Monday, April 29, 2013

From my collection: William Cabanne

A Paramount contract player from the early 1940s, William Cabanne hailed from New York, NY, and died at Newport Beach, CA age 72 in 1992. I have a sneaking suspicion, but no actual proof, that he was the son of prolific B movie hack W. Christy Cabanne (1888-1950).

From my collection: Jean Ames

Starlet Jean Ames, according to the IMDb, was born in New York, NY, in 1919 and enjoyed a brief 1941-'43 career in films. In one, the Ida Lupino starrer THE HARD WAY (1943), her character was listed as "pudgy girl."

Sunday, April 28, 2013

From my collection: "The Other" Doris Day

Yes, before "our" Doris Day burst onto the Technicolor screens in ROMANCE OF THE HIGH SEAS in 1948 there had been another, older, Doris Day, a Republic Pictures starlet who appeared opposite Roy Rogers in THE SAGA OF DEATH VALLEY (1939). For the sake of completion, if nothing else, this Doris Day was under contract to Republic from September 29, 1939 until January 28, 1940, after which she spent another year or so in pictures playing background roles. The Hempstead, NY, native died at Huntington Beach, CA, in 1998. She was 88.

From my collection: Irene Coleman

"Miss Chicago of 1931" and a Broadway showgirl, Irene Coleman was one of the "noises" in The Three Stooges' famous MEN IN BLACK (1935) but then spent the remainder of her career decorating the background of more forgettable fare. Coleman's career seems to have lasted until 1942. She died in Santa Monica, CA, as Irene Coleman Andrews, in 1975. The Nashua, NH, born performer was 61.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

From my collection: Lucia Carroll

I am adding a new series of posts with photos of performers that I know very little about and/or am just too lazy to research in depth. But now these photos will turn up on a simple google search of the name and I suppose there is some value in that.

The opener, Lucia Carroll, gave her birth year as 1916 and enjoyed a starlet turned bit player/extra career that lasted ca. 1940-1955. 1940-'41 she was under contract to Warners and became one of a coterie of starlets voted a 1941 "Baby Star," the studio attempting to resurrect a 1922-1934 tradition of selecting "promising newcomers," the erstwhile WAMPAS BABY STARS. Since these particular newcomers all just happened to be Warner contract players, the whole thing was considered nothing but an in-house publicity gimmick. Of the girls, Joan Leslie was deemed the most promising, an easy enough prediction since Warners was grooming her to star opposite Jimmy Cagney in YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942). Miss Carroll, in contrast, was shoehorned into NAVY BLUES (1941) with Ann Sheridan, the "Oomph Girl." Lucia joined 5 other starlets, including future serial queen Kay Adridge, to become the "Navy Blue Sextette," performing more publicity around the country than actually appearing in the film itself.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Arleen Whelan (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film of ..."

20th Century-Fox saddled red-headed Arleen Whelan, a former Hollywood manicurist, with playing the female love interest in KIDNAPPED (1938), a character never imagined by Robert Louis Stevenson. Arleen had to "make love" to a miscast, aging, Warner Baxter, as Scottish renegade Alan Breck, and the results were miserable. She hightailed it to Broadway after several uneventful trips to Fox's B-movie factory but returned to Hollywood later in the 1940s and became something of a regular in Westerns. Whelan was married three times, including actor Alexander D'Arcy, and spent her retirement at Dana Point, CA.

RAIDERS OF OLD CALIFORNIA (Republic, 1957) D: Albert C. Gannaway. CAST: Jim Davis, Arleen Whelan (Julie Johnson), Faron Young, Marty Robbins, Lee Van Cleef. The second of two Westerns filmed on location at Kanab, UT, and released by Republic (the other was TTHE BADGE OF MARSHALL, also featuring Davis and Whelan). RAIDERS OF OLD CALIFORNIA was originally intended to be in color, which certainly would have helped what is really a sub-par effort from a waning studio that used to be a proud Western genre specialist.


Friday, April 5, 2013

Lex Barker ( from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film of ...")

Despite the fact that he had been Hollywood's tenth TARZAN, to a whole generation of kids in the German-speaking world Lex Barker will forever be identified with pulp fiction writer Karl May’s Fennimore Cooper-inspired "Old Shatterhand" "westerns" filmed in such out-of-the-way places as Germany's Black Forest and Yugoslavia. From a New England family with a proud lineage, the handsome, blond Barker entered films in 1945 after some off-Broadway work and a tour of duty in World War II. He took over the Tarzan mantle from Johnny Weissmuller in 1948 but was rather more known for a hectic private life that included brief marriages to MGM stars Arlene Dahl and Lana Turner. In her book "Detour," Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane accuses an alcoholic Barker of molesting her, but other accounts dismiss Crane's claims and instead describe him as an "extremely gentle, noble and openhearted man to the people close to him." When Hollywood offers became scarce, Barker merely rolled with the punches and reclaimed his stardom in Germany where, in 1966, he was awarded a Bambi Award as the nation's "most popular foreign actor." Yet, even the long-lasting love affair with "Old Shatterhand" eventually ended and Barker's career finally waned. Separated from his fifth wife, Tia, he was making a living as a tennis instructor when he suffered a fatal heart attack while out strolling on Manhattan's Upper East Side on May 11, 1974. He was 54. When told of his death, former wife Lana Turner is reported to have quipped, “What took him so long?”

AOOM (Spain, 1970) D: Gonzalo Suárez. CAST. Lex Barker (Ristol), Teresa Gimpera, Luis Ciges, Romy, Julián Ugarte, Bill Dyckes, Gila Hodgkinson. Barker stars as a dead actor whose soul enters the body of a strangled woman. Director Suárez was a well-known sportswriter and Aoom marked the second and last in his proposed series of 10 "Iron Films."



Olga Baclanova (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film of ...")

"Baclanova, you go out!" Polish Pola Negri reportedly screamed when encountering Russian Olga Baclanova on the back lot at Paramount. Both were equally tempestuous and both were sponsored by powerful industry insiders -- the director Ernst Lubitsch (Negri) and theatrical entrepreneur Morris Gest (Baclanova) -- but Negri was a genuine star whereas Olga seemed destined to play all the roles considered too insubstantial by her rival, including the waterfront floozy in Josef Von Sternberg's still extant DOCKS OF NEW YORK (1928). But unlike Negri, Baclanova, who hailed from the Moscow Art Theatre, earned her chief claim to fame in a sound film. As Cleopatra in FREAKS (1932), she was that most avaricious of Midway femme fatales, a beautiful bareback rider conspiring with the strongman to separate the side show midget from his money. The creatures of the title, all real-life sideshow performers, take a horrible revenge by turning Cleopatra into one of their own: a legless, one-eyed "duck woman." The least likely production ever to emerge from staid Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, FREAKS remains as shocking today as it must have appeared in 1932, too grotesque, really, and in some strange way too moving to claim camp status. Baclanova's screen career was hurt beyond repair by the bad reviews but she continued to perform with a nightclub act and on the legitimate stage before retiring to Vesey, Switzerland, where she died in 1974 age 78.

The final film of Olga Baclanova:

CLAUDIA (20th Century-Fox, 1943) D: Edmund Goulding. CAST: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Ina Claire, Reginald Gardiner, Olga Baclanova (Madame Dorushka), Jean Howard. Baclanova repeated her 1941 Broadway role as an eccentric Russian singer in this charming tale of a young wife (McGuire, in her screen debut) coping with a new husband (Robert Young), a rural farm and the separation from her society mother (Claire) and life in the Big City. Ironically, the role of Madame Dorushka had first been offered to Pola Negri, who turned it down as too insignificant.


Thursday, April 4, 2013

Gertrude Astor (from my unpublished FADEOUT: The Final Film of ...)

Tall, handsome rather than beautiful, and always dressed to the nines (she and the equally statuesque Lilyan Tashman were for years known as Hollywood's most fashionable), Gertrude Astor vamped her way through more than 300 films in a screen career that lasted from the early days of Universal in 1915 through 1961. Usually, Astor plied her trade for comedic purposes but she could be dramatic as well, notably as Mrs. St. Clare in the extant UNCLE TOM'S CABIN (1928), her own favorite. Shortly before she died on her ninetieth birthday, Astor was feted with a banquet by her old studio, Universal. "I am very proud," she said on the occasion, "I thought that life was over and I should just crawl in a corner and die. I have no family. I haven't a soul on earth to enjoy this with, but I'm going to do plenty of that." The ever-popular Gertrude Astor died of a stroke at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

The final film of Gertrude Astor:

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (Paramount, 1962) D: John Ford. CAST: James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmund O'Brien, Andy Devine, Woody Strode, Gertrude Astor (extra). Along with most of John Ford's coterie of former silent stars, including Ruth Clifford and Eva Novak, Astor was merely a background extra in this taught Western in which citified (and unarmed) lawyer Stewart attempts to clean up a lawless town. But not, it turns out, without a little help of aging gunman Wayne.


Nils Asther (from my unpublished FADEOUT: The Final Film of ...)

Promoted by MGM as the “male Garbo,” this Swedish import was even prettier than his leading lady and that would eventually prove his downfall. They co-starred in WILD ORCHIDS (1929) and THE SINGLE STANDARD (1929), both empty star vehicles, and the studio punched up the shared glamour for all it was worth. But despite a brief marriage to vaudeville entertainer Vivian Duncan, Nils Asther was unabashedly gay, to the point where Garbo supposedly begged him to treat her on screen “like one of your sailors.” Despite his Swedish accent, the Danish born, Stockholm reared actor made the transition from silents to sound with ease and played the title role in Frank Capra’s THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN (1952), a miscegenation melodrama with Barbara Stanwyck that was chosen to open New York’s giant new flagship theater, Radio City Music Hall. But in reality, Asther's luxurious Latin Lover looks already belonged to a bygone era and the next two decades found him drifting from one cheap movie to the next, usually playing dyed-in-the-wool villains, charming but utterly corrupt. He was reduced to working as a $1 an hour delivery clerk by 1949 and hightailed it back to Europe where his name still meant something at the box-office. Offers, however, remained few and far between and the increasingly gaunt actor ended his screen career in a little-known Danish potboiler.

The final film of Nils Asther:

GUDRUN (Denmark, 1963) D: Anker. CAST: Birgitte Federspiel, Paul Reichardt, Jørgen Buckhøj, Laila Andersson, Yvonne Ingdal, Nils Asther (Mr. Roscoe). A young secretary finds herself the object of amorous attention from not only her boss but also a lesbian landlady and a British business tycoon (Asther). GUDRUN was released to the art trade in the US in 1967 as "Suddenly, A Woman!" Although not popular at the time, the drama did garner ingénue Laila Andersson the Danish equivalent of the Oscar. Oddly, the actress then stayed away from films for fifteen years.


Mari Aldon (from my unpublished FADEOUT: The Final Film of ...)

Born in Lithuania, reared in Canada and a former ballerina, Mari Aldon drifted about Hollywood from the mid-1940s, finding herself left on the cutting-room floor for FOREVER AMBER (1947) and playing typical starlet assignments when she suddenly nabbed a co-starring role opposite none other than Gary Cooper in DISTANT DRUMS (1951), a “Western” set among the Seminoles in Florida. She was then briefly seen as Phil Carey's wife in the Joan Crawford vehicle THIS WOMAN IS DANGEROUS(1952) and was Warren Stevens' girlfriend, again briefly,opposite Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart in THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (1954) before segueing into B-Movies (the British lensed RACE FOR LIFE [1954]), television and a marriage to veteran film director Tay Garnett. She died age 78 in Las Vegas in 2004.

The final film of Mari Aldon:

THE MAD TRAPPER (1972) D: Tay Garnett. CAST: Mike Mazurki, Mari Aldon, Fritz Ford, Vic Christy, Jimmy Kane. Aldon, who last appeared on television in a 1966 BONANZA episode, “The Fighters,” returned to the big screen in this outdoor melodrama directed by her husband. Or did she? When the film, a fairy tale filmed in Alaska about a murder suspected trapper (Mazurki) sharing his wilderness cabin, and life, with a lynx, was finally released in 1975, Aldon was no longer listed in the cast, which now appeared entirely without female participation.


Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Peggy Knudsen (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film of ..."

Peggy Knudsen portrayed Mrs. Mona Mars in the 1946 Humphrey Bogart classic THE BIG SLEEP (1946), the wife of Mr. Big, as it were, around whom much of the plot turned. The role was played by one Patricia Clarke in an early version of the film that was shelved after Warner Bros. demanded additional scenes to be filmed with the red-hot Lauren Bacall. Exit Miss Clarke, who did not quite live up the all the exposition, and enter Miss Knudsen, who did. It was one scene only but both critics and the audience at large took notice. Unfortunately, the powers at be at Warner Bros. paid little or no attention and Knudsen's follow-ups were forgettable. Twice divorced and the mother of three children, Knudsen would later suffer from a debilitating arthritic condition, her medical bills paid for by her best friend, movie star Loretta Young, with whom she had stayed while making her initial screen test for Warners back in 1945. Knudsen was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, an honor that probably came courtesy of Miss Young. She died in Encino aged 57 in 1980.

The final film of Peggy Knudsen:

ISTANBUL (Universal-International, 1957) D: Joseph Pevney. CAST: Errol Flynn, Cornell Borchers, John Bentley, Torin Thatcher, Leif Erickson, Peggy Knudsen (Marge Boyle), Nat "King" Cole. The life and times of a dashing diamond smuggler and his glamorous paramour (German star Borchers) who may or may not be what she appears. Knudsen and Erickson play typical "ugly Americans" who also may be something other than what they appear to be. Flynn had replaced Jeff Chandler in this remake of the 1947 melodrama SINGAPORE. Knudsen later did her fair share of television guest roles and had a recurrent role on the sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. "

Louise Allbritton (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film of ..."

Statuesque, blonde and blessed with an easy way with a quip, Louise Allbritton never got the break she deserved from Universal, who saw her as just another starlet useful for decorating the company's endless regiment of B-Movies. But critics noticed a genuine gift for screwball comedy that recalled the late Carole Lombard, notably in SAN DIEGO, I LOVE YOU (1944) and MEN IN HER DIARY (1945), and some scribes even took Universal to task for wasting her. The studio paid no attention, of course, and by the late 1940s, she was playing second fiddle to the likes of Ma and Pa Kettle. She did mainly television after marrying CBS News correspondent Charles Collingwood, becoming on of the medium's very first talk show personalities, and retired for good in the late 1950s.

The final film of Louise Allbritton:

THE DOOLINS OF OKLAHOMA (Columbia, 1949) D: Gordon Douglas. CAST: Randolph Scott, George Macready, Louise Allbritton (Rose of Cimarron), John Ireland, Virginia Huston. Bill Doolin (Scott), the last of the Dalton gang, forms his own group of bank robbers but is reformed by the love of a good woman (Huston). Although earning third billing as a tough saloon belle, Allbritton has really very little to do in this otherwise fine Western co-produced by Randolph Scott himself. According to some sources, she later starred in the title role in something called "FELICIA," but, if true, the film was never released.

Ross Alexander (from my unpublished FADEOUT: The Final Film of ...)

Ross Alexander was poised for a major screen career when he suddenly killed himself at the age of 29 by shooting himself at his Encino farm, January 2, 1937, a tragedy that ultimately paved the way for newcomer Ronald Reagan. Or so the story goes. In reality, with his elfin looks and somewhat effete manners, Alexander would probably not have outlasted the 1930s as a leading man, never mind enjoying a career as lengthy as Reagan's. He had come to Hollywood in 1932 from Broadway with a reputation as a "kept man" by several well-connected homosexuals and found a surprising home at testosterone heavy Warner Bros. Alexander's whimsical style worked well as Demetrius in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (1935) but much less so elsewhere and his final films were programmers. On December 5, 1935, the first Mrs. Alexander, Aleta Freel, despondent over her own lack of acting success, killed herself at their home on Woodrow Wilson Dr. in the Hollywood Hills. Ross married starlet Anne Nagel nine months later but their union seemed doomed from the outset. According to reports, Alexander was still deeply troubled by the death of Aleta and shot himself in his barn with the identical weapon Aleta had used, a .22 caliber rifle. Another, more likely, scenario had Alexander taking his own life after Bette Davis had announced to everyone at the studio that the young actor was "abnormal," Bette apparently wishing to calm her loutish husband, Harmon Nelson, who foolishly thought she was having an affair with the effete young actor. According to Hollywood lore, fellow Warner star Errol Flynn, who may or may not have been Alexander's lover at one time but was certainly a very lose friend, never forgave Davis for her behavior and did his best not to work with her and failing only twice. Nor did he ever find much good to say about Ronald Reagan, Alexander's supposed replacement.

Ross Alexander's final film (released posthumously)

READY, WILLING AND ABLE (Warner Bros., 1937) D: Ray Enright. CAST: Ruby Keeler, Lee Dixon, Allen Jenkins, Louise Fazenda, Ross Alexander (Barry Granville), Carol Hughes, Hugh O'Connell, Winifred Shaw. A couple of down-on-their-luck Broadway impresarios (Dixon and Alexander) secure backing for their newest show by promising to corral a famous British leading lady (Shaw). They instead are saddled with college kid Keeler, who is forced to imitate the posh star. READY, WILLING AND ABLE was released at the tail end of Warner Bros.'s musical cycle and marked Ruby Keeler's final film for the company. The musical-comedy is best remembered for a Bobby Connolly staged production number, "Too Marvelous for Words," in which scores of chorines bang out Johnny Mercer and Richard Whiting's hit song on typewriters. The number earned Connolly an Oscar nomination for Best Choreography. Although he was the nominal male lead, Warner Bros. played down Alexander's ghostly presence by billing him below the comedy relief. For today's viewer READY, WILLING AND ABLE becomes a showcase not for Alexander or Miss Keeler (whose charms may leave a modern audience decidedly cold) but for Louise Fazenda, a now forgotten comedienne who had actually given Mabel Normand a run for her money in the silent era.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Iris Adrian (from my unpublished FADEOUT: The Final Film of ...")

"Iris has no worries; Iris saved up like a smart dame," this brassy supporting player told an interviewer in the early 1980s. You remember Iris Adrian, of course, if not by name then certainly from her fire-engine voice and eye-catching dye jobs, both trademarks prominently displayed in numerous B-movies from 1930 onwards. Off-screen, Iris Adrian's fear of earthquakes was well known: "One good shake and [Iris] is out of business,"she told celebrity interviewer David Ragan in the 1970s. Fear became a shocking reality in 1994 when she was seriously injured in the 6.9 Northridge quake. Iris never recovered and died from her injuries seven months later. She was 82.

The final film of Iris Adrian:

HERBIE GOES BANANAS (Buena Vista, 1980) D: Vincent McEveety; CAST: Charles Martin Smith, Cloris Leachman, Steven W. Burns, Elyssa Davalos, John Vernon, Harvey Korman, Richard Jaeckel, Alex Rocco, Iris Adrian, Fritz Feld, Vito Scotti, Warde Donovan. In the fourth and final "Love Bug" comedy, the Volkswagen is entered in a high-stakes race in Brazil (although filming took place in Mexico) but ends up as a four-wheel matador in a bullring.


Acquanetta (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film Of ..."

Universal definitely didn't plan it that way but when the special effects people applied the old WOLF MAN time-lapse photography to poor Paula Dupree, the CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN (1944), the results proved quite unsettling. Halfway through the transformation from starlet to gorilla woman, the girl suddenly appeared startlingly African-American. Why, at least one reviewer demanded to know, would Universal seemingly endorse the bizarre racial theories of Nazi Germany in the middle of World War II? The studio, of course, wanted to do no such thing, only to entertain and perhaps even frighten, and Paula Dupree, their latest horror creation, went on to appear in two additional programmers, JUNGLE WOMAN (1944) and JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1945). She was played in the first two installments by Burnu Acquanetta (apparently meaning "burning water" in Arapaho), a former New York cover girl whom Universal relentlessly ballyhooed as "The Venezuelan Volcano." The dark-eyed beauty wasn't Venezuelan at all, of course, but that is really all we know for certain. She herself claimed to be part American Indian and part British royalty, but her adopted name was Mildred Davenport and she grew up in Pennsylvania. She came to Universal in 1942 but her stay there proved brief. The exotic queen of Universal potboilers, Maria Montez, reportedly hated this potential new rival on sight and got rid of her post haste. Or at least that was what Acquanetta herself later claimed, but her sudden departure was probably due more to the fact that she couldn't act. At all. After a few additional jungle girl roles, she married a car dealer and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where she wrote Indian poetry and presented Friday night fright movies on television. Acquanetta died at Ahwatuki, AZ, in 2004 age 83.

The final film of Acquanetta:

GRIZZLY ADAMS: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (Questar Entertainment, 1990) D: Ken Kennedy. CAST: Gene Edwards, Anthony Caruso, L.Q. Jones, Acquanetta. A direct-to-video release continuation of the 1977-1978 television series about a trapper fleeing modern life (the 1850s) in favor of the wilderness. This time Grizzly (formerly Dan Haggerty, now Edwards) and his pet bear Martha battle a gang of outlaws terrorizing a small town