BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM

ON A WOMAN CROSSING HER LEGS

"When you make a woman cross her legs in the films, 
maybe you don't need to see how high she can cross 
them, but how low she can cross them and still be 
interesting."

Will H. Hayes, Censorship "Czar of the Movies"
See Current Biography 1943
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HOLLYWOOD SIMILE

On February 14, 1967, Sheila Graham's column in The
New York Post  reported that Candice Bergen said tha
"Hollywood is like Picasso's bathroom." That statement
raises a number of questions: "What were Picasso's bathrooms really like? " (I am assuming that Picasso was wealthy enough to own homes that had more than one
bathroom). "Did Candice Bergen really know what Picasso's bathroom look like? Or was she guessing?"
"Is the description of Hollywood an expression of criticism or an expression of disdain?"

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TINSEL TOWN
"Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and 
you will find the real tinsel underneath."
                              Oscar Levant
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RANDOLPH SCOTT & THE VIRGINIAN (1929)

"Future western movie icon Randolph Scott, from Virginia, was hired as a dialect coach to teach Gary Cooper a Virginia accent, and also has a small non-speaking part in the film."

iDMb Trivia

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WHO WAS THE FIRST ACTOR TO RECEIVE AN ACADEMY AWARD 
FOR PLAYNG A GANGSTER?
'
Van Heflin

"Back at MGM, his third assignment at the studio, 
Johnny Eager (1941), had proved an excellent showcase 
for his acting skills. He played Jeff Hartnett, 
right-hand man of the titular crime figure (Robert Taylor),
 a complex, sardonic character, at once loyal soldier 
yet abjectly self-loathing. For his role as the heavy-drinking, Shakespeare-quoting mobster with a conscience, Van got the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor in 1942" 

iDMb--Johnny Eager

**

'
At the Atlanta premiere of 'Gone With the Wind': The Explosive Lost Scenes,
   David Vincent Kimel, The Ankler

"At the Atlanta premiere of Gone With the Wind on December 15, 1939, the 10-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. was dressed as a slave. It was the second night of an official three-day holiday proclaimed by the mayor of Atlanta and the governor of Georgia. King’s choir was serenading a white audience, directed to croon spirituals to evoke an ambiance of moonlight and magnolias for the benefit of the movie’s famous producer, David O. Selznick."

from The Daily Kos  Morning Round Up (March 2, 2023)

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TALKING ABOUT GONE WITH THE WIND

"...'Hollywood :  An Oral History'' makes clear that the shimmering masterpieces and the schlock disasters often rose from the same system and the same people one after another. This happened most memorably in the case of the 1939 films 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Gone With the Wind.' Both were made by more or less the same people, the crowd at M-G-M --even though the musical gets richer and stranger with subsequent viewings, while the Southern saga gets more ridiculous (and in its way more
repellent) with every passing year."

Adam Gopnik. "Talking Movies" in The New Yorker
(December 5, 2022)

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FRANK JACOBS'HOLLYWOOD JABBERWOCKY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlOtPem88b4


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THE ENDING TO ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S I CONFESS

"When Monty accepted the role in I Confess, the priest
was to be hanged at the end, then proven innocence.
But Hollywood censors thought it would offend Roman Catholics; a silly happy ending was tacked on while they were shooting the picture, making Hitchcock upset. He thought that "Montgomery Cliff always looked as if the angel of death was always walking alongside of him,"and it would have been very powerful cinematically to watch him stride to the gallows for a crime he didn't commit."

Patricia Bosworth . Montgomery Clift (New York: Bantam Books, 1979).
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CENSORSHIP OF THE 1941 FILM --THE MALTESE FALCON

The autobiography of film producer Hal Wallis contains references, to The Maltese Falcon that fans of the movie 
should take note of. First, Mr. Wallis notes that the film censors at first objected to showing any drinking in the movie (this, after all, was in 194l, when film-goers were easily shocked. What about barroom scenes in westerns?)
Mr. Wallis was finally allowed to show some drinking, but, as he points out, "We were not allowed to have the line spoken by Sam to his secretary, 'You'll come tonight?'.We could not show Joel Cairo as a homosexual. When he leaves the office, Sam couldn't say 'Just smell those gardenias.'
   "Instead Sam had to sniff the air and remark, 'Hmm! Gardenias!' Sam couldn't slap Bridget or indicate that he had slept with her. The Fat Man had to say, 'By gad, sir!' not 'By God, sir!'.

--Hal Wallis and Charles Higham. Starmaker: the Autobiography of  Hal Wallis (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1980) 

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CONFUSION

Jane Powell--
I once confused her with William Powell.
She was so insulted, she hit me below the belt.
I never found out how William felt.
**
GENE AUTRY

Autry, Gene
Westerns wholesome & clean
There was no kissing or fondling, of course.
Unless he was alone with Champion, his horse.

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ALFRED HITCHCOCK

A movie director named Hitchcock
Made movies which frighten, which shock.
Viewers grow tense
Wrapped in suspense
Because plot twists are unpredictable.

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ON BEING A MOVIE STAR


Gary Cooper
Was not super
Pleased, & he was not forgiving,
When I asked what he did for a living.


LJP