THE POSTMAN—At Twentieth Century-Fox Studios reported that Don Ameche’s fan mail was running only slightly behind Shirley Temple’s and Production Chief Darryl F. Zanack realized that the moment of Ameche’s stardom was at hand.

(Read More)

How The Lane Sisters Rose to Fame
Their devoted mother tells all. A blithe, moving saga of struggle and success.
by Cora B. Lane
March 15, 1939
Liberty

At seventeen, when I was working on my brother’s newspaper in Indiana, I had one ambition: To become a big-city reporter. So I married and became a small-town housewife. In the course of time, mother of five girls: Leota, Martha, Lola, Rosemary, and Priscilla.

“If you’d just adopt four children,” Rosemary suggested hopefully once, very hopefully, “we’d have a baseball team!”

But we had plenty of problems without worrying about full-sized teams. Indianoia, Iowa, where we lived, was the typical insular American town. Thirty-five hundred inhabitants in the heart of the corn belt. We had our county fairs, church bazaars, our rigid moral principles and even more rigid prejudices. (I’ll never forget the furor it created when I first put the girls in basketball bloomers!)

(Read More)

By HOWARD SHARPE
January 1937 – Movie Mirror

NELSON EDDY and I sat in the living room of his house in Beverly Hills chatting lazily of vague matters. There was a fire and there was rain outside the windows and the air was pale with cigarette smoke.

Nelson’s secretary had a terrifying stack of neatly opened mail on his desk. At my quizzical look, because I know the very heavy schedule under which he works, he smiled and she looked unperturbed and pleasantly cool in the face of this volume of work.

“It’s really not that much of a burden on me,” he laughed, and I noted that each letter was lined and checked; some sort of code was obviously in work.

“Any new requests this time?”

“Basically, no,” she replied. “But on these,” indicating a lesser pile of letters, “you will want to give extra time.”

“This evening, after dinner?”

“Right.”

“And the fate of that awesome balance?” I intruded.

“We do it this way because I like to keep my mail directly in hand. But,” he smiled, “broadly speaking, the public has exactly forty-six questions that they ask over and over. To date, not a single one has been asked less than a hundred times and some of them have turned up thousands of times—I answer the ones that require individual thought or counsel, that’s all.”

I said, “If thousands of people write you, all asking the same questions, then apparently they want to know the answers and there’s nothing egocentric about giving them at all. Now then supposing you scribble out the whole lot and dictate your honest replies to each and we’ll not only give the public what it wants but we’ll have a good portrait of your personal character as well.”
And it was so.

Question: Why didn’t you marry Jeanette MacDonald?

(Read More)

Photoplay
August 1941

Days to remember from an ace director about a redhead the marquees call Rita Hayworth and whom he calls “all emotion”

RITA HAYWORTH has to work with other directors. I have to work with other stars. Therefore it is, I suppose, very indiscreet of me to say that she is my favorite star—and I hope I am her favorite director. But that is what she is and that is what I hope I am.

I regard Rita as one of the most beautiful, one of the most talented, and one of the sweetest of human beings. We have made three pictures together so far—her first essay into real acting, “The Lady in Question” in 1940, and her two top hits, “Cover Girl” and “Gilda.” Personally, I wish we were going to make another thirty together.

There’s a lot of articles coming your way.  I’ve added 16 more articles over the past couple days.  Look for more to come.  I’m making up for being bad about not updating as intended every single day––So, here’s hoping I can catch up and keep with it.

Judy Garland
A Garland for Beauty
This Is What I Believe
Let’s Get Personal

Dorothy Lamour
How to Spoil a Romantic Moment

Alice Faye
Baby of the Family
Million Dollar Baby

Eleanor Powell
Dancing Lady

Ginger Rogers
Ginger’s Mama Speaks Her Piece
A Tribute to Ginger

Bing Crosby
Why Girls Can’t Resist Him

John Payne
The Best Son A Mother Ever Had

Rita Hayworth
Why Vic Will Never Forget Rita Hayworth

Jeanette MacDonald
Is Jeanette MacDonald Outgrowing Hollywood?

Dick Powell
And Father is Doing Well

Dick Haymes
Who Said Divorce?
It’s a Joke, Son

By Barbara Hayes
Photoplay, September 1937

AM still agape over the revelation of the most daring piece of deception ever perpetrated in Hollywood.

The author of it is Gene Raymond, the last person in the world I would have suspected of any such conniving. Yet for ten months—nearly a year, mind you!—Gene actually lived a double life as the mysterious ” Mr. John Morgan.”

In this audacious masquerade he succeeded not only in duping a town where nobody has ever been able to keep things under cover, but in hoodwinking his bride-to-be.

It was at eight o’clock one night that Gene first donned his disguise and so began the amazing series of events which were to launch him on his precarious Jekyll-Hyde career. That he got away with it, through elaborate lies and deepest subterfuge, gives evidence that he is not only a remarkable actor, but a man of daring and infinite resource.

On this evening, a few hours earlier, Gene had driven his fiancee to her home in Hollywood. Now, as he appeared before a deserted house among the winding hills of Bel-Air, no one would have recognized him. A hat was pulled down over his telltale blond hair, a muffler swathed his chin, and he carried a handkerchief ready to press to his face should any strangers pass. Gene Raymond had become Mr. John Morgan.

He walked briskly across the yard to the dark house. It was a large and rather rambling place, weeds grew along the walk, and a cold wind rustled through the gables.

The murky moonlight faintly revealed three people waiting in the shadows for Mr. Morgan. One of them was a lady who was, for a time, to be known only as “Mrs. Shux.”  She was to become a guiding genius in the conspiracy that was afoot, through all its astonishing ramifications. The other two were men intimately known to Gene Raymond.

(Read More)

I had part II of this article posted for ages–and I mean over 7 years, possibly more.  It’s taken me this long to actually get part I in my hands.  So, without further ado, but with much fan faire:

Judy Garland’s Gay Life Story

By Judy Garland (as told to Gladys Hall)

Screenland December 1940 – January 1941

PART I

I THINK First Things are the best things. “Wasn’t it Robert Louis Stevenson who said that first sunsets, first loves, all the things we see for the first time, all the first experiences we have, are always best? Anyway, think so. I know I’ll always remember, most clearly and deeply and forever, the first things that have happened to me in my first eighteen years. The things that have happened to me in my first (and only) “Past,” you might say, since now that I am eighteen, I think I can be said to have a Past. So, I got to thinking that maybe I’d write my first Life Story my own self, in my own way. My “own way” probably won’t be the Proper Way, at all. The Proper Way to write an Autobiography, I mean. Because I’m just going to sort of talk out loud, or write out loud, to my mother, to my friends, to my fans. I’m just

going to go on and on, sort of Revealing to them all the Important, First Things (important to me, that is) that have made up my Past.

Like, for instance, my first day on this earth, which is certainly the first, First Thing! Well, Mom, as you may remember, my first day on this earth was the day of June 10, 1922—(I seem to remember that movie girls don’t give the year of their birth—oh, well!)—and you may also recollect, Mom, that I first opened my eyes in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. You’ve got it down in my baby book that I weighed eight pounds when I was born and that my eyes were blue at birth and started to turn to brown when I was about five months old. You’ve also confessed to me that your first feeling about me was one of—terrible Disappointment! Because, having had two small daughters already, Suzanne and Virginia, naturally you and Daddy wanted some novelty in your children and just hoped and prayed that I would be a, boy! You terribly wanted me to be a boy, you’ve said, you planned for me to be a boy, you even named me Francis Gumm, Jr., after Daddy. And then, not only did I turn out to be, NOT the answer to your prayers, but just another little girl, for Pete’s sake. Also I was as red as an Indian, you said, and the reddest, homeliest baby anyone ever saw! You just made the best of it by changing the “i” to “e” and naming me Frances, anyway!

(Read More)

They’re livingon borrowed money—but Judy isn’t worried. She’s won back her public, there’s a new baby to dream about and all’s right with the world.

Judy Garland’s third husband, Sid Luft, strode into the California Superior Court several weeks ago. He was present to answer charges filed by his former wife, Lynn Bari.

Lynn wanted to know why Sid had violated a court order. He had failed to set up a $10,000 insurance fund for his son John as he had previously promised.

“Your Honor,” Sid said. ” I just don’t have the money. In fact we’re living on $30,000 I’ve borrowed.”

The judge listened attentively as Sid described his depleted finances. Presently he said, ” I see no point in sending this man to jail. He’s paying for the support of his son each month. I’m satisfied that when his financial condition improves he will meet his obligations.”

(Read More)

With Game Conductor Ralph Edwards
Photoplay, April 1948

Q: This is quite an honor, Bing, having you opposite our Photoplay microphone. If my wire could only see me now! Tell me . . . how does one go ahout acquiring the gentle art of crooning such as yours?
A: Nothing to it. Just open your mouth to the letter “B” and begin. If you can’t remember the lyrics or the tune… just whistle.

Q: I’ve tried that . . . and what do I get? Three Beverly Hills St. Bernards, a dachshund, two French poodles . . . even Lassie comes home. Tell me, Bing, who’s your favorite leading lady?
A: Joan Fontaine, Dorothy Lamour, Joan Caulfield, Rhonda Fleming, Joan Fontaine—need I go on?

You’ve gone much too far already so take the consequence. Show how you’d register nerves on the screen.

(Read More)

By Dick Haymes
Photoplay, June 1947

It was really Skipper who changed everything —though, of course, there wouldn’t have been any Skipper if first there hadn’t been Joanne.

I was playing a double date on Broadway in 1940—singing with the band at the Lincoln Hotel, then rushing around the corner from there, over to the Paramount Theater, for a fast half hour.

One evening as I stood up on the bandstand at the Lincoln I saw a pal, Larry Shayne, sitting at a ringstand table with a beautiful doll. Today Larry is my partner in my music publishing business—but my mind was not on commerce as I looked across the room that evening.

(Read More)