Sunday Activities....

found at the fabulous soyons-suave.

Lucille At 100 - A Colorful Life

Happy 100th Lucy.

The Mystery Gets Revealed!

Well, well, well!  Finally got you this time.  Score one for the old Felixarino!

 

On Wednesday you were requested to identify the little one in the carriage above and you all provided me with my first victory!!!!  No one accurately identified the baby as:

James Cagney!

Now sometimes Jimmy can get a little sensitive about these things, but just to show you that he has no hard feelings, he's invited you all to breakfast.

Complete.

I woke up late this morning and got the shocking but not surprising news that Elizabeth Taylor was dead.  I immediately went around to all my blog buddies to see what was posted; read the reactions.  Many beautiful, sad, funny things were said, and the general consensus seems to be that she will be greatly missed. I was not inclined to do my own post at first, but it turns out there is something that I would like to say.

I will not miss Elizabeth Taylor.  Put down that dvd of "X, Y and Zee" that you've got aimed at my head for a second and let me explain.  When someone that I've known, publicly or personally,  has died I get the feeling that I will miss them generally when their potential was clipped.  When there was more that they could have expressed. But Miss Taylor lived a blockbuster, Cinemascopic, Stereophonic, balls-out, no-stone-unturned, great big fat (sometimes literally) life.

Unlike most celebrities of her era, she never went through an "item in the columns" period.  From her pre-pubescence she was headlines all the way.  She has run the gamut of appearing in lousy pictures to great ones.  She has given everything from walk through performances to shuddering, shattering clinics in the art of motion picture acting.  She somehow managed, at various times, to become the toast of Hollywood, New York, Washington DC, London and Paris.  She's been the Queen of the Nile for chrissakes!

Many years ago she became legendary for her selfishness and for her compulsive acquisition of enough fine jewelery to open a very well appointed shop.  With a stockroom in back.  In more recent years she became just as legendary for her giving, both of time and money. 

Also headlined, of course, were the zany hijinks and madcap merriment of her romantic life.  She was a gal who believed in the 'now' of love.  She understood that there is nothing remotely logical about love and to try to bring logic and appropriateness to it was a futile exercise, and she lived accordingly.

It's also important for me to remember:  She Wasn't Like The Rest Of Us.  I'll never forget a piece of a Vanity Fair article on her many years ago.  It was sometime after the forming of AMFAR.  She was probably in her early sixties at this point. She was to attend a meeting with the Board of Directors of her Foundation that was being held at the downtown Bank of America building.  Afterwords, some of them were going someplace locally for lunch.  Her driver deposited her at the elevators in the parking garage and up she went to the penthouse boardroom.  After the meeting, it was decided that since the restaurant was a few doors away, they would walk to it.  This meant leaving the building by going through the bank lobby.  All these 'suits' and Elizabeth were walking through the bank when suddenly the guys became aware that she was not in their group any more.  They looked back and there she was, standing alone in the middle of the enormous bank, a look of wonder on her face.  They rushed back to her and asked if everything was alright.  More to herself then to them she muttered, "So this is what a bank looks like"!

In more recent years, she quieted down.  No more movie product - headlines few and far between.  She became a maternal homebody in the very same house that she had lived in for many of the spectacle years.  The house that has seen it all.  I find myself thankful that she got to add quietness and mundane to her repertoire of experiences.

In the end, if there's one line of dialog from her career to sums her up it would be from 'V-Woolf':  "I am the Earth Mother".  The earth is a vast and beautiful and horrifying and kind thing.  I will remember Elizabeth Taylor.  I will celebrate her.  But I will not miss her.  She did everything she came here to do.  She was complete.

Well He'll Be A Monkey's Uncle.

Last week while I was researching the post I did on the phony-doc "Ingagi", I discovered, once again, there is a website for everything.

I had mentioned, rather in passing, that the ferocious gorilla was really a guy in an ape suit.  Well it turns out that there is more than one website and a lot more than just a few fans dedicated to gorilla-suit-performances and the performers who performed them!  And I think I can safely say after reading up on it, that the undisputed King of The Gorilla Men is Mr. Charles Gemora.

Born the youngest of 18 children on the island of Negros, Philippines in 1903, young Carlos Cruz Gemora ran away while still in his teens to Manila.  An adept artist, he delighted many of the American Military personnel with his portrait drawing.  He even charmed a group of Yankee sailors into stowing away on their vessel and being smuggled into the good ol' USA at the Port of Long Beach.  Washing milk bottles at a dairy, the new American swapped his name Carlos for Charlie.

Charlie took to hanging out in front of the Universal Studios hoping to get some extra work in pictures, and since portrait drawing had gotten him noticed once before, he thought the magic would work again here.  It did.  He was brought on to the Art Department at Universal and put to work sculpting.

The extraordinary facade in 1923's "The Hunchback Of Notre Dame" is Charlie's work.

He was entrusted as the Set Designer on Lon Chaney's "Phantom Of The Opera"

Through his association and apprenticeship with Chaney he became adept at make-up.  Particularly of the character, trick and special effects variety.  He also designed several sets for his friend Doug Fairbanks, Sr.

It was finally in the late 20's that he began the segment of his career that he is most remembered for today:  designing, building and inhabiting gorilla suits.  His first suits and performances were, while rudimentary to what they would ultimately become, far better than any that had existed up to that point.  His drive to perfection was unabated.  He (and later his daughter, Diana) would hand crochet a combination of human and yak hair into the suits.  This mingling of straight and very curly hair gave him the natural matted appearance he was after.  So far as acting, Gemora spent untold hours and days in observation of the movements and behaviors of gorillas at the San Diego Zoo which was the only place in the whole southwestern region to see a gorilla at that time.

Above are two shots from "Seven Footprints To Satan", starring Thelma Todd.  1929

In addition to the scary stuff (The Unholy Three (1930), Murders In The Rue Morgue, Island Of Lost Souls) , with his masterful comic timing, Gemora played opposite such legends of laffs as, Laurel and Hardy (The Chimp and Swiss Miss), The Li'l Rascals (Bear Shooters), Thelma Todd and Zasu Pitts (Bum Voyage), The Marx Brothers (At The Circus), Hope and Crosby (Road To Zanzibar, Road To Utopia) and Abbott and Costello (Africa Screams).

Charlie's personal favorite was Paramount's 1941 "The Monster And The Girl".

His Gorilla character has been transplanted with a human brain.  Phillip Terry's
(the 3rd Mr. Joan Crawford) brain as a matter of fact!  This enabled Gemora to add more layers to his characterization.

Above I referred to his gorilla man work as a 'segment' of his career.  You see, Charlie Gemora did much more than just monkey around.  Starting in the mid 30s, he was also part of the Paramount Pictures make up department and remained there until his death in 1961 when he was working with Brando on "One-Eyed Jacks".

His daughter Diana tells a remarkable story about the making and shooting of the Martian costume in "War Of The Worlds" (1953).  Charlie had finished the costume the day before it was supposed to shoot.  That afternoon, the Art Director came in and decided it was all wrong, and it was much too large for his set.  It was now about 16 hours away from the suit having to 'work'.  Charlie raced home, grabbed a bite to eat and his trusty assistant Diana (then in her early teens) and together they pulled an all nighter basically doing a complete rebuild of the thing.  At eight the next morning, the latex was not cured, the paint was not dry, but the apparatus was gingerly transported to the set.  Charlie shrunk his already diminutive 5'4" frame into the costume, and Diana (still wearing the curlers in her hair that she had when her dad picked her up the afternoon before) wedged herself under the 2 foot crawl space below the set to work the controls that would breath air in and out of the Martians veins.  And the rest was 15 seconds of on screen cinematic history!

Making the kind of money that he did, he bought a large piece of hilltop land with a house overlooking Hollywood and Vine in the 30s.  As he needed to finance is extra curricular activities, he would sell of parcel after parcel of his land.

About those extra curricular activities.  He was a gambler (any thing you could make book on: poker, the ponies, the fights, wrestling) an entrepreneur and a film maker.  After WWII in addition to opening a chain of Orange Julius' back in the Philippines, he opened a slew of theaters and drive-ins there too.  In order to provide pertinent content to those theaters, he brought Filipino actors  to Hollywood and wrote and shot 16mm color feature movies.

It is also said that he invented a number of things which he never bothered to patent or take credit for.  He didn't care about the recognition; he just wanted to do his thing.  Among the list of inventions are:

"Aquashield"

Lipstick in a tube

Shower Water Deflector

First Kleenex Box

Non-staining Movie Blood

Non-staining Ink

Color additive for cement  to make it look like stone

Falsies

Camphor tubes used to make actors cry

Helped in the homogenizing of make-up

New ways of using latex, innovating prosthetics for surgeons after the Second World War for lost limbs.

Without the patents it is, of course, impossible to substantiate, but even if he only invented one of them, it's quite an accomplishment -- and I hope it was falsies!

With all that I learned while doing the research on him, (and I forgot to mention that he was a happy, impish, delightful man; loved by all who met him) I can't be faulted for thinking that Charlie Gemora may just be the most multi-talented guy ever to have hit Hollywood.

Stan The Man!

A block up the street from me, this guy retired yesterday.  Well there's more to it than that, see he's 87 years old and has been on the job since 1947.  You might think that at that age his productivity might have slipped or the quality of his work might have been a bit compromised but it hadn't and it wasn't, because if it had it would have been noticed.  You see it wasn't just his bosses that had their eye on his work....


Folks, meet KTLA television news anchor, Stan Chambers.

To fully understand the scope and depth of his career, here's a little perspective.  Paramount took their television station KTLA (originally known as W6XYZ) live on January 22, 1947 with a variety program hosted by Bob Hope.  It became the first licensed station West of the Mississippi and broadcast to each and every one of the 350 TV sets in Los Angeles.  Two months later, Chambers joined the station as their news anchor.

KTLA really has remained a station of firsts and Chambers has been there every step of the way.  Two years after he joined the company, he made history.  Three year old Kathy Fiscus fell into an abandoned water well in San Marino, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Chambers and a camera truck raced to the scene to do live remote coverage.  For 27 1/2 hours straight. 

Many people knew someone with a TV set where they could gather.  Those who didn't crowded into bars or onto sidewalks in front of appliance stores, riveted.  The day after the tragedy there began a massive uptick in the sales of television sets.  With Stan's reporting the television set went from being something of a novel and expensive plaything to a medium that could inform and unite a community - the country - the world.

Oil refinery fire, 1951

Chambers has also seen, first hand, some of the not-so-wonderful changes in the news racket.  With the introduction of CNN and the 24 hour news cycle, there has been a need for crap more sensational and tabloid style content.  I'm sure you know what I mean:

"WHAT'S IN YOUR REFRIGERATOR THAT CAN KILL YOU

 - TODAY AT 5!"

"POPPY BRENNIGAN TAKES YOU LIVE INTO A MALE STRIP CLUB

 - TONIGHT AT 11!"

But Chambers has stayed alert, detached, and professional; you know - a newsman. 

And last night after 63 years and over 22,000 news stories, Stan Chambers signed off.

During a commercial break last night, Chambers smiles at his family off camera.

Chambers receives a kiss from wife, Gigi, yesterday.

Luncheon Is Served!

Today we're having Campbells Cream of Crawford soup.  Free plaid tablecloth with purchase!

Kibbee In Bits

One of my very favorites members of the venerable Warner Bros. stock company of players would, without a doubt be Mr. Guy Bridges Kibbee.  He could play whatever you wanted:  funny, serious, drunk, befuddled, self important, rich, poor,  or adorable sugar daddy.  He played in everything from rags to white tie, and with a range like this, I've never seen him hit a false note.

In "Gold Diggers of 1933" he does 'old Boston money' so perfectly, that it's hard to imagine he was born (1882) in El Paso, Texas.  When only 13, the bug had bitten so deeply that he left home in pursuit of a life on the stage.  While dreaming the ultimate actor dream of Broadway, he earned his chops performing on Mississippi Riverboats and Vaudeville runs.  Sometime after the turn of the century, he got himself to New York at long last, where Broadway was no longer an ephemeral dream; it  was a street! 

For the next 20-25 years (an entire career span for many) he was cast in Broadway shows  --  after they left Broadway.  Touring productions.  Back on the road.  Time and again over these years, he would go back at the end of a tour and hover around Broadway, hoping.  But the money would always run out and he'd have to go back out on the road.

Finally the Gods of The Great White Way, gave him the once over and he was cast in "Torch Song".  The role of Cass Wheeler was 10th down on the cast list, but it was at the 1100 seat Plymouth Theater, ON BROADWAY.  So on the night of August 27, 1930, 48 year old Guy Kibbee walked on to his first Broadway stage and made a noise that went from New York to California and back again.  Seemingly before he could get the grease paint wiped off on opening night, Hollywood started calling.  Kibbee couldn't have been less interested.  He was quickly establishing himself exactly where he had always wanted to be.  Well Hollywood doesn't recognize "no" when it wants something and the calls and offers became ever more insistent.

Kibbee had cause to reconsider when his second New York show, "Marseilles",  closed after sixteen performances.  Why not take a little air trip to California and make a picture, the money was good and it might be fun.  It would be years before he ever used that return ticket.  He came to Hollywood at the beginning of  '31 and hit the ground running.  He did pictures for Paramount, Warners and MGM, and five months later, on May 16, 1931 he signed with Warner Bros.

He couldn't possibly have time to get homesick as Warners wasted no time in getting their moneys' worth out of him.  In just 18 months, (by the end of '32)  Guy had appeared in 20 titles released by the company.  In fact IMDB lists 111 film credits for him the last being in 1948, when he moved, finally, back to New York.  Between '48 and '50 there were numerous television appearances.

But the tremors were already starting to be quite visible and the the acting work stopped.  Parkinson's was the verdict.  By the end of 1953, completely in the grip of his disease, he spent over nine months in a private sanitarium in Rye, NY.

On September 20, 1954, penniless (his only income was Social Security) he arrived at
The Percy Williams Home for Sick and Needy Actors in East Islip NY.  "I've come to the bottom of the barrel", he told the admissions officer.

Now here's what I don't understand:  according to various sites that I researched Guy was wed from 1918 to 1923 to a Helen Shea.  That marriage produced four children.  And from 1925 until his death he was wedded to Esther Reed with whom he had three more children.  Where were these people?  Where was his Hollywood community?  Jack Warner?  The ever-odious Walter Winchell had the callousness to blurb in an Oct. '54 column, "Guy Kibbee is watching the parade go by at a nursing home."

Obviously there is more to the story.  I don't know, maybe he was a horrible man or a drunkard, but it just breaks my heart to think that after bringing so much joy for so many years he would end up this way.

During his stay at the Percy Williams home he was often incoherent and had little interest in the things around him, the exception being when one of his old movies played on TV, he would alertly watch them, laughing and comment that they were "kinda funny."  He passed away on May 24, 1956.

Gimme A Hint, Will Ya?

As you probably know, I have a vintage shop on Etsy.  (If you didn't, you can visit it here. Okay, how's that for a hint!)  So yesterday I was listing two old paperback books filled with the wisdom of  Heloise, and it hit me: What up with Heloise.  A little digging later, here's what up.  And quite a dame she was:

It was late 1958 and Eloise Bowles Cruse was a 39 year old Air Force wife bored in paradise.  She, the fly boy hubby and two kids were stationed in Honolulu.  She was a 5'2" bundle of energy that was only mildly satisfied by household upkeep and bridge with the girls at the Officers Club.  One thing she did really enjoy was the exchange of ideas on housekeeping tips and shortcuts that happened over her kaffeeklatches with friends.

Say-wait-a-minute! (cue the ascending glis on the harp) if this were a newspaper column; broader audience-more tips!  She casually brought up her journalistic desire at a cocktail party and a colonel within earshot laughed.  Laughed!  He then did something you probably shouldn't do if you wanted to keep Eloise in her place, he bet her ten bucks that she couldn't get a newspaper job because "you're nothing but a housewife".  Cut to:  Office of the Editor, Honolulu Advertiser.  Eloise, in business suit with silver spray in her hair (meant to indicate a look of wisdom) sells the guy on a thirty day, no pay trial basis for a column called "Readers Exchange".

After collecting on the $10 bet, she set up a card table in her bedroom and the non-typist hunted and pecked her way to preparing her column debut in February of '59.  In 1960 she changed her name (for alliteration's sake) and the name of the column to "Hints From Heloise".   On her own, with no agent, manager or lawyer she sold her column to papers in Oklahoma City, Houston and Dallas (she was a native Texan).  In the fall of 1961, King Features Syndicate (a division of Hearst) offered her a contract.  So by 1962, she was a household name and wrote the first of the two books I have.

Our Helpful, Hintfull Heloise was not without her quirks and eccentricities.  She was in the habit of using colored theatrical sprays on her hair to match her outfits (blue, green, lavender, no shade would be ignored).  If she were dancing at a social event with a perfect stranger and became aware of an odor emanating from his dentures, she thought nothing of informing him of a solution mixture that would cure the problem.

Difficulties in the relationship with her daughter, Ponce` (who now writes the feature and maintains the Heloise empire) were at times titanic, but seem, for the most part, to have been ironed out before the formers death in 1977.

In recent years with all the attention being devoted (deservedly) to Julia Child, it's seems that the contributions of Heloise, the column and the woman, have been a bit overlooked.  For an example, in all my research I was unable to find a photograph of her!

UPDATE! -  The spectacular Jason supplied the pictures below:

Above: Heloise and Ponce`

Below: Heloise and Nixon talk China

So here's to an American heroine who's work had and continues to have a major impact on domestic living!
Now, go clean something.

Baby I Could Drive This Car.

This lovely gold Jaguar somehow puts me in the mind of the Mad, Mod Sixties; Beatles; Carnaby Street; Bespoke suits; Mary Quant; Beverly Hills; Rich Hippies; The Daisy Discotheque, and about a million other delicious things!