Once Upon A Time....

From Motion Picture magazine, 1915.  (click to fully engorge)

Perspective On Fame.

"The motion picture business in those days was very different from the motion picture business of today. No other stars will ever hold the unique position occupied by Wallace Reid and Mary Pickford. The game has grown beyond that. There are too many attractive men and women, too much competition, too many theaters, too much interest now in the story, the settings, the cast, the photography. The motion picture fan has evolved, and the days of such enormous personal popularity as came to Wally are gone forever. No one can take Wally Reid's place because that place no longer exists. Like many another monarchy......it has become a republic."

- Adela Rogers St. Johns, Liberty Magazine, June 1928

Wallace Reid April 15, 1892 – January 18, 1923

Some Dame!

Alright, not really a Dame if you want to be technical.  More like a Baroness.

Born in 1874 little Marie Rose Antoinette Catherine de Robert d'Aqueria de Rochegude of Le Havre would, in 1895, marry in Paris and hence become the Baroness Catherine d'Erlanger.  In London where she and the Baron lived at 139 Piccadilly (Lord Byron's old joint, don't you know) she would be more commonly known as "Flame" for her hair color.

Flame as painted by William Bruce Ellis Ranken

Before you begin to feel to sorry for Flame being couped up in that city house, do know that it was one of three in which the Baron and she encamped.

139 Piccadilly exterior and....

interior.

Then there was Falconwood the Palladian manse outside of town:

Falconwood drawing room as painted by Sir John Lavery

And lastly, there was the place in Venice.  What.  Everyone needs a place in Venice.  But do they really need to name it Villa La Malcontenta?

La Malcontenta 

The Baroness loved the arts and she loved the artists.  Here she is being the art by participating in a tableau vivant, The Five Senses at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, 1900.

"Tasting" is the sense that the Baroness embodied.

Catherine cultivated the most astonishingly irreverent continental society of bohemians, artists and aristocrats at salons in her homes.  She was pals with Ravel, Debussy, Nijinsky and Proust.  She was also financial patroness to Diaghilev, The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and Cecil Beaton. (why buy art when you can buy artists?)

In short, she knew people.  So much so that when Helena Rubenstein was launching what would become her empire in 1908, she hired Flame to be her guide though the complex hierarchy of London Society.

The other thing we find out about the Baroness (and in Rubenstein she had a kindred spirit here) she was a junker -- a picker!  She absolutely adored trolling through the London flea markets searching for 'beautiful things'...at bargain prices.  Cecil Beaton once described her homes as being "decorated with an eclectic display of shell flowers, witch balls and mother of pearl furniture, all picked up for a song at the Caledonian market!"

Things in the 1930s, as we know, were getting a little dicey on the Continent, and at some point she appears to have loaded a container or two with some treasures and beat a path to North America.  Now, should you even be surprised when I tell you that her move led her to settle in Hollywood, U.S.A.?

She bought a lovely and shockingly unpretentious home just a couple of blocks north of the Sunset Strip.  Life did not slow down for our Flame.  It's probably also no surprise that she discovered and became dear friends with the fabulously mad decorator/artist Tony Duquette.  They would actually influence one another.

You can see elements of her Duquette-icised living room.  The crystal room divider.  Silver lame drapes with crystal valances.

In 1939, in the same building that would house Spago in the 1980s, our gal opened up Cafe Gala.

As Spago.

This was a few years after the infamous 'pansy raids' of the early 30s but make no mistake, Cafe Gala was quite pansy.  In a reserved sorta way.  No touching beyond a handshake and all that.  But the clientele made it clear and the place was jokingly known around town as Cafegaleh.  Often, after hours and after closing Bobby Short recalled that the place would be taken over by that wacky bunch from MGM:  Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Conny Salinger, Roger Edens, Lenny Hayton and Kay Thompson.  The Cafe Gala sparkled and shone for a decade. After it's happy run ended, the Baroness d'Erlanger opened "881".

This nightery was recently mentioned again in the Scotty Bowers book as he was the bartender who opened the place.  Shortly after this time though, after a very large, long and fabulous life, the Flame started to dim.  She was getting a bit dotty and slowly receded from public life.  She spent her days, tiara firmly on her head sitting in the garden behind her house and in 1959 booked passage on the Fabulon Express.

Just another day in a Hollywood garden.

This Calls For A Celebration!!!

Exactly 100 years ago today Nestor Studios, the first motion picture studio in Hollywood CA, opened up it's doors for business!

Blondeau Tavern soon to be Nestor Studios

It opened at the former Blondeau Tavern (above).  Nestor didn't remain autonomous for long though.  Carl Laemmle, of  Independent Motion Pictures (IMP), absorbed the company along with several others in 1912.  Afterwhich, Nestor head David Horsley and former Nestor Director Al Christie made pictures under the new Laemmle banner of Universal Pictures.

Same site in 1913

After Uncle Carl Laemmle (who had a very large Faemmle) moved Universal to what is still it's location today - Universal City,  Christie split off from the Universal moniker and the lot was now "Christie Comedies".  Christie's company expanded the lot and flourished for the next two decades.

 

Christie lot 1926

As we all know, however, progress happens....

Demolition of Christie Studios, 1937

And, every once in a while, progress is not such a horrible thing.....

CBS Columbia Square

Columbia Square opening April 30, 1938

Columbia Square Lobby

View from the stage of the 1000 seat studio A

The Glenn Miller Orchestra, Studio A

Lucille Ball and Richard Denning  "My Favorite Husband"

Agnes Moorehead's legendary performance of "Sorry Wrong Number"

Columbia Square is something of a ghost town now* since local CBS affiliate KCBS and KNX radio left a few years back.  The property is in the hands of new owners who, of course, plan new and dense and tall construction -- once this wacky economy clears up.  They have promised though to preserve Columbia Square.  Meanwhile some of the space is being rented out to production companies, mostly of the reality TV variety.  But it seems as though only 30-40% of the over 100,000 square feet are being used.

So today, on this most special day, I snuck in!  I boldly walked into the lobby, prepared to go into a riff about my historical walking tour and the significance of the building and the necessity of my walking through it.  I was also prepared to get summarily thrown out on my can.  But, don't you know there was no one sitting at the sweater-draped chair behind the receptionist desk!  I was home free.  I knew once I was inside that if I was spotted, I would be assumed to be an employee of one of the tenants.  So in I slipped.  It was a bit disappointing.  Much of the grandeur and streamline of the place was done over (seemingly in the '70s).  But I walked up to the roof top and went to the deck that surrounds the penthouse office (vacant) to snap these pictures just for you of Hollywood on it's 100th birthday:

The roof looking North East. 

The roof looking along the Penthouse wall to North West.  You can barely make out the Hollywood Sign on top of the hill.

Many of the photos above come from the fabulous facebook page CBS Columbia Square Alumni.

*Ghost town indeed.  Scores of former employees from the building insist that, not only does the spirit of CBS founder and president William Paley inhabit the building, but so does that of former KNX morning DJ/television star Bob Crane (Hogan's Heroes).

Funny (and Saucy) Girl.

Here's a different angle on Fanny Brice:

I don't know about the Snooks part, but seeing this I can definitely say....oh Baby!

Transform!

How to go from:

Vamp

Theda Bara, 1919

To:

Somebody's Bubbe

Theodosia Goodman, 1939  (photo by Carl Van Vechten)

In twenty short years.

That Gibson Girl!

Okay, Motion Picture Riddle Time:
What do Patsy Palmer, Margie Gibson, Marguerite Gibson, Helen Gibson, Ella Margaret Lewis, Ella Margaret Arce and Pat Lewis have in common?

Answer:  They're the same person.  Of course she was born Ella Margaret Gibson.  She was most commonly known though, as Margaret Gibson.  Until a little later when she was most commonly known as Patricia Palmer.  But her friends called her 'Gibby'.  While she had friends.

Now, I'm just warning you, this dame's story has more twists than a Chubby Checker record.  Let's begin, shall we:

Gibson was born in Colorado Springs in 1894 to parents who were in the show business.  Papa was a musician and Mother was a singer.  Trooping the road was all the child knew from the beginning.  Unfortunately, Papa was a rolling stone and by 1907 decided to go solo, leaving the now footlights savvy 12 year old as her mother's sole means of support.  It's a little fuzzy as to why mama is no longer capable of supporting herself but, hey, things happen, don't they.  Anyhooo, by 1912 they had trooped their way to Los Angeles and 17 year old Gibson had trooped her way through the front door of the Vitagraph company in Santa Monica, where she spent the next few years, becoming the youngest leading lady on the lot.  During her tenure she appeared opposite William Desmond Taylor (future Paramount Director and murder scandal topic) in 4 pictures.

Margaret Gibson and William Desmond Taylor in "The Kiss" 1914

There were quite a few publicity stories done on her during this time:  She's a fresh and humble beauty!;  She dances the tango!;  She wins a bathing suit competition!, and the like.  One such article mentions celebrating her 19th birthday (which actually would be her 20th) by holding an old fashioned housewarming party in her new home "built on a cliff overlooking the ocean".  In 1915 she appeared in "The Coward" at the prestigious Thomas Ince studios (this was on TCM last night and that's what launched me on this Gibson jag).

Then her career started going south (metaphorically) and east (geographically) to Hollywood and the poverty row studios.  The publicity puff pieces stop, no more about her lovely ocean-view home or her shiny black horse or her shiny green roadster.

The next mention that she received in the papers wasn't until 1917 and it wasn't on the society page.  It seems she had been arrested during the police raid of a downtown LA 'sportin' house' and charged as being a young woman employed in said house!  Preposterous! Nonsense!, our girl replied, she had merely visited this place to absorb local color for a film role.   Now this was good and quick thinking on Gibby's part since "Local Color" was the title of a picture she had made the year before.  There were also inferences of Opium dealing involved in the raid (just sayin').

In spite of the fact that there was sworn testimony from one of the other 'workers' that Gibby had in fact been seen at the house on many, many days, clad in nothing but a kimono, seated in the same hallway where the rest of the girls were, being tapped on the shoulder by one of the gentlemen who patronized the establishment, and disappearing into one of the rooms for 5-15 minute intervals with same gentlemen, she was acquitted!!!

The only thing that I can figure, is that there was a female D.A. (astounding considering the year) that was a regular Tasmanian Devil in her cross examinations of the defendant, and there's nothing like an imposing, forceful older woman accusing a young, fresh-faced girl of being low-down, dirty trash to make a jury feel like the girl is the underdog and the one to root for.

So with her record, if not necessarily her reputation, clean, she found her way back to Hollywood with her head somewhere between held high and hung low.  Of course the story had received sufficient coverage that she couldn't very well put the name Margaret Gibson on the credit roll any longer, and that's when she started using the name Patricia Palmer.  Among others.

We'll pick up her story in our next installment of, "That Gibson Girl!"

A Comic Legend....

....and a handsome bloke.

Captain DeMille's Army

The Vine Street Corps

The Lasky Home Guard was formed in Hollywood in 1917 during America's involvement in WWI.  It was made up of Famous Players-Lasky studio employees. Heading up this "regiment" was none other than Cecil B. De Mille, who was appointed their "Captain." His brother, William, and movie idol Wallace Reid were also in the Lasky Guard.  Reid held the office of "Color Sergeant".  On Wednesday evenings DeMille would drill the troops, marching in formation on the street outside the studio gate, wearing uniforms from the Costume Department and carrying rifles from the Prop Shop.


In 1918, the governor of California reviewed the Lasky Guard and Mary Pickford had the opportunity to present them with their colors, a silk flag with hand-embroidered stars that she had had made herself.

It's reassuring to know that if the Kaiser's ground troops had ever stormed Vine Street, more than likely, they would have been defeated.  Or perhaps put under contract.

B.G.

Before Ginger

Fred and Adele Astaire

Actors And Other Animals

Anne Francis and Lion

Betty, Bogie and Dog

Kitten, Kitt, and Kitten

Piper Laurie and Bunny

The Fabulous Judy Geeson with Parrot and Dog

And not to be outdone by her peers above, pre-Theda Bara vamp, Louise Glaum becomes the animal!

Louise Glaum

A Delicate Flower From Cinema's Silvery Silent Past

Mabel Normand

Fan Magazine Interviewer:  Won't you tell us, what are your favorite hobbies?


Mabel Normand:  I don't know...say anything you like but don't say I like to work.  That sounds like Mary Pickford, that prissy bitch.  Just say I like to pinch babies and twist their legs.  And get drunk.

All images and so much more are here.