Louis Wolheim: The Ugliest Character Actor in Hollywood History

In one of her earliest short stories - The Man Who Came Home - Edna Ferber described a character named Birdie as having “. . . a face that looked like a huge mistake.” She could easily have been referring to actor the great Louis Wolheim, who was, hands down, the ugliest character actor in Hollywood history. Universally respected as an actor’s actor, and widely known as an erudite “doll of a man” Wolheim was invariably cast as a brute because of his “huge mistake of a face.” Born into an Orthodox family in Russia in 1880, Wolheim, arrived in New York in 1888 with his parents Elias & Lena Wolheim, where they would eventually be blessed with nine more children.

A brilliant student who spoke fluent French, German, Spanish and Yiddish (his mother- tongue), Louis enrolled at the City College of New York; after 2 years, he transferred to Cornell University, where he earned a degree in engineering – and played varsity football. That’s how he originally injured his nose. However, according to a contemporary issue of Photoplay magazine, Louis had his nose restored to its original glory surgically, and celebrated the occasion with a party at an Ithaca bar. After a bit of drinking, he and one of his guests got into a fight, during which he broke his nose a second time. (Wolheim told the fan magazine that he won the fight.)

Following graduation, Wolheim remained in Ithaca where he became a highly popular and successful math tutor. One of his pupils was future movie star Alolphe Menjou, who later described Wolheim as having “a mind like a calculating machine and a face that looked as though it had been run over by a truck." (Ironically, it was the handsome, debonair Menjou who, in 1931, replaced Wolheim in his starring role in the original version of “The Front Page,” when Wolheim unexpectedly died.) Wolheim spent a couple of years in Mexcio working as a mining engineer and then returned to Ithaca, where he sold cigars at a local hotel. One day in mid-1914, Wolheim was spotted by actor Lionel Barrymore, who was in town shooting a two-reel picture for D.W. Griffith’s Biograph Studio. (n.b.: in 1914, Barrymore starred or appeared in 14 silent films). Barrymore, according to the legend, advised Louis that “with that face, you could make a fortune in the theater.” Shortly thereafter, Wolheim began his acting career, first as an uncredited extra in dozens of shorts and serials.

With the help of Lionel and his younger brother John, Wolheim eventually transferred his face and untrained theatrical talent on the stage, where from 1919 to 1925, he appeared in 10 Broadway plays. Keeping a finger in film, he also landed a reasonably meaty role in John’s 1922 film Sherlock Holmes, costarring Roland Young, William Powell, Hedda Hopper and, as Professor Moriarty, Gustav von Seyffertitz. (A trivial note: Von Seyffertitz, who by the outbreak of WWI was already a star of note in Hollywood, took the advice of his producer, Jesse Lasky, who thought it wise to change his name to something far, far less Teutonic. In 1915 and beyond, Americans were anti everything “Hunnish.” Thus, “sauerkraut” became “liberty cabbage,” the teaching of German in public school legally banned, and Gustav von Seyffertitz was renamed “C. Butler Clonblough.” He wouldn’t go back to using his birth name until 1919.)

Shortly after completing his brief role in Sherlock Holmes, Wolheim met playwright Eugene O'Neill by chance at a Barrymore thrown party to celebrate the opening of The Claw which starred Lionel and opened in October 1921. (The Claw was written by the French playwright Henri Bernstein, and was translated into English by none other than Louis Wolheim). O’Neil was immediately taken with Wolheim, and cast him as the lead in his newest play, an expressionist one act, eight scene piece called The Hairy Ape. The play, which confused most theatre-goers, was most notable for the newcomer playing the lead role of “Yank,” a barrel-chested trouble-maker who works on board a trans-Atlantic ship. It had a successful run on Broadway in 1921-1922;  O’Neil and Wolheim would would remain lifelong friends. Wolheim, with his “face that was a mistake” soon became familiar to Broadway audiences; in 1925, he costarred as Captain Flagg to William Boyd’s Sgt. Quirt in the fabulously successful What Price Glory? From there, it was a quick leap to Hollywood where the roles were bigger, the work quite steady and the paychecks far larger.

In 1927, Wolheim costarred in Two Arabian Knights, alongside his What Price Glory? costar William Boyd (the future “Hopalong Cassidy), and Mary Astor. The film, which won the first - and only - Academy Award for “Best Direction of a Comedy Picture” (Lewis Milestone, nee Lev Milstein) was produced by the then 22-year old Howard Hughes. (Trivia Break: Two Arabian Knights is the only film in Academy history to win a Best Director Prize [it wasn’t yet called an “Oscar”] without being nominated in any other category. Milestone would go on to win a second best director’s awards [1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front] - costarring Louis Wolheim - and be nominated for a third - 1931’s The Front Page - which, as mentioned above, originally starred Wolheim who, following his unexpected death, was replaced by his old Cornell student, Alophe Menjou.)

 From 1914-1931, Louis Wolheim appeared played in 49 silent and 8 talking motion pictures. Throughout his relatively short career, he made films for everyone from Wharton, Rolfe Photoplays to Biograph, Goldwyn, RKO, D.W. Griffith Productions and Universal. Wolheim’s best-known, most beloved performance was that of the German sergeant Kaczkinsky (Kat) in Universal’s all-time great anti-war film “All Quiet on the Western Front,” in which he costarred with the then 22-year old Lew Ayres. The film had a lasting effect on both Ayres and Wolheim: it turned the young Ayres into a lifelong pacifist, which all but ruined his career when he declared himself a conscientious objector in WWII - theatres refused to screen his films. For Wolheim, it put a dramatic bee in his bonnet. Seeking to expand his cinematic range by improving his looks, he began making arrangements for having his nose fixed by a prominent Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. However, his studio at the time, United Artists, went to court for a restraining order to stop him.

Typecast throughout his career as a gangster, bully or prisoner, off-screen Wolheim was known for his modesty and for always being ready to help friends in need. After his death, Photoplay Editor James R. Quirk wrote, “His hard-boiled face was a mask; he was a child who never quite knew what it was all about. I think he felt he would live to help a great world-change for the better. He had a passion to make the world better. He believed no one should get more from life than than he gave to it.”

Louis Wolheim died from stomach cancer on February 18, 1931, just six weeks shy of his 51st birthday. He is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, right next to the unmarked grave of Frank Zappa.

Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone

What's In a Name?

Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke

In the heyday of the Hollywood studio system (c. 1915-1957), each studio was a self-contained universe. Within its walls one could find carpentry shops and costumers; hairdressers, wigmakers and dance studios, commissaries, set building shops, sound stages and recording facilities, furniture and antique warehouses, writers, producers and directors wings One could build - and then tear down - complete mock-ups of Manhattan and London, Paris and a North African Casbah, Kansas, Casablanca and Constantinople. Most studios owned their own ranches out in the San Fernando Valley where Westerns and wars, rural dramas and jungle pictures could be shot. For actors under contract, the studio was a stern family at which you would be taught how to dress, ride a horse, sing, dance, and speak with a French, British or Mexican accent. The studio would also teach you the rudiments of fencing, create your (mostly false) biography, and keep you out of trouble. Each studio had its own police department that - along with your personal press agent - would work with the municipal cops and local papers to keep your name off the front page if you got into trouble.

The studios even renamed you if the name you were born with were either too ethnic or too long to fit on a marquee. I have written elsewhere about my family getting “legally Stoned” back when Erica and I were 7 or 8.

For those of us who grew up in that world, we were well aware of what people’s real names were. We also knew many of them without their wigs and toupees, false teeth makeup . . . just plain people who happened to photograph well.

Let’s see how many you can figure out. First, a list of real names; then a second list of their Hollywood names. Have a blast! (BTW: this list is by no means exhaustive, so don’t write in and ask “Why didn’t you include . . .?)

First, some actors:

1. Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke

2. Bernice Frankel

3. Naftaly Birnbaum

4. Spangler Arlington Brugh

5. Bernard Zanville

6. Lucille Fay Lesueur

7. Leo Jacob

8. Howard Silverblatt

9. Leonard Franklin Slye & Frances Octavia Smith

10. Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman

11. Jacob Lincoln Freund

12. Jacob Julius Garfinkle

13. Lyova Haskell Rosenthal

14. Frederic Austerlitz Jr. & Virginia Katherine McMath

15. Zvi Mosheh Skikne

16. Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler

17. Jerome Lester Horwitz

18. Samuel Horwitz

19. Madeline Gail Wolfson

20. David Daniel Kaminksy

21. László Lowenstein

22. Natalie Hershslag

23. Paul Sternberg

24. Arthur Leonard Rosenberg

25. Winona Laura Horowitz

26. Emanuel Goldenberg

27. Sophia Kosow

28. Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker

29. Jill Arlyn Oppenheim

30. Gerschon Lichtenstein

31. Harold Hochstein

32. Shirley Schrift

33. Isaiah Edwin Leopold

34. Dino Crocetti & Joseph Levitch

35. Ruby Stevens

36. Liliy Chauchoin

37. Harlean Carpantier

    Next, some directors:

38. Reuben Sax

39. Leib Milstein

40. Michael Igor Peschkowsky

41. Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz

42. Wilhelm Weiller

43. Allen Konigsberg

    Lastly, some producers and screenwriters:

44. Abraham Goodman

45. Clifford Gorodetsky

46. Dorothy Rothschild

47. Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum

48. Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff

49. Salomea Steuermann

50. Nathan Weinstein

51. Robert Shapera

52. Eliezer “Laiser” Zeleznik

53. Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen

54. Harold Brent Walinsky

55. Walter Feuchtwanger

56. Shmuel Gelbfisch

    OK: Let’s see how you did . .

    1. Mary Astor

    2. Bea Arthur

    3. George Burns

    4. Robert Taylor

    5. Dane Clark

    6. Joan Crawford

    7. Lee J. Cobb

    8. Howard Da Silva

    9. Roy Rogers & Dale Evans

    10. Douglas Fairbanks

    11. John Forsythe

    12. John Garfield

    13. Lee Grant

    14. Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers

    15. Laurence Harvey

    16. Hedy Lamarr

    17. “Curly Joe”Howard

    18. Shemp Howard

    19. Madeline Kahn

    20. Danny Kaye

    21. Peter Lorre

    22. Natalie Portman

    23. Paul Stewart

    24. Tony Randall

    25. Winona Rider

    26. Edward G. Robinson

    27. Sylvia Sidney

    28. Simone Signoret

    29. Jill St. John

    30. George E. Stone

    31. Harold Stone

    32. Shelly Winters

    33. Ed Wynn

    34. Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis

    35. Barbara Stanwyck

    36. Claudette Colbert

    37. Jean Harlow

    38. Richard Brooks

    39. Lewis Milestone

    40. Mike Nichols

    41. Jerome Robbins

    42. William Wyler

    43. Woody Allen

    44. Abby Mann

    45. Clifford Odets

    46. Dorothy Parker

    47. Ayn Rand

    48. Irwin Shaw

    49. Salka Viertel

    50. Nathaniel West

    51. Robert Evans

    52. Lewis Selznick

    53. Michael Todd

    54. Hal Wallace

    55. Walter Wanger

    56. Samuel Goldwyn

One of these days, we’ll produce another list. Until then, meet you on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Do be sure to stop in at Musso & Frank Grill (now celebrating its 100th birthday) for lunch. Yum . . .

Copyright©2019 K.F. Stone (née Kurt Franklin Schimberg)

A Horse Is a Horse (Of Course Of Course)

Tom Mix and Tony

I gotta admit that movie Westerns are still one of my guilty pleasures. As a kid I was fan of both Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger, delivered newspapers to both Milburn Stone (old “Doc Adams” of Gunsmoke fame) and perennial bad guy Jack Elam, was mesmerized by our down-the-street neighbor John Anderson (who played Abraham Lincoln on at least three occasions), and was family friends with Bill Williams (Kit Carson), his wife Barbara Hale (Della Street) and son William Katt (The Greatest American Hero). As kids, we spent quite a bit of time hanging out at “Corriganville,” a wonderful Western town in nearby Simi Valley where dozens upon dozens of Cowboy movies were filmed in the 40s and 50s, and the Iverson Movie Ranch (situated in the Santa Susana Pass just above Chatsworth, where everyone from Buster Keaton and Hopalong Cassidy to Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger and John Wayne shot movies. (Particularly well-known is a section of the Iverson Ranch known as the “Garden of the Gods"“; even though you’ve likely never heard of it, you’ve seen it a million times . . . everyone shot Westerns there.

Ever since the first cowboy star, “Broncho Billy” Anderson (Max Aronson) rode onto the silver screen in 1903, their horses played an integral role; they became teams to such an extent that saying “Tom Mix” without adding . . . and Tony” was as unthinkable as uttering the name “Romeo” and forgetting to add “. . . and Juliette.”) Of all the horses of my childhood, none could hold a candle to Roy Rogers’ magnificent Palomino, “Trigger.” Hollywood Brats of the post-War era will well remember “Uncle Ben’s Kiddie Park,” way out Van Nuys Blvd. in the Panorama City section of the San Fernando Valley. “Uncle Ben” had a pretty good collection of tame equines of all colors and sizes. Everyone’s favorite was, of course, a magnificent Palomino who could easily have passed for “Trigger’s” twin. We were so young and naive that we didn’t even know if this “Trigger” was a girl or a boy; we never thought to check under or behind its tail. We would wait in line for up to two hours just for the chance to spend ten or fifteen minutes riding this wondrous creature . . . wearing our Roy Rogers hat and spurs and imagining Dale Evans and “Buttermilk” riding alongside. Ah, those were the days.  We were so young, so innocent and naive; we had no idea that kids around the world didn’t live in such proximity to our heroes.

As already mentioned, the horses these cinematic cowboys rode became stars in their own right.  Despite the fact that at first, the Arkansas-born Broncho Billy didn’t know whether to mount a horse from the right or left, (it’s the left), “Ranger” became his costar in more than 350 one- and two-reel films.  As time progressed, the horses became more and more famous:  For more than twenty-five years,  the most famous horses in Hollywood were Tom Mix’s “Tony” (pictured above), William S. Hart’s “Fritz,” (shown below on left) Hoot Gibson’s variously named “Goldie,” “Midnight,” “Starlight,” “Mutt,” and “Pal” (not to mention “Silver”); Ken Maynard’s “Tarzan,” Richard Dix’s “Dice,” Hopalong Cassidy’s “Topper,” Gene Autry’s “Champion” and Audie Murphy’s “Rebel”. Without question “Silver” was the most popular of all equine names. For in addition to the Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore’s horse), Sunset Carson, Whip Wilson, and the aforementioned Hoot Gibson all had horses bearing the same name. 

In some cases, the actors actually owned the horses they rode on screen.  Most notable were Roy Rogers and Trigger, Dale Evans and “Buttermilk.” and John Wayne and “Dollar.”  But John Wayne did not have the financial wherewithal to purchase or care for a horse until later on in his career.  And here hangs a tale . . .

John Wayne (Marion Michael Morrison) and his football team buddy Ward Bond  played for the University of Southern California in the late 1920s.  They were spotted by director John Ford who liked them, and hired the two to move furniture from one scene to another.  Eventually, Ford started using the pair as extras in crowd scenes.  After appearing in 20 unaccredited  bits at various studios between 1926 and 1930, Morrison (by now renamed “John Wayne”) was hired for the lead in Howard Hawks’  1930 film ”The Big  Trail,” which was an absolute bomb.  Ford, who was furious with Wayne, let his protege  suffer through more than 60 third—rate roles for minor-league producers until,  to  Ford’s way of thinking, Wayne was ready for stardom.  That would not come until 1939, when Ford  cast   Wayne as “The Ringo Kid,” in Stagecoach, which would make  eventually make Wayne a star.  During his cinematic apprenticeship, Wayne appeared in dozens of westerns, some even  “starring” him as a character  called “Singing Sandy.”  At the time of his cinematic apprenticeship,  he rode a horse called “Duke.”  Eventually, when he became a star, his nickname would also be “Duke.”  Within the Hollywood  community, this nickname was a bit of a insult.  In referring to him as “Duke” Wayne, it was a way of  proclaiming that he was  no more an actor than his horse.  To this day, it is likely that few understand its genesis.

It helps to be a “Hollywood  Brat.”

Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone

Hollywood Hates Hollywood

Ben Hecht

Shortly after arriving out west, the witty, brilliantly prolific screenwriter Ben Hecht (The Front Page, Scarface, Twentieth Century, Nothing Sacred) began referring to Hollywood as “The land of mink-lined swimming pools and plastic palm tree,” and defining “starlet” as the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel. Not to be outdone, the equally witty Dorothy Parker (A Star is Born, Saboteur, Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman) noted that the only ‘ism’ Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.   The two were by no means alone in their lowly, utterly sarcastic assessment of the world’s film capitol.  William Faulkner called Hollywood A place where a man can get stabbed in the back while climbing a ladder.  And then there was Fred Allen, who claimed You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

When it comes to having a jaundiced view of the movie industry, nothing and no one is more jaded – or funnier – than Hollywood itself.  And when Hollywood makes films about Hollywood . . . watch out! 

What follows are a handful of Golden Age films which, in my humble opinion, are among the greatest (though not necessarily best-known) exemplars of classic Hollywood’s disdain for the very industry which, in the words of Marilyn Monroe will pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and a nickle fore your soul . . .

On September 24, 1930, a new play, the first collaboration of two young writers named George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre, which was co-owned by Sam Harris and Irving Berlin. It was called Once in a Lifetime, and went on to have a run of 406 performances, which in the early 1930’s was tremendous. This was a farce based on what took place in Hollywood just after the introduction of sound. For many great stars, sound meant the end of their Hollywood careers. Many did not speak English; many had voices and/or accents which simply didn’t go with their onscreen images. Hollywood’s response was to import as many Broadway actors - masters of proper diction - as possible along with a strange crowd who called themselves “elocutionists.” It was their job to teach the formerly silent how to speak. The play was an absolute hoot. And because it savagely prodded both Hollywood moguls - many of whom could barely speak English themselves - and director, it was widely assumed that no studio would ever dare turn it into a motion picture.

They were wrong. Universal’s diminutive “Uncle”Carl Laemlle not only bought the rights from Kaufman and Hart; he turned it into a howl of a movie which began with a self-serving crawler which proclaimed:

When I bought the moving picture rights to “Once in a Lifetime,” the stage play which so mercilessly and hilariously poked fun at Hollywood and its motion picture people, the critics said I would not dare make use of its best material on the screen.  It was too funny, they said, and it would make the world laugh at us!  I pity the man who cannot enjoy a laugh at his own expense. So I decided that if I could make the world in times like these, it would be a great thing to do.  I now leave it to you to judge whether I have spared the movies in translating the great stage success to the screen.  Carl Laemmle, President Universal Pictures.

Laemmle’s picture, which starred Jack Oakie, Sidney Fox, Aileen McMahon and Gregory Ratoff as the Goldwynesque producer Herman Glogauer, (What did they have to go and make pictures talk for? Things were going along fine. You couldn't stop making money - even if you turned out a good picture you made money!), the film brought in a fortune at the box office. Almost unknown today, it is worth a look. Its satiric look at a Hollywood in transition from silence to caterwauling is more than worth the price of admission. (You can watch the movie on YouTube below)

One of the most oft-filmed yarns about Hollywood is once again up for an Academy Award: A Star is Born, this time starring Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper and Sam Elliott. And while most film buffs consider the 1937 version starring Janet Gaynor, Frederic March, Adolphe Menjou and Andy Devine to be the original (followed by the 1954 reprise and 1976 musical starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, what they likely do not know is the true original was 1932’s What Price Hollywood? produced by 30-year old David O. Selznick, directed by the 33-year old George Cukor and starring Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman. The Oscar nominated screenplay by Jane Murfin and Adela Rogers St. Johns (it lost to Frances Marion’s The Champ), tells the story of waitress Mary Evans (Bennett) who is discovered by - and turned into a top-flight star - by the dipsomaniacal director Max Carey (Sherman), only to see her career soar as his hits rock bottom.

Originally meant to star “The It Girl,” Clara Bow, by 1932, she was going through too many psychological traumas to handle the role, thus it went to Constance Bennett. Originally based on the relationship between twenties’ megastar Colleen Moore and her then husband, director John McCormick, the film did not make back its investment. Nonetheless, it did manage to portray Hollywood’s seedy underbelly in a way almost never before seen or screened. The only real difference between this film and the various A Star is Born repeats is that here, the young, up-and-coming star does never marries the drunk, who, rather than being a star losing his career to alcohol, is rather her director. Regardless, it portrays Hollywood cupidity - success at any price - as hauntingly as any film ever made.

In 1936, Paramount producer Adolph Zukor and director Robert Florey came out with Hollywood Boulevard, which dealt with the extraordinarily destructive power of Hollywood gossip magazines.  Starring John Halliday, Marsha Hunt (our longtime neighbor who is still alive and now going on 102 years old), Robert Cummings and more than a dozen down-on-their-luck former silent screen stars, Hollywood Boulevard is an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, in which has-been actor John Blakeford (John Halliday) agrees to write his memoirs for a magazine-publisher. One review of the film was entitled The Dirt Brigade,  which just about says it all.  Hollywood Boulevard, which also contains a murder mystery sub-plot, is mostly an attack on the cruelties of Hollywood in the manner in which the town turns its back on former stars.  Many of the film’s supernumerary and bit actors (e.g. Frances X. Bushman, Charles Ray, Maurice Costello, Betty Compson, Mae Marsh, William Farnum) were, at one time, among the most popular and highest paid “superstars” of the silent era . . . many earning in excess of $10,000 a week (at a time when a decent annual income was $1,250.00).  For this film, few of them were listed in the credits, and were paid no more than $5.00.  That’s Hollywood; that’s Hollywood Boulevard.

Then there is the best, most spot-on Hollywood novel ever written: Bud Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? The novel, first published in 1941, tells the rags-to-riches story of Sammy Glick, the conquistador of the gutter, who steps on and over any- and everyone in his path in order to make it to the pinnacle of Hollywood success. Inspired partly on the life of his father, early Hollywood mogul B.P. Schulberg (1892-1957) and partly on the thousand octane writer/producer Jerry Wald (1911-1962) this ultimate Hollywood novel follows Sammy from the Brooklyn to Beverly Hills. Sammy is an amoral narcissist who is quick to pilfer and plagiarize the work of others, adapt novels he’s never read, and rip the heart and guts out of anyone who gets in his way. Most every character in the novel - writers Al Manheim and Julian Blumberg, producer Sidney Fineman, Sammy’s brother Israel - are Jewish.  Nonetheless, at the time the novel was in its final stage of rewrites, so the story goes, producer Samuel Goldwyn offered Schulberg a lot of money to not have it published because Goldwyn felt that the author was "doublecrossing the Jews" and perpetuating anti-Antisemitism by making Sammy Glick so venal.   

Despite the fact that What Makes Sammy Run? is a seminal Hollywood novel which was turned into a smash Broadway musical (starring Steve Lawrence as Sammy, Robert Alda as Al Manheim and Sally Ann Howes as Al’s girlfriend Kit, it has yet to be made into a theatrical film.  There have been two television presentations: in 1949, there was a live version (the Philco Television Theatre) starring Jose Ferrer, and a two-part 1959 television treatment starring Larry Blyden, John Forsythe Barbara Rush and Dina Merrill.  

According to a 2001 article in Variety, DreamWorks paid US$2.6 million to acquire the rights to the novel from Warner Brothers for a proposed movie version starring and/or directed by Ben Stiller, although production was never begun. Budd Schulberg, who died in 2009 at age 95, told The Jewish Daily Forward in 2006 that he doubted a film would ever be made, saying "I still think there's a sense that it's too anti-industry." In a 2009 newspaper interview, Schulberg quoted Steven Spielberg as saying that the book was "anti-Hollywood and should never be filmed."  

The quintessence of Hollywood’s historic hate for itself can be summed up in two marvelous quotes, plus a final thought from Sammy Glick:

From Walter Winchell: Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.

From Johnny Carson: In Hollywood, if you don’t have a shrink, people think you’re crazy.

Sammy Glick: Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on.

Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone

Cinematic Chemistry: That Certain Something . . . Part 1

Ever since the days when most of films were shot in New York, the vast majority of Westerns in Ft. Lee New Jersey and “movies” was the term used for the people on the screen or sheet (for after all, they moved) producers have been on the lookout for cinematic couples who possessed that indescribable something called chemistry. It has never mattered whether the chemistry was comedic or romantic, musical or slapstick; urban or western. All producers knew is that couples possessed of cinematic chemistry frequently caused cash registers to overflow.

John Bunny & Flora Finch

Without question, the movies’ first “chemical success” was a pair of physically mismatched actors (like Laurel and Hardy and briefly, Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton) who thoroughly hated one another - both on screen and in real life. They were the short, morbidly obese John Bunny (1863-1915) and the tall cadaverous Flora Finch (1867-1940). Between 1909 and 1915. the two appeared in an incredible 160 one- and two-reel films together. Their films were all made by the long-forgotten Vitagraph Company. And because these flicks were silent, their popularity was literally global. Costarring in films with titles like The New Stenographer (1910), The Subsiding of Mrs. Nag (1911) and A Cure for Pokeritis (1912), these fan favorites quickly became known as Bunnyfinches. He was jolly and enjoyed a good time; she was prudish and taciturn. The secret of their success was likely that the hatred they had for one another in “real” life carried over into “reel” life as well. By 1912, they were the most popular and highest-paid players in the world. When Bunny succumbed to Bright’s Disease at age 52, he was mourned by tens of millions of fans the world over. Ironically, Flora Finch, did not mourn his passing, didn’t even show up at his funeral . . .

Harold Lockwood & May Allison

During “The Great War” (WWI), the most popular romantic pairing, without question, was Harold Lockwood and May Allison. The chemistry between these two had much of the world believing they had to be married in real life - which definitely was not the case; Harold was married to Alma Jones, and May did not marry until several years after Harold had died. And when she did marry, it was to James Quirk, the editor and publisher of one of the earliest film fan magazines, Photoplay. Between 1916 and 1918, when Lockwood died of the Spanish Flu, the two made 22 feature-length films together, the most famous being David Harum Never mind that the plots of their films were all but indistinguishable; the public saw them as the ideal of romantic love. He was a boy scout - loyal and true - while she was as pure as the driven snow. After Lockwood’s death (he died at age 31), Allison’s career was all but over. Although she lived until 1989 (dying at age 99), she had not been on screen for more than 60 years. At yet, to serious movie buffs until this very day, the names Lockwood and Allison are fondly remembered for having possessed that “certain something.”

From time to time, studios attempted to make ‘teams” out of actors who turned out to have less than a gram of chemistry. Mack Sennett tried to pair a novice Charlie Chaplin with first, veteran Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and then top-flight comedienne Mabel Normand (whom film historians would eventually tab ‘the female Chaplin’). And when he moved on from Sennett’s “Keystone Comedies” to Bronco Billy’s “Essanay Pictures,” the company attempted to team him with the cross-eyed Ben Turpin in two two reelers made two weeks apart in February 1915: His New Job and A Night Out. None caught on; from virtually the first moment he stood before a camera, Chaplin had an instinctive knowledge of what he could accomplish on his own. His best chemistry came when he called all the shots . . .

Charles Farrell & Janet Gaynor

The reigning “chemical” stars of the late 1920s and early 1930s were sweet, wholesome yet gritty Janet Gaynor (who won the first Academy Award for Best Actress) and big, brawny Charles Farrell. After taking the world by storm in their first film, 1927’s Seventh Heaven, the pair made another 11 romantic films together over the next 7 years - the last being Change of Heart (1934). Today, Janet Gaynor is best known for playing Esther Victoria Blodgett (aka “Vicki Lester”) in the second of 5 versions of A Star is Born (most film historians hold that the 1932 RKO-Pathé production of What Price Hollywood? starring Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman was actually the first.) Today, Charlie Farrell is best-known - if remembered at all - for the mid 1950’s television show My Little Margie, in which he played Vern Albright, the father of Margie, played by Gale Storm. Gaynor and Farrell’s chemistry was that of young, first-time love . . . which people of any age can and do easily identify with. That they could maintain this chemistry into their early ‘30s was remarkable. Also, their films kept Fox from going bankrupt . . .

As the major studios got larger and more powerful, they had the ability to stockpile tens of dozens of actors and actresses and spend the time and money required to create cinematic identities and occasionally, teams abounding in chemistry. Among the most successful such pairings were William Powell and Myrna Loy who, between 1934 and 1947, costarred in 14 films - including 6 in the fabled “Thin Man” series. Prior to getting together (1934’s Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable), Hollywood had typecast Powell as either a bad guy or a suave swindler and Loy, unbelievably, as an Asian exotic. Immediately after costarring in the Gable film, MGM put the two together in The Thin Man. Their scenes together fairly sparkled; between the mystery, the Manhattans and the endless banter, they lit up the screen.

Rogers & Astaire

Then there was RKO’s pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - first as featured players in a minor 1933 Delores Del Rio - Gene Raymond fluffball called Flying Down to Rio. This totally forgettable film was saved when Fred and Ginger spent a little over 2 minutes dancing the Carioca . . . and thus was a new type of cinematic chemistry born. Ironically, Astaire wasn’t all that interested in dancing with Rogers again. As he wrote his agent, "I don't mind making another picture with her, but as for this team idea, it's out! I've just managed to live down one partnership (his sister Adele) and I don't want to be bothered with any more." But Fred was under long term contract to RKO, which meant he had to do what they told him. The next year these two received top billing in The Gay Divorcee, which would turn out to be the 2nd of their eventual 10 pictures together. And their chemistry? It was best explained by Katherine Hepburn (who knew a thing or two about onscreen chemistry . . . just ask Spencer Tracy) when she said “Fred gave Ginger class, while Ginger gave Fred sex . . .”

The Marx Brothers

Comedy teams have long been a fertile source of cinematic chemistry. Think Laurel and Hardy (107 films together) Abbott and Costello (36 films), Martin and Lewis (17 films), The Marx Brothers (17 films) The Three Stooges (nearly 200 shorts) and of course Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (and let’s not forget Dorothy Lamour) who made 7 “Road to . . .” pictures. What made most of these teams work so well was either the attraction of physical opposites (Laurel and Hardy), Abbott and Costello), bipolar personalities (the suave Dean Martin and frenetic Jerry Lewis) and the complex relations between members of the same family (the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges).

From the perspective of younger generations of film fans, it would seem that what cinematic chemistry is in short supply. In part 2 of this essay (which will be posted when it’s finished) we’ll explore whether this is true - and if so, why so . . .

Copyright©2019 Kurt F. Stone

Hedy Lamarr: Brains, Beauty and a Whole Lot More

Of all the scores of stars who graced the silver screen during Hollywood’s “Golden Era,” it is likely that the most beautiful and alluring of all was Hedy Lamarr . . . who was named for the silent star Barbara Lamar, who, in her day was known “the girl who is too beautiful” But unlike Barbara La Mar who died in 1926 from tuberculosis and nephritis at age 31, this Lamarr lived to the ripe old age of 86, and was far, far more than just another pretty face. Indeed as early as 1931, her first director, the great Max Reinhardt (Max Goldmann) referred to her as “the most beautiful women in the world” And for my money, he was absolutely correct.  Far from being a world-class actor, Hedy was nonetheless one of the smartest and accomplished stars of all time . . . away from the screen.

Ricardo Cortez: The First Sam Spade

“Ricardo Cortez” as the first Sam Spade

There likely isn’t a film buff on the planet who doesn’t know - and love - the 1941 classic detective drama The Maltese Falcon starring, among others, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. It is the living, breathing definition of a film classic. It is also one of the very first movies both written and directed by the same person - in this case, the then 35-year old Huston who made a deal with studio owner Jack Warner that he would only charge his boss a measly ten bucks for the screenplay if only he were permitted to also direct as well. What a lot of film buffs do not know is that Jack Warner actually produced two other films based on Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel prior to the Huston classic:

• 1931’s The Maltese Falcon, starring Ricardo Cortez as detective Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly,

• The 1936 tongue-in-check send up entitled Satan Met a Lady, starring Warren William as Sam Spade (here called “Ted Shane”) and Bette Davis as Ruth, here called “Valerie Purvis.” Unlike the 1931 version, which was a box-office hit, Satan Met a Lady was so bad that Bette Davis spent a lifetime trying to get it expunged from her official filmography!

For decades, film historians believed that original version of The Maltese Falcon starring Cortez, Daniels, (as well as Una Merkel, Thelma Todd *(about whom we’;ll devote a blog piece in the near future and Dudley Diggs) was either destroyed or missing. Actually, it was neither; Warner Brothers buried the 1931 version on a back shelf for fear that moviegoers would mistake it for the 1941 Bogart/Astor/Greenstreet classic. What a pity! For although not quite as true-to-form as the Bogart/Astor version, Ricardo Cortez does make a compelling - though less nuanced version - of the iconic, hard-boiled Sam Spade. Unlike Bogie’s Spade, Cortez’s wears a perpetual smile and is far more sexually aggressive. Then too, Cortez was not nearly as good an actor as the stage-trained Bogart. Unlike Bogart, Cortez was first, last and always a movie star . . . not an actor. And believe me, there is a world of difference between the two.

Nonetheless, unlike Humphrey Bogart, Ricardo Cortez is little remembered. In his day, Cortez was a first-rate “Latin Lover” and great fan favorite. He was the only actor to ever receive top billing over Greta Garbo (1926’s Torrent, her first American film); during his heyday in the late silent and early sound era, he played opposite a majority of the greatest actresses of the silver screen (Mary Astor, Loretta Young, Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell, to name but a few) with many of the most acclaimed directors and filmmakers in cinematic history. And yet, precious little is known about him.

Why?

Cortez and Garbo in Torrent (1926)

For two reasons: first, in the words of his biographer Dan Van Neste, “Cortez was an excessively private person.  He didn’t leave diaries, didn’t trust the press, granted very few interviews, and when he did, they were rarely substantive. Second, there never was a “Ricardo Cortez”; he, his life, background and family history were all the product of a slick Paramount (Famous Players-Lasky) publicity campaign. When, in the early 1920s, Paramount inexplicably lost the screen’s greatest “Latin Lover” Rudolf Valentino (Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla) to Metro (soon to become Metro-Goldwyn and eventually Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer), Paramount realized they needed a new, flashier, more sexually charged Latin. And so, they went to work and turned a Jewish kid from New York’s Lower East Side (Hester Street to be precise) born Jacob Krantz, the son of Morris and Sarah (Lefkowitz) Krantz, immigrants from Galacia, into Ricardo Cortez, whose original tagline was “The Man with the Bedroom Eyes.”

From the very beginning of his film career in 1917, when he started doing extra work in films shot in Ft. Lee, New Jersey at $2.00 a day, Krantz (who would legally change his name to “Ricardo Cortez” after becoming a major star and making in excess of $3,000.00 a week) was typecast as a either a Latin lover or exotic villain. Because of his dark olive complexion and heavy-lidded dark eyes, the deception was an easy one to pull off. Back in the 20’s and 30s, moviegoers were far more willing to believe what the fan magazines (fed largely by the various studios’ p.r. teams) told them about their favorite stars. Morever because movies were silent, there was no problem with the fact that stars like Ricardo Cortez didn’t sound anything like cultured, aristocratic Spaniards . . . or Mexicans or Italians; rather he spoke English like a Jewish kid from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Interestingly, where many silent stars decided to retire with the coming of sound rather than have their loyal fans discover that they weren’t who they were supposed to be, “Ric” Cortez, decided to keep on chugging along . . . and if for other reason than he loved the money they paid him.

The Cortez/Daniels Falcon was made by Warner Brother Broptherss in 1931 - several years before the Movie Production Cod, which mandated a stiff jolt of morality - into the industry. As such, the Cortez Falcon had Spade obviously sleeping with Miss Wonderly. In one scene, Miss Wondely (payed by Bebe Daniels) Additionally, takes a bath in the nude and Spade forces her to get out of all her clothes in order to determine if she has taken a thousand dollar bill.” There are numerous references to the homosexual relationship between Gutman (the “Fat Man”) and Wilmer (here referred to as his “boyfriend,” and in the 1941 version as a “gunsel,” which is an inside term for gay lover); moreover, in the Cortez/Daniels version, Miss WonderlyIn 1931, this as all OK. By 1936’s Satan Met a Lady, such scenes or suggestions were absolutely verboten. By comparison, the 1941 Bogart incarnation of Sam Spade was a growling Boy Scout.

As a Hollywood Brat, I can attest to the fact that the “six degrees of separation” are always at work. Consider the following:

• Brown Holmes, the screenwriter for Cortez’ Maltese Falcon, served in the same capacity for the 1941 Bogart version.

• Both the 1931 and 1941 version had the same cinematographer, Robert Edeson.

• Warren William, who plays the Sam Spade character (Ted Shane) in 1936’s Satan Met a Lady, also played Perry Mason in a series of films beginning in 1934, but was replaced in 1936 by none other than . . . you guessed it, Ricardo Cortez.

• Speaking of Perry Mason, Bette Davis (who costarred in Satan Met a Lady, filled in for Raymond Burr when he had to have surgery in Perry Mason: The Case of Constant Doyle (1963).

Getting back to The Maltese Falcon, Ricardo was signed to play Sam Spade mainly because Jack Warner’s first choice, the legendary actor - and world-class drunk - John Barrymore, was unavailable, having been already signed to star in another Warner’s film, Svengali (based on George Du Maurier’s Trilby. To a great degree, The Maltese Falcon revived Cortez’s cinematic career. and caused his loyal fans to forgive and forget that he in no way sounded the way they assumed a Latin Lover might. Over the next decade, Ricardo made several dozen motion pictures, including 1932’s Symphony For Six Million, one of classic Hollywood’s most Jewishly significant films. Based on a Fanny Hurst short story, Symphony stars Ricardo Cortez as Dr. Felix “Felixer” Klauber, a brilliant young doctor who grows away from his Jewish family and community when his older brother convinces him to make his fortune as a Park Avenue doctor.  When tragedy strikes, he sees where his obligations lie, but will it be too late? This particular film hit home with Ricardo Cortez, who had long felt that he, Jacob Krantz, had abandoned not only his family, but his cultural and religious heritage heritage in exchange for the extraordinary riches which only Hollywood could afford a junior high school dropout. Interestingly, Symphony for Six Million costarred Jewish actors Anna Appel and Gregory Ratoff, who, prior to their Hollywood years had starred with, respectively, Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre, and Chekhov’’s Moscow Art Theatre..

Cortez, realizing that he was losing his hold on the public, decided to start directing pictures. Between 1930 and 1940, he directed 7 films for Warner Brothers, all of them "program pictures made on a shoestring for the express purpose of filling the bottom half of the mandatory double bill ..." Between 1940 and 1958, he appeared in a mere 15 films and 1 television show (Bonanza). Forsaking Beverly Hills and returning to New York City, Cortez went back into the world of Wall Street, where he had begun his working life as a runner in the nineteen-teens. He succeeded admirably as a broker and continued selling stocks and bond - and doing an occasional commercial, until his death in 1977 at age 76/ The thrice married Cortez died childless. Over the course of a 43-year career, Ricardo Cortez made his way into 103 films, for which he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. If you’re ever out in Hollywood, you can find it at 1500 Vine Street.

For those of you who live in South Florida, I will be showing the 1931 Maltese Falcon at Florida International University on Wednesday, October 3rd at 3:00. If you;’re interested in attending class, please contact me through this website and we’ll see what we can do.

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

I

Goldwyn's 'Last Sten'

                Theda Bara (Theodosia Goodman)

Over many decades, Hollywood moguls have, from time to time, attempted to create stars from scratch. That is to say, taking a nobody, changing their name, creating a back-story and building them up so that they are already "legendary" even before the first foot of film has been exposed. Sometimes it works; sometimes it fails.  The first such manufactured star was Theda Bara, a dark-eyed rather zaftig young Jewish lady from the Avondale section of Cincinnati whose real name was Theodosia Goodman.  Early film mogul William Fox (Vilmos Fried - 1879-1952), a furrier from Tolscva, Hungary turned owner of the unheralded Fox Film Corporation in New York, found himself in desperate financial straits in 1914.  What to do? 

Fox and his publicity staff started looking around for an actress who could take direction, then go to work creating an identity and unique look, an unforgettable name and a biography (the crazier the better) to sell to a gullible public that would be thirsting to see her on the silver screen.  And so, assembling members of the press in a smoky, dimly lit hotel room in Chicago, the then 30-year old Miss Goodman (who though a natural blond now sported jet black curls) was introduced to the world as Theda Bara (an anagram for "Arab Death"), who, the assembled journalists were told, was born in the shadow of the Sphinx, the daughter of an Arab sheik and a French actress. (During the 6-month long publicity campaign, Miss Bara, the ultimate vamp, was also billed as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor.)  She finally hit the screen in a film based on a ridiculous stage 1909 Porter Emerson Browne play called A Fool There Was, and by the next year, was almost as popular as Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin.  Her weekly salary quickly skyrocketed from $50.00 to $4,000.00. Her vogue, which lasted barely 4 years, had her playing a succession of vamps, seductresses and wicked women in such films as Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Camille, Salomé and Madame Du Berry.  Miss Bara, who would be a doyen of Beverly Hills society for more than 30 years (dying there in 1955), not only saved Mr. Fox; she insured that his name and an offshoot of the company he created would still be in the headlines more than a hundred years later (think "Fox News").  Needless to say, this first "creating a star out of whole cloth" was a rousing success.

                            Jane Russell - Cleavage and All

In early 1940, RKO boss Howard Hughes - the Donald Trump of his era - decided that he too wanted to create a star.  And so, after looking around for a while, his search netted him a 19-year old graduate of Van Nuys High School (the same high school that Marilyn Monroe, Robert Redford and Dodger pitching great Don Drysdale attended) named Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell (1921-2001) He quickly signed her to a standard 7 year contract. Jane Russell had a couple of things going for her: she had actually studied drama and acting at Max Reinhardt's Acting Workshop, had been coached by Maria Ouspenskaya,  had a decent singing voice, and measured a colossal  38D-24-36.  After a year of publicizing his upcoming star (during which time she did not appear on screen), Miss Russell  got top billing in a film called The Outlaw, costarring the equally unknown Jack Buetel and featuring Oscar-winning actors Walter Huston and Thomas Mitchell.  Due to problems with the censorship board, the film (which was made in 1941) did not go into general release until 1946.  But Hughes continued publicizing Miss Russell. Thousands upon thousands of photos of the voluptuous star-in-the-making ran in magazines throughout the country.  By the time the film went into general circulation, she had the best known cleavage on the planet.  Hollywood writer and Algonquin Roundtable wit Dorothy Parker referred to Hughes' campaign as "The sale of two titties."  Critics hated the film; the public couldn't get enough of Jane Russell and her amazing cleavage.

Miss Russell would go on to star in more than 30 films, including The Paleface (1946), His Kind of Woman (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blonds (1953), and The Tall Men (1955).  Despite her seductively loose, lusty-busty image, Miss Russell was, in her own words, ". . . a mean-spirited, narrow-minded, right-wing, conservative Christian. I start out with that, and if you don't like it, you can lump it." By any stretch of the imagination, Howard Hughes' - like William Fox's experiment in star creation - was a great success. 

Sorry to report, such was not the case for one of the greatest of all movie moguls: Samuel Goldwyn. When he tried to create a star, he fell on his face, landing with a thud which resonates to this very day.  Her name?  Anna Sten . . .

                       Anna Sten in a Typical Garbo Pose

Born in Kiev (then Russia, now the Ukraine) in 1908, Annel Stenskaya Sudakevich  got her start in acting with the Moscow Art Theater. After playing small roles in a couple of Soviet films, she moved on to Germany, where scored rave reviews playing Grushenka in the 1931 masterpiece Der Mörder Dimitri Karamasoff ("The Murderer Dimitri Karamasoff") based on Dostoevsky's classic novel "The Brothers Karamazov."  One night, Goldwyn saw this film, and even before its conclusion gave orders to one of his assistants to contact Sten's people and sign her to a 7 year Hollywood contract.  He had dreams of making her his Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich - so much so that he arranged to have her photographed with some of the same poses Garbo used.  (See pictures to above of Anna Sten, and below of Greta Garbo, using the same pose)

When Sten arrived in the United States, so the story goes, she had put on considerable weight and, to Goldwyn's amazement, found her English to be impenetrable . . . which, considering the state of his English must have been truly depressing.  And so, Goldwyn put his staff to work slimming her down, working on her English and looking for the ideal picture in which she could make her American debut.  Of course, all the while, her picture and stories about her were running in fan magazines across the country.  Finally, Goldwyn decided on starring her in Nana, based on the classic novel by French author Emile Zola.  Unfortunately, a faithful treatment of this notorious literary whore and the men she ruins was impossible in an industry newly saddled with the restrictions of Will Hays and his Production Code.  Despite all her English lessons, Sten wound up learning her dialogue by rote; there was none of the vital thespic spontaneity that had so captivated Goldwyn or his staff.  Predictably, the film bombed . . .

                                           Greta Garbo: The Original Pose

Undeterred and possessing an ego approximately the size of California, Goldwyn persisted. Sten's next two films - We Live Again  (1934) costarring Frederic March and The Wedding Night (1935) which costarred Gary Cooper and won King Vidor a best director Oscar - were better, but the public wasn't buying. As Goldwyn biographer Scott Berg noted, "When the public failed to embrace her a third time, Goldwyn decided he could not afford to give her another chance." When it became known around Hollywood that Goldwyn, at Sten's request, cancelled the final year-and-a-half of her contract (which paid her $2,500.00 per week), The Wedding Night started being referred to as "Goldwyn's last Sten." The debacle wound up costing Goldwyn in excess of $2 million. 

Anna Sten would go on to make a handful of increasingly cheaper movies for increasingly minor studios.  She even guest starred in a handful of television shows.  She and her husband, the Russian-born producer Eugene Frenke (who were married for 52 years) moved to Manhatten, where he died in 1984 and Miss Sten about 10 years later, shortly before her 85th birthday.  Today, three things remain of the Sten legacy: Her nickname, "Goldwyn's Folly," the expression "Goldwyn's Last Sten," and a line written by Cole Porter for his 1934 show Anything Goes:

When Samuel Goldwyn can with great conviction
Can instruct Anna Sten in diction
Then Anna knows,
Anything goes.

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

The Most Iconic Sign on the Planet

                                   The Most Iconic Sign on the Planet

There likely isn't a soul on the planet cannot identify the gigantic HOLLYWOOD sign sitting atop a minuscule mountain few people know the name of.  For a couple of generations, that sign has best symbolized the flash and allure, the glitter and glamour of both a small town and a ginormous industry. Its history is fairly well known to those of us who are "Hollywood Brats." To those outside the brat brigade, that story might seem as improbable as any film the MGM or the Warner Brothers ever produced.  And, in matter of fact, that sign - whose history goes back 95 years, originally had next to nothing to do with the then nascent movie industry.  

Way back in 1923, Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler and a couple of developers named Woodruff and Schults  came up with he idea of erecting a larger-than-life advertisement for a new upscale housing development they were planning to build in the hills above Hollywood. Their development would be called "Hollywoodland." Their original intent was to erect a 43-foot high sign built of telephone poles, thin metal, wood, wire, and pipes and lit with 4,000 20-watt bulbs spaced 8 inches apart.  Chandler and his investors thought the sign would stand for no longer than 18 months. - at which time, they assumed,  construction would be complete and a score of well-heeled movie stars and executives would have begun moving into their new residential palaces. The sign wound up costing $21,000.00 (about $290,000.00 in today's dollars). Of course, in order to put up the sign they first had to build a pathway to the top of what would officially be named "Mt. Lee."  Chandler et al never got further than building a primitive road.  In 1926, the land with the enormous sign - which was already showing a bit of wear and tear - came into the hands of Mack Sennett, the enormously successful movie producer and owner of the Keystone studios. 

                        Beaachwood Canyon in the mid-1920's. 

c

         Peg's Suicide Makes Page 1 of the New York Times

The actual "Hollywoodland" sign made its way back into the news in a big way on September 16, 1932, when a distraught 23-year old Welsh-born stage actress named Peg Entwistle committed suicide by climbing up to the top of the "H" and then leaping to her death.  Entwistle, who had appeared on Broadway in the late 1920's was known both for her talent and her good flapper-esque looks.  Film immortal Bette Davis often proclaimed that Peg was the reason she decided to be an actress after witnessing one of her stage performances. “I had to be an actress, exactly like Peg Entwistle,” explained Davis. Peg was often cast in comedies as an attractive, good hearted  ingénue, but her desire was to play more challenging roles.  Arriving in Hollywood in early 1931, Entwistle made the rounds of studios with little success.  It is a tale that thousands of wannnabe film stars can tell.  Indeed, there is an old Hollywood saying that "The first requirement for becoming a star isn't talent, good looks or great luck; it's the ability to withstand repeated rejection." Apparently, Peg lacked that ability.  Just about the time Peg had hit rock bottom, she scored a feature part in an RKO picture called Thirteen Women, starring Irene Dunne, Ricardo Cortez (Jacob Stein) Myrna Loy, Florence Eldridge (the wife of actor Frederic March) and Jill Esmond (who had recently married Laurence Olivier). Peg was dismayed to learn that her 12 of her 16 minutes of screen time had been left on the cutting-room floor.  And so, she committed suicide by jumping from atop the sign.  Hikers found her body at the base of the sign along with a note which read "I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E.” Thirteen Women opened the day after her body was discovered.  Today, 86 years later, all Peg is remembered for is her death, not her talent.

One direct result of Peg's suicide was that the ladder which long stood on the sign's backside (permitting workers to ascend in order to effect repairs) was taken away.  But for years thereafter, picnickers would go to the base of the sign, spread out their blankets and dine . . . while waiting to see if perhaps the ghost of Peg Entwistle would be joining them for a nosh.

Maintenance of the iconic sign fell by the wayside during the Great Depression, and by the mid-1940s, the sign was looking pretty sad. The “H” fell down—legend has it the sign's caretaker drunkenly plowed into it with his car—and the other letters were deteriorating. Though the L.A. Recreation and Parks Commission wanted it completely torn down, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce had different ideas. They offered to remove the “LAND,” then restore the remaining nine letters to promote the town.  This they did in 1949 . . . the year of my birth.  In the mid 1970s I lived within hiking distance of the sign on Argyle, several blocks above Hollywood Blvd.  By that time the Hollywood sign was looking every inch of its 50-plus years. An “O” had toppled down the hill, an “L” had been set on fire, and the other letters were falling apart. Hugh Hefner came to the rescue, holding a benefit gala where celebrities were able to “purchase” the new letters. Hefner himself bought the “Y,” Alice Cooper bought an “O” in honor of Groucho Marx, and Andy Williams sponsored the “W.” Other donors included Gene Autry, Warner Bros. Records, and Les Kelley of Kelley Blue Book. 

In the 1940s, Howard Hughes bought 138 acres of land surrounding the sign, intending to build a compound for himself and then-girlfriend Ginger Rogers. Plans fell through after Rogers broke up with him, and the Hughes estate did nothing with the property for decades. When they finally sold it for $1.7 million in 2002, developers announced a plan to divide the estate into five luxury home sites. The Trust for Public Land raised money to purchase it from the developers for $12.5 million in 2010. The sign’s previous rescuer, Hugh Hefner, chipped in $900,000.  The sign's letters have been altered a couple of times over the years:

• In 1976, it was changed to “Hollyweed” to celebrate changes to marijuana laws. 
• It read "Holywood" when the Pope visited in 1987.
• It was briefly Ollywood during the Oliver North Iran-Contra hearings. 
• It’s been used to root for football teams, including “Go Navy” in 1983 and “GO UCLA” for the 1993 UCLA-USC game. 
• It even helped market a movie when animated character Holli Would was perched on top of the "D" to promote the film Cool World (1992). 

5 years ago, Sherwin-Williams freshened up each letter by removing all of the previous paint, then applying 105 gallons of primer and 255 gallons of exterior acrylic latex paint in the color “High Reflective White.”  

Throughout its 90-year history, the Hollywood(land) sign has been a symbol not only of a town which makes magic come true; it has served as an iconic totem for dreams and nightmares, music and mystery, dreams and delights.

May Harry Chandler's 18-month wonder stand watch over the movie capital for another 90 years . . .

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

Buster Keaton and the Sound of Silents

    Keaton & Arbuckle in "The Butcher Boy" 

Legend has it that when Joseph Francis Keaton IV was about 18 months old, he tumbled down a flight of stairs at home his parents were renting. Upon landing at the bottom of the stairs, magician Harry Houdini - a friend of the tykes parents - scooped up the tyke in his arms and said "That was a real buster!"  Thus was born a nickname which within less than two decades would be known all over the world.  Fast forward to 1917.  Walking down a street in Manhattan, the now 22-year old Buster Keaton - already a veteran star of vaudeville - ran into an old acquaintance, the 30-year old former vaudevillian and current slapstick comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.  At the time of their chance meeting, Arbuckle was as popular a star as Charlie Chaplin - with whom he had costarred in several films for Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies.  Arbuckle, so the story goes, urged Keaton to come and check out his newly-created film company, "The Comique Film Corporation," and perhaps become a movie actor.  ("Comique" was owned by Joseph Schenck - pronounced Skenk - who would, within a half-dozen years,  become both Keaton's producer and  brother-in-law.)

The next day, so the story goes, Keaton went over to the Comique studio, which was located in a warehouse at 318-320 East 48th Street in a tough section of Manhattan. After walking around Arbuckle's 3rd floor space (the 1st floor being occupied by Schenk's wife, actress Norma Talmadge) Fatty asked Buster what else he'd like to see.  Quick as a flash, Keaton answered "THE CAMERA!"  Over the next 24 hours, Keaton, a born mechanic,  literally took a camera apart and put it back together not once but twice . . . in order to figure out how it worked and what it could do and could not do.  By the beginning of the third day, Keaton was ready to costar with Arbuckle in The Butcher Boy (photo above).  And thus, a star was born.

Keaton would go on to become a complete filmmaker. Like Chaplin, he was both a director and a first-rate editor.  He was also an ingenious cinematic engineer, whose films contained construction pieces which were actual costars.  The scene below, from Keaton's 1928 feature film Steamboat Bill, Jr., is arguably the most dangerous stunt ever put on film; that building facade falling on Buster actually weighed more than 2 tons. The entire company - save the cinematographer,  who had to stick around to hand crank the camera - hit in a trailer just off the set's sight-line.  They were afraid to watch, fearful that their boss was about to be crushed.

                                                   Buster Keaton's Italian Villa c. 1927

By 1925, Keaton was one of the world's best-paid and most popular film stars.  In 1926 Keaton purchased a 3 1/2 acre lot just behind the Beverly Hills Hotel and built a lavish - and I do mean lavish - 10,000 square foot home known forever more as "The Italian Villa."  (It's original address was 1004 Hartford Way; today it's called Pamela Drive.) Among his closest neighbors were Charlie Chaplin, John Gilbert, Rudolph Valentino and Harold Lloyd.  The Keatons - Buster and his wife Natalie (Talmadge) were known for their Sunday bashes, in which food was plentiful and liquor flowed like Niagara.  Alas, Buster's Edenic existence wouldn't last for long.  Following what was arguably his greatest picture, The General, Keaton made what he later called "the greatest mistake of my life": he permitted his brother-in-law (and producer) Joseph Schenck to sell his contract to MGM. Suddenly, Keaton was an employee without his own studio and shorn of the right to use his own crew.  Then, Natalie filed for divorce, took their two boys and changed their names from Keaton to Talmadge.  Then, MGM started pairing him up with Jimmy Durante; an obvious attempt to elevate the old Schnozzola at Buster's expense.  As a result of all this Buster started drinking heavily; by 1932 was virtually unemployable and had to file for bankruptcy.  Natalie sold the Villa to cover her debts.  At one point it was the home of Marlene Dietrich, Cary Grant and his wife, heiress Barbara Hutton. Actor James Mason and his wife Pamela (for whom the street was renamed) purchased the Villa for $84,000.00 in 1952.  (BTW, it's back on the market now and will only set the purchaser back $16.2 million . . . )

The 30's were pretty much a inebriated blur to Buster.  By the end of the decade he was back making one- and two-reelers for lesser studios and working as a 'comedy doctor' for the bigger ones.  Then he married his third wife, Eleanor Norris, an MGM dancer who was nearly a quarter century younger than "The Old Stone Face."  Things began looking up, for in addition to being his loving wife, Eleanor turned out to be Buster's biggest fan, his nurse and closest adviser.

And then there was actor James Mason . . . who we will get to in another couple of paragraphs.

The percentage of silent and early talking motion pictures which were destroyed, burnt or simply disappeared is appalling.  Virtually none of vamp Theda Bara's 44 feature films are known to exist as are the overwhelming majority of films produced/directed by D.W. Griffith. Researchers at the Library of Congress suggest that more than 75% of all films made between 1910 and 1930 no longer exist. In part this is because most - if not all - of the early movie moguls considered films to be commerce, not art.  Once they got past their first - and only - run studio heads burnt films, figuring that a) no one would want to view them a second time and b) film contained silver which could be extracted and then sold.  Then too, those films which were saved in metal cans were improperly stored and disintegrated.  A handful of stars - notably Charlie Chaplin and his best friend Douglas Fairbanks - considered their work to be art, and paid scientists a small fortune to come up with what would become known as 'Safety Film' celluloid which would not disintegrate if stored under optimal conditions.  As a result, virtually their entire oeuvre is, to this day, available.  

Where Chaplin and Fairbanks were both deliberate and driven to preserve their films, Buster just lucked into the immortality of his cinematic canon.  Like his stone-faced persona, Buster had a ministering angel looking out for him, ready to provide a miracle.  That miracle was performed by the British actor James Mason (1909-1984) and an American-born film collector named Raymond Rohauer (1924-1987).  As mentioned above,  Mason and wife Pamela purchased Keaton's Italian Villa in 1952. By then the Villa had been renovated, re-landscaped and subdivided to make way for three more mansions.  When the Masons first purchased the estate in 1952, they weren't aware that Buster had built a small workshop on the property where he spent a lot of his downtime tinkering around with various mechanical projects.  One day, Mason was out in the workshop and realized that the structure contained a false wall.  When a worker he had hired broke through that wall, they discovered a rather large safe.  Inside that safe they discovered . . . can after can after can containing canister after canister after canister of nitrate films . . . all made by Buster Keaton! 

What happened next is the stuff of legend.  

The way I heard it, not knowing precisely what to do with this cinematic cache, Mason drove over to the Silent Movie Theatre located at 611 Fairfax Avenue and offered the lot to the theater's founder John Hampton.  (Hampton and his wife Dorothy opened his silent theatre in 1942 - a time when silent movies had ceased to exist.  With the exception of a brief closure in 2017, the Silent Movie Theatre is still running nothing but silent pictures.  Hampton soon got hold of Ray Rohauer, who had befriended Buster at that very theater when he was a 20-year old film enthusiast.  Rohauer proceeded to raise sufficient funds to repair and restore Buster's films, and then begin showing them around the country.  He also decided to restore Keaton's legal rights to these films and provide him with the lion's share of all ticket sales.  Soon, Buster was on the way back up.  The next year, Buster was paid $50,000 for rights to his life story, which were turned into a (not very good) film starring Donald O'Conner, Ann Blyth and Rhonda Flemming.  This fee permitted Buster and Eleanor to purchase a ranch out in Woodland Hills (in the San Fernando Valley) at 22612 Sylvan Street  where Buster and Eleanor spent the rest of his life living among his St. Bernards,  his chickens and the miniature railroad which encircled his property.  By the time of his death on February 1, 1966, he had been back on top for more than a decade thanks mostly to Eleanor, but also to his gritty determination, his innate talent and an outright miracle coauthored by James Mason and Raymond Rohauer.

So what is the sound of silents? 

Applause, of course . . . 

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

Make Me a Star!

Most die-hard classic movie fans know that John Garfield was born Julius Garfinkle, Edward G. Robinson Emmanuel Goldenberg, Cary Grant Archibald Alexander Leach and Joan Crawford Lucille Fay LeSueur.  It takes a world-class flicker freak to identify the following (the answers will be found at the end of this piece):

                  February 1910: The P.R. Stunt Supreme

1. Spangler Arlington Brugh
2. Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke
3. Jane Alice Peters
4. Clara Viola Cronk
5. Ruby Stevens
6. William Henry Pratt
7. Alphonso d’Abruzzo
8. Maurice Micklewhite
9. Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko
10. Frederic Austerlitz Jr. & Virginia McMath
11. Dino Paul Crocetti & Jerome Joseph Levitch
12. Melvin Kaminsky & Jerome Silberman

What few fans know is that  during the silver screen's first fifteen years,  the movie-going public had no idea what their favorite stars names were - let alone directors, producers or screenwriters; they were either completely anonymous, known by their character names (such as "Broncho Billy," whom we met in our last posting), or identified by some physical characteristic. As an example, years before the public knew the name Mary Pickford (Gladys Marie Smith), they were head-over-heels in love with a virginal young actress known simply as "The Girl With the Curls." Similarly, the silver screen's first matinee idol, Maurice Costello, (who would one day become John Barrymore's drinking buddy . . . not to mention father-in-law) was known as  either "The Dimpled Darling," or simply, "Dimples." 

There were two reasons why early movie stars had no names:

1. Early studio owners and producers kept their actors (largely amateurs) anonymous, figuring that if the public knew their names, these nameless amateurs would demand higher salaries. (For the most part they earned $2.50 and $5.00 a day.)
2. Those actors who did come from the legitimate stage didn't want theatre-goers or the fellow thespians to know that they were "slumming."  Most stage actors coming from the thee-ah-ter considered motion pictures decidedly déclassé. They managed to justify their "walk on the wild side" by convincing themselves (and their Broadway colleagues) they were only in it for the money . . . hence the anonymity.

That all changed in February, 1910. 

                      Carl Laemmle ((1867-1939) in 1910

The two people most directly responsible for this revolution were an elfin mogul named Carl Laemmle and a Canadian-born actress known to the public as "The Biograph Girl."  Laemlle, originally from Laupheim, Germany emigrated to the United States as a young man with $50.00 in his pockets and an itch to make something of himself. By the age of 17 he was bookkeeper for the Continental Clothing Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  Armed with an innate genius for self-promotion and a love of spectacle, he wandered into the nascent movie industry and in 1909, on a shoestring, created a production/distribution company with the pixiesque name "I.M.P.," which stood for "Independent Moving Pictures."  Its logo featured a suitably impish logo of a grinning devil wielding a pitchfork. It took guts to create IMP; in so doing, Laemmle would be forced to take on Thomas Alva Edison's "Motion Pictures Patents Trust," which ordained that any company wishing to use an Edison-made camera had to pay his trust a royalty for every foot of film exposed.  Against tremendous odds, Laemlle successfully took on Edison and proved  in court that the Trust was in violation of the Sherman Anti Trust Act.

Step one.

Next, Laemmle decided to enhance both his image and that of his company by stealing away and signing the most popular movie star of the day: the Canadian-born Florence Lawrence, who had been a stage actress since age 6.  Moving over to moving pictures in about 1906, Florence worked first for the Vitagraph Company and then for Biograph, whose director was the great D.W. Griffith.  So taken was the public with this incredibly photogenic young woman with the most expressive face on celuloid, that they flooded the studio, (located at 11 East 14th St. near Union Square) demanding to know her name.  When the studio refused to reveal her name, her hundreds of thousands of fans took to calling her, simply "The Biograph Girl."  Making upwards of three one-reel films a week, Florence made a fortune for Biograph, which paid her a mere $25.00 (about $655.00 in today's money) a week.  Needless to say, Florence was dissatisfied, and surreptitiously, began contacting other studios to find out if anyone might be willing to pay her more.  When Biograph found out about what she was doing, they fired her.  But Florence wasn't out of work for long.

Enter Carl Laemmle.

Laemmle, who as mentioned above, had a flair for self-promotion and publicity stunts, came up with a doozy which he shared with the Biograph Girl.  She agreed to go ahead with it . . . especially since Laemmle agreed to pay her an astounding $125.00 a week (about $3.200.00 in today's dollars. What Laemmle did was to stage a ruse to publicize his new leading lady.  

Laemmle planted a newspaper story in February 1910 that the “Biograph Girl” had been struck and killed by a streetcar, and then took out an advertisement in an industry newspaper to debunk the story. “We Nail a Lie” (see facimile above) declared the IMP advertisement, which blamed rival studios for the deception of its own creation and announced that not only was Lawrence alive, but that she would star in its next film.

              The Story That Gave Birth to Stardom

A star was born.  Shortly thereafter, Laemmle revealed to the public the name of one of the heretofore leading male heartthrobs: King Baggot, the first "King of the Movies."  Before too long, an ever-increasing number of photo-players were known by name and, as the early producers feared, were paid more and more money.  Within four years, a Jewish girl from the North Avondale section of Cincinnati named Theodosia Goodman, would be renamed "Theda Bara" (supposedly an anagram for "Arab Death," turned into a vamp and paid $4,000.00 a week by William Fox (Fuchs), the eponymous founder of everything Fox. (BTW, Theda's $4,000.00 is the equivalent of nearly $95,000.00 per week . . . and at a time when there was no such thing as an income tax.)

Lawrence and Laemmle's fortunes would go in opposite directions.  Florence Lawrence would make some 55 pictures for Carl Laemlle's IMP Company over the next year, then move on to the Lubin Company for which she would make another 75 pictures.  By 1916, her career was on a downward spiral; over the next 20 years she would appear on screen (frequently as an uncredited extra) in but 20 pictures for such "Poverty Row" studios as Nestor, Supreme, M.H. Hoffman and Ben Wilson Productions.  By the end of 1938, Florence Lawrence, the "Biograph Girl" and world's first motion picture star with a name was dead . . . the victim of suicide.  It was depressing when an adoring public did not know her name back before 1910; it became lethally so when the public had totally forgotten her . . . 

For Carl Laemmle, things went in the precise opposite direction . . . up, up, up.  In 1915, "IMP" became "Universal Studios," with a 237-acre facility located in an area just outside Hollywood proper forever known as "Universal City."  At the studio's two-day grand opening (March 15 and 16, 1915) which was attended by the crème de la crème, including Henry Ford and literally thousands of locals, the young John Ford, then an assistant director, occasional actor and all-round roustabout, managed to burn down an entire Western set which quickly spread to the rest of the studio, nearly burning it to the ground. The quick-on-his-feet, nearly fired Ford claimed that he had done it on purpose in order to get spectacular footage for an upcoming Western film!  He was subsequently hired to direct cowboy pictures . . . and the rest is history.  Within 3 years, Laemlle's Universal Studios had more than 6,000 employees, a vast number of whom were relatives including future director William Wyler and his 18-year old secretary Irving Thalberg, who would eventually become the legendary production manager at MGM.  Indeed, Laemmle had so many cousins, nieces, nephews and children working for him that all Hollywood grew to know the line "Carl Laemmle (pronounced lem-lee) has a big femiy . . ."  And of course today, Universal is as big as ever.

But for all his accomplishments, Laemmle's most important  - and certainly most enduring - may well have been giving stars the right to have names . . .  either the ones they were born with or the ones they were assigned by their studios, agents or publicists.

And speaking of names, here are the Hollywood names of the people listed at the beginning of this piece:

1. Spangler Arlington Brugh: Robert Taylor
2. Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke: Mary Astor
3. Jane Alice Peters: Carole Lombard
4. Clara Viola Cronk: Clair Windsor
5. Ruby Stevens: Barbara Stanwyck
6. William Henry Pratt: Boris Karloff
7. Alphonso d’Abruzzo: Alan Alda
8. Maurice Micklewhite: Michael Caine
9. Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko: Natalie Wood
10. Frederic Austerlitz Jr. & Virginia McMath: Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers
11. Dino Paul Crocetti & Jerome Joseph Levitch: Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis
12. Melvin Kaminsky & Jerome Silberman: Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder

That's pretty much how a Hollywood brat born with the last name "Schimberg," got lawfully "Stoned" when he was 7 . . . 

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

"Broncho Billy" - Filmdom's 1st Cowboy Star

         "Broncho Billy" Anderson (Max Aronson)

For more than a century, one of Hollywood’s perennial character-types has been the cowboy.  Indeed, much of the world “knows and understands” the American West through our cowboy stars. From  the flash, white-hatted Tom Mix, the "good bad man" William S. Hart, daffy Hoot Gibson and the gentlemanly Fred Thomson in the silent era; to square-jawed Richard Dix, the prototypical John Wayne (born Marion Michael Morrison)  the singing  Oron Grover "Gene" Autry, drunken Ken Maynard and all-American Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye) in the era of talkies; and James Arness ("Matt Dillon"), Clayton Moore ("The Lone Ranger)", Clint Eastwood ("Rowdy Yates"and James Garner ("Bret Maverick") in the television era, cowboys rode and roped, saved towns and strummed guitars (at one point during his interminable apprenticeship even John Wayne played a singing cowboy called “Singing Sandy”), saved maidens and embodied all that which was best, bravest and most heroic about the American West. And we got to know their horses as well:

·      

• “Tony” (Tom Mix),
• “Pinto Ben” (William S Hart)
• “Midnight” (Hoot Gibson)
• “Silver King” (Fred Thomson)
•  “Dice” (Richard Dix)
•  “Duke” (John Wayne - who gave him his nickname.  It's an inside Hollywood joke: "even, Duke, his horse, was a better actor . . .")
•  “Champion: (Gene Autry)
•  “Tarzan” (Ken Maynard)
• “Trigger” (Roy Rogers)
• “Buck”  “Marshall Dillon")
•  “Silver” (“The Lone Ranger”)
• “Jouster” ("Rowdy Yates")
• “El Loaner” (“Bret Maverick”)

They were all – with the possible exception of William S. Hart, filmdom’s first and greatest “good bad man”- the epitome of courage, morality and erect, ramrod righteousness.  Collectively, they portrayed a type of American icon known from Tirana to Turkmenistan and from Christchurch to Cairo.

Of course, few were real westerners; they were actors portraying cowboys:

• Tom Mix was from Pennsylvania and fought in the Spanish-American war;
• William. S. Hart came from Upstate New York, and before entering movies was a renowned stage actor who starred in the original 1899 production of Ben Hur;
• Fred Thomson (the husband of Mary Pickford’s favorite screenwriter) was a graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary;
• John Wayne played football at USC (along with future Western perennial Ward Bond)'
• Gary Cooper, the son of a Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court, was educated in England and worked as a cartoonist;
• James Stewart was a graduate of Princeton;
• Richard Dix (Ernest Brimmer) studied to be a surgeon at the University of Minnesota.

Then there were the classic movie stars (both male and female) who - unbelievably - did make at least one western:

• James Cagney ("The Oklahoma Kid," 1939)
• Edward G. Robinson ("The Violent Men," 1954)
• Humphry Boart ("Virginia City," (1940)
• Barbara Stanwyck ("Annie Oakley," 1935)
• Jack Benny ("Buck Benny Rides Again," 1940)
• Rita Hayworth ("Trouble in Texas," 1937)
• Carole Lombard ("The Arizona Kid." 1930)
• Spencer Tracy ("Broken Lance," 1954)
• Fred MacMurray ("Day of the Bad Man," 1954)

Unquestionably, the least prepossessing of all cowboy stars was the very first: “Broncho Billy” Anderson (that’s him in the photo at the beginning of this essay). Known to the public as “Gilbert M. Anderson,” this pot-bellied six-footer knew next to nothing about guns and when it came to horses, knew less than nothing. The son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, the movie world’s first cowboy star (and first Jewish star of any kind) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1880. His real name was Maxwell Henry Aronson. At the turn of the century, the 20-year old , Max moved to New York, where he became a photographer’s model and did a bit of acting in little theaters. Adopting the distinctly non-Jewish name “Gilbert Anderson,” Max started hanging around companies which made “flickers” – two, three and four-minute moving photos which “real” (viz. stage) actors considered totally déclassé. Finally, in 1903, Max played at least three separate roles in the seminal Western, The Great Train Robbery (believed by virtually every film historian to be the first narrative movie). If you ever get the chance to see The Great Train Robbery (follow this link to the YouTube video), you will note that Broncho Billy was such an inept horseman that he actually tried to get on his mount from the right side . . . a major no-no.  (That’s Billy playing the dancing tenderfoot in the hand-tinted photo on the right.) (That’s Billy playing the dancing tenderfoot in the hand-tinted photo on the right.) Max would go on to write, produce, direct and star in nearly 1,000 films between 1903 and 1965. 

                                            The Essanay Studio

In 1905, Aronson (Anderson) along with a partner by the name of George K. Spoor,  created his own studio.  Putting the first letter of their last names together, Spoor and Anderson became “Essanay.” Originally making films in Chicago with the likes of the teenage Gloria Swanson and cross-eyed Ben Turpin (who received filmdom’s first pie in the face in a 1909, half-reel film called Mr. Flip, directed by Max Aronson), they were able to turn out 3 or 4 short films a week.  After a couple of years in the Windy City, they went out west, building a major studio in Niles, California (that’s it on the left), which today is a touristy district within the city of Fremont. In 1915, Anderson stole Charlie Chaplin away from Mac Sennett’s Keystone Studio, where in 1914 Sennett produced 34 one- and two-reel Chaplin shorts. Sennett paid Chaplin the then-majestic sum of $150.00 a week.  In 1915, Essanay lured Chaplin away from Keystone by offering him a nearly 850% increase in salary for directing and starring in a dozen two-reel films. His first film for Aronson/Anderson was the aptly titled His New Job. One of these shorts – the twenty-nine minute “The Tramp” – gave Chaplin’s immortal character its nickname. For starring in these 10 two-reel shorts, Anderson (Aaronson) paid Chaplin the unprecedented sum of $1,250.00 a week plus a $10,000.00 signing bonus. (In 1915, a decent income was $500.00 a year.) Chaplin’s time with Essanay would be brief; in 1916, the then 27-year old cinematic genius left Essanay and signed with the Mutual Film Corporation, which agreed to pay him the toothsome salary of $10,000.00 per week plus a $150,000.00 signing bonus for making precisely 12 films..  In 1917, Chaplin would build his own studio at the corner of La Brea and Sunset; today, this property, which still looks like an English village, is the home of  the Jim Henson Studios. In  and agreed to pay him the toothsome salary of $10,000.00 per week plus a $150,000.00 signing bonus for making precisely 12 films.

                       Maxwell Henry Aronson in Real (as Opposed to "Reel") Life

What Anderson and Spoor may have lacked in cinematic panache, they more than made up in p.r. brilliance.  Case in point: in 1908, they announced a contest to find a one-word equivalent to “moving picture show,” “five-cent theatre” or "nickelodeon," all of which were deemed inadequate. The contest was Essanay’s attempt to uplift the movie industry.  Over 2,500 suggestions were received by the closing day, September 1st, and a $100 prize was awarded to Edgar Strakosch, owner of three theaters in Sacramento. Strakosch's winning entry had the term “photoplay.” The name was appropriated for Photoplay, the best of the silent-era fan magazines, and used frequently in those days. It was a combination of p.r. stunts like this and an enormous output of one- and half-reel “photoplays” (costing, on average no more than $800.00 apiece), which made Essanay the most successful of the early film companies.  By 1910, Broncho Billy was making $50,000.00 a year. By 1912, he was pulling in three times that amount.  And, he continued riding the range, keeping the peace and rescuing the damsels as Broncho Billy in dozens upon dozens of short films with titles like “Broncho Billy’s Marriage,” “Broncho Billy and the Card Sharp,” and” Broncho Billy’s Word of Honor.” Indeed, Anderson was a one-man show. Throughout his career, he directed 469 films (a hefty percentage of which he starred in), acted in 349, non Broncho Billys,  and produced another 246.  (If you’d like to see an example of a Broncho Billy flick, click here) He could complete a typical one-reel film (about 11 minutes worth of screen time) in two days, and then get it out to theatres across the country within 48 hours.  Essanay even had its own train, complete with a car set up as an editing laboratory, which would permit them to travel and do location shooting.

In early 1914, the San Francisco Chronicle proclaimed Gilbert M. Anderson “The King of the Movies.”  In an article saluting him as the shining star of the Bay Area film community, he was compared to the British Empire (upon which the sun never set) saying: “At any time, some place on this earth, Bill is spurring his mustang across the screen.  He never quits.”  The newspaper estimated 11,000,000 people watched Broncho Billy perform on-screen every day of the year.  But alas, Anderson’s success was not to last; unlike up-and-coming independent producers, he and his partner Spoor refused to make full-length motion pictures.  By the beginning of “The Great War,” Essanay was beginning to creak along.  By the early 1920s, they were out of business. But before Essanay fully collapsed, Broncho Billy managed to get Spoor to buy him out.  At the time, estimates of Broncho Billy Anderson’s payday ranged from $500,000.00 to a million dollars. 

Anderson took some of this money and bought an ownership stake in the then world champion Boston Red Sox.  When Anderson’s Red Sox partner Harry Frazee wanted to raise capital to finance a Broadway play (some say it was No, No, Nanette  . . . but that’s an urban legend) he sold, against Broncho Billy’s advice, Babe Ruth, his best pitcher, to the New York Yankees.  Shortly thereafter, Broncho Billy left the Red Sox, and the team, suffering from what would become known as “The Curse of the Bambino,” wouldn’t win another World Series for nearly a century. Bill went on to produce Broadway shows himself – none of which earned a penny.

Max Aronson, who, despite being the world’s first great movie star was a fairly solitary man, would spend the remaining 50+ years of his life living in relative obscurity. In the early 1920s he produced a couple of one- and two-reel comedies starring Charlie Chaplin’s former understudy, Stan Laurel.  In one of these films, A Lucky Dog, Anderson teamed Laurel with a "heavy" named Oliver Hardy.  Though they would not become the revered team of “Laurel and Hardy” for nearly another 10 years, Broncho Billy can claim credit for having first brought them together.

                   "Broncho Billy" at Age 78

In 1958 the Movie Picture Academy gave him an honorary Academy Award as a “motion picture pioneer” for his “contributions to the development of motion pictures as entertainment.  In 1965, Broncho Billy came out of retirement to go before the cameras one last time: a cameo role as an old man in the Dan Duryea western “The Bounty Hunter.

Anderson was married to Mollie Schabbleman from 1910 until his death in 1971. They had one daughter, a Stanford graduate named Maxine, who would eventually become a highly successful Hollywood talent agent. The motion picture industry honored “Broncho Billy Anderson” with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1651 Vine St. About three months ago – March 21, 2018 to be precise – a historical roadside marker was dedicated to Max Aronson, aka Gilbert M. Anderson, aka Broncho Billy, in Little Rock, Arkansas, across the street from his birthplace, 713 Center Street.  The marker was donated by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. 

At the time of the dedication ceremony, few people had any idea of who Broncho Billy was, let alone the fact that the first western star was a Jewish kid named Maxwell Henry Aronson . . .

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone

A Note of Welcome to "Tales From Hollywood & Vine"

Malvin Wald (1917-2008), was a truly gifted screenwriter. He was also the father of one of my oldest friends, Alan, whom I've mentioned in The K.F. Stone Weekly over the years. Mal was also part of a screen dynasty: his older brother Jerry (1911-1962) was both a screen writer ("Brother Rat," "They Drive By Night," "Peyton Place") and producer ("The Man Who Came to Dinner," "Key Largo," "Johnny Belinda," "Mildred Pierce.") Jerry has long been cited as the real-life inspiration for the character "Sammy Glick" in the 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run? written by Bud Schulberg. (Schulberg's novel, by the way, is generally considered to be the  greatest Hollywood novel of all time, bar none. 

        Alan and Kurt  in Clint Eastwood's "Coogan's Bluff"

Alan and I spent a lifetime sitting next to one another in school (we sat in alphabetic order), were lab partners in chem class, and had the pleasure of playing hippy extras in Clint Eastwood's 1967 film Coogan's Bluff. (In the photo to the left, Alan's the bearded fellow just under the upraised arm; I'm the black-headed kid in the serape with his back to the camera. In another scene, I was dressed as Sgt. Pepper.) A half-century later, Alan is still making a living as an extra. Although few people outside of Hollywood can identify his father, Malvin, just about everyone knows the most famous line of his most famous screenplay (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award): "There are eight million stories in the naked city; this has been one of them."  This new blog, Tales From Hollywood & Vine, is, in a way, an homage to Malvin . . . for indeed, there are "Eight million stories  coming from Hollywood & Vine, the crossroads of the film world."  For those of us who are collectively known as "Hollywood Brats," a lot of these stories are well known; we heard them at breakfast, lunch and dinner; many of them dealt with our neighbors, our friends' parents, our own parents . . . with people whom we went to school, shul, swimming lessons, or the barber shop . . .

For as long as I can remember, Hollywood - both the real town and the generic term - have been a focal part of my life.  Dad,  a Baltimore native who studied business at the University of Richmond, first hit Hollywood not too long after movies began to talk, intent on becoming the next Cary Grant or William Powell. (Ironically, in their latter years, Dad and Mr. Grant could easily have passed for white-haired identical twins!) Back in the '30s,  Dad had several things going for him: he was head-turningly handsome, well-spoken and was a tailor's delight. The one thing he lacked was acting talent. As the old Hollywood saw goes "He couldn't act, but he sure knew how to behave."  Despite never becoming an actor, the movie industry did eventually provide him with a good living; he wound up working for more than a half-century as a stock broker/investment advisor to a lot of Hollywood folks who otherwise would have spent every dime (and then some) they ever made.  Without him and the men and women of his brokerage firm, they probably would have spent their latter years living on scraps.

                                Mom and Lilian Gish in 1941

Mom, on the other hand, came out to Hollywood having already spent a few years on stage in her native Chicago.  She had  - and still has - a sort of Roselyn Russell "Auntie Mame" personality. (That's mom in the mirror, with the legendary actress Lillian Gish looking over her shoulder at the left.)  At the time the picture was taken - early 1941 - mom was appearing in the then-popular musical "Knickerbocker Holiday" at the Goodman Theatre, while Miss Gish, who learned the art of film from the legendary D.W. Griffith, was in the midst of a record-breaking 66-week run of "Life With Father" at the Blackstone.  Shortly after her play closed, Mom left for Hollywood, where she met Dad at a party thrown by her cousin Mitzie in Beverly Hills. They married in 1943 and would remain married until dad's passing in 2002.  Throughout their nearly 60-year marriage, Mom would occasionally return to the stage (notably in a revival of Arthur Laurents' "The Birdcage"), appear on radio, and keep her hand in the biz.  Today, she is as active and beautiful as ever.  (n.b.: Sorry for the bad quality of the photo of her and Miss Gish, but it is more than 75 years old.  The picture of her below, taken some 70 years later, shows her still looking like a star. 

                        Mom, more than 70 Years After Photo With Lillian Gish 

Having been born in Hollywood and raised both in and around the movie industry, we (me and my "slightly-older-sister" Erica [Riki]) kind of took it for granted that being an actor, writer, director or musician was what everybody did.  Our neighborhood was filled with people in the industry. Lots of our friends' parents were in film or television, and we went to school with a lot of future actors and musicians.  As an added bonus, a lot of these folks were on my paper route.  I well remember delivering the Greet Sheet (yes, the front page was actually light green!) to the likes of Milburn Stone ("Doc" on Gunsmoke), Bill Williams and his wife Barbara Hale ("Kit Carson" and "Della Street"), Jack Elam (one of filmdom's great bad guys), and Hershel Bernardi, to name but a few.  The kids included the young Bobby Redford (who would wash his car  shirtless in the front yard), Tom Selleck (a great basketball player in high school), William Katt (the son of "Kit Carson" and "Della Street" who would go on to star as "The Greatest American Hero" and "Paul Drake"), brothers Barry and Stanley Livingston ("My Three Sons") Jo Ann Harris and legendary composer Tom Scott.  We even had a dog star in our neighborhood: "Paloma," a white standard French Poodle who was famous in the 1950s and '60s for being dyed different colors for various films. I best remember her playing Jane Mansfield's hand-dyed pooch (with whom she took a bath) in the 1957 comedy "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" In between films, when Palooma's owners, the Yortis's, let her fur grow out, Paloma would revert to being just another neighborhood dog; while in the midst of a shoot, however, she became a bit of a canine snob.  Ah, such memories!

In a life filled to overflowing with serious subjects and serious activities - medical research protocols, university lectures, political speechwriting, weekly political essays and sermons - writing about Hollywood is as pleasurable and utterly intoxicating as indulging in a carafe of vintage wine and tray of canapés at the end of a long day.  I have long been looking forward to creating this blog; my film students have long been prodding me to put the stories I tell on paper . . . or in this case into HTML.

Without question, film is the most collaborative of all art forms.  And without a doubt, it is art - although art largely in the service of profit.  (Originally, the term "movies" referred to all those nameless people who appeared on the screen, because they "moved.")  Every "flicker," "galloping ghost-type, "film" or "motion picture" relies on the skills, the expertise and quirks of hundreds of people in order to create something the public will want to see.  By and large, these creative people - actors, writers, directors, editors, composers, musicians, set-designers, make-up artists, carpenters, electricians, caterers, etc. are rarely your average drink of water; they are, generally speaking, a bit unconventional than average, to put it mildly.  Hollywood - both the place and the Platonic absolute - is akin to a steamer-trunk of tales to be told.  It is my intention to post perhaps two articles a month dealing with Hollywood trivia, a "behind-the-scenes" look at the making of well-known films, a bit of Hollywood history, a personal insight into a star who was just a neighbor, or gossip known mostly - if not exclusively - to Hollywood Brats like Alan Wald and yours truly.  I hope you will enjoy reading these bi-weekly pieces nearly as much as I will no doubt enjoy writing them.

Lights!  Camera! Action!  

Copyright©2018 Kurt F. Stone