Happy Halloween

Boo! I flew back at 1 A.M. this morning and boy are my arms tired. I'm behind on everything & have to go into work now (sigh). Catch everyone later! Thanks, Bantaskin...looks like some neat stuff to read up on!

Hopefully I don't mess this up. Left to Right: Clark Gable, Bob, Lionel Barrymore, Paul Muni.

Boo!

More Stars Than There Are in Heaven

Father figure Mayer and a few of his brood celebrating Lional Barrymore’s birthday in 1939. Its mind-blowing to think of the talent you would encouter strolling from set to set on any given day at MGM.

Photo: Courtesy of
Simplyclassics.net

Sure to be a Hit on YouTube

I wish I knew how to make a YouTube segment so I could upload that magnificent knockdown fight between Bob and Norma Shearer from Private Lives. It's got to be the best husband and wife slugfest ever filmed. The way Norma wallops Bob you’d never know he was one of her favorite leading man--requesting him whenever she had the power to choose because “she felt so comfortable with him” and because he made her laugh, which she said she needed to do. They definitely had marvelous chemistry. Unfortunately the failure of “Riptide” and critics' comments that they “had had enough of Shearer and Montgomery’s cocktail-shaking coynesses” doomed the screen partnership and their fifth film ended up being their last together. Mabye it was for the best--I can't see Bob in period costume performing Shakespeare or playing Count Axel de Fersen...

Photo: Courtesy of Simplyclassics.net

L.B.'s Dream Factory

I read a bit of trivia recently about Lady in the Lake that cleared up a mystery for me--why Bob addressed the camera at the start and the finish of the film and faded with a kiss, especially since he was such an admirer of John Ford, who disliked kiss and fades. L. B. Mayer made him add the prologue and epilogue because preview audiences were confused and also mad that they saw so little of Bob on screen. They also wanted to see him kiss Audrey Totter, thus he gave in and added the conventional ending. He and Audrey thought the kiss was so corny that when they shot the scene, they couldn’t stop giggling, chalking up numerous retakes.

At another point during production Bob and L. B. Mayer were in the projection room watching rushes of Lady in the Lake when a close-up of Audrey came on. Suddenly Mayer sat up and jabbed Bob in the ribs and said “Why does her hair look like that?” Bob explained that in the previous scene, which hadn’t been shot yet, she’s awakened in the middle of the night, to which Mayer replied, "I don’t care if she’s coming out of the toilet, her hair can’t look like that. A Metro star must look her best, even asleep.''

Broken Promises

There's a lot of well-known anecdotes associated with the smooth comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith such as Alfred Hitchcock directing as a favor to Carole Lombard, Lombard directing Hitchcock in a scene in which he tries to panhandle Montgomery, and Lombard sneaking over to the parking lot and covering Montgomery’s car with FDR bumper stickers and Montgomery painstakingly removing them only to have to do it all over again the next day. One story I wasn’t aware of until I read an excerpt from Donald Spoto’s book The Dark Side of Genius was that Hitchcock altered a scene to include a promise to his wife, Alma, that they would leave for Saint Moritz after filming to celebrate their wedding anniversary--something they hadn’t been able to do for the past seven years. Hitchcock snuck the promise into a scene in which Montgomery, feigning unconsciousness, deliriously mumbles “We’ll go away the first two weeks in December…Playing in the snow, we’ll have a lot of fun…The first two weeks in December, we’ll go away to that ski resort…yes the first two weeks in December.”

I’m having a little trouble imagining Hitch whizzing down those slopes.