Teacher, Teacher

Is it just me, or does Clark not look particularly thrilled to be there? Not his brightest shining hour...

Prohibition in Curls

It's her birthday, making her - depending on what source one prefers - anything from 111 to 107.

Stars on their Days Off

On a fine summer afternoon, here we see Spangler Brugh, Ruby Stevens, and William Gable, taking a break from their golf game in a snapshot by Jane Peters.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Folly of the Blonde

One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Marion Davies turned 116 earlier this week, so I thought it would be nice to showcase one of her later efforts today...

O Captain My Captain!

Mr. Muscato and I are going boating soon.  I know it's unlikely, but I can't help hoping that the captain will resemble Clark, maybe just a little...

I Don't Mean Frisco...

Pardon the colorization on this one - sadly, it seems to be all the gods of Youtube will offer up to mark this, the 112th anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake.

Here, of course, we have the potent combo of Jeannette MacDonald and Clark Gable in MGM's 1936 blockbuster film of the tragedy (as it was not just a disaster pic but also the usual MGM love-trio plot, they were joined by Spencer Tracy; we don't see him here).  Each does what they do best:  Jeanette sings (the title song of course, several times), and Clark looks at her with that just-this-side-of-a-leer of his that telegraphs quite clearly that his intentions are intriguingly far from honorable.

I'm especially fond of dear Mr. Ethan Mordden's description of Jeanette in the middle of this sequence - he says she turns up wearing "the kind of hat that a banshee would wear to a bris," and that about sums it all up for me.

Jeanette isn't, I think, as fondly remembered as she might be.  She made too many pictures with that great big hunk of ham-scented wood, Nelson Eddy, and at some point seems to have lost the spark that's so obvious here and have started taking herself seriously as Big Diva on the lot.  Lost in the change was the slightly off-center, frequently naughty lady who had been such a huge hit in some of the earliest smash musicals at Paramount and who then moved on up to Metro.  We certainly catch her here, especially when she lets her audience take the melody and lets loose with a kind of opera-meets-bebop ad lib, during which she carries out a very refined version of minstrel-show trucking.

Seconds later, you know, the whole place goes to hell (a great sequence).  Somewhere across town, in a less fictional version of the city, the young Miss Alice B. Toklas (a year out from her fateful meeting with Gertrude in Paris) wakes her father and says, "the city has been rocked by an earthquake and is now on fire!"  "Ah," says he, "That will give us a black eye in the east."  Well, you can see why she left.

Birthday King: Dear Mr. Gable

The King of Hollywood would have been 109 today. We catch him here in a domestic moment with the third Mrs. Gable, aka Carole Lombard, and a couple of small friends.

It's always seemed to me that the light went out in Gable after Lombard's death, and except for the rare spark here and there (and some deeply touching moments in his last film, The Misfits - Monroe's influence?), something about losing her (and the War, I suppose, and just passing time) quenched what it was that had made him such a Total Star.

Sharing the day? Well, it's a mixed bunch - the great Victor Herbert alongside Saturday Night Live also-ran Garrett Morris; the inimitable Incomparable Hildegarde and byproduct-of-fame Lisa Marie Presley; two Very Different Divas, the superlative Renata Tebaldi and subculture superstar Exene Cervenka; and two of the more mordant talents of the Anglophone world, Miss Muriel "Jean Brodie" Spark and Terry "the Pepperpot Python" Jones.

Oh, and another lady who will shortly merit a post all her own. Don't say you haven't been warned...

Clark

Gable. He made me love him.

They Met at MGM

Aren't they spectacular? That's what stars look like, kids.

What I don't understand is how they could have made a picture together that I have literally never heard of. Granted, it's not reputed to be in the top few of either of their oeuvres, but still: it's Roz and Clark. Not to mention Peter Lorre, Jessie Ralph, and my favorite smarmy 30s ethnique, Eduardo Cianelli, all directed by Clarence Brown, art directed by Cedric Gibbons, and gowned (well, at least Roz and Miss Ralph) by Adrian.

It's called They Met in Bombay, which certainly sounds promising.


It sounds pretty diverting, too; the leads are rival jewel thiefs, it features exotic settings (the title city, followed by a chase across the China Seas to Hong Kong), and it even has a patriotic twist when Clark reforms and ends up a war hero.

It sounds like a kind of combination of a screwball caper like Palm Beach Story or Jewel Robbery combined with In Which We Serve, but how bad can a 1941 MGM A-feature like this be? Especially if it features a stateroom-surprise scene?

Not to mention the prospect of Roz in a very Sylvia-Fowler-recalling hooded frock, Clark reprising his It Happened One Night deshabille, and Peter Lorre in yellowface?

Has anybody seen it? Is it a hidden demi-gem or something worth giving a miss? Enquiring minds want to know!

In a Kingdom by the Sea

"The Kings of Hollywood," by Slim Aarons, 1957

Proof positive that Old Hollywood had it nailed, glamourwise: even Van Heflin looks fab, although I think Coop may have had a drop too much. Wouldn't you like to have spent New Year's Eve at Romanoff's, once upon a time?

Dear Mr. Gable

The King. Just because.