Hollywood Wedding Nights

Hidden Hollywood: Gloria Swanson’s Wedding Night

October 10, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 5 Comments

swanson by steichen 1924 — Gloria Swanson photographed by Edward Steichen, 1924.

Between 1919 and 1921, Gloria Swanson starred in a series of wildly popular films for director Cecile B. De Mille in which the iconography of Hollywood glamour was formally codified. The titles of these films carry the whiff of scandal and decadence: Don’t Change Your Husband (1919), For Better, For Worse (1919), Male and Female (1919), Why Change Your Wife? (1920). In truth, each of the DeMille-Swanson films were neat little morality tales where virtue and tradition triumphed.

The visual language of glamour was characterized by stunning women sheathed in one gorgeous outfit after another, placed within elegant sets that defy practicality in favor of a dream-like universe. In De Mille’s Swanson movies, the decadent bathrooms were prominently featured. The massive sunken tubs, marble walls and floors, made audiences gasp with disbelief and pleasure. The symbol of the roaring twenties, according to Hollywood, was a bathroom fit for a queen.

Swanson’s elaborate costumes often weighed close to her petite 90lb. frame. But Swanson soldiered on bearing her burden with nary a complaint. For the sake of authenticity, De Mille accessorized his leading lady in wildly expensive jewels that only added to the fearsome weight Swanson carried with such regal posture.

Hidden Hollywood: Joan Fontaine’s Honeymoon from Hell

September 26, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 5 Comments

Joan Fontaine, Rebecca 1940 — Joan Fontaine, Rebecca, 1940

In 1939, Joan Fontaine, twenty-one years old, was slowly making her way up the Hollywood ladder. MGM signed Fontaine to play a small part in the high profile production The Women, directed by George Cukor, starring Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell and Paulette Goddard. For the young actress, it was a plum assignment.

At the same time, Fontaine was subject to numerous screen tests for the role of the second Mrs. De Winter for David O. Selznick’s highly anticipated Rebecca, first under the direction of John Cromwell and then Alfred Hitchcock. The screen tests were grueling, and the emotional toll devastating. Fontaine’s nerves were seriously frayed.

Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland were living in the same house in North Hollywood with their overbearing mother Lilian, a failed actress. As always, Joan and Olivia were engaged in a low-intensity conflict. Like so many Hollywood actresses, Fontaine’s father was long gone.

Hidden Hollywood: Ava Gardner and Mickey Rooney’s Wedding Night

September 12, 2016 by Robert J. Avrech 8 Comments

Ava Gardener, The Killers, 1946, the film that made her a star. — Ava Gardner, The Killers, 1946, the film that made her a star.

MGM’s roster of female stars constituted the greatest collection of beautiful and talented women the world has ever known.

One of the greatest was Ava Gardner.

As an emerging starlet in the early 1940’s, before she made a single movie the breathtaking Southern beauty was the talk of the town.

Mickey Rooney was MGM’s golden boy, a versatile star equally adept at musicals, comedy and drama. His signature role as the small-town youngster Andy Hardy made him something of a cash cow for the studio. The Hardy movies were cheap to produce and earned enormous profits.

In his compulsively readable autobiography, Life is Too Short, Rooney claims that his mother worked as a prostitute in order to put food on the table during the depths of the Depression. Thus, it’s not surprising that Rooney pursued women with an obsessive compulsion, seeking affection and love in all the wrong places: call girls, ambitious actresses and mature women–including Irving Thalberg’s widow Norma Shearer–were smitten by Rooney’s brash boyish charm.

In Memoriam: Mickey Rooney, 1920-2014

April 11, 2014 by Robert J. Avrech 9 Comments

Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in Love Finds Andy Hardy, 1938. — Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney in *Love Finds Andy Hardy*, 1938.

At five feet, two inches, he was the biggest star in the world.

Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule, Jr.) was probably the most talented star Hollywood ever produced. His astonishing career started in the silent era as a child actor. Rooney made the transition to sound with ease, and his career saw work in radio, television and Broadway. Rooney popularity reached a fever pitch in the late 1930s and 1940s. Rooney did it all. As Puck in Max Reinhardt’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) the fifteen year-old Rooney dazzled with unrestrained energy. Of course, Rooney and Judy Garland added to the American lexicon of optimism and generosity when they exclaimed, “Hey kids, lets put on a show!”

In Boys Town (1938) Rooney is a strutting, hard-shelled delinquent who ultimately reveals his vulnerabilities with choking sobs that are the template for the eternally mixed-up adolescent. Without Mickey Rooney there would have been no James Dean.

As Andy Hardy, Rooney, the small-town kid with a big heart would, at a strategic point in Act III, turn to his father, Judge Hardy (Lewis Stone)—a judge who was proud to judge others—and say: “Pop, can I talk to you, man-to-man?”

Joan Fontaine’s Not So Hollywood Wedding Night

September 1, 2011 by Robert J. Avrech 11 Comments

joan fontaine rebecca — Joan Fontaine, Rebecca 1940.

At the same time, Fontaine was subject to numerous screen tests for the role of the second Mrs. De Winter for David O. Selznick’s Rebecca, first under the direction of John Cromwell and then Alfred Hitchcock. Screen tests are grueling, and the emotional toll is devastating. During this period of her life Fontaine’s nerves were seriously frayed.

Fontaine and her sister Olivia de Havilland lived in the same house in North Hollywood with their overbearing mother Lilian, a failed actress. As always, Joan and Olivia were engaged in a low-intensity conflict. Like so many Hollywood actresses, Fontaine’s father was long gone.

Fontaine freely admits that she had a thing for older men. Ambitious, but deeply vulnerable, the young actress was looking for security, and a “protector.”

She already had a brief affair with her childhood idol, the handsome leading man, Conrad Nagel. Her description of their first intimacy is less than passionate: