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And the unauthorized heirs to the unofficial heirs possibly?
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But can these do anything artistic at all? At least sing "Steal Me Away" with class? Nah!
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Don´t worry, I wasn´t promoting the Landers either, lol!Oh, I wasn't promoting the Kardashians in any way. Not a fan of theirs at all.
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C'mom, you can't diss Afton and Stacks.Don´t worry, I wasn´t promoting the Landers either, lol!
So very true. Constance Bennett had poise, style, and screen presence. She was incredibly versatile whether in dramatic roles or comedy. Her final role in "Madame X" as Lana Turner's duplicitous mother-in-law Estelle was unforgettable.
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Constance Bennett was certainly one of a kind. In her prime, in the early-'30s, she was right behind Garbo in box office popularity. WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD (1932), even before the original A STAR IS BORN (1937), peeled the veil off Hollywood and allowed the public to see behind-the-scenes of America's glitzy dream factory. She was beautiful, stylish, and sophisticated, which helped her morph into a healthy career as a comedienne in movies like TOPPER (1937) and MERRILY WE LIVE (1938). Bennett was even capable of elevating a poor quality film, such as she did with TWO-FACED WOMAN (1941), the miscalculated George Cukor comedy that ultimately served as Garbo's swan song. As she aged, acting gradually took a back-seat in her life, especially when she found she had a knack for selling real estate. Still, she managed to turn up in some showy supporting roles, with one of my favorites being AS YOUNG AS YOU FEEL (1951), a B-movie comedy featuring talents like Monty Woolley, Thelma Ritter, Jean Peters, and a young Marilyn Monroe. MADAME X (1966) was a strong end to a long and quite varied film career.
Ann Todd was in a niche all by herself. She seemed to always play solid, thoughtful, circumspect women. She could slide from the noble and principled to the incredibly vulnerable and tragically human. I loved her soothing voice and that uniquely uplifting quality she always left me with.Ann Harding (1902─1981), who was touted as RKO's answer to Norma Shearer, starred in a string of popular women's pictures during the 1930s. She was one of the first popular leading ladies to make a splash as sound films were becoming popular in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and she earned an Academy Award nomination for her role in Holiday (1931).
Although RKO could not regularly afford to dish out the budgets for Harding's films as MGM had done for Shearer, she did make her imprint on American audiences during the Great Depression. She often appeared alongside well-known marquee names, such as Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery, William Powell, Robert Young, and Gary Cooper. She also had a string of popular successes in the movies, namely The Animal Kingdom (1932) and When Ladies Meet (1933).
Harding was known for her striking features, most notably her waist-length blonde hair. She eventually became stereotyped in the role of a long-suffering, self-sacrificing young woman, which led to the decline in her public popularity. Following the lukewarm reception of her late-1930s films, she married conductor Werner Janssen in 1937, and she gradually shifted her life away from the limelight. She would occasionally return to acting, notably in such successes as Eyes in the Night (1942) and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), the latter which turned out to be one of her final film performances. She acted exclusively on television thereafter, before ultimately retiring from the profession for good in 1965.
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So glad you mentioned Irene Dunne. She was alwaysMaybe not a forgotten star but Irene Dunn never gets the recognition these days that she deserves. When there are any programmes on Hollywood's golden age they always feature names such as Bette Davis, Lauren Becall, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Crawford but Irene Dunne never seems to get a mention. When she died in 1990, I remember she got a small paragraph buried away on an inside page of the newspaper I read that day which in no way reflected her stature as one of the greats of Hollywood.
She made her first film in 1930 (Leathernecking) and her final film in 1952 (It Grows On Trees). Her most famous roles were as Anna Leonowens in Anna and The King of Siam (1946) and starring as "Mama" in the 1948 film I Remember Mama in which Barbara Bel Geddes had a supporting role.
She was nominated for 5 Oscars but never won and is widely considered to be one of the greatest actresses never to have won the award.
Thanks for the correction! I did mean Harding but you have such a wonderful rainbow of some of Hollywood's unsung talents I got overexcited in seeing them again.
We concur! Gene Tierney was almost ethereal. Her cool aristocratic air, her sublime looks, her elegant deportment lit up any screen. Sadly beneath her polished exterior lay unresolved demons. Added to this her often disastrous liaisons in her personal life made things worse. But you would never know it behind the camera. Whether she was the beautiful "Laura" or the bitterly jealous Isabel in "The Razor's Edge" or the shockingly cold blooded killer in "Leave Her to Heaven" Gene Tierney simply glowed on the screen.
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Gene Tierney is criminally underrated. Every now and again some film noir buffs will dust her off and make some noise about her, but among general classic movie nerds, she often falls through the cracks. She was stunningly beautiful and had a sultry voice (a feat achieved by her taking up smoking when she felt she sounded like an "angry Minnie Mouse" in her first film). Outside of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945), which breaks the norm for a film noir by being filmed in glorious Technicolor, and films like LAURA (1944) and THE RAZOR'S EDGE (1946), she was a great actress in many other roles. Her career was cut relatively short due to her own personal mental illness, and she was later removed from MOGAMBO (1953), leaving the door wide open for newcomer Grace Kelly to take her place.
The scene of Gene in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN where she watches the disabled young boy drown is disturbingly sad and iconic.
The scene of Gene in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN where she watches the disabled young boy drown is disturbingly sad and iconic.
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I'm glad you're enjoying the thread. I've long enjoyed discussing classic movies and the stars in them, and I felt this thread would be a healthy way to discuss those not-so-easily remembered or frequently discussed faces from those films that might not necessarily spring lengthy discussions worthy of their own thread. Sometimes I'll watch an old movie and see a familiar face and then come here to type something up about how said person basically fell off the radar or through the cracks of cinematic history.
Kudos for including Ruth Chatterton! Her best known performance as the shallow and self absorbed Fran in the hands of a less capable actress would have had the audience simply and completely detesting her but Chatterton manages to make us forgive and pity this silly fool. Ruth was my favourite Madame X and I never comprehended the failure of "Journal of a Crime". She is superb and for my money it is her finest performance in a hefty and meaty role as Francoise MoiletRuth Chatterton (1892─1961) found work as an actress on stage, film, and television in a career lasting over forty years. She later became quite well-known for her novelist and aviation accomplishments. She was one of the only few female aviators working successfully in the United States during the 1930s.
She made her Broadway debut in 1911, but she found her first great stage success in 1919 with Daddy Long Legs. At the age of thirty-six, she made her first feature film which was called Sins of the Fathers (1928). Its success brought her to the attention of Paramount Pictures, who signed her to a contract, and cast her in her first sound film entitled The Doctor's Secret (1929). Chatterton made a smooth transition from silents to talkies, drawing on her stage experience as a training ground for how to conduct her voice for the sound equipment.
Chatterton moved to MGM in 1929, where she would star in Madame X. Her performance was acclaimed, and she was nominated for an Academy Award (she lost to Mary Pickford). In the early 1930s, she was reportedly right behind actresses Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Constance Bennett in terms on box office popularity, although the quality of her film output was generally considered mediocre. She eventually ditched MGM and Paramount for Warner Brothers sometime around 1932. It was said that Chatterton's addition to Warner Brothers brought an "infusion of class".
One of Chatterton's more popular films was the 1933 pre-code comedy called Female, which she played a no-nonsense, strait-laced professional at a time when many women in films were not permitted to do so. Her last film for Warner Brothers was the poorly received melodrama Journal of a Crime in 1934, after-which her career stalled. She then starred opposite Walter Huston in Dodsworth (1936) for Samuel Goldwyn, giving a performance that many of her peers deemed Oscar-worthy. She made on two more films in England before her film career permanently ended in 1938.
She died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1961, aged sixty-eight.
I remember reading through my large Great Movie Actresses book, and always stopping on Ruth Chatterton. There was always something that sparked about her, and I always want to dig into her career. Bette Davis, who supported her in the 1932 film The Rich Are Always with Us, later recalled how the cameramen employed a "special" lighting for Chatterton, apparently to disguise her age. She was approaching forty at the time. In this realm, I've always thought of Ruth Chatterton and Mae West in the same mindset; they were both born in the early 1890s, but yet remained fairly consistent with keeping their age ambiguous for several years.
I have a book called Leading Ladies that says Irene Dunne is generally regarded as unfashionable today. That's always baffled me. I just don't really understand how she could be thought of as such, but I guess it's because she didn't have the "grand" roles that Davis, Stanwyck, and Crawford had. But even that theory is shaky, considering Norma Shearer had those kinds of romantic roles, but her imprint on modern society is slight, too.
I've always enjoyed Irene Dunne in the movies I've seen her in, particularly My Favorite Wife and Penny Serenade. She's quite beautiful, and always lovely. She's a real delight in her pictures, and I hate that I haven't more on them in my collection. Maybe that needs to be rectified.
If anything, you'll love her accent. As an introduction catch her in Dr.Jekyll and Mr Hyde as the terrorized Ivy. Her role is small but she is terrific. Then anything with her and Joel McCrea --which is around 4 or 5 pictures-- should show you how talented she was. Her pairing with Bette Davis is another not to miss. They play off each other perfectly. If you're hooked by then her other films of that era are often quite good. After her career suddenly faded her other performances are capable but do little to reveal her fine abilities.
But when I saw her as Ivy pursued by the maniacal Mr. Hyde I couldn't get enough of the great Miriam Hopkins.
Try to keep a look to see if Turner Classic Movies has either "An American Tragedy" or "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine". The first was an earlier remake of "A Place in the Sun" with Elizabeth Taylor. Sylvia Sidney is heartbreaking as the luckless Roberta Alden. Shelley Winters unsympathetically interpreted the role in the remake and ruined it.
In the latter film she's effective as well. She then goes on to demonstrate her versatility as she slips in another fine performance in Alfred Hitchcock's excellent"Sabotage".
If you haven't already try to see this splendid actress in "Three Comrades" or "The Shop Around the Corner". These two films alone will have you wanting more. A brilliant talent.
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Yes, I used to have a large GREAT MOVIE ACTRESSES book that included Chatterton in the section about the top actresses of the 1930s. Naturally, I had never heard of her before reading said book -- which I originally got around 15 years ago -- but I was always drawn to her picture. I've seen FEMALE (1933) on TCM and I want to say they showed JOURNAL OF A CRIME (1934) once as well. She was a big deal back in her prime, but she's sadly another one that's slid right through the cracks of time.
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Anne Shirley was an American actress who worked in Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1940s. Born Dawn Evelyn Paris in New York in 1918, she began modeling as a baby, and ultimately made her feature film debut at the age of four in MOONSHINE VALLEY (1922). She was originally billed professionally as Dawn O'Day. She worked with Walt Disney in the late 1920s, voicing "Alice" in his silent "Alice in Cartoonland" shorts. She was quite successful as a child actress in Pre-Code films, such as GUN SMOKE (1931) and SO BIG (1932), the latter starring a young Barbara Stanwyck.
She made her way to RKO Studios in the early 1930s. There, she was cast as the title character in ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (1934), a film adaptation of the 1908 novel. The film was successful and she decided to take the character's name -- Anne Shirley -- as her professional stage name. From 1934 onward, she was professionally known as Anne Shirley. She starred in CHATTERBOX (1936), playing a young aspiring actress, and also appeared in STELLA DALLAS (1937), again starring Stanwyck, and VIGIL IN THE NIGHT (1940), starring Carole Lombard.
Shirley was one of the many actresses in Hollywood in the late 1930s that wanted a role in GONE WITH THE WIND, the glossy movie version of the best-selling novel being produced by David O. Selznick. Shirley screen-tested for the part of Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, but ultimately wasn't cast in favor of Olivia de Havilland. Shirley's screen test was later used in the MAKING OF A LEGEND documentary about the film.
Still at RKO, she appeared in several movies throughout the 1930s. One such film was MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS (1939), a B-movie with poor prospects, that had been originally slated for Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn. When Hepburn refused the role, Shirley was brought in to salvage the project. The movie was ultimately a critical and box office dud. Shirley's final movie role was in the 1944 film noir MURDER, MY SWEET, starring Dick Powell and Claire Trevor.
Shirley retired from show business in 1944 at just 26 years old. She was married to actor John Payne from 1937 to 1943, producing a daughter, future actress Julie Payne. She was then married to Adrian Scott, a screenwriter and producer, from 1945 to 1948, and finally to screenwriter and director Charles Lederer from 1949 until his death in 1976.
Anne Shirley passed from lung cancer on July 4, 1993, aged 75.
She made her way to RKO Studios in the early 1930s. There, she was cast as the title character in ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (1934), a film adaptation of the 1908 novel. The film was successful and she decided to take the character's name -- Anne Shirley -- as her professional stage name. From 1934 onward, she was professionally known as Anne Shirley. She starred in CHATTERBOX (1936), playing a young aspiring actress, and also appeared in STELLA DALLAS (1937), again starring Stanwyck, and VIGIL IN THE NIGHT (1940), starring Carole Lombard.
Shirley was one of the many actresses in Hollywood in the late 1930s that wanted a role in GONE WITH THE WIND, the glossy movie version of the best-selling novel being produced by David O. Selznick. Shirley screen-tested for the part of Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, but ultimately wasn't cast in favor of Olivia de Havilland. Shirley's screen test was later used in the MAKING OF A LEGEND documentary about the film.
Still at RKO, she appeared in several movies throughout the 1930s. One such film was MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS (1939), a B-movie with poor prospects, that had been originally slated for Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn. When Hepburn refused the role, Shirley was brought in to salvage the project. The movie was ultimately a critical and box office dud. Shirley's final movie role was in the 1944 film noir MURDER, MY SWEET, starring Dick Powell and Claire Trevor.
Shirley retired from show business in 1944 at just 26 years old. She was married to actor John Payne from 1937 to 1943, producing a daughter, future actress Julie Payne. She was then married to Adrian Scott, a screenwriter and producer, from 1945 to 1948, and finally to screenwriter and director Charles Lederer from 1949 until his death in 1976.
Anne Shirley passed from lung cancer on July 4, 1993, aged 75.