Happy Halloween!

Watch out for the little old lady down the street ...

                      Lionel Barrymore in The Devil Doll (1936)

Bob Competes With Frank Morgan for the Girl? Only in the Movies.

When Ladies Meet (1931) is included in the newly released Forbidden Hollywood, Vol. 9.  Bob co-stars with Myrna Loy, but it is definitely a Myrna Loy movie with able support from Ann Harding, Frank Morgan, Alice Brady and our Bob.  The 'forbidden' description applies because of Myrna's designs on married Frank Morgan.  Bob, her ardent suitor, seeks to break up the Loy/Morgan affair by setting up a meeting of Frank's wife Ann Harding with Loy.  Great scene, great performance by Harding.  The movie has a really excellent script adapted from a Rachel Crothers play with superb art direction by Cedric Gibbons ... most of the scenes are in a Connecticut country cottage, a home about which to dream.  

Myrna discusses discusses filming Ladies in her autobiography, Being and Becoming: 

Bob Montgomery adored Alice Brady, and, both being great wits, they made very entertaining companions.  We became a little coterie of three, occasionally going to Alice's house or having something to eat after work.  That kind of easy camaraderie is rare in pictures, everything goes so fast you very often don't get to know people.

 Now that had to be a fun trio. 

Miscellaneous Thoughts and an ID'd Photo

First I get help identifying the photo in the Oct. 20th post, and now I have been able to identify the mystery photo in the March 31st post.  I thought it was from the 20s, actually it is a 1932 movie titled While Paris Sleeps which starred Victor McLaglen and featured William Bakewell and Helen Mack, the young couple in the photo.  I ran across a sister photo which had the ID information ... one of my mini-Viola! moments.

  William Bakewell and Helen Mack in While Paris Sleeps (1932)

When was the last time you saw anyone wear a hat?  And I don't mean a baseball cap, or a uniform hat...just your everyday Dick and Jane going out in public.  Everybody wore hats back when, and then they just went away.  Kinda sad.  I think most men look great in a fedora.  Bob Montgomery looked great in any kind of hat.

     Riders of the Black Hills (1938) with the Three Mesquiteers
            (Bob Livingston, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune)
 
There were some fabulous sets dreamed up by the studios in the 1930s and 1940s.  Be it a nightclub stage dreamed up by Busby Berkeley or a simple country cottage in the English countryside, they were extremely important in making a successful movie.  Sometimes the sets are a bit much.  I hope Irene is  on a stage picking fake flowers and not on a real garden set.  Gotta check out this movie some time.  Either way, Irene, always the pro, managed not to break out laughing at her fake flower bouquet.  

                         Irene Dunne in Sweet Adeline (1934)

Happy Birthday, Constance Bennett!

I have always admired Constance Bennett.  She was beautiful, a good actress, played a mean hand of poker and ran her own cosmetics and clothing company.   Her good business sense also helped make her the highest-paid actress in the early 1930s.  That's saying a lot in the time of Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford.  $150,000 for a movie or $30,000 per week ... darn good money for 1931.  That's a heck of a lot more than Bob was making when he co-starred with Constance in The Easiest Way.

            Bob and Constance Bennett in The Easiest Way (1931)

 She was born October 22, 1904, into the acting Bennett family.  Both parents were actors and sister Joan Bennett would also become a successful actress.  She married five times, the last time to a U.S. Air Force officer in 1946, finally a good marriage that lasted until her death in 1965.  Even as a life-long Democrat involved in politics throughout her life, she remained friends with Montgomery, Mr. Republican, and appeared twice on Robert Montgomery Presents. 

             Clark Gable and Constance in After Office Hours (1935)

60 years is much too short a life, but Constance apparently lived those years fully.  She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery ... not many Hollywood people have that distinction. 

And the Mystery Person Is.................

I love group photos of stars who appear to have little in common.  Granted, they all seem to be hams, but really, Don Ameche and W. C. Fields singing together?!  Of course the photo did not come with any information as to why this divergent group was posing for a photo.  Perhaps they've come together for a charity event or a morale booster for the troops, does appear to have been taken in the early to mid-40s. 

What I do know is that the stars are Fields, Nelson Eddy, Charley McCarthy, Edgar Bergen, Ameche and Dorothy Lamour.    The guy sitting down ... anyone know who he is?