Maureen O'Hara - Actress and Colleen

Maureen O'Hara appears on page 49 of Big Star Album, no. 1, Winter 1943, a large magazine from the Dell Publishing Company.  The paper is not glossy, being the wartime stock, but the issue is loaded with full-page portraits of the stars of the day.  One is struck by the repeated references to Miss O'Hara's Irish birth, not as a matter of biography but rather, it seems inferenced, as a selling point, an important part of her studio publicity.

To have been foreign born is naturally exotic to us, and to have trained in Dublin's illustrious Abbey Theater is certainly impressive, but her blurb is filled with Blarney Stone and leprechaun references,  of being an Irish colleen.  Did Marlene Dietrich's German heritage, Ingrid Bergman's Swedish heritage, or Greer Garson's English heritage matter as much to their careers? Were they selling points, or merely interesting trivia?  

The article stresses that despite her beauty, Miss O'Hara was an accomplished actress, that she was not just building a career on her charm. Indeed, she was a splendid actress, nor did she lean on predominantly Irish roles, which would have limited her career, though she was obviously proud of her ancestry and even recorded an album of Irish folk songs.  Even charming tropes are still tropes, and one must wonder if they weren't occasionally an exhausting burden.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century.

Requiescat in Pace - Maureen O'Hara

May Herself rest in peace.

Movie Stars on the Radio

A couple of weeks ago, a reader posted a comment on my essay on “Theater Guild on the Air” from September 2008 (see link to post here):

Professional Tourist said...
I have been trying to track down a copy of the Theater Guild on the Air production of "The Little Foxes" with Agnes Moorehead, which was broadcast on January 4, 1948. So far I've had no luck -- the Internet Archive site, which you link above, does not have this particular program, and I haven't found any place else on the net that has this one.

Do you know of any additional resources for these Theater Guild on the Air programs (preferably in MP3 format, but CD would work too)?

Thank you.
December 19, 2008
Jacqueline T Lynch said...
Hi, and welcome to the blog. I've taken a look around the sites with which I'm familiar, and unfortunately I've come up with nothing. There are a few episodes of Theater Guild on the Air which seem to be missing, or at least not commercially available. I know how frustrating that is. I'm still looking for an episode broadcast the following month, "Romeo & Juliet" with Dorothy McGuire and Maurice Evans. The only source I've found is the Paley Center for Media, formerly called the Museum of Television and Radio. I'd have to go to New York City to listen to it. I may just, sometime.

I've checked their database, but among the many entries they have for Agnes Moorehead, the show you want isn't among them.

I'll keep looking, and if ever I find it, I'll post it on the blog. I hope our readers will keep an eye out, too.

I hope some of our readers can help with Professional Tourist’s request. It raised for me the question of why more old movie buffs are not also old radio buffs? Old movies and old radio are like peanut butter and jelly. They go together.

This blog has addressed the appearances of Hollywood stars on old radio before, in the above-mentioned post, and in a post on the Lux Radio Theatre from April 2007.

Part of the reason for so many old movie fans not to jump on the old radio bandwagon could be that many of these programs were difficult to obtain before the days of Internet. Early collectors of classic radio programs, which today are commonly referred to as “Old-Time Radio” or “OTR”, had to scrounge for reel-to-reel audio or transcription to acetate disks. In the nostalgic craze of the 1970s, some old time radio programs became available on vinyl LP, and later cassette.

Today, collectors are more fortunate in obtaining a wide selection of OTR shows on audio CD, as MP3 files, and in the presence of so many dealers in old time radio with easily accessible websites and some of which also publish mail order catalogues.

One website is The Vintage Radio Place, which also posts a valuable log of programs with dates and guest stars.

Another site is OTRCat.com, which offers interesting collections of programs. I’m shortly due to receive from this dealer a collection of appearances on different programs by Barbara Stanwyck, and another with a collection of different Shakespearean presentations on radio. If you have a favorite star or program, this site offers entire collections, including collections of programs relative to different holidays or subjects.

There are a number of these sellers of old-time radio packages, and also free sources like the Internet Archive of shows in public domain. You can also listen to streaming audio of old-time radio shows on BostonPete.com, hosted by Wayne Boenig.

OTR fans can also enjoy a wealth of information on one of my favorite blogs, The Easy Ace.

Newcomers to OTR might think of old radio in terms of serial programs for children, like “The Lone Ranger” or “The Shadow”, but most stars of Hollywood’s heyday performed on radio, and some of them, like Barbara Stanwyck, or Joseph Cotten, performed on radio a lot.

I’ve also been surprised reading through biographies or autobiographies of film stars through the years that they rarely mention radio performances, yet this was an important part of an actor’s resume before television.

Radio curiously melded together the competing worlds of Film and Stage, which usually disdained each other. Here, before a standing microphone and usually before a live audience, those two worlds collided, and usually with fascinating results.

(Actually, some programs were not done live, but recorded without an audience, on disk, and played for later radio transmission. It has been noted that Joan Crawford, who did not do a lot of radio, preferred this method because she was not a stage actress and the thought of performing live made her anxious. She preferred having the control of being able to do over a mistake.)

Radio was the place for newcomers to get their first jobs. Jennifer Jones had her own local program in Oklahoma when she was still Phyllis Isley. Robert Walker and Dorothy McGuire both started on radio soap operas.

Radio was the place for actors and actresses to play roles which otherwise would not be offered to them, playing Shakespeare, playing roles which were older or younger than they might normally be cast. Or, play against type. Heroes and heroines became killers and nasty people without any noticeable detriment to their film careers. Character actors, like Agnes Moorehead, frequently played leads on radio.

Radio was the place where almost the entire cast of a movie could be reunited, such as in Screen Guild Theater’s production of “How Green Was My Valley” in 1941, with Sara Allgood, Walter Pidgeon, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, Rhys Williams, and Maureen O’Hara.

Radio was the place where actors who never performed in a film together, could be paired off like Humphrey Bogart and Dorothy McGuire in “The Valiant” on Screen Guild Theater, a play that had been written by another actor in the show, Robert Middlemass.

Middlemass wasn’t the only author to trod the boards, or rather the airways. Novelist Edna Ferber played Parthy Hawks in a Campbell Soup Playhouse production of “Show Boat”, based on her novel, in 1939 that starred Margaret Sullavan, with Helen Morgan reprising her original Broadway role as Julie. Ferber clearly threw herself into the role, which was her acting debut, but since there was no actual scenery to chew, we can just say she approached the part with gusto.

Radio was the place where stars got their own shows, like “Bold Venture” with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, a steamy series set in Havana, where they do a take on their “To Have and Have Not” characters. One of my favorite characters in this series is the sarcastic chief of police who once returned a lost purse to Bacall’s character, named Sailor Duval. He said he knew it was hers because it didn’t have any money in it.

Ronald Colman and wife Benita Hume played in the comedy “The Halls of Ivy”, and Dana Andrews starred in his own noir-ish series, “I Was a Communist for the FBI.” Phil Harris and Alice Faye ran amok in a funny situation comedy, “The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show.”

And if you’ve never heard the comedy “Our Miss Brooks” with Eve Arden, her sardonic delivery is as delightful as any of her film performances, and she’s backed up by Gale Gordon, who was probably the best foil anybody ever had on radio. Again, here we have a case of an actress who never got lead roles in film, but made radio her ticket to stardom and became an icon of popular culture.

Radio was where actors and actresses got a crack at performing roles made famous by others, like Loretta Young in a Campbell Soup Playhouse production of “Theodora Goes Wild” in 1940, a role performed on film by Irene Dunne.

Ronald Regan and his then wife Jane Wyman took over the Dennis Morgan and Barbara Stanwyck roles in “Christmas in Connecticut” in 1946 on Screen Guild Theater. If you listen to this one, the sound is distorted in the first few minutes, but hang on, it clears up. And probably the funniest performance by a sound effects guy comes when they do the scene of bathing the baby. The audience continually breaks up.

Radio was a seat-of-your-pants venue, where when Screen Guild Theater’s “History is Made at Night” had a last-minute cast change. This 1940 show was meant to feature Charles Boyer and Myrna Loy, but the announcer tells us that Greer Garson is stepping in at the last minute because Myrna Loy has spent the last week in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital “fighting a bad case of the flu.” It was Greer Garson’s first radio performance in the United States, and as is supposed to happen in theater, the understudy became a star.

Actually, the understudy was already a seasoned actress and on her way to being groomed to become one of MGM’s biggest stars. Where else but in old time radio would a star acquiesce to understudy status? Filling in for each other at the last minute was common in radio then. Barbara Stanwyck even famously filled in for Mary Livingstone on the Jack Benny Show. All one needed was a script in hand, a good voice, and steady nerves.

While old-time radio has become more easily accessible than ever, there are still, unfortunately, a number of missing programs that collectors and fans are trying to locate. For the newcomer, a whole new world is opened when listening to these programs. Largely, it is a world of your own imagination, and that is the most astonishing, and gratifying, part of it, as well as getting to enjoy favorite actors and actresses showing another side.

For a gallery of photos of stars behind the mic, have a look at the Old Time Radio Scrapbook.

Two Views of Ireland

Director John Ford came up with two representations of the Irish in film, and they show both ends of the spectrum between the violent circle of vengeance that has plagued that culture for hundreds of years, and the sentimental portrait of a witty caricature. “The Informer” (1935) and “The Quiet Man” (1952) give us not necessarily opposing views of Ireland, both show repressive aspects to their society, but between them give a fuller picture so much so that they should probably be shown together.

Both are excellent films, and despite being the products of Hollywood, because both are directed by a man whose family came from Ireland, who spoke Irish Gaelic himself, they carry an authenticity that most Hollywood films do not have when depicting a foreign land. “The Informer” is gritty, stark, and reflective of the German expressionist school of film. Victor McLaglen, who won the Academy Award for his performance, is a bumbling, flawed, irascible man, a man of little intelligence, whose betrayal to the police of a friend turns him into a haunted, and hunted, man. He turned in the fellow for the reward money, to finance immigration for himself and his prostitute girlfriend to America. He squanders the money instead, his guilt chasing him through the foggy night. In the end, confessing his crime to the betrayed man’s mother, played by Una O’Connor, the IRA catches up with McLaglen and shoots him like a dog. His arms held out in rapture for being forgiven by the Madonna-like sorrowing O’Connor, this lowly, lying, desperate ape of a man becomes Christ-like, and dies for his own sins.

Mr. McLaglen returns in “The Quiet Man” as a boasting, selfish, brawler, the bossy brother of Maureen O’Hara, without whose permission she cannot marry John Wayne. McLaglen, despite similar attributes to his bedeviled character in “The Informer” is here a comic figure, and actually likable despite his irascibility. Maureen O’Hara is a spitfire, able to hold her own with her bullying brother, and John Wayne is the American who has returned to the land of his birth to settle down. This time it is Wayne who is the haunted character, an ex-boxer who caused the death of a competitor in the ring, and who runs from his guilt, and all violence, to this peaceful Irish countryside.

Though we have dependable Ward Bond along as the parish priest, the rest of the cast are Irish, members of the distinguished Abbey Players. They, more than the color picture postcard scenery, give this film its charm. The stereotype of the hard-drinking, brawling Irish is more than winked at. Particularly in the famous scene where Mr. Wayne drags Miss O’Hara across the hills and fields, as townspeople swarm to watch, and the sweet village lady graciously offers Mr. Wayne a stick, “to beat the lovely lady,” we know we are being gloriously kidded by a culture that delights especially in laughing at itself.

Soon Mr. Wayne trades Maureen O’Hara for Victor McLaglen in a cross-country boxing match that wildly entertains the locals and ironically squares things between him and his brother-in-law. Barry Fitzgerald as the village matchmaker and bookie is a gem in this film. His coy smile at Maureen O’Hara as she sings at the spinet and suddenly bursts into what must have been genuine laughter at him, is delightful. The kindly act of brotherly love when the Catholics of the neighborhood pretend to be Protestants so that the visiting Church of Ireland bishop won’t remove the local vicar, played by Fitzgerald’s real-life brother Arthur Shields, and cheer him as he drives by, is a reminder that enmity and vengeance are not part of everyday life for everyone on this island.

“The Informer” is bleak; “The Quiet Man” is romantic confection, and both films together illustrate a more complete picture of a culture of fierce nationalism, religious passion, humor, oppression and human flaws than they would taken separately. Ford and his vision of his ancestral homeland is the glue. It is through his skeptical, and romantic, eye that we see this culture which has come to personify this feast day of a Christian saint.

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) sets two interesting precedents for the American public. First, it becomes a traditional must-see film for the Christmas holiday season, something warm and fuzzy, and frequently re-made. Secondly, and more importantly, it openly and frankly acknowledges, perhaps even establishes, the phenomenon of yuletide commercialism, Black Friday binges, Cyber Mondays and Thanksgiving as a warm-up act for the big show to follow.

Maureen O’Hara is in Human Resources at New York City’s famed Macy’s Department Store and is in charge of the Thanksgiving Parade. She hires Edmund Gwenn as a last-minute replacement for the fellow supposed to play Santa Claus, whose float brings up the rear of the parade. She has unwittingly hired the real Santa Claus to play himself, and that is where the plot takes off. John Payne is her prospective beau and Santa’s attorney, and young Natalie Wood her daughter, who does not believe in Santa.

We have a few shots of Macy’s and a couple of actors playing Mr. Macy and his rival, Mr. Gimbel, but it’s not really so much about Macy’s or New York City. This could be any department store in any town. These could be your kids waiting in line in to sit in Santa’s lap, or it could be you, or your parents. We have a suggestion of the late war with the most touching scene in the movie probably where the little girl from Holland, who does not speak English, is captivated by a Santa Claus who can easily converse with her in Dutch. But most of the film is not about the past, either good old days or horrors gratefully behind us. It is not even about the present, with bustling well-dressed shoppers using cash instead of credit cards and content to wait until Christmas Eve to decorate their real trees, with dreams of their first suburban post-war homes dancing in their heads, topping their wish list.

It is about the future, a time which this film maps out even if it does not envision. It is about a time of paying with plastic, and of over-spending with plastic. It is about the economic reporters gauging, analyzing, cringing and exulting about how much money is being spent by the shopper, by the minute, in an America where two-thirds of our economy is dependent on this one short season.

It is about putting up the tree on Thanksgiving after rushing through the turkey dinner. It is about watching Miracle on 34th Street not because it is one of the few classic films which mentions that most American of holidays, Thanksgiving, but because leads us into Christmas, ready, set, go right after you finish your piece of pumpkin pie.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) - Part 1

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939) has a very literate script as a foundation and from this beginning, taken from the Victor Hugo novel, stands as fine a film, as evocative of time and place, as ever was made. Performances by Charles Laughton as Quasimodo the Hunchback, Maureen O’Hara as Esmeralda, and Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Frollo are superb.

Throughout the film the main theme of superstition and prejudice, which we are warned seek “to crush the adventurous spirit of man,” vies with the enlightenment of a new day. Looming above Paris, and seen in the background of many shots is the magnificent Cathedral of Notre Dame. It represents both the majestic spirit of man, the heights of his creativity and his faith, and yet it also represents a past of superstition and cruelty. Opposite this is the new invention of the printing press, which King Louis XI, played by Harry Davenport, marvels over, calling it a miracle when he is told that a book which would normally take months to copy by hand can be printed in a few weeks, thereby allowing the common folk to have access to knowledge.

Frollo, the chief justice, a complex man whose need to control is greater than his compassion, fears and loathes the printing press, which he says can “destroy a kingdom.” There are similar discussions throughout the film about where the world is headed with all these new fangled inventions. While watching the Fools Day celebrations, a fellow in the background behind the King keeps comically interrupting his conversation about Columbus’ assertion that the world is round by flatly commenting, “It’s flat.” The King, though he may become enlightened, has many in his court who are jealous of their privileges and of the way things are and should always be.

He is a great philosopher, this king, who comments on Quasimodo’s fascination for the Fools Day crowd, “The ugly is very appealing to man…one shrinks from the ugly, yet wants to look at it. There’s devilish fascination in it. We extract pleasure from horror.”

There are many horrors in this Paris of a long ago day. The poor are forced to beg or steal. The Gypsies, like Esmeralda, are reviled and persecuted, and anyone who runs afoul of the nobility is tortured. Esmeralda is told she is from “an evil race.” How sad to think that when this film was released in 1939, another European culture was persecuting Gypsies, Jews, and other so-called “inferior” persons as a means of expressing their own self-superiority. To think that the same superstition and prejudice could have lingered unchecked in five hundred years is appalling. It keeps one from viewing aspects of this film with amused condescension, like the world is flat and the king’s taking only one bath a year, from the perspective our own self superiority. The thought that prejudice should exist from one century to the next should keep us humble.

It is a Paris of wet streets and shadows. The shadows are ruled by an underclass of beggars and thieves. Frollo, captivated by Esmeralda and at the same time, repulsed by his lust for her, sends his ward, Quasimodo, into the streets to catch her. Sir Cedric’s multilayered performance is fascinating. Frollo is not a cardboard cutout bad guy; he is a complex man capable of greatness and susceptible to failure.

Quasimodo is caught, accused of attacking Esmeralda, and publicly whipped. Though taken as a child under the care of Frollo and raised in the bell tower of the Cathedral, Frollo regards Quasimodo more as a pet than a foster son, and there is perhaps no sadder, more devastating scene than when Frollo rides past Quasimodo, strung up on the pillory, and refuses to help him or even acknowledge him. We see by Laughton’s expression never has anyone been so alone.

The fickle crowd begins to jeer him and throw things, but Esmeralda brings him water, and when he is released back to the Cathedral, Quasimodo can only obsess with joy and wonder that someone was actually kind to him.

More tomorrow on "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939).

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The Hunchback Of Notre Dame [DVD](1939) DVD

John Wayne - 100th Anniversary

I once met an Arizona cowboy, a real cowboy, not a film one, who said he wanted to vote for John Wayne as President. That Wayne had entered politics only on the sidelines and not a candidate, and the fact that he had been deceased for some years, did not detract this cowboy from his belief that Mr. Wayne was somehow eternal, and somehow eternally the right answer to America’s problems.

John Wayne had a remarkable career, and his image on screen as someone stalwart, moral, and dispensing no-nonsense justice was, and is, appealing in a world where we have many doubts about where our society is going and who we can really trust. The 100th anniversary of John Wayne’s birth, on May 26th, will undoubtedly give us a chance to watch some of his films and remember again what made him so likeable, and so iconic an American figure.

His long career, begun in the 1920s, really took off after John Ford’s “Stagecoach” (1939), and the 1940s saw Wayne’s career blossom, from war films to westerns. By the end of the decade, he was firmly ensconced in the public’s, and the film industry’s mind as the man who made things right just by showing up. The posse and the cavalry were just there for support.

But that is image, and film is first and foremost, all about illusion. John Wayne did not bravely fight the enemy in World War II, no matter how many times he did it on the soundstage. In truth, he applied for a deferment and never served, even though many of his fellow actors, men with families and careers that were just as important to them, joined the armed forces. At the time, Mr. Wayne was criticized as caring more about his career than his country, and was disparaged as a coward, just as he would accuse men who would not serve in the armed forces during the Vietnam War of cowardice. Some have suggested that this period of his life in Hollywood during the war may have helped make him such a vocal supporter of investigations against communists in Hollywood in the 1950s and an advocate of right-wing politics in the future. Whether his later actions were because of, or in spite of, the personal choice he made during World War II not to serve, he remained a heroic figure on film, and some of his best work was when the film was less about a message and more about the man he was playing.

One of his best in this vein was in “The Quiet Man” (1952) where John Wayne plays the lone American in an Irish village, out to put a violent past behind him, only to find more exasperating, and much more comic, battles ahead of him before he finds happiness with Maureen O’Hara. He is as much the rugged individualist in the rain-swept ruins of an Irish castle, vainly trying to protect from the rain Miss O’Hara, who nestles against him in a beautifully filmed wordless scene, as he ever is leading a cavalry charge in Monument Valley.

His cross-country fistfight with Victor McLaglen is the most entertaining pummeling we are likely to see on film, and director John Ford’s stock actors, including Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald, Mildred Natwick, and a riotous flock of actors from Irish theater make Wayne’s Irish-born but American-raised character seem as if he is truly a man without a country.

In a world today where Americans are so disparaged abroad, it is especially poignant to see Wayne in this foreign setting, bewildered and misunderstood, but managing to fit in at last while losing none of his American individualism. He still stands tall. (At 6’4½ ” he should.) If John Wayne means different things to different people, then that is as it should be. Being allowed to express your own perspective is one of the best things about being American.

That’s all for this week. See you Monday.