HOLLYWOOD – DID YOU KNOW? – Volume 5.

HOLLYWOOD – DID YOU KNOW? – Volume 5.

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Fans of 1939’s Gone with the Wind will doubtless be familiar with the following sentiments, for they appeared on the screen as the film began. ‘There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, of master and of slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a civilization gone with the wind…’ One can only imagine what African-Americans, particularly those descended from slaves, thought of such drivel. Knights, cavaliers, ladies fair, gallantry, a dream remembered indeed! Nauseous.

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In 1966, Jack Warner began preparing his ‘last chance’ musical, the medieval opus Camelot. For King Arthur’s mythical castle, he built a replica of Spain’s Castle of Coca at enormous cost, making it the largest set ever erected on the Warner Bros lot. He got Joshua Logan to direct but even the music of Lerner & Loewe could not prevent the picture from being a monumental box-office flop. Perhaps, the outcome might have been different if the talented Broadway cast of Julie Andrews, Richard Burton and Robert Goulet had been signed instead of opting for non-singers Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Harris and Franco Nero. Three years later Paramount Pictures made the same mistake with Paint Your Wagon, when the studio cast non-singers Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin and Jean Seberg in the main singing roles. Outstanding vocalist Harve Presnell got a berth in the picture but gave us only one song, the wonderful ‘They Call the Wind Maria’. The ‘non-vocalists’ sang the rest and the costly production brought an extended halt to the long run of money-making movie musicals churned out by Hollywood.

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Kelly LeBrock & Gene Wilder in The Woman in Red (1984)

Former supermodel Kelly LeBrock made the pulses of young men around the world quicken when they saw her in the 1984 film The Woman in Red. She truly was the face of the eighties – 24 years old and drop-dead gorgeous. That same year she married a Moroccan film producer named Victor Drai, a man who had previously lived from 1975 until 1980 with the equally stunning Jacqueline Bisset. Whether he traded ‘up’ or ‘down’ to Kelly might well be debated until hell freezes over. Anyway, by 1986 the marriage was over and a year later, action star Steven Seagal replaced Mr. Drai in Kelly’s marital bed. That union lasted nine years and produced three children until Seagal shot himself in the foot by having an affair with his children’s nanny, a lady named Arisa Wolf. She, too, gave him a child (in September ’96).

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Rudy Vallee

Rudy Vallee started his career as a saxophone player and singer before moving on to become a successful band leader. In the 20s and early 30s, he had a hit radio program called The Fleishmann’s Yeast Hour and it would be both fair and accurate to say that he was universally hated by his cast and crew, despite his ranking alongside Bing Crosby and Russ Columbo on America’s hit parades. The man’s enormous ego was the problem. He often instigated fist fights with those who got on his nerves; he slugged photographers and he punched hecklers in the nose; he threw sheet music in the faces of his pianists and was considered to be a slave driver by his staff. In December 1943, the lovely actress Jane Greer, surprisingly found something to love about him and became the third of his four wives. Less than eight months later, in July ’44, they divorced.

In public, however, he presented an entirely different image. Fans, especially young women, found him very attractive, so much so that he emerged as one of the first celebrity pop stars. Flappers followed him everywhere and screamed themselves hoarse at his vocalizing. He had a rather weak crooner’s voice so he started singing with a megaphone and it became his trademark. In typical egotistical fashion, Vallee offered the following revealing observation regarding the reason for his popularity: ‘People called me the guy with the cock in his voice. Maybe that’s why in 84 years of life I’ve been with 145 women and girls.’ Evidently, he believed that sleeping with an overall average of less than two women a year during his life made him in some way unique. Cancer claimed Mr. Vallee in 1986 whilst he was watching the Statue of Liberty Centennial celebrations on television.

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Coloratura soprano Jane Powell, probably best known for her portrayal of Milly in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), is now in her nineties (as of March 2020). The second of her five husbands, Patrick Nerney, bought Jane a beautiful pair of diamond earrings on one occasion, but her morbid fear of needles presented a problem when it came to the need to have her ears pierced. Upon discovering she was pregnant with her daughter Lindsay, she explained to her doctor that he could deliver her baby, but only if he promised to also pierce Jane’s ears while she was on the delivery table and under anaesthetic! He agreed to do so and she left the delivery room with a brand new baby daughter and two newly pierced ears.

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Rachel Roberts

The suicide of Rex Harrison’s ex-wife Rachel Roberts in 1980 was truly horrendous. After ingesting some barbiturates, she swallowed lye, alkali, or some other caustic substance, and the acidic effect of the poisonous agent once ingested, propelled her body through a decorative glass screen. When her gardener discovered Rachel’s body on the floor of her kitchen amongst the shards of glass, she was clad in her negligee and more or less cut to pieces. In all probability she had bled to death before the barbiturates had fully worked. She was 53 years old at the time of her death and known in the entertainment industry as a legendary alcoholic, with a history of eccentric behaviour. Devastated by her divorce from Harrison several years earlier, her alcoholism and depression had increased dramatically in the final years of her life. It was a terrible ending for a fine actress.

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One night, while Ethel Morman was in the middle of belting out one of her songs, a drunken member of the audience kept calling out to her, annoying both the audience and Ethel. As she got to the last line of the song, she hit the first three notes and then stopped singing. Walking off the stage through the wings and down the stairs into the audience, she suddenly appeared at the drunken man’s seat, yanked him out of it and dragged him through the doors that led out of the theatre. Then she literally threw him into the street before returning to the centre of the stage to deliver the remaining solitary note of the song! Sixties fans will recall her portraying the abominable mother of Dorothy Provine’s and Dick Shawn’s characters in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Ethel was a big woman on-screen and off. And a scary one!

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Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren stated in a 2008 GQ interview that she had been date raped as a student. She also admitted having often taken cocaine at parties, not only in her twenties but until well into the 1980s. She stopped snorting coke, she said, after reading that Nazi mass murderer Klaus Barbie, the man known as ‘The Butcher of Lyon’ in World War Two, had made a living from dealing in the stuff. The story about his dealing in cocaine turned out to be untrue – but at least it stopped her using.

15 Comments

  1. Erm . . . I liked BOTH Camelot and Paint Your Wagon! I know we disagree on tnis, Alan! The male chorus in PYW was terrific. I laughed like a drain at Hand me Down That can of Beans when I first saw the film. It was so different

    • In Australia, ‘Paint Your Wagon’ was a huge hit, although considerably less so in the USA. My brother and I went to see it FIVE times in a fortnight! All because of Lee Marvin. What an actor he was. The best ‘heavy’ on-screen and a fabulously funny comedian (PYW & Cat Ballou). There were some nice songs in ‘Camelot’ but Franco Nero as Lancelot was (to me) completely unimpressive and the direction was at a funeral pace, I felt. Then again, Cat, we all have differing opinions on most things. Who’s to say any one opinion is better than another. Certainly, not I. Lovely to hear from you again.

      • Re: Camelot. I tried watching, but it is so slow, dull, and boring that at one point I had to spare myself further torture and turn it off. Besides, I’ve never been a fan of Richard Harris.

        • I thought Harris always had a screen presence but he was extremely difficult to work with by all accounts, Craig. Indeed, I thought he was the only reasonable ingredient in the entire movie, although his presence still did not make it worth watching.

      • On I’m still here, Alan, and always enjoy your posts. Sometimes I just don’t have a pertinent comment (especially Westerns. Sorry I don’t share your knowledge and love!).

        • Good to hear you’re still on deck, Cat, what with this horrible Covid thing going around. We are so fortunate in Western Australia. Our isolation keeps us safe – so far, anyway.

  2. The magnificent Camelot Castle set that was constructed on the Warner Brothers Studio backlot was enormous and cost $500,000.

    In 1972 the castle was renovated into a Tibetan Lamasery for the musical version of “Lost Horizon.”

    It was also used to be the Chinese Shaolin Temple in flashback scenes for the popular television series “Kung Fu.”

    In Yvonne Craig’s autobiography she wrote about the time that Rudy Valle was a guest villain on the “Batman” TV series on which Yvonne portrayed Barbara Gordon aka Batgirl.

    On the three-part episode “The Londinium Larcenies,” Valee played the villain Lord Fogg who tangles with Batman, Robin, and Batgirl.

    Craig found Valee to be a crabby, cranky, curmudgeon and she disliked working with him. The “Batman” episodes were usually done in two-parts; each part running for a half-hour.

    Yvonne wrote that it figures that with the miserable Valee that the show was in three-parts instead of two?

    Vincent Price was delight when he appeared on the show according to Yvonne; Valle a pain in the neck.

    • Few entertainers were possessed of a bigger ego than Rudy Vallee at his peak. Personally, I have never been able to understand his popularity. He was 66 years old when he appeared on ‘Batman’, his career well and truly in decline. Who knows his state of mind by then? Vincent Price, on the other hand, was truly admired by all who knew him right up until the end of his life. He was a class act.

      • “Bullseye” on both counts. Remember reading in the ’70s or ’80s Vallee wanted to have the street he lived on changed to “Rue de Vallee” I mean seriously? Maybe in the ’20s, at the peak of his popularity, but 50 years later? Everything I’ve read on Price was exactly as you’ve stated, a class act.

        • I think Rudee’s final years were spent in ‘LaLa Land’, Matt. As for VP, I recall being completely surprised to learn that he was an American. The guy sounded more British than Larry Olivier!

          • On VP, think due to his patrician upbringing – If I remember rightly his Grandfather invented something like baking soda. Trips to Europe growing up, Yale graduate, an “Old School” class act. Thinking about it, can you name any current equivalents? Know different times, but I’d be hard pressed, minus the pr puffery, to name genuine contemporaries.

  3. Mr Royale, imagine a show Top of the Pops. A show in the seventies being the up and with it of the time. Then when the presenter saying for the third week the number one., , Paint your Wagon, if nothing else me mam loved Lee Marvin singing it.

    • I quite like ‘Wandering Star’, Morris, mainly because of the arrangement, tune itself, and the wonderful male chorus. Lee Marvin would have been the first to admit he was no singer. Good song though.

        • In my opinion, Morris, whenever Lee Marvin appeared on screen he effortlessly stole the scene he was in. As far as screen presence was concerned, he had it in spades!. Fabulous actor with a voice that demanded attention. You and I are in complete agreement there.

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