2 Mac/Eddy movies on TCM UK in March!
Turner Classic Movies UK March Schedule:
Three Daring Daughters: Thursday, March 20, at 6:45.
Sweethearts: Tuesday, March 25, 16:50
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Chicago theater shows “I Married an Angel”
Sorry that we missed knowing about this until the matinee was over…but if you live in Chicago you should download the info about the Portage Theater for future Mac/Eddy films!
Retired baritone reflects…on Nelson Eddy
Bobby Brittain performed for FDR and shared stages with Lucille Ball and Ethel Barrymore.
February 29, 2008
A 12-year-old Bobby Brittain entered Tin Pan Alley in the 1930s, dressed in his knickers and naively peddling words to a song he wrote.
Brittain loved to sing. The song “March of Dimes” put him in front of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, performing at a benefit of the same name, at the Waldorf Astoria. That performance resulted in a contact from the well-known William Morris Agency in Manhattan, N.Y.
Brittain had a lot going for him — everything except for his name. The agency already had someone by that name, so Bobby Brittain had to adopt a new persona, and it was the beginning of a successful career for a man known as Tommy Dix.
Today this 84-year-old, silver-haired baritone can still croon anyone back into yesteryear. The songs still sound in his heart, and he can still remember their impact on him as a youth.
The Williamsburg resident reflected back to 1935, when his mother took him to see “Naughty Marietta,” a play with Nelson Eddy.
“I heard Nelson Eddy sing, ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life,’ and I began to cry,” he said.
When his mother asked him why he was crying, he told her, “That was beautiful.”
“I knew then, that’s what I wanted to do.” After winning a four-year scholarship to Manhattan’s High School of Music & Art, he became president of the science club, where the other half of his heart lies. He claims that someone entered his name into a drawing, and he was able to attend the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University for a day, where he was privileged to hear Albert Einstein speak.
“I only understood a fraction of what he was talking about,” he says.
He was tempted toward a career in science, but singing also tugged at him and he found early success employing his voice.
“I got sidetracked,” Brittain said of his singing career. “We were poor, it was during the Depression and this was a great way to make plenty money.”
Show business gave him the chance to be the voice of Henry in the radio production of “The Aldridge Family,” among other shows. From those small beginnings, he catapulted into film; starring in “Best Foot Forward” with Lucille Ball. He lived on the West Coast for a couple of years after that, but quickly returned home. One of his songs from “Best Foot Forward” enjoyed widespread popularity, “Buckle Down Winsocki.” And, for anyone around in the 1960s, he was also the voice behind the television commercial tune “Buckle up for Safety, Buckle up.”
At the age of 15, he performed in the original stage version of “The Corn is Green,” with Ethel Barrymore.
“Don’t quote me, but I may be the only person still living from that show,” Brittain said.
As much as he enjoyed entertaining, he left the business at the age of 23.
“I didn’t like all the things that were going on, so I left,” Brittain said. “I didn’t want to be under the observation of audiences any longer. Being on tour was hard, and there was no privacy. I began to like music less, because it became a job.”
But he still loved to sing. Brittain can still sit and serenade you with his songs of long ago. He also can reminisce about his Army service during World War II, his two marriages, his son and life stories. He will reveal his love of science and the arts, and he will share tears about his beloved wife, Elizabeth, who he married in 1992 but who died two years ago.
Around his home are busts of Aristotle, Hypnos, Euripides, Beethoven and Thomas Jefferson; photos of Albert Einstein, who he holds in high esteem; and the complete collection of “Great Books of the Western World.”
“I aspire to be an appreciator of beautiful things — one should develop that sense early on. We need to stand on the shoulders of the ones that went before us. When an old man dies, a great library burns down,” he said.
He sums up his life by quoting a famous line that he lives by, from philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”
The Shocking Miss Pilgrim - a 99-year old screenwriter tells it as Hollywood was!
Here’s another book recommendation! I read an excellent review of this book and decided to check it out, noting that she discussed Louis B. Mayer. It’s a slim volume but very insightful into the 20s and 30s. Maas discusses all aspects of her life and times, the cutthroat industry, prejudice against women, the parties that were little more than orgies. Seems like some aspects of Hollywood haven’t changed much!
From the “Publishers Weekly” review: “In 1920, she answered a New York Times classified ad from Universal Pictures, becoming, at age 23, Universal’s N.Y.C. story editor. In 1925, she arrived in Hollywood, turned down a screen test and instead scripted a Clara Bow vehicle, The Plastic Age….. Maas trashes Hollywood legends, recalling Louis B. Mayer as “a very fearful, insecure man”; Clara Bow dancing nude on a tabletop; Jeanne Eagels squatting to urinate in the midst of a film set; and Marion Davies commenting on her affair with Hearst: “I’m a slave, that’s what. A toy poodle.”
From the Amazon.com review: ” In The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, Frederica–who met and married filmmaker Ernest Maas in 1927–shows how, despite her screenwriting abilities, her career in motion pictures was stymied by her outspoken disagreements with studio bosses, and how many of those around her gave into debauchery. (At one party, she reports, “undressed, tousled men chased naked women, shrieking with laughter. Included in this orgy was Ray Long, Mr. Hearst’s representative; Harry Rapf, my own producer; and even the immaculate Irving Thalberg–all drunk, drunk, drunk.”) Her memoir’s prose has a charming tone, perfectly matching her Jazz Age exploits, which take up the bulk of the story. She also discusses the decline of the Maas’s careers, which they finally abandoned after the Second World War, but not before writing a musical (called The Shocking Miss Pilgrim) for Betty Grable. The best passages concern Frederica’s adventures in a young industry that was still discovering itself, such as her part in the creation of a motion picture legend: newly arrived actress Lucille LeSueur came up to her one day and said, “I like the way you dress. You dress like a lady. I need that. I want to be dressed right. Smart. I figured you could help.” One shopping expedition later, and Joan Crawford was taking her first steps toward stardom. “–Ron Hogan
My only complaint was that the book wasn’t longer; still, this is an excellent eyewitness account of what it was like to be a woman in Hollywood. You can probably get the book through your local library system or order it at the link above.
Reviews still coming in for the Lubitsch/Jeanette MacDonald DVDs
…
His first sound film was The Love Parade, made in 1929, the first truly “talkie” year. His use of camera movement is only slightly constrained in this operetta starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. The following year’s Monte Carlo was another leap forward, with its famous “Beyond the Blue Horizon” number, in which train sounds set the rhythm, leading to Jeanette MacDonald’s vocal and the choral backing of farmers as the train speeds by their fields. The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) is similar in tone and subject to The Love Parade, with an even smoother execution. And One Hour with You (1932) — a remake of The Marriage Circle (1924), one of Lubitsch’s best silents — is arguably the greatest of the four.
The “argument” is largely a matter of casting. Chevalier was known as “the French Jolson,” and, like the American Jolson, his style and persona have (to be kind) dated badly.
In addition to his often impenetrable accent, Chevalier’s repertoire of rolling eyes, raised eyebrows, smug grins and jaunty chuckles make his whole act somewhere between irritating and intolerable. Monte Carlo benefits hugely by having Jack Buchanan (The Band Wagon) in what would otherwise have been “the Chevalier role.”
What shall I watch tonight? How about “Love Me Tonight”
A blog called “What Shall I Watch Tonight?”
And then there’s Love Me Tonight (1932), a pre-Code classic from Mamoulian and one of the best musicals ever. Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith, Charles Ruggles, even Gabby Hayes(!) when he was still just plain ol’ George. Highlights: the incredible opening scene where Paris awakens, MacDonald in a nightgown so deliciously transparent it belongs in a stag movie, and the “traveling” melodies “Isn’t It Romantic?” and “Mimi”, both courtesy of Rodgers and Hart. In time, Rodgers came to detest Hart, MacDonald came to loathe Chevalier and I wasn’t too crazy about Mamoulian after working eight months deciphering his rambling tales of Hollywood yore. But - art lives on long after old grudges die, and this film is proof of that.
Alice Brady gossip - Nelson’s co-star and 1933 girlfriend
You may not be aware, but last fall there was much-to-do about a blind gossip item regarding “Shimmy” and “Timmy,” causing a scandalous fury around the Internet as movie buffs attempted to figure out the identity of a 1930s Oscar-winning character actress who, suffering from cancer, had a “stand-in” replace her at times both on the screen and off for public appearances (even the Academy Awards!).
After nearly a month of tremendous speculation (and some correct guesses), the person who posted this blind item identified the actress (”Shimmy”) as Alice Brady and her impersonator “Timmy” as Arthur Blake.
Alice Brady was the star of one of Nelson’s first MGM films, “Broadway to Hollywood” (1933), which also co-starred Frank Morgan and Mickey Rooney. Nelson had a walk-on that consisted of him singing one number on-stage while off-stage, Brady and Morgan had a loud argument. The camera spends most of the time on Brady and Morgan and their yelling at each other pretty much drowns out Nelson’s singing!
Still, Nelson found time for a short romance with Alice Brady who, born in 1992, was nine years his senior. The only candid photo with Nelson from that film that we’ve ever found is the one pictured here, on the set with Brady.
She went on to win the 1937 Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film “In Old Chicago” but was too ill to attend the award ceremony. Her Oscar statuette disappeared after the presentation and she passed away before it could be replaced - just days short of her 47th birthday.
Here is the original blind item: “I don’t remember the first time I met JJ. It just seemed like from the first day I started at my first position he was there. It seems like he has always said he is retired, but at the same time it seems like he always has a piece of every project. JJ is pushing 90 if he isn’t there already. He started in the business when he was a kid doing gofer work and his career rise has matched the rise of films through their infancy all the way to the present day. He knows everyone and for those few people he doesn’t know, they certainly know him. I’ve always told him he needs to write a book about his life and times and let future generations have an insight into his life and what he has seen. I get the feeling he has, although he hasn’t ever confirmed it. Maybe he is waiting to publish it after he dies. I don’t know. With what I do now I don’t come into contact with JJ much anymore on a professional basis but I always stay in touch on a personal basis. Every other month or so we get together for brunch and I get entertained for a few hours. I’m not sure what JJ gets out of it except for some company and some free food. Somehow I think I’m getting the better part of the deal. This past Sunday the conversation turned towards an event he had hinted at previously, but had never really finished the story and I took the opportunity this time to get the answers I wanted. All I will say about these events are they happened within the past 50 years and only about ten people know the whole story. Timmy was a gay man at a time when gay men were treated miserably, not only in Hollywood but in the rest of the country as well. Timmy’s homosexuality was compounded by the fact that he was very slightly built, had very pale features and a skin condition that prevented much hair growth on his body. What Timmy had going for him was a personality that wouldn’t quit and a way of capturing an audience whether one person, five hundred or through film that was unlike anything most people had seen previously. Timmy grew up in the Northeast in a small town where he really and truly didn’t fit in. At some point he knew he wanted to be an actor and began performing in theatres across the country. He would stick in a city long enough to work in some plays and shows and then move on when he heard of another opportunity in a bigger town or for more money somewhere else. Each of these moves pushed him further and further west to his ultimate destination in Hollywood. When he first arrived in LA, the studio system was still going strong and most performers were tied to a studio for many years. They would often work on several films simultaneously and often share accommodations with other performers of the same level who also worked at the same studio. Timmy worked often, but nothing more than a few lines here or there and spent a great deal of time in the “chorus” sections of musicals which were still fairly popular. To supplement his income Timmy began performing in local theatre productions. One night the lead actress was unable to perform and there was no understudy. A sold out audience was going to be sent home unless something was done. Enter Timmy. With the audience none the wiser, Timmy performed the entire two hour show as the lead actress and received a standing ovation. He was brilliant and there was even a review in the paper which talked about this understudy who was even better than the regular actress. As good as Timmy was, it was only for one night, and he went back to his regular role the next night. Timmy was excited about the possibilities the night before had held though and the response he received was never far from his mind. After another year working at the studio without getting much further than bit parts, Timmy decided to do something which would put him in the spotlight. When his studio contract ended he basically reversed his original trek to LA and began performing in small town theatres again, but this time as a woman. Timmy traveled and did the theatre route for almost two years while building up a resume and a background for his new persona. When he finally felt as if he had it down, Timmy returned to Hollywood. This time as a woman. From his very first screen test as a woman, Timmy was destined to become a star. Timmy was initially given meaty supporting roles and moved into an apartment with two other women who worked at the studio. One of those women was JJ’s wife. There was just no way for Timmy to keep his masculinity a secret in such close quarters and so the two women became Timmy’s confidantes and helped him whenever possible. Over the next two years, Timmy worked steadily as a woman and kept getting better and better roles. He was very rarely the lead, but in memorable role he was cast as the lead opposite a very closeted A list at the time actor who also remained single for his entire life. The two began a relationship which was always kept quiet but lasted for many years. Shortly after Timmy was cast as the lead, he was cast in another role which is the subject of the blind. Timmy was incredible in this role and whether his acting was as a result of his new found love or as a result of just the right part at the right time, Hollywood took notice and so did the critics. During award season, Timmy began winning regularly for his role. I want to make it perfectly clear that none of these organizations knew Timmy was actually a man when they were honoring him with awards as an actress. This award season was a blessing because it honored Timmy for his work, but at the same time the increased publicity and probes into his background were causing a great deal of stress and Timmy began getting hives and breaking out as the stress of trying to maintain three different persona’s. Timmy himself, Timmy the actress, and Timmy the gay man in a loving relationship with a closeted star. When it came to the very big award, the one with all the television viewers, Timmy won again. There he was, the woman who was really a gay man was being honored for being the Best Supporting Actress/Best Actress of the year. Its up to you to figure out which of the two he won. After the award season, Timmy thought the hives and his skin would go back to normal, but if anything they became worse. The severe outbreak he had been dealing with had altered his body to the point where it just wouldn’t go back to normal. At that time there was no CGI, and makeup could only do so much. Timmy the award winning actress was having trouble finding work because of his condition and so he saw his career slowly work its way back down the ladder over the course of three or four years. Timmy considered trying to resume a film career as a man but the skin condition made that impossible because it would have been one hell of a coincidence that two people who looked remarkably alike had the same condition. What he could do though was return to the theatre, and he did so, as a man and worked as a man until his death from AIDS related complications. Sunday after brunch I went to Blockbuster and I rented the award winning film, and even knowing what I knew, when I watched it Sunday night it was almost impossible to tell. If you watch it carefully there is one giveaway which is a scar. It’s not a big scar, but its evident in photos of the male Timmy which you can still find online in old cast photos and in the female version of Timmy as she acts her way to one of the biggest awards in films. Timmy as an actor and actress was in over 100 films and theatre productions from Topeka to Broadway, but this is about one role and one award.”
You can read the “solution” for this blind item with lots of film clips of both Alice Brady and Arthur Blake playing her at this link. It’s certainly a fascinating piece of Hollywood history!
Poignant news story of woman who lost her Nelson Eddy sketches!
Heartbroken is what she is.
No, that is not adequate, the way her lower lip quivers when she recounts what happened on Monday afternoon, the way she slaps her kitchen counter, looks to the ceiling and blinks back tears.
It was the first time in at least 60 years that she had taken them outside of her home.
Maybe she was just lonely that day, perhaps wanting to impress the two elderly gentlemen she’d befriended in the park.
Or, if nothing else, the reason was, simply, that artists will break even the most hardened personal rules for anyone asking to view their work.
“It was my youth!” Wenona Casedy says bitterly, over and over.
She is 86 years old.
Ah, but when she talks in her expansive way of her intricately drawn pencil sketches, it is once again late-1930s, Depression-era Denver, and she is a starry-eyed 16-year-old hunting down musicians and celebrities outside the old City Auditorium downtown.
All of her opera and popular music heroes would come to town most every year.
And she would storm the stage door, begging an agent or a manager - anyone - to please have the subject of her portrait autograph it for her.
She remembers the day in ‘38 when Nelson Eddy, the singer and movie star, came to town. As president of the Denver Nelson Eddy Fan Club, she’d tracked him to the sixth floor of the Brown Palace.
She gathered her girls and they stormed the sixth floor. His manager met them at the hotel room door. Well, they asked him, would he at least sign their autograph books?
Wenona Casedy handed him the pencil sketch of her idol - she was too poor to afford paints.
“The next thing I know, the manager walks back into the hallway as we are leaving, asking if Wenona Hampson is here,” she recalls.
“Well, Mr. Eddy wants to see you!” she is told. Had she just gone to heaven?
“Here I am, this 16-year-old girl getting to see this great big movie star!” she says, looking away in clear reverie, as if it is happening all over again.
Nelson Eddy walks from a back room as she enters the room, throws his hands up and exults that he had always wanted to meet her, the girl with the sketches.
“He actually hugged me and signed my portrait for me!”
“I liked him because he was such a great singer,” Wenona Casedy says now. “And because he was well, just so beautiful!”
In her basement today are three, professional-quality pencil sketches of Nelson Eddy from years before that time, none of them signed.
At City Auditorium, which evolved into the Denver Performing Arts Center, she became legendary. Every artist, opera star or band member demanded to see the girl with the sketches, to see if they had been included.
Soon, she was often a guest backstage. Managers often asked that she come to every performance. Artists began to feel insulted if they did not have a Wenona Hampson sketch when they arrived in town.
Jeannette MacDonald sat for her three times. She loved it, if only because Nelson Eddy was always right there.
She took a phone company job across the street from the auditorium when she turned 18, and arranged for her work hours to end at curtain time, just so she could see the curtain rise and, later, have artists sign her work.
During the war, she married. She had children. For years she never sketched. She had compiled some 40 pencil sketches of stars that ultimately were all autographed.
And then came Monday.
The two elderly gentlemen she’d befriend over the past six months - both of whom could never keep up with her on her daily walks around Harvey Park in southwest Denver - had finally asked if they could see her drawings.
Oh, she never let them out of the house, she told them.
OK, maybe this once.
They were impressed by the intricacy of the drawings, of learning who the Depression-era stars were. They’d grown up on a farm in western Kansas. They didn’t even know who Nelson Eddy was, she said.
She soon gathered her drawings, all of them in black notebooks, and bid the men adieu. When she arrived back at her West Yale Avenue condominium, she could not find them.
The best she can figure now is she drove off with the notebooks, each containing at least 10 sketches, still on the trunk of her car. She immediately drove back.
She and Tim Todd, the longtime recreation director at the park, searched for hours.
Nothing.
On Thursday, she’d drawn up and was posting $200 reward notices for the drawings around the park. Tim Todd was doing the same thing.
“I feel so bad for her,” he later said. “My mom died last September, and Wenona, she reminds me of her.”
The sketches still have not surfaced.
“No questions asked,” Wenona Casedy says of the reward.
“They were my whole youth,” she says. She paces the floor with her late, beloved husband Selman’s wedding ring swinging on a gold chain around her neck.
“They are everything to me. And I cannot tell you how sick I feel about it.”
If you’ve seen them, just drop them off with Tim Todd at Harvey Park. He will arrange the reward for you.
No questions asked.
NOTE: This story had a happy ending:
Passer-by, brother return sketches, joy to artist
SOURCE: Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News
The old woman met the younger one almost before she walked into the backyard through the sliding glass door. She threw her arms open wide, and the two embraced.
“Are you the one who found my sketches?” Wenona Casedy whispered softly, tightly clutching the young woman, who began nodding and hugging her back. “This is such a miracle,” the 86-year-old woman said, looking to the sky. “I never thought I would ever see them…”
Obit of woman who cooked a meal for Nelson Eddy!
Robbie Board: ‘A kindly, gentle spirit’
Robbie Board was a slightly built tower of strength — a woman who worked and raised three children alone after her husband died. She was passionate about justice, say those who knew her, and she always spoke her mind.
Board died June 21, 2006, at age 100. Hers is not a name heard often when people speak of the history of civil rights and desegregation in Roanoke. Yet Board, some say, was an unsung hero of that time and beyond.
“She was a great believer in equal rights for everybody,” recalled her daughter, Jeane Hale Marsh of Roanoke.
“She was a great person, and because she came this way, we’re a better family and this is a better community,” her other daughter, Jackie Bolden said.
Old friends
Robbie Board lived a colorful and eventful life. As a young woman, she worked as a housekeeper at the house of a young John Payne, who would become the Roanoke Valley’s most famous movie star. (Payne was a staple in mid-century movie musicals, but is best remembered as co-star of “Miracle on 34th Street,” along with Maureen O’Hara and a very young Natalie Wood. Payne was the lawyer who defended Santa Claus.)
Board was in her 20s at the time, with three children of her own. (Her first husband, William Hale, had died very young with pneumonia, Jackie Bolden said. Robbie Board was married a second time, to Lynwood Board, when the children were already grown.) Board recalled in interviews that Payne was always clowning around in his kitchen and asking her to critique his singing. “He should have been a comedian,” Board told The Roanoke Times at age 94.
Sometimes Payne took her to the movies. “With his hat turned up, Mr. Payne was the sportiest man in town,” Board told the Roanoker magazine in 1992. Board also said she once cooked country ham and fried potatoes at the Payne house for singer Nelson Eddy.
Another great review of Jeanette’s Paramount Films…
Saucy dialogue and flimsy nighties in spades
February 22, 2008
Critic Andrew Sarris defined the “Lubitsch touch” as the “counterpoint between sadness and gaiety,” to which one might add witty dialogue alongside insinuating pantomime and a view that audiences should be treated as mature enough to get subtle jokes. Director Ernst Lubitsch arrived in Hollywood in 1922 after a successful career in Germany, and in 1929 made one of the first great sound musicals, The Love Parade, with Maurice Chevalier (a star of Parisian music halls) and Jeanette MacDonald, whose background in operettas perfectly complemented Lubitsch’s fascination with the genre.
The finest Chevalier-MacDonald comedy is Rouben Mamoulian’s 1932 romp Love Me Tonight, released on DVD by Kino in 2003, but The Love Parade and three other titles in Lubitsch Musicals (from Eclipse, a subsidiary of the Criterion label) remain a treat. They were filmed before the censors clamped down on dialogue of the sort spoken here, or flimsy nighties of the sort MacDonald wears, or plots that treat infidelity and caddishness with the European offhandedness Lubitsch favoured. The plots are set in artificial kingdoms where people break into song as easily as they speak and where servants echo their employers’ love affairs and spats. Sample lyrics from a Love Parade ditty sung by Lupino Lane (aide to the military attaché played by Chevalier) and Lillian Roth (handmaiden to MacDonald’s monarch): “Squeeze me once, squeeze me twice/ Most improper, but oh it’s nice/ Let’s be common and do it again.”
In Monte Carlo (1930), MacDonald leaves a wealthy duke at the altar and takes up with disguised count Jack Buchanan in a part Chevalier would have played if he hadn’t been otherwise occupied. One influential scene uses the sound of train wheels and whistles as the rhythm for MacDonald’s song Beyond the Blue Horizon. In The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), Chevalier gravitates between free spirit Claudette Colbert and wealthy, reserved Miriam Hopkins. Both Colbert and Hopkins demanded that Lubitsch photograph only the more photogenic right side of their faces; Hopkins won. Chevalier and MacDonald reunited in One Hour With You (1932), which was to have been directed by George Cukor but was handed to Lubitsch two weeks into shooting. Cukor’s contract required him to remain on set, which he recalled in 1971 as “goddamned agony for me.”
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