Embraceable You". Her classic line, of course, is: "I'm tired of playing second fiddle to the ghost of Beethoven!" (Funny...I think I had that said to me too, around Day Three or so of The Beethoven Experience.)
And then there's Oscar Levant, who does double duty as a concert pianist and the movie's comic relief. I had one of those "You know you're getting old when..." moments when I first saw him in this movie: Oscar Levant looks like a kid to me here. They give his piano playing a fair amount of screen time (considering), and it is thrilling to watch his outsized hands on the keys. Not to be missed are his inspired non sequiturs, which seem to be his own way of turning to the fourth wall and saying "What am I doing in this movie?":
Did I ever tell you I was in love once? It took me two weeks to get over her. I played all the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas. It took exactly two weeks.
Are you sure there's nothing else I can do for you? Maybe you'd like to hear me play the Hammerklavier sonata—it only takes an hour, if I leave out the repeats.
I realized at some point that I've felt a presumptuous familiarity with Oscar Levant for years, although I've only seen him in one other movie (The Band Wagon), have never seen any vintage reruns of his television appearances, and, aside from my copy of Levant Plays Gershwin and the various versions of "Blame It On My Youth" dotted here and there in my jazz library, don't know all that much about him as a performer or composer. I was curious to see what he was like as a writer, so I tracked down his first book, A Smattering of Ignorance, written several years before he appeared in Humoresque. It's a collection of musings and anecdotes delivered with deadpan hilarity, based on his life to that point, as a concert pianist, conductor and composer in New York City, as a composition student of Schoenberg and Hollywood studio "cog in the wheel" in L.A., and as a grieving friend of the then recently deceased George Gershwin. The book is as meaty as it is entertaining, and its best chapters are those in which Levant gets serious about the future of American music: "The progress that had been made toward insinuating new American works into the program of symphony orchestras was arrested because the support of the orchestras was dwindling, and the conductors did not wish to alienate their audiences further by forcing difficult works on them. [....] A new generation of composers was emerging which inevitably would be subject to the same cycle of mild patronizing interest and essential indifference as that which preceded them." (Plus ça change...?) But I'm also happy to indulge in the guilty pleasure of laughing at this tale of a particular studio boor:
The level of musical perception among Holywood producers is, if anything, slightly lower than their perception of values associated with the other arts. [....] I recall the plight of one, whose social prestige decreed his presence at a certain Hollywood Bowl concert. It chanced that the important work of the evening was the C minor symphony of Beethoven, which he suffered in silence until the coda of the final movement. This has, as you will recall, what could be desribed as an 1805 Roxy finish, with the tonic and dominant chords repeated a dozen times, with flourishes. At each insistent recurrence of the tonic he half rose from his chair to facilitate his exit . . . also because he was bored. When the third series of tonic and dominant chords still left him short of the actual end of the movement he turned and muttered, "The rat fooled me again."
[....]
Perhaps his most searching bit of musical criticism was propounded when he said to me dictatorially, "In my opinion"—marking the words carefully to allow the full weight of his thought to rest on me—"the greatest piece of music ever written is 'Humoreske.'"
It was after such a characteristic demonstration that S. N. Behrman said of this producer, "Now I know why he can make those instantaneous decisions—he is never deflected by thought."
Oscar Levant, A Smattering of Ignorance. Garden City Publishing Co., Inc., 1942 (reissue ISBN 0848821521).
by The Bookish Gardener
Daughter Dearest
One of Hollywood’s greatest stars, Joan Crawford, was redefined as a sadistic control freak by Mommie Dearest, her daughter’s 1978 tell-all. In an excerpt from the author’s new Crawford biography, based in part on interviews with another Crawford daughter, a very different story emerges.
by Charlotte Chandler March 2008
Excerpted from Not the Girl Next Door, by Charlotte Chandler, to be published this month by Simon & Schuster; © 2008 by the author.
Joan Crawford with her four adopted children, Christina, Christopher, and the twins, Cathy and Cindy, in the early 50s. From Underwood & Underwood/Corbis.
It was clear as I listened to Joan Crawford and her longtime friend and publicist, John Springer, at a lunch in 1976, almost two years before the publication of Joan’s daughter Christina’s book Mommie Dearest, that they knew it was forthcoming. They spoke about it with a sense of foreboding, though they had no idea that it would turn out to be the prototype of angry books by the children of stars. “I think she’s using my name strictly to make money,” Joan told us. “I suppose she doesn’t think that I’m going to leave her enough or that I’m going to disappear soon enough.” She sighed. Obviously referring to her adoption of Christina, she said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Springer asked her if she planned to read the book. “I plan not to read it,” she replied. “Why spoil days of your life reading a book that can only hurt you? It’s against my beliefs. You know, Johnny, I’ve become a Christian Scientist. I find it very positive and comforting and a kind of protection. I’ve learned that there are people who will hurt you if you let them—even if you don’t let them. I prefer to cut off people who want to hurt me, rather than to continue to give them power over me to go on inflicting pain.”
As we lunched that day, Crawford was dying of cancer. Springer had brought me together with her some time earlier in the hope that I could produce an intimate biography of one of the most enduring of Hollywood stars, who had made more than 80 films in a career that started in 1925 and ended in 1970. She had won the Oscar for best actress in 1946, for Mildred Pierce (ironically, about a mother and an ungrateful daughter), and she had had featured roles in such film classics as Grand Hotel, with John Barrymore and Greta Garbo, in 1932, and George Cukor’s film version of Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women, in 1939. In 1962 she had starred opposite her great rival, Bette Davis, in Robert Aldrich’s blockbuster What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, the first of a series of camp horror films featuring aging grandes dames of the cinema. She had been married to two of Hollywood’s leading men, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (1929–33) and Franchot Tone (1935–39), as well as to the actor Phillip Terry (1942–46) and Pepsi-Cola president Alfred Steele (1955 until his death, in 1959). From 1959 to 1973 she served on the board of Pepsi-Cola.
Unable to have children, she had adopted five: a girl, Christina, in 1940; a boy, Christopher, in 1942, who was soon reclaimed by his birth mother; a second boy, also named Christopher, in 1943; and twin girls, Catherine (Cathy) and Cynthia (Cindy), in 1947. Christina, like her mother, became an actress, and for a time was a regular on the CBS soap opera The Secret Storm. During a leave Christina took for major surgery, in 1968, Joan, who was then in her early 60s, replaced her 29-year-old daughter on the show. That created an unhappy rivalry, which resulted in a long estrangement and, ultimately, the book we were discussing that day at lunch.
“I think this book will be full of lies and twisted truths,” Crawford said, adding, “I don’t think my adopted daughter is writing this book just just to hurt me. If her purpose were to hurt me, she has already accomplished it without going to the trouble of writing a book.
“If Christina had good things to say about the person who adored her, tried to be a good mother to her, she would have told me about the book. I would have helped if I could, if she wanted my help.
“I’ve come to think that what she has wanted is to be me. Or at least to have what I have. I wanted to share everything I had with her, but I couldn’t reach or influence her.
“She is her own person, and that person brought me a lot of pain. I said this about Christopher [Crawford’s estranged adopted son] and now I say it about Christina. The problem was I adopted her, but she didn’t adopt me.”
On May 10, 1977, Joan Crawford died in her bedroom in her apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The papers announced that she had died of a heart attack, a coronary occlusion. That was what she had wanted, “not a discussion of my insides.” The heart attack may have been brought on by her deteriorating health.
Her obituary appeared on page one of The New York Times, giving her birth date as March 23, 1908. No one would have appreciated the words on her position in film history more than Crawford herself: “Miss Crawford was a quintessential superstar—an epitome of timeless glamour who personified for decades the dreams and disappointments of American women.”
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. told me that he was asked frequently by interviewers if he believed Joan had ended her own life, as had been rumored. His answer was an unequivocal no. “She had the strong will to be able to do it, if it was what she had wanted to do, but nobody could convince me she would want to do that. Even in pain, even with no hope of ever getting better, I feel it was against her religious and ethical beliefs. It took the greater strength for her to go on. She liked to be in control of her life as much as possible, and she didn’t like to feel out of control. I believe that when she heard the bad news—no hope—she waited for a natural death without trying to prolong a life she didn’t consider would be worth living. She wanted to die in a dignified way, looking as well as she could. I know that.”
According to Crawford’s instructions, she was cremated, and her ashes were placed in an urn at Ferncliff Cemetery, Westchester County, New York, next to her last husband, Alfred Steele. The funeral was held at Campbell’s Funeral Home, in New York City. Among those in attendance were the actress Myrna Loy, who had known her the longest, the actors Van Johnson and Brian Aherne, the artist Andy Warhol, John Springer, and Joan’s four children: Christina, 37; Christopher, 33; and the twins, Cindy and Cathy, 30.
The definitive Joan Crawford
By Cathie Beck, Special to the Rocky
Published February 29, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Not the Girl Next Door
* Nonfiction. By Charlotte Chandler. Simon & Schuster, $26. Grade: B+
Book in a nutshell: This consummate celebrity biographer (of Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman and Groucho Marx, to name a few) has taken on yet another uber- legend. This time it's Joan Crawford, the larger-than-life superstar of the first half (and part of the second) of the 20th century. Drawing on interviews with Crawford, as well as reminiscences of those who knew her, Chandler has created an intimate, frank and studied portrait of the Hollywood icon.
Lucille LeSueur was born in San Antonio, Texas, sometime around 1908 (no official record exists and Crawford insisted upon this year). She was married four times, became one of Hollywood's brightest lights by the early 1930s and was nominated three times for an Academy Award, winning once.
Chandler exploits her standard resources to deliver believable quotes from those who knew her well - and in some cases, intimately - long before Crawford's adopted daughter made Mommie Dearest one of Crawford's unfortunate and oft-spoofed legacies.
Best tidbit: Warren Cowan, who represented Joan, relates an anecdote that speaks volumes about Crawford: "The first time I met Joan was when I drove to her home one morning. I knocked and rang the front bell, and there was no answer. So I walked around the back of the house, and there was a kitchen door, which was half door and half window. I looked in, and there was the maid scrubbing the kitchen floor, wearing a bandanna on her head. I rapped on the door and she saw me and came to the door. I said, 'Excuse me, is Miss Crawford at home?'
"She said, 'You must be Warren. It's me, Joan.'
" . . . She was incredible. She answered all her fan mail. . . . She was the most disciplined person."
Pros: No one can beat Chandler for thorough research and painstaking storytelling.
Cons: One tends to wonder to what extent quotations have been edited, rewritten, rearranged, etc., in order to be more readable.
Final word: This is the definitive book on Crawford's life and her career. It's entertaining while offering convincing authenticity.
By Cathie Beck, Special to the Rocky
Published February 29, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Not the Girl Next Door
* Nonfiction. By Charlotte Chandler. Simon & Schuster, $26. Grade: B+
Book in a nutshell: This consummate celebrity biographer (of Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman and Groucho Marx, to name a few) has taken on yet another uber- legend. This time it's Joan Crawford, the larger-than-life superstar of the first half (and part of the second) of the 20th century. Drawing on interviews with Crawford, as well as reminiscences of those who knew her, Chandler has created an intimate, frank and studied portrait of the Hollywood icon.
Lucille LeSueur was born in San Antonio, Texas, sometime around 1908 (no official record exists and Crawford insisted upon this year). She was married four times, became one of Hollywood's brightest lights by the early 1930s and was nominated three times for an Academy Award, winning once.
Chandler exploits her standard resources to deliver believable quotes from those who knew her well - and in some cases, intimately - long before Crawford's adopted daughter made Mommie Dearest one of Crawford's unfortunate and oft-spoofed legacies.
Best tidbit: Warren Cowan, who represented Joan, relates an anecdote that speaks volumes about Crawford: "The first time I met Joan was when I drove to her home one morning. I knocked and rang the front bell, and there was no answer. So I walked around the back of the house, and there was a kitchen door, which was half door and half window. I looked in, and there was the maid scrubbing the kitchen floor, wearing a bandanna on her head. I rapped on the door and she saw me and came to the door. I said, 'Excuse me, is Miss Crawford at home?'
"She said, 'You must be Warren. It's me, Joan.'
" . . . She was incredible. She answered all her fan mail. . . . She was the most disciplined person."
Pros: No one can beat Chandler for thorough research and painstaking storytelling.
Cons: One tends to wonder to what extent quotations have been edited, rewritten, rearranged, etc., in order to be more readable.
Final word: This is the definitive book on Crawford's life and her career. It's entertaining while offering convincing authenticity.
PEPSI, AFRICA AND JOAN CRAWFORD
"Africa was, in a sense, my baptism in Pepsi, and I have a great affection for that continent."
- Joan Crawford
As a playwright with a taste for the oddly comic, Neil Tucker likes to think that if a situation isn't immediately funny, he can make it that way.
Even when the situation is catastrophic--such as the '70s oil embargo or the 1987 Whittier earthquake--Tucker has twisted the material into comedy in such plays as "Oil!" and "Aftershock: The Movie."
Even when the situation is catastrophic--such as the '70s oil embargo or the 1987 Whittier earthquake--Tucker has twisted the material into comedy in such plays as "Oil!" and "Aftershock: The Movie."
But when he cracked open Joan Crawford's sometimes unconsciously wacky autobiography, "My Way of Life" (sample line: "When I went to London to make 'Trog,' I had 37 pieces of luggage"), and came across an episode from the mega-star's life, Tucker felt as if he had been handed a comedy on a plate.
"Here it is." Tucker is pointing to a page in Crawford's book showing her and her husband, Pepsi-Cola President Alfred Steele, happily posing with a regally decorated Zulu chief. Above the picture is Crawford's caption: "Zululand was fantastically colorful and the friendliest place ever."
"My first glimpse of this," Tucker says, "made me laugh for days. I mean, Joan Crawford having this bonding with the Zulu people in South Africa in the mid-'50s. Nobody could even make that up." Perhaps not, but starting with this nutty anecdote in Hollywood history, Tucker has made it up from there in his comedy, "Joan and the Zulus," playing at the Cast Theatre.
Nevertheless, comedy doesn't exactly sum up the play's intentions, at least as Tucker, director John DiFusco and actress Grace Zabriskie (as Crawford) explain it. What deceptively appears to be a campy frolic is, Zabriskie says, "a spiritual comedy."
Then Zabriskie adds: "This is very much Neil saying goodbye to himself, and being able to laugh about things he hadn't been able to laugh about before."
That is because Tucker, 45, has tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to AIDS. A year ago this month, soon after he received the test results, the playwright pulled a 1980 draft of "Joan" out of his files. "I have a ton of unproduced scripts," Tucker says, "but I picked this one since I wanted to be near laughter."
"My first glimpse of this," Tucker says, "made me laugh for days. I mean, Joan Crawford having this bonding with the Zulu people in South Africa in the mid-'50s. Nobody could even make that up." Perhaps not, but starting with this nutty anecdote in Hollywood history, Tucker has made it up from there in his comedy, "Joan and the Zulus," playing at the Cast Theatre.
Nevertheless, comedy doesn't exactly sum up the play's intentions, at least as Tucker, director John DiFusco and actress Grace Zabriskie (as Crawford) explain it. What deceptively appears to be a campy frolic is, Zabriskie says, "a spiritual comedy."
Then Zabriskie adds: "This is very much Neil saying goodbye to himself, and being able to laugh about things he hadn't been able to laugh about before."
That is because Tucker, 45, has tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which leads to AIDS. A year ago this month, soon after he received the test results, the playwright pulled a 1980 draft of "Joan" out of his files. "I have a ton of unproduced scripts," Tucker says, "but I picked this one since I wanted to be near laughter."
Returning to it after the long hiatus, he added some fresh dimensions to Crawford's adventure with the Zulus and Pepsi, from an African goddess/chorus named Ulanga (Earnestine Phillips) to a mysterious disease that breaks out in Zululand after Crawford's celebratory visit.
Even though Tucker isn't divulging details, his imagined epidemic may be one of the first in a comedy, spiritual or not. "It does have strange parallels to AIDS, but it's never overt," says Tucker, who also leads stress-reduction workshops for people with HIV at the Gay and Lesbian Center in West Hollywood. "As Ulanga says," adds Zabriskie, " 'Plagues may come and go, but a curse turns into a blessing in the compassionate arms of Ulanga.'
It's about as far from a poor-me strategy for healing as a playwright could concoct, but it's one, Tucker says, that Crawford herself would have understood.
"She was a devout Christian Scientist," he says, "and I arrange things so her faith eventually links with the Zulus' own. Joan's dedication to the Zulus was also very much an extension of her 30 years' worth of extravagant attention to her fans. It was always very genuine. But she was also highly attuned to the uses of publicity." So, for that matter, was Pepsi-Cola, which quickly realized how Crawford's presence alongside Steele, as they opened bottling plants throughout the Third World, attracted media attention. There are few more potent American exports and symbols of the American pop culture empire--then and now--than movies and soft drinks; during the height of the Cold War, Crawford was a sales image for both.
"She was a devout Christian Scientist," he says, "and I arrange things so her faith eventually links with the Zulus' own. Joan's dedication to the Zulus was also very much an extension of her 30 years' worth of extravagant attention to her fans. It was always very genuine. But she was also highly attuned to the uses of publicity." So, for that matter, was Pepsi-Cola, which quickly realized how Crawford's presence alongside Steele, as they opened bottling plants throughout the Third World, attracted media attention. There are few more potent American exports and symbols of the American pop culture empire--then and now--than movies and soft drinks; during the height of the Cold War, Crawford was a sales image for both.
Ever since the appearance of the book and movie version of "Mommie Dearest," Crawford's eldest daughter Christina's notorious account of her tortured upbringing, a beastly superimposition has crept over Crawford's image, formerly that of an eccentric but regal star. "Joan and the Zulus" does show, Tucker says, "a cruel, obsessive streak in Joan, but this is not the Joan of 'Mommie Dearest.' It's a far better film than the kind of camp trash it's been made out to be, maybe the best ever on a Hollywood star, and Christina's revelation of the secret war against children is much like Magic Johnson's contribution to AIDS awareness.
"But we're having affectionate, outrageous fun with Joan here. I've included, for instance, her actual maid, a kind of adopted mother she called 'Mamacita' (Sandy Martin), who goes a little nuts when a Zulu delegation visits Joan at her New York penthouse.
"Joan made herself, this little girl from Missouri named Lucille LeSeur, into somebody named 'Joan Crawford.' And I'm consciously creating a myth of a myth."
Isn't the double burden, though, of Zabriskie's playing Crawford and following Faye Dunaway's larger-than-life "Mommie Dearest" portrayal a tad excessive? Zabriskie, who is regularly seen either at Stages (where Tucker saw her in "Camaralenta") or in David Lynch's movies (she was a kind of she-devil in 'Wild At Heart' and will be in Lynch's upcoming feature, "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me"), refuses to see Joan as a burden at all.
"I decided to think of it this way: Faye Dunaway did the definitive serious Joan, and I'm doing the definitive humorous Joan. I let go worrying about the total Joan, and instead chose aspects of her work from later roles, grande dame types, which didn't have nearly the range of her earlier ones." "Grace," remarks director DiFusco, "has one thing in common with Joan, and that's perfectionism. She has more notes than I have. I'm serious! She built her character internally, in her own way, and though I helped her add a few 'Joan-isms,' the creation of this Joan Crawford is mostly Grace's work."
Zabriskie says: "When Neil came up to me at a New Year's party and said, 'My New Year's resolution is for you to play Joan Crawford,' I thought, 'Whoa.' I didn't see it at all. But after we did a reading and a makeup test at the Cast last April, it started to come together."
And just as it did, it had to wait for Zabriskie, who was the only actress Tucker and DiFusco would consider for Crawford. Ironically, the role of perhaps the ultimate movie star had to wait until Zabriskie was done with a seven-month spate of movies.
"I had to do this for Neil," Zabriskie says. "With the state of Neil's health, there was no way to put this off forever. In this life, there is no 'forever.' "
Joan Crawford depicted in the Walt Disney cartoon
THE AUTOGRAPH HOUND 1939
