ANNOUNCEMENT

Due to circumstances there haven't been any posts lately, as you will have noticed. This is just a temporary thing and we hope to resume service as usual in 2013!
Until then: a very Merry Christmas and best wishes for you and your loved ones for the new year!

  P.S. I know many of you are still waiting for the answer to Moviestar Morph 13 so here it is: Bela Lugosi and Kirk Douglas!

MOVIESTAR MORPH 13

Alright, after a small break we're picking up where we left it: at Moviestar Morph no. 13. Unlucky for some? Can you untangle the two actors genetically fused together here?

MOVIESTAR MORPH 12 - the answer

First off, my apologies for taking so long posting the answer to Moviestar Morph 12 - I didn't have internet access for 5 days.
Number 12 was an easy one, and most people guessed correctly.


The full morph:

MOVIESTAR MORPH 12

After the last morph, which was a little more difficult than usual, a new Moviestar Morph that might be easier to guess - name the two actresses!

MOVIE MAGAZINES: Romantic Movie Stories, June 1936

Romantic Movie Stories published full movie plots as short stories, illustrated with stills from the films they were based on. Today such a thing would be unthinkable - a publication spoiling the entire storylines and details of popular films! The magazine is padded with the usual gossip columns and a truly enormous amount of advertisements, which now do have their own retro-entertainment value.
Here are some of the nicest pages:

MOVIESTAR MORPH 11 - the answer

I'm not sure if it's a first but this time nobody guessed the morph correctly! Many saw Boris Karloff quite early on but just couldn't work out the second actor. It was Rock Hudson! Maybe Karloff's rough features were just too dominant to let Rock's more gentle ones through.



Here's the full morph:

RE(TRO)VIEW

RE(TRO)VIEW: The Big Shakedown (1934)

CAST:
Charles Farrell - Jimmy Morrell
Bette Davis - Norma Nelson
Ricardo Cortez - Dutch Barnes
Glenda Farrell - Lily Duran
Allen Jenkins - Lefty
Dewey Robinson - Slim

Directed by John Francis Dillon



★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ (warning: some spoilers)

To say that Bette Davis single-handedly saves this film from disaster would be an overstatement - but it's not too far from the truth.

The paperthin plot tells the tale of enthusuastic but dumb Jimmy Morell, pharmacist, who gets conned/blackmailed into making counterfeit toothpaste (!) by mob boss Dutch Barnes. Things go so well that Dutch gets another bright idea: counterfeit cosmetics and perfumes! By now Jimmy is in deep and though he protests, goes along with the scheme. His fiancé, smart cookie Norma (Davis) is against Jimmy's involvement from the start but, for unclear reasons, still stays with him.
Not knowing when to stop, Dutch now orders Jimmy to copy a popular brand of antiseptic. Jimmy tells him he's unable to copy the product exactly this time but Dutch doesn't care and makes him manufacture the inferior antiseptic anyway. Lily, Dutch's jilted lover, decides to rat him out to the company that produces the original antiseptic and is promptly murdered, preventing the company to sue him without Lily as their witness.
Feeling invincible, Dutch now forces Jimmy to produce fake digitalis, a heart stimulant. The fake stuff is useless because Jimmy can't get all of the needed ingredients. A melodramatic turn of events soon escalates into confrontation and gruesome death, followed by a very sudden happy end.

As manufactured and flimsy as the plot is, there still are things to be enjoyed in this studio quickie. For one thing, at just over an hour long, it doesn't outstay its welcome and the action is fairly fast-paced. Bette steals the show with minimal effort, showing glimpses of the actress she would soon become (her breakthrough film Of Human Bondage is from the same year). Everyone speaks in a loud stage voice and overall the acting is too broad for the screen. There are plenty of comical moments, especially with Dutch and his cronies but that is one of the problems with this film: it can't decide what it is. Is it a comedy or a crime thriller? A melodrama? It has elements of all three and never settles on one of them. The deaths in the story are too brutal to sit next to comedic moments with cartoonish gangsters.
Charles Farrell is alright as the not-too-bright pharmacist but you have to wonder what Norma sees in him. He means well, I suppose. Ricardo Cortez does very well as the crime boss, though subtlety is not in his dictionary. There aren't all that many scenes with Bette Davis but when she does appear, she lights up the screen and instantly lifts the film from mediocre studio fodder to something lightweight but entertaining.

MOVIESTAR MORPH 11

The last morph was perhaps just a little too easy so I made number 11 somewhat more difficult than usual. Two actors - who are they?

BORN TODAY

BORN TODAY: Montgomery Clift (1920 - 1966)



The only person I know who is in worse shape than I am.

- Marilyn Monroe on Montgomery Clift

With only 17 movies to his name, Montgomery Clift would have been a mostly forgotten actor from the post-war era today if it weren't for his enduring performances in those movies. Ofcourse his myth is enhanced by the stories of drug and alcohol abuse, depression, bisexuality and the car crash that changed his life. Most of his roles had a common theme: the suffering, conflicted young man - the kind of roles that Marlon Brando and James Dean also excelled in. The troubled Clift himself said: "Failure and its accompanying misery is for the artist his most vital source of creative energy" - a truth evident in any close-up of that handsome face on screen, his eyes usually doing most of the storytelling.

Clift had a very close friendship with Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he starred in three movies: A Place In the Sun (1951), Raintree Country (1957), and the excellent Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).
I don't think he made a single bad movie but my favourites are I Confess (1951), The Young Lions (1958) and Freud (1962).

The details of his much too short life and the circumstances that led to his premature death are certainly tragic, but his reputation as one of the best actors of his time will remain, along with the image of that haunting beauty.



with Elizabeth Taylor



with Paul Douglas



Monty in happier times with Marlon Brando:

MOVIESTAR MORPH 10 - the answer

Well, pretty much everyone got this one right but Daniel on Facebook was the first. Kudos!



The full sequence:

CASUAL FRIDAY

CASUAL FRIDAY: Joan Crawford dressed up as a discusthrowing metal chicken.

MOVIESTAR MORPH 10

Hurrah! We've reached number 10! I'd like to thank my parents, my loyal fans and you beautiful people in the dark out there for...OH, sorry. Got a little carried away.
So: number 10. A dark beauty, to be sure - but which two actresses donated their genes to make her?

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: The Big Lift (1950)



The Big Lift is a dramatisation of real events during the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, using real footage of the airlifts, making the film a historical document as well as an entertaining flick starring Montgomery Clift and Paul Douglas. The film is also populated by real servicemen, rather than actors or extras, adding another layer of authenticity. The love story is pure Hollywood, though, but it sits well within the confines of the limited scope of the main focus of the story. All round good performances, and the added interest of seeing part of actual history makes this film a pleasant 120 minutes to spend on the weekend.


Watch or download the full movie on archive.org.

BORN TODAY

BORN TODAY: Carole Lombard (1908 - 1942)



We can only guess at the movies and portrayals Carole Lombard would have gone on to give to the world hadn't her life been cut short in such a tragic way. Hollywood -and the world - was shocked to learn of the death of their most beloved (and highest-paid) star in 1942, following the plane crash that killed her at age 33.
Her magnetic presence in every film she made was more than a match for the leading men she was paired with, among them George Raft, William Powell, James Stewart, Cary Grant and, ofcourse, her great love Clark Gable. Gable and Lombard were married in 1939. Though Gable was to be married twice more in his life, he opted to be interred beside Lombard when he died in 1960.

Carole Lombard's last film, To Be or Not to Be (1942), was released posthumously.
She won an Academy Award for best actress in My Man Godfrey (1933).



Lombard with Ricardo Cortez and Paul Lukas






with Fred MacMurray





with Clark Gable

MOVIESTAR MORPH 9 - the answer

James Cagney was the most obvious half of this morph and many identified him. There were a lot of diverse guesses for the other half and some finally identified Tyrone Power - but none as fast as Eustacia Vye, over at Facebook, who guessed both correctly almost instantly!



The full morph sequence:

MOVIESTAR MORPH 9

Suddenly it's October - how did that happen? High time for another Moviestar Morph!
This charming fella is made up of two actors who were born in different centuries, one known for his tough guy portrayals, the other for his romantic heroes. So who are they?

BORN TODAY

BORN TODAY: Greer Garson (1904–1996)




The British Greer Garson was one of the major box office draws for MGM studios, especially in the forties. She received an impressive seven Academy Award nominations - starting with her first Hollywood role in Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939). Her only actual win was for Mrs. Miniver (1942) - and deservedly so. She was responsible for the Academy issuing time limits on acceptance speeches - hers was five minutes and thirty seconds (!), a record that still stands. The actor who played her son in the movie would later become her husband.
Other memorable performances by Garson were in films like Pride and Prejudice (1940), Madame Curie (1943), and, my personal favourite, Random Harvest (1942), a somewhat far-fetched melodrama about amnesia, lost love, more amnesia and a happy ending. The picture received multiple Academy Award nominations, Best Film and Best Actor (Ronald Colman) among them. Garson wasn't nominated because her nomination for Mrs. Miniver that same year made her ineligible.
Greer Garson was a classy actress, her wit and personal charm were her strongest features. Always engaging, I've not seen her give a bad performance.

Quote: "I do wish I could tell you my age but it's impossible. It keeps changing all the time!"




With Walter Pidgeon in Mrs. Miniver (1942)

MOVIESTAR MORPH 8 - the answer

Despite my incorrect claim that she won an Oscar, a lot of people still guessed Judy Garland correctly (ofcourse the one time that I don't bother checking a fact I get it wrong! Who knew - she never won a thing!). Alyssa LM was the smarty pants who recognized Shirley MacLaine as the second actress - well done!



Here's the full morph sequence:

MOVIESTAR MORPH 8

Number 8! Hmmm...who are these two very talented ladies spliced together? They were born twelve years apart, they both have family members who became famous actors in their own right!

MOVIESTAR MORPH 7 - the answer

This Moviestar Morph was a little easier than usual and a lot of people identified both actors correctly. I used two of my blog friend Patti's favourite actors, as she had kind of requested - as an exception, by the way!


(I think the end result kind of looks like Liam Neeson!)

As usual, here's the full morph sequence:

MOVIE MAGAZINES

MOVIE MAGAZINES: Film Pictorial, October 1936

I have a collection of old movie magazines from which I will pick an issue now and then and show you some of the articles, reviews and gossip of the time.
First up is an issue of Film Pictorial from 1936, with cover girl Merle Oberon, who had just starred in These Three (1936), a William Wyler picture also starring Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea, which was a version of The Children's Hour (William Wyler later, rather splendidly, remade the film in 1961 with the lesbian theme intact from the play with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine ). The same-sex origins of the story are never mentioned in the accompanying two-page article, calling the picture a 'drama of school life' instead.



Then there's an article about James Cagney who, apparently, is angry because he's convinced he's been blacklisted by Hollywood because he hasn't worked for a year. (Cagney had just fought Warner Brothers about his contract, and more or less won. However, other studios were now not so keen to hire him as they saw him as a troublemaker. Bette Davis would later go through an almost identical phase in her career.)
Another article, under the headline 'HUNTED!',tells how George Brent had on numerous occassions escaped death. He had been an Irish freedom fighter before becoming a star and was forever on the run from the authorities. The whole piece smells of a lot of studio image-building. If the article is to be believed he virtually single-handedly fought the English for his native Ireland and he was the most wanted man in Britain.



Which brings us to the gossip pages, which don't seem to be very gossipy at all. Ann Harding had a difficult divorce, Irene Dunne is moving into a new home ("It's all to be white! White rugs, Chippendale furniture painted white, sculptures in white Carrara marble. The only touch of colour will be my green pet turtle!"), The Marx Brothers are taking forever filming their new picture A Day At The Races, there's a budding romance between 'young' Jimmy Stewart and Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor is overwhelmed by adoring fans wherever he goes, restricting his mobility and he receives over 8000 letters a week.

One of the most entertaining features in the magazine are the letters from readers. Here's a few samples:

- "Sir, Margaret Sullavan should speak her lines more clearly, instead of sounding as if she were suffering from a severe bronchial complaint!"

- "In recent films such as The Tunnel and Things To Come, the new invention of television has been prominently featured. There seems little doubt that, within a few years, it will have advanced to such an extent as to form part of our home lives, much as the radio does today. Accepting this as a fact, what steps will the film industry take to combat this threat?"

- "Patric Knowles is far more attractive and manly than Robert Taylor will ever be!"

Ofcourse there are some great ads in the magazine as well:

MOVIESTAR MORPH 7

A male morph again this time - who are the two famous actors merged together? They were born five years apart. They've received five Academy Award nominations total. Combined, they appeared in over 100 movies.