PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD CHRISTMAS

It's the Holidays again! Hard to believe we are celebrating Christmas 2022! I hope your holiday season is healthy and happy, and here is how some of the classic Hollywood celebrated Christmas in the past...

Carole Lombard

Burl Ives & Dinah Shore

Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall

Eddie Cantor

Jayne Mansfield

June Haver    

CELEBRITY ADS: HUMPHREY BOGART

In the ad below, I thought Humphrey Bogart was selling cigarettes, but he is actually selling a pocket pen! It's amazing that even in classic Hollywood, stars would lend their names to anything! This advertisement came from 1951...

CLASSIC STARS AND THE MILITARY

In honor of Veteran's Day and the men and women that have given their lives for us through the years, I wanted to list some of the classic Hollywood stars that have served their country so bravely...

Humphrey Bogart: Sailor, U.S. Navy
He enrolled at age 18 after being expelled from prep school and was, according to naval records, a model sailor who spent most of his months after World War I ended ferrying troops back from Europe. Bogart supposedly got his trademark scar from a shrapnel wound while at sea, leading to his characteristic lisp.

Ronald Reagan: Captain, U.S. Army
Reagan enlisted in the Army Enlisted Reserve during peacetime (1937) and was already a Second Lieutenant when war broke out. He reported for active duty in 1942. His nearsightedness prevented him from serving overseas, however, and he spent the war doing armed forces PR in Culver City, California.

Jimmy Stewart: Brigadier General, U.S. Army
Having enlisted before Pearl Harbor, Stewart was the first major American movie star to don a uniform in World War II. An avid pilot, Stewart already had his pilot's license and hours of pre-war flying experience. After he began flying combat missions, he was quickly promoted to Major and then Colonel, eventually becoming a Brigadier General after the war in the Reserves.

Clark Gable: Major, U.S. Army Air Corps
Enlisted after the tragic death of wife Carole Lombard in 1942. Spent most of the war in the U.K. making recruiting films on "special assignment." He did fly some combat missions, however, and earned a few medals. Adolf Hitler was a fan, sort of: He offered a price on Gable's head if anyone captured him, unharmed.

Henry Fonda: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy
Enlisted at the peak of his career in 1942, declaring, "I don't want to be in a fake war in a studio." Served for three years on the destroyer USS Satterlee and was later commissioned as a Lt. Junior Grade in Air Combat Intelligence and was awarded a Presidential Citation and the Bronze Star.

Paul Newman: Radioman/Gunner, U.S. Navy
Enrolled in a Navy program, hoping to become a pilot, but was ineligible due to color-blindness. He instead became a radioman and gunner, stationed to torpedo bombers in Hawaii in 1944. He was on the USS Bunker Hill during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific theater.

Kirk Douglas: Lieutenant, U.S. Navy
In his autobiography 'The Ragman's Son,' Douglas related that he applied for the Air Force, but failed their psychological test. He was able to join the Navy despite less-than-perfect eyesight, and became a Communications Officer in antisubmarine warfare. He received a medical discharge for war injuries in 1944.

George C. Scott: Guard/Instructor, U.S. Marines
Scott served the USMC from 1945 until 1949, and was assigned to the 8th and I Barracks in Washington, D.C, where he served as a guard at Arlington National Cemetery (a duty that drove him to drink, he said years later). He also taught English literature at the Marine Corps Institute.

Gene Hackman: Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps
In 1946 at 16 (he lied about his age), the future 'Unforgiven' star left home to join the Marines, where he reportedly served four-and-a-half years as a field radio operator.  Hackman's stint included assignments in China, Japan and Hawaii. His first showbiz gig was as a DJ on the Armed Forces Network.

Steve McQueen: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps
Joined up in 1947 and was quickly promoted to Private First Class, but -- much in keeping with his future tough-guy film image -- was demoted seven times due to insubordination. He also spent 41 days in the brig for going AWOL to be with his girlfriend. He eventually shaped up, saving the lives of five other Marines, and was honorably discharged in 1950.

Clint Eastwood: Swimming Instructor, U.S. Army
Drafted in 1950, during the Korean War. He was stationed at Fort Ord in California, where, thanks to his lifeguard training, he served as a swimming instructor. He saw the most action on leave: In 1951, a bomber he was in crashed in the ocean near Point Reyes. He and the pilot swam three miles to shore, a more-than-adequate prep for his role in 'Escape From Alcatraz.'

James Earl Jones: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army
During college, he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps and became a cadet in the Pershing Rifles Drill Team. Although the Korean War was underway, Jones wasn't activated until 1953. He says he was "washed out" of Ranger training and was instead sent to establish a cold weather training unit in Colorado...

THANK YOU TO ALL THAT HAVE SERVED!!!

BORN ON THIS DAY: MICHAEL CURTIZ

For some reason, I find it funny that the director of 1954’s White Christmas was actually born on Christmas Eve. Through Curtiz career he directed many of the greatest movies ever put on film. Curtiz was born Kertész Kaminer Manó to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary) on December 24, 1886. Curtiz loved to tell stories and he claimed he had been a member of the Hungarian fencing team at the 1912 Olympic Games. In reality, Curtiz had a conventional middle-class upbringing; he studied at Markoszy University and the Royal Academy of Theater and Art, Budapest, before beginning his career as an actor and director as Mihály Kertész at the National Hungarian Theater in 1912.

Details of his early experience as a director are sparse, and it is not clear what part he may have played in the direction of several early films, but he is known to have directed at least one film in Hungary before spending six months in 1913 at the Nordisk studio in Denmark honing his craft. While in Denmark, Curtiz worked as the assistant director for August Blom on Denmark's first multi-reel feature film, Atlantis. On the outbreak of World War I, he briefly served in the artillery of the Austro-Hungarian Army, but he had returned to film-making by 1915. In that or the following year he married for the first time, to actress Lucy Doraine. The couple divorced in 1923. Curtiz left Hungary when the film industry was nationalized in 1919, during the brief Hungarian Soviet Republic, and soon settled in Vienna. He made at least 21 films for Sascha Films, among them the Biblical epics Sodom und Gomorrha (1922) and Die Sklavenkönigin (1924). The latter, released in the US as Moon of Israel, caught the attention of Jack Warner, who hired Curtiz for his own studio with the intention of having him direct a similar film for Warner Brothers, Noah's Ark, eventually produced in 1928. When he left for the United States, he left behind at least one illegitimate son and one illegitimate daughter.

Curtiz arrived in the United States in 1926 (according to some sources on the fourth of July, but according to others in June). He took the anglicized name "Michael Curtiz". He had a lengthy and prolific Hollywood career, with directing credits on over 100 films in many film genres. During the 1930s, he was often credited on four films in a single year, although he was not always the sole director on these projects. In the pre-Code period, Curtiz directed such films as Mystery of the Wax Museum, Doctor X (both shot in two-strip Technicolor), and The Kennel Murder Case. In the mid-1930s, he began the successful cycle of adventure films starring Errol Flynn that included Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Dodge City, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Sea Hawk and Santa Fe Trail (1940).

Prime examples of his work in the 1940s are The Sea Wolf (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945). During this period he also directed the pro-Soviet propaganda film Mission to Moscow (1943), which was commissioned at the request of president Franklin D. Roosevelt in order to aid the wartime effort. Other Curtiz efforts included Four Daughters (1938), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Life With Father (1947), Young Man with a Horn and The Breaking Point (1950).

While Curtiz himself had escaped Europe before the rise of Nazism, other members of his family were not as lucky. His sister's family was sent to Auschwitz, where her husband died. Curtiz paid part of his own salary into the European Film Fund; a benevolent association which helped European refugees in the film business establish themselves in the U.S.

In the late 1940s, he made a new agreement with Warners under which the studio and his own production company were to share the costs and profits of his subsequent films. These films did poorly, however, whether as part of the changes in the film industry in this period or because Curtiz "had no skills in shaping the entirety of a picture". Either way, as Curtiz himself said, "You are only appreciated so far as you carry the dough into the box office. They throw you into gutter next day". The long partnership between director and studio descended into a bitter court battle.

After his relationship with Warners broke down, Curtiz continued to direct on a freelance basis from 1954 onwards and he made many films for Paramount from White Christmas (1954), starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye to King Creole (1958), starring Elvis Presley. His final film, The Comancheros, was released six months before his death from cancer on April 10, 1962, aged 75…

THE LAST WORDS OF CLASSIC STARS

True movie fans, especially fans of classic movies put Hollywood stars up on a pedestal. The classic stars of Hollywood seemed larger than life and so far removed from the movie fan. However, there is one thing that the stars had in common with average people...they both will eventually face death. It is sort of ghoulish but I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the last words of some of our favorite icons of classic Hollywood...


Codeine . . . bourbon.
~~ Tallulah Bankhead, actress, d. December 12, 1968

How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?
~~ P. T. Barnum, entrepreneur, d. 1891

Is everybody happy? I want everybody to be happy. I know I'm happy.
~~ Ethel Barrymore, actress, d. June 18, 1959

Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
~~ John Barrymore, actor, d. May 29, 1942

I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.
~~ Humphrey Bogart, actor, d. January 14, 1957

That was the best ice-cream soda I ever tasted.
~~ Lou Costello, comedian, d. March 3, 1959

Goodnight my darlings, I'll see you tomorrow.
~~ Noel Coward, writer, d. 1973

That was a great game of golf, fellas.
~~ Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby, singer / actor, d. October 14, 1977

I've never felt better.
~~ Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., actor, d. December 12, 1939

Yes, it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy.
(When asked if he thought dying was tough.)
~~ Edmund Gwenn, actor, d. September 6, 1959

Nothing matters. Nothing matters.
~~ Louis B. Mayer, film producer, d. October 29, 1957

Don't worry chief, it will be alright.
~~ Rudolph Valentino, actor, d. August 23, 1926

This is it. I'm going. I'm going.
~~ Al Jolson, singer, d. October 23, 1950

This isn't Hamlet, you know, it's not meant to go into the bloody ear. (To his nurse, who spilt water over him while trying to moisten his lips.)
~~Laurence Olivier, actor, d. July 11, 1989

"Don't you dare ask God to help me!" (Said to her housekeeper who had begun to pray aloud.
~~Joan Crawford, actress, d. May 10, 1977

"I think I'm losing it."
~~Frank Sinatra, singer, d. May 14, 1998

"Just don't leave me alone"
~~John Belushi, comedian, d. March 5, 1982

"I'm going to go be with Gloria now"
~~Jimmy Stewart, actor, d. July 2, 1997

"Curtain! Fast music! Light! Ready for the last finale! Great! The show looks good, the show looks good!" (he was yelling this in delirium on his death bed)
~~Florenz Ziegfeld, Broadway producer, d. July 22, 1932

You know how I love a party!
~~Rudy Vallee, singer, d. July 3, 1986

THE YEAR IN MOVIES: 1942

It is hard to believe that the year 1942 was 70 years ago. 1942 saw the country in its first full year in the war. Bing Crosby recorded "White Christmas" for the first time, and everyone was dancing to the sounds of the big bands. It was a tough year for society but a great year for movies and Hollywood...



Best Picture-winning Casablanca (1942), based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick's and set in 1941 war-time Morocco, premiered in New York. Its studio, Warner Bros., capitalized on the war-time events occurring (the Allied landings in N. Africa that mentioned the city). Altogether, its director Michael Curtiz made over 40 films in the decade of the 30s, and over 150 films in his entire career, from the silent era to the early 1960s.

Jacques Tourneur's moody and intelligent Cat People (1942), producer Val Lewton's first film at RKO, influenced future film-makers by showing how subtle and suggestive horror could be effectively generated.

The first of numerous Hollywood films to take up the U.S. cause of World War II was Wake Island (1942). It was Hollywood's first major World War II film, starring Brian Donlevy, William Bendix, and Robert Preston. The war film was followed by other morale-boosting feature films such as Flying Tigers.

Black actor Paul Robeson, who had starred in Show Boat (1936), said he wouldn't make any more films until there were better roles for blacks. His last film was Tales of Manhattan (1942).

Tweety Bird, originally pink-colored, debuted in Tale of Two Kitties, a spoof on the popular comedy team of Abbott and Costello. Tweety Bird's first cartoon appearance with lisping cat Sylvester was in Tweetie Pie (1947) -- it won an Oscar for animator Friz Freleng. This was the first Warner Brothers cartoon to win an Oscar!

During a War Bond promotional tour, 33 year-old popular star and actress Carole Lombard, Clark Gable's wife, was killed in a plane crash near Las Vegas, Nevada on January 16, 1942.

A fire in Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub took the life of 50 year-old B-western movie star Buck Jones after he sustained injuries. 492 individuals were victims of the deadly blaze.

Orson Welles directed his second motion picture, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), noted for dialogue that was realistically spoken.

The Hollywood Canteen was founded (by Bette Davis, John Garfield, and others) and opened its doors on Cahuenga Blvd. in greater Los Angeles (Hollywood) in the fall of 1942, to provide free entertainment (food, dancing, etc.) to servicemen by those in the industry. It operated for just over three years as a morale booster, during the war years, and was the impetus for the Warners' film Hollywood Canteen (1944), featuring lots of stars in cameo roles.

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy teamed up for the first time in MGM's Woman of the Year (1942). It was the first of nine films in which Tracy and Hepburn starred together, stretching out a period of 25 years until their final film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences commenced with an award category for Best Documentary - Short Subject, won for the first time (in the 1942 awards ceremony) by the Canadian production Churchill's Island (1941).

Lena Horne was the first African-American woman to sign a long-term contract with a major studio (MGM) as a specialty performer, meaning that she was initially cast in parts and subplots (usually separate singing scenes) that could be edited out for showings in Southern theaters.



Warner Bros' nostalgic, shamelessly-patriotic, entertaining black and white musical biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) was released. It was the first time that a living US President (FDR in this case, played by Jack Young) was portrayed in a motion picture. For the first time in his entire career, James Cagney attended the premiere for one of his films - when it had its world premiere on Memorial Day, 1942 on Broadway. Rather than tickets for its opening night premiere, the studio sold war bonds and reportedly raised over $5 million for the war effort. It became the second highest grossing box-office hit of the year for Warners (after Desperate Journey (1942)). Cagney won his sole career Oscar, and became the first Best Actor Oscar winner to take home the Oscar for an appearance in a film musical, in his role as American music entertainer George M. Cohan. The film was one of the first computer-colorized films released by entrepreneur Ted Turner in 1985 (on George M. Cohan's alleged birthday July 4th - naturally!).

The war years had a distinct influence on Hollywood. The Office of War Information (OWI) stated that film makers should consider seven questions before producing a movie, including this one: "Will this picture help to win the war?" The War Production Board imposed a $5,000 limit on set construction. Wartime cloth restrictions were imposed, prohibiting cuffed trousers and pleats. Klieg-lit Hollywood premieres were prohibited. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood turned out numerous anti-Japanese films, some of them quite racist, such as Fox's Little Tokyo, U.S.A.,which dealt with the controversial subject of Japanese internment. The OWI then cracked down on the artistic license of Hollywood beginning in 1943. The Office of Censorship prohibited the export of films that showed racial discrimination, depicted Americans as single-handedly winning the war, or painted our allies as imperialists.

And that was the year in movies 1942...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CHRISTMAS WITH OLD HOLLYWOOD

It is hard to believe that it is the Christmas season once again. There is nothing better to do at this season than to snuggle in with a good classic movie. Here are some unusual and different pictures of your favorite classic stars during the holidays...


DANNY KAYE AND NAT KING COLE

BUSTER KEATON

JOE E. BROWN

HUMPHREY BOGART AND LAUREN BACALL

GRACIE ALLEN

ESTHER WILLIAMS

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CELEBRITY FATHERS

It is never easy to be a parent. Even as your child grows up, you never stop worrying about them. I can imagine it is even harder for a celebrity father...harder for the parent as well as the child. In honor of Father's Day this weekend, here are some great pictures featuring celebrity fathers of classic Hollywood...

PERRY COMO AND HIS SON

JACK BENNY AND HIS DAUGHTER

JOHN WAYNE AND HIS SON

JIMMY STEWART AND HIS SONS

FRED ASTAIRE AND HIS DAUGHTER

HUMPHREY BOGART AND HIS SON

HUMPHREY BOGART AND HIS STAR POWER

The so-called "Greatest Generation," whose lives were shaped by the Depression and World War II, made up the core audience for Humphrey Bogart's movies, but Bogart's star power would span generations. His death in 1957 set the stage for his embrace by baby boomers, foreign audiences and other moviegoers who were captivated by his portrayals of authentic, hard-bitten characters in performances that continue to withstand the test of time.

The aura surrounding his work has yet to fade. A dozen years ago, the American Film Institute ranked Bogart as Hollywood's greatest male star of all time, one of many posthumous honors bestowed upon him.

In "Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart," former Time magazine movie critic Stefan Kanfer says Bogart's enduring success is unlikely to be eclipsed.

Kanfer says teens and 20-somethings have become the dominant market, whereas people of all ages went to the movies in Bogart's pre-television heyday. Also, Bogart achieved leading man status at 42 as Sam Spade in 1941's "The Maltese Falcon," followed by other adult roles such as Rick Blaine in "Casablanca," Fred C. Dobbs in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and his Oscar-winning performance as Charlie Allnut in "The African Queen."

Kanfer contrasts Bogart's masculine appeal to that of Hollywood's crop of youthful and more callow stars like Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise and Tobey Maguire.

"From time to time columnists dub some young actor the new Clark Gable, the new Jimmy Stewart, the new Marlon Brando," Kanfer writes. "No one claims to have discovered the new Humphrey Bogart. With good reason. There was nothing like him before his entrance; there has been nothing like him since his exit."

The only son of a well-to-do doctor and a renowned illustrator in New York, Bogart stumbled into acting after he had failed at other jobs and other prospects seemed dim. His formal education ended with expulsion from Phillips Andover; he enlisted in the Navy during World War I.

In one of his first roles on the New York stage in 1922, he was cast as a worthless "young sprig of the aristocracy" in a play that was widely panned. "It was here," writes Kanfer, "that the distinctive Bogart delivery was born — the sudden rictus, the lips pulled back after a statement, the unique sibilance that sometimes made him sound tentative and boyish, and at other times gave him a vaguely malevolent air."

His big break came in 1934 when he was given the role of escaped convict Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood's Broadway hit "The Petrified Forest," a role he would reprise two years later on the screen.

Kanfer, who has written biographies of Marlon Brando, Lucille Ball and Groucho Marx, brings his knowledge of Hollywood and its ways to this entertaining book. His portrait of Bogart is replete with anecdotes drawn from scores of biographies and memoirs published after the actor's death.

The reader follows the ascent of Bogart's career as he progresses from playing the heavy in grade-B gangster movies to his memorable performances of the 1940s and '50s. Among them was "Casablanca," which made him a superstar and remains the lodestar for many film buffs.

Kanfer traces Bogart's personal life, including three brief and tempestuous marriages that set the stage for his whirlwind courtship of Lauren Bacall that began during the filming of "To Have and Have Not." Another thread in the story is how his liberal politics made him an occasional target of congressional investigators intent on exposing members of the Communist Party in Hollywood.

But perhaps most unique about Bogart is the career trajectory after he died of cancer. The Brattle Theater near Harvard began running "Casablanca," sparking a Bogart cult that extended to other college campuses. After Jean-Paul Belmondo mimicked Bogart's mannerisms in Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless," other New Wave directors began to channel the Bogart style. Years later, the Bogart mystique surfaced anew in Woody Allen's "Play It Again, Sam."

Kanfer's book should appeal to older Bogart enthusiasts and younger movie fans discovering him for the first time. It's a readable and entertaining biography that reflects the author's delight in his subject and the world in which Bogart thrived.

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