BITS & PIECES OF A MISLAID LIFE: FILM #23

"Virginia Woolf wrote that the cinema was a case of the savages
beginning not with two bars of iron and working up to Mozart,
but with grand pianos and nothing to play."

Pauline Kael, reviewing Ryan's Daughter in The New Yorker
(November 21, 1979)
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JOAN CRAWFORD WANTS TO SING OPERA

David Niven, interviewed by Dick Cavett, revealed that actress Joan Crawford wanted to sing opera. She hired the MGM Orchestra
and she made a recording of her singing Aida. She asked Fred Astaire and his wife, and Niven to listen to the recording.
It was God-awful, Niven recalled. "It was painful.Two full sides
of the record. Fred went an extraordinary color. His face turned blue." It took all their strength and self control to keep from
bursting out laughing. When the record finished they told Crawford that she was very good.

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ZASU PITTS

Zasu Pitts--
When One of the Hollywoods wits
Quipped: "Her name is prnounced Za-Sue,"
I brilliantly replied "Is that so"?

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Zasu Pitts
Appeared in a number of hits
& some flops.
She was in movies with a talking mule or in ones with
  crooks & cops.

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SOMETHING  GOOD

“’Something Good’ which the archivist Dino Everett rediscovered in 2017 and the scholar Allyson Nadia Field helped identify , shows two vaudeville  performers clasping hands and kissing. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry  in 2018 and noted that it ‘may represent the earliest example of African American intimacy onscreen.’”

Ben Kenigsberg. “It Starts With a Kiss in the 19th Century” in. The New York Times (January13,2022)
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MUSSOLINI'S MISTRESS & THE 1964 FILM MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE

"Domenico arranges an apartment in Naples for Filumena. The former tenant's belongings are still in. There is a picture of Clara Petacci ( = dictator Mussolini's mistress) on the wall and Filumena asks when is this going to be removed. The scene is set to late 1940's, so this obviously symbolizes Italy's transition from fascism to a republic. Mussolini himself would probably not have passed the censors."

iMDb trivia

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SHORT REVIEW

"If you think the title ('A BEAUTIFUL LIFE') stinks, try
the movie."
               Anthony Lane
**

TALLULAH BANKHEAD, WATCHING HERSELF IN THE MOVIE -- DIE! DIE! MY DARLING!

"At her first closeup  she called out: 'I want to apologize for looking older than God's wet nurse.' as years earlier she said: 'They used to shoot Shirley Temple through gauze. They should shoot me through linoleum."

Denis Brian. Tallulah, Darling (New York: MacMillan,1972)
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LOVE AND SEX IN MOVIE ADVERTISING

"Bernard Macfadden, pledging himself to restore the sanctuary of family life in America, advertised a batch of his own films thus: 'Love that defies the World ! Soul-crushing drama! Girls'
greatest questions!  Life's pitalls! burning love-passionate hate -- Love's siren call!' 
  "One Hollywood copywriter helped himself liberally to a
stanza of Byron's Don Juan:
 
         "HER HUSBAND DREW THE GIRL TO HIM AND --a long,long kiss, a kiss of love and youth and beauty, all concentrating like rays into one focus, kindled from above; such kisses as belong to early days. Where heart, soul and sense in concert move, and the blood is lava, and the pulse is ablaze."


E. S. Turner. The Shocking History of Advertising. (New York:
E.P. Dutton & Company, Inc. 1953)
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CAROLE LOMBARD IN TWENTIETH CENTURY (1934)

"Howard Hawks was concerned when Carole Lombard could not perform the kicking scene very well. Hawks took her out for a walk and recalls, "I asked her how much money she was getting for this picture. She told me ($2000) and I said, 'What would you say if I told you you'd earned your whole salary this morning and didn't have to act anymore?' And she was stunned. So I said, 'Now forget about the scene. What would you do if someone said such and such to you?' And she said, 'I'd kick him in the balls.' And I said, 'Well, he (John Barrymore) said something like that - why don't you kick him?' She said, 'Are you kidding?' And I said, 'No.'" Hawks ended the conversation with, "Now we're going back in and make this scene and you kick, and you do any damn thing that comes into your mind that's natural, and quit acting. If you don't quit, I'm going to fire you this afternoon." Hawks' white lies did the trick, and the scene was filmed. In addition, Hawks claimed that after that, Lombard never began another movie without sending him a telegram that read, "I'm gonna start kicking him."

iMBd Trivia -- TWENTIETH CENTURY
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LUC SANTE ON NICK ADAMS

"Nick Adams died young, of 'an overdose of drugs he was taking for a nervous disorder,' and this was entirely in character, could have been more appropriate only if he had literally exploded."

Luc Sante. "Rogues Gallery" in O.K. You Mugs: Writers on
Movie Actors, edited by Luc Sante and Melissa Holbrook 
Pierson (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999)

**


A DOORBELL RINGS ON THE SCREEN 
& I GET UP TO ANSWER THE DOOR

I am beginning to think that my life is
One succession of movies after another,
Saccules of images at 24 fps.
I go to the movies & then I go home,
I turn on TV to watch more movies,
Skewed days of my life inwoven
With frame  of light,then darkness,
Light,  then darkness again. 
Days like this mean nothing.
Lovers, removing clothes, embrace,
Fireworks explode in the night sky
& a train enters a tunnel.
I watch bodies more buff than mine,
& I grow restless with longing.
Saxophones are playing,
But they are not real saxophones.


Louis Phillips