BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: FILM #24

NOTES ON THE IT GIRL CLARA BOW

1928: She became the highest paid movie star, receiving $35,000 per week.
•	Prince refers to her in his song "Condition of the Heart". The line goes, "There was a woman from the ghetto who made funny faces just like Clara Bow".

from iMDb Trivia
**

CLARK GABLE LOOKS LIKE AN APE

"His ears are too big and he looks like an ape.” So said Twentieth Century-Fox founder Darryl F. Zanuck of the young actor who would become “the King of Hollywood” and appear in more than 60 films. Zanuck was initially no fan, but he eventually changed his mind — and that wasn’t the only time William Clark Gable confounded his critics. Screen idol Gary Cooper turned down a role that Gable accepted, stating, “[That film] is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I’m glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling flat on his nose, not me.” That film, by the way, was Gone With the Wind, and Gable’s portrayal of Rhett Butler is still legendary."

Interesting Facts website

**
THE LAST LINE OF GONE WITH THE WIND

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a hoot!" That was one of the proposed alternate choices for Butler's memorable final line, as Selznick was unsure whether "damn" would make it past the censors of the Motion Picture Production Code (more popularly known as the Hays Code). Although it's been reported that the producer was fined $5,000 for electing to go ahead with the line as is, an amendment to Production Code rules enacted before the film's release actually permitted the use of mild swearing in "proper historical context" or in "a quotation from a literary work." Thus, "I don't give a damn" was given the green light, sparing the audience from decidedly less juicy put-downs such as "the whole thing is a stench in my nostrils" or "it makes my gorge rise."
HISTORY FACTS WEBSITE (MARCH 28, 2024)
*
ON DONALD O'CONNOR'S FAMILY

From a vaudeville family act, his father John Edward "Chuck" O'Connor was an acrobat with Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Baily Circus as a "leaper". His mother was a circus bareback rider and dancer named Effie. One of seven children, three died in infancy, but the rest were incorporated into show business. His mother kept the family going with extended family members despite many deaths (including her husband) until 1941.

iMDb Trivia

DAVID DENBY DESCRIBES JOAN CRAWFORD

 "Her ferocious will to succeed seems a grim version of the life force itself. Few men go weak in the knees dreaming about her, as they might with Lana Turner or Rita Hayworth; nor is she the kind of woman men could imagine bantering with blissfully as a lover, as they might with Katharine Hepburn or Barbara Stanwyck. She’s the date who raises your blood pressure, not your libido. She was always a bigger hit with women than with men, but, at this point, young women eager to emulate her drive and success may shudder. The ravenous smile, the scything broad shoulders, the burdensome distress, the important walk and complicated hair—she’s too insistent, too laborious and heavily armed, and also too vulnerable."

David Denby. "The Glamorous, Messy Life of Joan Crawford" . New Yorker Classics,Sun, Jul 7, 2024
**

**
ABOUT THE FILM "THE BIG KNIFE" starring Jack Palance

"Perhaps only movie in film history to carry screen credit for company that supplied "upholstered furniture."

iMDb trivIa
**

ON CENSORING Ann Vickers (1933)


(JOHN) Cromwell filmed a then-controversial adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel Ann Vickers (1933). Irene Dunne played the eponymous character, a social reformer who exposes the degrading conditions in American prisons and has an affair with a jurist Walter Huston. Jane Murfin's screenplay reflected the characterizations in the Lewis novel, where Vickers is a "birth control advocate" who engages in an extramarital affair. The script drew the ire of the Production Code Administration and the Catholic Church. The Studio Relations Committee (SRC) chairman James Wingate called the script "vulgarly offensive". The SRC, overseeing the MPPDA, demanded an overhaul of the Murfin's script. RKO managers protested, and a compromise was reached when Dunne's character was relieved of adultery charges by a change in her marital status. Although awarded approval, the film helped spur the formation of the Production Code Administration, which later rigorously censored films for almost 25 years, largely under Catholic moral crusader Joseph Ignatius Breen.
     WIKIPEDIA--JOHN CROMWELL

BRIEF FILM QUERY

Miz cast –
Miscast?
**
LON CHANEY
His knowledge of make-up was so vast that he wrote the entry on the subject for an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica."
iMDb trivia
**

HOW I RULE MY KINGDOM
WITH AN IRON HAND

Like some llth century Chinese Emperor
Waiting for the Pagoda tree
To bend golden leaves to his will,
I find it difficult to rule my kingdom.
To keep the peasants from revolting,
I present them pleasing poems
Like this one, free of rhymes.
With noses in the air, 
With hands in their pockets,
They walk away, whistling.
Today, for example, all my loyal subjects
Have gone to the movies.


REX REASON

Reason, Rex --
Never played Oedipus Rex
But he did act in Taza, Son of Cochise.
I ask you: Was that a wise choice?

Louis Phillips