It’s hard to know which approach to concentrate on more: the underestimated prescience of The Damned Don’t Cry or its immediate relevance to what is now going on and visibly falling apart within the Obama Nation.

One will inevitably overlap into the other.

Life imitating an art form which was initially imitating life is a wonderfully dizzying theme to savor.

I suppose the well-known Warren Beatty film about Bugsy Siegel might be the first place to start.

Bugsy was the gangster drama in which the real Virginia Hill, portrayed this time by Annette Bening, ended up dangerously involved with Bugsy Siegel and the internecine warfare going on between rival personalities within the same crime syndicate.

Tinged with the memories of the Bonnie and Clyde film that Beatty apparently had a hand in writing, Bugsy harkened back to the glory days of Warren Beatty’s first, heavyweight appearance as star/auteur.

Clearly an attempt to revitalize not only his stardom but his obsession with almost anything that rattles the cages of the American bourgeoisie, now known as the Tea Partiers, Beatty’s gangster fascination replicates not only President Barack Obama’s more controversial associations in a notoriously corrupt Chicago, but fulfills the President’s well-known admiration for one of the greatest of gangster films, Godfather.

I suspect the fascination of a film star for gangsters cannot be far removed from the illusions of a “community organizer” about Chicago hoodlums, Bertolt Brechtian screenplays, intellectual daydreams that attain Barack Obama’s goal of living in the White House as the biggest Godfather of them all.

If we jump back to The Damned Don’t Cry and Joan Crawford’s version of Virginia Hill and that character’s deepening involvement with not only racketeers but cold-blooded killers as well … hmmm … one leaps even further, to the Chicago “connections” which the Kennedy family had through bootleg whiskey, and the possible repercussions such “associations” might have had upon JFK and his Presidency.

This is not a plot thickening.

It is American Progressive History!

The eternal question, of course, is “Just how long can these people think they can get away with murder?!”

The American People have been getting away with legalized infanticide for 37 years!

Roe v Wade was passed by a bipartisan Supreme Court packed mainly with Republicans?!

Obviously the Political Syndicate wanted to addict the American People to legalized murder, training them to turn a blind eye.

It has had the miraculous effect of creating the kind of Congress that passed a Health Care Bill against the will of the American People.

“We’ll pass it first! Then let you read it!”

After America’s passive acceptance of Roe v Wade, can you blame the Progressives for their contempt?!

With both the Presidential Clintons and the Presidential Obamas as major cheerleaders for the expansion of abortion worldwide, the question of “how long these people can get away with murder” gets increasingly relevant, don’t you think?

Meanwhile, back at The Damned Don’t Cry, Joan Crawford’s bottomless desire to “get ahead” regardless of any warning signs … well … doesn’t this mirror the Obama Nation’s entire foreign and domestic policy, both of which seem bent upon destroying what once was known as America?

 And why?!

The New World Order Syndicate!

If anything stands in the way of the Progressive Movement and its dreams for fundamentally transforming America, it is the Constitution and the American Declaration of Independence.

However, with those two sacred documents in the hands of Progressive Mobsters, a Crime Inc. that we elected, why did we possibly expect the future to be other than it is tragically turning out to be?

Now we, the entire human race, are all “Damned” like the once innocent Virginia Hill, and there’s no use crying over spilled innocence.

The damned don’t cry because they can’t do other than they have done and they share no regrets for the very same reason.

We’ll possibly be at it until it kills us all.

World War III is as inevitable as the final death of the tall, wealthy, bad guy in The Damned Don’t Cry!

Similarly the Progressive Fat Cats won’t be sharing a victory lap either.

They don’t know that because they’re all fans of Mao Tse Tung.

 That Bad Guy, if you’ll remember, died a winner.

That’s how the Progressive New World Order’s Board of Directors thinks it’ll end: as winners!

Big, Tall, Short or Small, they all think it’s a “gimme.”

So did Bugsy Siegel.

Cooper delivers his one-liners in a Preston Sturges staccato that helps give the 1970s film a pleasant 1930s gloss, bridging the gap between comic book and movie. But if, like me, you were just a kid when you saw Superman, you may not have known that here was an actor who, fifty years earlier, was one of the most popular and recognizable in the world, courtesy of a little picture called The Champ.

Cooper’s rise to childhood stardom was all-too typical — born in 1922, the unhappy progeny of a broken home, he was first dragged to the studios by his grandmother. “For most of the ladies in that poor neighborhood,” Cooper wrote in his autobiography, “it became common practice to walk to the studio gate in the morning and see if any of the directors needed extras. . .if you were picked, you got $2 and a box lunch. . . [my grandmother] was picked often because she had a little towheaded kid with her — me.”

A host of small roles eventually led to a job as one of Hal Roach’s Little Rascals, which after a few years resulted in a breakout, Oscar-nominated role playing the titular moppet in the Hollywood adaptation of the famous comic strip Skippy. Directed by his uncle (who won a Best Directing Oscar for the film), it made a name for Cooper as the movie kid who could cry better than any other (Cooper claims that his uncle once got him to cry on cue by threatening to shoot his dog), and its popularity quickly led to a lucrative M-G-M contract and the chance to star in The Champ.

Then as now, child stars were held in something akin to contempt by many filmgoers. The New York Herald-Tribune said in its review of The Champ that “This department, it is only right to tell you, has little sympathy for the child performers. Ordinarily they play with the clumsiness you might expect of their youth, while invariably providing in their personal qualities all of the more deplorable instincts of maturity. In a word, they act like children while seeming immature adults.” That description sounds like Dakota Fanning and any number of modern child actors. But Jackie Cooper, according to the same review,

proves by one of the finest and knowingly sensitive portrayals of the recent cinema that he is an actor of genuine distinction: a child who performs with all of the intelligence and mature emotional power supposed to belong to an adult, without losing anything of the youthful appeal to be expected of his years.

Time magazine was much less charitable to Cooper’s Champ performance, chortling that, “every time Beery gets drunk, gambles away the racehorse which he has presented to his son, or is taken to jail for disturbing the peace, there is a shot of little Cooper sticking out his underlip and wrinkling his eyes.” That pat criticism, simplistic and snide, fails to account for any number of great scenes where Cooper isn’t sniffling in close-up.

Cooper played the role not just with amazing naturalness, but also with an eye toward the dramatic arc of his character. Like in his real life, in The Champ he’s a kid forced to leave behind his innocence and become an adult before his time.

The studio put out press releases saying how wonderfully Beery and eight-year-old Cooper got along, and anecdotal evidence contemporary to the period supports that assertion, despite the barrage of negative things Cooper said about Beery fifty years after the fact in his autobiography. News reporters visiting M-G-M claimed that, far from being afraid or angry at Beery, Cooper called him “Uncle Wally,” and happily followed him around the set. Beery himself recounted in an interview how he would help the director talk the eight-year-old through the emotional spectrum of each scene until he figured out how to play it. (One breakthrough came when little Dink undresses his drunk Dad and puts him to bed — after having it explained to him several times, Cooper suddenly brightened and exclaimed to the crew, “I get it! I’m the father and Wally’s the kid!”)

Later in life, Beery would say that “. . .[one of the few times] in my life I felt that maybe I was a pretty decent guy. . .was when little Jackie Cooper said he liked Wally Beery better than any other man he knew.” Cooper would star in several more movies with Beery, most notably Treasure Island (1934) and together they became one of Hollywood’s most popular screen pairs of the 1930s.

The tone of his autobiography hints that the real thing Cooper was missing was a father figure, and when someone like Beery failed to assume that role for him off-screen it hurt. The truth was that he was a lonely, friendless kid caught in the vast machinery of Hollywood, seeming to have everything in the world but empty and directionless inside. Judging from all of the extant pictures from that era, as well as newspaper accounts of press junkets, public appearances, and other films, Cooper’s childhood was one long series of meetings, movies, and promotions. For instance, in the month following the November 1931 release of The Champ, period newspapers tell of Cooper coming to Grauman’s Chinese Theater for a joint promotion with Santa Claus, first pressing his hands and feet into the cement forecourt and then introducing The Champ to 2000 kids in the theater. He was (in the words of Sid Grauman) “America’s Boy,” and a countrywide superstar. And he fulfilled that role at the expense of his childhood.

Like most prepubescent stars, his fame largely disappeared when he grew up. Cooper would later dismiss his entire childhood as a bad nightmare, aghast at the pressures he was put under when so young and lamenting the normal life he lost in the process. By the end of his teens he had slept with stars as varied as Judy Garland and Joan Crawford (the latter when he was seventeen and Crawford thirty-four), smoked dope and taken pills while hanging out with big-band musicians like Gene Krupa (Cooper learned the drums and often sat in with them), and spent virtually all the money he had made in Hollywood on fancy clothes, cars and women.

He credits the service with finally shaping him up and making a man out of him. When World War II hit, his handlers were ready and willing to pull the strings necessary to keep him out, but he bucked their advice and insisted on joining the Navy. He was twenty years old, and his childhood career was already just a memory. Although he says he was mercilessly hazed by fellow servicemen who held his movie-star status against him, Cooper maintained that, “I wouldn’t have wanted to be anyplace else. It would have been worse outside, getting the sneers from women wondering why you weren’t in uniform. Besides, there was that patriotic consideration — my country was in a desperate war, and I wanted to do my part, corny as that might sound, so we would win.”

Jackie Cooper spent the war playing the drums in a USO band, and after he was discharged had some tough years. He went through three marriages — with the last wife, twenty-five years into the marriage he had an affair with a younger woman and briefly left the house, only to come to his senses and patch things up before it was too late (the incident forms a moving chapter of his autobiography). He found work wherever he could, first in New York on the stage, then on ’50s TV shows, then as a studio executive in the ’60s, and finally as a Emmy Award-winning director of television throughout the ’70s, most notably on the now-classic show M*A*S*H.

Over the decades he remained active in the Navy Reserve, which eventually caused a problem on the M*A*S*H set. As Captain William S. Graves relates in Cooper’s book:

I came over to the set because I wanted to make some Christmas tapes [to send to the troops in Vietnam]. . . Some were thirty seconds, some were twenty seconds. . .and they’d say, “It’s Christmas, and we miss all you guys, and you’re doing a good job for your country, and we appreciate what you’re doing, and come home safe and Merry Christmas.”

. . . when I got there, Alan Alda had said he would make no Christmas greetings for the armed forces. So, of course, people sort of followed his lead, and Loretta Swit wouldn’t do it, Gary whatever-his-name wouldn’t do it. . .

Jack had done his best to try to get these guys all to do it because he believed in it, and he was doing it. . . the only people that did it were Wayne Rogers, who was a Navy lieutenant at one point in his life, and McLean Stevenson, who was a Navy pharmacist’s mate during the Korean War. And they did a nice job. But nobody else on that show would do it.

Imagine that: a group of Hollywood people, who had made their fortunes playing in arguably the most beloved military-themed TV show of all time, refusing to offer a kind word for the troops fighting in Vietnam. Jackie Cooper had a lot of problems throughout his life, and he regretted his movie-star childhood. But at least he got into the Navy, and came out with a lifelong dedication to our armed forces that does him credit.

Cooper regularly derides his childhood acting as shallow, but at the time of The Champ hordes of moviegoers disagreed with him. The review for Variety on November 11, 1931 was typical of the euphoric reaction Cooper got from most critics and audiences:

A good picture, almost entirely by virtue of an inspired performance by a boy, Jackie Cooper. There is none of the usual hammy quality of the average child actor in this kid. He goes beyond, simply acting natural in natural situations. He has the power to square the broadest plot exaggerations that a Hollywood scenarist can devise, merely with wistful boyishness and a manner that never gets scrambled with thespian mechanics. . . The director and his meg are not mirrored in Jackie Cooper’s phiz. There is no suggestion of orders from and training under an anxious parent or tutor in a single gesture, expression, or intonation. Here is the perfect child player, chiefly because he isn’t typical.

The boy, as is customary with boys in pictures, says some strange things for a boy his age; his thinking has far more scope and depth than is good for a boy his age. There are many chances for character to become unbelievable and lose its grip, but this boy doesn’t let it get away from him.

Instead of waiting to grow up and tell his grandchildren about it, the Cooper boy can tell his grandfather right now that this is his picture. Youth isn’t wasted on children when there are kids like this. It will be talkers’ heavy loss when Jackie Cooper grows up.

And it was — to this day, Cooper is the youngest actor ever to be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. The early superstar career ended all too soon, but then there was the Navy, and some classic M*A*S*H episodes, and of course even that wonderful late-career turn in Superman. Most other child actors turned out far worse, that’s for sure. In an age category normally dominated by Lindsay Lohans, Jackie Cooper stands out as something special.

Cooper is eighty-seven years old now, and retired from the business. His wife just died last year after over fifty years of marriage. He has several grown children (two daughters have predeceased him) and a whole bunch of memories. I hope that he’s mellowed since writing his autobiography, and that these days he’s a lot more proud of his accomplishments. He certainly deserves to be.

Next Saturday in For Conservative Movie Lovers, the gifted director of The Champ, and how he brought script, camera, and actors together to make an instant classic.

Previous posts in the series “King Vidor, Wallace Beery and The Champ“

Part 1 | Part 2

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

Please Don’t Shoot My Dog: The Autobiography of Jackie Cooper. An honest attempt by Cooper to evaluate his life as a Hollywood star, faults and all. He often comes across as whiny and ungrateful, but he also doesn’t pull any punches, going so far as to let his detractors tell their side of the story whenever possible in their own words.

Hordes of internet websites, including Wikipedia, make the claim that in this book Cooper calls Wallace Beery, “the most sadistic person I have ever known,” and says he was a “violent, foul-mouthed drunkard,” among other things. Actually Cooper says nothing of the sort. Beery is described, fairly mildly as these things go, as a sort of Little Napoleon petty tyrant on the set: making people wait inordinately for him, demanding little favors of special treatment from directors and producers, whining over small things, and trying to upstage his fellow actors whenever possible. Among Cooper’s charges against Beery are that he didn’t tip at the commissary, never gave Cooper a ride on his speedboat, and (my personal favorite) never bought poor lil’ Coop an ice cream cone. Hardly the stuff of sadism, despite what the Internet gossips would have you believe. In the final analysis Cooper says: “I never did actually hate him, although I never liked him. . . I really don’t think he was a swell guy at all. When I first started with him, I wanted him to be. He was a big disappointment.” Not a glowing endorsement by any means, but a far cry from “the most sadistic person I have ever known.”

“Jackie Cooper Has All Aversions of the Average Youngster For Studies” by Wood Soanes. This is a reprint of a magazine exposé from 1932, soon after The Champ was released. Like many other articles, it shows Cooper at the time getting along fine with Beery. Although one might chalk that up to studio propaganda, the variety and number of sources all telling the same tale makes me think that Cooper’s opinion of Beery might have been higher as a child, only to deteriorate over the course of fifty years as an adult. (Fifty years, it should be remembered, of people constantly asking, “So what was it like working with Wallace Beery?” long after his own stardom had dimmed.)

Jackie Cooper on The Milton Berle Show (1953): A clip from this classic show showing an adult Cooper showing off his drumming skills in a musical number with sexy 1950s singer Dagmar.

Jackie Cooper’s Birthday Party and Jackie Cooper’s Christmas Party (both 1931): These M-G-M shorts are a lot of fun, showing Jackie Cooper in his Champ heyday, having massive parties with legions of kids while being feted by all the studio’s great stars of the era, including Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Jimmy Durante, and of course Wallace Beery. Keep your eyes peeled for these on TCM, where they sometimes appear.

Oscar season approaches, which means that once again it’s time for the annual cry of … There-Are-No-Good-Roles-For-Women! Maybe “cry” isn’t the best word. ”Whine” is more suitable — from a self-inflicted wound. Here’s a taste of this year’s first-whine from a Hollywood Reporter story titled: Shallow Pool for Oscar’s Actress Contenders:

How shallow is the pool? Some are talking about performances such as Sandra Bullock’s in the feel-good film “The Blind Side

The lack of depth has led to a slew of awards-season chatter, from the expected downplaying — all categories are cyclical — to blanket explanations about studios making fewer awards movies in general. …

But it also highlights that, for all the strides made by the women behind the camera, the women in front of them can still be subject to the old prejudices. Indeed, the more cynical in town — including at least one actress awards-contender — say that the director and actress trends are hardly a coincidence. Many female directors, they argue, can feel pressure to cast a preponderance of strong male leads to negate the perception that theirs is a female-oriented film.

The article is simply wrong on one very important point. These aren’t “old prejudices,” these are new prejudices.

Back in the bad old studio days when a handful of Republican men ran everything, women ruled. Well, maybe not “ruled,” but they were a steady force at the box office because those Republican men spent millions grooming girls into movie stars and building A-pictures around them. (And for a while, Rita Hayworth did rule Columbia.)

At one time or another, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia De Havilland, Jean Harlow, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Janet Gaynor, Mae West, Claudette Colbert, Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy, Alice Faye, Judy Garland, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Grable, Esther Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly and many, many others worked as regularly and earned nearly as much success (and sometimes more) as their male counterparts in all kinds of films, including big-budget prestige pictures that put many butts in many seats. At one time or another, each was was a stand-alone movie star and many enjoyed long legendary careers.

Did a paternalistic and sometimes sexist system force these women to fight for decent roles in-between casting couch wrestling sessions? Of course, but anyone who wants to argue something’s changed should drop me an email inquiring about a bridge for sale.

But the real story is just how many of those fights were won allowing these immortals to leave behind a wealth of films loaded with strong, dignified, feminine performances that will live for as long as there’s civilization. And what won those sometimes historic battles wasn’t some sense of entitlement over ”fairness.” These women were as tough as they were talented. 

So what changed?

Well, you tell me.

Forty years ago the left started their takeover of the film industry. Now that they own it fully there are more women in executive positions than ever before, and yet most every year you can hear the scrape of a barrel bottom when Oscar nominations are announced.

Sounds to me like some sensitivity training is in order.

But it’s really about the free market. Women don’t draw like they once did and you can trace the reason for that to the roles and the actresses themselves. Somewhere along the line, ”acting like men” became confused with strength, and nudity and sex with romance. Other than a natural charisma and a dab of talent, the secret to stardom is retaining enough sense of mystery to allow audiences to project what they want on you, and nothing breaks that spell quicker than the literal and figurative baring of the ass. 

On the big screen, as in real life, it’s hard to respect someone you’ve just seen tramp around cussing like R. Lee Ermey in “Full Metal Jacket.” For the men in the audience, the illusion is shattered (lust fades, love lasts forever) … for the women, they can no longer relate. Offscreen, no one likes a loudmouth trashing who you are and what you believe in. You can sum the whole problem up in a word … ”class.”

But in the true spirit of socialism, present-day Hollywood’s solution is not an attempt to rebuild the female movie star but to foster equality through the dragging down of the male star.

The death of the movie star is no longer just a “woman’s problem.” Narcissism is an equal-opportunity affliction and without those sexist, paternalistic conservative studio bosses to look out for their shared interests, both male and female stars have worked overtime to deconstruct themselves in the eyes of the public. And so…

…today the chickens and roosters are coming home to roost.

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

Blessed with a lovely, melodic voice, it’s something of a puzzle why Paramount dropped Esther Ralston’s option in 1929. Esther was a rising star who, between 1924 and 1929, starred or co-starred in twenty-five films. She would seem a natural for talkies.

But the mystery is soon cleared up as Esther explains:

Since I had only a year to go on my Paramount contract, the studio sent me a new contract with a talkie clause to sign. Knowing I had been brought up in the theater before going into pictures, George decided I should ask for a hundred thousand dollars to sign this talkie clause. He sent me alone to talk to Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor. They were courteous as always, but explained that the new talkie panic had them worried and they didn’t feel they should have to increase my salary until they were sure I would be adequate in talkies.

Once again, the destructive Svengali-Trilby relationship asserts itself as the guiding principle of Esther and George.

Unlike so many other stars who grew tired and cynical under the pressures of the frantic pace of production, Esther genuinely delighted in the hard work and was, by all accounts, well liked by everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

In her modest but hugely revealing memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, and years later in conversation with silent film historian, Anthony Slide, Esther vents about an unpleasant breach, professional and personal, with director Dorothy Arzner.

Publicity photo of Esther Ralston for Ten Modern Commandments, the film in which director Dorothy Arzner sexually harassed the young star.

Open about her homosexuality, director Dorothy Arzner, during production of Fashions for Women and Ten Modern Commandments, 1927, is in the habit of dragging Esther into her lap and groping her breasts.

Esther rejects Arzner’s crude advances and Arzner takes revenge by browbeating Esther, making her perform take after take of a single scene. Ironic, because Esther was known as One-Take Ralston.

Furious, Esther storms into Adolf Zukor’s office and announces that she will never again work with Arzner.

Esther Wants a Baby

Broke, with Hollywood re-gearing for the new era of talkies, George proposes that Esther go on the road with a vaudeville act. It is notable that George himself never once considers going to work. No, the structure of their dysfunctional relationship dictates Esther as breadwinner and George as, um, parasite.

Like the veteran trouper she is, Esther puts together an act billed as the “Golden Girl of the Silver Screen… in Person.”

Esther opens in 1929 at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. Playing to enthusiastic audiences, the tour moves to Chicago and then The Palace in New York. A month later, playing three shows a day, four on Saturday and Sunday, Esther is worn down, depressed.

Although it was a thrill to see people lined up for a block and a half waiting to get into the theater to see my act, I just wanted to go home to have a baby. George kept urging me to be patient, saying that having a baby might make me lose my American Venus figure, that I was still young and there would be plenty of time to start a family.

A crude manipulator, George threatens to commit suicide if Esther insists on abandoning the tour. Torn by her desire to start a family, and her husband’s control over her life and career, Esther sinks into silence and starts to lose weight. Alarmed at seeing his meal ticket in meltdown, George makes an appointment for Esther with a “Park Avenue specialist.”

I was thoroughly examined and, after I had dressed, I came out to the office where the specialist was talking with George. They both stared at me so solemnly that I was frightened. “What is it?” I almost screamed. “Why are you looking at me like that. Is something wrong with me?”

“Better sit down, my dear,” the doctor said quietly, then he told me the bad news. Evidently, my strenuous acrobatic dancing, my high kicks and so forth, had left me with one ovary completely damaged and the other only halfway intact. “I’m sorry, Miss Ralston, but I’m afraid you can never have children. I’m so sorry.” He said.

I was numb with shock. It just couldn’t be true. All I wanted out of life was to have children. Who cared about a career? What price being a movie star, here today gone tomorrow? No babies? Not ever? I wanted to die.

What is going on here?

I presented Esther’s narrative to a close friend, a distinguished physician. He pointed out that female athletes, and dancers—usually ballerinas—through endless training, rehearsals, and extreme diets, frequently lose their menstrual cycles, which leads to temporary infertility.

But Esther does not present as that kind of dancer or dieter. No, it seems that Esther was the victim of a cruel manipulation designed to keep her on the road and insure a cash flow.

I’m fairly certain that George Webb greased the palm of the Park Avenue specialist to offer the heart-breaking diagnosis thereby breaking down Esther’s defenses and making her even more dependent on her husband.

Esther agrees to finish the tour.

The Case of Lena Smith, 1929, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Released just as sound was coming in, this film, according to Esther, was her very best work. No copies are known to exist. Lena Smith is one of the most sought after lost films of the silent era.

Esther might be gullible, and she is most certainly uninformed about female biology, but she has true grit and faith in G-d.

Raised an Episcopalian, Esther confesses that for years she has been an earnest student of Christian Science. Convinced that G-d wants her to have a child, Esther summons a Christian Science Practitioner for prayer sessions.

In the days before antibiotics, when the most ordinary infection could result in death, scores of the Hollywood colony flocked to Christian Science. The great director King Vidor was one of the most visible adherents.

A few months later, her vaudeville tour ended, back in Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer offers Esther a long-term contract worth $100,000.

Esther turns it down, explaining that she is, yes, pregnant.

With all due respect to Christian Science, I still believe that George Webb and the Park Avenue specialist conspired the false diagnosis to keep Esther working.

Esther and the Miraculous Turtle Cream

Meanwhile, George discovers a “scientist” who has invented a miraculous “turtle cosmetic cream” guaranteed to make women look years younger. In 1930, using the money Esther earned on her vaudeville tour, George opens “Esther’s in Hollywood” a spa on Yucca Street in Los Angeles.

In 1931 Esther gives birth to a daughter, Mary Esther, and Ralston looks forward to a quiet life in her mansion as a mother and wife.

But business and money management at “Esther’s in Hollywood” is not what it should be—big shock—and George arranges for another grueling vaudeville tour.

Playing to sold-out audiences, Esther is invited to England to deliver a Command Performance at the Palladium, the largest theater in the world.

Rather than be separated from her child, Esther hires a Nanny to help care for baby Mary on the tour.

Esther and the anti-Semites

Checking into the Mayfair hotel in London, Esther discovers that Eddie Kay, her musical conductor and arranger, and his wife Tessie are not registered.

“Why not?” I said. “All my company are to be registered here at this hotel. “But Madame,” answered the clerk, “I’m sorry, but we couldn’t register Mr. Kay. He is a Jew.”

“Restricted” hotels were an accepted part of the social landscape in Europe and America all through the 1950’s.

Esther immediately checks out of the Mayfair and rents a luxurious apartment directly across from the Marble Arch where Eddie, Tessie and Esther’s entire staff stay for the duration of the London tour.

Esther does not deliver a tedious lecture about fighting injustice and prejudice. She doesn’t make any grand claims for her righteousness. She does the right thing, and moves on with her story.

Admirable.

Esther is exhausted and homesick, for America, for her lovely mansion, and the golden California sunshine. But George books weeks of further engagements in Scotland and Wales.

We had been almost a year in England by now and I began to fret with homesickness. We had received a cable from our receptionist at “Esther’s in Hollywood” requesting an immediate five thousand dollars for new hair dryers. It seemed to me that our salon was beginning to cost more than it was bringing in.

I complained to George that it just didn’t seem fair that his mother, Mrs. Frey, his nephew Mac, and his youngest daughter, Marion should all be living in our “castle,” enjoying the California sunshine, swimming in my beloved pool, being waited on by Sing [the cook] while my baby and I were so far from home and I had to work so hard for every penny.

So badly has George mismanaged Esther’s finances that on February 27, 1933, Esther’s mansion and all its contents are put up for auction. Esther does not provide details of George’s financial mismanagement, but between bad investments, various swindles, and George’s degenerate gambling we can well imagine how another fortune is lost.

Esther makes a list of each creditor and accepts every job that Hollywood has to offer. Dollar by dollar, Esther pays off her considerable debts.

Quarreling all the time, George and Esther are bound in a loveless, dysfunctional marriage.

Esther Gets on the Very Bad Side of L.B. Mayer

Thirty-one years old, Esther is no longer the devastatingly beautiful ingénue who lit up the screen in the silent era. But Louis B. Mayer, the most powerful studio head in Hollywood, is still anxious to bring her to MGM.

He offers her $750.00 a week, a steep decline from the days when she was pulling in $2,500 a week, but Esther is more than grateful to sign the contract.

But there’s a catch. And it’s classic Hollywood.

L.B. Mayer has a massive schoolboy crush on Esther, and when she realizes that the powerful mogul expects, um, favors in return for roles, Esther spurns Mayer’s advances.

When I arrived at the studio the next morning, I was told to go at once to Mr. Mayer’s office. He wanted to see me.

“Good morning,” I said cheerfully as I entered his office.

Mr. Mayer glared at me and, shaking his finger at me furiously, he shouted, “Think you’re pretty smart, eh? Think you fooled me? Let me tell you, I can have any woman on this lot — Joan Crawford and…”

I stood up indignantly and interrupted his tirade. “Perhaps you can — any woman but Esther Ralston.”

“Just who do you think you are?” he sputtered.

“I thought, Mr. Mayer, I was hired as an actress, but evidently you had other plans for me.’

Getting up from his chair, Mayer paced up and down the room, shouting, “You sing your psalms, young lady, and see where you get! I’ll blackball you in every studio in Hollywood, and what’s more you’ll get nothing here!”

Mayer makes good on his promise. MGM sells Esther’s contract to Universal for a group of less than stellar projects which do nothing for her career, and as everyone knows if you’re not on an upward trajectory in Hollywood, you’re probably in a downward spiral.

Esther Ralston and Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee.

Esther’s one MGM film during that period is the Joan Crawford vehicle, Sadie McKee, 1934.

It is director Clarence Brown—Garbo’s frequent helmer—who insists on casting Ralston as the theatrical femme fatale, Dolly Merrick.

Esther’s part is small, but she sparkles in every scene. Even as a slinky tramp, Esther brings warmth to the character that keeps you off-balance. You want to hate this vaudeville villainess, yet at the same time there is the urge to melt into her arms.

Here’s a brief clip of Esther Ralston singing I Looked In Your Eyes with Gene Raymond. As you can see, Esther is magnetic, with a richly-toned voice. As Dolly Merrick, Esther plays a vaudeville femme fatale who steals Barry from good girl Crawford. Sadie McKee is not one of Crawford’s better known vehicles, but it happens to be one of my favorites. And Esther Ralston’s presence is one of the reasons this film has such appeal for yours truly.

–

In March of 1934, Esther finally sues for divorce from George Webb. True to form, Webb counter-sues, demanding $75.00 a week in alimony. The judge denies Webb’s claim and hands Esther full custody of their child Mary Esther.

Esther Rebuilds Her Life—Sorta

At last free from George Webb, a liar, a gambler, and swindler, Esther is free to rebuild her life and career, and hopefully choose her next relationship through the prism of hard earned experience.

However, the day after her divorce—the very next day—at a Hollywood party in Brentwood, Esther clamps eyes on Ted Morgan, a smooth crooner with a pleasing baritone.

Chatting intimately, Esther learns that Morgan’s wife has just run off with another man.

Reflects Esther:

I guess the fact that we were both unhappy victims of divorce brought us closer together, for I brought him home to Mama’s the next day for dinner.

In the meantime, Esther comes to the conclusion that though she can always earn money, she can’t seem to hold on to it. Thus, Esther engages a high-profile money manager who claims that his clients are a who’s who of Hollywood talent. Confident that, at last, she has found financial salvation, Esther turns over her entire savings to her new money manager. He puts Esther on a weekly allowance and —

— and if your stomach is churning as you read this, well, you have guessed correctly.

The money manager blows town, conning Esther out of all her money.

For those keeping a scorecard, this makes three fortunes Esther has earned and lost.

Esther Ralston is once again broke, adrift in a cocoon of bafflement and betrayal.

It is under these circumstances in June 1935—betrayed by a man she trusted, and forced to drastically downsize—that Esther accepts Morgan’s marriage proposal.

Admits Esther:

During these months, Will Morgan and I were seeing each other constantly and though it seemed that he was drinking an awful lot, I refused to see the danger signals. We were so in love.

Esther with Bill Morgan husband #2.

Really, at this point in the narrative I ‘m slapping my forehead like a Dexedrine fueled lab monkey.

Esther, baby, what are you thinking?

Of course, Morgan can’t buy a job in Hollywood and so he convinces the pliable Esther to combine their talents.

The Ralston-Morgan Vaudeville Act goes on a mildly successful tour across the U.S. No doubt, if it was just Esther head-lining, the box office would have been better.

Forced to leave daughter Mary behind, the pain of their separation is almost more than Esther can bear. And so when Esther’s agent tells her that she has several film offers back in Hollywood, Esther cancels the tour and hurries home.

Resenting Esther’s success, Morgan climbs into a bottle—a case of bottles.

One day, on location for The Girl From Mandalay, Morgan, a sloppy drunk, staggers on the set and disrupts production:

After this final humiliation, I took Mary and went to stay with Mama. I told Bill I’d had it with his drinking and I was leaving him for good. A few nights later, I drove back to our apartment in North Hollywood to pick up my belongings. I parked the car in front and as I got out, saw Bill waiting for me. He was drunk again, and as I turned to go back to the car, he grabbed me by the throat and tried to drag me to the apartment door, yelling, “You aren’t going to leave me, I’ll kill you first.”

Okay, kids, pull out your trusty scorecard: check off two husbands who have threatened murder.

Esther’s life, her dreadful choices in love, is like a Kabuki performance where movement and emotion are ritualized. Esther and the men in her life play their assigned roles to grim perfection.

Esther and Bill are divorced in 1938. Again, Esther is almost penniless and the sole support of her daughter.

What to do?

Esther drives cross-country to New York seeking work in radio and summer stock.

The American Venus is determined to get a fresh start.

But on her very first day in New York, in an agent’s office, Esther meets a young, well-connected show biz columnist who immediately sets his sights on Ralston.

Coming soon, Part III, and yup, husband # 3 also wants to murder Esther.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Hedy Lamarr’s perfectly arched eyebrows emphasize her symmetrical features. Considered the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, Lamarr was also incredibly bright, co-inventing, in 1941, a “frequency-hopping device that now serves as the basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology.” That quote is grabbed from Wikipedia. I have absolutely no idea what it means, but darn, I’m impressed. Anyhoo. Married six times, Lamarr gained and lost several fortunes. After her career was over she was arrested on shoplifting charges.

Screening movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, I’ve noticed an interesting trend—in eyebrows.

During the early days of silent films, female stars appeared pretty normal. Which is to say, eyebrows were lightly plucked, but retained a recognizably human configuration.

But the Flapper Age of the 1920’s, a time of huge social upheaval in America, ushered in severely plucked eyebrows, styles that were eventually refined into Baroque loops and harsh anorexic gashes.

A close friend, a brilliant cultural observer, wrote to me with this fascinating bit of cultural information:

Flappers were the first group of women outside of prostitutes to shave their legs and armpits. They changed the world, depilation-wise.

Narrow eyebrows seem to have come into fashion as Hollywood, and society in general, turned away from the Nineteenth Century ideal of the woman with the hourglass figure to the starved creature of the modern age.

Plucked eyebrows reached their apotheosis in the 30’s as whip-thin Art Deco was all the rage. Eyebrows in Hollywood evolved into extra fine lines that seemed drawn by Dexedrine fueled designers.

Studio stylists regularly shaved the eyebrows of the vulnerable young actresses being groomed for stardom, but after a few shavings the eyebrows of the chosen Pygmalions failed to grow back. Thus, several generations of Hollywood stars lacked eyebrows and their faces became blank canvasses for the powerful studio stylists.

The clash between the reality of her true self with the manufactured Hollywood image was deeply alienating for many young women, most of them uneducated teenagers from hard scrabble childhoods. No wonder Lana Turner wryly commented on her seven disastrous marriages: “The problem is that men marry Lana Turner—and wake up next to me.”

Let’s go to the visuals:

Jean Harlow had narrow, deep-set eyes—difficult to photograph—and so along with false eyelashes like shelves, studio stylists inscribed eyebrows, like soaring roman arches, to create the illusion of rounder, wider eyes. Harlow suffered to maintain her bombshell image. So toxic was the dye used for her platinum blond hair that it finally started falling out in clumps—like a chemotherapy patient—and she was forced to wear wigs for extended periods.

Carole Lombard had a lovely forehead, cheekbones like blades, and her eyebrows—low slashes—were etched in order to draw attention to those patrician features. In January, 1942, on a national tour selling U.S. War bonds, Lombard, one of the most beloved figures in Hollywood, was killed in a plane crash, making her one of America’s first casualties of World War II.

Clara Bow’s drooping eyebrows seem to echo her emotional instability—she was probably bi-polar. Her mother, an occasional prostitute, twice tried to murder Bow when she was just a child. Her father repeatedly raped young Clara after Bow’s mother was confined to a mental institution. Clara Bow was one of Hollywood’s greatest natural actresses, but her important body of work is barely recognized and a “nothing”—so said the great George Cukor—like Louise Brooks is built into a cultural and movie icon. We have the French—what a shocker—to thank for initiating this bit of historical lunacy.

Marlene Dietrich, monstrously self-absorbed, positioned a full length mirror beside the camera to keep an eye on her reflection. Dietrich understood her own image, and worked hard at refining the mystery and glamor that characterized her fame. Dietrich wielded her beauty like a sexual totalitarian, seducing scores of men and women with frightening self-assurance. When John Wayne rebuffed her advances she flew into a rage calling Wayne a “stupid American cowboy.”

Marion Davies started out as a teenage Ziegfeld Girl. Posing in the elaborate costumes, Davies looked fresh and lovely, and the severe stutter that plagued her, was rendered unimportant. In Hollywood, her all-American looks gave way to various make-up extremes. Here, Davie’s eyebrows seem to be crawling down her cheek bones. One of the kindest, most generous women in Hollywood, Orson Welles admitted that in his cruel portrayal of supremely untalented Susan Alexander in Citizen Kane, 1941, he did Davies, a hugely gifted comedienne, “a dirty.”

Garbo’s eyes were probably her best feature and her eyebrows draw attention to her hypnotic gaze. Garbo was most effective in close-up, that’s what her fans best remember and fetishize. In medium and long shot, Garbo is often noticeably uncomfortable—she had a tendency to slouch—and her attempts to control her klutziness results in some awkward moments. Take a look at her performance in Grand Hotel, 1932. She plays a ballerina, but she’s a dancer with two left feet.

Bette Davis hated Hollywood’s emphasis on beauty, but even she submitted to extreme plucking. Later in her career at Warner Bros., when she had clout, and didn’t hesitate to use it, Davis let her eyebrows grow in and she reconstituted her own image with an iron fist. Eventually, Davis refused to pose for the studio glamor portraits.

Known in her later career for thick as mink eyebrows, Joan Crawford actually started out with the harshly plucked Flapper look. Watching Crawford in close-up can be an eerie experience: those saucer eyes never blink and her unyielding stare burns a hole through the silver screen.

Anna May Wong was Hollywood’s first and greatest Chinese star—though she was born and raised in Los Angeles. The studios carefully constructed her image as an Oriental femme fatale using the full Hollywood arsenal of hair styles, wardrobe, props and barely there eyebrows. Catch her in the pre-code Shanghai Express, 1932, in which she plays a slinky courtesan. Anna May Wong blows Marlene Dietrich off the screen by remaining Buddha-still in contrast to Dietrich’s Rococo poses. A natural leading lady, beautiful and talented, Anna May’s movie career was severely hampered by the Motion Picture Code where portrayals of miscegenation were forbidden.

Alice Faye is barely remembered today, but, for a few years, she was a huge singing star for Twentieth Century Fox. Not conventionally beautiful, rather the cute girl next door, the studio imposed on Faye a glamorous image that just didn’t fit. When her film career sputtered, Faye moved into radio starring in a successful show with her husband, band leader Phil Harris.

Joan Marsh was the daughter of the great, pioneering Hollywood cinematographer Charles Rosher and as such, she knew something about the primacy of image. This offspring of Hollywood gained positive attention as a child actress in Mary Pickford’s delightful Daddy Long Legs, 1919. There’s something silkily feline about Marsh in this iconic George Hurrell portrait. Her darting eyebrows draw attention to her flowing river of hair. Marsh never gained leading lady status, she was primarily a feature and day player—her continuous battles with weight are just heartbreaking. Marsh retired from the screen in 1944. In later years, she managed a stationary shop on Ojai, California.

Now, let’s skip forward to 1956, eyebrows are back, bigger and badder than ever:

It looks like two caterpillars have taken up residence over Audrey Hepburn’s eyes. Hepburn was lovely, a charming actress who projected intelligence and vulnerability. She was a class act, but never a star who caused men to walk distractedly into walls. Her carefully constructed image—boyish hair, boyish figure, and he-man eyebrows—short circuited the traditional Hollywood look.

And finally, the greatest eyebrows in Hollywood history.

Julie Newmar gained fame as Catwoman, “the purrfect villainess,” from the Batman TV series, her episodes running from 1966-67. Newmar’s mother, Helen Jesmer, was one of Ziegfeld’s most stunning girls. Newmar wrote the introduction to the ravishing volume, Jazz Age Beauties, in which Jesmer appears along with dozens of other Ziegfeld girls. Next time you watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, 1954, feast your eyes on the unbelievably leggy and wasp waisted Newmar as Dorcus, one of the abducted brides.

For more great visuals of notable Hollywood eyebrows, head on over to Starlet Showcase.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

Flags and bunting graced every building and sound stage. There was band music and rows of picnic tables groaning under the weight of food.

L.B. Mayer, a man without a birth date

Every MGM star was expected to attend and pay homage to America-and to L.B. Mayer. For in Mayer’s mind, the two were inseparable. All complied, except Greta Garbo, a woman far too narcissistic to lavish attention on any country or person other than her own mirrored island.

Though Yiddish was his first language, L.B. Mayer delivered a rousing Fourth of July speech. Mayer could be a forceful English speaker, mixing deeply personal anecdotes—usually about his beloved mother—and soaring rhetoric about his adopted home, America.

To date, every Mayer biographer and film writer with whom I’m familiar repeats the familiar anecdote in which Mayer “claimed to have lost his birth certificate” when crossing from Europe to America. The quotation marks tell us—with a condescending wink and nudge—that Mayer fibbed in order to adopt July Fourth as his birthday, thereby conflating his identity with America’s.

However, the truth of Mayer’s birth date can best be appreciated and understood within the context of the Eastern European Jewish culture from which the junk man turned film pioneer emerged.

L.B. Mayer, real name Lazar Meir, was born in Minsk, today the capital of Belarus, but at the time part of the Russian Empire known as The Pale of Settlement where Jews were forced to reside by the viciously anti-Semitic Tzar.

For the most part, Jews of the Pale lived in grinding poverty and the constant threat of pogroms—state sanctioned murder, pillage and rape by the Cossacks. But in spite of their oppression and status as second class citizens, these Jews were overwhelmingly pious and ritually observant, preserving Judaism thorough faith in the G-d of Israel, adherence to the Torah and the study of Talmud.

This was a culture steeped in preserving Jewish traditions, traditions where Biblical and Rabbinic literature is marked by an absence of birth dates.

In the Bible we are informed that men and women lived for a specific number of years—and there is considerable Rabbinic debate at to what constitutes a year in the Biblical age. In addition, the great Rabbinic sages are, at best, recorded as living during the reign of whichever King was, at the time, ruling.

Crucial to understanding life in The Pale, is an awareness that birth certificates were avoided by Jewish families because the Tzar used this information to draft Jewish children—as young as 12-years old—into the Russian army for a period of twenty-five years. The goal being to rid the child of his religious identity and convert him to Christianity.

Studying Jewish tombstones that were documented before the onslaught of the Communist bulldozers in Eastern Europe, there is a marked absence of birth dates. Most often the name of the deceased—for instance, Jacob son of Aaron, no family names—is inscribed, accompanied with a biblical inscription, usually from King David’s Psalms, and finally, the yahrtzeit, the date of death. It is rare to see a birth date chiseled into the stone.

Most Jews confined to The Pale marked their birthday through an association with a specific Jewish holiday.

As an example, my paternal grandfather, Rabbi Samuel Avrech, also from The Pale, told me that he was born “… sometime around Chanukah.”

In contrast, I tell people that I was born in the year of All About Eve.

L.B. Mayer, like every pioneering Jewish mogul, was anxious to shed his Jewish identity. These rags to riches studio chiefs were unable to reconcile Judaism with their aspirations to be real Americans.

And so, it seems more than likely that rather than admit to a vague birth date—associated with an ancient Jewish festival—Mayer crafted the lost birth certificate story, thereby avoiding what he viewed as his embarrassing Jewish heritage.

In any case, L.B. Mayer, the man who invented the star system and who headed the most powerful studio in Hollywood, was intensely patriotic—he emigrated to America from Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada—and insisted that MGM films reflect his deeply held values.

Every Hollywood studio produced thousands upon thousands of still photos as a means of promoting their stars. There were basic, canned poses used over and over again: Starlets in swimsuits, swashbuckling actors with swords, a male and female star locked in a passionate embrace. There were also photo sets celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

And there were Independence Day stills.

To jaded eyes, these photos appear artless and heavy-handed. To be sure, the great glamor photographers George Hurrell and C.S. Bull did not snap the shutter for these novelty poses.

But to me, studio produced July Fourth pictures represent a genuine love of America and the values of democracy, liberty and freedom. These are refreshing images, free of tedious, post-modern irony, images that speak deeply of Hollywood’s Golden Age and it’s place in the American grain.

Always an explosive performer, Joan Crawford celebrates liberty.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

I also found these quotes from Ms. Fox:

“I don’t want to have to go on talk shows and pull out every single S.A.T. word I’ve ever learned, to prove, like, ‘Take me seriously, I am intelligent, I can speak.’ I don’t want to have to do that. I resent having to prove that I’m not a retard.”

And…

“Women are expected to be conformist automatons in L.A. but in Britain you can be more yourself and people will take you on face value.”

Far be it from me to point out that the base audience for “Transformers” is young males in Middle America, the same men that Fox condemns to a robot apocalypse.  I doubt the bi-coastal elites from Beverly Hills to the Upper West Side will be waiting in line for the midnight showing of Michael Bay’s latest opus.  Alienating your core audience is never a good idea.  Perhaps Ms. Fox holds an associate’s degree from the Timothy Geithner School of Business Management.

Fox asserts that she is “not a retard” and that she bucks the system by not being a “conformist.”  Is it bad for me to call foul on both points?

I learned something a long time ago.  Back in my fraternity days at USC (oops, man, did I just give the Huffington Post ammo?… A USC FRAT BOY!!!!!!  No wonder…) I noticed how the guys who constantly bragged about their sexual prowess really didn’t do too well.  The guys who were discrete, never bragged, never felt the need to prove anything, had a steady stream of attractive dates and girlfriends. The braggarts would spend their weekends regaling in tales of three ways and sex with strippers while drinking forty-ouncers and challenging each other to games of “Street Fighter” on the Super NES.

The same goes for intelligence.  When you feel compelled to tell the world how smart you are, how intellectual your positions are, how deep your education runs, the sad truth is that you probably aren’t that bright.

Megan Fox is a panderer.  She trashes Middle America to the British Press.  She wears “Star Wars” T-shirts to make Fan Boys drool, then calls those Fan Boys “retards” to the hipsters in Silver Lake.  She talks up her intelligence and non-conformity…. by making stupid, conformist statements.

Lauren Bacall made this observation about Hollywood: “When I first went into pictures, women absolutely ran the show. Bette Davis practically owned Warner Brothers.”  Bacall doesn’t know many of the stars of today. “They’re all too self-involved, y’know? And they’re so unaware of what goes on anywhere else.”

Hmmmm…is there any way that we can draw a parallel between the rise of “correct” thought in Hollywood as evidenced by self-absorbed automatons like Megan Fox and the observation that Hollywood used to be BETTER for women?  Is it, perhaps, that whiny divas who parrot talking points to look cool, who lack independent thought and rely on their good looks instead of honing their craft, have made Hollywood WORSE for women?  That may be a stretch.  Maybe I need some self-professed smart person to help me make that argument.

Bacall, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Joan Crawford…these women are legends.  Not just because they are superior, gifted actresses, but because you can feel their presence, their intellect, their “moxie” in every thing they did.

As a reformed frat guy I can tell you…these women had “balls!”

I have a friend.  An actress.  The one pictured above that you might not recognize.  Her resume is similar to Fox’s, before her lucky break in “Transformers.”  This actress is not an automaton.  Her politics are a unique blend of feminism, social liberalism, libertarianism, and hawkish neo-conservatism.  She has a business degree from BYU, although she’s never mentioned it to anyone to further her “smart” credentials.  When she walks into a party she doesn’t instantly turn the conversation into a discourse on her sexual habits a la Ms. Fox, nor does she sit by and let a comment about that “fascist George Bush” go by without a rebuttal.

Yet while Megan Fox was busy being pampered on the set of “Transformers,” this actress worked with me on the direct to video knock-off movie “Transmorphers.”  While Megan Fox sat in her trailer waiting for make-up, this actress did her own make-up, then stood outside in the freezing rain for 12 hours in an old junkyard near Topanga.  While Megan Fox pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, this actress got paid $50 a day.  No complaints.  No crying.  Just smiles and hard work.

Yes, Megan Fox, women in Hollywood still face issues and obstacles.  But not in the way that you think.  While you are gaming the system, being part of the problem and not the solution, others are advancing the cause despite you.

I know a couple of other actresses like my friend.  They feel alienated, blacklisted, and closed off.  Not because they are as attractive as Megan Fox and people can’t get past their looks.  Not solely because of the male stranglehold on Hollywood.  They feel out of place because they have “balls.”

And the last thing you want to be in the tolerant world of Hollywood is a woman with “balls.”

Megan Fox is clearly lacking a pair.

It’s in the walk.

Think of Mae West, hands caressing her Rubenesque hips, head tilted, not just sauntering, but oozing forward, the exaggerated female.

Elbows cocked and angled at his hips, moving with concentrated energy, Jimmy Cagney looks like a coiled spring about to explode.

Joan Crawford, leading with her linebacker shoulders, like a tank on the battlefield, determined, dangerous, unstoppable.

Spine rigid, arms glued to his side, plum straight steps—no motion in the hips or shoulders—eyes nailed to the distant horizon, Henry Fonda’s walk is a combination of cool reserve and righteous indignation.

Bette Davis, nervously wringing her hands—William Wyler once threatened to chain them down—as she paces back and forth in her pathologically unstable world.

Rapid fire mincing steps, hips and shoulders swaying, Marilyn Monroe is the archetype of the sexually charged woman, and yet simultaneously a little girl who is innocent of her immense power.

And then there is John Wayne.

His walk is odd.

Distinctive, but odd.

It’s a complex, disorienting, and ultimately elegant forward propulsion: long manly strides, elbows bent and poised—like a boxer locked into position—a distinctly feminine swooshing of the hips, and a pronounced case of pigeon toe.

Was Duke’s walk natural?

Or was it part of the John Wayne image, a carefully constructed bit of acting business?

Harry Carey, Jr., in his fascinating memoir, Company of Heroes: My Life as an Actor in the John Ford Stock Company, provides invaluable and deeply private insights into the famous John Wayne walk.

First, Harry Carey, Jr. sketches in some background on John Wayne’s intimate relationship with the great character actor Paul Fix (1901–1983) Carey’s father-in-law:

…Paul Fix had almost as much to do with Duke’s success as a screen actor as did John Ford. Paul Fix literally taught John Wayne what John Wayne knew about acting. He was the man who gave Duke his first insight into forming the mold which was to be his persona. Most people give Uncle Jack [John Ford] the credit for this, but the first man to put the John Wayne image into John Wayne’s head was Paul Fix.

Carey, Jr. discusses the early days, the B westerns, and journeyman actor John Wayne’s stage appearance that turned disastrous:

Paul first worked as an actor with Duke in those early westerns. In those days, Paul had a sort of slinky, haunted look about him, like a man who might steal or lie, so of course he was usually cast as a heavy; not the head honcho, though, the sly henchman. He played a lot of gangsters, along with Sheldon Leonard or Barton MacLane. Paul was very serious about acting, and he wrote many plays. He was always putting them on in the little theaters around Hollywood. He cast Duke in one of them, but Duke was so frightened of live theater that he overdosed on booze and made a total ass out of himself. His wife, Josephine [Alicia Saenz], was so furious she screamed from the audience, “You’re a bum—a drunken bum!” What a night in the theater! Little did they know that they were looking at the man who was to become the biggest movie star of all time.

Harry Carey, Jr. reveals how Paul Fix worked behind the scenes as an acting coach to John Wayne during the most important film of Duke’s career.

Duke used to tell Paul that he felt awkward in front of the camera. He said he didn’t know what to do with his hands; that he didn’t feel natural. Not too many years later, Duke got his big break when John Ford cast him as “The Ringo Kid” in Stagecoach. Duke was overwhelmed by this good news but paralyzed with fear that he wouldn’t be able to carry it off. He went to Paul for help. Without John Ford’s knowledge. Duke went to Paul’s house every night to go over the next day’s work while they were shooting in town.

Private and not so private acting coaches are not unusual in Hollywood. Montgomery Clift was so dependent on his acting coach Mira Rostova, that he put her on salary while shooting some of his most famous films. And much to the chagrin of his directors and co-stars, Clift, after every take, would anxiously look to Rostova—not the director—for approval or disapproval of his line readings.

“Not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk.”

And now Carey fills us in on the birth of the legendary John Wayne walk:

Because Duke was kind of heavy-footed and used to trudge more than walk, Paul told Duke to point his toes when he walked, and the “John Wayne walk” was born. Try it yourself. Take a step and point your toe, like you’re stabbing it into the ground—left foot, right foot. Your shoulders automatically move back and forth, and the hips follow, not unlike Marilyn Monroe’s walk. When Duke first did it, it was ballsey as hell. As the Wayne legend began to form, the walk became more pronounced. Rio Bravo or any of the “Rios” are good examples.

Hollywood stardom is a mysterious thing. In the days when the studio system dominated, the moguls consciously searched for the key to a players potential image. And then, once identified, the studio system—at its best, an incredible make-over machine—created, polished and ruthlessly exploited that star’s specific persona.

No wonder L.B. Mayer alternately broke down in rage and tears when he discovered that Andy Hardy/Mickey Rooney ran off in the middle of the night and married the young and sexy Ava Gardner. Mayer was terrified that the public would reject the incredibly profitable Andy Rooney series—innocence and apple pie—when they realized that small town, all American Andy/Mickey was actually something of a dog, hooking up with a hot 17-year old actress—not to mention a host of chorus girls, hookers and vulnerable starlets.

With Clark Gable it gradually became clear to the executives at MGM that he was a man’s man, possessed of a humorous glint in his eye that turned women to jelly. For Jean Arthur it was her sandpaper voice and hesitant delivery that conveyed a woman desperate for control, but on the edge of a melt down. Jean Harlow was perfect as the sexy, vulnerable, wise-cracking tootsie who didn’t take herself too seriously.

But since the demise of the studio system, Hollywood stardom has morphed into an eerie kind of tabloid celebrity. Movie stars no longer have an identifiable movie persona, in fact most work hard at subverting a fixed image. They take pride in grabbing movie roles that go against type. Contemporary actors want to prove that they have range, that they are versatile. Hence, absent a fixed address, the post-modern actor is, with rare exceptions, fated to be excluded from the pantheon of Hollywood immortals.

For John Wayne, after a long Hollywood apprenticeship, his stardom was defined and exquisitely refined as a particular kind of rugged American individual; a man, no matter how conflicted, who recognized the difference between good and evil—and strode across the silver screen like a colossus.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

12:45pm PST – Mildred Pierce (1945) – A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society. Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden Dir: Michael Curtiz BW-111 mins, TV-PG

An interesting exercise would be to watch a double feature of the just released “He’s Just Not That Into You” and today’s pick as example number 11,283 of what’s wrong with Big Hollywood. Liberals dominate Big Hollywood and more women are in positions of power than ever before, and yet “Into You,” like most female driven films today, alternately portrays its five female leads as home wreckers, one-dimensional neurotics, or pathetically needy near-stalkers — but all are as emotionally dependent on men as is possible. Compare that to Hollywood 64 years ago when men (many of them conservative) dominated the film industry and created a slew of top-shelf melodramas populated with complicated, flawed, but very human and usually very strong (at least at the fade) women like Mildred Pierce.

For her work here as a mother who goes too far in order to satisfy an ungrateful daughter, Joan Crawford would finally win the Best Actress Oscar she wanted badly enough to leave her home of two decades at MGM in order to sign with Warner Brothers. Good thing too, for this would become her defining role, and rightly so. Crawford’s thoroughly convincing performance carries the picture and makes you believe every melodramatic (in a good way) turn and twist of the plot.

Part noir, part soaper, “Mildred Pierce” is based on James M. Cain’s bestseller about a smart, independent woman blinded by maternal love. The story opens on her making a bad choice and then takes us through the journey required to help her realize that, including failed marriages, the rise and fall of a self-made business, and ultimately murder.

At the end of the film, when we leave Mildred, her life’s pretty much in shambles. However, we also know to what extent it’s possible that “happily ever after” is finally within her grasp. And not because  of some man who came to his senses (set to a familiar pop song) to complete her.