Music To My Ears 4

This one's a bit of a mystery.  Another picture of the same woman, at least I think so, with yet another name.  So, is it Mary Reagan, Ann Parker or Penny?  In any case she loves Bill.  Stamped on the back, "MAX MUNN AUTREY, M. Ph.  Photographic Artist 7009 Sunset Blvd.-Hollywood 28, Calif."  There's also the stamp on the lower left corner of the print.  I was able  to find a bit about Autrey on line.  He was a successful photographer, both at his own studio and as the official photographer for Fox Studios in the 1920's.  I'm about to put some of Autrey's portraits on my Fair Use blog.

Click on Music To My Ears in labels to see more.

Ryan's Daughter

Despite the fact that I live in Los Angeles and work in the movies, albeit in a rather minor position, I don't have a lot of photos from movie sets.  This one is from Ryan's Daughter, directed by David Lean.  Lean was a British director who made some rather nice adaptations of plays by Noel Coward and several books by Charles Dickens who went on to make a series of historical epics that made him into a major figure in the film world.  Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago, before returning to a couple of tasteful literary adaptations.  Ryan's Daughter which was based on Madame Bovary and A Passage to India, based on a book by E.M. Forster.  Although, there was a certain amount of criticism of the last two that Lean couldn't shake the epic feel which overwhelmed his story.  Well, as Edward Abbey once pointed out, it's not critics that make these decisions, it's the democracy of time. 

So, the two actors in this photo.  Leo McKern and Sarah Miles.  Other members of the cast included Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, John Mills, and Christopher Jones.  Jones is pretty much forgotten today, but when his career was just hitting it's stride he was thought of as the heir to James Dean.  He made a movie that's now considered a cult classic.  Wild in the Streets was about a 28 year old rock star elected president of the United States after the voting age is reduced to 16 and the age requirement for the office is eliminated.

New Pages

After the photo lab I worked at went out of business, I ended up working on movie sets as a background actor and stand-in.  When I found this picture I knew exactly what it was.  The man on the right is an assistant director or production assistant and he's delivering new script pages to the actors.   Too bad their faces aren't visible.  Who knows, those two might be really famous.

Clifton Webb and Friends

The man on the right is actor Clifton Webb.  Curiously what's written on the back, "Dave McIntyre Don Larson June 59"  doesn't mention Webb.  Perhaps the writer assumed that  identifying Webb wasn't necessary.  I couldn't find any info on McIntyre and Larson, but for those of you too young and don't watch old movies.....

Webb was born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck in 1889 in the less than cosmopolitan Indianapolis, Indiana.  As a child he studied voice and dance and was a professional ballroom dancer by his late teens.  His early career was mostly in the theater.  He had the occasional film role, including in silent movies, but didn't become a star until 1944 when he played villain Waldo Lydecker in Otto Preminger's Laura.  In 1948 he starred in Sitting Pretty as Lynn Belvedere an eccentric genius who takes a job as a babysitter.  The movie was so successful that Webb ended up making a series of Mr. Belvedere films.  He was in Titanic opposite Barbara Stanwyck, still my favorite film version of the sinking of the ship.  (Sorry James Cameron.)  Some of his more memorable films,  The Razor's Edge,  The Man Who Wasn't There, Three Coins in a Fountain, Cheaper By the Dozen,  and as Victor Parmalee, in Boy on a Dolphin.  I wonder if he chose the name of the character.  He lived with his overbearing mother Maybelle  until she died in 1960.  He died six years latter in 1966. 

Going by the backdrop, I'm thinking this photo was taken in a television studio. Perhaps he was being interviewed.

Dolores Del Rio and Her Hollywood Home

What can I say?  I love Dolores Del Rio.  She was born in Mexico, moved to Hollywood during the silent era and started working in the movies almost immediately.  She made a couple  of really good silents, especially What Price Glory and Ramona, and then, despite the accent, made an easy transition to sound films, making a few classics along the way.  Right of the top of my head, Madame Du Barry, Flying Down to Rio, In Caliente, and Journey Into Fear.  As the Hollywood parts became harder to get, she returned to Mexico and became a big star all over again, and when she was working, Mexican cinema was in a golden era.  As she aged out of lead actress territory, she came back to the United States and finished up her career with TV and smaller movie parts.  She died in 1983, aged 78. 

Next time I get to the Hollywood Walk of Fame with all the cheesy tourist shops I'll have to check if someone is still making postcards of star's homes.  I doubt it, but you never can tell.

Mariette Hartley and Arlene Dayton?

One would think, since I live in Los Angeles and work in the movies (albeit at a very low level), I'd have lots of Hollywood photos.  Not really.  The fact is they don't interest me all that much. I only have these two pictures because they were in one of those occasionally purchased envelopes of images that almost always have stuff I wouldn't have bought by themselves.

So, the woman on the left is Mariette Hartley, an actress that those of us of a certain age would recognize right away.  She did a lot of episodic television, the occasional movie, and most prominently, along with James Garner, was a long time pitch woman for Polaroid cameras. 

Look at the bottom of the two pictures and stage lights can be seen.  Clearly from a sound stage, probably from one of her many television appearances.  Going by the hair styles and clothing, I took a quick look at her IMDB page, searching for a possible match from about the late seventies through the eighties, but couldn't find an actual show.  As far as Arlene Dayton, her name is written on the back of the top print, but no one by that name  has an IMDB listing. 

Born in 1940, Hartley is still active.  She's had a recurring role in the Fox series 9-1-1. 

Camera, Action!

I might be necessary to click on the photos and bring them up in a bigger window to see, but there is a camera in the upper left corner, behind the actors.  And my favorite thing about these pictures; written on the back of the top image, "disregard dark lines on face of print."   Come on.  Once it's mentioned, no one will be able to disregard the fogging.

Lights

Alright, the shiny thing is a reflector.  Obviously, it's used to reflect light, and less obviously, to soften light.  The crew members are getting a bit more casual in dress compared to yesterday's post.

Sound

After the photo lab I worked at went belly up, after going through my unemployment, savings and retirement fund, I started doing background work in the movies.  This piece of equipment is a boom mic, and quite frankly, they haven't changed all that much since this picture was taken.  But who is the guy?  All the techs I've seen on set dress casually.  For some reason, they seem to favor shorts.  Did boom operators once show up to set wearing suits?  Hard to imagine. 

Famous People?

I have to say, this very small snapshot looks like it was posed.  Too, the tall man on the right looks familiar, and  the guy in the trench coat looks a bit like Spencer Tracy.  There is a stamp on the back, most of which is unreadable, but I could make out "KONSUM FOTOLAB" according to Google Translate, cooperative photo lab.  I like silent movies, and I've seen a number of German ones.  Perhaps, Tracy made a trip to Germany, and he met with members of the German film industry. 

My Heart Calls You

Written on the back, "Mein herz ruft nach dir."  A quick trip to Google translate gave me my heart calls you.  It sure looks like a theatrical photo so a quick trip to IMDB gave me Mein Herz Ruft Nach Dir, My Heart Calls You, 1934, starring Jan Kiepura as Mario Delmonte, and Marta Eggerth as Clara.  And what do you know, this happy couple are Jan and Marta themselves.  Really happy since they met on the movie, and married in real life.  They stayed married until Jan's death in 1966.

Anyway, both Jan and Marta were pretty famous in the world of opera, and starred in a number of pre-war German musicals.  Jan Kiepura, a tenor, was born in 1902, in a small town in  Poland, back when Poland was still part of the Russian Empire.  Marta Eggerth, a lyric soprano, was born in 1912, in Budapest, back when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

After their marriage, Jan and Marta called Vienna home, but after the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, they fled, first to Paris, and then the United States.  Back to IMDB, and I found a 1942 credit for Marta in For Me and My Gal, starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, directed by Busby Berkeley.  IBDB, the Broadway theater version of IMDB, listed three war time credits for Jan and Marta together.  They played supporting roles in two separate productions of The Merry Widow, and lead roles in Polonaise.  Marta also had a credit, without Jan, in Higher and Higher.  They also became American citizens and bought a home in Rye, New York.

After the war, they often returned to Europe to perform in operas, operettas, and concerts, though their pre-war film career was lost to them.  As already noted, Jan Kiepura died in 1966.  He was buried in Warsaw, Poland.  Marta lived to 2013, aged 101.  I went to YouTube and found some of their work, including a concert by Marta, aged 82, singing songs by Robert Stolz, composer of light operas and music for cabaret.   At that point, I realized I could spend the whole day researching Austrian operettas and Berlin cabaret.  I have eclectic musical tastes, have actually been to a grand total of two operas and have several  Kurt Weill/Ute Lemper CDs, (In German, I can't understand a word.) so it might have been a day well spent, but I've other things to do, so don't be lazy, do your own computer surfing.

Samurai

Written on the back, "This Poster Is Good Shot."   I agree.

A Night At the Movies

Stamped on the back, "MISSION PHOTO SERVICE, 278 Franklin Street, Phone 3571, Monterey, California."  And it's dated, "9/15/41."

The Monterey of today is a town of millionaires, and probably a few billionaires as well.  It's tourists visiting the aquarium and shopping and high end boutiques.  In 1941 Monterey was a working class fishing town, the Monterey of Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

It's hard to know what this gathering was about.  There's a screen and a 16mm movie projector in the background, so they must have been there to watch a film.  The suit wearers have a banker vibe, while the open collar types could be captains in the fishing fleets.  But why were they all gathered to watch a movie?  I wish I knew.

Hollywood At War

These two photos are each stamped, "MAY 13, 1943."

Most people, when they think of Hollywood and war,  think of war movies.  The war actually made and destroyed the careers of many actors.  George Reeve of Superman fame was an up and coming actor who spent several years in the marines, returned to Hollywood only to find his career stalled.  John Wayne was a minor star who had made a few good movies, most notably Stagecoach.  Too old for the draft, bad knees from college football injuries, rejected by the O.S.S., he became a major star almost by default.  And then there was Dwight Frye, Renfield in Dracula, suffering from a heart condition, unable to serve, he ended up working two jobs.  Actor by day, draftsman at a defense plant by night.  He ended up dying of a heart attack from over work.

Star Wars In the Teens

I'm old enough to have seen the original Star Wars when it first came out.   For the record, I thought it a fun, but somewhat inconsequential movie.  I also thought Princess Leia's hairdo the stupidest thing I'd ever seen on an actress.  Anyway, after the photo lab I worked in went out of business, I turned to background work in the movies.  It was either that, or live in my car.   Funny thing is, for years I would joke that I was the only person in Los Angeles that didn't want to be in the movies, and now look at me.  Even though I barely survive, I love what I do.  And, as a member of SAG-AFTRA, I get to see free movies during award season.  So, go see the new Star Wars movie if you must, but please also see The Revenant, I Smile Back, The Big Short, Straight Outta Compton, Carol, Spotlight, as well as non nominees Mad Max; Fury Road and The Martian.  Please, it's your duty to stop The Force!

More Hollywood Costume Postcards

A month or so ago, I put up a couple of photographic bits of ephemera form the ongoing Hollywood Costume show at LACMA, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Don't count on many more of these in the future.  I don't get down to the museum every week, and the show will only last so long, but when I do get there, if there are any new cards, I'll pick them up and post them for the movie fans who drop by this blog.  Anyway, Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained and James Dean in East of Eden.

Click LACMA to see the others.

Hooray For Hollywood (And Berlin)

Take a look to the right of this post and you'll see an advertisement.  I'm not happy about that.  I'd prefer to live in a world where we weren't all trying to sell something.  I have no interest in commerce.  I don't want to be an entrepreneur.  My heart doesn't go pitter-pat when the people whisper the name Steve Jobs in hushed, reverential tones.  But, the fact is, I'm about to turn 60, and my income is half what it was when I was forty, and an extra $100 in my pocket from ad sells,  every twelve to fourteen months, helps a lot.

Anyway, I went down to LACMA, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this afternoon, visited the galleries (Free to L.A. County residents after 3 o'clock) and hung around and saw a couple of movies.  These were the hand outs, they're photographs, and if I am going to have ads, they might as well be for something I like.

The top one is a postcard advertising an exhibit of movie costumes, sponsored by the The Motion Picture Academy.  Yes, that Academy, the one with the awards.  A couple of decades ago, the museum bought an old department store, next to their property, for what was supposed to be an expansion.  Somehow that never happened, and the building is now going to be used for a movie museum managed by the Academy.  Since that deal was announced, they've been curating shows at LACMA.  In addition to the costumes show, they've also got one dedicated to silent and early sound era German cinema.  That's were the second image comes in.  It's the program for the movies I actually saw, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Doll, both directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

For the record, my favorite Lubitsch film, Ninotchka, with Greta Garbo.  And my favorite Hitchcock, Notorious with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.

And if anyone out there in blog world is going to be in L.A. this Tuesday, the museum is showing Gone With The Wind, on film, for free.  It's actually kind of racist, but hey, it's beloved.

Cine Kodak Eight Model 20

I love photographs of people holding cameras, especially when it's a camera in my collection.  The Cine Kodak Eight Model 20 (Mine still works.) is one of the most important mass market movie cameras ever made.  Introduced in 1932, as the great depression took it's toll on Kodak's bottom line, the Model 20 was the first double 8 camera ever made.  (Also know as regular 8 or straight 8.)  Some unknown Kodak engineer came up with a very simple idea.  Take a roll of 16mm movie film, the standard for home movies, double the number of perforations, expose only one half the width of film per pass through the camera, flip the reel over, run it through the camera a second time, exposing the other half of the film.  Four frames where there had been one.  A 25 foot reel of double 8 would have the same run time as a 100 foot reel of 16mm.  After processing, the film had to be slit in half, and the two lengths spliced together, but the greater processing costs were small compared to the savings in film stock.  At a time when the vast majority of Kodak's customers were short of money, the Cine Model 20 kept Kodak in the home movie business.

So, what difference does it make if a double 8 camera still works when the film is no longer made?  Actually, in a way, it still is.  While no surviving film company still manufactures the film, some do make 16mm.  There are companies that still have working 8mm perforating machines.  They buy 16mm, run it through the perforating machines, and new double 8 is made.  In the United States, Dwayne's Photography in Parsons, Kansas.  If interested, go to their website, and place an order.  They'll process it too.  All part of the service.  It's not cheap, but it does keep those of us who love film happy.  And while I haven't bothered to do the research, I'd be surprised if there aren't small operations like Dwayne's still operating in Europe, Asia or South America.

Just looking at this picture, I'm betting that it was taken sometime in the early to mid fifties.  The cars are older than that, but our budding John Ford is pretty young, and he and his friends were probably driving older cars.  Too, take a look at the bottom of the print.  Short shorts, plus the hair cut, and the expanding metal watchband...well, I could be wrong, but taken together, I'm not getting a feel for an earlier time period.

And finally...The serial number on my camera is AK 6181.  That has to be pretty early in the manufacturing run.  Perhaps, 1932.

Eileen Heckenbach Loved the Accordion 1

Anthony Galla-Rini was an American accordionist born in 1904.  At the age of four, he was part of his father's Vaudeville act.  In time, Galla-Rini would master twelve instruments including the accordion.  In 1924, he quit his father's act in a salary dispute and formed a new act with his sisters.  In 1932, he left the act and opened an accordion studio in San Francisco.  In addition to teaching, he also began composing and arranging for the accordion.  Within a few years, Galla-Rini and his wife and son moved to New York City to be closer to the music publishers located in the city.  In 1938, he founded The AAA, The American Accordionist's Association.  In 1941, he composed the Accordion Concerto in G Minor (No. 1) which premiered with The Oklahoma City University Symphony Orchestra.  In 1942, he returned to California, formed a rumba band which headlined the Trocadero in Los Angeles.  He also began a long career composing music and performing for the movies.  In 1976, he returned to classical music with the Accordion Concerto in G Minor (No. 2).  In 1983 he composed the Sonata in D Minor For Accordion.  Anthony Galla-Rini died in 2006, aged 102.

The Apeda Studio was in business in New York City from 1906 to 1990.  It was founded by Alexander W. Dreyfoos, the photographer, and Henry Obstfield, the businessman.  With it's industrial developers and mechanized postcard printers, the Apeda Studio was an immediate success.  Like many studios servicing the theatrical community, Apeda, and it's staff of photographers sold prints to the general public of their sitters.  They also bought up the negatives of their competitors as well as making copies of photographs distributed by other photo studios, going so far as removing other studio logos and replacing them with the Apeda mark.  Dreyfoos and Obstfield would eventually be sued for violating the copyright of rival The White Studios.  Apeda won by arguing that copyright was the property of the sitter, and not the photographer.

May You Live In Interesting Times, Lilian Harvey

I'm sure most people have heard the old Chinese curse about living in interesting times.  Well, I'm not sure such a curse ever existed or if it's the invention of some B-movie writer, or if it's all that bad to live in such eras.  In any case, Lilian Harvey lived in interesting times.

Lilian Harvey was born Helene Lilian Muriel Pape in 1906, in London.  Her mother was English, her father was a German businessman.  Not a good combination for the twentieth century. At the beginning of World War 1, Lilian and her parents were living in Magdeburg, Germany.  Unable, or perhaps unwilling to leave, Lilian's parents stayed in Germany, but fearing for their daughter's safety, they sent young Lilian to live with relatives in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French, along with the German and English she already knew.

After the war, she returned to Germany to be with her parents.  After graduating form the German version of high school, she began studying voice and dance at the Berlin State Opera, while also pursuing theatrical work.  She also changed her name to Lilian Harvey.  She danced in revues, sang on stage, acted in plays, and also began working in silent movies.

One of the things about silent movies was that they were an international art form.  A silent movie made in Germany, with translated inter-titles, could play anywhere in the world.  When sound came along, suddenly, there were national cinemas.  Movies made in the large market of the United States, with an audience in other English language markets, continued apace, but  a country like Germany, with a much smaller population, had to adapt.  What the German, as well as other European film industries did, was to film the same movie, in multiple languages, all at the same time.  A situation made for Lilian Harvey.  Thanks to her training, she could sing and dance, her stage experience had given her a  good voice for talkies, and she could speak fluent, unaccented, German, English, and French.  And while these were all advantages, she was also a charming performer, with a gift for light comedy, as well as enough range to handle a dramatic role.  Far more important for a movie actor.

So, with the advent of sound movies, Lilian Harvey became an international star.  Not all of the German actors could work in multiple languages, so Lilian often found herself filming a scene with a German costar, then doing the same scene again with an English, or French actor.  Laurence Olivier's first film role was opposite Lilian in an English version of Hokuspokus.  In the mid thirties, Lilian Harvey accepted an invitation to work at Fox Studios in Hollywood.  She made a few films, none as popular as her European films, so she walked away from George White's Scandals.  The film was a major hit, and her replacement, Alice Faye became a big star.

While Harvey was still popular with German audiences, she had fallen out of favor with the German, Nazi government.  Despite the Nuremberg Laws that made it impossible for Jews to work in film, she continued her friendship with many of her Jewish colleagues.  In 1937, she bailed out her friend, choreographer Jens Keith, who had been arrested for violating Paragraph 175, a Nazi era law criminalizing homosexuality.  While out on bail, Keith fled to Paris.  Lilian Harvey was arrested by the Gestapo, but  released several days latter.  In 1939, Lilian Harvey herself fled Germany, moving to France.  Eventually she was stripped of her German citizenship for entertaining French troops.  Her large real estate holdings and bank accounts were also seized.

In 1942, Lilian Harvey, once again, moved to the United States.  This time there would be no film work.  (Her last films were shot, in France, in 1940.)  She did work on stage, and was also a nurse in Los Angeles.  After the war, she moved to France, where she worked as a singer.  It wasn't until 1949 that she returned to Germany to give a series of concerts.  Her career petered out after that.  Eventually she retired to Antibes on the French Riviera, where she supported herself running a souvenir shop.  She died in 1968, at the age of 62.

The photo is a German tobacco card, from the 1930s.