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Claudette Colbert (1948) Sun Valley – photographed by Earl Theisen. Getty Images

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Earl Theisen, my dad: Daughter finds negatives of Marilyn, more.

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Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.

Ida Lupino

Is it any wonder she turned to directing? In an era, I might add, when that was a nearly impossible career choice for a woman. Have times changed? Not much. The percentage of women directing films and TV now is under 10 percent. Will times change? Darlings, that is inevitable.

Back to glorious Ida Lupino, born of a long line of entertainers in London 1918, she was called to Hollywood in 1933. Two years later Ms. Lupino — becoming more and more canny about the studio system and the art of filmmaking, and desirous of something a little more pithy to do than wave a fan over Claudette Colbert’s head in Cleopatra — received her first studio rebuke, and her first suspension. She was often suspended from her contract in her long acting career. During one of these times in 1948, she decided to start working behind the lens. She wrote, she produced, and on her first independent feature the director was struck ill, and she took over.

“If Hollywood is to remain on the top of the film world, I know one thing for sure — there must be more experimentation with out-of-the-way film subjects,” declared Ida Lupino, the DGA’s second female director member and one of its most prolific. In her day, she “tackled subjects that were pretty daring at the time – unwed mothers, under the table payoffs in amateur tennis, a hitchhiker’s cross-country crime spree, bigamy and polio.” In the early 1950s, this was no small feat, especially under the constant scrutiny of the Production Code Administration. A pioneer of independent, low-budget films, she later made the transition to television, directing episodes for 56 different series. On the set, she preferred being called “mother” and avoided ordering her crew around. “I’d say, ‘Darlings, mother has a problem. I’d love to do this. Can you do it? It sounds kooky, but I want to do it. Now can you do it for me?’ And they do it – they just do it.” Her director’s chair read: “Mother of all of us.”

via The Director’s Guild of America: Ida Lupino.

If you read along on the blog you will know I am near completion on a novel about a Hollywood babysitter’s unlikely rise to studio boss. I’ve toyed with the idea of calling it Snowball in Hell, settled on You Don’t Own Me, and recently (and since it centers on the longstanding relationships of five women, who meet young and stand together) I’m toying with calling it You and I are Certainly Simpatico. Here’s to the pioneering spirit of Ida Lupino.

• • Vickie Lester

    I love this movie, and talk about being an impressionable child, I think if you had asked me at the time I would have said, “When I grow up I want to be a nun.”

    Reply
    • Gallivanta

      I just wanted to be a movie star like Hayley
• regularpop

  The quotes make her sound brassy and brilliant. Apparently, I need to watch some more Lupino films (acting & directing). The Hitchhiker is supposed to be great, but a review I read recently made it sound terrifying. Perhaps The Trouble with Angels is a better place to begin?

  Reply
  • Vickie Lester

    Trouble with Angles holds up remarkably well, and it’s charming and heartfelt (and I’m completely biased).

    Reply
    • regularpop

      Hayley Mills IS charming and heartfelt. That doesn’t sound like bias to me

I had a Preston Sturges film fest instead, and went to bed blissfully happy…movie magic…binge watching of the best kind .

The Lady Eve… In which card shark Barbara Stanwyck tries to swindle bashful scientist (and heir to a fortune) Henry Fonda, and loses her heart.

and The Palm Beach Story,  a romantic screwball comedy with wit and verve and wonderful performances…

How does a young lady who hops aboard a train in New York City without her luggage and ticket end up serenaded by “The Ale and Quail” club?

And, breakfast with a stranger dressed in a pajama top and blanket skirt?

You’ll have to watch “The Palm Beach Story” to find out, but if you’d like to see a delicious scene where she scores a ruby bracelet check in at noon.

First of all, hats off to one of my favorite blogs: The Automat | In which the unqualified gentleman looks at art. And, thank you Mr. Whittington for reminding me about Mr. Niven’s wonderful autobiography.

Ernst Lubitsch… wanted me to start immediately at Paramount in a very good part in “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife with Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert.

Working with Lubitsch in the company of such professional experts and such privately wonderful human beings as Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert was a joy that lasted about three months.

The screenplay was by another expert – Billy Wilder.

Lubitsch sat, like a little gnome, beside the camera, perched on a step ladder, giggling and hugging himself at all his own wonderful inventiveness. A vast cigar was always in his mouth. He was patient, understanding and encouraging: what more could an actor ask?

I learned major lessons about playing comedy during that time and will forever remember a statement of his: “nobody should play comedy unless they have a circus going on inside.”

Irving (Thalberg) and Norma (Shearer), like all the top movie people, had a private projection room in their home. One night Lubitsch brought down a print of “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” and they ran it after dinner for their friends.

I sat squirming with embarrassment throughout the showing but after it was all over, everyone, with one exception, was overly flattering and enthusiastic. Fairbanks and Sylvia, Merle, the Astaires, Paulette Goddard, and Frederick Lonsdale, all puffed me pleasantly. One guest sat silent in his chair. Finally, I could stand it no longer.

“What did you think, Mr. Chaplin?”

His answer constituted the greatest advice to any beginner in my profession.

“Don’t be like the majority of actors… don’t just stand around waiting for your turn to speak – learn to listen.”

“The Moon’s a Balloon” by David Niven

Claudette Colbert & The Magic of Cinema

There are some actresses whose names you don’t hear much anymore. It’s something to do with the passing of time; some stars are well-remembered, others, though they may have been as good if not better, are relatively little remarked-upon.
So, let’s talk about one of them, the glorious Claudette Colbert. For over a decade in the thirties and forties Claudette was a great star, often good in dramatic roles but  luminously wonderful in comedy. She was able to be sophisticated, lively, seductive, playful, intelligent, and altogether delicious. Quite apart from anything else she was radiantly sexy, she just had *it*! Her beautiful kittenlike face with its  mischievous eyes and adorable cheeks simply glowed in black and white. She may have said “By five in the afternoon I am tired and my face shows it”, which got her fired from 1948’s “State of the Union”, but who, really, could argue with that?! I was enchanted by her face as a boy and remain so now; the magic of cinema!

Claudette brought true zest to comedic roles and was at perhaps her best in two masterpieces for legendary directors, Preston Sturges’ “The Palm Beach Story”, and – the movie that made her a star – “It Happened One Night”, directed by Frank Capra and co-starring manly Clark Gable. Fans of classic comedy won’t need reminding of Claudette’s travails with the Ale and Quail Club (truly, absurdly hilarious!) or the romantic vicissitudes in “Story”, while “Night” is justly famous for the “Walls of Jericho” bed scene (not to forget Gable’s vestless chest!) and Claudette scandalously baring her thigh to attract a motorist’s attention when hitch-hiking! Certainly, Claudette could be hard to work with and said of Night after filming “I’ve just finished the worst picture in the world”, but, hey, nobody’s perfect! To see her at her best is still sheer delight.

THE WORLD IN A LIBRARY

Depending on what source you read, either printed books or e-readers
are doomed. Traditional publishing is in chaos while technology is
opening up new avenues for innovation (some of which are being used by
the hugely talented weblogsmith of this very site, Mrs Vickie
Lester!). Yet it’s important that we don’t allow our obsession with
new technologies to destroy what we have, contrary to popular belief NOT
EVERYONE has access to all of these technologies nor do they want it.
Technology provides us with many wonderful things some of which such
as weblogs or cellphones and emails open up vistas to those who
wouldn’t have had them before but it’s important that we don’t let new
technologies replace everything from the past because to do so would
be short-sighted and moronic. Not that I feel strongly about this or
anything! (If you disagree with this you may discuss it with me, I do
hope you won’t mind me sticking my fingers in  my ears while going
“La-la-la-la! Not listening” and intermittently sticking my tongue out
at you! I’m SO RUDE!)

After that intemperate rant, I’ll get to what I really want to talk
about: the Magic of Libraries. I remember getting my first library
card and though it may sound rather boring to you I was really
excited, here was a key to a new world or WORLDS. Worlds made of
words.

Libraries have remained special to me, from the smallest to the
grandest they represent not just knowledge but a gathering place for
fictional people, places, landscapes, states of being. And all you
have to be is a member to have access. Yes, a library card is key and
libraries themselves are symbolic of a kind of Narnian otherworld.
Here in Blighty we have some glorious old libraries, buildings that in
their impressive architecture and, in some cases, their histories and
that of those who have used them symbolize much of what libraries can
mean. However, what’s really meaningful about any library be it in
England or the U.S. or wherever  is that ANYONE can use them.

That’s the ultimate magic of a lending library. Beyond the beauty of
the buildings or anything else, the fact that they can be used, free
of charge, is a wonder. Just as any modern society without books is,
essentially, worthless and scary (you think that’s too harsh? Ha! I
didn’t come here today to bandy words, dear reader!) so to is the
prospect of one without libraries nightmarish and Orwellian. The
current economic Hades we’re going through has seen the demise of many
libraries in the United Kingdom and the diminuition of services, which
may seem small potatoes to some but the reduction in them shouldn’t be
seen as anything less than a disaster. It was with the invention of
lending libraries for all that those who would once have been able to
read few if any books were presented with the opportunity to
experience many other worlds with the result (arguably) that literacy
grew and the love of books was able to spread like a benign or divine
virus (inarguably). I don’t suppose it’ll come as a surprise that I
think people who argue that times have changed and that we no longer
need libraries are misguided at best, and lazy-minded, selfish, and
moronic at worst, but, hey, that’s part of my “charm”! Bwahahaha! I’ll
just add to that polemical address that apart from books libraries can
also provide solace, reading clubs, pilates classes (!), a place to
go, and many other services so to treat them as an anachronism would
be a Great and Grave Mistake.

Before I sign off, I’ll just conclude with a few of the things I
associate with libraries (now, now, falling asleep isn’t polite…)
and their magic: the scent of books, it may sound bonkos – which is
like “bonkers” but much worse! – but the smell of books seems
particularly piquant and transporting to me, something you certainly
don’t get with *turns up nose* a Kindle; dust moving in motes of light
from high windows in the library when I was a child; the thick music
of an Indian lady’s voice overheard as I read a book;

the thrill of finding a desired book or of discovering great books you
didn’t know existed; talking and flirting regularly with two
attractive library assistants – sisters, yet – named, ah, let’s say
Isobel and Isla (I must admit that being singularly unconfident and
ridiculously shy they had to approach me!)… Ah, well, I think I’ve
given myself enough rope… Please tell us your – good, funny,
unusual – experiences with libraries in the comments. Be Seeing You!

A little bird in the wardrobe department chirped this item in my ear –she was having a hard time getting actors under thirty to put on their underwear.

Besides the obvious issues of hygiene what you wear under your costume affects how the garments look on top. Children, it isn’t a question of free will, networks and the MPAA come down hard on odd protuberances and popping nipples. Okay?

Apparently this wasn’t a problem only in our era. (Insert shameless plug here.) If you watch carefully during THE PALM BEACH story, a delightful comedy released in 1942, you will see Joel McCrea’s penis fly out of his pajamas while pursuing Claudette Colbert (who was fully clothed, including hat and gloves, so don’t get the wrong idea) out of their New York apartment.

Maybe the censors at the time didn’t spot it, or maybe since WWII was going on they figured people had bigger fish to fry.

The Seven Wonders of Preston Sturges

In just four years, 1940–44, Preston Sturges wrote and directed seven classics reflecting the America he loved and laughed at–a fast-talking, unpredictable melting pot that seems more real than the visions of Frank Capra or John Ford. Then his luck ran out.

By Douglas McGrath

Of all the stupid vanities in a business that specializes in stupid vanities, the possessory credit takes the cake. That credit is the one that appears at the top of a film saying, “A film by _______,” the blank then implausibly being filled by the name of a single person, the director.

Let’s not get into how many other people—starting with the writer and continuing in essential ways through the cast, cinematographer, editor, and composer—influence the quality of a film. (Try to imagine the original choice of Shirley Temple instead of Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz or Mae West rather than Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard to understand how dependent a film’s tone is on the contributions of all its elements.)

The possessory credit is silly for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is that it’s redundant: we’ll see whom the film is by when we get to the other credits. But if anyone deserves this credit, it would have to be someone who has created a world in which the speech and actions and people, in which the tone and tenor of events, are as obviously the creation of one artist as a passage of Twain’s is obviously a passage of Twain’s and not of Charlotte Brontë’s, as a Renoir is never confused with a Picasso.

It is safe to say that no one ever mistook a film by Preston Sturges for a film by anyone else. This is not something you can say of most directors, including many fine ones: George Cukor, William Wyler, John Huston. While one might expect that it was George Cukor who directed Roman Holiday instead of William Wyler, one could never imagine anyone but Sturges behind any of the manic yet buttery pictures that bear his name.

Though the events in his films often border on the unreal, ironically his world resembles ours more than most movies do, because the Sturges universe is so ungentrified. The characters in a Sturges film are slickers and hicks, frantic, contemplative, melancholy, literate, sub-intelligent, vain, self-doubting, sentimental, cynical, hushed, and shouting. A hallmark of most artists is the consistency of their world—one thinks of the delicacy in René Clair’s work, the droll, intoxicating understatement of Lubitsch, the painful clamor of Jerry Lewis. But the Sturges world seems the product of a multiple-personality disorder. (Sturges used to dictate his scripts aloud to a secretary as he wrote them, and when he did, he convincingly played all the parts.) I can think of no other artist who keeps the delicate and the explosive so close together.

This collision of tones perhaps took its cue from his life. He was born in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. His mother, Mary, divorced Preston’s father when Preston was not quite three and moved with her son to Paris. On her first day there she met the celebrated dancer Isadora Duncan. Though Sturges would at times resent his mother’s fast friendship with Duncan, he owed the Duncan family an enormous debt. Almost as soon as they arrived in Paris, Sturges, always susceptible to respiratory trouble, came down with a pneumonia that no doctor could tame. Isadora Duncan’s mother arrived with a bottle of champagne, from which she fed him lifesaving spoonfuls until he was restored. “Champagne and Pneumonia”—it could be the title of a Sturges movie. It also aptly calls up the conflicting elements at work in his films: the effervescent and the feverish.

via The Seven Wonders of Preston Sturges | Vanity Fair.

Preston Sturges, center, flanked left to right by Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Claudette Colbert, and Rudy Vallée on the set of “The Palm Beach Story”.

My darlings, I first posted this the day after the Academy Awards in February, and I’m trotting it out again because; a) it’s possibly my favorite movie of all time, and b) I’m still working with my editor on the manuscript… and I feel certain he would have something to say about that semi-colon I just typed in .

It’s the day after… And, if you’re reading this any time before noon Pacific Standard Time I’m probably burrowed under my blankets and flat out sound asleep. About a month ago I finally figured out how to put film clips up on the blog (look, I’m middle-aged so cut me some slack, and yes I know the kid could do it in about 15 seconds, but he’s busy at school), the point is this is sooooo much more entertaining than anything I could come up with – so have some fun and watch.

I’m not a shopper, and considering who raised me that must have come as quite a shock. My mother, the erstwhile retail ninja, also was responsible for sitting me down when I was young and screening “The Palm Beach Story” – still one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. If only shopping was like this… effortless, indulgent, adventurous, and full of surprises.