Warning: If You Want A Little Gary Cooper, There Are Strings Attached.

**Note to self** Must remember to phone the puppet maker and place order for a  1/4 scale Philip puppet.

Mystery Guest, Will You Enter And Sign In Please!

Ok, the RULES haven't changed.  If you've seen this picture before, or know for sure who this is, feel free to send me an email, but for the sake of unbridled mystery and tension, let the gang have a go at it in the comments section.

This one is going to be either very easy or very difficult, I'm not sure which.  Of course with you lot of smarty pants, probably easy.

Ok, ready, set.....

.......Name That Skirt!

Conquering The Demands Of Stardom...

Betty Grable sends her robot likeness out to handle autograph seekers.

The Big "One".

No, I'm not talking about a California earthquake.

And I'm not talking about an outsized appendage.

I'm not even talking about Fred Sandford going to join Elizabeth!

This big one is:

Today is the Felix In Hollywood Blog's One Year Anniversary!!!

Sometime in April of 2009 , I was doing a furious Google search on long-forgotten 1950s Columbia starlet, Lucy Marlow (like you do) and got directed to this thing called Stirred Straight Up With A Twist.  Up till this time, I had heard the word 'blog' but had no idea what one was.  So, I'm reading this coverage on Marlow and it's bright, it's informed and it's funnier than shit.  Well I was hooked.  I started reading post after post.  What's more I began to click on the 'comments', and found more bright and shining light bulbs flashing their brilliance.  My God, I thought, here are my people!  They think like I think, they like what I like.  It took about two months but I went through TJB's entire archives as well as checking his current daily posts.  I also branched out to his blog roll, and you guessed it, more amazement and delight.  I wanted to play in this sandbox, with these kids really, really bad.  But alas, I was too intimidated.  They were the 'big kids' and I felt too puny.  I began daily haunts to Mr. Peenee, Lethal Dose, Muscato (Muscato, please come home!), Night Is Half Gone, Infomaniac, Mean Dirty Pirate, and Fabulon (recreated as Chateau Thombeau).  

I'm not sure which came first but by July I  a) opened a blogger account and left a few tentative comments myself and, surprise-surprise, nobody laughed at me or told me to go away,   and  b) got up my nerve and sent a fan email to TJB.  Well you'll never believe this, but he answered me!  Not only that but he was kind and friendly!!  I then reached out to Donna Lethal.  Same deal.  Over and over again, all of these guys were really nice.  Then I noticed witty commenter Cool Cookie start his blog Doing Hard Time In Shaker Heights.  On Dec. 16th, I couldn't take it anymore and decided to join the fun. 

My very first post found me wonder where this was all going to go.  Where it went was beyond my imagination.  About 290 posts later, I'm followed by 61 people and the page has been view damn near 50,000 times!  My last visitor was from Cambodia for heaven sakes.  I got to watch the beautiful Norma Desmond open the Mitten Drinnen blog.  The entire experience has added a dimension to my life that I absolutely cherish.  For the last twelve months you've laughed with me, cried with me, listened to me bitch, and given me a much needed sense of responsibility to keep this thing going.  Thank you readers.  

Thank you fellow bloggers.

Eternal thanks to TJB, and of course to Lucy Marlow.





TJB as Lucy Marlow in "The Lucy Marlow" story.

I Guess You Could Call It A Couch Condom...

Crawford in the Hollywood apartment she kept in the 1960s.  Located behind Loretta Young's house on Fountain Avenue.

"There was more plastic on that furniture than on the meat at the A&P."
-Interior Decorator Carleton Varney

This is probably my favorite quote from the documentary, "Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star", and yes, your humble host was the Associate Producer of that little epic.

Time To Cast Your Vote!

For the Most Unlikely Duo Award from the contestants below:

Edith Piaf & Carmen Miranda

Mahalia Jackson & Dean Martin

Cary Grant & Talented Reading Poodle

 

 

 

Norma Shearer & Gracie Allen

Well readers?

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other.

It kinda looks like Paulette Goddard and Dorothy Lamour are posing with a miniature doll of  Veronica Lake!

Now A Brief Message From Our Holiday Sponsor...

 

Just kidding.  You know who the real sponsor of this blog is, dontcha:

Fancy lettering by Cool Cookie!

And now just in time for the Holidays (or any day) you can give the gift of Felix!
That's right, beautiful Gift Presentation Certificates are available from
The Felix In Hollywood Tour Company!!!

"At last, Hollywood History is at hand.....On Foot."

Everybody loves a present.  Now you can purchase a tour pass for one or up to eight people.

*Here's the answer for that "hard to buy for" friend, family member, boss or associate.

*Know someone who's planning a trip to Southern California?  This makes a perfect bon voyage present.

The best part is, the certificate is valid for use for the next three months.  That way the recipient can schedule their tour at their own leisure.

If you're buying a certificate, go straight to the "Buy Your Ticket" tab.  Then just send an email to philip@felixinhollywoodtours.com and give me the name of the recipient(s), the name of the gift giver(s), and whether you want me to email the certificate jpeg, or have me mail a printed copy to you.

Pretty snappy idea, huh?

Black And White And Red All Over

Lucy's having quite a day, don't you think we should too?

Why Don't You....

Take some time today to:

Enjoy a cup of coffee

Jack Palance, on set candid from The Barbarians

Catch up on a little reading

Judy Garland and various Munchkins, on set candid from The Wizard Of Oz

And hang out with friends of common interests

James Stewart & Lew Ayers publicity still from Ice Follies Of 1939

My Latest 'Favorite Line From A Movie Of All Time'

The film is the 1954 MGM comedy "Susan Slept Here".   Dick Powell as a jaded Hollywood screenwriter, Mark Christopher.

 

Alvy Moore is his subservient, yes-man assistant, Virgil.

My girl Glenda Farrell as Powell's wise cracking, soused secretary, Maude.

Obscenely gorgeous Anne Francis plays Powell's girlfriend and Senator's daughter, Isabella.

Into this well oiled machine of dysfunction, is thrown a wrench in the form of perky/spunky juvenile delinquent, Debbie Reynolds as Susan.

Madcap hilarity ensues.


I'm going to take the largely unpopular opinion and say I really like this picture.  The story is ridiculously implausible, but the dialog is brilliant.  The performances, across the board, are appropriately broad.  The set of Mark's fab 50s Hollywood apartment (complete with wet bar) is absurdly groovy.  To top it all off, there is a minimalist- modern dream sequence that is divine (and I'm a push over for a good dream sequence).

The problem most people seem to have with it is the vast age difference between the reluctant love interests. The Powell character is supposed to be 35 (the actor was 50) and Reynolds' character 17 1/2 (she was 22 at the time of filming).  In an overwhelming number of reviews and opinions on the web that I've read, there is a compelling need to refer to this seventeen year spread as 'creepy'.  Perhaps they are reacting to the fact that Susan is under the age of majority.  By six months.  If I'm going to be honest, I really don't see much difference between 17 1/2 years of age and that magic number: 18.  As for the 17 year spread between them, that happens to have been the exact age difference between my parents.  My folks start sleeping together when she was 21 and he was 38 and they married two years later.  For all their problems (none of which had anything to do with their ages) they did just fine.  And they stayed married till the end of their lives.

Oops, as you can see, my love of dream sequences takes a backseat to my tendency to digress.  Never mind.  The picture is in glorious widescreen Technicolor, and has a Holiday theme.  Check it out.

I started all of this out with something about a line - well here it is.

The Set Up

Virgil: What do you know about Motherhood?

The Payoff

Maude:  I happened to have typed the script of Stella Dallas!

As My Dad Used To Say.....

Johnnie Ray and Judy Garland on stage in the little room at Caesars, Feb '69

"....her skirt is so short you can see what she had for breakfast!"

It's All In The Name...

Clara Bow's "It Cafe"

Reginald Denny's Hobby Shop

Thelma Todd's "Sidewalk Cafe"

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle's Plantation Club

Bebe Daniel's Sportswear

Judy Garland Flower Shop

Hangin' Out My Shingle

What's Is It With Pussies...

...and cool 1950s actors?

The Elegant Silent Type

In his 1975 book, "The Silent Clowns", film critic Walter Kerr make the strong argument that when considering the top four silent comedians (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd and Langdon) a fifth should and must be added.  That man is Raymond Griffith.

While his contemporaries costumed and positioned their characters as vagrant to middle class, Griffith adopted the upper crust persona of white tie, tails and silk top hat.

“The things that happen to a man in a soft hat may be humorous or tragic, as the case may be; the same things happening to a silk-hatted individual are excruciatingly funny . . . Why? I don't know exactly. Maybe because it is incongruous. Maybe it is because we have a prejudice against snobbishness or the qualities the silk hat suggests.” - From Motion Picture Magazine, 1925.

The talkie revolution sent the denizens of Hollywood scurrying like nothing before or since.  Who could record well and who couldn't.  Who would successfully make the transition and who wouldn't.  I was utter pandemonium.  But not for Raymond Griffith.
See, despite his great stardom with the Lasky Company in the silent era, he had no illusions of continuing his career in the talkers.

Griffith was born with grease paint in his veins on January 23, 1895 in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, James Henry Griffith, was an actor from San Francisco, California. Mary Guichard, his mother, was a stage actress who was born in France. Griffith's grandfather, Gerald Griffith had also been an actor, as was his great grandfather Thomas Griffith.  He was fifteen months old when he made his stage debut, playing a baby in his parents' stage company. When he was seven years old, he starred as Little Lord Fauntleroy. He even played “the little girl” in a production of Ten Nights In a Barroom at the age of eight.

Everything was Jake for the child performer until he contracted respiratory diphtheria.  A common childhood disease of the era, the diphtheria bacterium could enter the body through the nose or mouth. A membrane would form over the throat and tonsils. If untreated, this disease can be fatal or cause paralysis. In Griffith's case, diphtheria permanently damaged his vocal chords, and for the rest of his life he was unable to speak in a volume above a hoarse whisper.

It's ironic then that his swan song in front of the camera was a talkie, and would be his most remembered role!


A harrowing, gruesome, morbid tale of war, so compelling in its realism, bigness and repulsiveness that Universal's "All Quiet On The Western Front" becomes at once a money picture.  Nothing passed up for the niceties; nothing glossed over for the women. Here exhibited is a war as it is, butchery.- Daily Variety, May 6, 1930

Lew Ayers as Paul Baumer and Raymond Griffith as Gerard Duval.

  In a poignant scene, Grifftiths' Duval is killed by Lew Ayres' character Paul Baumer. As Duval lays dying, Baumer realizes the horror of the war. Griffith's wordless cameo performance was a highlight of the movie.  The film won the Academy Award for best picture of 1930.  The Variety review went on to say, "Raymond Griffith is the Frenchman stabbed and who died in the trench. He didn't have to talk for Griffith died as no one else has on the screen."

...and scene.


As they say in business, diversification is the key.  Around the same time as 'Western Front'  Griffith hired his friend Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright) construct a Produce Market for him.  The modernism style of the now demolished structure was seen a precursor to both the Googie architectural style and the modern strip mall.

Now if you're thinking he turned away from the industry and just sold fruits and vegetables for the rest of his life, let me ally your concerns.  The vegetables were just a sideline.

Ray quickly became a go to 'script doctor' around town and was soon tucked firmly under the wing of Darryl Zanuck.  By the mid 30s he was a full fledged Producer under Zanuck at Fox and gave us hours of fun, music and merriment in films starring, The Ritz Brothers, Sonja Henie, and Miss Shirley Temple.

Griffith grabbed his top hat and cane and headed for Fabulon in 1957.  While dining with friends at "The Masquers Club"  he choked to death on his dinner.

The Cast Includes...

The phrase above invariably precedes the names of some of my favorite performers from the Golden Age of movies.  But if you've spent any extended time on this blog, you already know my dirty little secret:  I'm queer for character people!  I've submitted postings on  Guy Kibbee, Edna May Oliver, Constance Collier, and my all time favorite personal god/super hero/dream man Franklin Pangborn!

The words 'Character Actor' can be a little misleading to the uninitiated.  One could be tempted to think it means and actor who can effortlessly disappear into a wide variety of characterizations in the way that, say, Meryl Streep does.  Au contraire.  Perhaps 'Personality Actor' would be a more fitting description.  These people had a schtick, a personality type, that they would repeat (to magnificent effect) in picture after picture after picture.

It would also be tempting to think that these types died with black and white film and the studio system.  Not true.  While you don't see the Margaret Dumont's and the Edward Everett Horton's in movies much anymore, they aren't gone.  They're given TV series'.  Think Paul Lynde, Roseanne Barr, Fran Drescher, Jerry Seinfeld.  You know, Character People!

All that said, it seems like it's time for a new entry, don't you think?

Ladies and Gentlemen, everybody's favorite head waiter/butler/valet:

Eric Blore

Blore (born 1887) had been an insurance agent for two years in his native England when he was bitten with the acting bug in 1908.  With success at home and on tour in Australia, he moved to the New York stage in 1923.  The next 10 years saw a series of performances with terrific reviews.  It was in 1933 that he became a 'made man' in Hollywood (right along with Astaire and Rogers) in a little thing called "Flying Down To Rio".  RKO apparently found Blore to be such an integral part of the Fred & Ginger magic that he played in 5 films with them.

Butling for Warren William in "The Lone Wolf" series.

In the years that followed, he worked at every studio in town doing his thing.  Playing a butler clearly does a fella a lot better financially than being a butler.  I found a 1937 newspaper article that listed a judges ruling of $150 per week in alimony Blore was to pay his ex (that's $2300 in today's dollars!).  But then he was never your average butler.  He was efficient, he had answers when his employers didn't, he was cute, and there was something just a little naughty in there too.  In his last teaming with Astaire (The Sky's The Limit, 1943) he even says, "If I were not such a gentleman's gentleman, I could be such a cad's cad".

The gift to comedy that he was, it's only fitting that his end was a bit screwball.  In 1959, legendary critic Kenneth Tynan referred, in a New Yorker article, to 'the late Eric Blore'.  When the infuriated lawyer of the very much alive Blore demanded a retraction and apology, Tynan's editor frostily informed his writer that it would be the first retraction in the history of the magazine.  The chastised Tynan prepared his mea culpa, the issue was put to bed, printed and delivered.  On the newsstands the next morning was New Yorker magazine apologizing to the actor, next to the morning edition of the newspaper with the obituary for character actor Eric Blore, who passed away the night before!