—Marlene Dietrich, photo by Eve Arnold, 1952
The Bride, 1842
Oil on canvas
923 × 713 mm
Tate Museum
Sir William Quiller Orchardson (British) 1832–1910
Oil on canvas
832 × 1213 mm
Tate Museum
Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D. M. Marshman Jr.
—Alfred Hitchcock, photo by Irving Penn, 1948
White-Throated Toucan c.1705?
Watercolor and bodycolor with gum arabic on vellum; 30.4 x 38.1 cm
Royal Collection Trust
—Fay Wray, On The Other Hand
Thornhill, ON, Sept. 2019
“Stroke of Cobalt” 2020
Detail
acrylic on canvas
20 in. X 20 in.
Gads, Hitch never won an Oscar? We are still watching his movies 50-60-70 years later.
How many will be watching some of these recent winners 70 years from now?
I thought so.
When that ’63 Corvette came out, there was a groundswell of orders. I guess the new mid-engined C8 is similar.
I can remember sitting in the back of a station wagon and the friend and I kept motioning the new Corvette owner to raise is headlights – he did.
I still think that series – the C2 for 2nd generation – was the best looking – particular the coupe.
Thank Pete Brock, Larry Shinoda and Bill Mitchell for that.
Marlene – wise woman. I think she would be fascinating to interview. Didn’t some French director make a movie of an interview with the provision that she was not to be seen? She was in another room and in her later years.
Like a few others – Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra – wish I has seen her show in the 70s.
Didn’t her parents invent the name Marlene?
Bill:
The actor Maximillian Schell was the one who made the doc about Dietrich where she would not appear. I’ve never seen it.
I have seen Schell’s Marlene film and it is of considerable interest. Sometimes, and this is memory after decades, she seemed to be speaking from the other side of a closed door, while for the most part her comments had been pre-recorded. We would all like to have seen her, but there is little to no doubt she and her director made the right decision, after all, who wants to see a bombed out beauty. Have a look for yourself.
Schell’s documentary on Dietrich, named “Marlene”, was on Netflix or Amazon Prime about year ago or so. Watched it then. Not on now unless you want to get on one of the Prime apps. As Barry said, it’s interesting. Worth watching.
Her name was Marie Magdalene Dietrich. Her father’s surname was Dietrich. She never used the surname “von Losch” as some document because her stepfather never adopted the Dietrich children. She portmanteaued her name into Marlene, which she pronounced “Mar-leena Deet-rich”. She expressly identified her name’s pronunciation in a radio interview with Louella Parsons back in 1931. Found a link again: https://lastgoddess.blogspot.com/2011/02/louella-parsons-interviews-marlene.html
I think she was bisexual, but she sure understood men better than most women.
In the 50s and early 60s she was treated horribly when she visited Germany. She was spat on by some.
They considered her a traitor.
You sure have to admire her though. She had guts and was definitely her own woman.
I remember seeing that Netflix program.
You’re right Robert it was Maximilian Schell.
As I recall he did a lot of negotiation with her before she permitted the interview and set the ground rules.
Interview was in her Paris apartment.
I thought it was well worth watching.
And she was probably right insofar as hiding herself.
Best to remember the stars as they were.
I always think of them as we saw them on the screen and for me it’s a shock many times to see them decades later.
Thank you for those “Sunset Boulevard” bits, Robert. It is hands-down my favorite movie. According to Sam Staggs in his book “Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard,” it was Swanson’s idea to have DeMille play himself, and she had sent him a telegram asking him to do it. She signed it “Young Fellow,” which was DeMille’s nickname for her, but by 1949, “it had slipped his mind. When he got the telegram, he was disgruntled by the long-ago nickname which he couldn’t place. Then someone on his staff reminded him and he lit up.”
A blessed Passover and good Sabbath to you and yours.
Faye got $10,000 for 10 weeks work. Of course, that’s $1,000/week. She didn’t get residuals, but how many did in those days. So, let’s see the level of suffering.
According to CPI-U inflation her $10,000 in 1933 was equivalent to $201,189 in 2020 dollars. (Ranges from ~$180k to ~$203k depending on whose calculator you use.)
Hmm. Even if you think CPI-U underestimates inflation, and I do, when was the last time you complained about earning $20,000/week?
Re Life Under Quarantine:
I’m from an era of Scarlet Fever, Malaria, Infantile Paralysis. None of these lasted days, months or years, but decades. We were all concerned, but no government anywhere shut down its own economy; a cycle of mass hysteria has been implanted by an obsession with non-stop, and immediate, communication. The result, self-destruction is now on the table.
Not only correct, but further theatrical context would put Fay Wray a good deal below Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo and others in the pecking order. A nice actress with good legs but never a major, or even minor, movie star, just a leading lady.
I had scarlet fever in 1944. I was quarantined and my mother was allowed to stay with me. My father and sister moved out for several weeks. Polio was a worry every summer. Lots of people avoided movie theaters.
On Fay Wray, when I was in college there was a period when King Kong was on TV every day. At the same time each day, there would be stampede of feet on the stairs of the fraternity house with the cry of “bare tit !” as the brothers would all rush to see that 2 minute segment of the movie. Then everybody would resume their previous activity.
Exactly, but a personal choice not a political mandate.
King Kong was the first movie I saw as a child that made me cry. I think I was about 5 or 6 years old. The film has had a lasting impact on my psyche.