Pairing Up

Today we have a little post featuring movie stills and publicity photos of male stars in which, with a little imagination (and that's about how much we possess! Ha ha!), a different scenario might be envisioned than the one intended... In other words, they might be unintentionally suggestive. Or, perhaps, they are completely benign and we just have a dirty mind. Or maybe the men in them are just plain handsome so we feel like sharing!

Today's poster boys, Randolph Scott and Cary Grant were featured in a notorious series of photo spreads taken during their bachelorhood in which they were seen swimming together, working out in abbreviated shorts, dining elegantly together, lounging near one another and even cooking in the kitchen (with Cary in an apron and Randy wielding a phallic bunch of celery!)

You thought I was making that one up, didn't you...?  Nope.

All just speculation? Hiding in plain sight? Best/worst kept secret in Hollywood?

We may never know the truth about them, but it's been written that when Cary was pressured into marrying and leaving his and Randy's bachelor pad, he soon became despondent, attempted suicide and was soon divorced and back there again. And later in life, in the wake of their marriages and children, these two were reportedly seen holding hands under the table at lunch, which is either the saddest or the most touching thing about their long association with one another.

Here, we find Randolph Scott in an intense stare-down with John Wayne in Pittsburgh. They were meant to be squabbling over Marlene Dietrich, but she's nowhere to be seen in this shot. They could be having a romantic dinner...!

This one, with Scott and Lex Barker from Thunder Over the Plains, is even more suggestive. It could be a dance hold! (The link for Lex this time is to a page with several color Tarzan comic book covers at the end.)

The two brooding pusses in this shot are Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers in Wings.

Check out the dreamy intensity of this portrait from the same pairing.

As this is a WWI war drama, there's an emotional ending for the young men...

...VERY emotional!

Arlen, by the way, was a very handsome young man. Sort of a Paul Newman for the 1930s (I always wish they'd have played father and son in a movie.) He's seen here with David Newell and Kay Francis in the four-cornered circus romance Dangerous Curves. (Clara Bow rounding out the quartet.)

But with some thoughtful cropping of Ms. Francis, and the gents' matching robes, this could be another sort of lover's quarrel!

My favorite silent-era actor is delectable George O'Brien, seen here looking as timeless as ever and elbow-to-elbow with another young actor. You may recognize him as one of the most heralded in all of cinema?  Spencer Tracy.

On the right in this twosome is Henry Wilcoxon, who while having a sort of sneering quality in his face, is an actor I nonetheless found strikingly handsome in his prime. He later became an assistant and frequent supporting actor in Cecil B. DeMille movies.

Hmmm... I wonder what costars and close personal friends Cesar Romero and Tyrone Power have spied and are discussing here.

Yes, I know they're fighting and not getting comfy, but it's sort of neat to see former Tarzans Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe working together (in Captive Girl.)

Even better is this one of the two, from another movie of theirs, Swamp Fire. Even out of their loincloths they seemed to find reasons to be shirtless on celluloid!

No, this isn't a pair. Or is it? With Mickey Rooney and Eddie Bracken fighting over who gets the biggest piece of delicious figure model Ed Fury! This was part of a publicity shoot for A Slight Case of Larceny (in which I don't believe Fury even appears!)

Another awesome photo shoot - some of which has appeared on this blog before - involves Tab Hunter and John Bromfield. Here Bromfield is demonstrating his rod for Hunter.

And here Bromfield is demonstrating his other rod for the readers! What a gorgeous man he was.

Now entering the Robert Wagner wing of today's post. He's seen here making his presence known to costar Jeffrey Hunter in A Kiss Before Dying.

And here he is making his presence known to Hunter again, during a photo shoot!

In this shot (from one of his 1950s war films, perhaps The Hunters?) Wagner and a buddy are enjoying an Asian spa together.

Poolside, he's getting his exercise in with a muscular partner...

...followed by some laps not in but around the pool!

Mechanic fantasy anyone? I don't know the handsome, bearded fella under the hood, but that's Rock Hudson giving the body a hearty buff.

Hollywood's first gay adoption? No... just Broken Arrow star John Lupton showing off his new baby daughter to costar Michael Ansara.

Skipping ahead to longtime friends Robert Redford and Paul Newman, costars of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. For a while, there were murmurings about them costarring a third time in a film based upon "The Front Runner," all about a track coach who has a sexual relationship with his star runner! Newman, who'd bought the option, let it lapse when he ran into script (and casting plausibility) issues.

My Two Dads. In retrospect, they sorta look like the type of two dads we see more often these days!

Who knows what hairy stuff was going on in the woods with Joe Namath and his (unidentified) friend...? Gotta love the '70s and '80s when men could go shirtless (not to mention hairy) and few batted an eye.

The End!

Still Quoting....!

"When I worked on The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), Vanessa Redgrave tried to convert me to a form of communism, Trotskyism, whatever the hell it is. Talented broad, but everyone ducked behind a camera when she came around. I asked her, 'Vanessa can you shoot a pistol?' 'Why?' 'Well, when the revolution comes...' 'No, no,' she interrupted. 'Someone else will do that.' Some Trotskyite. She travels by Rolls Royce." - ROBERT DUVALL on VANESSA REDGRAVE

"Then, I thought to myself, 'Darn it, maybe I can't do what Vanessa Redgrave can, but can Vanessa Redgrave do what I can do? Who's kidding who here? - RAQUEL WELCH on VANESSA REDGRAVE

"What seemed like such a nice, simple, artless performance in Superman (1978) was the finest kind of acting. Reeve's timing-and humor-has to be just about perfect to make the character come off." - director SIDNEY LUMET on CHRISTOPHER REEVE (who he directed in Deathtrap (1982.)

"It was my father who told me I should develop my body seeing as how I wasn't born with much of a brain an' it was the only thing I had to fall back on. Then I saw Steve Reeves an' I thought, 'Jesus, anybody can go to school an' become a lawyer, but I wanna be able to pull down a temple, shift a bridge, take on a whole Roman army. ...That's a man to me.'" - SYLVESTER STALLONE on STEVE REEVES

"It's the man's tremendous wit that just keeps coming across. Listen, there's no acting style. Most people just play themselves. Spencer Tracy used to say to me after a scene, 'Did I ham that one up?' If I said yes, he'd say, 'Okay, let's do it again.' There's that same honesty in Burt Reynolds. He's a throwback to the old school." - MYRNA LOY on BURT REYNOLDS (whose mother she played in The End, 1978.)

"He is the one the ladies like to dance with and their husbands like to drink with. He is the larger-than-life actor of our times. He is gifted, talented, naughty-but nice." - FRANK SINATRA on BURT REYNOLDS (and in whose Cannonball Run II, 1982, he appeared.)

"Burt has a quality that nobody else has. He's funny, sexy, glib, likeable and still very macho. But Burt tries to be all things to all people... He thinks that unless he's doing...intense dramatic work-then he's not an actor. But I don't think he's comfortable with that kind of intense emotional revealing. He doesn't like to reveal himself that way in life, yet he's mad at himself because he can't do that on the screen." SALLY FIELD (one-time romantic partner and costar in Smokey and the Bandit, 1977, The End, 1978, Hooper, 1978, and Smokey and the Bandit II, 1980) on BURT REYNOLDS in 1985.)

"She's one of the reasons I left show business... We'd give her a new scene, and she couldn't remember the lines. She couldn't sing and, surprisingly, she couldn't do the dances. And all through the horror of it all she was smiling and grinning and unreal. There's no denying her appeal to the public. That's what makes her so dangerous. She almost smiled me into bankruptcy." - PAUL GREGORY (producer of the 1959 musical The Pink Jungle, which closed prior to its scheduled 1960 Broadway opening and involved at least seven Actors Equity motions) on GINGER ROGERS

"Don't let her fool you. Tangle with her and she'll shingle your attic." BOB HOPE on JANE RUSSELL (his costar in The Paleface, 1948, and Son of Paleface, 1952.)

"...One of the best actors alive. But my opinion of him as an actor is much higher than my opinion of him as a man." - JOHN HUSTON on GEORGE C. SCOTT (who he directed three times in The List of Adrian Messenger, 1963, The Last Run, 1971, and The Bible: In the Beginning, 1966, the last of which included a booze-fueled relationship with Ava Gardner in which Scott reportedly beat her to the point of hospitalization.)

"But everything [on High, Wide and Handsome, 1937] became a little bit brighter when I got to know Randolph Scott, one of the finest men in Hollywood... Now a retired millionaire, he's still as handsome as he was in 1937, totally charming and loads of fun." DOROTHY LAMOUR on RANDOLPH SCOTT

"Randy Scott is a complete anachronism. He's a gentleman. And so far, he's the only one I've met in this business full of self-promoting sons-of-bitches." - director MICHAEL CURTIZ on RANDOLPH SCOTT (who he directed in Virginia City, 1940.)

"I think his mother had gained such an incredible influence over him that he virtually abdicated his own rights to any individual personality... Finally, he had to invade other bodies to register at all. He had to inhabit, he was like a ghoul, he had to feast off somebody else! But he did it so well, it became an art. He was not a genius, Sellers, he was a freak." - SPIKE MILLIGAN on PETER SELLERS (his frequent stage, television and movie cohort.)

"Talk about unprofessional rat finks." - BILLY WILDER on PETER SELLERS (who Wilder directed, uncredited, in Casino Royale, 1967.)

"Norma, who I have always like and got along with, was at notorious loggerheads with Joan [Crawford.] You see, she was treated as Queen of the Lot because of her marriage to the boss, Irving Thalberg. Joan had made a lot of money for the company, and I imagine that's what annoyed both of them; it was a competition of who was really the Queen of the Lot." ROSALIND RUSSELL on NORMA SHEARER and JOAN CRAWFORD (all three stars of The Women, 1939.)

"And you can tell Miss Shearer that I didn't get where I am on my ass." - JOAN CRAWFORD on NORMA SHEARER (to the press.)