Porky Pig in "The Wearing of the Grin"

The Wearing of the Grin (1951) seems to have been Porky Pig's last starring role before being relegated to a mere supporting player.  It's one of my favorites, and though the above video is only a clip and not the entire cartoon, you get the idea of St. Patrick's Day, the trope of the scary deserted castle suggesting a horror film, but there's something else we don't see until farther along in the cartoon:  a brilliant parody of The Red Shoes (1948).  Only in this case, of course, they're green.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

 

Anniversaries, time marches on.

A couple of anniversaries this week:  the 16th anniversary of Another Old Movie Blog, and most poignant for many of us, the first anniversary of the passing of our dear friend and classic movie blogger, Paddy Nolan-Hall, aka The Caftan Woman.  I think of her often, especially but not only while watching classic films.

Thank you, if I don't say it enough, not only to readers of this blog but to all other classic film bloggers for being a wonderful, special family.

Here are some past posts about The Caftan Woman:

Another Old Movie Blog: The Caftan Woman Blogathon -- NOW SHOWING

Another Old Movie Blog: The Case of Charlie Chan and The Caftan Woman

Another Old Movie Blog: Patricia Nolan-Hall, a.k.a. The Caftan Woman - Requiescat in Pace

Another Old Movie Blog: Paddy Nolan-Hall, a.k.a. The Caftan Woman

Another Old Movie Blog: A Canadian's Perspective: A Visit from Paddy Nolan-Hall

Visit Paddy's own blog, The Caftan Woman, here.

The Moving Picture Girls series

The advent of silent movies had a profound effect on society in just about every way one could imagine.  While we classic film fans are well familiar with by-products of the film industry in the form of memorabilia and fads, I recently came across a series of children’s books published during the Silent Era called The Moving Picture Girls.

I’ve been researching, for too many years that I care to count, a book I’m working on (off and on) about children’s chapter books written during World War II with the war as a background.  These include the Dave Dawson series, the Cherry Ames series, and many, many that are lesser knowns today that reflected the anxieties of the youth of that time and were intended to involve them in a world at war and to inspire them.  In the process, I stumbled upon this interesting series for girls of an earlier generation.

I would think the Moving Picture Girls series might have inspired a few girls to head for Hollywood in those early, heady days; for the most part, they were reflective of a new medium, a new industry, a new art form, and a new career for young women.

The author is Laura Lee Hope, which is actually a pseudonym for a team of writers, whose most famous series might have been The Bobbsey Twins. The seven original books in the series were published from 1914 to 1916.  These are the books in order:

The Moving Picture Girls
The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm
The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound
The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms
The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch
The Moving Picture Girls at Sea

The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays

In the first book, stage actor Hosmer DeVere struggles to find work and support his two teenage daughters, Ruth and Alice, when he has lost his voice and needs rest and medical treatment.  He accepts a job working in silent films, where he does not have to speak.  He accepts reluctantly, because, of course, he thinks the flickers are vulgar and beneath the stature of a stage actor. 

His daughters become involved in mysteries and hijinks traveling with him on location shoots through the series, and even become film actresses themselves.

Now in public domain, you can read these books through the Project Gutenberg website, or purchase in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, or you will probably find a few old copies on eBay, if your bent is collecting.  Have a look at this website for more descriptions of each book.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

First anniversary - Slava Ukraini

 

One year since the start of World War III (whether we acknowledge it or not).  

Invasion and atrocities.

Putin's Russia has committed mass kidnapping of children, mass torture, extensive war crimes.

Putin's Russia is currently committing genocide.

Support Ukraine in every way possible.  We should join the fight against fascism wherever it exists.

Support freedom and democracy.

Slava Ukraini!

Helen Kane - portrait of the "Boop-a-Doop Girl"

This sepia-toned portrait of Helen Kane, the Boop-a-Doop Girl from the book Stars of the Photoplay, a book of photo portraits of the Hollywood stars (Photoplay Publishing Co., 1930), recalls the heady days of the glorious wide-eyed flappers with their spit curls and sexual suggestiveness expressed through a gauze of pretended innocence.

The year 1930 also brought the first appearance of her cartoon alter ego, Betty Boop.  We've discussed Betty's influence on pop culture in this previous post.  Miss Kane would sue cartoonist/animator Max Fleischer over his creation stealing her "boop-a-doop" line.  She did not win her case.

Helen Kane's career would lose its momentum partly due to the Great Depression and the end of the flapper era, and due to all those impersonators, cartoon or human, who made boop-a-dooping a flood on the market, and the originator was no longer so original.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

FREE! - Hollywood Fights Fascism

The eBook version of Hollywood Fights Fascism, my collection of essays on movies from Hollywood's heyday that addressed the evils of fascism will be FREE on Amazon starting today, February 9th through Monday, February 13th.  You're welcome to grab your free copy, and leave a review if you wish.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

The I Don't Care Girl - 1953

The I Don’t Care Girl (1953) is a biography of the vaudeville star Eva Tanguay, and like a lot of movie “biographies” of the era, it falls short of actually telling the facts.  It actually falls short of being remotely connected to the life of Eva Tanguay at all.

Mitzi Gaynor stars, and among the greatest differences between Miss Gaynor and Miss Tanguay is that Miss Gaynor was actually quite talented.  Unlike Eva Tanguay, Gaynor could sing and dance – was a particularly graceful dancer.  While the movie has its entertaining moments, it would have been more interesting to have a film about Eva that was closer to the mark in her personality, abilities, and real-life experiences, not to mention all the vaudeville greats who crossed paths with her.

In her day, Eva was a superstar, the highest-paid performer in vaudeville.  Born in Canada, she spent her early childhood in Holyoke, Massachusetts.  This is my neck of the woods, so I grew up hearing about the name and fame of Eva, even though those heady days of vaudeville occurred decades before I was born.  Her debut took place in 1886 at a local amateur night contest at eight years old, where she won a dollar. 

Decades later, a more down-and-out Eva made some of her last performances back in her hometown of Holyoke – which is described in my book Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts.  I’ll be giving a talk on this book next week in my area.

In between her start and her ending was a career that might astonish us today.  The best description I can find is here in the excellent book by Trav S. D., No Applause—Just Throw Money:

Billed as an “eccentric comedienne,” her act, at its heart, was that she was nuts.  A bad singer and a graceless dancer, with hair like a rat’s nest, the homely, overweight Tanguay would put on outrageous outfits, sing provocative, self-involved songs commissioned especially for her and fling herself around on stage in a suggestive manner.  She was looked upon as a curiosity, like the “wild man” in a circus sideshow, evincing the same sort of appeal that Janis Joplin and Tina Turner later had in the rock era…But her racier numbers were deemed acceptable because her act was not really reducible to sex.  She was just…crazy.

 

From my book, Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain:

“Miss Tanguay reportedly choked a fellow chorus girl to unconsciousness when that woman criticized her performance, and knocked another fellow performer’s head into a brick wall.  Noticing that scandal brought headlines, which brought more people to the theater to see her, Tanguay started creating controversy, including marriages, to keep her name in the headlines.  If that weren’t enough, she billed herself professionally as The Girl Who Made Vaudeville Famous.  It must have worked.  She drew the top salary in the business, at $3,500 per week.”

“I Don’t Care” was her signature song, and the movie of the same name does have one scene of Mitzi Gaynor performing this number where she does seem to channel a wee bit of Eva’s maniacal energy—shrieking and kicking, and climbing up the proscenium to the box and into the audience, which was always astounded, pleased, and waiting to see what on earth would happen next.

Most of the rest of the film seems to be an attempt to grasp at straws at Eva’s career, and with a oh, let's just make it up shrug of the shoulders that Eva herself might appreciate. 

The film begins with George Jessel playing himself, a producer at 20^th Century-Fox planning a movie on the life of Eva Tanguay, and sending underlings to look for performers who might have worked with her to ferret out her life story. 

David Wayne plays a vaudevillian who takes Eva on as a young partner.  We being a series of flashback scenes to the good old days, but later are told David Wayne’s memories are false, exaggerated, and Jessel is no nearer the truth to uncovering Eva’s story. 

Oscar Levant and Bob Graham play a battling vaudeville team, always arguing and stealing girlfriends from one another, but Mr. Graham wins out here as the love of Eva’s life.  They have a rocky romance:  he is already married, has a roving eye, and she is insanely jealous.  A few scenes of Mitzi Gaynor throwing stuff is meant to suggest Eva’s powerful impulse to pummel.

The movie concludes with a reunion over a World War I misunderstanding, and a bizarre reappearance of George Jessel breaking the fourth wall backstage telling the audience, “I just wanted to see how it finished.”

Along the way we have several musical numbers.  They are a mélange of ballet, jazz, bee-bop, showing Mitzi Gaynor as graceful and athletic, but there is a surreal quality to them that, except for the fact that they are stunning visuals, are really kind of pointless to an already nonsensical plot.  Oscar Levant has some interminable, if well-executed, piano solos.

Eva Tanguay died in 1947, six years before this film was made, and it was perhaps inevitable that Hollywood would pay tribute to a once well-known entertainer.  Instead of the extravaganza it was hyped to be, the movie really just goes through the motions, and very few of those motions are Eva’s.

You can see The I Don’t Care Girl currently on YouTube.

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 Sources:

Trav S.D.  No Applause—Just Throw Money—The Book that Made Vaudeville Famous  (NY: Faber and Faber, Inc., 2005) p. 199

Lynch, Jacqueline T.  Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts (Chicopee, Mass.: Jacqueline T. Lynch, 2017) p.18.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Rosalind Russell's tutorial on lighting the Shabbat candles

Recently, a lady contacted me to share some information about her grandmother's involvement in the film A Majority of One (1961), which we discussed here.

I receive emails from time to time from readers of this blog, but I seldom mention them out of the assumption that they prefer their comments to be private, otherwise they would leave their remarks in the blog comments section.  However, I was given permission to share this, though I will omit names.

"I read your article about Rosalind Russell’s moving portrayal of an older Jewish woman in A Majority of One and in particular her blessing of the Shabbat candles. 

"It meant a lot to me reading this because my grandmother... told us that she was the person who showed Ms. Russell how to do it."

A rabbi was consulted for the film regarding this scene, and he recommended her grandmother for the job of teaching Roz about the beautiful prayer ritual. 

"I think she went 1 or maybe 2 times to show her.  I never really asked the details, but she told us what she’d done at the time.

"I never saw the movie.  But to read of this as an especially moving part of the movie and to know of my grandmother’s role and remembering her pray over her own Shabbat candles brought back wonderful memories.  I’d like to see the movie.  Thank you."

Receiving this email was, of course, a great thrill for me, not only to hear from someone even distantly connected to the film, but to find out a little more about the behind-the-scenes technical consultants whom we sometimes don't learn much about, though probably most films then and now do rely on the expertise of consultants.  Even, in this case, if it's only for one very special scene.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Public Domain Day - 2023

Time once again to update our annual look at Public Domain Day, which is January 1^st, the day that another year of creative works enter into public domain.

This year the works of 1927 apply, and for films this includes:

Metropolis

The Jazz Singer

Wings

Sunrise

7th Heaven

As you can see, we have giants among them, Oscar nominees and winners among them, since the first Academy Awards covered entries from August 1927 to July 1928.  We also note that with the Jazz Singer, we’ve got a toehold in the coming sound era, so 1927 certainly marks a great sea change in our culture.

 Another Old Movie Blog: Public Domain Day - 2022

Another Old Movie Blog: Public Domain Day - 2021

Another Old Movie Blog: Public Domain Day - 2020

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

Mary Field - What a Character! blogathon

Mary Field was a very good actress, with the ability to command a scene and entirely lose herself in a character, yet most of the roles she played were brief, uncredited, and leaves one wondering what her career might have been like had the Hollywood caste system not been so rigid.

This post is part of the11th Annual What a Character! blogathon, hosted by Paula of Paula’s Cinema Club and @Paula_Guthat, Kellee of Outspoken & Freckled and @Irishjayhawk66, and Aurora of Once Upon a Screen and @CitizenScreen.  Have a look here at the other great blogs on the roster.

Mary Field appeared in over 100 films, along with several television appearances in a career spanning 46 years before her retirement in 1963 at 54.  Many of her roles were spinster types: maids, shop clerks, librarians; many were comic, some were poignant, but all were unique individuals.  

The comic man-chasing spinster in The Great Gildersleeve (1942) who made Gildy’s life a wreck is unrecognizable from the quiet, concerned adoptive mother who brings her little Dutch-speaking orphan to see Santa Claus in a moving scene in Miracle on 34^th Street (1947).  You would not know they were the same actress.  Unlike many character actors, I think she is less recognizable because of her ability to play nuanced roles.

She is one of the boarders in Shadows on the Stairs (1941), a larger-than-life personality who steals scenes.  She is perhaps barely noticed in many other films, but she appeared in greats such as Ball of Fire (1941), Now, Voyager (1942), and Mrs. Miniver (1942).

Mary Field was what was called a day worker, someone reliable to plug into a small role at short notice, but seemingly stuck in that particular orbit of studio system hirelings.  Many struggling actors would be, and were, grateful for a toehold in the industry, but most would find that it also meant a dead end of not reaching supporting player status on a studio’s roster, let alone stardom.

Yet Mary Field, I think, had the ability, much like Lionel Barrymore, to be a character actor-star. 

My favorite role, so far, is her turn as the shop clerk in a women’s clothing store in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) which we covered here.  I’ll quote from that essay:

The funniest scene in the movie is when Mr. Powell heads to a women’s clothing store in town to purchase some sort of top for his mermaid.  His befuddled awkwardness sets the stage for a terrific scene, and he plays the straight man for Mary Field, whom you’ve probably seen uncredited in a zillion movie walk-on parts.  Here she gets a good role as the primly officious clerk, who delights in her soliloquy sales pitches to the uncomfortable Mr. Powell.  She sounds like a Banana Republic or J Peterman catalog description gone amuck. 

She displays a sweater, “Light as a whisper, gay as a sunbeam, wearing it will be an emotional adventure spangled with the moon glow of twilight.”  

Miss Field continues her merry prattle, “A gay spectrum of springtime hues—fuchsia, purple almond, banana, marshmallow, peach dream and licorice!”

 Mr. Powell replies, “Would you be good enough to tell me something?”

Miss Field: “Enchanted.”  (I love her over-the-top playfulness with proper speech.)

Mr. Powell: “Whatever became of blue?”

She finds he is going to be trouble, especially when he wants to know if someone can swim in her sweaters.

“May I ask is the young lady’s prejudice against swimming in a swimming suit quite deep-seated?”  (One of my all-time favorite lines.  I just love her.  In a way, her intonation and enunciation reminds me of a reformed Eliza Doolittle when she is carefully trying to explain to Freddy Eynsford-Hill that, “Them she lived with would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat.”  Her careful stroking of the difficult language as if to tame it.)

Mr. Powell just realizes he could buy his mermaid a two-piece swimsuit instead of a sweater and she could just wear the top part.  But Miss Field, Saleswoman of the Year, insists they do not sell half of a bathing suit.  She holds one up, “The diaper model.  Provocative, n'est–ce pas?”  (She’s straight-faced, slam-dunk hysterical.)

 

Here in Top o’ the Morning (1949), she plays a chambermaid who gets to sing a line or two with Bing Crosby.  She played against the greats, and held her own.

Miss Field’s personal life was something of an enigma.  Reportedly, she was a foundling left outside the doors of a church as a baby.  She was adopted, and went to school in Westchester, New York.  In her late 20s she went to Hollywood.  Perhaps there was some stage work in the interim, but I don’t know.  She married, had children, and evidently, was satisfied in middle age to leave her acting career.

Hat's off to the day workers, and to Mary Field, who deserved more screen time and a higher notch in the caste system (and the cast).

Check out the other great characters actors being paid tribute in this 11th Annual What a Character! blogathon here.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

What a Character Blogathon!

 

Happy New Year!  I can't think of a better way to start the new year right, as Bing would sing, than to take part in the 11th Annual What a Character! blogathon, hosted by Paula's Cinema Club, Once Upon a Screen, and Outspoken & Freckled blogs.

My choice this year is Mary Field.  Join us this coming Sunday, January 8th, for a roster of wonderful blogs celebrating our favorite wonderful classic film character actors.  Have a look at them here.

See you then!

Happy New Year !

As we prepare to cap this holiday season and ring the old year out, may I thank you for the pleasure of your company, and wish you a very Happy New Year!

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism.  Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.