From my collection: JOEL DEAN & DEREK COOPER

Joel Dean played juveniles at Columbia Pictures from 1939. He was still available for work seven years later but did not earn any screen or television credits beyond 1942.

Derek Cooper was one of three performers signed exclusively by producer Hal Wallis in 1946. The other two were Lizabeth Scott, she of film noir fame, and Australian import Ann Richards. Wallis released through Paramount at the time.

                                                    

From my collection: RAY BARONS

Ray Barons' name appears in a couple of WW II melodramas and in 1948 he was signed by Columbia to appear in Mary Lou. To use the vernacular of the American Film Institute, his appearance in the final screen version could not be determined.

                                             

From my collection: ROBERT REGENT

Before appearing in a few films during World War II, Robert Regent starred opposite Eleanor Phelps on the CBS radio serial "Life and Love of Dr Susan" (1939).

I'll Sell My Life (1941)

Robert Regent plays Rose Hobart's blind artist brother (pictured) in this obscure crime "meller" (to use a typical Variety term) about a woman paid to accept culpability for a murder she didn't commit. It is a good performance as far as it goes but an awkward screenplay kills whatever merits the film may have had.

I knew the late great Rose Hobart quite well, having shared many Halloween and birthday parties in her company. I especially remember one occasion where, late at night and both of us two sheets to the wind, I had to hoist the nonagenarian Rose into a taxi van hired to take her back to the Motion a Picture Country House and Hospital in Calabassas, CA, where she resided in this the December of her long life.

From my collection; LEE ELSON

Hailing from Ohio, Lee Elson was under contract with RKO in 1946, playing a policeman in the classic noir Out of the Past (1947). Elson passed away in San Diego, CA, at the age of 79 in 1998.

                                    

From my collection: JOHN DEAUVILLE

Dancer John Deauville was listed among the 119 performers under term contract with Paramount Pictures in 1945. He hailed from New Haven, CT.

From my collection: GORDON CLARK alias BARON VON THRANE

Variously spelling his name "Clark" or "Clarke," this debonair performer went from being a stand-in for Douglas Faurbanks, Jr. in the late 1930s to playing bit roles well into the television era. But as a clipping from the 1938 fan publication HOLLYWOOD explained, Mr Clark's background was quite exotic:

                                     

As the caption to the still below suggests, Gordon did indeed use the moniker Baron Von Thrane:

"Just what the perfectly groomed film player wears in a romantic comedy is revealed in this photo of  Douglas Fairbanks (left) and his stand-in, Baron Von Thrane. Doug is rehearsing his lines for a scene with Dannielle Darrieux, French actress, in The Rage of Paris at Universal Studios."

Stage actor GARLAND BRUNTON

Stage actor and later radio writer/producer Garland Brunton listed himself available for "leading man" roles in the 1946 Academy Players Directory. Brunton, who had appeared on Broadway in "Falstaff" back in 1929, was born in California 24 July 1903 and passed away in Los Angeles, CA, on July 1, 1975. He is buried at famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  Brunton was also a songwriter of note.

                                     

My **** Amazon.com review of KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE

My heart sank when John O'Dowd opened his acknowledgements by recognizing "The Lord, Jesus Christ, for his many blessings in my life ..." Because, truly, this kind of apparent Born Again Christianity doesn't at first glance appear to coalesce with the life, and wanton sex, of Gal About Hollywood Barbara Payton, she of the unforgettable (for all the wrong reasons) "Bride of the Gorilla." So much more my delight when Mr O'Dowd's tome turns out to be an extremely well written and thoroughly researched study of a life and career in overdrive that was more than just the infamous Barbara-Franchot Tone-Tom Neal debacle with its bruised faces, egos and careers. The author knows his stuff and the result is no fluff piece but a page turner that is highly recommended. Even, I dare say, for folks out there unfamiliar with Barbara Payton's tragic fate. This reader waited a long time for Bearmanor Media to publish the ebook version, but the results were absolutely worth the wait. Top notch entertainment!

                                

Let's hear it for GREGG PALMER!

Gregg Palmer, who previously went under his real name of Palmer Lee, toiled as a Universal-International contract player alongside the likes of Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis and Jeff Chandler. Yet unlike those three good-looking gents, Gregg never became a star. In fact, you could even say that once he allowed himself to go to seed a bit, he became much more employable than in his male starlet days. Mostly as a supporting player in TV Westerns and as a member of the unofficial John Wayne stick company. And as such, his carreer lasted into the 1980s. 

I recently came across Gregg Palmer as the cavalry officer befriending Rock Hudson's Taza, Son of Cochise (1954) in the Western of that name, one of those throwaway Universal potboilers that usually promise more than they deliver. But this one held my interest mainly because of Mr. Palmer, who actually managed to upstage a loin clothed Rock Hudson. There was something of the young Clark Gable in the young Gregg Palmer that the studio obviously missed. Too bad because Gregg could actually act and was as handsome as any in them thar Universal hills. As far as can be determined. Gregg Palmer still lives in his little bungalow in Encino, CA, enjoying his retirement at the age of 86.    

A little aside: according to the usual online sources, Palmer Lee was Gregg's birth name. Really? For some reasons, I doubt that the son of Norwegian immigrants would be named Palmer Lee. But maybe that's just me.

                                       

Doretta Johnson & THE MAGIC CARPET (Columbia, 1951)

Tonight I had the dubious pleasure of watching Lucille Ball's notorious The Magic Carpet, a hilariously bad Sam Katzman Arabian fantasy. Lucille, as most probably know, was toiling under a three-picture deal with Columbia Pictures when Cecil B. DeMille wanted her for his upcoming circus blockbuster The Greatest Show on Earth. Harry Cohn, in true miserly form, refused to let her go and instead held her to her contract and The Magic Carpet, hoping to the end that she would break the contract in disgust and he wouldn't have to pay her. But Lucy and Desi were about to launch their television series and The Magic Carpet, despite its glorious ineptitude, would earn her a hefty $85,000 for five days work and who could turn that down? The rest of course is I Love Lucy history and the onerous Carpet was soon forgotten

As was Doretta Johnson, a dancer and chorus girl who previously had decorated a Bowery Boys movie over at Monogram Pictures but little else. Here, she opens the festivities as the doomed wife if an equally doomed Caliph of Bagdad. Before her untimely demise in the hands of a surly Raymond Burr, Queen Yashima manages to send her infant progeny, and royal heir, away on the wondrous rug of the title. The child grows up to become John Agar and no one leaves the Columbia sound stages for the duration. But at least Doretta (pictured below) had a few lines, which is more than she was given in her previous appearances.