Hooray for Hollywood? Volume 2

We're back with another selection of remarks from our recently-procured book "Hollywood on Hollywood." Rather than put the book's cover on another post, I've opted to use Miss Deborah Kerr and one of her apt quotes on Tinseltown. And there are some more selections to follow! 

"The name Hollywood is, to this day, a misnomer-one very small section of an enormous area where many people work in the movie business, but hardly any people who work in that business actually live in Hollywood, as such." -- Deborah Kerr, 1977. (And still true today...!)

"I have thought, since my tours, that we in Hollywood run a great danger of becoming too insular. I know I was near it when I left. Hollywood is such a tight unit in the American scene that a Hollywoodite's map of the world is apt to show one large eastern seaboard area labeled 'New York,' and one west coast section labeled 'Hollywood.' There are a few pin dots scattered over the map reading, 'Sun Valley,' 'Palm Springs,' 'Miami Beach,' 'Bermuda.' The space between is arid waste. There are no dots reading 'Cincinnati,' 'Sioux City,' 'Augusta,' 'Spokane.'" -- Jeanette MacDonald, 1947. (Wow... Very perceptive and prescient. And decades later people on the coasts were still referring to the "flyover country" in-between.)

"I brought Ruth Warrick out to play Mrs. [Citizen] Kane because the part called for a lady. I have not been able to find a lady in Hollywood." -- Orson Welles, 1947. (He certainly did his fair share of looking...!)

The aforementioned Ruth Warrick in Citizen Kane (1941)

"Hollywood is not an easy place for two people to work. When you leave your house, you're both sleepy, since it's the crack of dawn. When you come home, you're exhausted. All you want is an Old-Fashioned and some peace and quiet. The two of you, as a result, are so full of your own problems that you can't help each other at the time when you most should." -- Cornel Wilde, the 1940s. (Wilde was, at the time wed to actress and sometimes costar Patricia Knight - from 1937-1951. Just after their divorce, he wed Jean Wallace in a union that lasted 30 years and many joint projects, but that, too, wound up in divorce.)

"People outside Hollywood don't understand how it is here. It's a battle to maintain a basic integrity; a scrap against bull and baloney. You've got to fight all the time." -- Burt Lancaster, 1949. (Lancaster was already forming a production company in order to maintain more control of his projects and it eventually emerged as Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, a success venture that put forth several notable movies.)

"There's more pressure on you in Hollywood than in New York. On Broadway, you do your performance every night and that's it. Here you have to get up at five in the morning - which is tough on me - in order to get ready in time at the studio. Then you have to rehearse, do your scenes, and you get home late where you have a relaxing dinner and start studying till bedtime. There's no let-up. There's also so much fussing about costumes and makeup and hair all day on the set. That's plausible, I guess, since the camera is on you - if you're lucky enough to get a close-up. One the stage your audience is at least twenty-five feet away." -- Vera-Ellen, 1949. (Vera-Ellen, a spectacular dancer, receded from view in the late-'50s when her sort of musicals were on the wane and a variety of ailments began to affect her physicality. The sudden death of her only child - of SIDS - in 1963 cemented her retirement from public view.)

"Young love deserves a better break on the screen. The over-age stars get all the clinches, while the young actors in Hollywood today - if they're lucky - get the meaningless kiss or two." -- John Derek, 1951. (Derek more than made up for any slights when he presented film after film featuring wife after wife in anything from semi-nudity to outright nakedness on screen! Inset features his costar Jody Lawrance.)

"In Hollywood you do nothing for yourself. You don't even apply your own make-up. You are awakened, taken to the studio, made up. You play your roles in snips and driblets, harassed by delays, interruptions and stupidities. Over the proceedings hangs a pall of indecision, the fear of the studio swami that the work may in some fashion upset a coal miner in West Virginia, a lama in Tibet. Timidity was the screen's curse. It still is. - Tallulah Bankhead, 1952. (From one of the least timid souls on earth...! This did change in the 1960s and '70s, but it's since pendulumed back to focus groups, committees, "correctness," et al, with a few exceptions.)

"Hollywood is full of these watching, waiting helpers, who look for pretty girls in distress. Mostly what they want is to help take your clothes off in their apartments. Many of them do have valuable connections, and will use them-but the asking price is rather high." -- Mamie Van Doren - 1964. (This quote was from her auto-bio "My Naughty, Naughty Life" [likely a play on Errol Flynn's "My Wicked, Wicked Ways."] She would later pen an even more frank book, "Playing the Field.")

"When I first arrived in Hollywood, they told me to get a new name, so I thought back to the best times I had as a kid playing on the tidal land [in Wales]. There was a tannery and old mills. It was really mill land. So I called myself Jack Milland but they said, 'In Hollywood, only dogs are called Jack,' so I looked down a list and picked the shortest name I could find - Ray." -- Ray Milland, 1972. (Milland was born Alfred Jones, January 3rd 1907, in Neath, Glamoran, Wales. Regardless of his desire for "Ray" he was nonetheless billed early on as "Raymond!")

"They treat you so great in Hollywood, make you feel important even if you really aren't. The technician there, you could have them in your home. They're bright they're alert, they're intelligent, they're trying to help you." -- Paul Lynde, 1973. (I wonder if ol' Paul ever had a Key Grip or a Best Boy over for tea and cookies? Ha ha!)

"There's a dismal swamp out there in Hollywood where the money goes and it's never accounted for. I had 5% of Patton (1970), which cost $10 million to make and grossed $40 million, and I've never made a dime." -- George C. Scott, 1974. (Movie accountants have long been noted by many people for their "creativity" with the numbers...!)

"There I was on the screen, a pancaked, lacquered Hollywood purse made out of a Cincinnati sow's ear." -- Doris Day, 1975. (I'm drawn to quotes that include Cincinnati, as that's where I reside. Day was raised not far from my area and the aforementioned Vera-Ellen just blocks from my house! By the way, popular as she was, I think she really blossomed most when they allowed her more natural - often comedic - attributes to come more to light than all the "lacquer.")

"In Hollywood they like you until you're standing on a pedestal and they hand you an Oscar. Then they say, 'How did he get up there? Let's knock him down.'" -- Yul Brynner, 1975. (True as this may be, Yul had it better than many others... And it doesn't seem to have applied to people like Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep, to name more recent recipients.)

"Certainly, there are good marriages in Hollywood, but to imagine that people who are beautiful, and glorified by the camera and publicity, wardrobe and make-up departments and who are thrown together in close proximity day after day; to imagine they don't get involved with each other, especially when the emotional requirements of their scenes are that they be in love with each other- I mean it's not human to believe they don't!" -- Shelley Winters, 1980. (Shelley did know of what she spoke...!)

"I've always enjoyed working in Hollywood. They are so efficient. And it's so exhilarating." -- Vivien Leigh, 1964. "I loathe Hollywood, and for no other part [Scarlett O'Hara] would I have dreamed of signing a contract. All their standards are financial ones. The more I see of Hollywood, the less possible it becomes." -- Vivien Leigh, quoted posthumously in the 1969 book "Vivien Leigh: A Bouquet." (So who knows what to believe....?!)

Designer Double-Dip: "Christmas" Re-Gifting

A close friend and I recently made another sojourn to The Rosemary Clooney House, a museum devoted to the gifted singer and sometimes actress. Hailing from Maysville, Kentucky, Clooney spent her last 20 years stationed in the cozy, nearby town of Augusta in a quaint brick home along the Ohio River. After her passing, the house was reinvented (and saved from condemnation) into a charming museum that has continued to fill up with genuine memorabilia since its founding in 2005. The museum is owned and operated as a non-profit organization by former Ky Lt. Governor Steve Henry and his wife Heather French Henry, who was Miss America 2000. Both have worked tirelessly to build the museum up from its initial set of offerings and new things are coming in frequently. (I might add, the $5.00 admission has never increased in these long and troubled 17 years since the opening - at which, naturally, I was present!)

Miss Heather Renee French-Henry and me on the day The Rosemary Clooney House was dedicated.

Her big night. The first Miss Kentucky ever to win the crown!

I've never been able to get her and the dress on the same day. Sometimes ya gotta improvise!

Mrs. Henry, who was the only Miss America contestant that I ever rooted for who proceeded to actually win, is boundlessly creative and not only sings, paints, designs ornaments, writes and endeavors on the behalf of disabled veterans, but she also, along with her mother, painstakingly recreated Rosemary's dress from the finale of White Christmas (1954), the original not believed to have survived. However, the "Sisters" dresses shown with it at left are the real deal. (I bet ya can tell which one was Vera-Ellen's!) These are only a few of the now many costumes which are found within the museum.

Longtime readers here know that I was at the museum the day that White Christmas dancer George Chakiris was on hand (with pal, former Miss America Lee Meriwether) to help present more memorabilia from that film. And since that, there has been still more recovered, including a green tuxedo like the one he wore and a paler one, worn by John Brascia, who was the featured dancer opposite Vera-Ellen in two numbers. The top photo here was not taken at the museum but rather at an exhibit, but all the clothing shown can be found at the museum now. So all that exposition out of the way, we can now move on to the gist of this post!

White Christmas was a (very) loose remake of an earlier film, Holiday Inn (1942), which starred Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and also featured music by Irving Berlin. Holiday Inn was a smash hit (number 8 for the year of its release) and introduced the Oscar-winning song "White Christmas" to the world. Astaire chose not to do Christmas and, after Donald O'Connor had to bow out due to illness, Danny Kaye was cast.

During the making of Holiday Inn, the U.S. was attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and suddenly the war was on. The movie already had a gallery of holiday-themed numbers, but after we were entered into WWII, the Fourth of July number was expanded.

Note the eagles hovering over the star-spangled stage. 

Next comes a passel of patriotic pretties, all done up in striped skirts and glittery, star-dotted tops.

It would be hard to get any more "1940s" than the gals here with their iconic coiffures.

No, this is not an Ann Miller lookalike contest!

Edith Head was the chief designer at Paramount during this time, but I don't know if she merely oversaw or actually designed these costumes. The perky number is eye-catching, but we don't really get to know exactly what these get-ups would have looked like in color. Until now...

The chorine costumes from Holiday Inn can be seen in my first photo from White Christmas above as well as in this moment with Crosby. Note the red top hanging in the piece of luggage. The costumes are never part of a number or scene in Christmas, but they decorate the set multiple times as Crosby's company of performers rehearse at Dean Jagger's inn.

Here they help provide a backdrop for Crosby and Ms. Clooney.

Perhaps the best chance to lay eyes on them is during this rehearsal sequence. They are on hangers behind the cast and for a brief moment we get to see one of them, full-length and un-obscured but for Vera-Ellen's extended arm. It's a neat, almost secret, sort of connection between the similar, yet not truly connected, movies. Still, this is not the only example of designer double-dipping that I have for you today.

When folks recall White Christmas, so often they think about "Sisters" or the finale with the title number in all its glory. But truly one of its showstoppers is the spectacular production number "Mandy." In it, an impossibly slender Vera-Ellen emerges in a white getup against a striking scarlet set and proceed to dance herself silly.

The other costars are in the number as well and do their part...

...even providing a certain amount of hoofing.

However, in this particular sequence, they know their place.

The splendiferous number provides an explosion of color.

This white costume with removable train is housed at the Clooney Museum and so is one of the female dance ensembles (complete with "tambourine!") It's the dancing girls' getups I want you to take note of.

Nearly 70 years later, time has bled some of the red color from the ensemble, but otherwise its condition is remarkable.

Here we see Mr. Chakiris peering at Vera-Ellen. His boyish face and figure are featured throughout the film whenever dancers are required.

Here we see Brascia joining the star for what becomes a highly-energetic and athletic routine. (And again take notice of the dancing girls' clothing.)

For her part, Vera-Ellen is whirled around, stretched apart and hurled all over the place!

The remarkable sequence gets strangely overlooked and is made even more remarkable by the low number of edits in it. This is being performed for the camera in straight takes. (It's also easy, with everything going on, to miss Clooney in the background banging away on her tambourine!)

While Vera-Ellen is being yanked around and twisted like a pretzel...

...Bing, Rosie and Danny have a somewhat easier time of it.

So... the red-hued dancing girls of White Christmas did their part and then hung up their costumes in exchange for the next assignment. Were these confections ever seen again after 1954?

Yes! Ten years later, the outfits were dusted off, stripped of their bows and featured in the Elvis Presley/Barbara Stanwyck film Roustabout (1964.)

The once glitteringly glamorous getups from White Christmas were now morphed into cooch-dance costumes in a carnival! See what difference a few accessories can make?

Babs, at far left, doesn't seem too impressed.

Here's a closer look at the now-familiar pieces.

This is another Paramount/Edith Head production, so the recycling of the costumes makes sense.

The removal of the large bows on the back do leave a few of the gals showing more than had been intended the first time the outfits were filmed. But I guess it suits the "Girlie Show" setting.

See what I mean, Vern?!

So I'd say, all in all, that my dance card was pretty full today! I do have to take a moment here to credit (not to mention thank!) the warmly welcoming Mr. Henry for pointing out these costume overlaps to me. He and his wife's endless search for memorabilia continually provides documentation that leads to fun facts like these.

It fascinates me that Vera-Ellen and George Chakiris were both born in the neighborhood in which I currently reside and later wound up with thriving Hollywood careers. Chakiris had moved away only a few years after his birth, but Vera-Ellen was raised here.

In fact, I am only about two blocks from her childhood home. (It crossed my mind once that I should fudge the details and open up MY house as the "Vera-Ellen House & Museum!" LOL) She and Doris Day (who was only a couple of miles south!) used to carpool to dance class together. It's a remarkable region for those with burgeoning musical talent. (Of course Cincinnati also gave the world Charles Manson... so I'll quite while I'm ahead!)

That's all for this time, folks!