Fun Finds: Hollywood Studio Magazine, May 1985

This past weekend was the infamous Dayton Book Fair, in which a convention center is filled with books of all sorts for $2.00 apiece (hardback) and $1.00 paperback. I always make it a point to attend because one never knows what's going to be lying around. (This year I got a horde of interesting paperbacks more than hardbacks, but I did find the now-rare-ish autobiography of Jean Negulesco, who didn't register with me at all when it first came out in 1984, but who directed many films I now enjoy.) I was sad that I couldn't go on Sunday when, for the price of $7.50, one could fill a brown grocery bag with as many books as could be fit into it! But I was pressed into adjudicating a matinee musical performance and couldn't get out of it. This magazine, the only one I picked up, seemed like it would be fun to share with everyone here. I do have to confess I don't like the photo of Rita Hayworth on the cover as she somehow looks bleak and hard rather than sensuous and elegant as I prefer to think of her. And on we go!

I've mentioned it here before when I have presented issues of Hollywood Studio Magazine but its editor (Joan Evans) from 1966 on, was the goddaughter of Joan Crawford and was, in fact, named after her (her parents were Hollywood writers.) Things went sour when seventeen year-old Joan wanted to wed a car salesman named Kirby Weatherly against her parents' wishes. Crawford approved and held the wedding in her home (without mom and pop around!) and though it was a friendship-ending bit of duplicity, Evans and Weatherly remain wed to this day, a scant sixty-seven years later! Evans remained devoted to Crawford throughout and after her life. Interesting here that she had to apologize for use of the word "broad" in this publication. That trend of people (often a proportionately small number) suddenly taking offense at once commonly-used words was already taking hold in 1985 and persists today. Also, I doubt that I would have found the 1984 Oscar telecast boring, as one reader did, but I certainly find it so now...!

This is a curious placement of the header to the main article since said article doesn't pop up for almost 20 more pages! I doubt anyone can't guess where Loretta Young would fall in this little game of categories (and it looks like Rita is going to wind up in the other one.)

If you want a really depressing read, try the book "The Peter Lawford Story" by Patricia Seaton Lawford on her husband, which takes place during the later parts of his life.

I'm sorry, and no harm to Peter's work as an actor, but he looks truly ridiculous as MacBeth! I much prefer him in his youthful parts in things like The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), Good News (1947) and Little Women (1949), among others.

Not long after this issue was published, Mr. Connery embarked on a string of movies that finally broke him free of the James Bond mold and proved his acting talent. The Name of the Rose (1986) earned him a BAFTA award, The Untouchables (1987) won him an Oscar and The Hunt for Red October (1990, another BAFTA nomination), among others, proved his box office appeal. He stepped away from acting, of his own accord, in 2003.

My generation's Bond was Roger Moore (the first one of the series I ever saw was For Your Eyes Only, 1981) so I had to learn about Connery's Bond by going backwards. I recall once seeing some artwork not dissimilar to the middle picture above (though I thought it was for Thunderball, 1965, not From Russia With Love, 1963) in which Connery was depicted as being nude during his massage and thinking, "Oh, okay... I'm going to need to see this!" The artwork (which I will attempt to locate for you) turned out to be a lie, sadly, as he was covered up by a sheet (with, I think, shorts on under that even!)

I very much enjoy Connery's Bond films, but my favorite movies of his are in other genres, including Marnie (1964), Shalako (1968), The Anderson Tapes (1971) and Zardoz (1974) not to forget Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and The Wind and the Lion (1975.) Then there is the disastrous Meteor (1978!) But I really tended to like him in most everything I saw of his.

Miss Maureen O'Hara

My affection for Ms. O'Hara has been amply demonstrated here and here. It's fascinating to realize that before the advent of American Movie Classics, which later disappointingly changed its format, and Turner Classic Movies, fans of older films were resigned to having to watch their beloved projects in terrible prints, hacked to death for commercial breaks and running time, if they could even find them at all! Ted Turner was many things, not all of them great, but I am indebted to him for TCM (although it must be said that the channel's integrity was very much due to its incredible first and longtime host, the late Robert Osborne.)

It was neat to read more about O'Hara's case against Confidential magazine and other aspects of her life and career. And I'm howling over the hilarious diatribe against remakes that was tacked onto the end of the article. There's a man after my own heart, though I think I might be glad that no sequel to The Quiet Man (1952) was ever produced.

This is a pretty interesting interview with Ms. Hepburn, who wasn't exactly the most easy person to land for such a thing. Nowhere on this page does the article even mention the movie she was making at the time...!

The movie in question was Grace Quigley (1984), which had been in a bit of development hell for a dozen years. Initially intended as a project for Hepburn and Steve McQueen, the black comedy ultimately emerged with Nick Nolte (who Hepburn claimed was drunk throughout) and fizzled at the box office (and with many critics.) It's reputation has increased slightly over the years, however.

Though she worked several times in TV-movies after this, Hepburn made no more features until the ill-advised Love Affair (1994), which proved to be her swan song.

I have never seen Lady Be Good (1941) and to be honest had heard precious little about it apart from seeing some dancing clips along the way, so it was interesting to read about some of these stars and their reflections on the movie and their relationships to one another.

You'll hate me for saying this, but I've never seen ANY Eleanor Powell movie...! I'll have to make a point to see one some time.

I've long been a fan of Ann Sothern, however, whose career went on for far longer a time.

Some of these aren't great photos of the ladies, but it's still neat to see them during this period. Rose Hobart's promising screen career skidded to a halt in the late-1940s as she was blacklisted for her political stances. She lived to be ninety-four when natural causes claimed her in 2000. Virginia O'Brien, who passed away of a heart attack at age eighty-one in 2001, was married for about a dozen years to one-time 1940s movie Superman Kirk Alyn. Is that the best pic they could come up with of Connie Russell? She passed away five years after this issue of a heart ailment at only sixty-seven.

The author of the book excerpted in this segment, Laurie Jacobson, seemed to specialize in downbeat topics, from tragedies to sordid gossip to eerie ghosts to the torture-some experiences of her husband Jon Provost when he was starring on TV's Lassie. I did, however, LOVE the book in question, "Hollywood Heartbreak: The Tragic and Mysterious Deaths of Hollywood's Most Remarkable Legends."

There is a hilarious error in this text, however. Reference is made to Mineo's plays, "Fortune" and "Men's Eyes," as both being performed in L.A. and on Broadway. First off, there was a SINGLE play, called "Fortune and Men's Eyes." Secondly, the daring play was never produced on Broadway. It had three runs Off-Broadway, one of which was directed by Mineo. 

Now we come to the cover story, which strove to categorize famed leading actresses and either ladies, broads or in-betweeners.

I'll wait while you print off this list and mark your votes accordingly...

Page one of a center-spread featuring a few of the gals in question...

...followed by page two.

I usually try to piece things like this together so your overall viewing experience is not encumbered.

The next article begins at the side of this page. A man named Patrick Brock recollects his association with Ramon Novarro. (It may have been unintentional, but that's the second star in this issue who was gay and savagely murdered...!)

I'm not sure how well Brock actually knew Novarro, no matter the article's title, but the bit about Valentino and his "sculpture" has since been discounted entirely, especially with regards to the murder itself. He is merely repeating gossip from a highly-questionable source. I also had to grin/grimace at the author's use of the term "deviation."

Here is someone I know practically nothing about. It was interesting to learn more about her.

Rare was the gal who could evade Errol Flynn! She married that fiance and was with him thirty years until his death. And there's an amusing anecdote about Tallulah Bankhead, too. I don't think I have ever seen Ms. King in anything! But her career stretched up into the 1990s. She passed away in 2003 of natural causes at age eighty-four. Most fascinating trivia tidbit? Reportedly she never once bought any groceries or cooked in her life, eating all three meals out every. single. day.

This article on the amazing movie houses of the golden age could have used more pictures.

There are books out there on the subject, though, and those places were simply incredible!

These photos go with the column on the following page. Neat that Peter Fonda, whose father Henry starred in the movie, came to see that stage version of 12 Angry Men. But it was the opener at The Henry Fonda Theatre, so it stands to reason. I don't recall ever seeing Cyd Charisse's hair this way before. She looks great.

I have the DVD of Irwin Allen's Alice in Wonderland and it is a loo-loo! Countless older stars drift by in the two-part tale, but it's rendered pretty painful by the casting of an utterly charmless little girl as Alice. I found it interesting that John James reportedly didn't wish to be photographed with Ken Kercheval of a rival prime-time soap. Really...?

Almost all, if not every one, of the movies listed in this ad were public domain, meaning the quality was going to be beyond awful! And yet the distributor was getting $20.00/each for them - not an insubstantial price for 1985! Look at the prices of the videos being released in the main article... wildly expensive even today, but back then? Crikey!!

Here's Andrea King again, this time with her one-hundred year-old mother who I must say looks great! I had to chortle at the name of the one Japanese restaurant, "Joy of Tempura!" Sounds right up my alley...!

I always delight in reading the letters from readers in old mags like this. The people always spell out their feelings, good or bad, very plainly and bluntly. I can recall GWTW (1939) being released on home video (and thankfully the movie wasn't filmed in widescreen, so it's true that it looked pretty good in the old TV ratio) and the price was a steep $99.99!! (I think I paid about $5.00 for my DVD of it...!)

I had utterly forgotten that there was ever a movie called Sylvester (1985) or that Melissa Gilbert starred in it! I only think of her in TV-movie remakes like The Miracle Worker (1978), The Diary of Anne Frank (1980) or Splendor in the Grass (1981.) I never saw it, but with Michael Schoeffling on hand it couldn't be a total loss....!

Here are the names of the leading actresses along with the category that they were determined to have fallen into by the magazine's staff.

In this last article, we find that the author of the Ramon Novarro piece also knew Laurence Olivier. He seems to have had a better grip on Olivier than he did on Novarro despite only limited meetings with him over the years. It's a nice write-up, though.

Lord Olivier at or near his peak.

And with that, I give you, as promised, The End!

TinselTales: Roo-ing Around

This is a potential new type of post that I'm trying out. It involves taking a closer look at gossip about a particular person or project. This one is reasonably obscure but then that's why I'm featuring it! In 1950, 20th Century Fox set out to make the first American Technicolor film shot in Australia (using funds that were "frozen" there due to currency laws of the time.) First meant to star Tyrone Power, he bailed in order to work in a London stage production of Mr. Roberts. Next, the trio of Richard Widmark, Jean Simmons and Errol Flynn was considered, but by the time it was ready to go, the project was set to star Peter Lawford, Constance Smith and Richard Boone. Smith was given to Otto Preminger for his film The 13th Letter (1951) and so Maureen O'Hara was courted for the part instead. It proved to be an ill-advised decision on her part because the script was in a state of constant rewrites and, despite top-billing, she hardly had a role to play (coming in more than 20 minutes after the movie's start and with the running time at 84 minutes total!) She wound up as something of a guest star in her own movie, with most of the things that had appealed to her about the script she read being discarded in the final rendition.

The story really concerns two con men, Lawford and Boone, who decide to take advantage of an old coot (Finlay Currie) who owns a large station in the outback. Currie's son is long-missing and Lawford decides to pose as him, meanwhile beginning to fall for Currie's daughter, O'Hara. This is more than complicated since he's trying to pass himself off as her brother, though she doesn't know that at first! The plot line had veered significantly from initially having a horde of kangaroos virtually wiping out a town (!) to this gently racy love story/con game to where there is barely a hopper to be found in the finished product, rendering the title Kangaroo (1952) pointless. The poster is an amalgam of untruths!

O'Hara, who was always proudly Irish, found to her delight that there were many Irish people in Australia and she took to the people there instantly. Her affection for the place and its inhabitants marked almost the only pleasant aspects of the entire experience. She wasn't fond of director Lewis Milestone's script changes, but couldn't leave the production - which was hotly anticipated in Australia - without causing deeply hurt feelings in the host country. She also felt that both Lawford and Boone were arrogant and rude with the crew and most of the people in their presence (she stated that people called Peter Lawford "Peter Awful!")

Now for the gossip... According to O'Hara, the Australian press was so unhappy with the way they'd been treated by these two gents that they decided to follow them around and attempt to dig up unappealing information on them to use in printed stories. One night, they hit pay dirt when Lawford and Boone were discovered visiting an all-male brothel which was, according to O'Hara, filled with "beautiful boys!" The scandal was such that 20th Century Fox execs implored O'Hara to somehow smooth the whole thing over and prevent the damaging story from actually going to press. In the end, it was indeed buried until half a century later when she relayed it in her autobiography.

I don't know if these two actually did partake in the gay brothel (or if they ever found entertainment on their own time), but I can say that throughout Kangaroo, Boone can scarcely keep his eyes or his hands off of Lawford. They have more chemistry together than the supposed lovebirds Lawford and O'Hara. It must be said, though, that O'Hara refers to Boone as a Broadway "hoofer" when, in fact, Boone was a dramatic actor in things like Medea and The Man and never a musical on The Great White Way. Both men were married for most of their lives, Boone three times and Lawford four, not that this means anything in the final analysis.

Both men were 6' tall, but their heights seem to differ throughout the film.

Though they aren't shown sleeping, it's implied that these two share one room at the station.

Boone was never known for his good looks, but he is about as handsome as he ever was at this particular time. Likewise, Lawford, with his burnished tan and golden-streaked hair was near his own peak of physical appeal.

Their secretive scheme lends a suspicious element to shots like this. ("Do you think anyone knows?")

Only Peter Lawford would play a conman on a rugged trail drive while wearing a pinky ring!

Just when you're wondering if one of them is going to "whip it out," the two of them whip it out in a vicious, prolonged duel with whips cracking endlessly. They seem to be doing a substantial amount of their own stunt-work in this climax that recalls Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones' passionate fight to the death in Duel in the Sun (1946.)

It's only after he's been whipped almost to death that we finally get a skosh of beefcake in the movie.

Note that in the shot above, from the very same scene, he has no visible wounds at all, but in this one he looks like Willem Dafoe in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988!)

Boone was exceptional at playing cold, threatening villains, though he had became a household name in the late-1950s thanks to his role as the slick, forthright hired helper on Have Gun Will Travel. Later moving to Hawaii, he worked less frequently, but usually to good effect. He was offered the role of Steve McGarrett on Hawaii 5-O, but turned it down, allowing Jack Lord to enjoy a 12-season run with it! (He was hoping that his own pilot, Kona Coast, would go to series, but it did not.) Boone died at sixty-three in 1981 of throat cancer and pneumonia.

Lawford overcame a childhood accident (which left him with a diminished right arm), a childhood molestation and a ruinous relationship with his controlling mother to become a young leading man at MGM. After a failed marriage to one of the Kennedy's, a falling out with close pal Frank Sinatra and career woes, things became unspooled for him and he suffered from severe alcohol and drug abuse. He died in 1984 of liver and kidney disease at only age sixty-one (and looking far older.)