HOLLYWOOD LOVE: DINAH SHORE AND BURT REYNOLDS

He said goodbye to the love of his life in 1994 and regretted it every day since ..

Every February, Burt Reynold an elderly man, grey and stooping, walked alone through Forest Lawns Cemetery, Palm Springs, California, and placed a wreath of roses on the grave of the woman he loved and lost.

Burt Reynolds outlived the love of his life, Dinah Shore by 24 years until his death in September of 2018, but he never forgot his true love.

They had met in 1970 when Burt Reynolds was 35 and Hollywood's most sought-after leading man. She was 53, now the grande dame of TV talk shows, cool, aloof and still hauntingly beautiful. Reynolds had burst into movies from college football and his dark macho looks made him the star of half a dozen big-earning Westerns and the dream lover of millions of women fans.

He had married and divorced TV Laugh-In star Judy Carne, and had well publicised affairs with Sally Field, Raquel Welch and tennis star Chris Evert. He was living with Japanese actress Miko Mayama and Hollywood rumour was that they would get married. But meeting Dinah Shore, as a guest on her TV chat-show, changed all that. "I had never met her before but out of the blue I asked her to come to Palm Springs for the weekend. She said no, but I knew it was the beginning of the most special relationship of my life.

"I'd never met anyone like her. I realised there was a big age gap between us but it didn't make the slightest difference. I was already in love with her."

"Being with Dinah opened every Hollywood door," Reynolds said. "I got to know Sinatra, Jack Benny, Edward G. Robinson, Groucho Marx, Peggy Lee, Orson Welles. Everyone knew Dinah and they all loved her."

After four years together, the happiness and closeness of Burt Reynolds and Dinah Shore had become Hollywood legend. "We dreamed of building a house in Hawaii. We couldn't have been more in love. But there was a snag. Dinah wouldn't marry me.

"She said it was because she couldn't give me children and it's true I wanted them badly. But we could have adopted. I knew it was more than that.

"Even so, Dinah had everything I ever wanted in a woman. And when I told her: 'I want to be with you for the rest of my life,' I really meant it. And yet a year later he was telling friends: "Breaking up with Dinah is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I knew it was time to get married or move on, and she refused to marry me."

During a tearful confrontation in 1975, Reynolds told Dinah Shore: "I will love you all my life. The hardest part is that I'm falling deeper in love with you every moment." Then he turned and walked away.

Reynolds cried for days afterwards. "A piece of me was lost. I missed the closeness and the friendship and to be truthful I've never stopped missing it ever since. Every time I picked up the phone I wanted to call her".

Burt Reynolds' desire for children made him marry glamorous Loni Anderson. They had a son, Quinton, but the marriage was soon in trouble and ended in a $10 million divorce.

Alone again, Burt Reynolds rang Dinah Shore hoping to get together again. But she refused to see him despite his pleading.

Finally, from a friend, he discovered her tragic secret — the reason why she had refused to marry him and why she now had broken off the relationship for good. Dinah Shore had terminal cancer. She died in 1994.

He never got to say goodbye to Dinah so for the rest of his life Burt would visit her grave, and now maybe they are together again...

SOURCE

COMING SOON: THE MONTH OF WHITE CHRISTMAS

Mark your calendars and make your cocoa with marshmallows, because during the month of December we are celebrating everything White Christmas. From the song to the movie, we are honoring songwriter's Irving Berlin's masterpiece, which was subsequently featured in three Bing Crosby movies.

Just us for the winter fun!

CELEBRITY ADS: FREDRIC MARCH

This is one of the last cigarette ads claiming a doctor’s endorsement. This 1954 ad in Life magazine showed Hollywood star Fredric March making this assertion after having read the letter written by a “Dr. Darkis” that was inset into the advertisement. Dr. Darkis explained in this letter that L&M filters used a “highly purified alpha cellulose” that was “entirely harmless” and “effectively filtered the smoke.” Darkis was not a physician, but a research chemist...

COMING SOON: BUTTONS - A CHRISTMAS TALE

It is amazing and terrific that well into their 90s that entertainment icons Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury are still make great movies - and a new musical at that! The two legends play guardian angels.

Buttons is a Christmas Tale is the magical, musical story that shows believing can be the greatest gift of all. Follow the heartwarming journey of two orphan girls whose only wish is to find a home for Christmas. With a little help from their guardian angels (screen legends Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury), they discover that miracles really can happen when you find the power to believe. From director Tim Janis, this inspiring holiday film for the whole family features an all-star cast including Jane Seymour, Roma Downey and Abigail Spencer, and is narrated by Kate Winslet and Robert Redford.

The release date of the DVD is December 3, 2019, but you may pre-order at https://paramnt.us/Get.Buttons now! Digital copies of the film will be available, starting November 19, 2019. The digital copy may also be purchased at the same link.

HOLLYWOOD URBAN LEGEND: STAN LAUREL & OLIVER HARDY

URBAN LEGEND: Did Stan Laurel refuse to work in anything after the death of his comedy partner Oliver Hardy?

STATUS: Yes, it is 100% true!

As much as they were inseparable friends and “partners in crime” in all of their mischiefs on the big screen, they were just as close in real life. In 1957, when Oliver Hardy passed away, Laurel, devastated by his best friend’s death, never fully recovered and so, retired from acting, refusing to perform on stage or act in another film without his best pal. Stan Laurel was courted by every movie director in the business to come out of retirement, including Stanley Kramer who wanted Laurel for his comedy epic It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World in 1963, but Laurel said no to all offers. Stan Laurel would die eight years after his partner on February 23, 1965...

BORN ON THIS DAY: VERONICA LAKE

One of the tragic stars of Hollywood was Veronica Lake. However, she was one of the beautiful in her day.  Lake was born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in the New York City borough of Brooklyn in 1922. Her father, Harry Eugene Ockelman, was of German and Irish descent,, and worked for an oil company aboard a ship. He died in an industrial explosion in Philadelphia in 1932. Lake's mother, Constance Frances Charlotta (née Trimble; 1902–1992), of Irish descent, married Anthony Keane, a newspaper staff artist, also of Irish descent, in 1933, and Lake began using his surname.

The Keanes lived in Saranac Lake, New York, where young Lake attended St. Bernard's School. She was then sent to Villa Maria, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from which she was expelled. Lake later claimed she attended McGill University and took a premed course for a year, intending to become a surgeon. This claim was included in several press biographies, although Lake later declared it was bogus. Lake subsequently apologized to the president of McGill, who was simply amused when she explained her habit of self-dramatizing. When her stepfather fell ill during her second year, the Keane family later moved to Miami, Florida. Lake attended Miami High School, where she was known for her beauty. She had a troubled childhood and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, according to her mother.

In 1938, the Keanes moved to Beverly Hills, California. While briefly under contract to MGM, Lake enrolled in that studio's acting farm, the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting (now the Beverly Hills Playhouse). She made friends with a girl named Gwen Horn and accompanied her when Horn went to audition at RKO. She appeared in the play Thought for Food in January 1939. A theatre critic from the Los Angeles Times called her "a fetching little trick" for her appearance in She Made Her Bed.

She also appeared as an extra in a number of movies. Keane's first appearance on screen was for RKO, playing a small role among several coeds in the film Sorority House (1939). The part wound up being cut from the film, but she was encouraged to continue. Similar roles followed, including All Women Have Secrets (1939), Dancing Co-Ed (also 1939), Young as Your Feel (1940), and Forty Little Mothers (also 1940). Forty Little Mothers was the first time she let her hair down on screen.

Lake attracted the interest of Fred Wilcox, an assistant director, who shot a test scene of her performing from a play and showed it to an agent. The agent, in turn, showed it to producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., who was looking for a new girl to play the part of a nightclub singer in a military drama, I Wanted Wings (1940). The role would make Lake, still in her teens, a star. Hornblow changed the actress's name to Veronica Lake. According to him, her eyes, "calm and clear like a blue lake", were the inspiration for her new name. The rest is movie noir history, and it is sad that her last years were spent in illness and forgotten memories. Today, as always, we can celebrate the life of Veronica Lake...

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Hollywood and the studio system was very cruel to Judy Garland. They never considered her a beauty, but Judy Garland was one of the most beauty women in Hollywood. Here is six photos that prove this...