Barbara Kent: “I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but being an actress was not it.”

—The Sound of Silence, by Michael Ankerich.

Barbara Kent, b. Barbara Cloutman, who passed away a few weeks ago, was one of the last surviving movie stars—Mickey Rooney, ailing and frail, might be the last—who worked in the golden era of silent movies and then made the transition to sound.

She was a reluctant actress, a star whose light shined quite briefly, and then with exquisite sanity, she stepped out of the limelight and into the embrace of private life and marriage.

In 1925 Kent won the Miss Hollywood beauty pageant. Apparently, her parents pushed her to enter the contest. Thus, from the very beginning, Barbara was playing a role she neither sought nor desired. Though she had no acting experience, Universal offered the tiny—she was under five feet tall—baby-faced, 17 year-old beauty queen a contract.

In 1926, Kent was cast in ”Flesh and the Devil” (1926) as a young woman in love with the dashing John Gilbert who has eyes only for the heartless vamp Greta Garbo. Garbo gets all the loving close-ups, but I’ve always felt that Kent was far more attractive and desirable than the remote and narcissistic Garbo.

Kent starred opposite Oliver Hardy in “No Man’s Law” (1927). In this film, she’s seen swimming in the nude, but in fact she was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking. This was something of a minor scandal, but a little scandal has never hurt the career of a Hollywood ingenue.

My very favorite Kent film is “Lonesome” (1928), a near-masterpiece set in Coney Island, directed by Paul Fejos. Kent plays Mary, a switchboard operator who meets Jim (Glenn Tryon), a factory worker, in Coney Island. They spend the day together, fall in love, and then get separated in the bustling crowd. It’s a simple urban tale, a slice of poetry that’s distinguished by the heart-breaking sincerity of the performances and the director’s keen eye for location and expressive camera movement. Sadly, Universal added three stiff talking scenes to the film in order to show off the new technology. This bone-head move—the studios were in a panic about talkies—nearly ruins the magic of a wonderful if obscure movie.

Barbara Kent and Harold Lloyd in “Welcome Danger” 1929, her first movie of the sound era.

After taking voice lessons, Kent made the switch to talkies. She starred opposite the great Harold Lloyd—he first laid eyes on her at Hearst’s San Simeon castle—in his first sound film, “Welcome Danger” (1929). Kent plays Lloyd’s love interest, though she’s dressed as a man when they first meet.

In “Feet First,” (1930) Lloyd plays a shoe salesman who believes that Kent is the boss’s daughter and goes to lunatic lengths to impress her. Lloyd was a great spotter of talent. That he used Barbara in two pictures back to back is evidence of Kent’s promise as a star.

In both films Kent is charming, feisty and adorably mischievous. She’s the all-American girl every American boy aspires to marry.

Kent married MGM executive-turned-agent Harry Edington in 1932 and, except for a few more film roles, she retired to private life. The two remained together until Edington’s death in 1949. Kent married Jack Monroe, an engineer, in 1954. Monroe died in 1998. Towards the end of her life, Kent lived in Palm Desert, Calif.

Kent granted few interviews and frequently denied that she was ever a movie star. Make no mistake about it, Kent is a Hollywood success story. She survived the grinding wheels of stardom. Later in life Kent observed:

“It saddened me when I watched the likes of Bette Davis and Anita Page crawling across the screen looking like a cross between Baby Jane Hudson and a tired, chipped old porcelain dolly. I am a firm believer in the Mary Pickford school, where one should quit whilst still good-looking and on top.”

An active woman, Kent piloted light aircraft until her 85th birthday and played golf well into her mid-90s.

It is odd, but I suddenly realize how deeply attached I am to the stars of the silent screen. Their images have nourished me, their films taught and continue to teach me my craft as a screenwriter. I have internalized their dramatic emotional lives, and in some cases I have come to understand—however imperfectly—their real lives which were, quite frequently, even more tumultuous than their fictional lives.

Now, I am witness to the final heart beats of that remarkable generation. Movies are ribbons of dreams–and this dream, the age of silent movies, when the visual language of movies was invented and perfected–is coming to an end.

RIP, Barbara Kent.

The cover that launched BB.

In a trance, Vadim gazed at the cover of Elle magazine. The model looked schoolgirlish and chaste but Vadim detected something more; he saw a smoldering girl-woman whose face and body was created for the movies.

BB, age 18, in her demure wedding gown. Years later, Bardot auctioned her dress and the proceeds went to her animal rights foundation.

At the time, Vadim was working as an assistant to the respected director Marc Allégret. Vadim showed Allégret the photo and urged his boss to set up a screen test for the unknown model. Allégret, known as a spotter of new talent—he discovered Jean-Paul Belmando—gave his young protege the go-ahead.

Vadim tracked down Bardot. At first, her parents rejected Vadim’s proposal. Their daughter was studying ballet, a serious art. Movies were, well, not quite respectable. Vadim persisted and finally Bardot’s parents submitted to their daughter’s tearful fits and Vadim’s respectful if relentless offensive.

The screen test was a disaster. Under the hot lights Bardot’s chronic eczema flared. She was stiff, awkward, lacking in all charisma. But Vadim was not dissuaded. He believed in Brigitte, even if she had no idea what he saw in her. At the same time, Brigitte’s parents sensed, quite correctly, that Vadim was interested in more than their daughter’s career. They considered Vadim a disreputable bohemian and forbade Brigitte from seeing Vadim until she was of age, eighteen years old.

Brigitte, a typical, hormone-driven teenager, had a full-scale melt down.  There were tears and hysterical fits. Her father threatened to send her to boarding school in—horror of horrors—England.

In a desperate move, Brigitte’s parents arranged a date for their rebellious daughter with a local young man from a good Catholic family. Surely, Brigitte would give up bad boy Vadim for a more proper match.

Curfew, her father sternly cautioned, was midnight. On the date, Brigitte was bored out of her mind. No wonder, for the past few months Brigitte was cutting school and meeting with Vadim in his little apartment where they made love and dreamed of a future together.

Brigitte came home from her date ten minutes past midnight.

Papa Bardot was livid. He took Brigitte over his knee, hiked up her skirt and spanked her bottom. And this was the very first night that his daughter was wearing adult stockings and garter belt. Adding to the humiliation was that her date—he must have been shocked out of his little mind—was standing right there to witness the punishment.

Needless to say, Brigitte continued meeting with Vadim in secret. And three years later, when she turned 18, Brigitte and Vadim were married. Mrs. Vadim was on her way to becoming BB, the modern eras most potent movie sex symbol.

Kirk Douglas as a high school senior.

In the beginning of his legendary career, Kirk Douglas (1916 – ) b. Issur Danielovitch, was almost typecast as a well-meaning but ineffectual husband as in, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946, and A Letter to Three Wives, 1949.  But his career exploded into mega-stardom when he played bitter, cynical heroes motivated by rage: Champion, 1949, Ace in the Hole, 1951, The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952, Paths of Glory, 1957, Spartacus, 1960, and his favorite film Lonely Are the Brave, 1962,

Douglas was never a conventional leading man. Though handsome as a fairy tale prince he wielded his masculine beauty like a weapon. There was none of the gruff charm that made Gable the King of Hollywood, nor was Douglas an elegant, urbane gentleman like William Powell.

He excelled at playing, in his own words, “sons of bitches.”

Douglas always felt like an outsider. And his fine memoir, The Ragman’s Son, touchingly reveals a chronically damaged self-image. The only son—he had six sisters—of illiterate Jewish Russian immigrants, Douglas was terrified of Herschel, his distant, hard-drinking father. But, like so many Hollywood stars, Douglas was deeply attached to his gentle, long-suffering mother Bryna. In fact, Douglas named his film company Bryna Productions.

Young Kirk Douglas with his beloved mother Bryna.

Raised in Amsterdam, New York, twenty-eight miles northwest of Albany, Douglas describes the city as “WASP town.” For traditional Jews from the Ukraine this new world was blessedly free, however polite anti-Semitism was widespread. And the rage that is at the heart of actor Kirk Douglas has its genesis in his difficult childhood.

In his senior year of high school, young Issur was looking forward to attending the school prom:

Kirk Douglas in “Ace in the Hole,” 1951. In this Billy Wilder classic Douglas plays reporter Chuck Tatum, perhaps the most cynical, self-centered son of a bitch in film history.

… I had never been to a school dance in the evening because I didn’t have the clothes or the money. I was a pretty good dancer, especially with a step called the glide and dip. But senior year, I decided to save up and go to the Senior Prom. It was a big event to me, my first prom.

There was a girl, Ann Brown. She was pretty and always wore nice clean dresses. She lived on Market Hill, the rich part of town. I danced with her sometimes during lunch hour. I felt she liked me. I invited her to go with me. She said yes! I was ecstatic, counted my pennies to make sure I had enough for the ticket and a nice corsage. I was going to press my suit carefully.

The next day I came to school very happy. I saw her, my date for the prom, and waved. She didn’t wave back. That’s strange, I thought. I guess she didn’t see me. During lunch hour when people were dancing, I couldn’t quite seem to get her attention. I didn’t understand. I ran up to her and she turned away. Finally, I trapped her in the corridor.

“What’s wrong?”

She started to stutter, then finally said, “I can’t go to the prom with you.”

My heart sank. I was bewildered. She had seemed so happy about it the day before. “Why?”

She wouldn’t answer. I insisted.“Why? Have I done something?”

“No.” Long pause. “My father won’t let me.”

I said, “I’m sure the prom won’t be very late. I’ll get you home whenever he’d like.”

“No, no,” she said. “It’s not that.”

“Well what is it?”

“Because you’re a Jew and your father’s a ragman!” She ran away.

I just stood there with my mouth open. Certainly it was not new to me to be persecuted for being a Jew. But somehow I didn’t associate it with this nice, freshly scrubbed American girl with her well-pressed dresses. I couldn’t believe it. I knew that she came from a wealthy family and her father was a college graduate. I had always thought that people who hated Jews were like my immigrant neighbors who had come from a touch background with no education.

The night of the prom arrived. I had already told many people that I was going, and I was expected to go, because I was on the dance committee. But I didn’t go.

To deal with the pain and rejection young Issur, already fascinated by the make-believe world of theater, escaped reality by retreating into a protective shell, into comforting dreams and pleasant fantasies. Thus was born the actor Kirk Douglas.

Charlton Heston as Judah Ben Hur, the Jewish hero—notice the Star of David necklace—of Ben Hur, 1959.

The Los Angeles Times is, like the NY Times, a reliably anti-Israel newspaper whose liberal/progressive/leftist slant often veers into  support for the Jew-hatred that is the foundation of Palestinian terror.

Even their entertainment articles frequently marinate in a radical ideology that extends to an ignorant and vile denial of Jewish, not to mention literary history.

In this brief announcement of an anniversary release of a Ben Hur DVD, the Charlton Heston character, Judah Ben Hur, is referred to as a “Palestinian nobleman.”

In the book and in all the movies Judah Ben Hur is a Jewish merchant.

This charade of so-called Palestinian history is a replacement ideology, Jewish history erased by faux Palestinians, a post-modern construct with zero historical basis.

I might add that this is also a fabrication of movie history.

This is a classic example of the big lie that was used by the Nazis to persecute and ultimately commit genocide against the Jews. This strategy is being used by the Muslim world, Arab, Turkish and Persian, to demonize the Jewish people and create an environment where the murder of Jews is not only acceptable but necessary.

Remember, The Los Angeles Times withheld the video of footage showing Barack Obama celebrating with PLO terrorist spokesman Rashid Khalidi. Apparently the Jew-hatred rampant that evening would have destroyed Obama’s presidential aspirations.

The Los Angeles Times is an enthusiastic partner in jihad.

I’d like to thank my friend Yisroel Medad of My Right Word for bringing this stealth piece of Jew-hatred to my attention.

William Wyler‘s 1959 epic, “Ben-Hur,” which dominated the Academy Awards in winning 11 Oscars, including best film, director, actor (Charlton Heston) and supporting actor (Hugh Griffith), is getting the superstar treatment in Warner’s 50th-anniversary ultimate collection edition arriving Tuesday in both regular DVD and Blu-ray.

Based on the novel by Lew Wallace, the period drama revolves around Judah Ben-Hur (Heston), a Palestinian nobleman [bold font by Big Hollywood] who is enslaved by the Romans, engages in one of the most thrilling chariot races ever captured on screen, and even encounters Jesus Christ.

The film was restored frame by frame from the original 65-millimeter camera negative and digitally remastered. Among the extras on the three-disc set are the new feature-length documentary “Charlton Heston & Ben Hur: A Personal Journey,” written and directed by the actor’s son, Fraser C. Heston; highlights from the 1960 Oscar telecast and the 1925 silent version starring Ramon Novarro.

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 tests for the star-making 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 domineering mother Lilian, a failed actress. As always, Joan and Olivia were engaged in a low-intensity conflict, which continues tot his very day. And 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 woman 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:

The whole experience had been no more than a quick surgical violation conducted with considerable modesty and no conversation. It reminded me of the time when I had to stand up in class as a child and be vaccinated. This just wasn’t as neat… and hurt more. Yet I was smugly pleased that I could now consider myself an adult.

Fontaine’s clinical detachment is best understood in context. She just wrapped production on Gunga Din. Her role was small, but her dewy innocence left an indelible impression on producers and directors. Fontaine confesses that during production she girlishly day-dreamed about her director, George Stevens, another older man.

Enter Brian Aherne, a respected British stage actor making a name for himself in Hollywood. He was charming, handsome and of course older.

Quick as a jump-cut, Fontaine and Aherne were engaged. But the night before the wedding, Aherne’s friend, director Jean Negulesco, called Joan and told her that Brian had cold feet and wanted to call off the wedding. Unwilling to be publicly humiliated Fontaine told Negulesco that she would be at the church at the appointed time. Brian could take it from there. If he wanted to divorce her the next day, he could.

Joan Fontaine and Brian Aherne.

Aherene did show up and the unhappy couple pronounced their wedding vows.

In addition to the emotional dysfunction Fontaine recently had a wisdom tooth extracted. Her jaw was swollen and aching. Aherne’s sinuses were acting up.

Right after the wedding reception, the newlyweds drove in Aherne’s light blue Packard convertible to San Francisco’s swanky Fairmont Hotel, without ever discussing Negulesco’s midnight phone call.

In her fine memoir, No Bed of Roses, Fontaine describes the honeymoon:

After ordering champagne and dinner, we both changed our clothes, I into a white lace-trimmed negligee, Brian into a navy-blue-and-red patterned dressing gown. He hoped I’d excuse the worn elbows; he’d ordered a new robe from his tailor in London, but it  would take months to deliver. After a knock at the door, our dinner was served in our suite by a bevy of unctuous waiters. The door finally closed on the embarrassed newlyweds, the thirty-seven-year-old groom, the twenty-one-year-old bride.

During dinner, perhaps to conceal his apprehension, Brian recounted his previous romance with Marlene Dietrich, his affection for her daughter Maria. He got up from the table to illustrate ballet steps he taught the child, having learned then while going to the Italia Conti Drama School in London. He asked me if I would object if he took Maria out one night a week. Pulling myself together, I replied, “No, not if I can go out with Conrad Nagel on those nights.” He never mentioned it again, though Marlene called him several times during our marriage to ask his advice about her daughter.

With Brian pirouetting about the room, his dressing gown flapping, its tassels waving in the air, I grew increasingly numb. The foghorns in the bay hooted their melancholy warning, the plaintive sounds I remembered from my childhood.

Finally, closing the bedroom door behind us, Brian said he wished he’d remembered to pack a hot-water bottle for his sinuses. I could have used an ice bag on my aching cheek. The lights were turned out. Somewhere, from the cornice of the hotel room, I felt, Mother was watching.

During the night, I rose quietly, slipped on my negligee, and went into the adjoining room. I huddled on a marble window ledge and watched the fog whirl past our Nob Hill aerie. Brian found me asleep there in the early morning. Mrs. Aherne had a wedding night not to remember.

The honeymoon was definitely over.

Fontaine went on to win the first of her three Best Actress Academy Awards for Rebecca. Aherne’s career went cold as their marriage. They finally divorced in 1945.

Sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland.

Director Erich von Stroheim, right, was fired by Hollywood for his profligate spending.

Hollywood, an overwhelming leftist enclave, has a deep, dark secret.

This secret has nothing to do with substance abuse or adultery.

Hollywood’s best kept secret is that it is deeply Conservative—when it does the business of, well, Hollywood.

Step into any pre-production meeting and this is what you’ll hear:

Executive Producer: “Who do we get to direct?”

Producer: “Here’s my list.”

Exec Producer scans list, crosses off a few names: “Not enough experience,” he says.

Exec Producer and Producer consider: director of photography, production design, costume design, casting director; the dozen top choices are discussed in excruciating detail. Credits are pored over again and again. Are they right for the job? Do they connect with the material? But the main question is always: What have they done before?

It comes down to four essentials.

1. Experience.

2. Talent.

3. Temperament.

4. Cost.

No one will hire a first-timer to fill an important position. It does not happen. Schlep jobs go to Harvard graduates who are dying to get into the biz.

Hollywood is brutal, the hardest industry in which to get a break, and once you’re in you have to fight tooth and nail to stay on the inside.

There is no room for excuses. If you don’t do the job you will be fired.

If you are in a position of authority, say a show-runner, and you’re ratings plunge, you will be replaced.

Years ago, I was producing my own TV show and I told my Executive Producer that our director could not get the performance we wanted from our leading actor.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“You know what you are doing, Robert?”

“What?”

“Kvetching.”

I burned with embarrassment.

“There’s no room in this business for whiners. Fire the son-of-a-bitch.”

“Huh?”

“Fire your director or I’ll fire you. You wrote the show, you’re producing the show, you are responsible.”

It was that simple, that cold-blooded.

In short: business.

America was not downgraded during the Great Depression.

But America has been downgraded under Obama.

And Obama kvetches: It’s the fault of the Tea party, the S&P, Bush, Eric (A Jew who refuses to be a court-Jew) Cantor…

Obama has no experience in business or governance.

Not one member of his cabinet has experience in the private sector.

His economic advisors wouldn’t know how to run a falafel stand.

These people would have been fired long ago if they were working in Hollywood.

Heck, they never would have been hired.

If America wants to get out of this economic nightmare then we must fire Obama.

Only then will the kvetching stop and America will have any chance of recovering jobs and economic prosperity.

Welcome to Hollywood.

Here's a perfect illustration of the iconography of freedom. Marilyn Monroe displays a picture of Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, in a sleek convertible with the open road beckoning.

Automobiles represent freedom.

Try and remember when you were a teenager yearning for your driver’s license so you could hop into daddy’s car and go, go, go. It didn’t matter where, you just wanted to burn rubber and escape into the far horizon.

The brilliant, exhilirating and touching American Grafitti, 1973, is the ultimate expression of American car culture. Almost every single scene takes place in a car.

Los Angeles was the first America city built to accomodate the automobile. And the movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, most born dirt-poor, expressed delight in their sudden prosperity and fame by purchasing and posing with their dream machines.

Contrast cars with trains.

Trains and subways are an expression of the collective. Individual identity is erased. You are at the mercy of a state run system that turns  the citizen into a small cog manipulated by unmotivated, inefficient government bureaucrats.

That’s why Progressives-Liberals-Leftists are obsessed with high-speeed rail. The freedom of the road is repellent to statists who want to regulate/control diet, education, light bulbs, health care, your very geography.

Need I mention that Nazis just adored trains AKA cattle cars. And hey, the Italians boasted that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

At a certain point, one must acknowledge the convergence of philosophy between post-modern liberalism and iron-fist facism. Both ideologies assert the power of the state as the final arbiter of human affairs. Hence, the government replaces G-d and family as the center of man’s universe. It’s no surprise that the Nazi party’s formal title was The National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Anyhoo.

Hollywood produced great stars who proudly posed with their autos, symbols of glamour, affluence, and freedom.

Silent film comedienne Mabel Normand shows off her custom built Mercer Runabout 22-72, equipped with fold-a-way makeup kit and vanity table. The car was a gift from Mabel's boyfriend, producer Mack Sennett, 1920. The night before their wedding Mabel discovered Mack in bed with actress Mae Busch. The wedding was cancelled. Mabel boozed, became addicted to cocaine and was involved in several high-profile Hollywood scandals. Her brilliant career tanked and she died at the age of 37.

Rudolph Valentino loved cars and spent hours tinkering with engines. He owned several very expensive custom built vehicles. Rudy proudly displays his Isotta-Franschini limousine, built to his exacting specifications, 1923. I'm reading Evelyn Zumaya's new, groundbreaking biography, “Affairs Valentino.” Along with details of Rudy's love of the automobile—and his horrendous driving—I'm gaining a whole new perspective on this remarkable figure of motion picture history.

Rita Hayworth, b. Margarita Carmen Cansino, presents a distinctly unglamorous but fetching vision of the girl next door as she poses with her 1941 Lincoln Continental. When Hayworth first came to Hollywood she was painfully shy, could not look strangers in the eye and barely spoke above a whisper. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons confidently predicted that Hayworth would never make it in the movies.

Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn was expelled from school for fighting and seducing a school laundress. Flynn loved America, became a citizen and attempted to enlist at the start of World War II. An enlarged heart, malaria, reliance on morphine for chronic back pain, and venereal disease firmly classified him as 4-F. Known for his swashbuckler image and party-hard lifestyle, Flynn looks ready to cruise Sunset Strip in his seriously cool Auburn Speedster.

Robert Montgomery was born to privilege, but his father committed suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge leaving the family penniless. Montgomery was, no doubt, relieved to be able to afford this Cadillac Sport-Phaeton. An active Republican Montgomery was outspoken against Communist influence in Hollywood.

Jimmy Stewart was best when playing the everyman American. His 1938 Plymouth reflects this unpretentious personae. Stewart flew as a command pilot in a B-24 on numerous missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. Back in civilian life, he refused to publicize his heroic war record in order to garner publicity.

Director Josef von Sternberg, b. Jonas Sternberg, gave Marlene Dietrich this 1931 forest green Rolls Royce as a gift. Her chauffer, Briggs—perfect name—carried a set of revolvers to protect his famous employer. When Dietrich traveled to Europe, she sent her Rolls and Briggs in advance. David Niven notes in his excellent autobiography, “The Moon's a Balloon” that Dietrich supplied Briggs with a mink trimmed uniform, which, I suppose, qualifies Briggs as Hollywood's first metrosexual chauffer-bodyguard.

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.

Ava Gardner in “The Killers,” her breakthrough role, 1946.

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—smitten by Rooney’s brash boyish charm.

The first time Rooney laid eyes on Ava Gardner was when she visited the set of “Babes on Broadway,” in 1941. She was wearing a wispy summer dress and high heels. Rooney was also wearing a dress and high heels—a Carmen Miranda costume.

Rooney recalls the gauzy moment:

“Hello,” said Ava. That’s all. Just hello. And without a smile. But she said it in the soft drawl of her native rural North Carolina, and I was a goner. I had known many beautiful women in my lifetime, but this little lady topped them all. She was five feet one, but she invariably wore high heels, so she was about my height when I was wearing five-inch wedgies.

Ava was eighteen years old, Rooney, twenty-one, and his technique with women, he admits, was a combination of early Neanderthal and late Freud. He pursued the gorgeous young starlet with ferocious determination. After turning down five dates Ava finally succumbed, no doubt out of sheer exhaustion and because as one of MGM’s most powerful and bankable stars Rooney could, Ava understood, help advance her career.

After a night of drinking, dancing and table-hopping at Chasen’s, Rooney was smitten. Ava was exhausted by Rooney’s non-stop patter. He was, she realized, always performing. When Rooney saw Ava to her door at two in the morning he impulsively proposed marriage.

Ava, playing a cool customer but in truth a tongue-tied country girl, gave a little hoot, smiled enigmatically, and ducked into her apartment.

For the next few weeks Rooney kept asking and Ava kept evading. Ava was told by everyone in the Hollywood colony that Rooney never took no for an answer.

Soon after December 7, 1941, Rooney presented Ava with a huge diamond ring and once again popped the question.

There is nothing like war to concentrate the mind on love and romance.

Ava finally surrendered.

They kissed and Rooney started to grope the inexperienced young woman from Grabtown, North Carolina.

But Ava Gardner would not sleep with Rooney before accepting the sacraments of marriage. She was a virgin, and she insisted, that was the way she was going to keep it until the wedding night.

Rooney was out of his mind with desire.

Ava Gardner before her MGM glamour make-over.

Informed of the engagement, L.B. Mayer hit the ceiling. He accused Rooney of trying to destroy MGM. There was an image to preserve and marriage to an unknown hillbilly starlet did not fit the carefully crafted studio profile of Andy Hardy, the clean-cut all-American boy.

Terrified of Mayer’s incandescent temper Ava was ready to postpone the marriage. But Rooney stood up to the most powerful studio chief in Hollywood and threatened to break his contract if Mayer did not give his blessing to the union.

L.B. Mayer realized he was no match for Ava Gardner’s smoldering sensuality and wisely backed down. The wily mogul even hosted a bachelor party for Rooney. The guest list included: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor, Lewis Stone, Bill Holden, Robert Montgomery, Lionel Barrymore, William Powell, and Frederic March.

Ava and Mickey were married on January 10, 1942.

The wedding night should have been an MGM soft-focus dream of deep kisses, moonlight and unquenchable passion.

Ava Gardner and Mickey Rooney on their wedding day.

Mickey Rooney confesses the awful truth:

After the ceremony, we kissed our families good-bye and headed for our honeymoon in Carmel, at the Del Monte Inn…

We didn’t have a normal, sexy wedding night. I was a nervous wreck. Getting there had been more than half the fun. Now I didn’t quite know how to savor my victory. To quiet my nerves I drank too much champagne at dinner and barely made it back to our room before I took off my pants and sank into the bed. By the time Ava emerged from the bathroom, all dressed in white satin and lace, I was snoring heavily—dreaming, no doubt about how nice it was, being married to the most beautiful woman in the world.

The marriage was a predictable disaster. Rooney was interested in booze, betting, and babes—not necessarily in that order. Ava reports in her autobiography, Ava: My Story, that she spent her days posing for MGM publicity photos—her career had yet to ignite—then cooked, cleaned, and decorated the house. She was trying to be a good wife.

But Rooney was a serial adulterer who spent all his time at the studio, the track, and a brothel stocked with prostitutes who were dead-ringers for Hollywood movie stars.

Go figure.

Finally Ava walked out on him. One year and five days after he slipped a ring on her finger bearing the engraving: “Love Forever,” they were divorced.

Years later, Ava somewhat wickedly characterized their union as Love Finds Andy Hardy.

Ava’s career soared after appearing as the femme fatale opposite Burt Lancaster in “The Killers,” 1946. But her love life was tumultuous, a blizzard of booze, wrenching love affairs and failed marriages to Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw, volcanic and abusive men.

Rooney racked up an astonishing seven additional marriages after Ava.

Neither ever found true contentment in love or marriage.

Hollywood was and still is a dream factory that all too frequently weaves nightmares.

1. The film is based on an old and well known Jewish joke. So old is the joke that I actually heard this back in high school when I was a student at the Brooklyn Talmudic Academy.

2. A certain segment of orthodox Jewish men wear black suits and black hats only. Think of it as a regulation uniform. Why? The most common explanation is that black signifies mourning and the Jewish people are still mourning the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. Also—and this is just my personal opinion—black is, y’know, slimming.

3. Be sure to watch the film all the way through the credits. Enjoy!

]]> http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2011/07/04/america-the-melting-pot-jewish-catholic-short-film-to-cleanse-the-palate/feed/ 18 http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2011/06/30/girl-with-green-eyes-47-years-later/ http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ravrech/2011/06/30/girl-with-green-eyes-47-years-later/#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 13:36:45 +0000 Robert J. Avrech http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/?p=487060 Turner Classic Movies allows yours truly to catch up on movies never seen and movies viewed so long ago that memory has left muddled, imprecise impressions.

In 1964, age 14, I shlepped from Brooklyn into Manhattan to see the British movie Girl With Green Eyes. Those were the days when I actually took movie critics oh-so-seriously. Okay, I was a dopey teenager, what did I know?

Here’s what I remember:

Actress Rita Tushingham: Her name made me giggle because Tushingham is just too close to the Yiddish word tushy, which means butt. My maternal grandmother Chana Gittel used to pinch my rear and exclaim: “Tushy-sweet!”

Everyone in my family thought this was just hysterical.

I wasn’t so sure.

Also, I was kind of huh? about Tushingham. She did not look or sound like a real movie star.

True confession: I was, and probably remain, totally superficial; ga-ga over Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and of course Brigitte Bardot, though I had not seen one of her movies, only endless photographs which were quite enough to induce sleepless adolescent nights.

Also, I kept staring in horror at co-star Lynn Redgrave’s crooked teeth. Sheesh, even movie stars in Britain can’t get decent dental care. At the time I figured they didn’t have Jewish dentists in Britain. Now I know about the National Health Service. Socialized medicine means periodontal disease… for all.

So I sat in this art house movie theater feeling all sophisticated and —

Bored.

To.

Death.

About ten minutes into the film I was thinking:

1. Is this film in English? Because it really needs subtitles.

2. When does the story begin?

3. Is there a plot?

I think I fell asleep. Probably dreamed of BB.

Anyhoo.

Girl With Green Eyes was on TCM recently and I decided to give it another chance. Forty-seven years is a long time and surely my tastes have changed, hopefully matured.

Synopsis: Tushingham is Kate Brady a young Catholic farm girl who comes to Dublin to find work. She falls in love with the much older and divorced writer Eugene Gaillard, Peter Finch. That’s it. No clever plot twists, no car chases, no nude scenes, no gun battles, no drama. Just meandering scenes spliced together with zero awareness of structure.

Okay, older and wiser me has to admit that Rita Tushingham is a pretty skilled actress. She does not do glamour. No way. But she is a proper working class heroine, a Marxist pin-up.

Finch is also pretty darned good, though he’s hobbled by a role which locks him into endless dour and humorless scenes. But he’s got a great rugged look and it’s easy to see why Vivien Leigh cheated on Laurence Olivier with the emotionally volcanic Australian.

Girl With Green Eyes is a classic example of kitchen sink realism, all the rage in Britain from the late fifties to the mid-sixties, a tedious and mannered cinematic movement that has much in common with Soviet Socialist realism. Other films of this genre are Look Back in Anger (1959), Room at the Top (1959), The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), The Pumpkin Eater (1964), and Alfie (1966.)

Don’t ask me why, but I stayed with this reel of Thorazine. I wanted to like it because, in truth, I want to like every movie I watch.

Rita Tushingham and Peter Finch in Girl With Green Eyes, 1964.

And then it was all worth it.

One scene.

One line of dialogue.

Tushingham, a devout Catholic, attends Mass. Finch, a cynical and world-weary intellectual, waits outside for his young lover. When she exits church he asks why she bothers with religion. Tushingham’s Kate replies:

“Because when I don’t go to Mass I feel all the goodness going out of me.”

I actually sat up, hit the rewind button and played the scene again. A few times.

Because this little throwaway scene should have been the spine of the movie if the screenwriter and director had understood or cared about dramatic velocity.

It’s a lovely moment that is the saving grace of an otherwise unbearably boring and flabby movie. Tushingham delivers the line with a touching mixture of strength, innocence and spiritual bewilderment. Finch’s reaction shot is perfectly modulated to her heartfelt declaration. He realizes in a stunning rush of clarity that they have no future.

In a sense, G-d has intervened in a doomed relationship.

Forty-seven years later, Girl With Green Eyes delivers a moment in time that’s been worth the wait.