The Old Movie Maven

The Old Movie Maven Magazine

2006-09-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Maven would like to announce that

The Old Movie Maven

has a new home to go with her new

THE OLD MOVIE MAVEN MAGAZINE

at http://theoldmoviemaven.tripod.com.

You will be able to see who and what is

where in the magazine plus notice when

each new issue comes out. . . .

Plus extras in the months ahead

as both magazine and website

will be ongoing projects!

So please check in often!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2006-02-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

Have a

Happy

Valentine's

Day with

Your

Loved Ones!

One Body Too Many (1944)

2006-02-11T14:30:00.000-08:00

"One Body Too Many" (1944) may be a standard murder mystery but it's still fun!

Jack Haley plays Albert Tuttle, an agent trying to sell life insurance to reclusive Cyrus J. Rutherford, who just happens to have $8,000,000 and an astronomy observatory on his roof.

Haley gets an appointment by pretending to be into astrology, another interest of the millionaire.

This is where "One Body Too Many" gets interesting - and different from most Old Dark Mysteries.

Rutherford has not only died before the beginning of the movie, the preamble to his will dictates that his family and staff have to stay in the house until his tomb (complete with glass covering) is built.

Bernard Nedell is Rutherford's attorney, Morton Gellman, who calls the Atlas detective agency for someone to sit with the coffin--with contents!--overnight.

The rest of the cast are as good as Jack Haley and superb as red herring.

The butler and housekeeper are Bela Lugosi and Blanche Yurka as Murkil and Matthews. They have a running theme of offering a tray of coffee to everyone in the house . . . not to mention having the rat poison on hand for unwanted guest . . . I mean vermin.

Douglas Fowley is the uptight husband who's wife, Maxine Fife, takes an interest in Lyle Talbot, who plays ne'er-do-well Jim Davis.

Lucien Littlefield is a great stand-by from the days of the silents as Kenneth Hopkins.

He is effective as the henpecked husband to Estelle Hopkins, who is played by Fay Helm.

Helm had quite a career in Hollywood of some 64 movies form 1936 to 1946 before becoming a "lost actress" for decades.

Her current entry at www.imdb.com lists her as born April 9, 1909, to September 27, 2003.

(Jean Parker)

Jean Parker had a much longer career from the early 20s to the mid-60s and lived for 90 years until November 30, 2005.

She's manages to play heroine to Jack Haley's not-quite-he-man type of leading man who is confused with the detective from the Atlas Agency.

That doesn't stop him from trying to sell everybody life insurance.

"One Body Too Many" isn't on the level of "The Cat and the Canary" (with Bob Hope, 1939) or "The Night Monster" (a 1942 movie that also has Bela Lugosi as a suspicious butler.

It does deliver as good clean fun if you can get your hands on a copy--especially if you like thunderstorms in your movies!

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Go to www.torysmysterymovies.com for those hard to find movies.

If you mention this blog in your email order, you'll get an discount!

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Do you want in on a new magazine?

Delivered right to your email address?!

With movie reviews and tidbits like great websites for movie lovers?

Then Maven's Movie Magazine!

Our next issue is due out on Monday, February 13.

For details and subscription rates, you can email Maven at theoldmvoiemaven@yahoo or write her at:

Miss Maven

P.O. Box 59443

Hurst, TX 76054

Earth vs. the Spider

2006-02-10T16:15:00.000-08:00

Hollywood gave us space aliens, giant ants, tarantulas and scorpions so why not a big freaking hairy spider?!

Earth vs the Spider (1958) is your standard B-monster movie but it can be fun to watch!

There's a blooper straight off in the credits with the word star spelled as Starrring at the beginning of the credits!

The two teenage couple who go looking for her missing father come across a giant spider in the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.

The town fathers don't believe them, of course, until they go out and see for themselves.

They use pesticides to kill it and haul it off to the high school auditorium where photographers take pictures until it gets taken away for research.

Wouldn't you know that a rock-and-roll group practicing in the auditorium wakes it up.

Either Mr. Spider wanted to jitterbug or wanted to request Little Richard or Elvis Presley!

Therein lies another blooper:

The amazing disappearing drummer.

He runs off when the spider awakens and then he's back again.

Maven personally things the young man who is "conducting" the combo should be listed as a blooper because he doesn't know squat from conducting.

Our hero, Mike Simpson (played by Gene Persson), has a father who runs a movie theatre. . . . It just happens that the movie that's playing is "something about puppet people" and comes from the same studio that produced The Spider, American International.

The spider goes on the usual rampage with the usual damsels in distress, a baby is somehow left in the middle of the street and everybody going nuts as they try to flee the town.

Our teenage hero and heroine, Mike and Carol, go back to the caves to retrieve her bracelet from her father and guess who shows up?!

You know when these females are so whiney their boyfriends will do ANYTHING to shut them up that trouble is all they get.

When the girls get THIS whiney, Maven starts rooting for the monsters!

You'll recognize Gene Roth (aka Gene Stutenroth) as the sheriff from all those Three Stooges shorts and other parts he played over the years.

As a matter of fact . . . Carol is such a pain that Maven wouldn't mind if the Three Stooges had sown up!

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Try the first issue of Maven's Movie Magazine at http://moreofmavensmovies.blogspot.com/2006/02/mavens-movies.html.

For more information and lots more, you can email her at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com or write her at

Miss Maven

P.O. Box 54493

Hurst, TX 76054

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If you're looking for a particular movie, check out www.torysmysterymovies.com.

Mention this blog in your email order and get a discount!

Ginger Rogers & No Fred Astaire?

2006-02-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine a Ginger Rogers movie without Fred Astaire?

Would you believe that the first movie they made together, Flying Down To Rio (1933), was Rogers' 25th movie?

Astaire had only made one other movie, Dancing Lady (1933) with Joan Crawford before that.

Ginger Rogers, on the other hand, had already made 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 in 1933.

She had also made The Thirteenth Guest in 1932 and A Shriek in the Night in 1933, both with Lyle Talbot early in his career.

A Shriek in the Night is a delightful B-feature mystery with Rogers and Talbot as rival reporters going between taunting each other, the comic-relief idiots, and various people shouting.

You really think there wouldn't be with a title like that?!

Especially Louise Beavers, who plays the stereotypical Black maid but does it well.

She is countered by Caucasian Lillian Harmer playing the dead man's housekeeper, Augusta.

Ginger Rogers plays Patricia (Pat) Morgan who has been placed in millionaire Colby's apartment as his live-in secretary to dig up the dirt on him.

Lyle Talbot is Theodore (Ted) Rand works for another paper and manages to scoop Pat on Colby's murder.

Their inter-paper fighting is typical for the 30's but still fun to watch them tossing the quips back and forth.

A taxi driver refers to Rand as a "man" (not too hard to imagine given Talbot's looks!) and Pat answers, "Don't be vulgar!"

And there is a blooper late in the movie when Pat opens a letter addressed to her as "Miss Tenny."

Our two hard-working reporters and the police go their separate ways to investigate not only Colby's death but three other ones that pop up in a high-rise luxury apartment with vintage art deco furniture.

There are plenty of suspects of various classes and you'd be hard-pressed to figure out the murderer until the end in this very suspenseful movie.

Definitely a mustsee!

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Would you like to see other movie reviews and tidbits that you won't find here or any where else?

Maven will send you subscription information at theoldmoviemave@yahoo.com or at

Miss Maven

P.O. Box 54493

Hurst, TX 76054

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Need to find an old movie or series that you can't find anywhere else?

Go to www.torysmysterymovie.com.

Mention Maven's blog in your email order and get a discount!

Mystery in Swing

2006-02-05T15:55:00.000-08:00

During the period when the United States was still in the throes of segregation, there was a thriving movie business for African-Americans by African-Americans.

Whites seldom saw what they called "race movies" and were mainly acquainted with black actors like Hattie McDaniels (Mammy won her the first Supporting Actress for GONE WITH THE WIND, 1939) and Bill (Bojangles) Robinson.

(Robinson with arguably his best-known partner, Shirley Temple)

The United States did appreciate cross-over artists like Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington who made movies as well as music with their orchestras.

Mystery in Swing (1940) is one of the movies made when the "race movies" were in their heyday.

It's typical of the day that these movies covered the same genres that Hollywood's bigger studios did.

Mystery . . . is a murder mystery revolving around Prince Ellis, a trumpet-player whose ego is as big as his talent.

So guess who gets killed?!

Our hero is Monte Hawley, a favorite of African-American audiences, as Biff Boyd, a reporter who has to interview Prince Ellis to keep his job.

He's partial to one of his co-workers, Linda Carroll (played by Marguerite Whitten), who's sister and father are suspects in Ellis' murder.

It's a Aetna Film B-Feature and a International Roadshow Release.

Acting and production levels are good and well-worth the watching, including the musical numbers by CeePee Johnson and his Orchestra.

The Four Toppers and Josephine Edwards (as Maxine Rae) do great musical numbers with quite an ending:

Maxine Rae becomes the second victim of murder as she ends her number, a rather memorable way to go out!

This happens about the time that Biff Boyd and the police that Prince Ellis was poisoned while playing his trumpet in the privacy of his home.

That's one killer horn to Maven's opinion!

It's also Maven's opinion that you'll forget that you're watching a "black movie" since you'll quickly get involved with the characters set against the worlds of newspapers and nightclubs!

If you'd like to get this movie, or other difficult-to-find films, contact www.torysmysterymovies.com.

Mention this blog in your email order and get a discount!

Do you have a comment, question or suggestions about movies?

You can either email Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com or write her at:

Miss Maven

P.O. Box 54493

Hurst, TX 76054

Flying Down to Rio

2006-02-03T14:30:00.000-08:00

Ginger Rogers writes about her first movie with Fred Astaire in her autobiography, Ginger: My Story (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1991, page 126):

In Flying Down to Rio, Fred and I had secondary roles, and provided the comic relief. I played a band vocalist and sang "Music Makes Me"; our big moment together came during the full-scale production number, "The Carioca." Dave Gould was the film's dance director and his assistant was my old pal from Top Speed, Hermes Pan. Hermes and Fred actually met on the set when Fred had a problem with a solo and Hermes came up with a step. That, as they say, was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Hermes also came up with a brilliant idea for "The Carioca." The lyrics talked about dancing head to head, and Hermes thought we should follow the words literally and suggested that Fred and I press our foreheads together as we went through the steps.

Ask me today if I had any notion of what would spring from "The Carioca" and I'd have to say no. Even looking at Flying Down to Rio now, it is hard to believe that our brief assay onto the dance floor led to a string of musical films.

Not to mention the string of Astaire/Rogers movies!

And how many people can remember who played the romantic leads?!

(They're Delores del Rio and Gene Raymond)

Maven votes for the sexy dancers any day of the week!

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Do you have any comments, questions or comments for Maven?

You can email her at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com or write her at

Miss Maven

P.O. Box 544493

Hurst, TX 76054

<<>>

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Mention this blog in your email order to www.torysmysterymovies.com and get a discount!

Barrymore Family Antics

2006-02-01T14:10:00.000-08:00

The Barrymore Family Tree is full of very colorful characters, Drew being only the latest incarnation!

You can check out an epic poem about her great-grandfather, Maurice Barrymore, written by Michael J. Farrand at http://empirecontact.com/narrative/barrymore.html.

Plus an incident in Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming (with James Kotsilibas-Davis, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987, page 50):

Dispite his bravado, Jack [John Barrymore] had a gentle side, but he seldom showed it to me. He usually tortured me during that early period at Warners, making a serious play for me on and off the set. He used to call in the middle of the night from some Culver City night spot. "This is the ham what am," he would intone in that matchless voice, urging me to join him or wanting to join me. God knows he was attractive, but he was really a rascal and I knew it. Actually, there was more to it than that. I sensed something wrong in him and it frightened me.

Maven wonders just what there was in John Barrymore for Ms. Loy to resist?

An irresistable voice? Maybe.

Drop-dead looks?

Okay, maybe he looked better than George Clooney and Brad Pitt put together.

Acting?

With those genes?

Please excuse Maven while she goes and catches her breathe!

Where did she put her bourbon . . . I mean smelling salts. . . .

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Is there a favorite movie or one that you remember from your childhood that you just can't find?

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Mary Brian

2006-01-30T15:05:00.000-08:00

"Return Engagement: Faces to Remember - Then & Now" (Clarkson N. Potter, Inc.; 1984) covers a wide range of Hollywood actresses of our Golden Era.

Horst's classic photographs from their heydays to ones he took for James Watters' 1984 book illustrate this incredible book.

Pages 122 - 123 cover Mary Brian, best known to some of us as Yvette Lamartine in "Charlie Chan in Paris."

According to Watters:

In her 70s, she's as animated as she was listening to Buddy Rogers strum a ukulele. Her North Hollywood home is on a secluded acre just a few blocks from freeway traffic. "We used to have sheep here to keep the lawn down." In the den, the walls are filled with WWII photos and plaques of Mary's work, when she entertained troops in Europe and North Africa. "We traveled with a combat unit on the front lines. We couldn't use scenery or anything because we had to be undercover." Mary takes a chair next to one of her paintings, a favorite, of her godchild, the daughter of Stuart Erwin, Jr. Stu Sr. and his wife, June Collyer, were friends and colleagues at Paramount. "If you witness three generations in Hollywood, does that make you a pioneer? I was so young when I started, I had to go to school on the lot." Then, sounding a sensible not of Wendy, she adds, "But I'm glad I've got my painting and not just my memories like so many other old-timers."

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She died of natural causes on December 30, 2002, at the age of 96.

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If you'd like "Maven's Musings" that cover "Rear Window," Grace Kelley, and so on . . . contact Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com or

Miss Maven

P.O. Box 54493

Hurst, TX 76054

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If you want to find "Charlie Chan in Paris" or any other movie, go to www.torysmysterymovies.com.

Mention Maven's blog in your email order and get a discount.

Ava Gardner

2006-01-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

Who best to play the title character in "One Touch of Venus"?

How about Ava Gardner?!

[Ava Gardner, One Touch of Venus.

Doesn't this picture make her hands look deformed?!]

Eve Arden writes in her autobiography, Three Phases of Eve(St. Vincent's Press, New York, 1985, page 67):

[Eve Arden, 1936]

Universal offered me a part in One Touch of Venus, starring Ava Gardner . . . .

When she first stepped on the set, I thought she was certainly one of the most beautiful girls I'd ever seen. Those catlike green eyes looked me over, and then she smiled. Draped all in white, with her dark curls piled on her head, she shamed the statue from which she turned to flesh. . . .

[Ava Garnder, One Touch of Venus]

Since most of my scene were with Tom Conway, I didn't see much of Ava during the picture, but felt she was very much down to earth and likeable. One evening about a month after the picture was finished, I ran into her and Howard Duff in the neighborhood drugstore near my home.

[Can you imagine ANY drop-dead gorgeous moviestar going ANYWHERE today without paparazzi all over her?!?!

Not to mention what the television tabloids would do to find out what she was in there to buy!]

After a brief chat, Ava said, "Eve, you have a swimming pool, don't you?" . . . It was a very hot night, so I promptly invited them up for a dip. I dug out one of my bathing suits, which Ava draped over her much smaller figure, and we tied it on with knots. Bikinis were unknown then.

Venus on my diving board was sensational in a suit of knots. What Howard Duff wore I happily can't remember.

[Ava Gardner (left) and Robert Walker (right),

One Touch of Venus]

Does anyone really care?!

Maven certainly doesn't, especially when she thinks of herself in a bathing suit.

Sssooooooooobbb!

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Would you like to know more about your favorite actors and movies not covered by this blog?

How about longer articles in newsletter form and delivered to your email address?

Just get in touch with Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Lon Chaney in The Unknown

2006-01-24T14:10:00.000-08:00

Bob Thomas's biography, Joan Crawford: A Biography (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1978, page 59 - 60) includes how she felt about Lon Chaney:

. . . She later declared that her best teacher was Lon Chaney [Sr.]. Offstage he was a mild, shy man but on the set his concentration on his menacing role was so all-absorbing that his fellow actors were terrified. As an armless circus performer in The Unknown (1927), he was required to light cigarettes and use knives and forks with his feet, even throw daggers at his beautiful assistant, played by Joan. She marveled at how Chaney spent hours alone in his dressing room perfecting the role, and how he never allowed his own persona to enter his screen character.

Maven marvels at La Belle Crawford . . . did she really learn how to act from Chaney?!

Maybe she should have learned how to throw knives and hide the bodies to make her point more effective about the better roles that had gone to Norma Shearer instead!

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Please send Maven your comments, questions and suggestions at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

And please send your email orders to www.torysmysterymovies.com for the titles that you can't find anywhere else.

Mention this blog and get a discount!

Drew Barrymore's Forebears!

2006-01-22T15:26:00.000-08:00

Drew Barrymore shouldn't surprise anyone who knows about her famous forebears!

John Barrymore was "some punkins" himself, even as a child according to John Kobler in his biography of Mr. Barrymore: Damned in Paradise: The Life of John Barrymore (Antheneum, New York, 1977, page 41).

John exhibited at an early age a waywardness not surprising in a son of Maurice Barrymore. On October 16, 1895, in his thirteenth year, Maurice delivered him to the preparatory-school division of Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution in Washington, D.C. The priest who greeted them, Father Richard, showed them through the various buildings. As they entered the gymnasium, John asked permission to test his skill on some horizontal bars. The priest readily granted it and John executed a neat handstand, forgetting what his pockets contained. Out tumbled a pair of brass knuckles, a pack of cigarettes and a half-pint flask of whiskey. Maurice was not greatly perturbed by this evidence of precocious turpitude, and the Jesuit fathers, while troubled, decided to admit the boy in the hope of reforming him. They failed.

One night, returning to his dormitory from a clandestine visit to Harvey's Old Oyster House, flushed with liquor, John proceeded to entertain his schoolmates with imitations of drunken actors. A preceptor interrupted the performance. "I suppose you know you're going fast to perdition," he said.

"No," John retorted, "but I'm sure I'm going back to New York."

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Maven is afraid that Washington, D.C., and the Jesuits never did understand the Barrymores!

Can't you imagine how different things would be if they had?!?!

Whoa!

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Have a comment, question or suggestion about an old movie?

Email Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com!

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John Carradine as Dracula

2006-01-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

John Carradine wrote about being Dracula in his introduction to House of Dracula (The Original Shooting Script) [edited by Philip Riley; MagicImage Filmbooks, Volume 16; 1993; pages 11 - 12):

. . . To date, I have the distinction of being the only actor who looked the part as visualized by Bram Stoker in 1897. Dracula was a Magyar. When he first appears to Jonathan Harker he is an old man with long white hair and a moustache. It would have been impossible to speak lines with a mouth full of sharp teeth, so I settled on the long hair and white moustache. The studio [Universal] refused to allow me to keep the long hair, but the moustache remained. For some reason they needed to make the character in the mold of the Wolf Man for the second film [House of Frankenstein, 1944 and House of Dracula, 1945]. I played the character as evil as possible for I learned long ago that if I wanted to continue to eat, villains find steadier work than artists. the The public will remember a villain. The story writer[Curt Siodmak] of the first film at least had talent and credibility. He knew what he was writing about for he came from the are where the legends were told around gypsy campfires. However the scriptwriter knew as much about the characters as his paycheck would allow! They ended up making Dracula a type of dope fiend. Instead of existing as the traditional vampire, he now was seeking out the help of a doctor to cure him of his vampirism by the use of modern medical means. But instead the doctor's blood gets contaminated by the vampire and he becomes evil.

[John Carradine, Martha O'Driscoll and Lon Chaney, Jr., with his sons on the set of House of Dracula]

Maven begs to differ. . . .

All some men need to do is get alone with a woman and they go for her . . . neck area!

That's Maven's story and she's sticking to it!

Email any comments, questions or suggestions for Maven to theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com, especially if you have a question about an old movie or three!

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Know the old movie but can't find it?

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Arsenic and Old Lace

2006-01-18T15:40:00.000-08:00

"Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944) is as close to being perfect as Hollywood can get.

For starters, you can't get any better as to actors, starting with Cary Grant at his most elegant and funniest as Mortimer Brewster.

(Maven thinks naming Grant "Mortimer" alone is a hoot!)

There's horror here, too, with Josephine Hull as his Aunt Abby.

Her brother was none other than Henry Hull, "Werewolf of London."

(And she certainly has the pedigree!)

You have Raymond Massey stepping in for Boris Karloff, who originated the part of Jonathan Brewster on Broadway and couldn't be borrowed for the film.

Peter Lorre is Dr. Einstein and perfect as Raymond Massey's sidekick/plastic surgeon and can't operate unless he's drunk . . .

(Maybe the anesthetic gave him the morning-after heebie-jeebies.)

Priscilla Lane is Elaine Harper, the Minister's daughter who lives across the cemetery from Mortimer's two aunts, who can't figure out if she's married to Mortimer or murder material for Jonathan.

(Across the cemetery?

At least you don't have to worry about the kids trick-or-treating from next door!)

John Alexander is "Teddy Roosevelt."

Not the President, just the one officially looneytoons resident of the house who almost looks normal compared to the rest of the family, starting with the Aunts.

"They're two of the dearest, sweetest, kindest old ladies that ever walked the earth. They're out of this world. They're like pressed rose leaves," Police Sgt. Brophy (Edward McNamara).

Consider:

MORTIMER: Men don't just get into window seats and die!

ABBY: OF course not, dear. He died first.

MORTIMER: But how?

ABBY: The gentleman died because he drank some wine with poisoning it. Now, I don't know why you're making such a big deal over this, Mortimer. Don't you worry about a thing!

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MORTIMER: Well, how did the poison get in the wine?

MARTHA: Well, we put it in wine because it's less noticeable. When it's in tea it has a distinct order.

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MORTIMER: All I did was cross the bridge and I was in Brooklyn. Amazing.
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Boy, is Maven glad she lives in Texas!
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Have any titles you're curious about, whether they're worth checking out?
Just email Maven at tholdmoviemaven@yahoo.com.
If you wonder where to get your old movies, check out www.torysmysterymovies.com.

Mention Maven's blog in your email order and get a discount!

To Be or Not to Be (1942)

2006-01-17T14:25:00.000-08:00

"To Be or Not to Be"

That's not a question this time but a movie with Jack Benny as the head of a Polish theatrical troupe that includes his wife who's played by the beautiful Carole Lombard.

Need Maven say that this is a comedy?

Need Maven say that you probably figured that out as soon as you saw Jack Benny's name?!

Our fearless band of actors tangle with Hitler's Gestapo over the names of the Polish Resistance Movement.

Okay.

So basically it isn't a funny subject from a time when so much of the world was being plunged into a war of horror by so few who were still in power when this movie was made in 1942.

Hollywood did its part in the propaganda war by helping shape public opinion, support and morale on the side of our military and allies.

Which is where the likes of Jack Benny comes in.

Benny may not have the reputation that Bob Hope did for entertaining our troops but he did help the home fires bright.

"To Be or Not to Be" doesn't have any of the regulars from his radio show like his wife, Mary Livingston, or band leader, Phil Harris.

[L. to r.: Charles Halton, Tom Dugan,(?), Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, Robert Stack, and John Ridges)

What it does have is a young (and very good-looking) Robert Stack as Lieutenant Sobinski, plus veterans such as Sig Ruman (Colonel Ehrhardt), Maude Eburne (Anna), Lionel Atwill (Rawitch), and Halliwell Hobbes (General Armstrong.

What you end up with is a very funny movie well-worth taking home, preferably for good!

Where else would you find Felix Bressart as Greenberg telling Lionel Atwill, "Mr. Rawitch, what you are I wouldn't eat."

Rawitch: "How dare you call me a ham!"

And Carole Lombard as Maria Tura:

It's becoming ridiculous the way you grab attention. If I tell a joke, you finish it. If I go on a diet, you lose the weight. If I have a cold, you cough. And if we should have a baby, I'm not so sure I'd be the mother.

Jack Benny as her husband, Josef Tura:

I'm statisfied to be the father.

[Jack Benny in disguise with Carole Lombard]

(Another Benny line:)

You can't have your cake and shoot it.

Sig Ruman (Col. Ehrhardt) gets a good take on the Fuhrer:

They named a brandy after Napoleon, they made a herring out of Bismarck, and the Fuhrer is going to end up as a piece of cheese!

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Maven definitely rates it as a musthave video!

And any titles or stories that you have comments, questions or suggestions about . . . please email her at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

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If you're trying to find such a vintage movie, try www.torysmysterymovies.com.

Mention this blog in your email order and get a discount!

London After Midnight

2006-01-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

When is a vampire movie not a vampire movie?

Ask Denis Gifford in (A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, New York, !973) pages 68 - 71:

British sensitivity changed the title of the new Chaney and Browning venture: London After Midnight (1927) became The Hypnotist in England. It was the first true American vampire movie despite the twist in its tail. Authentic vampire trappings abounded: twin punctures in the jugular, an hickory stick staked through the heart, pallid and dark-eyed lovelies at the window. Before the Browning version, Hollywood vampires had been pallid and dark-eyed lovelies of the Theda Bara breed: sucking their men dry but not of blood. Chaney had his expected unmasking scene, but in reverse. . . . [t]he hideous vampire . . . revealed as upright Inspector Burke of Scotland Yard, hornrims and all! Outside the requisites of plot payoff, the make-up took a little longer: sharpened dentures made it painful for Chaney to speak, and wire hoops in his eye-sockets were tightened before takes to bulge his eyes. The denouement was not, it appears, a copout. Claimed Browning:

"Mystery stories are tricky, for if they are too gruesome or horrible, if they exceed the average imagination by too much, the audience will laugh. London After Midnight is an example of how to get people to accept ghosts and other supernatural spirits by letting them turn out to be the machinations of a detective. Thereby the audience is not asked to believe the horrible impossible, but the horrible possible, and plausibility increased, rather than lessened, the thrills and chills."

Somebody forgot to tell James Whale when he made Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, and The Invisible Man!

Not to mention Alfred Hitchcock and Stephen King that!

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Have a title but not the story? You can send that plus other questions, comments and suggestions to Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com!

If you have the title AND the story, you can go to http://www.tory.

If you mention this blog in your discount, you'll get a discount!

Veronica Lake

2006-01-15T16:38:00.000-08:00

One picture is worth a thousand words, right?

Not necessarily!

Edith Head wrote about the difficulty of fitting Veronica Lake in her autobiography, Edith Head's Hollywood, (also by Paddy Calistro; E.P. Dutton, Inc.; New York; 1983) pages 53 - 4:

Her figure problems seemed insurmountable. She was short, like me, and very tiny--possibly the smallest normal adult i had ever seen. Her waist was the smallest in Hollywood, 20 3/4". That was 5 1/2" smaller than the average waist. Far from a designer's dream like Dietrich or Lombard. Yet everyone was telling me to make her into a sex symbol. She had a good bust, but I couldn't show it because of the Hays Office's anticleavage rules. I was forced to be extremely careful in every costume she wore. The fabrics I used in Veronica's clthes alays had some type of vertical interest; horizontal lies would shorten her. I devised meclines that called attention to her bust without actually exposing it. I always played up the fact that she had big breasts, which made her seem like a larger woman.

In her first film, Gulliver's Travels (1941), I dressed her in told lame and beaded gowns. She was sultry and an immediate hit. Veronica was married and was, unfortunately for me, very pregnant at the time we were making that film. The important question was: How do you photograph a girl so she does not appear pregnant? She can stand behind a piano. She can carry a large muff and you can assume it's a winter picture. Or, what was most successful for Veronica, she can carry a huge fan. Gulliver's Travels was full of these devices, but looking back there are still times when she looks lika a pudgy, short girl-- you can't do a whole movie behind a muff, fan, or piano. But by the end of the film I was an expert at concealing pregnancy. She became a sex symbol, so I must have done something right.

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Maven just wishes Edith Head could design clothes that takes off pounds for Maven!

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Want to fill in your movie gaps?

Go to www.torysmysterymovies.com.

Mention Maven in your email order and get a discount.

Lugosi!

2006-01-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

"The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield."

These words have haunted us ever since the first time that we heard Bela Lugosi say them.

Why?

Denis Gifford tries to explain it in A Pictorial History of Horror Movies (The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, New York, 1973) page 82:

[What woman wouldn't want her neck bitten

by the Bela Lugosi in this picture?!]

[That the 1931 Dracula is a] moody piece [is] due less to [Tod] Browning than his gifted cameraman, the fabulous Karl Freund. Yet antique as Dracula undoubtedly is, it can still hold an audience in thrall. That it is the oldest talkie still playing commercially is due entirely to the hypnotic performance of its star.

"An evil expression in the eyes, a sinister arch to the brow or a leer on my lips - all of which take long practice in muscular control - are sufficient to hypnotize an audience into seeing what I want them to see, and what I myself see in the mind's eye."

Lugosi's hypnosis was helped out by Browning aiming twin pencil-spots into his eyeballs. That one consistently missed its mark worried neither audience nor Warner Brothers, who quickly picked up the effect for John Barrymore's Svengali (1931). . . .

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Maven personally wishes that Gifford had put it differently.

"Aiming twin pencil-spots into his eyeballs" sounds awfully painful!

Maybe that's why the Bela Lugosi Website has been under construction for several years!!

[www.lugosi.com]

Remember a movie, but not the name?

Please email that and any other questions, comments and suggestions to Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

If you remember the name but can't find it, have you tried www.torysmysterymovies.com?

(Mention Maven's blog in your email order and get a discount!)

If you want an entirely new movie experience, try "Boxford Park" at www.trilloandsuede.com/movie.html!

Bela Lugosi in a New Light

2006-01-12T14:03:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven came across an item about Bela Lugosi while researching today's post.

Maven had never seen this, in spite of checking out about old horror movies and actors for almost longer than Maven can count not to mention old radio shows almost as long!

Just in case you haven't seen it either . . . enjoy!

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Mystery House

194?

Bela Lugosi was to be the star of Mystery House, with Ken Carpenter as the host.

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Mystery House was a terrific radio series starring Bela Lugosi. There was only one problem: It never aired. Fortunately, it survives on record and tape for collectors to enjoy. The following excerpt is from an exhaustive book on Bela's career entitled LUGOSI by Gary Don Rhodes.

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"Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Lugosi's radio career is this -- an attempt at his own program [Mystery House]. It hoped to feature Lugosi in the leading role of various 'Grand Guignol' tales. Ken Carpenter, a well-known radio personality at the time, gave introductory and closing remarks. Among the planned episodes was a story about a woman who had been buried alive, with producers hoping for Simone Simon as a guest. 'The Thirsty Death', a 'pilot' episode, survives and features John Carradine and Lureen Tuttle as guests. Lugosi played a jealous husband who injects his wife or Carradine -- her presumed lover -- with a poison, only to find out too late that the two were innocent infidelity. This particular recording is seemingly the only one actually produced and recorded. The Mystery House press would have sponsored it, so why the show never reached the air remains a question. The stories in Mystery House were to be from 'the greatest mystery theater the world has ever known, the Grand Guignol of Paris.' The only recorded show claims Lugosi was to star in a series of films for Universal Studios. If produced, they would have echoed the Inner Sanctum series of films Universal made with Lon Chaney, Jr. Some 14 episodes of Mystery House exist without Lugosi, surviving artifacts from another of the program's incarnations."

[From http://members.aol.com/radiodrama/mysteryhouse.html.]

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The Old Dark House

2006-01-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

William K. Everson gave a great comparison between the movie of The Old Dark House (1932) and the novel (Benighted) it was based on in Classics of the Horror Film (Citadel Press, New York, 1974, page 81):

Priestley's original novel was rather uneven; he was generally much more at home with his "social," semi-political books and plays--or with his simple, regional comedies of manners, like When We Are Married, which dealt with the people and class-distinctions of Yorkshire that he knew wo well. Elements of both schools of writing seem to be forced into Benighted, and get in the way of the melodrama too often. The one major difference between novel and film was that Priestley killed off his hero, Penderell, whereas indications in the film that this might have been a last minute decision. The well-knit scenario is carefully balanced, pitting the five inhabitants of the house against the five guests. In a very rough kind o way, each has an opposing counterpart, and the night of terror brings out the best (or worst) in all of them, solving all their problems, just as dawn automatically banishes the insoluble fears and dangers of a nightmare. (Somehow, it is a little difficult to consider oneself free of problems with Karloff's semi-mad butler still lumbering around!)

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STILL?!?!

Miss Maven's beloved mother watched this movie just once because Boris Karloff was in it and that was it.

Never again!

This is one of those movies that Miss Maven strongly recommends parents watch before letting their children of about twelve or under watch it.

Come to think of it . . . .

Some days Maven isn't up to it!

Please excuse her while she looks for her bourbon--

er, smelling salts!

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Miss Maven recommends www.torysmysterymovies.com for hard-to-find movies.

If you mention Maven's blog in your email order, you'll get a discount!

<<>>

If you would like to read Miss Maven's reviews of movies that you won't find here or at http://charliechanannex.blogspot.com, or any comments, questions or suggestions . . . you can email Miss Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

I Married an Angel

2006-01-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

Calvin Thomas Beck wrote about "I Married a Witch" in Scream Queens: Heroines of the Horrors (Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.; New York, 1978).

On the relationship of the two stars, Frederic March and Veronica Lake:

During filming, March was subjected to Lake's practical jokes. In the scene in which he carries her off, a cameraman helped her rig a forty-pound weight under her dress. The scene was shot three times, with the unsuspecting March breathing heavily and gradually losing his strength. After the last take, the diminutive Lake looked at him, said "Big bones," and walked away. When March learned the truth a few days letter, it irritated him to such an extent that he never spoke to her thereafter. According to Lake, the reason for the jokes was that "he treated me like dirt under his talented feet."

Another I Married a Witch incident with March is described in her autobiography, Veronica: "The shot was medium, showing only the two of us from waist-high. We were into the scene, and he came close to me. He was standing direct in front of the chair. I carefully brought my foot up between his legs. And I moved my foot up and down, each upward movement pushing it ever so lightly into his groin. Pro that he is, he never showed his predicament during the scene. But it wasn't easy for him, and I delighted in knowing what was going through his mind. Naturally, when the scene was over, he laced into me. I just smiled."

Way to go!

The way Frederic March comes across in many of his films, Miss Maven thinks Mr. March deserved even worse, even if only shake him up a little to loosen him up!!!

Any comments, questions, or suggestions (or Shadow Lake!), you can send to Miss Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Have you tried www.torysmysterymovies.com for most anything you might want.

Mention Miss Maven's blog and you'll get a discout with your email!

You can email Miss Maven with any comments, questions, and suggestions at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Devil Made Me Do It

2006-01-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

"The Devil Made Me Do It!"

Flip Wilson had dressed up as "Geraldine" to make this a rallying cry for a generation when Helen Hayes and Mildred Natwick were doing their series, The Snoop Sisters.

(Helen Hayes)

It became the name of a delicious episode of their series that aired on March 5, 1974.

Helen Hayes was Ernesta Snoop and coming home from a vacation and being greeted by her sister, Mildred Natwick (Gwendolyn Snoop Nickolson) and they are immediately face with the dead body of Hayes' seat-mate on the plane.

(Mildred Natwick)

Bert Convy (Lt. Steve Ostrowski) and Lou Antonio (Barney) were on hand, as usual to get if not keep the ladies out of trouble.

Dear nephew Convey was a policemen who frequently ended up deep into cases because of his aunties . . . but just as often they were the ones who helped solve his cases!

Barney was their chauffeur, handyman and chaperone when Convy tried to get the nosy ladies off his cases.

"The Devil Made Me Do It" is a perfect case.

(Cyril Ritchard)

The Snoop Sisters couldn't let well enough dead when the body showed up on the luggage carousel at the airport.

Maven wouldn't have had any problem.

Some of us pack light!

So Ernesta and "G" start investigating and end up with a medallion that leads them to witches and warlocks like Cyril Ritchard and rock and roller Alice Cooper.

(Alice Cooper)

Where else are going to find those two together, with Greg Morris (of TV's "Mission Impossible" fame)?!

Miss Maven rates this a definite musthave.

Miss Maven was lucky enough to being able to get it at www.torysmysterymovies.com.

(Mention Maven and her blog in your email and get a discount on your order!)

You can email any comments, questions or suggestions to Miss Maven, herself, at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Judy Garland

2006-01-05T11:48:00.000-08:00

Judy Garland never did get over the fact that all people wanted from her was her voice.

Aljean Harmetz makes a case for that in her book,
"The Making of 'The Wizard of Oz,'" A Delta Book, 1977, page 108 - 9:

During her vaudeville childhood, Judy Garland had come to perceive herself as the undesired repository of her voice. The years at MGM would only intensify that feeling. "Mr. Mayer used to love to show his stars off,: Says his ex-secretary, Sue Taruog. "When Joan Crawford came to have lunch with him once without dressing up, he sent her home. He wanted to walk on the lot with one of his stars and have everybody say,'Isn't she gorgeous?'" MGM did indeed want Judy Garland solely for her voice. Even a glance at the other young girls who came to the studio as contract players made that obvious. Ann Rutherford. Lana Turner. Hedy Lamarr. Gloria de Haven. June Allyson. Deanna Durbin. Durbin was lost to the studio by accident in 1936 after being paired with Garland in a short film, Every Sunday, that was really a contest. Which girl should the studio keep? Which would give evidence of that magical rapport with an audience? Deanna Durbin's lean, long-legged prettiness convinced many of the executives who judged the film, although Judy's voice tilted the balance back to dead center. T the end of her life. Judy Garland would remember those early years when the wardrobe women circled her, discussing her flaws between themselves but never once speaking directly to her. "She got her revenge," says costumer designer Mary Ann Nyberg. "when I was designing for Arthur Freed, she showed me how she could stand a certain way for a fitting, and when the dress was made and brought back, the waistline would be one inch too short. She could also distend her throat and make the neckline stand out." During those first seven years, Judy Garland's sense of physical unattractiveness--and , by extension, sexual unattractiveness--became an obsession.

Miss Maven wishes that Judy could have "sic-ed" Toto on those too-too nasty people. . . .

And Maven isn't talking about a little nip on their ankles either!

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If you love old movies but don't know which ones to get . . . or want to know more about the ones you have now . . . try Maven's Reviews!

You'll get the stories and backgrounds on movies from the twenties to the sixties, including Charlie Chans and other series.

You'll get vintage posts from this blog and The Annex at http://charliechanannex.blogspot.com.

Just email Miss Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com for an list and to make any suggestions for future movies!

Nancy Drew

2006-01-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

The Nancy Drew books have always been so popular from the first books in 1930 that you'd think that movies would have been a sure thing.

Television has certainly made periodic tries starting in the 1970's with Pamela Sue Martin.

But movies?

Warner Brothers did try in 1938.

Really.

But they made a few boo-boos.

For starters, there was Ned Nickerson.

Except there wasn't Ned Nickerson because they changed his name to Ted for some unexplainable reason.

Miss Maven thinks that maybe Warner's thought "Ned Nickerson" sounded like a sissy.

Come to think of it, he does end up in a dress or three!

All in the name of a good cause, of course!

And what happened to Hannah Gruen, the Drews' housekeeper?

She became Effie in Nancy Drew, Detective in 1938.

Excuse Miss Maven while she stops laughing. . . .

Effie was Hannah's niece in the original versions of Nancy Drew and about as much help as Zasu Pitts.

(And anybody who doesn't know who Zasu Pitts was is at the wrong blog!)

Nancy was changed from a self-assured, socially confident and independent teenager to a pain in the . . . (pick your favorite body part).

Ms. Drew did whatever she could think of, including bullying, to get "Ted" (Frankie Thomas, Jr.) to do her bidding, even when it might (and did) mean losing his job.

What makes her "know-it-all" attitude is seeing her relationship with her father.

In Nancy Drew, Reporter, we are treated to a cutesy scene of Drew putting his daughter to be like she's either five-years-old or an idiot.

Miss Maven isn't sue which group should be more insulted.

Should you watch them?

Yes, as long as you know what you're getting into!

The basic stories are good, two being from the actual original books.

Nancy Drew, Detective is from The Mystery at Larkspur Lane and stays fairly faithful to the book.

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (1939) was based on The Hidden Staircase and was the last movie for decades.

No wonder.

The original story had Nancy sleuthing pretty much by herself and Ned wouldn't make his appearance for several more books.

There wasn't any chauffeur dying on the job (suicide, murder or alien-kidnapping) OR a race track syndicate!

Bottom line:

Watch them if you've never read the original books.

If you have . . . .

Miss Maven recommends watching them as parodies, if necessary, but do watch them!

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If you have any comments, questions or suggestions or would like a list of her new Maven's Reviews, you can reach Miss Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.

The Major and the Minor

2006-01-02T11:46:00.000-08:00

Ginger Rogers wrote about her dual role in "The Major and the Minor" in her autobiography, "Ginger: My Story" (HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1991, page 243):

(Ginger Rogers after she's turned

herself into a twelve-year-old.)

Billy Wilder was a wonderful traffic cop for this film and couldn't have been more enchanting. From the very beginning, he had the nicest attitude toward me and all the other actors. The "Major" in this story was played by Ray Milland, Rita Johnson playedis snobbish fiancee, and Diana Lynn was her little sister, the only character in the story who recognized that I was putting on an act. We had many fresh-faced young talents playing the cadets who were constantly after "Susu," among them Raymond Roe and Frankie Thomas, Jr. The Main source of our off-camera laughter was the very talented Robert Benchley. Of of his lines tome, written by Charles Brackett--"Why don't you slip out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?"--became a standard. Benchley's on-stage humor was the antithesis of the backstage Benchley I came to know. His innocent type of humor was very different from his own nature, for he was far more serious and complex. He would arrive at the studio in the morning punctually, carrying with him a stack of books, and would read, on average, four books a day. I was amazed at his literary accomplishments.

(Rogers with her first husband, Lew

Ayres, and mother, Lela Rogers.)

Miss Maven is always amazed at how Ginger Rogers could pull off the scene at the beginning of the movie where she disguises herself as a twelve-year-old to get the child's discount to ride the train.

Miss Maven hasn't been able to do that since she was . . . sob! . . . ten!

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You can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com

A New Maven Service

2006-01-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven is pleased to announce

a new service to her readers!

She is making available new reviews

for sale plus vintage posts

from her blogs.

(Meaning these will be straight

text . . . . No photographs.)

You may reach Miss Maven by

clicking on the envelope that

you will find at the bottom

of each post on this blog.

You may also reach her

directly at her email address:

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Please let her know if you wish

her order form or if you have

any questions or suggestions.

In the meantime . . .

Happy New Year

from

Miss Maven and staff!

After the Thin Man

2005-12-30T11:35:00.000-08:00

"After the Thin Man" (1936) finds Nick and Nora Charles arriving in San Francisco on the train that they had taken to get away from New York and "The Thin Man" case.

They are immediately besieged by reporters, his disreputable friends and . . . .

Nick asks who the couple is passing them on the street and Nora replies, "Oh, you wouldn't know them. They're respectable!"

Asta, their wire-haired fox terrier, has his own homecoming when he tears around to the Charles' kennel.

There are "Mrs. Asta" with all the little Astas . . . and one little black Scottie puppy.

Turns out that a Scottie-about-town has been digging his way under the fence to Mrs. Asta's . . . heart.

Nick and Nora finally get to their house, planning a New Year's Eve of an early bedtime only to find out a large party of strangers already at home.

What could be worse than that?

Spending an evening with Nora's relatives who remind Nick of a barely antimated wax works.

Not to mention Aunt Katherine (Jessie Ralph) who could have been run the army, navy and coast guard all by herself in another lifetime.

Nick does get a "nifty" when the elderly butler asks him to "walk this way" as he toddles forward.

Nick immediately starts shuffling forward in excellent imitation of the butler.

William Powell and Myra Loy are a joy in Dashiell Hammett's sequel to "The Thin Man" as Nick and Nora.

The plot is fast-paced, suspenseful and full of possibilities concerning Nora's cousin, Selma (Elissa Landi), and her wandering husband, Robert (Alan Marshall).

Nick and Nora are snookered into looking for him in the Lichee Night Club, waiting for his girlfriend, Polly Byrnes (Penny Singleton in a pre-"Blondie" role).

The possible suspects ranges from the owners of the Lichee (Joseph Calleia and William Law) to Selma's weird psychiatrist (George Zucco) to her former boyfriend, David Graham (Jimmy Stewart).

"After the Thin Man" is full of treats and atmosphere with San Fransico with foggy streets on New Year's Eve.

We also get a scene with Nick considering whether to get Nora out of jail or not after her arrest in Graham's apartment!

Powell and Loy have one of the cutest scenes in the whole series when they have to chase Asta around their house in the middle of the night for a clue tied to a rock thrown through the window.

Powell gets great lines like, "Come on, let's get something to eat. I'm thirsty."

He's drinking a martini when Loy asks him if he's packing.

"I'm just putting away this liquor."

He can also "set 'em up."

He's explaining "whodunit" at the end, "You see, when it comes to words like that, an illiterate person . . . ."

Polly Byrnes: "Whaddya mean, illiterate? My father and mother were married right here in the city hall."

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

2005-12-28T07:57:00.000-08:00

"Mystery of the Wax Museum"

Another classic with Lionel Atwill (Ivan Igor) and Fay Wray (Charlotte Duncan) in a classic horror movie made during the same era as Karloff's "Frankenstein" and Lugosi's "Dracula."

But our "Mystery . . ." was different.

It was made in an early version of Technicolor with a two-strip method for red and green.

It was also different because it had Glenda Farrell as a reporter who figures out what's going on in Igor's new wax museum.

This is several years before she became another reporter in the Torchy Blane series.

"Mystery of the Wax Museum" starts out in London in 1921 when Igor's museum is burned down by his partner who'd rather have the insurance money than a business that's losing money.

Igor is so badly burned in the resulting fire that we don't seem him again until New Year's Eve of 1933 in New York.

(My, how time flies! It only took two years for Price to turn up in his movie!)

Igor just "happens" to live in the same apartment building as June Gale, a suspected suicide whose body is stolen from the morgue.

Farrell (Florence Dempsey) comes to the aid of Gavin Gordon (George Winton), Gale's former love.

She figures out that there's something rotten in the new wax museum: They're turning dead bodies like Gale's into wax figures and Igor wants to turn Farrell's friend, Fay Wray, into Marie Antoinette.

"Mystery of the Wax Museum" is well-written with plenty of suspense from a play by Charles Belden.

Farrell ends up with some spiffy lines like,

"OK, brother, then you can go to some nice warm place and I don't mean California."

Even better is,
Gordon: "I've only known you twenty-four hours but I'm in love with you."

Farrell: "Doesn't usually take that long."

When Ivan Igor gets the line, "I offer you immortality, my child. Think of it: in a thousand years you shall be as lovely as you are now!" . . . Miss Maven keeps thinking fine but what will her INSIDES look like?!

The monster makeup is so good that Farrell get to say,

"I don't know what he was but he made Frankenstein look like a lily!"

The excellent supporting cast includes Frank McHugh as Farrell's combative editor.

He gets the best line in the whole movie when Farrell gives him the raspberry over the telephone,

"A cow does that and gives milk besides!"

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Miss Maven can be reached at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Stage Door (1937)

2005-12-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

"Stage Door" (1937) is an excellent movie well worth the watching . . . and probably saving to boot!

A lot of men may call it a "chick flick" but the chicks in this movie are top flight, the writing is superb, the humor is beautifully delivered and it'll take you all over the emotional rollercoaster.

What else would you get from a cast as diverse as Katharine Hepburn (Terry) to Margaret Early (Mary Lou)?!

You must forgive Miss Maven since two of the actress are from Texas:

Ginger Rogers (Jean Maitland) got her start in Maven's hometown of Fort Worth and Ann Miller (Annie) was from Houston.

An interesting note about Miller was that she lied about her age to get this job, being only 14 when she played "Annie" in "Stage Door!"

Both ladies made names for themselves as dancers as well as actresses in Hollywood.

Two of the supporting actresses went on to make names for themselves on television in the fifties.

Lucille Ball (Judy Canfield) created a dynasty on TV with her then husband, Desi Arnaz, with "I Love Lucy."

One of the series that was made at Desilu Studios (formerly RKO) was "Our Miss Brooks" with Eve Arden (Eve) in the title role.

One wonderful thing about these actresses is their ability to not only be able to act but bull off some deliciously wicked lines like:

Jean: Hey, you're not gonna catch the opening tonight,hug?

Eve: No, I'm going tomorrow and catch the closing.

And how about:

Terry: I see that, in addition to your other charms, you have that insolence generated by an inferior upbringing.

Jean: Hmm! Fancy clothes, fancy language and everything!

Terry: Unfortunately, I learned to speak English correctly.

Jean: That won't be of much use to you here. We all talk pig Latin.

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Eve: Well, I don't like to gossip, but that new gal seems to have an awful crush on Shakespeare!

Susan (Peggy O'Donnell): I wouldn't be surprised if they get married!

Mary Lou: Oh, you're fooling'! Shakespeare's dead.

Madeline (Jan Wiley): No!

Mary Lou: Well, if he's the same one that wrote "Hamlet," he is.

Eve: Never heard of it.

Mary Lou: Well, certainly you must have heard of "Hamlet."

Eve: Well, I meet so many people.

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Terry: How many doors are there to this place?

Jean: Well, there's the trap door, the humidor, and the cuspidor. How many doors would you like?

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Jean: Do you mind if I ask a personal question?

Terry: Another one?

Jean: Are those trunks full of bodies?

Terry: Just those, but I don't intend to unpack them.

<<>>

Linda (Gail Patrick): If you were a little more considerate of your elders, maybe Mr. Powell [Adolphe Menjou] would send his car for you someday. Of course, he would probably take one look at you and send you right back again, but then you have to expect that.

Jean: Is that so?

Linda: Do you know, I think I could fix you up with Mr. Powell's chauffeur. The chauffeur has a very nice car too.

Jean: Yes, but I understand that Mr. Powell's chauffeur doesn't go as far in his car as Mr. Powell does. . . .

Jean: Hey, that's a kind of good-looking' piece of jackrabbit you got there.

Linda: Oh, it's just a little trinket my "Aunt Susan" sent over.

Jean: Say, I think it's very unselfish of those little animals to give up their lives to keep other animals warm.

Linda: You know, they're very smart little animals. They never give up their lives for the wrong people.

Jean: Well you understand the rodent family much better than I do.

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This is also the movie that give Katharine Hepburn one of the best lines in her career (and, yes, she did say it!): The calla lilies are in bloom again.

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Miss Maven will bloom if you would like to get in touch with her at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Happy Holidays!

2005-12-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

Holiday Inn

2005-12-22T07:25:00.000-08:00

What's better than a Fred Astaire or Bing Crosby movie?

How about one with both of them?

Sure, but if you throw Irving Berlin's holiday music . . . .

How could you go wrong?

You can't because what you end up with is "Holiday Inn" (1942).

Yes, Miss Maven knows about "White Christmas" (1954), even to having Bing Crosby.

It's a movie worth watching in it's own right but it's completely separate from ". . . Inn" beyond the fact that they both deal with a dance team.

"Holiday Inn" has Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby in love with the girl they dance with, Virginia Dale.

[She's listed as Rene in "Docks of New Orleans" for you Chan Fans.

Miss Maven is still trying to verify it!]

Astaire ends up with Dale and Crosby ends up with . . . his Inn.

Marjorie Reynolds shows up and they team up to make the inn a going concern.

[Okay, equal time for James Lee Wong fans: Reynolds was Bobby Logan!]

There's great dancing and lots of music by Irving Berlin mixed in as Crosby tries to keep Reynolds under wraps when Astaire shows up after being dumped by Dale for a Texas millionaire.

Virginia Dale does a good job of what singing and dancing she's handed.

Marjorie Reynolds is a surprise, though, being a better singer than you might expect as well as holding her own with Fred Astaire.

She is as long as you don't know that Martha Mears dubbed her voice!

Walter Abel is the manager who has to deal with clients who keep swapping partners or loosing them or . . . .

You're going to start wondering why they don't fire him when he doesn't quite because of their antics!

Louise Beavers is excellent, as always, as Crosby's housekeeper/cook.

The musical numbers are great good fun to watch, celebrating all the holidays that America celebrated in 1942, including two Thanksgivings.

(There were two to make fun of Franklin Delano Roosevelt moving Thanksgiving from the third to fourth Thursday in November.)

There is a segment for Lincoln, complete with Bing Crosby putting "black face" on Marjorie Reynolds.

Miss Maven even remembers it.

Prints now have a blip in the film where they cut it out.

There is also a blip in Astaire's dance in the fourth of July segment, just don't ask Miss Maven why!

Irving Berlin wrote all the music and Crosby's brother, Bob, conducted his own band for the specialty numbers.

One final note: Fred Astaire tossed back two shots of bourbon before filming the "drunk dance" and another one before each take.

They used the seventh take in the movie!

The Thin Man

2005-12-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

You may not think of "The Thin Man" in terms of Christmas.

You'd be surprised!

This classic movie with William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles starts in New York in late October and picks up just before Christmas!

They spend so much screen time around it that they even have a joke with their dog, Asta, getting . . . shall we say chummy? . . . with the tree while Nora is decorating it!

One of Miss Maven's favorite scenes is Christmas morning when Nick is enjoying his new air rifle as they discuss the mystery of "The Thin Man."

Part of the charm of the scene, of the whole series, lies in the working relationship between Loy and Powell as she describes in her autobiography, "Knowing and Becoming" (with James Kotsilibas-Davis, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1987, pages 88 - 89):

I played differently with Bill. He was so naturally witty and outrageous that I stayed somewhat detached, always a little incredulous. From that very first scene, a curious thing passed between us, a feeling of rhythm, complete understanding, in instinct for how one could bring out the best in the other. In all our work together you can see that strange--I don't know what . . . a kind of rapport. It wasn't conscious. If you heard us talking in a room, you'd hear the same thing. He'd tease me a little and a kind of blending emerged that seemed to please people. Whatever caused it, though, it was magical, and Woody Van Dyke brought it to fruition in our next picture--perhaps the best remembered of my hundred and twenty-four features. . . .

What other director would introduce his leading lady with a perfect three-point landing on a barroom floor--even if it was the Ritz bar? I was supposed to stroll in looking very chic, laded down with packages and leading Asta on a leash. "Can you fall?" Woody asked. "Do you know how to do a fall?" I said, "I've never worked for Mack Sennett, but I'm a dancer. I think I can do it." I would have done anything for Woody, because I was devoted to him. "You just trip yourself," he explained, "and then go right down."

He put a camera on the floor, a mark where he wanted me to land, and we shot it without any rehearsal. I must have been crazy. I could have killed myself, but my dance training paid off. I dashed in with Asta, and all those packages, tripped myself, went down, slid across the floor, and hit the mark with my chin. It was absolutely incredible!

(Courtesy of www.iloveasta.com)

Just as incredible as the talents of Myrna Loy, William Powell, Woody Van Dyke and everybody else involved in "The Thin Man" . . . and that includes Asta, who has his very own website!!

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You can get in touch with Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

A Christmas Carol

2005-12-19T07:22:00.000-08:00

"A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens is a perfect story for the Christmas holidays!

What more could you ask for?

Okay, Miss Maven knows. . . . She asked Santa for a new DVD player. That's not what she's talking about!

". . . Carol" is a vivid story about a miser who comes acopper on Christmas Eve when he's confronted by ghosts of the season.

Hollywood is still trying to come up with new ways of telling this classic story and frequently with quite a license!

But Miss Maven will concentrate with the 1938 and 1951 versions here.

The 1951 movie with Alistair Sim is what many baby boomers like Maven are most familiar.

Both have an excellent cast, production values and writers but Sim's comes across as much more depressing as his Scrooge is more hard-bitten, his cynicism comes across as deeper-rooted.

Reginald Owen starts off obnoxious in his 1938 ". . . Carol" but his Scrooge is still essentially a more humane person.

He manages to give the part an almost child-like quality as he is taken through his paces by the Christmas spirits.

Miss Maven must admit that the studio could have done better by it's actors.

The costumes may have been historically correct but they prove that some men just weren't built for that period of clothes!

Not to mention that Reginald Owen was given a top fluff of hair that Miss Maven keeps looking at instead of watching the action!

And Barry McKay is always a great addition as his nephew, Fred.

The 1938 ". . . Carol" had a unique distinction:

It was the only movie where Gene Lockhart and his wife, Kathleen Lockhart, appeared together with their daughter, June, in her movie debut!

This version also has Leo G. Carroll as Marley, Scrooge's dead partner.

Carroll ironically went on to play Topper on television with his own set of ghosts.

Ann Rutherford was cast as The Ghost of Christmas Past, and excellently so.

She wasn't always so lucky to get out of the "Polly Benedict" kind of roles from the Andy Hardy Series.

There is a blooper at the end of the 1951 version when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas Morning.

Watch Alistair Sim when he goes over to the mirror and you can see part of the camera crew reflected in it!

Miss Maven recommends both movies as mustsees but thinks that the 1938 "A Christmas Carol" is the one you should add to your collection first, especially if you have children--or managed to keep the child alive in you!

Miss Maven's Christmas Movies

2005-12-17T11:46:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven is starting off our Christmas Movies with an entry from the Columbia Series called "Alias Boston Blackie."

Blackie (Chester Morris) is a jewel thief who is retired from business except that the police, in the person of Inspector Farraday (Richard Lane), doesn't believe it.

That's the basis of 14 entries in the series, at any rate!

They are definitely "B" entries but great fun for their kind!

Blackie is confronted with such diverse cases as sabotage to seances to the art world over the course of the movies!

Chester Morris and Richard Lane are marvelous in their recurring roles as sparring partners Blackie and Farraday. They are amply supported by Walter Sande (later Frank Sully) as dim-witted Matthews, Lloyd Corrigan as philanthropist Arthur Manleder and George E. Stone (originally George Wegenheim) as The Runt, Blackie's assistants, as it were.

Who thinks these parts up?!

"Alias Boston Blackie" is an entry centered on a group of entertainers who travel by bus to a prison to entertain the inmates on Christmas Eve.

Blackie goes along as to help out but Farraday tags along to keep him on the up-and-up but neither of them plans on one of the inmates (Larry Parks) masquerades his way out as a clown.

Are you getting the feeling that the writers were already hitting the Eggnog?

Especially when Blackie ends up having to masquerade in the same clown costume to help Parks to see the light.

Not to mention Blackie having to pass as a New York City Policeman!

In the process, he clears him even as Blackie shuffles a corpse while being threatened by one of the bad guys, a bus/taxi driver (Lloyd Bridges).

Adele Mara has a great line when questioned by a hotel clerk about wanting a room on the top floor: "Don't worry. I don't have time to jump today!"

But Blackie triumphs once again and all the good guys are back in his apartment on Christmas Night to toast the holiday.

"Alias Boston Blackie" is a fun movie to watch, especially around Christmas time!

2005-12-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven regrets that she and her staff (Aunt Battie and her assisstants: Slo, Mo and Larry) must take a few days off.

They must get ready for Christmas plus work on the back log in the office.

They will be back as soon as possible.

In the meantime . . .

Merry Ho Ho Ho!

Grand Hotel

2005-12-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Irving Thalberg began a whole genre of movie-making when he made Grand Hotel, according to Roland Flamini's "Thalberg: The Last Tycoon and the world M-G-M" (Crown Publishers, Inc.; New York; 1994; pages 137 - 138).

[Spoiler Alert: Details of the ending are contained in this post.]

In "Grand Hotel" Thalberg pioneered a formula that is now familiar (Stagecoach, Airport, California Suite) but was the innovative. the interaction of a number of characters hitherto unknown to each other, brought together in one setting, ran counter to the industry's conventional wisdom. If putting more than two stars in one picture was wasteful, using six stars was sheer folly, and Thalberg had a lot of explaining to do when he began to pile stars into his production.

[Left: Lionel Barrymore; center: Joan Crawford; right: John Barrymore]

. . . The characters [they play] are all failures in one way or another, and in the bustling old central European hotel each confronts a personal crisis, which in the case of two results in death. [Greta] Garbo was the obvious choice for Grusinskaya, the prima ballerina who is past her prime; and Joan Crawford,was immediately announced in the role of Flaemmchen, the stenographer who uses sex to get ahead. . . .

For the Baron von Geigern, the hotel thief with whom Garbo falls in love and who is killed in the picture, Thalberg had initially wanted Clark Gable. John Barrymore got the part when Thalberg decided to cast both brothers in the picture: Lionel played Kringelein, the terminally ill clerk who checks into the "Grand Hotel: for one brief fling at the good life before dying. For a while plans went forward to pair Gable with Crawford. He was to Preysing, the self-made industrialist and in his way also a failure, with whom Crawford has an affair; but in the end Thalberg opted to cast the rough-hewn Wallace Beery.

[Greta Garbo and John Barrymore]

Miss Maven recommends "Grand Hotel" as a mustsee story that is beautifully put together all the way around. It's well-written, beautifully produced and acted as only M-G-M can do with their stable of stars.

Miss Maven hesitates to say it's a musthave for two reasons.

One is that it can be as depressing as all get out with Preysing killing the Baron and we know that Kringelein is dying when he leaves the hotel with Flaemmchen.

Miss Maven's other problem is Thalberg's choice in stars.

Greta Garbo was a great actress in Maven's opinion.

However, Miss Maven's late mother was a ballet dancer.

Miss Maven has pictures of her beloved mother in costume and "en pointe."

Greta Garbo was no ballerina.

However beautiful you may have thought Garbo, she clearly didn't carry herself like a dancer.

Miss Maven loves the use of the Barrymore brothers since they were great actors perfect in their parts and a joy to see working together in scenes in "Grand Hotel."

Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, eat your hearts out!

Clark Gable would have been wasted in this movie.

He's much more fun to watch in movies like "Red Dust" and "Saratoga" with Jean Harlow!

Besides, that poster of "Grand Hotel" makes Joan Crawford look like they forgot her eyeballs!

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Miss Maven can be reached at her tv--er, email address at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Great Lines of Mae West, Part 2

2005-12-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

Only Mae West could get away with a line from "I'm No Angel" (1933) like, "Beulah, peel me a grape"!

Or,

"It's not the men in your live that counts, it's the life in your men."

Miss Maven admits she's heard those but she didn't remember

"Were you at the haircutter or have your ears moved down?"

Maven marvels at any man who can move any of his parts down . . . !

[The quintessential Mae West]

But back to La Belle West as Tira!

Jack Clayton (Cary Grant): You were wonderful tonight.

Tira: Yeah, I'm always wonderful at night.

Jack Clayton: Tonight, you were especially good.

Tira: When I'm good, I'm very good; but when I'm bad, I'm better.

So is Miss Maven!

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Tira: What do you do for a living?

Rich Guy: I'm a politician.

Tira: I don't like to work either.

Miss Maven knows some politicians now that fit this bill!!

Jack Clayton: Oh, I'm crazy about you.

Tira: I did my best to make you that way.

Jack Clayton: Look, darling, you need a rest and so do I. Let me take you away somewhere, we'll--

Tira: Would you call that a rest?

Jack Clayton: What are you thinking about?

Tira: Same thing you are.

Miss Maven was beginning to wonder if he'd EVER get the idea!

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You can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Great Lines of Mae West, Part 1

2005-12-05T12:06:00.000-08:00

"Goodness had nothing to do with them!"

That's the line Miss Maven remembers from the earliest movie she saw with Mae West.

It's the great response to a hatcheck girl looking at all her diamonds and saying, "Oh, my goodness!"

(And if you thought she was talking about anything but diamonds, shame on you!)

(Mae West and George Raft in "Night After Night")

One exchange that Miss Maven loves is the exchange between Ms. West (as Lady Lou) and Cary Grant in "She Done Him Wrong" (1933).

Right off, you have to love the name she gave her leading man. What else to call Cary Grant than Captain Cummings in a script by La Belle West?!

She greets him with "Hello there, warm, dark and handsome."

Mae asks the good Captain "Why don't you come up some time and see me?"

He's busy with work at night.

The idea of any man turning down Mae West's sweet, innocent little invitation absolutely flummoxes Miss Maven.

She tries again with "Come up some time and I'll read your fortune."

Maven must confess to laughing so hard at that line that she couldn't tell you WHAT happens next!

Ms. West had other goodies in that movie:

"It was a toss up between whether I go in for diamonds or sing in the choir. The choir lost."

Trust Miss Maven. The choir is harder to carry around with you to show off--They usually can't even agree on what night to practice!
"When Women go wrong, men go right after them."

That's the only time men don't need to stop and ask directions.

Captain Cummings says "Haven't you ever met a man who could make you happy?"

"Sure, lots of times."

Modern pop psychologists would probably say she has a healthy sense of self but that's not what Miss Maven's grandmother would have called it!

Another good source of Westisms are in "I'm No Angel" (1933):

Jim Clayton tells her "You were wonderful tonight."

Ms. West: "Yeah, I'm always wonderful at night!"

Clayton: "Tonight, you were especially good."

Ms. West: "Well . . . When I'm good, I'm very good but, when I'm bad, I'm better!"

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Excuse Miss Maven but she'll continue Mae West's great quotes tomorrow.

She wants to try that last on on Santa Claus!

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You can contact Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Making of King Kong, Part 5

2005-12-04T13:33:00.000-08:00

George E. Turner and Orville Goldner describe the sequence in the movie where Robert Armstrong tries to be a cameraman in The Making of King Kong, Ballantine Books, New York, 1975, page 109:

[The front of the camera used to film King Kong]

During the screen test sequence, Armstrong was supposed to adjust the lenses of his camera and insert a rectangular filter into the matte box while explaining that he always cranks his own camera because a cameraman he hired for a jungle film fled when a rhinoceros charged the camera. On each take the actor was unable to fit the filter into place--much to the merriment of the camera crew. Schoedsack finally cut from the scene at the crucial moment to a shot of sailors watching the action. Later the remainder of Ann's test was filmed including the famed scene in which the girl, under Denham's direction, covers her eyes and screams at the top of her lungs. This time only one take was necessary--much to Fay Wray's relief.

[The sideview of the camera used to film King Kong]

[The rear of the camera used to film King Kong]

And much to Miss Maven's relief!!

Her lungs haven't been the same since the last time the Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl!!

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You can reach Miss Maven without her screaming her lungs out at you at theolcmoviemaven@yahoo.com!

The Making of King Kong, Part 4

2005-12-03T10:56:00.000-08:00

Orville Goldner and George E. Turner discuss how the leads were hired for "King Kong" in their book, "The Making of King Kong" (Ballantine Books, New York, 1975, page 65 - 71):

[Cooper and Wray on the set]

[Executive Producer] Cooper had approached Fay Wray with the news that he had chosen her to be the leading lady in a film about "a discovery of gigantic proportions" and that she would play opposite "the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood." Her initial enthusiasm changed to panic as he showed her [Mario] Larrinaga's official portrait of her film suitor stalking through the jungle with Miss Wray clutched in one hairy paw. The role called for a blonde (for contrast) . . . . as Kong's "golden woman."

[Wray and her "other" leading man,

Bruce Cabot]

Her other romantic lead, Bruce Cabot, was a young contract player who hadn't yet been in a film. . . . Cabot was given the role in King Kong after a rather unusual screen test: Cooper made him climb down a rope that was suspended from the log bridge on stage .

[Robert] Armstrong, between scenes of The Most Dangerous Game, was instructed to exchange his dress suit for a soiled and tattered safari get-up for his first day's work with Cooper.

[Without a script yet, Cooper gave him directions for the scene of his character leading his men through the woods on Skull Island.]

'I was to hold up my hand and stop my followers. As I looked across the log I was to see, across the chasm at the other end, a fifty-foot ape.

'At this point I said, "Excuse me, Mr. Cooper, but if I understand you correctly you said that I saw a fifty-foot ape." He said, "Yes, that's right, Bob. Why?" I said . . . "Well, I've been in this business a great many years, but you tell me how to take a fifty-foot ape big!" '

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Miss Maven wants to know how you DON'T take a fifty-foot ape big?!

Maven would run like "heck" if she came across one any bigger than a stuffed one from Toys 'R' Us!

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You can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Making of King Kong, Part 3

2005-12-02T12:08:00.000-08:00

" 'King Kong' was made partly out of the genius of Willis Harold O'Brien and what he called 'animation in depth,' a method by which inanimate objects are given an illusion of life and movement on film."

[You'll notice how the "figure" of Fay Wray looks so fake next to the very realistic King Kong and pterydactl?]

This is from "The Making of King Kong" by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner, Ballantine Books, New York, 1975, page 41.

[One of the dinosaur models used in "King Kong"]

They go on to say:

"The basic idea, known as stop-motion, is a simple one that was exploited before 1900 by a pioneer French producer, George Melies. A subject is placed in position and a single frame is shot of that placement. The subject then is moved slightly and another frame is exposed. Further related positions are photographed in this manner, describing the increments of movement of whatever action is to be simulated on the film. The strip of 'still' frames, when projected in the usual way, are blended by the 'persistence of vision' into a semblance of motion. The speed at which the subject appears to movie is determined by the distance between the positions photographed: fast-movie objects require less footage and therefore the placements are farther apart than would be necessary for slow-moving effects. It was by this method that a bed was made to dance and leap all over the room in Edwin S. Porters wonderful trick film of 1906, The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend.

[The model used for the brontosaurus in "King Kong."]

"Although O'Brien was far from being the first film-maker to utilize dimentional animation, his efforts were more ambitious than those of his predecessors or contemporaries and it was he who refined and developed the technique until he attained near-perfection."

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Miss Maven wonders . . . with all the remakes that Hollywood has been putting out lately, why hasn't anyone found THIS title?!

THE DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND?!?!

You'll forgive Miss Maven while she swoons from fear at all the blood and gore that that title could produce!!

And please don't bring up all the even bloodier and gorier sequels that they could make!

Smelling salts, where are Maven's smelling salts . . . ?!?!

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When Miss Maven recovers, she will accept all notes, suggestions and smelling salt . . . er, ideas . . . at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Making of King Kong, Part 2

2005-12-01T11:55:00.000-08:00

King Kong struck a blow for womankind, according to Orville Goldner and George E. Turner in their "Making Of King Kong" (Ballantine Books, New York, 1975, page 9):

"Ann Darrow, the film's heroine immortalized by Fay Wray's performance, springs as surely from the life of Ruth Rose, co-author of the shooting script. Like Ann, the writer was an unemployed actress who found adventure and romance in far away, primitive lands. Had she not met her future husband [Ernset B. Schoedsack] aboard the expedition ship 'Arcturus' it is likely that the love scenes aboard the 'Venture' would have been played in the Philip Barry story fo dialogue that typified films of the period instead of a clumsily sincere tough-guy style that is touching because it seems real. The crusty Captain Englehorn and his roughneck crew seem lifelike because writer and producers knew well their living counterparts.

Plus Fay Wray was filming "King Kong" during the day while filming "The Most Dangerous Game" at night with Joel McCrea and Leslie Banks.

Miss Maven recommends both as musthaves since Ms. Wray's performance is just a starting point for similarities between the films.

Both have heros worth drooling over--Miss Maven means admiring!: Bruce Cabot and Joel McCrea.

And then there is Robert Armstrong, who gets a little drunk in "Most Dangerous Game."

Hey, watching Ms. Wray set on far away lush green islands that are part rocky mountains and part marshy swaps that she's dunked into with hardly any clothes on and lusted after by monsters, some being two-legged . . . .

Oh, dear, Miss Maven needs to get her bourbon back out . . . I mean smelling salts . . . .

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Please send your sympathies, er, suggestions and all to Miss Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Making of King Kong, Part 1

2005-11-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

King Kong!

The Eighth Wonder of the World!

And the making of King Kong in 1933 was a wonder of movie-making as well!

Orville Goldner and George E. Turner takes us behind the scenes and deep into Kong's jungle so we can see what it took to make this classic. . . .*

[Miss Maven hopes they're watching the same version as she is!]

. . . There are valid reasons why none of the dozens of imitations [of King Kong] has succeeded in duplicating its grasp upon the imagination of the public. One is that, however fantastic and implausible the film may be, it convinces because it is built upon solid biographical fact. It is as personal a statement of its guiding geniuses--Marion C. Cooper, Ernest B. Shoedsack, Rush Rose and Willis H. O'Brien--as is anything by Chaplin or Stroheim. This underlying reality is sensed by the viewer.

Carl Denham, the daredevil producer who seeks and finds Kong, is a personality composite of Cooper and Shoedsack. He possesses the same courage and intentness of purpose that made possible the filming of Grass, Chang and Rango under incredibly difficult conditions. He accepts hardship and danger willingly as the price of the game. He knows he must avoid the monsoon because he ran afoul of it in Thailand, cranks his won camera because his cinematographer in Sumatra was rendered helpless by a fear of wild animals, seeks a girl to appear in his new film because exhibitors complained that if Chang only had "love interest" it would have made twice as much money. It is said that if Denham wants a picture of a lion he just walks up and tells it to look pleasant--an approach no more brazen than Schoedsack's method of provoking tigers into charging his camera.

Miss Maven suspects that Carl Denham may have headed the Internal Revenue Service in another lifetime!

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*The Making of King Kong, Ballantine Books, New York, 1975, page 7 - 9 Foreward).

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You can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Universal Studios

2005-11-29T11:57:00.000-08:00

Roland Flamini writes about Carl Laemmle and the beginnings of Universal Studio's tours in Thalberg: The Last tycoon and the World of M-G-M (Crown Publishers, Inc.; New York; 1994; pages 25 - 28:

The president of Universal was an impulsive, excitable, and sometimes giddy operator. He was five feet two inchs tall and a paranoid who was convinced that everyone was out to cheat him--from business associates to the waiter who brought his check at a restaurant. . . . [And in] an industry notorious for its nepotism, he set records for the number of useless relations on the payroll--a trait lampooned by the verse satirist Ogden Nash in the line "Uncle Carl Laemmle has a very large faemmle."

(Carle Laemmle surrounded by some of his actors and Carl, Jr.)

. . . the studio, which Laemmle referred to as the Bottomless Pit, produced . . . Lemmle's own brainchild, the Universal tour. At twenty-five cents a head, including a boxed lunch, it attracted an average of five hundred visitors a day. They toured the back lots with its various stages, then sat of bleachers to watch filming in progress. (The Universal tour was discontinued in the 1930s, then successfully revived in 1964.)

. . . Universal was founded in 1912, but Universal City had been operating for only four years. Unlike other Hollywood studios, it was not a series of buildings but a ranch that sprawled over some four hundred acres of terrain in the San Fernando Valley, ideal for scenery but difficult to manage. Trying to control it was like trying to control a game reserve. Jackrabbits and mountain lions still roamed it. Tracking down a company and rounding up stray extras was like being on safari or perhaps like rounding up stray cattle on the range.

Miss Maven wonders if the visitors toured the WHOLE four hundred acres--She hopes they were provided at least water in those boxed lunches!

'Cause they's critters sides cattle out in them stagebrushes!!

And Louis B. Meyer at M-G-M and Jack Warner (and Brothers) just thought they had trouble wrangling THEIR actors!!

Besides . . . anybody who thinks wrangling cattle is easy can come to Fort Worth, TX, where they STILL have cattle drives for visitors!

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You can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

David O. Selznick

2005-11-28T14:25:00.000-08:00

David O. Selznick was a one-of-a-kind talent in Hollywood.

A one-of-a-kind what depends on who you ask!

Beverly Linet wrote Star-Crossed (G.P. Putnam, Sons; New York; 1986) about Robert Walker and Jennifer Jones and how large a part of their divorce was attributable to Selznick's egomania and obsession with Jones.

Linet writes (on page 113):

. . . [S]screenwriter Gavin Lambert relates that "whenever Marlene Dietrich [who appeared in Selznick's Garden of Allah] had a party, she'd set up a game of "Inquisition." One of the most provocative questions was "Who'd be the last person in the world you would go to bed with---even if not doing so meant sacrificing the lives of your children?" Her female guests, with rare exceptions, would unhesitantly name Adolf Hitler. But Marlene, who had personally rejected and violently detested the German dictator, never failed to reply, "David O. Selznick.'"

Obviously, in ways Miss Dietrich never made public, she had herself suffered at the hands of Selznik.

Miss Maven wonders what would have happened if David Selznick had been set up on a date with Godzilla?!

Maybe that's where Freddy Kruger came from?!

Music in the Movies

2005-11-27T16:35:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven is inaugurating a new department . . . .

Music in the Movies . . . .

You just never know where a song will turn up!

<><>

Such as Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)!

In this case, Warner Oland did the honors as our talented detective!

He is enroute to [like you can't guess?!] Shanghai when he's waylaid by a band of kiddies into playing leap-frog.

(Better him than Miss Maven because her arthritis sometimes sounds like a cannon going off if she has to . . . never mind!)

(Courtesy of www.charliechan.net)

The children then want Charlie to sing for them in a beautiful voice that Miss Maven wishes that Hollywood has used more often.

Mr. Oland sounds so much better than Maven does!

.
Princess Ming Lo Fu

Long the journey, hard the way,

But his heart was gay,

For, was he not a Prince both strong and brave,

Vowed a princess fair to save?

And he slew the dreadful dragon,

Even cut off his seven heads;

And in this cave he found the Princess

Bound in her lowly bed.

Then came they back to the land

Of the mighty Emperor Fu Manchu,

To claim his reward, the dainty hand

of lovely Ming Lo Fu.

The song is something of an "in" joke since it refers to another role that Warner Oland played in several movies: Fu Manchu!

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You can reach Miss Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Myrna Loy

2005-11-25T23:00:00.000-08:00

Myrna Loy addressed the role of Hollywood's treatment of actors playing non-whites in the movies in her autobiography, Being and Becoming (with James Kotsilibas-Davis; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; New York; 1987; page 52):

. . . But these exotica started to predominate [in roles given to Loy]. My bit as a mulatto in The Heart of Maryland led to a role that I'm very much ashamed of. Zanuck wrote Ham and Eggs at the Front, a blackface parody of What Price Glory? casting me as a spy. How could I ever have put on blackface? When I think of it now, it horrifies me. Well, our awareness broadens, thank God! It was a tasteless slapstick comedy that I mercifully recall very little about.

Fox borrowed me and expanded my capacity for exotica. I played my first Chinese part, under the direction of Howard Hawks, in A Girl in Every Port. With the structure around my eyes, it turned out, makeup could make me look Oriental. It seems strange of a redhead from Montana, but that part of my face, at least, is easily adapted. they just whitened my upper lids, accented the natural line, and I got away with it. So what do they do back at Warners? They cast me as a Chinese in The Crimson City, with Anna May Wong. Up against her, of course, I looked about Chinese as Raggedy Ann.

Miss Maven is glad that Dracula, The Wolf Man, The Mummy and Frankenstein's Monster haven't gotten together to complain about how THEY'RE treated in Hollywood!

If THEY ever get ticked off, Maven suspects that that Halloween will be a run on wolf's bane, silver bullets and . . . .

Hey . . . just where DO you get Egyptian amulets for protection?!?!?

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If you would like contact Miss Maven, you can reach her at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-24T13:10:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving,

Everybody!

From

Miss Maven,

Aunt Battie

and the whole gang here!

The Barrymore Family

2005-11-23T10:20:00.000-08:00

Those young movie lovers who only know the Barrymore family through the acting talent of Drew Barrymore are in for a surprise.

(Drew Barrymore)

Ms. Barrymore comes from an acting dynasty that began with her great-great-grandparents, John Drew and Louisa Lane.

Her great-grandparents were Maurice Barrymore and Georgie Drew.

All were royalty on the Great White Way of Broadway.

Thanks to motion pictures and Hollywood, the works of her grandfather, John Barrymore, have been preserved.

(Ethel Barrymore)

So have the movies of John, Sr.'s brother and sister, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore.

(Lionel Barrymore)

Drew seems to have gotten something of her grandfather's irreverence if we can believe what John Kobler wrote in his biography called Damned in Paradise: The Life of John Barrymore (Antheneum, New York, 1977, page 191):

(John Barrymore)

[About Barrymore's coarse language] . . . John and Willard Louis, a fun-loving character actor who played the Prince of Wales, would occasionally spice the dialogue with obscenities, there existing as yet now sound camera. When Beau Brummel was released, the studio received a good many scandalized letters from deaf lip-readers.

(Lionel Barrymore, left, Joan Crawford

and John Barrymore, right)

John's manner on the set, his gaiety and fellow feeling deeply impressed Mary [Astor]. She had never before met a star without affectation and condescension. John was on first-name terms with all the workmen and enjoyed long, technical talks with them. Yet he preserved an unassailable dignity, letting nobody forget that he was a Barrymore. Once, when a cameraman yelled: "Hey, Jack!" John spun around, eyed him coldly and said: "Why so formal? Call me kid."

(Lionel Barrymore, left on the couch, Ethel Barrymoresitting on his right, John Barrymore holding the baby)

Miss Maven laments that Barrymore eventually became a parody of his former self but in his prime in such movies as Counsellor-at-Law, Twentieth Century and Grand Hotel . . . . Hot Dog!

He could act rings around Ben Affleck, George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

He was one of those actors who could fascinate his audiences just reading the phone book!

You must excuse Miss Maven while she gets her smelling salts out at just the thought of John Barrymore!

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You can reach Miss Maven (after she recovers her breath!)

at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Dracula vs. Dracula

2005-11-22T12:38:00.000-08:00

"Dracula."

Who do you think of?

Miss Maven would bet that your first thought would be Bela Lugosi from his 1931 break-through film of that name.

(A young Lugosi playing Jesus early in his career.)

Did you know that there is a Spanish-language version with an actor that many say could be . . . you should pardon Maven . . . a dead-ringer for Lugosi?!

Carlos Villarias was the star of the alternate version that was filmed using the same sets as Lugosi's movie.

There are differences in their "Draculas."

Bela Lugosi looks deadlier as Dracula because people don't want to think that anyone that handsome and suave could be anything but someone to take home and meet Mother.

That would solve all those mother-in-law jokes!

Carlos Villarias looks like he's slightly touched in the head in comparison.

Either that or somebody hacked him off.

Who would be dumb enough to hack off a vampire?

. . . On second thought, Miss Maven wouldn't put it past the Internal Revenue Service.

Helen Chandler comes off as plain vanilla compared to Lupita Tovar, who has the added advantage of sexier clothes.

Miss Maven warns you not to run out and get the Spanish version because she's talking about sexier clothes for 1931!

(Lupita Tovar with Carlos Villarias as "Conde Dracula"

and in the Spanish language version of "The Cat Creeps" [1930])

Hah! You thought Miss Maven was getting naughty, weren't you!

George Robinson was director George Melford's cinematographer.

He brought an entirely different feel to the sets, using more mobile camera and more innovative use of angles and shadows then Karl Freund's camera-work.

Miss Maven suspects that Freund's work on "Dracula" was at the direction of Tod Browning since Maven thinks he did such superb work on such diverse works as "The Mummy" and "Mad Love" and television's "I Love Lucy"!

And in what may be the ultimate vampire moment: When Bela Lugosi enters Helen Chandler's bedroom and crosses over, Karl Freund tactfully fades the camera out.

George Robinson's version shows Carlos Villarias' swooping down to spread his cloak over Lupita Tovar as he's about to take a bite out of crime.

Or is it a bite "into crime" this time?!

Oh, dear, Miss Maven is getting a little too carried away here.

Please excuse her while she tries to find the bourbon . . . er, smelling salts!

<<>>

Please try both and compare them for yourselves as Miss Maven is having a time with the cap of the liquor bottle . . . oops, smelling salts.

<<>>

Miss Maven can be reached (when she recovers) at

the oldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Charlie Chan Movies

2005-11-21T10:25:00.000-08:00

Charlie Chan Movies!

Yippee!

Rush Glick has announced his

schedule for his December Monday Night

Chat Room* on his website at

www.charliechan.info!

Decemeber 5 - Charlie Chan in Reno

December 12 - Charlie Chan in Dangerous Money

December 19 - The Sky Dragon

December 26 - Charlie Chan in Honlulu

<<>>

*Our Chat Room hours at www.charliechan.info are 8:00 PM to 10:00 (Eastern Standard).

Lon Chaney, Sr.

2005-11-20T07:52:00.000-08:00

Lon Chaney, Sr., set a standard in Hollywood makeup that not even his own son could live up to.

(Mr. Chaney doesn't look too threatening there, does he?)

He not only made himself up throughout his much-too-short career in movies like "The Phantom of the Opera"

(Miss Maven remembers nightmares that looked like this!)

but in movies where he had TWO different characters to portray like the lost "London After Midnight."

As the Scotland Yard Inspector . . .

And the . . . shall we say . . . new boy on the block?

(Can Miss Maven say "two-faced?!")

Lon Chaney, Sr., managed to top even himself in the "The Unholy Three" where he played in "straight" makeup as a con and as a sweet little old lady, first in the silent version.

He then did it again for the talkie in 1930.

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Miss Maven trusts you will excuse her while she goes and makes a stiff drink for herself and then watches a Shirley Temple movie so she can go to sleep tonight!

<><>

Please send only nice, calming emails to Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com!

Lon Chaney, Jr.

2005-11-19T14:10:00.000-08:00

The Wolf Man makeup must have been miserable for Lon Chaney!

According to A Pictorial History of Horror Movies by Denis Gifford (Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, New York, 1974, page 136):

(Jack Pierce, who created the Wolf Man makeup and applied it to Lon Chaney, Jr.)

The day we did the transformations I came in at two a.m. When I hit that position they would take little nails and drive them through the skin at the edge of my fingers, on both hands, so that I wouldn't move them anymore. While I was in this position they would build a plaster cast of the back of my head. Then they would take drapes from behind me and starch them, and while they were drying them, they would take the camera and weigh it down with one ton, so that it wouldn't quiver when people walked. They had targets for my eyes up there. Then, while I'm still in this position, they would shoot five or ten frames of film in the camera. They'd take that film out and send it to the lab. While it was there the makeup man [Jack P. Pierce] would come and the whole thing off my face, and put on a new one, only less. I'm still immobile. When the film came back from the lab they'd check me. They'd say, "Your eyes have moved a little bit, movie them to the right . . . now your shoulder is up. . . ." Then they'd roll it again and shoot another ten frames. Well, we did twenty-one changes of makeup and it took twenty-two hours. I won't discuss about the bathroom!

(Pierce and Chaney in a publicity still)

<<>>

Miss Maven doesn't think she WANTS to hear about the bathroom!

<<>>

You can reach Miss Maven OUTSIDE the bathroom at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com!

John Barrymore

2005-11-18T10:50:00.000-08:00

Mary Astor writes in her autobiography, A Life on Film (Delacorte Press; New York; 1967, 1969, 1971; pages 53 - 54) about John Barrymore's private dramatic lessons:

. . ."Think! The camera's a mind reader. Don't let your thoughts wander to what kind of shoes you're going to buy, or to plan on what you'll say to so-and-so when you see him. Sustain--even though you're made the shot fifty times."

I remember we were sitting at lunch and I said, "May I have some more butter, please." He used it. He said, "Before any scene--go over how long you've known him--or her. You even say 'Pass the butter' differently, according to how you feel. Right now you're bored--I can hear it. There's always something under what you're saying--caused by a million things. How does it make you feel? Suppose, for instance, the guy says--maybe he's your husband--'I've quit my job.' And your line is, "Pass the butter, please.' O.K. now don't giggle like an ass. Listen, there'd be a world of difference if you think. 'Well screw him, I'll get somebody else to buy me a sable coat.' Or if you feel happy that the guy's finally got up enough nerve to do something that was your idea all along. Now let's try it. Let's improvise. I'll go out and come in and tell you I've quit my job. I'm, ah--let's see--a shoe salesman, and I'll tell you I've quit my job and you invent something and let me see you thinking."

...

A few years ago I was working with some Actors' Studio people in a TV show, trying to make sense of the nomenclature they used. I asked one of them, "What do you mean by 'subtext?' " he explained. My thoughts whisked back thirty years to "Pass the butter."

(John Barrymore as Hamlet)

The young John Barrymore could have melted Miss Maven's butter anytime!

<<>>

You can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmvoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Alfred Hitchcock

2005-11-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

Edith Head wrote about working with director Alfred Hitchcock in her autobiography, Edith Head's Hollywood (with Paddy Calistro; E.P. Dutton, Inc.; 1983, page 58):

Notorious was my first opportunity to dress Ingrid [Bergman] the way she should be. For such a big woman, she was a joy to dress. I was able to do evening clothes, sports clothes, street clothes-the whole gamut. I just had to be sure that was what I did pleased Hitch. He was very specific about costumes for his leading ladies. He spoke a designer's language, even though he didn't know the first thing about clothes. He specified colors in the script of they were important. If he wanted a skirt that brushed a desk as a woman walked by, he spelled that out tool. For Notorious, he repeated many times that the clothes must not be a focal point, that Bergman was to be a believable secret agent.

The job was tricky. Her clothes couldn't be smart in the ordinary sense. They had to avoid the fussy and extreme. And they had to be right for her. . .

I learned my restraint lessons very well. In what was one of the sexiest love scenes ever on screen, Bergman and Grant were totally dressed, but who remembers what they wore?

Miss Maven wonders who cares?!

<<>>

You can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

King Kong vs. Godzilla

2005-11-16T15:35:00.000-08:00

King Kong vs. Godzilla.

Miss Maven must admit to being a sucker for tall, dark guys with lots of personality who know what's what about fur coats!

Which is ironic since "King Kong" (1933) was made in what is known as stop-action photography which was used to reinforce Merian C. Cooper's story of a giant ape who ends up falling for Fay Wray.

(Miss Maven has known some men SHE'D like to see fall . . . off the Brooklyn Bridge . . . Mount Rushmore . . . the Eiffel Tower . . . .)

That Cooper, Willis H. O'Brien and company can make what was essentially a doll so sympathetic and sustain it over the length of a movie is a miracle of technology and writing.

Godzilla unfortunately doesn't fair so well by comparison. . . .

Okay, Godzilla has an electric personality but that doesn't change the fact that he needs an orthodontist sssoooo badly!

Not to mention industrial strength mouthwash!

Now Miss Maven has always had soft spot for Raymond Burr's work in Godzilla but let's face it.

Who wouldn't wonder what it was like for Fay Wray to be rescued by Bruce Cabot?!

And how can you not want to laugh at a creature that doesn't look any scarier than some dude in a badly-fitting lounge-lizard outfit?!

Miss Maven challenges you to watch both "King Kong" and "Godzilla" together and see who YOU'D vote for!

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You can send questions and comments to Miss Maven at http://theoldmoviemaven.blogspot.com.

The Best Years of Our Lives

2005-11-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is a mustsee, if not musthave, movie in Miss Maven's video library.

Sam Goldwyn's epic to the returning veterans of World War II deals with the problems they faced back home.

One of the actual vets was Harold Russell, who played the double amputee Homer Parrish and had to face the reality in Hollywood that many veterans did in the rest of the country.

According to A. Scott Berg in his biography, Goldwyn (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; New York, 1983; page 413) reports:

Harold Russell performed a number of tricky scenes, designed to show his compensating for his handicap in the most unassuming way, During one shot in which he was having a drink with Frederic March, the old pro warned him, "When I say my lines keep those g**damned hooks down! Don't lift that bottle of beer, because I want people listening to what I'm saying, not watching you drink beer."

<<>>

Hhhhmmmm.

Mr. Goldwyn apparently forgot to tell Mr. March that The Best Years of Our Lives was supposed to address this very problem of making all our former servicemen feel welcome and integrated back into society.

If March was trying to give him an acting lesson then MARCH was the one with the handicap in Miss Maven's book!

(Left to right at the piano: Harold Russell, Hoagy Carmichael, and Frederic March.

In the far background: Dana Andrews in the phone booth.)

"We got lucky with Harold Russell," said [William] Wyler [the director],"because he was an absolute natural." Goldwyn had enrolled him in acting classes, but the director insisted he ditch them. In the end, Russell compensated for lack of technique with integrity, which shone through his entire performance, even the love scenes.

<<>>

Miss Maven is pleased to report that not only Frederic March get the best actor award of the 1947 Academy Awards for The Best Years of Our Lives, but Harold Russell got TWO!

One for best supporting actor and an honorary award "for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance in The Best Years of Our Lives."

So much for Frederic March, says Miss Maven!

<<>>

You can send your thoughts and comments to Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Death Takes a Holiday

2005-11-14T17:36:00.000-08:00

"Death Takes a Holiday" isn't a film for everyone as Death wishes to take on human form to find out why he is so shunned and feared by human beings.

Miss Maven isn't surprised when she knows that most people have a healthy dislike of things they CAN see, like the IRS, police cars with lights going and doctors with thermometers in hand and eyes on your rear-end!

(Doesn't Frederic March look like he's trying to put a potato chip in his eye?!)

Frederic March's acting style is best described as the "I'm so precious I can hardly stand myself" school of acting. It can be irritating at best if not flat-out difficult to take depending on the role.

The dual role of Death/Prince Sirki in this movie fits March perfectly.

He comes to Duke Lambert (Sir Guy Standing) to announce his plan to appear as Prince Sirki and tells the duke no one is to know his real identity or he'll immediately revert to being Death and . . . .

Maven would just as soon as skip over seeing Death when he's REALLY ticked off!

Miss Maven thinks this movie is one worth watching either on cable or renting since it is a well-written script that's beautifully photographed with an excellent cast.

Maven must confess to enjoying taking back to the tv, listening to some of the lines they have!

DEATH: I am - how shall I pursue it - a sort of vagabond of space. I am the point of contact between time and eternity.

You couldn't think up a better job description?

DEATH: My holiday is just caprice - mad joke that I play on life. But what a monstrous, what a sublime joke! I, Death, do thereby take on the World, the Flesh, and the Devil!

Some joke! It sounds like a porn movie to Miss Maven and a badly-acted one at that!

DUKE LAMBERT (Sir Guy Standing): I've had a glimpse of deep waters tonight, and I didn't like it.

Just be glad you didn't have to go swimming in it a half-hour after eating!

STEPHANIE (Helen Westley): Love is music and love is poetry!

Can't you make up your mind?

ALDA (Katharine Alexander): [the clock has just chimed loudly and startled the Baron Cesarea] Midnight - and everyone's calm and collected excepting the Baron.

Miss Maven just got a look at the bar bill and she's be upset, too!

DEATH: I wish that we may never meet when you are less beautiful, and I must be less kind.

Just come over sometime right after Miss Maven gets up in the morning and has to face the Wicked Witch of the Mirror staring back at her!

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The quotes are courtesy of the Internet Movie Database at www.imdb.com.

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E-mails can be sent to Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Jean Harlow, Part 2

2005-11-13T08:06:00.000-08:00

"Saratoga" was the movie Jean Harlow was making when she died at the age of 27.

Her death was attributed to uremic poison brought on by acute nephritis but "Mama Jean" Harlow contributed by reusing to get her daughter proper medical care, claiming that it went against her Christian Scientist beliefs.

What we are left with is a mixed bag of a film.

"Saratoga" manages to pretty much overcome the problem with a great cast, story, scenery and plenty of excitement of clips of horseracing!

Walter Pidgeon becomes more foil than actor in "Saratoga" with the likes of Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Una Merkel and Hattie McDaniel!

[If Miss Maven knew how they do it, she'd have opened the newest--and hottest!--acting school in New York since Broadway became the Great White Way!!]

(Lionel Barrymore)

The basic premise of the story is that Grandpa Clayton (Barrymore) is trying to save his horse-breeding farm while his son (Jonathan Hale) and, later, his granddaughter (Harlow) try to sell their last stud [stallion].

This quickly goes by the wayside as Duke Bradley (Gable) tries to help Grandpa Clayton keep the horse AND the farm.

(Clark Gable, Cliff Edwards and Jean Harlow)

It's predictable what will happen as you watch the movie. . . . Gable and Harlow range from scrapping with each other to being just this side of affectionate and back again throughout the movie.

That they do it with such flair that you don't mind Harlow's irritating attempt to sound "upper class."

Miss Maven puts it in quotation marks because nobody sounds like that except when they are trying to sound that way in the movies! Miss Maven frequently wants to stuff marshmallows in their mouths just to shut them up until they get past the urge!

"Saratoga" only falters when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided to follow Harlow's fans by finishing the movie.

They employed a body double and possibly two different voice doubles for the few scenes that Harlow hadn't done.

Miss Maven has heard that there were those people who watched it just to see if they could figure out which scenes had Jean Harlow in them and which ones didn't.

Trust Maven. . . . It's obvious since M-G-M wouldn't pay so much to such a high-profile actress and then NOT show her face.

Miss Maven recommends "Saratoga" because it still holds up today with such moments of Clark Gable hiding under Harlow's sofa while she's forced to smoke his cigar and Hattie McDaniel taking a turn at singing "The Horse with the Dreamy Eyes!"

Not to mention all the horses throughout the movie for equine fanciers!

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You can contact Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Jean Harlow, Part 1

2005-11-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

Jean Harlow was in a class by herself, according to Edith Head's Hollywood (with Paddy Calistro; E.P. Dutton, Inc.; 1983).

On page 16:

She was Jean Harlow, a second-stringer in those days, but once Howard Hughes convinced her to bleach her hair she became a star within a year. Of course, when I worked with her I just thought of her as another actress, but I was impressed with her sensuous body and I made the most of it with white satin cut on the bias. I was afraid of how Clara [Bow] would react, since Jean really upstaged her in that slinky white gown. Most stars would have resented sharing a big scene with such a sizzling, voluptuous creature as Harlow. Not Clara. She was simply fascinated by her. I won't take credit for Harlow's screen image, but I think I'm entitled to say that what she wore in those scenes inspired others to take a second look and realize her knockout potential.

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Yes, but you have to know what to do with that slinky white knockout dress on that knockout body or you might as well be looking at Olive Oyl!

Do you really think that Howard Hughes was interested in her mind?!

Not to mention Hughes himself: He was just as good-looking as Leonard DiCaprio plus a genius IQ, a family fortune AND the cachet of being a Texan to boot!

On page 142:

Those beautiful clinging clothes that Jean Harlow wore in her day--that was sex. People don't understand that it is far more exciting to see a woman dressed in clothes that suggest gorgeous breasts and alluring hips that to see her bare bosom or buttocks. Naked bodies have very little personality. Clothes are symbols that provide identification--especially in a film. If everyone walked around without clothes, it would be very difficult for people to remember each other, or even to notice each other.

Miss Maven would still notice Mel Gibson at a distance, clothed or not!!

Besides . . . he's the only known way to turn Maven into a gibbering--but darling and precious--idiot!

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You can email Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Happy Veteran's Day!

2005-11-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven would like to salute our servicemen and servicewomen of today and tomorrow as well as those who have served our country since the USA's beginning!

Maven hopes that you all come home safe and sound to all your loved ones, knowing that the rest of us can never thank you enough!

Miss Maven would like to highlight one serviceman's tour of duty since you all are just as courageous plus just as gorgeous looking:

(Clark Gable with 8th USAAF CO Major General Ira Eaker)

Clark Gable arrived in England in April 1943 and joined the 351st Bombardment Group at Polebrook, Northhamptonshire, from where he flew some of his filming mission [sic] during bombing raids over France and Germany. He also flew with the 303 Bombardment Group from Molesworth in Cambridgeshire.

His presence and involvement were kept secret for some time because there were fears that he would be a prime target for kidnapping. He himself actually feared being captured and "put on show all over the Third Reich in a cage". It was known that Hitler was a particular fan of the star.

He is shown in the picture with fellow actor James Stewart, who served with the 445th Bombardement Group at Tibenham near Old Buckenham.

(Courtesy of www.455th.ukpc.net/tomfeise/455th/cgable.htm.)

<<>>

Our Military Rocks!!

<<>>

Your can reach Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Flying Down to Rio

2005-11-10T14:35:00.000-08:00

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire made their first movie together as a dance team in the 1933 Flying Down to Rio.

Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond were the stars of the movie, with Raul Roulien's beautiful tenor voice singing "Orchids in the Moonlight."

(Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond)

Miss Maven rates that song a show-stopper but it frequently doesn't get enough credit as it comes after Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger literally going head-to-head in the Academy Award-winning "The Carioca."

Their musical talents AND their comedic skills at least match if not over-shadow Del Rio and Raymond from the get-go.

Not to mention willingness to contort yourself for the good of the dance number, looking at that still!

Franklin Pangborn as the Hotel Manager tries to bring Raymond's band into tow with such edicts as they can't talk to the guests.

Rogers pipes up with "What if they talk to US?!"
Astaire compares Raymond's "interest" (okay, Maven agrees "lust" may be a better word!) in Del Rio to causing them to end up eating dog food.

And the cheap brands, too!

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers lead the band to a local Rio nightclub, guided by one of the locals who is proud to tell them HIS band once played Skinedectomy (know here as Schenactady!).

The high points are the production numbers, the first one that matched Astaire and Rogers dancing at their best and with a solo by Etta Moten (who only made this, Gold Diggers of 1933 and a third movie where her scenes were cut out.)

(Etta Moten)

The other was the finale of various ladies doing various things on all these planes.

Miss Maven doesn't mean for that to sound so naughty.

That's belongs to Ginger Rogers in the song called "Music Makes Me" and all the fun banter going back and forth throughout the movie.

Maven urges you to check this movie out for your own collection if you haven't already!

<><>

Miss Maven would like to hear your ideas and suggestions at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com!

Fashion in Film - Evening Gloves - What are they?

2005-11-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

We've seen evening gloves on the likes of Marilyn Monroe to Gloria Swanson to Bette Davis in the movies!

(Bette Davis,

courtesy of www.operaglvoes.com)

But what is the difference between evening gloves and any other kind?

Miss Maven bows to Miss Manners' on the subject!

[Judith Martin, Miss Manner(R) Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Warner Books, New York, 1982, page 546.]

(Rita Hyaworth,

courtesy of www.operagloves.com)

DEAR MISS MANNERS:

What are "eighteen-button gloves:?

GENTLE READER:

These are white gloves that come above the elbow and make a riveting show when the wearer slowly peels it off before she can take a drink. They are called "eighteen-button" because they have three pearl buttons at each wrist.

DEAR MISS MANNERS:

No doubt this is a stupid question and I am demonstrating my unfitness for respectable society, but WHY doesn't a pair of eighteen-button gloves have eighteen buttons on it, or even eighteen buttons a glove, for a grand total of thirty-six?

GENTLE READER:

Yes, indeed, this is a silly question, because everybody know that there are buttons and buttons, and while eighteen-button gloves have three small pearl buttons each at the musketeer (which everyone knows is the opening at the wrist), there are, indeed, eighteen buttons on each in length. That button is a standard of measurement of approximately one inch. The approximate part is because it is a French standard of measurement.

If you begin measuring at the base of the thumb, you will find that four-button gloves end about the wrist, eight-button below the elbow, ten-button about the elbow, and twenty-six the longest up to the armpit. Naturally this system only comes out right on French arms.

(Gloria Swanson,

courtesy of www.operagloves.com)

Miss Maven must confess that she has referred to the twenty-six-button gloves in private as the "be-sure-you've-used-your-deoderant-button gloves"!

(Courtesy of www.vintagefiberworks.com)

Miss Maven isn't sure if THESE gloves could have belonged to some really kinky space aliens!

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Miss Maven looks forward to your emails at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Links!

2005-11-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven has a new facet to The Old Movie Maven.

She has added links that you can find down at the lower right hand corner of this blog, between her profile and previous posts.

Maven has enjoyed them for sometime and can recommend them to you.

One thing that she should mention is that Rush Glick has a Chat Room at his www.charliechan.info that Miss Maven has attended for several years now.

We celebrated The Melbourne Cup (in Australia) this past Monday and Halloween the week before with a virtual party.

Miss Maven's good friend, Virginia, arrived in her virtual costume of The Spirit of Tresure Island from "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island"!

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Miss Maven can be reached by email at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Major and the Minor

2005-11-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

"The Major and the Minor" is a great movie but couldn't be made today for fear of running afoul of the Politically Correct Crowd!

There is absolutely nothing in this movie that you couldn't show your mother-in-law or children. . . .

Okay. You might not want to show the younger females in your family how to fake being younger to get away with stuff.

You could remind them that they don't have Edith Head to dress them but then Miss Maven will have to explain who Edith Head is.

[If you don't know who Edith Head is, she's not Marilyn Mason's girlfriend for starters! She's also not a porn star so no cute cracks about her name!]

Ms. Head was the costume designer for Paramount Studios when they made "The Major and the Minor" with Ginger Rogers.

From Edith Head's Hollywood with Paddy Calistro; E.P. Dutton, Inc.; 1983; pages 59 - 60:

. . . [It] would have been easier to turna thirty-one-year-old Ginger Rogers into a twelve-year-old if we could have done it behind the scenes. But the plot hinged on Ginger doing it herself, with the audience watching. Wally Westmore was doing the makeup and hair for the film and his problems were as complex as mine. We conferred for weeks on just what to do, and we finally decided what the working-girl look had to be so we could ease into the little-girl look. Then we presented our ideas to Billy Wilder, who was making his directing debut. Naturally, Billy had his own thoughts so I had to sketch and resketch until I had finally pleased everyone.

Ginger appeared first in a simple belted blouse that could be quickly unbelted into a low-slung middy blouse, a knee-length plaid skirt that could be hiked up above her knees easily, stockings that could be crumpled down to look like anklets, and a wide-brimmed hat that looked extremely ingenue with two blond pigtails hanging out. Ginger made the transformation perfectly, and the movie received raves from the critics. After that film she asked me to do her next films at RKO, before she returned to Paramount for Lady in the Dark.

Miss Maven wishes that SHE had that much help to look that much younger. . . . SOB!

In the meantime, while her Botox takes effect, here are some lines from "The Major and the Minor" to amuse you:

SUSAN APPLEGATE: You should be very glad I'm not 12. I was a very straightforward child. I used to spit.

Come to think of it, there are some people

now that Miss Mave would like to

spit . . . . Never Mind!

FIRST CONDUCTOR: If you're Swedish, suppose you say something in Swedish.

SUSAN APPLEGATE: I vant to be alone.

Look where it got Greta Garbo!

MAJOR PHILIP KIRBY: You know Su-Su, you're a very peculiar child.

SUSAN APPLEGATE: You bet I am.

And Miss Maven has stayed that way

and enjoyed every moment of it!

CADET CLIFFORD OSBORNE: Well, the bus is here. The zombies have arrived.

SUSAN APPLEGATE: Who?

Cadet CLIFFORD OSBORNE: [disdainfully] The girls from Miss Shackleford's school.

CADET LIEUTENANT MILLER: We use them for women.

[PSSST, Bob!! That's not a zombie!!

Miss Maven doesn't know what it is

but could you get it out of here,

please?!?!]

You should see what almost passed for

dates for Miss Ma . . . . Never mind!

And now for Robert Benchley's classic:

MR. OSBORNE: Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?

Miss Maven won't settle for anything less than a

champagne punch, no matter how she feels like

somebody's done that to her when she's been

drinking it!

Whether Ginger Rogers really looks like she's 12 in this movie is debatable but she has the attitude down pat. At least for 1942!

And who couldn't fall in love with her co-star, Ray Milland?!

Miss Maven rates this as at least a mustsee!

Oh, nooo!

The botox is taking efffext.

Ooopsh!

My mouths gowin nummm lsdllfdklresseefkr!

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Please go directly to www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html

before Miss Maven completely embarrasses herself!

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Please send cards of sympathy and condolences to Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Charlie Chan in the Flesh

2005-11-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

I've met Charlie Chan, the Chinese detective, in the flesh!

It was on August 7th, 2005, when I went to Dallas (Texas) with Lisa, a fellow Chan Fan, to meet Inspector Chan, expert in bloodstain pattern.

He was as knowledgeable, professional, and charming as ever but in disguise . . . as a Detective Constable on the Forensic Services Unit for the Niagara Regional Police Service in Canada.

He's Craig Moore and he was in Dallas attending the 90th Annual Educational Conference for the International Association for the Identification.

Craig was kind enough to give us each our own copies of his handbook he wrote for the three-day workshop he gave on bloodstain analysis.

I could understand Lisa getting a copy since she had sent him a copy of Charlie Chan at the Race Track with Chan lecturing on the same subject.

Craig used two stills from the movie as part history and part illustration in his handbook on how knowledge and interest in blood patterns developed over time and history.

We were both fascinated to learn that Craig did Charlie Chan one better. . . . Craig developed and patented a demonstration aid, a model design, to help jurors and students to more easily understand the theory of how bloodstain patterns occur in crimes~~how the blood pattern relates to the perpetrator~~for the countless times Craig has testified in court on the subject.

He gave a great deal of credit to Herbert Leon MacDonell. [That's not a misspelling. There's only one "n" in Mr. MacDonell's name!]

Herb MacDonell had taught students of blood pattern analysis (BPA) like Craig for 30+ years.

We also appreciated Craig for telling us about Mr. MacDonell as an inspiration to his students to carry on his "knowledge and similar desire to achieve more than the status quo."

The quote is from Craig Moore but Lisa and I felt that he could have just as easily been talking about Charlie Chan!

Craig began his handbook for his workshop with Genesis (Capter 4, Verse 10) to start showing the cnnection of bloodstain paterns to a committed crime.

His several references to books on Germanic law show his theory as to how the writers of"Charlie Chan at the Race Track" (and therefore Chan himself!) could have learned about bloodstain patters.

[It also reminded me of scenes S.S. Van Dine wrote in his Philo Vance stories called "The Greene Murder Case" and "The Casino Murder Case." Their solutions involved libraries of crimes and law in German.]

Craig also quoted William Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

MacBeth has stabbed King Duncan and says, "What hands are here! Ha! They pluck out my eyes. Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hands?" ("MacBeth," Act II, Scene II.)

Sherlock Holmes ". . . Pointing to numerous gouts and splashes of blood, which lay all around. . . . Then of course, this belongs to a second individual--presumably the murderere. . . . " ("A Study in Scarlet," Part 1, Chapter 3)

Craig also mentioned that there are several designs similar to his but Craig's model is not only patented here and in Canada but used by more than two dozen agencies like the Houston Police Department her in my home state of Texas!

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Lisa and I thought of a fellow Chan Fan who lives up in Canada, Jillian Stone, who is a former Royal Canadian Mounted Policeperson because we are so proud of knowing two fine people who are such incredible role models of upholding what is right and good in both Canada and the United States.

"Thank you so much!" (Charlie Chan, of course!)

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A crime scene for dummy noir fans, go to

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html.

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You can send Miss Maven e-mails at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

All About Eve

2005-11-04T13:45:00.000-08:00

There is only one dress that most people associate with "All About Eve": The off-the-shoulder cocktail dress that Bette Davis wore.

Edith Head discusses how it came about in her Edith Head's Hollywood (with Paddy Calistro; E.P. Dutton, Inc.; New York; 1983; page 93):

Bette Davis is a perfectionist when it comes to costumes. So am I. That's why we work together so well. She tests her clothes, she takes time with the fittings to make sure everything works well for the requirements of the script, and she discusses any problems long before she goes on camera. But there was a major exception in All About Eve. The off-the-shoulder dress for the big party scene was an accident. My original sketch had a square neckline and a tight bodice. I had extremely high hopes for this dress because the fabric, a brown gros de Londres (a heavy silk), photographs magnificently in black and white, and it was trimmed in rich brown sable.

(Left to right: Anne Baxter, Bette Davis,

Marilyn Monroe, and Georrge Sanders)

Because we were working on such a tight deadline, the dress was made up the night before Bette was scheduled to wear it. i went in early the day of the filming to make sure the dress was pressed and camera-ready. There was Bette, already in the dress, looking quizzically at her own reflection in the mirror. I was horrified. The dress didn't fit at all. The to of the tree-quarter-length sleeves had a fullness created by pleats, but someone had miscalculated and the entire bodice and neckline were too big. There was no time to save anything, and a change would delay the shooting. I told Bette not to worry, that I would personally tell Joe Mankiewicz what happenened.

(A very young Marilyn Monroe

from "All About Eve")

I had just about reached the door, my knees feeling as if they were going to give out, when Bette told me to turn around and look. She pulled the neckline off her shoulders, shook one shoulder sexily, and said, "Don't you like it better like this, anyway?" It looked wonderful and I could have hugged her. In fact, I think I did. With a few simple stitches I secured the neckline in place so she could move comfortably, and she left for the set. Above all, I did not want to delay the shooting.

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How come nothing like that ever happens to Miss Maven when SHE gets dresses. . . . (Sob!)

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For a sure thing, try

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html.

On the Road with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby

2005-11-03T14:20:00.000-08:00

Edith Head loved working on the Road pictures with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. She talked about dressing them for the series of classic movies in her book Edith Head's Hollywood (with Paddy Calistro, E.P. Dutton, Inc., New York, 1983, page 48):

Bob loved dressing up for the films. He didn't mind wearing a burnoose or a turban or whatever I wanted to put him in. The funnier and more bizarre it was, the better he liked it. Bing was the opposite. He loathed dressing up. I don't think Bing really cared about playing any character but himself. His movie roles were really usually variations of Crosby the Crooner. With his singing voice, that was enough. Satorially he preferred simple clothes: a sport shirt and slacks. It pained him to put on any headgear more exotic than a Panama hat or a golf cap. He wasn't unpleasant about it, just unhappy. He couldn't really have the fun with his get ups that Bob had. I doubt if anyone was ever conscious of the fact that Bob was always more amusingly dressed than Bing. I always noticed because I knew of Bing's aversion to costumes.

Bob was always enthusiastic about Dottie's [Dorothy Lamour's] costumes, too. I thought they were pretty fantastic myself, eve if I did design them. She had put on a few curves since The Jungle Princess and had a more mature, sexy image in the Road roles. In some scenes she was breathtakingly beautiful and in others her costumes were as ridiculous as Bob's. But she carried them off perfectly. Bob was wide-eyed over her costumes and always made her feel beautiful.

Bob has a special place in my heart for what he did for my costumes in the Road pictures. It was his enthusiasm that really inspired everyone else to get into the spirit of the Roads. There were chaotic plots and gags and lavish sets and great music, but Bob Hope pulled it all together.

Miss Maven feels like being in Never Neverland when thinking about these movies, the actors . . . just everything about them!

So get on the road and get 'em!

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But make time to also check out

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html.

Lady Sleuths of the Silver Screen--Torchy Blane

2005-11-02T16:00:00.000-08:00

Torchy Blane!

Don't you love the name?!

Torchy Blane!

You don't know whether it's a new lamp for camping or a great blues singer out of New Orleans!

Torchy Blane was a character in a series of nine movies that Warners Studio made in the late thirties about a nosy reporter who was played by Glenda Farrell.

Farrell is perhaps best known today as the nosy reporter in "Mystery of the Wax Museum" that starred Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray.

Glenda Farrell's character in "Mystery . . ." was Florence Dempsey, straight out of the hard-boiled school of wise-cracking females of the time. Farrell is ironically better served in this 1933 movie because she's not only playing a woman working in a man's world . . . she's successful at it.

Plus Florence Dempsey comes across as a stronger character than Torchy Blane when Dempsey simply decides she wants to get married at the end of the movie.

Blane goes through nine movies alternating between whining, cajoling and arguing with her detective boyfriend about getting married like she's schizophrenic and torn between her job and marriage.

You don't know who to hit upside the head-or more often--Torchy Blane or her fiance, Steve MacBride, for putting up with her!

The plots of the pictures range from Torchy trying to solve a murder set against a nightclub atmosphere ("Smart Blonde" with Jane Wyman in a bit part) to prison life ("Torchy Plays with Dynamite" with Jane Wyman now playing Torchy Blane).

They even have Lola Lane as "Torchy Blane in Panama" as the next to last entry before ". . . Dynamite."

All the movies are well-done with Warner's usual quality maintained throughout, even when it gets a mite far-fetched~~[SPOILER]~~like when the good guys show up in a submarine at the end of "Torchy Blane in Chinatown."

Miss Maven is still giggling at how they got from Chinese burial tablets to Navy Subs!!

[Note to Charlie Chan fans: This movie has Victor Sen Yung (Jimmy Chan) in a bit part as a Chinese entertainer.

Maybe that will make the Politically Correct Asian-American group happy that he was so beautifully typecast!]

Miss Maven rates the Torchy Blane series as at least a mustsee.

You're bound to want at least some of them for your own video library, if for no other reason than you can take out your frustrations by throwing popcorn, etc., at Torchy when she gets whiny about getting marriage!

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Then you get to clean up and go see

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html.

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Send your cards and letters to Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Whozat?

2005-11-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven would like to post something different today, a cartoon from www.basilrathbone.net:

Miss Maven can name Basil Rathbone and Carol Channing in the lower left-corner plus Groucho Marx, Mickey Rooney and probably Liza Minnelli and Jose Ferrer.

Some of the others . . . ?

Please let Miss Maven know if you can name any of the others at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com!

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When you're finished, you might try www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html!

Arsenic and Old Lace

2005-10-31T14:30:00.000-08:00

Miss Maven has come full circle from "The Werewolf of London" (and "She-Wolf of London") at the beginning of October and now we're at "Arsenic and Old Lace!"

Why full circle?

The "hero" of "Werewolf . . ." was Henry Hull whose sister, Josephine Hull, plays Aunt Abby Brewster in "Arsenic . . . !

(You can check the Hull Family at www.preservehollywood.org.)

Besides, "Arsenic and Old Lace" makes a great Halloween movie with lots of atmosphere, plenty of laughs and great good acting all around.

Cary Grant plays Mortimer Brewster, a novelist with novel ideas about matrimony should be a subject that sane people should avoid at all cost.

He "comes a croppper" in more ways than one in this 1944 film.

Priscilla Lane plays Elaine Harper, the girl next door to his aunts whom Mortimer Brewster falls in love with.

Unfortunately for Mortimer, things go from matrimony to worse when they DO marry, just not the way Mortimer thought! Especially when "Teddy" Brewster does his Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill up the stairs, complete with bugle!

Jean Adair, who played Aunt Martha Brewster, helped an ill vaudevillian named Archie Leach (Cary Grant!) back to health in the mid-twenties so it was old-home week for them on this film.

Grant sits on a tombstone in the cemetery between the Harper and Brewster homes in one scene and you can see "Archie Leach" on a nearby stone!

Dr. Einstein is played by Peter Lorre who had a little help in one scene: He falls into an open window seat and tries to light a match. The wire that's used to power the light can be seen coming out of his sleeve.

Release of this movie was delayed some three years because of the success of the stage play on which it was based.

Ironically, it was the play still being on Broadway that led to Raymond Massey in the role of Jonathan Brewster since his character goes homicidal every time someone says he looks like Boris Karloff. Karloff was playing the same role on stage as Massey was playing him in the movie!

(Raymond Massey, Cary Grant and Peter Lorre)

Miss Maven recommends that this movie might be okay for children to watch but their parents will get the most out of this gottahave picture!

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After you've seen "Arsenic and Old Lace," try

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html.

Miss Maven, Aunt Battie and Slo, Mo and Larry and their Fraternity Ghosts want to wish you a Spooktacular Halloween!

You can reach them at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Uninvited

2005-10-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

Aunt Battie here, still substituting for Miss Maven who has family visiting so Auntie gets to pick today's movie!

One of her favorites is The Uninvited, 1944, with Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Gail Russell, Donald Crisp, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Dorothy Stickey, Barbara Everett and Alan Napier.

It is discussed in Classics of the Horror Film by William Everson (Citadel Press Book, New York, 1974, page 162):

In any event, the audience acceptance of ghosts on this level [World War II] undoubtedly paved the way for a romantic, but far more serious ghost story, in The Uninvited. . . .

Like so many directorial "first," this initial film by Lewis Allen remains far and away the best film he ever made. It is also quite probably the movies' best ghost story, rivaled certainly by the mirror sequence in Dead of Night, but generally quite superior to The Innocents, The Haunting [1963], The Legend of Hell House and the very few other movies that have had the integrity to take their phantoms seriously without explaining it all away as did this film's followup. The Unseen, an admirable thriller, until its last-reel collapse.

To be sure, there are flaws in the film. In its determination to avoid mere sensation, it wisely underplays, and builds up a genuinely frightening web of intangibles which cannot be explained away. . . . But on the other hand, in avoiding visual horror it avoids most of the other visual elements too; too many things are talked about that could have been shown graphically and excitingly while still keeping the supernatural content to suggestion. . . . (The exception is the eventual materialization of the ghost as a shadowy white mist. Some have felt this to be an unsubtle surrender to a need for at least one special effect, but this seems an unfair criticism.)

Aunt Battie would like to recommend The Uninvited as a gottahave on her niece Maven's Rating System.

Auntie's assistants (Slo, Mo and Larry) would like to watch it for Halloween but they and their fraternity brothers run scared out of the house to go trick-or-treating as soon as she starts the movie!!

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For a good movie for anytime of the year try

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html.

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Emails can be sent to Miss Maven, Aunt Battie,

Slo, Mo and Larry at the oldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

2005-10-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

I am Miss Maven's Aunt Battie, taking over temporarily for her since she has some out-of-state visitors through Halloween.

The first tribute that Maven wanted mentioned was "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein."

She wanted to credit www.imdb.com for the following tidbits!

Glenn Strange was playing the Frankenstein monster, but during shooting one day he tripped over a camera cable and broke his ankle. Lon Chaney, Jr., (playing the Wolf Man) wasn't working that day, so he put on the Frankenstein makeup/outfit and filled in for Strange in one scene where Dr. Mornay gets thrown through the window. So Chaney wound up playing two monsters in this movie. . . .

During the final chase scene, when Bud and Lou are standing in front of a door and the Frankenstein monster punches through it, Lou was off his mark and got hit on the jaw.

The animation sequences of Dracula-as-a-bat and Dracula-changing-from-bat-to-Dracula were done by Universal-International's animator, Walter Lantz (of Woody Woodpecker fame).

Marks the first time Universal-International stopped using the effective but lengthy application time of make-up artist Jack Pierce for the monster make-up, using Bud Westmore and Jack Kevan's more cost-effective rubber appliances.

This film was such a hit that it was reportedly Univeral-International's second highest grossing film of the year.

The scene in which Wilbur (Lou Costello) is unknowingly sitting on the Franenstein Monster's (Glenn Strange) lap required multiple takes. The scene allowed Costello to improvise wildly, which caused Strange to constantly break up laughing during the takes. . . .

Three actors in this film had previously played the Frankenstein Monster. Aside from Glenn Strange who actually plays the role again, both Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr., had experience under the flat top as well.

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And that isn't even ALL of the entries for "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein!"

Aunt Battie and her assistants (Slo, Mo, and Larry) will enjoy watching it again and looking for these juicy bits!

And for more fun try

www.trilloandsuede.com/movielink.html!

House of Dracula

2005-10-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

"The House of Dracula" (1944) is the last of our Universal classic monster movies.

Larry Talbot finally finds his cure and lives happily ever after. . . .

And then Abbott and Costello came alone four years later with their homage to Universal's monsters!

Wouldn't you know that the studio gave it a reunion of sorts while saving themselves a bit of money on actors and all?!

Shots of the Frankenstein Monster stumbling around the exploding laboratory at the film's climax were actually lifted from the film "The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). In the long shots, stuntman Eddie Parker doubles for Lone Chaney, Jr. (Who played the Monster in that film).

Footage of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster from Bride of Frankenstein (1935) appears during a dream sequence, intermixed with footage of Glenn Strange in the same role.

This is the only film in which the character of Lawrence Talbot sports a moustache. (www.imdb.com)

Miss Maven would also like to share an interview with Jane Adams who played Nina in ". . . Dracula" from House of Dracula, edited by Philip Riley, MagicImage FilmBooks, 1993, page 23:

What was the atmosphere like on the set of "House of Dracula"?

Well, I was familiar with Onslow Stevens (as Dr. Franz Edelmann)and John Carradine (as Count Dracula), who acted on the stage at Pasadena Playhouse . . . really fine actors. On "House of Dracula," my memory is that they were ALL very serious actors, and they were sitting around, studying their scripts. The makeup was uncomfortable (for them, particularly), and my cast weighed a lot; it was made of Plaster of Paris, before they used plastics. It was all Auntie a serious thing - the script was heavy and serious.

There's a famous candid shot of you posing and laughing with Glenn Strange as Frankenstein's Monster.

Oh yes! He was a VERY nice man. EVERYBODY was on that set. Martha O'Driscoll (Miliza) was very nice, very helpful to me, because I didn't really know anything abut movie-making, having trained in stage technique at the Playhouse.

So, all in all, I just had a very rich experience. It was a great set, and a great studio.

Would that we all could have been happy little flies on the walls of THAT set, with Lon Chaney's sons visiting,don't you think?!

Miss Maven

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Have you tried a dummy noir movie lately?

Here it is at

www.trilloandsuede/movielink.html!

<><>

Send your cards and letters to Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemven@yahoo.com.

House of Frankenstein

2005-10-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

Miss Maven has some tasty tidbits for fans of "The House of Frankenstein!"

For starters, "A segment of this film was released to the 8mm home movie market by Castle films, under the title 'Doom of Dracula.' " (www.imdb.com)

Miss Maven wonders . . . if "House of Frankenstein" wasn't jazzed up enough for the 8mm home market, why didn't they use it to begin with?!

Or does that go with the goofs that imdb.com also mentions for the film?

When Dracula is thrown from the carriage, and looks up the hill to where his casket lays, half his mustache is missing.

When Larry Talbot transforms into the Wolf Man for the final time, his hands aren't made up. This can be spotted before he crashes though the glass door.

At Dracula's last moment, he clutches at this coffin with his bare hand - which suddenly has a white glove on it as he dies and turns skeletal.

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Poor Drac's mother had tried so hard to teach him that a gentleman ALWAYS had a fresh supply of clean gloves because you never know WHEN you might be in an accident!

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And coming up with something so small like trivia for so large a creature as the Frankenstein's Monster almost puts Miss Maven into a faint!

Glenn Strange became the four actor to play the Monster in Universal's Franenstein series. The actor who played the original Monster, Boris Karloff, was also present on the film playing the role of Dr. Niemann. Being on the set Karloff, was able to personally coach Strange in the way the Monster should be played.

Despite the title, this is the first of the Universal Frankenstein films in which a member of the Frankenstein family does not appear.

Bela Lugosi was passed over the role of Dracula, partly because of negotiations, partly because the studio was unhappy with his performance in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" . . . where he portrayed the Frankenstein Monster; and the executives decided to edit out all the Monster's dialogue from the final version. [Also from www.imdb.com]

The title "House of . . ." refers to the ruins/house owned by Ludwig Frankestein, the 2nd son of Henry Frankenstein (portrayed by Cedric Hardwicke) in the "The Ghost of Frankenstein". It's also the same 'house' where Lawrence Talbot discovers the Monster in ice in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man"; and, of course, where Nieman discovers the Wolfman [sic] and the Monster in this film.

Originally Kharis the mummy, another Universal "classic monster', was to be in the movie but was removed because of budget restrictions.

Miss Maven, her Aunt Battie and her dear Auntie's assistants would have paid much Halloween candy to see THAT Battle Royale with the Mummy as well as those other monsters!

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For a change of pace, try

www.trilloandsuede/movielink.html.

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If you have any goofs, trivia or alternate versions,

please send them to Miss Maven at

theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

2005-10-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

"Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" was in a class by itself according to Denis Gifford in his "A Pictorial History of Horror Movies," Hamlyn, New York, page 141:

"Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (1942) was conceived as a battle of the giants! The idea was vintage Laemmle: instead of teaming stars, team monsters. But Universal had set themselves a problem: both the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man had last been played by the same actor, Lon Chaney. Chaney would let no one else play his Baby, so who to cast for the Monster? The problem was soon solved. Lugosi's part in the saga, Ygor, was now dead, his brain in the Monster's head, his voice in the Monster's mouth. What more natural than have Lugosi play the Monster? If he was still recognizable under [John] Pierce's makeup then that was simply Ygor showing through! Besides, there was an element of destiny that the fans would not have forgotten. Lugosi had rejected the original role twelve years earlier. Lugosi could no longer afford to be so choosy. He brought tot the Monster his own curious interpretation, a hissing evil that snarled through the makeup. His stretch-armed strutting seems senseless in context, yet was not so in shooting. For as filmed Lugosi's Monster is blind as a bat. [They goofed in giving Ygor's brain to the Monster. They had different blood types that damaged the Monster's optic nerves. Miss Maven couldn't make this up!] Pre-release shortening by the studio removed the reason for Lugosi's climatic close-upped smile: Patrick Knowles has not only restored the Monster's strength, but his sight, too!

There's a fun goof to catch during the fight between the Wolf Man and the Monster at the end of the movie.

Watch carefully when the Wolf Man gets up on the big piece of laboratory machinery and jumps the Monster below. You'll see fine wires pulling the machinery forward as Lon Chaney jumps!

That reminds Maven of what the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) has to say about "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man":

During Larry Talbot's first transformation into the Wolf Man, he goes from wearing light-colored night clothes to a dark shir and pants. When he awakens the next morning, he's back wearing the pajamas.

When Franenstein's Monster is first reveled behind the ice wall, his face is completely different than when he is shown walking with Talbot in the next scene. This is due to a different actor playing the role during the first sequence . . . .

When the monster is being recharged in Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory by Dr. Kettering, he is clearly enunciating the words, "Thank you, Dr. Kettering!" The line was deleted from the final film.

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Miss Maven loves to collect goofs and trivia about our classic movies so please send them to her at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com.

The Ghost of Frankenstein

2005-10-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

Working on "The Ghost of Frankenstein" could be a bloody mess~~and in the worst way!

According to Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com):

It was reported that the rubber headpiece used for the Frankenstein monster make-up was very uncomfortable for Lone Chaney, Jr. to wear. It sat directly on his forehead and he constantly complained. Once he asked for it to be removed. Angry ad frustrated when no one listened, he ripped it off himself, tearing open a bloody gash in his forehead. Production on the film was shut down for a couple of days.

By the way, imdb.com made a boo-boo themselves in the Goof department for "Ghost . . . ." They call Dr. Frankenstein's daughter (played by Evelyn Ankers) Elsa in the cast of credits but Ilsa in the section for Goofs. Even Ilona Massey is called Elsa in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man!"

To continue with goofs:

The first time we see the else-up for the wall plaque for "Dr. Frankenstein - Diseases of the Mind" outside his "mansion", it is hardly in such a place. If you look close to the left of the sign you'll see a ladder, wires on the ground, palm trees and a station wagon type of car.

The dramatic shadow cast by the monster's hand when first discovered by Ygor in the sulfur pit comes from a light source completely at odds with the overhead light shining down into the sulfur pit in which we see the monster encased.

When the monster appears outside Ilse's [Elsa's] window, it casts a nearly full-body shadow on the library wall, with one arm fully visible, but in the close-ups of the monster has the arm in question obscured behind the window frame. Later in the same sequence, Ygor pops up over the Monster's shoulder, yet the shadow cast seconds later shows only the monster.

Miss Maven will never be able to watch "The Ghost of Frankenstein" in quite the same way again!

Especially when they obviously used a "recuperating patient" double for the Monster after surgery.

Anyone who can tell me just who that is in all the gauze-wrappings can contact Miss Maven at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com!