A site designed for all of the wonderful people out there in the dark and dedicated to the unabashed passion for silents, early talkies, all stars and all films.
Susan Lenox (Her fall and Rise)....the fall of silence, the rise of sound Garbo and Gable: what a pair! MGM was notoriously dense when providing Garbo with a suitable leading man, but here they nailed it.
They walk in beauty
In 1931, Greta Garbo was more than a queen of the movies. Like the empress of some remote, exotic land, she retained her air of mystery and wonder as talking pictures smashed, as Norma Desmond said, “the idols of the world.” Garbo survived sound. Her deep, accented growl complimented her image. But sound, combined with the changing tastes of depression-era audiences, also robbed her of some of her power. She moved with authority in the movie-worlds of satins and furs, of heavy sighs and sophisticated shrugs. But by 1931, audiences craved something more realistic, something grittier, something so un-Garbo.
She had proved that she could knock back a viskey with the best of them in her first talkie, Anna Christie (1930). After a few more sophisticated roles, MGM again walked the pre-code tightrope with Garbo in 1931’s Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise).
Garbo and Gable play house
Based on a scandalous book of the same name, Garbo plays an illegitimate and abused farm girl who is sold into marriage to a man she finds repugnant and who tries to rape her before their wedding. Determined not to marry the lout, she rushes off into a storm and lands in the nice comfy home of none other than Clark Gable. And here the story become unlike anything Garbo did before or since.
In 1931, the pre-mustache Gable was just beginning his long rein as the king of Hollywood. No matter how ordinary Garbo is made to look in this film, she is never just a regular gal. Can you imagine finding Garbo in your barn in a storm? Gable, however, no matter how gorgeous, always comes across natural and at ease and just an ordinary guy who happens to to look like a movie star. He is modern, she is timeless.
Mustache or no mustache - HOT
Garbo as the farmer's daughter
The story is wild, with Garbo joining a circus, living as the mistress of a crooked politician and finally chasing Gable, who has rejected her, to the jungles of South America where both (he a drunk and she a not-quite prostitute/dancer) are reconciled. She gets to wear an array of fantastic Adrian designs and is more "regular" than she ever appeared before or since. The scene where Gable teaches her to fish is adorable. Garbo is many things, but she is rarely cute or adorable. It is great fun to see her this way.
Garbo laughs - and fishes!
Hard working circus professional
A celestial vision
So, here is Garbo, giving her usual fine performance, looking spectacular and having a grand old time and it is Gable who, I think, dominates. He is new, he is bright and, yes, he is the future and there is no turning back.
Passing the torch
While is has been said that Garbo and Gable did not like one another, their chemistry is undeniable. So much so that Garbo was given first crack at re-teaming with Gable in Red Dust. After Garbo declined, the role went to Jean Harlow, another nod to the future. Garbo would go on to give 10 more magical performances before retreating to the realm of the gods - her true home. Gable would continue as a star of the first magnitude for another 30 years.
Welcome to 2013 - a year of scandals at A Person in the Dark. Yes, I love movies, but I confess I am a sucker for those juicy Hollywood scandals of old.
January's Scandal: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
Hollywood in the early part of the twentieth century was a tough place. The work was hard and the conditions hardly up to OSHA standards. But, for those lucky enough to gain fame and fortune, the fun and play was just as rough and tumble. Roscoe (he hated being called "Fatty") Arbuckle was the comic darling of the Keystone lot in the early teens. He and Mable Normand delighted the public with their adorable antics. Before Chaplin, before Keaton and before Lloyd, it was Fatty that tickled the movie-goers fancy. Arbuckle eventually left Keystone to produce his own films.
Mabel and Roscoe
By all accounts, Roscoe was a lovely man, kind and well-liked by his peers. Even his ex-wife, actress Minta Durfee, proclaimed him the nicest man in the world. His friendship with Buster Keaton was rock solid and he served as a mentor to both Charlie Chaplin and, much later, to Bob Hope (encouraging Hope to seek his fortune in motion pictures). If Roscoe had a fatal flaw, it was his love for alcohol and an addiction to morphine (as the result of a serious leg injury). Those flaws didn't stand in his way when showing generosity to his friends, which lead him to plan a fun getaway to San Francisco to blow off some steam on September 5, 1921.
The plan seemed like a good one. San Francisco was often used by the movie stars as a place to let their hair down. So, Roscoe rented several rooms at the St. Francis Hotel for a group of his friends, who were all invited to a party. A little Labor Day r&r with alcohol and women was just what the doctor ordered. But, in the midst of the partying, something went horribly wrong.
Virginia Rappe
While the guests partied, one guest lay writhing in pain in one of Roscoe's rooms. Virginia Rappe was a model, sometime actress and girlfriend of director Henry Lehrman. She was also a notorious party girl who, as they used to say, was no better than she should be. Virginia, who was seriously ill before she even came to the party, was admitted to the hospital 2 days after the party, where she died on September 9, 1921. Her friend, Bambina Maude Delmont, told Virginia's doctor that Roscoe had raped her friend, who died of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder.
Here's what happened: * Virginia Rappe, already suffering from and poor health due, in part, from too much drinking and too many abortions, became seriously ill at the party. The hotel doctor determined that her condition was caused by an over consumption of alcohol. * Roscoe, among others, tried to help her and tried to cool her overheated body with ice cubes and a bath. *Maude Delmont, a known, said that Virginia told her Roscoe "hurt her," which meant rape. Delmont, a known professional correspondent for blackmailers who had been targeted by the police for fraud, bigamy, extortion, and racketeering, was not even present in the room when Virginia became ill.
Bambina Maude Delmont
Here's what the public was told:
Fatty Arbuckle, host of a wildly out of control party, savagely raped and caused the death of poor Virginia Rappe with his massive weight. Not only did he rape her, but the beast also abused her with either a Coca-Cola or champagne bottle. On September 11, 1921, Roscoe Arbuckle was arrested for the murder of Virginia Rappe.
Roscoe's Mug Shot
For 2 excruciating trials, Roscoe's name and reputation was slandered while the prosecution paraded liar after liar before the jury. The wild partying ways of the the movie colony was exposed and morality groups called for Roscoe's execution. Both trials resulted in a hung jury. Roscoe Arbuckle was finally cleared and found innocent at a third trial. At the end of the mercifully swift third trial, a verdict was rendered in 6 minutes, with the jury foreman reading this statement:"Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done to him... there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story which we all believe. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgement of fourteen men and women that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame."District Attorney Matthew Brady had pressured witnesses to lie under oath and it was revealed that Maude Delmont was attempting to extort money from Arbuckle's attorneys. But, exoneration came too late. Both his career and his spirit were ruined. William Randolph Hearst made hay of the scandal and made a fortune off of these lies in the process. He never apologized to Roscoe for gleefully destroying him. The public and Hollywood turned their back on the man who had brought joy to so many. He was innocent and he was a pariah.
Roscoe did have some loyal friends. Buster Keaton stood by him to the end and tried to give him work when no one else would. Buster, by the way, was asked to attend the party at the St. Francis that fateful weekend, but was unable to go due to other plans (plans for which he was eternally grateful). Roscoe turned to alcohol in a big way, but still managed to find work, directing low budget films under the pseudonym William Goodrich ("will be good"). By all accounts, he was a broken man. Things finally seemed to be looking up in 1933. One June 29, 1933 he was signed by Warner Brothers for a feature length film. But resurrection was not to come. Roscoe died of a heart attack that same night. Some may agree that cause of death was a broken heart.
The Arbuckle scandal, along with the scandal concerning the mysterious death of director William Desmond Taylor, put the morality (or immorality) of Hollywood in the spotlight forever and all time. For a deeper dive into the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal, check out Frame-Up, The Untold Story of Roscoe "Fatty Arbuckle," by Andy Edmonds.
Remnants of Roscoe are still among us. Click here and check out his beautiful 1919 custom made Pierce Arrow, currently at auction. He sure had good taste!
Said Louise Brooks, who, at the tail end of her career, found herself playing a part in the cheaply-made Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood (1931, director: William Goodrich):
"He made no attempt to direct this picture. He sat in his chair like a man dead. He had been very nice and sweetly dead ever since the scandal that ruined his career. But it was such an amazing thing for me to come in to make this broken-down picture, and to find my director was the great Roscoe Arbuckle. Oh, I thought he was magnificent in films. He was a wonderful dancer—a wonderful ballroom dancer, in his heyday. It was like floating in the arms of a huge doughnut—really delightful."
Like the fictional Lina Lamont of “Singin’ in the Rain,” the real-life Mae Murray was “a shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament." While real people walked on the ground, Mae Murray fluttered above it on gauzy fairy wings. While real people breathed oxygen, Mae Murray inhaled the rarefied air of the gods. While real people ate, slept and aged. Mae faced each morning ageless and dewy-fresh, a vision of perpetual loveliness. So believed those wonderful people out there in the dark (for a time) and, sadly, so believed Mae Murray (all of the time).
“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” Norma Desmond
Although it is not proven that Mae Murray was the inspiration for Norma Desmond, it is almost impossible not to see a resemblance between the two. However, the real-life Mae made the fictional Norma seem almost normal. The real-life silent screen queen of the 20s was defined, not only by her screen allure, but also by her fabrications, her fictions, her pretenses, her litigiousness and her decidedly odd behavior. The real story of the girl with the bee-stung lips has lied buried beneath Mae’s attempt to artfully obscure the truth. She has remained an unsolved crackpot mystery. Unsolved, that is, until the seven veils of artifice have been lifted, one my one, by author Michael G. Ankerich in the aptly-titled “Mae Murray: The Girl With the Bee-Stung Lips.”
Author Ankerich gives us the Mae we know and the Mae we did not know. We know she was a Ziegfeld performer and successful dancer, we know she was a successful movie queen, we know she was bilked out of her fortune by faux-royalty, we know she lost custody of her son, and we know she descended into poverty and madness. What we did not know is that Mae, born Marie Koenig, came from poverty, that she was remarkably hard working and a team player (at her best), and that she tried, she really tried, to make it all work. The author also reveals that she had a family whose existence she denied as long as possible. Ankerich hit a homerun by interviewing her son Koran/David, a main player in Mae’s life who has, up until now, refused to be interviewed. He sheds invaluable light on his mother who, though she might have loved him, could not let go of the fantasy that Hollywood had, at first, so willingly helped her to create and, at last, destroyed any hope of her leading a normal life out of the spotlight.
“You know, a dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.” Cecil B. De Mille speaking of Norma Desmond
Like a circus performer whose spangles look glamorous from afar, but tawdry and tacky at close range, Ankerich gives us the sad, sad story of Mae’s decline. But, Mae is clearly a likeable gal, and the author likes her, too. When her life was secure and centered (especially during her marriage to director Robert Z. Leonard), she was fun, generous and a serious artist. He treats her with great compassion always, even when she was at her most unlikeable. The memories of George Hamilton, whose mother befriended Mae in her old age and who George knew (and tangoed with) as a youth, are tender and revealing (it was George’s mother who paid for Mae headstone upon her death).
“You were silly like us, but your gift survived it all.” W.H. Auden, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”
Yes, she was silly, but her gift still lives on. It is on display in many silent films still available, but in full flower in 1925’s “The Merry Widow.” She and director Erich Von Stroheim (oh the irony) butted heads, but in the end they produced her greatest achievement, the one she lived off the rest of her life.
"Where are the cameras? Where are my flowers? I must be photographed with flowers! Get them before I’m surrounded by cameramen!" Mae Murray at the end of the long, dark journey
This book, bedsides being a swell read, is a must for all silent film lovers and for those who love the larger-than-life characters that made that era golden.
“Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips” is available at Amazon.
For more about the irrepressible Mae, visit Michael G. Ankerich’s blog "Close Ups and Long Shots" by clicking HERE.
Yes, it's a new year, and with new beginnings come those resolutions. This time, I intend to use some cinematic inspiration.
1.Get Organized! Somewhere between this:
and this:
Must not go all crazy-eyed Sleeping with the Enemy
are my orderly closets and kitchen cabinets. 2. Loose Weight! Somewhere between this:
The hilarious Rebel Wilson in "Bridesmaids"
and this:
Angie - please eat!
is a reasonably thinner and healthier me (just gotta get in there and drag her out). 3. Figure out a way to age gracefully Ah, this is a hard one, but the clock keeps ticking. So, I would like to avoid this:
and shoot for this:
my hero
4. Get more sleep! We all know how hard it is to get enough sleep and how very important it is. But too much is no good:
and not enough is even worse:
5. Watch more movies! This one is easy.
I'll just do it! After all, I'll feel better, be more rested and be totally age-appropriate and organized. Wishing you all the very best of everything in 2013. I have a feeling it's going to be spectacular!
I usually avoid writing about television, this being a movie blog and all that. However, television was the medium that introduced me to classic films, fed my dreams of Hollywood and remains, still, through DVDs and TCM, my main venue for viewing movies. It was also the first breeding ground of my fantasy life (you know, the one where I grow up and marry Cary Grant). So, this Christmas, instead of lovely starlets posing for Christmas publicity photos, I offer my fantasy Christmas family (1960s-style with a little give and take over the decades).
Make Room for Daddy was my favorite TV show as a kid. First of all, Danny Williams and his family lived in this very sophisticated New York apartment with 2 levels! It seemed very appropriate for a nightclub entertainer of Danny's caliber to be living in such a nice place. I never understood why Ricky Ricardo, who appeared to have a good thing going at the Tropicana, forced Lucy to live in that crummy apartment.
"Ricky, don't be so cheap! Get outta that crummy apartment and live a little!
I related to this show because people were always yelling at one anther and wise cracking, which is kind of how my house was. The house that Dr. and Donna Stone lived in seemed as far removed from reality to me as the land of Oz.
Danny reminded me of my dad. He was not a nightclub entertainer, but he was beleaguered by a bunch of us whose mouths knew little restraint.
Marjorie Lord as Kathy was, to me, the perfect TV mom. She was loving and chic. Plus, my own mom was a redhead and I always thought they were the prettiest ladies.
My brothers were considerable older, but they were wiseguys like Rusty. My resemblance to Linda was mentioned frequently.
I am swapping big sister Sherry Jackson's Terry for Sally Field's Gidget - just because it is my fantasy.
A special seat at the family table wound have to be saved for Uncle Tonoose. He is by far my favorite uncle and I love him dearly.
My TV aunt that comes for Christmas is Samantha Stevens. That might mean that Endora is either Danny's or Kathy's mom, but I can't go there. Anyway, she is one of my favorite aunts because she is so beautiful and stylish and seems to have some special powers. I hope I grow up to inherit her nose (but if Danny is my dad, well.... I guess she is related to Kathy). Only Darrin #1 accompanies her in my fantasy.
My other favorite aunt is Susie MacNamara (of Private Secretary). Now, I only got to see this show on morning reruns, but I was always enamored of Ann Sothern's working girl. She was single, stylish and supporting herself. I want to sit right next to her. I realize that her boss, Mr. Sands, was Gidget's father, but that does not happen in my fantasy. Thought - get outta my head!!
And so, that is my happy Christmas family. Rusty, Gidget and I would get up early and unwrap our gifts (Rusty and I both get an a Viewmaster and an Etch a Sketch, Rusty also gets Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots and the Game of Mousetrap. I am so happy with my Easy Bake Oven and the dolls that looks just like me! Big sister Gidget is thrilled with her paisley skirt and go go boots).
It was a marvelous Christmas and many years later I return home. Danny and Kathy still live in the same apartment and I am now Ann Marie, aspiring actress, fashion plate and daddy's girl.
Hoping your holiday season is filled with love and peace and the warmth of family and good friends (real and imagined).
If you are dazzled by beauty, daring, and creativity, I think you will like the new cinematic stab at “Anna Karenina.” While I looked forward to seeing this, the weight of the earlier performances of both Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh seemed too much for the frail little shoulders of Keira Knightley. How could she compare?
First, let me say that reading this book in high school was NOT a happy experience. It was just so long, and all of the artifice of Imperial Russian society seemed so – well – artificial. Why couldn't the characters just say what they mean? Ah, youth…… And so Director Joe Wright’s challenge: not only to squeeze this hulking epic story of intertwined relationships into an approximate 2-hour story, but to make it look and feel fresh. I am happy to report that he has succeeded. Another straightforward retelling of Anna’s story would have been just so boring, no matter how gorgeously filmed. Instead Wright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard have elected to frame this story of the human heart so chained to the artifice and hypocrisy of society with the proscenium arch of the stage. It is bold, it is daring and it is gorgeous. And – it just feels right.
Well, we all know how it ends (Anna, the train and all that), but the characterizations offer some thrills:
Keira Knightley as Anna
Unlike the dignified beauties, Garbo and Leigh, Knightley is an artless, even coltish young woman playing the part of a respectable married lady. She seems content with her priggish husband and clearly adores her young son, but when the outlandish beauty of Count Vronsky is placed before her, she is consumed by an uncontrollable and feverish passion that ultimately wrecks her life. She tries so hard to live by the rules, but the rule of desire is just too much for her. She is, after all, so young.
Jude Law as Karenin
This is my favorite performance in the film. I hated this character in the book, and played by both Basil Rathbone and Ralph Richardson (in the Garbo and Leigh version), he is a cold-hearted prig. Jude Law (almost unrecognizable) plays the deceived husband with compassion. Yes, he's a bore, but he loves Anna and is heart-broken by her deceit. I felt sorry for him - something I never felt for this character when reading the book or watching the other film versions of the story.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vroksky
Aaron Taylor-Johnson is so outlandishly pretty as Anna's lover, Count Vronsky, that I found myself chuckling in order to relive the discomfort of such beauty in a masculine form. He is discomforting, not to mention callow, thoughtless and selfish. He is disturbing. Based on her wardrobe and accessories, Anna loves beautiful things. How could she not want to possess this jewel? The film also gives time to the Levin/Kitty romance, which balances the destructive love of Anna and Vronsky.
Was it perfect? Probably not. But, it dazzled my eyes and thrilled my imagination and that's why I love the movies.
