Glenda Farrell, the fast-talking, wisecracking blonde of early Warner Bros. films, was born in Enid, Oklahoma, probably in 1901. Some sources cite 1904, but if the U.S. Census is to be believed, Ms. Farrell's publicity people probably encouraged the misconception.

But what's three years? Whether she started acting at 7 or 10 as (what else?) Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Glenda Farrell knew what she wanted and worked very hard to get it. She preferred stage work to movies, but appeared in several silent films in uncredited parts before making a name for herself on Broadway. Her success in theatre led to a contract with Warner Brothers anyway, and Farrell became the studio's go-to gun moll, girl reporter, and smart-aleck best friend; second leads, but sturdy ones. She was often paired with pal Joan Blondell in the early 30s, but also supported the likes of Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, and Kay Francis.

She is probably best known as the eponymous star of the Torchy Blane series, an agreeable B series about a plucky reporter who'd do anything to get a story. But Farrell grew tired of being typecast and took fewer roles on the screen, preferring the range of opportunity Broadway offered.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, Farrell's screen appearances were primarily on television. In 1963 she won an Emmy for her recurring role on Ben Casey, and took the occasional role in film up until 1970, the year before her death. Even though several sources claim that Glenda Farrell was not a smoker -- and even though there's many an excellent photo out there of Glenda Farrell spectacularly posed with a cigarette -- it was lung cancer that took her on May 1, 1971, at age 66 or 70, depending.

She was a joy to watch, particularly in those buddy pictures with Joan Blondell. For a gal who was often shooting three pictures at once in those years, Glenda Farrell seemed to be having an awfully good time.

My memory of this film is fonder than it should be. It appeals to me because Mickey Rooney is restrained and affecting in it and certain scenes were etched in my memory from the first time I saw it on television a thousand years ago.

But I forgot about the soundtrack. And the harp. And the platitudes. And the dripping sentimentality. Oh god, and the folk dancing -- THAT slipped my mind. But if all I retained, lo these many years, is Rooney's truly excellent performance, the cinematography, the sudden overwhelming grief brought on by a wartime telegram, and Jackie "Butch" Jenkins generally, maybe it's worth the slog through molasses.

The story opens under the narration of the late Matthew Macauley (Ray Collins) who soothes us with the idea that although he is dead, his "self" lives on in the places he frequented, the town he called home (mythical, allegorical, Ithaca, California) and the family he left behind: 6-year-old Ulysses (Butch Jenkins), high schooler Homer (Mickey Rooney), next oldest Bess (Donna Reed), eldest son, Marcus (Van Johnson), a private in the US. army about to go to combat, and wife Kate (Fay Bainter).

Now that dad's dead and Marcus has joined the army, Homer is the "man" of the house and has recently taken a job at the local telegraph office. His boss is sturdy, up-and-comer, Tom Spangler (James Craig), who used to be Ithaca's 220 low hurdle champion, but who now runs the Western Union office and keeps the telegraph operator, drunken, world-weary old man Grogan (Frank Morgan) in coffee and pie.  Spangler is also engaged to Diana something-or-other (Marsha Hunt), a frivolous debutante, who is in this movie, one supposes, to show us that all classes are sacrificing for the war and that the rich are people too. She also gets to comment on the quaint folk dancing during the "It's a Small World" portion of the film that showcases the melting pot that is America. One feels for Marsha Hunt.

It's Homer's job to deliver telegrams all over town --  the sad as well as the singing ones -- to keep Mr. Grogan sober enough to type out the messages as they come in, and to be on the receiving end of whatever lengthy pearls of wisdom come from an adult's mouth. Could be his teacher, Mr. Spangler, his dear mother, why, even a soldier on leave. Everyone has something to impart.

The soldiers are all fine young men: they sing hymns and think about their mothers or their girls, even when three of them (a super young Robert Mitchum, Barry Nelson, and Don DeFore) meet Bess and her friend Mary (Marcus's fiancée) and take them to the movies. No monkey business or threat of impropriety; this isn't Crossfire. And here's a bit of cinephilia: the hymn all the boys sing together on the transport train is the same one older Robert Mitchum sings menacingly throughout Night of the Hunter some years later. Telling...

But it was 1943, smack in the middle of the war (for the U.S. anyway) and lots of young people were heading off to possibly die, certainly to be forever changed, leaving families and friends behind. I'd like to think this movie made people feel better about the worry. Some of it is beautiful and painful, and some of it is maudlin and corny, but in spite of feeling socked in the face every so often with a bag of maple syrup, this movie makes me cry and makes me hope that audiences in 1943 watching it cried together and felt like maybe all their hardships were worth it.

But seriously, a harp?

This post is my entry for the MGM Blogathon, sponsored by Silver Scenes.

Please check out all the fabulous posts by other classic movie bloggers: More stars than there are in heaven.

One forgets that there were only three Doris Day/Rock Hudson/Tony Randall films, so good was their chemistry. Send Me No Flowers is the last of them, and unlike the other two, Rock and Doris start out married and very well-acquainted with each other. 

George (Rock) and Judy (Doris) Kimball have everything: a lovely home in the suburbs with the world's largest medicine cabinet (this is important), the latest model car, a gossipy milkman, and best friend, Arnold (Tony Randall), living right next door. George is a platinum-level hypochondriac who takes pills for everything. He's also a health nut by 1964 standards; a hipster by ours. He drinks carrot juice, wheat tea, eats organic foods with no animal fats, but takes sleeping pills because he's so anxious.

Or at least he thinks they're sleeping pills. Judy has been replacing the Seconal in each capsule with white sugar for the last five years, knowing George will sleep like a baby.

One day, George visits his long-suffering physician, Dr. Morrisey (veteran character actor, Edward Andrews), to get something for his chest pains (indigestion) and asks about the cardiogram he made the doctor do a couple weeks before. While in the office, he overhears the doctor receiving very bad results of another patient's cardiogram and thinks the results are his. Dr. Morrisey tells the consulting physician over the phone that he won't tell the patient that he has only two weeks to live, because, well, why upset the guy? George thinks Doc Morrisey is talking about him and now his worst fears have been realized.

The rest of the film is about George and Arnold trying to find Judy a suitable husband to take care of her after he shuffles this mortal coil in roughly two weeks. There's a dream about Judy and the groovy young delivery boy, some window shopping for likely candidates at the country club, until finally they find the friends land on Bert (Clint Walker), a millionaire who happens to be Judy's old boyfriend. Judy starts to get suspicious at George's constantly throwing Bert in her way.

The situation is further complicated by the plight of the Kimballs' neighbors, the Bullards, who are getting a divorce. We don't ever see Mr. Bullard, but Linda Bullard (Patricia Barry) is an attractive redhead who is about to be pounced on by George's skeevy wolf pal, Winnie Burr (Hal March). Judy happens upon George trying to warn Linda of Winnie's intentions and gets the wrong idea when she sees Linda kiss George in thanks.

Guess what? It all works out in the end, and along the way we get great friend business between George and Arnold (the way Tony Randall sizes up Bert is hilarious); some beautiful righteous indignation from Judy (which no one does that better or cuter than Doris Day), and Paul Lynde as an enthusiastic funeral director,


If there had been an Oscar for reaction shots, Tony Randall would have won it every time.

Apparently, she "loathed playing piano for people; always have," but was quite good at it and made several records.

I had no idea Diana Lynn played piano at all, let alone that her virtuosity is what got her into pictures in the first place. Play she did, and in her first two pictures, the pre-teen was billed at "Dolly" Loehr until 1942, when Paramount signed her to a long-term contract and changed her name to "Diana Lynn."

Lynn's first feature role was as Ray Milland's fiancee (Rita Johnson)'s kid sister in The Major and the Minor  (1942), and while she's not in it for long, she's pivotal -- wise, canny, and helpful. Similarly, in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Lynn plays a smarter, infinitely more mature kid sister to poor ol' Betty Hutton.

As with many other child actors that preceded her, Diana Lynn got fewer and roles as she got older. It's not a little confounding, because she played such sophisticated, mature kids, but what do I know? In the 1950s, she worked mainly on television, but did have an adult lead opposite Ronald Reagan in Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), which may very well have been the last straw. She also performed on Broadway and on the London stage.

Her first marriage was in 1948 to architect John C. Lindsay, whom she divorced in 1953. Several years later, she married Mortimer Hall, son of Dorothy Schiff, publisher of the New York Post. Lynn felt that it was possible to balance career and family, and when interviewed in the 1960s about how she managed it all, she said, "I don't burden my husband with every detail of stagecraft...[and] I try to be instinctive about raising my children. I try to hear what they're not saying. It's working out. They're nice; they're happy; they've got manners." 

Pretty sensible.

She had been running a fledgling travel agency in New York City when Paramount offered her the lead role in the film adaptation of Joan Didion's novel, Play It as It Lays. Just before shooting began, Lynn had a fatal stroke and died at the age of 45 on December 18, 1971. She left behind her husband and four children, two of whom, Dolly and Daisy, are in show business today.

I recommend Miracle of Morgan's Creek for a happy example of this fine actress' work.

Actually one of those Reveres, Anne Revere was born in Manhattan and educated at Wellesley College. She studied at the American Laboratory Theatre, the New York-based drama school that trained such theatre luminaries as Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler.

After enjoying success on Broadway in the early 1930s, Revere went to Hollywood to reprise her stage role in the film version of the play, Double Door (1934), but didn't get another film role until 1940. This time, she enjoyed regular work as a character actress, playing mostly the worried, poor, or otherwise careworn mother of the lead actor.

The work dried up abruptly in 1951 after Revere exercised her Fifth Amendment rights before the House Un-American Activities Committee. She had just finished a plum role in the film A Place in the Sun  (1951) as Montgomery Clift's mother, but the studio whittled it down to practically nothing in response. She didn't appear in another film until nearly 20 years later. Revere resigned from her position on the board of the Screen Actors Guild that same year.

The now blacklisted Academy-Award-Winning actress (Best Supporting Actress 1944, National Velvet) and her husband, writer and actor Samuel Rosen, ran a theatre school in Los Angeles for a time, then went back to New York to work on the stage. She won a Tony in 1961 for her performance in Lillian Hellman's, "Toys in the Attic," and also appeared on television in several soap operas.

So work she did, and without regret: "I'm a free thinking Yankee rebel and nobody's going to tell me what to do!" A sentiment her ancestor, Paul, could certainly get behind.

Now I feel bad for continually mixing her up with Flora Robson in my youth.

I love that The Fortune Cookie is structured like a caper film. The adventure is about two guys trying to make big money out of a small accident: will they get the money? will they give up? will they get caught?  It's comparatively small-time for a caper film -- no jewels or art to be stolen, but all is set to that trademark Billy Wilder dialog, unfolding through flawed, slightly unlikable characters, and that makes it big.

Jack Lemmon plays Harry Hinkle, a sports cameraman who is injured while covering a football game by one of the players, Luther "Boom Boom" Jackson (Ron Rich). While in the hospital, Hinkle's brother-in-law, "Whiplash Wille" Gingrich (Walter Matthau), convinces Harry to sue the football team for damages, defraud the insurance companies, and cash in with a huge settlement. The prospect of paying out half a million bucks to "Shyster Gingrich" (an oft-repeated phrase that makes me giggle every time) is too much for the insurance company, so they hire crack detective Chester Purkey (Wilder stable actor Cliff Osmond) to put Hinkle under surveillance in the hopes of discovering fraud.

The more lying Hinkle has to do, however, the less comfortable he becomes with the whole scheme. He's fine with using his injury to win back the affections of his crummy ex-wife, Sandy (Judi West), a pretty if unpleasant woman who is eager to get a piece of the action. But Harry is less happy about deceiving Boom-Boom, who feels so guilty for causing the injury that he's been taking time away from the team to take care of Harry, and in the process, is getting fined and benched for missing so much practice.

Boom-Boom is also beginning to drink, plays poorly on the field, and is getting into bar fights. On the evening Gingrich sews up a $200,000 settlement, Boom-Boom is arrested on a drunk and disorderly charge. Seeing how upset Hinkle is over the plight of his football player friend -- and in one last effort to prove fraud -- Purkey decides to pay the "invalid" a visit and do a little race-baiting to get a literal rise out of Harry. 

It works. But it also all works out: Sandy is shown up to be the gold-digger she is, Gingrich makes lemonade out of the lemons that are the pieces of a torn-up settlement check, and Hinkle helps his friend get back on track.

No one is better than Walter Matthau at fast-talking shysterism. During the making of this film, Matthau had a heart attack and all production stopped while he recovered. During said recovery, Matthau lost 30 pounds and had to wear a heavy coat for the remainder of the shooting for continuity's sake. The Fortune Cookie was also the first time Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon were teamed up in a film, and that turned out pretty well.

I feel sorriest for Lurene Tuttle, who plays Hinkle's mother in this film, because her dialog consists mostly of screams and sobs. She's very good at it, but it's a waste of some good potential mom acting.

The Fortune Cookie is a charming movie about the problems of cheating -- on your family, your friends, and the system. It's also ahead of its time in the treatment of friendship between a white guy and  black guy without it being really about that. Refreshing and subtly revolutionary for a very racially charged time. But make sure you remember where you filed the DVD or you'll have to watch it streaming with Polish subtitles on YouTube.

This post is my (late) contribution to The Billy Wilder Blogathon, hosted by Outspoken & Freckled and Once Upon a Screen.

Please check out all the other bloggers who managed to get their entries in on time!

Ralph Bellamy began acting as soon as he was able, running away from his Chicago home to join a repertory company right after high school. On the road he did every kind of theater work, from tent shows to the Chautauqua circuit. By the time he was 23, he ran his own troupe and performed all over the country, eventually landing on Broadway. His work on the stage landed him offers from Hollywood studios and off he went.

Bellamy made his film debut in 1931 as a gangster in a Wallace Beery picture called The Secret Six and worked steadily as a second lead until he got tired of being typecast as the dopey "new man" of the female lead -- even though he was so damned good at it! 

He took a break from movies and split his time between Broadway and television during those great early days when "Playhouse" and "Studio" programs brought drama to the small screen. During this period, Bellamy became a founder and board member of the Screen Actor's Guild and served as a much-reelected president of Actor's Equity. In that role, he helped navigate the troubled waters of the McCarthy Era by drafting guidelines for protecting actors against unfounded charges of Communist sympathies. He is also credited for making the tax code more just for actors whose earnings tend to fluctuate wildly between gigs.

The last of his 100+ film roles was as Richard Gere's powerful business associate in Pretty Woman (1990), a silly movie, but a successful one, and not a bad note to end on. 

Ralph Bellamy died on November 29, 1991 after a long illness at the age of 87. 

Felt like a bit of color and despair today, and even though Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman is in glorious black and white, Susan Hayward is always in color to me. The story is allegedly based on Bing Crosby's first wife, Dixie Lee, who gave up her singing career when they married and developed a problem with alcohol. In this film, Hayward plays Angelica "Angie" Evans, the nightclub singing wife of Ken Conway (Lee Bowman), an up-and-coming radio crooner. When the two marry, Angie quits show business to support her husband's career. Guess what happens next?

Ken, with the help of his songwriting partner, Steve Nelson (Eddie Albert), becomes a big star and sets up Angie in a beautiful penthouse apartment in New York City with truckloads of cash, a very well-stocked bar, and a household staff to look after her and their infant daughter, also called Angie. With nothing to do and no experience with the social expectations her husband's success demands, Angie begins to feel lost.

Ken means well, but as everyone around him knows, Angie Sr. likes to take a little drink now and again to build up her confidence. She used to have to have two snorts before performing when she was working, and now that she isn't working, there is more time and opportunity to do so. It doesn't help that Ken is away on tour a lot and that his lovely crooning attracts many a bobby-soxer, or that his super-efficient assistant is a beautiful young brunette called Martha (Marsha Hunt).

The more successful Ken becomes, the lonelier Angie gets and the less able the two are to connect in helpful ways. She starts hitting the sauce a lot harder and he doesn't know how to help her. Eventually, Martha starts taking over hostessing and other formerly wifely duties (well, not all of them) and winds up in love with Ken. 

Not a cheerful movie, in other words, even though it was written in part by Dorothy Parker. Smash-Up was billed as the woman's version of The Lost Weekend and earned Susan Hayward the first of her five Academy Award nominations. It's a good performance, but the movie is only a little better than average.

Eddie Albert does a sensitive and affecting job as the best friend who sees all of this coming. He also plays his own guitar. Who knew?

Dick Moore is one of those actors I keep seeing, but  have never paid enough attention to. His is a distinctive look, with those large, brown eyes, and general sweetness. 

Moore's career began at age 18 months in the film, The Beloved Rogue (1927), as baby John Barrymore and continued fairly steadily until he retired from acting in 1957 at the ripe old age of 29. Like many child performers before him, the lion's share of his work and box office appeal occurred before he turned 10, by which time he had made 52 pictures, not the least of which were a year's worth of the early "Our Gang" shorts.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Moore had a fairly good run in juvenile parts through the 1940s, and even took time to finish college and serve in the Second World War. A fact often cited during this period in his career is that he was the actor chosen to give Shirley Temple her first screen kiss. It was his first kiss ever, but not hers, as she was fond of saying. Just seems like something to mention.

By the end of the decade, the parts did begin to dry up and Moore turned to television for a while before quitting acting altogether, Afterward, Moore became an editor and public relations man for Actors Equity and had a very successful post-film career.

In 1984, Dick Moore interviewed 31 former child actors for his book Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (But don't have sex or take the car), a fascinating, sad and sensitive insight into the lives and problems faced by his cohort during Hollywood's golden age. It was in the process of writing this book that Moore met and began dating Jane Powell, an actress who survived child stardom in much the same way he did. They married in 1988 and are together to this day.

You know when somebody asks you what kind of superpower you'd like, you're supposed to answer something like "invisibility" or "x-ray vision" or something like that, but I'd want Paul Lynde's heroic ability to say and get away with some of the s*** he did on Hollywood Squares. 

Known mostly for his work on television games shows and sit-coms, Paul Lynde started his show business career as a stand-up comic in New York City in the late 1940s. His Broadway debut was in the musical comedy revue, New Faces of 1952, which was later made into a film. From there, Lynde guest starred on a number of TV comedies and returned to Broadway to play what later would be his most famous screen role, Harry MacAfee, the beleaguered father in Bye Bye Birdie.

It's hard to recall the first time I became aware of Paul Lynde, because he was kind of in everything during the early 1970s, my formative TV years: Bewitched  as Endora's jokester brother, Uncle Arthur; the voice of the Hooded Claw in The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (and the only thing that made that cartoon watchable); guesting on I Dream of Jeannie or  Love, American Style; voicing Templeton the rat in Charlotte's Web; and, of course, Hollywood Squares, where he'd make jokes I knew were funny, but didn't know why.

And yet, I never did watch the shows developed for him. Apparently, not many other people watched The Paul Lynde Show (1972-1973) or The New Temperatures Rising Show (1973-1974) either, and both were canceled without much fanfare. Already a heavy drinker, Lynde became more alcohol and drug dependent after the failure of the sitcoms and was arrested a number of times for public intoxication. He continued to work, but as a game show panelist or guest star in other people's shows.

Paul Lynde's sexuality was an open secret in Hollywood, and indeed, was the theme of many of his funniest one-liners from Hollywood Squares:

Peter Marshall: What is a pullet?
Paul Lynde: A little show of affection.

Peter Marshall: Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.

Peter Marshall: According to the old song, what's breaking up that old gang of mine?
Paul Lynde: Anita Bryant!

In the Salon interview with Lynde's biographers, Lynde emerges as both a pioneer for gay humor in popular culture and as a symbol of "a self-loathing era for gay culture." He also turns out to have been a mean drunk, not a little racist, and a pretty unhappy person.

For the last couple years of his life, Paul Lynde quit drugs and alcohol and became a spokesperson for Weight Watchers. Alas, the years that preceded his attempt at a healthier lifestyle seemed to win out, and Paul Lynde died of cardiac arrest attributed to extreme substance abuse in 1982. He was only 55 years old.