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Bette Davis and Howard Hughes

1938. Bette Davis with predator Howard Hughes. The caption reads:

Film Celebrities Attend Tailwaggers’ Dinner. Beverly Hills, Calif. – With the idea of making Hollywood ‘Tailwagger conscious,’ Bette Davis, motion picture star, recently elected president of the Tailwaggers, was hostess to many film celebrities at a dinner party and cotillion at the Beverly Hills Hotel here the night of August 11. Its proceeds will go toward financing a concert in the Hollywood Bowl during National Dog Week, September 18 to 24, for the purpose of raising funds to establish an ultra-modern dog hospital, shelter and kennels. Photo shows Miss Davis and Howard Hughes, millionaire round-the-world flier, at the party.

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Gina Lollobrigida – the temptress of the Tiber

1958. Gina Lollobrigida in Solomon and Sheba. Photo by Leo Fuchs. Read more.

Gina Lollobrigida was one of the great international sex symbols of postwar cinema.

In its January 1956 issue, Modern Screen magazine reported that:

L’Italienne is downright gorgeous but you can find others just as beautiful. But she is currently the most important international star. Almost single-handed, Gina of the unpronounceable last name has lifted the Italian film industry up to glossy respectability and reasonable solvency.

The “unpronounceable last name” was regularly abbreviated to La Lollo, and a few websites suggest that the frilly red lettuce lollo rosso was named after her tousled coiffure or even her panties – seriously?

The previous year she had played the title role in La donna più bella del mondo (literally, The Most Beautiful Woman in the World but released to English-speaking audiences as Beautiful But Dangerous). It was a sobriquet enthusiastically embraced both by the star herself and by the salivating media.

And before that, in October 1954, Pane, amore e fantasia (Bread, Love and Jealousy) had been the hit of Italian Film Week in London and Gina had been presented to the Queen. It was an early triumph but also a reminder that she had competition. At the premiere she had been rather upstaged by another upwardly mobile actress, Sophia Loren, who had drawn attention with a daringly low-cut gown. Swords had been crossed and the feud continued for decades.

Until the mid-fifties Gina had been seen mostly in Italian films but she was about to star in a series of hit movies made for the US market that would transform her hitherto limited fan base – films like Trapeze (1956), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956) and Solomon and Sheba (1959).

In a career that stretched from 1946 to 2011, IMDb credits Gina with 69 appearances on screen. While the movies in which she starred vary in quality, they demonstrate her flexibility as an actress, perfectly at home in serious drama, romantic comedy and high farce. Although she was always considered more a sex symbol than a serious actress, she won more than a dozen awards including three for best actress at the David di Donatello awards (Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars).

Around 1955. Gina Lollobrigida snapped by a paparazzo. Read more.

Growing up

Gina Lollobrigida is born in 1927, one of four daughters whose father is a furniture maker. Towards the end of World War II, their home is destroyed by Allied air attacks and the family moves to Rome, where they end up living in a single room. Gina would tell the Associated Press in 1994:

I know what it is to be hungry. I know what it is to lose your home. I remember when I had fear. I know what it is to grow up never having a toy.

To get an impression of the poverty and desperation around at the time, you have only to watch Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 neorealist film Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves).

After school, Gina has lessons in singing, dancing and drawing. To help pay for these, she does sketches of American GIs and part-time work modelling for comics. And it turns out that there’s another opportunity too. In her own words as reported in La Stampa (a newspaper) in 2001:

I had two directors stop me twice outside of my school and ask if I wanted to be in movies. Curiosity led me to make appearances in two or three films. Then when I was offered the lead role in Love of a Clown [based on the opera Pagliacci] I absolutely refused.
My final strategy for getting them to leave me alone was to ask to be paid one million [lire], which was a lot compared to the 1,000 I earned for secondary roles. I thought this would be enough to discourage anyone. To my great surprise they accepted and this is how I began my cinema career.

Or perhaps not so surprising given her hourglass figure, her sultry looks and the reputation she’s built already for diligently learning her lines and taking her work seriously. Pagliacci – Amore tragico is released in 1948 and she’s on her way to stardom.

Gina Lollobrigida at the Cannes Film Festival

1958. Gina Lollobrigida, surrounded by photographers, makes an entrance at the Cannes Film Festival.

Gina Lollobrigida conversion behind the scenes as director John Sturges looks on

Gina Lollobrigida behind the scenes

1959. Gina Lollobrigida conversing behind the scenes of Never So Few. Director John Sturges (wearing glasses) looks on.

Gina Lollobrigida with her minder

Around 1960. Is that Gina Lollobrigida's minder behind her or someone else? Unfortunately the caption is missing from the back of the photo. Photo by Leo Fuchs.

Gina Lollobrigida dining with André Maurois

1965. Gina Lollobrigida dining with French author André Maurois at the Cannes Film Festival.

Gina Lollobrigida and Milko Skofic

The following year she marries a doctor from Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia) who is helping refugees temporarily being put up at Rome’s Cinecittà film studios. Throughout the fifties, the couple are more or less inseparable, their relationship reported with a mix of enthusiasm and implicit astonishment by various movie magazines such as Modern Screen. This is from an article, Gina Lollobrigida and her backstage husband, which appears in the January 1956 edition:

For eight of her 27 years she’s been married to the same man, Dr. Milko Skofic. They say the Skofics don’t have trouble because the good doctor is so madly jealous he never leaves his glamorous wife’s side long enough for trouble to begin. Well, he’s only in Paris (where Gina’s making Trapeze with Lancaster and Curtis) on week ends but Gina just isn’t interested in anyone but Milko.
Skofic has not yet lived down the decision they both made soon after the marriage. He chose to manage his wife’s career instead of continuing his medical practice. As a foreigner and a refugee he was faced with difficulties in reestablishing himself. But Gina’s star was rising and she needed advice. She still does.

Gina Lollobrigida being laced into a corset for a scene from Crossed Swords

Hourglass Gina

1954. Her dresser laces Gina Lollobrigida's corset to emphasize her already voluptuous curves. You can see the result in Il maestro di Don Giovanni (Crossed Swords, 1954) in which Gina stars opposite Errol Flynn. This photo is reproduced in the January 1954 issue of Screenland magazine to illustrate an article called It’s True What They Say About Gina.

Gina Lollobrigida in La romana

1954. Gina Lollobrigida as Adriana Silenzi in La romana (Woman of Rome).

Gina Lollobrigida in La romana

1954. Gina Lollobrigida as Adriana Silenzi in La romana (Woman of Rome).

Gina Lollobrigida arriving at The Tivoli

1954. Gina Lollobrigida arriving at The Tivoli. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

The Italian Film Festival opened last night at the Tivoli with the film “Neapolitan Fantasy”. Italian film stars were presented to the Queen who along with the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Margaret attended the performance.
PS: “La Lollo” they call her in her native Italy – Gina Lollobrigida arriving at the Tivoli

But the marriage gets off to a tricky start.

1958. Gina Lollobrigida in Solomon and Sheba. Photo by Leo Fuchs.

Howard Hughes and Hollywood

And that tricky start is down to studio boss and arch-womaniser Howard Hughes. Gina catches his famously roving eye – accounts differ as to exactly how – and she’s summoned by him to Hollywood for a screen test. She asks for a pair of tickets so that Milko can go with her but she ends up setting off on her own. It’s possible that’s because he can’t get a US visa but more likely because he’d get in the way of Hughes’ seduction routine. So just the one ticket turns up.

When she arrives Hughes sets her up in a suite at a luxurious hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and arranges an English teacher and a voice coach for her. At this point in her life she knows very little English.

And then he gets down to the real business – embarking on an affair. She’s not allowed out except in his company, of which there’s plenty on offer. Hughes arranges a series of dates, a priority being to avoid any media attention. So they end up eating at cheap diners or even, sometimes, in his car. As part of the entertainment he teaches her to swear.

She gets increasingly frustrated and desperate. After two and a half months of these goings-on and with no movie-making in sight, she agrees to sign a seven-year contract, Hughes’ condition for letting her go home. The terms of the contract all but prevent her from making a film with any other studio in the US. The get-out, such as it is, is that she can star in American films shot outside the US.

That’s handy as the Hollywood studios are beginning to take advantage of the talent and lower production costs available in Europe and particularly at Cinecittà. Beat the Devil (1953) in which she stars opposite Humphrey Bogart is shot in Italy and directed by John Huston. The following year, Gina appears on the front cover of the August 16 issue of TIME magazine

Gina Lollobrigida (pronounced low-low-bridge-id-ah) was in town to make a movie. And who is Gina? Hardly anywhere in the world today except in the U.S., could such a question be asked. In Europe she is the most famous seven syllables since “Come up and see me some time.”

Gina Lollobrigida in La romana

1954. Gina Lollobrigida as Adriana Silenzi in La romana (Woman of Rome).

Gina Lollobrigida in La romana

1954. Gina Lollobrigida as Adriana Silenzi in La romana (Woman of Rome).

Gina Lollobrigida on the set of La legge

1958. Gina Lollobrigida in a décolleté top on the set of La legge (The Law).

Gina Lollobrigida filming La bellezza di Ippolita

1962. Gina Lollobrigida, uncharacteristically blonde, filming La bellezza di Ippolita (She Got What She Asked For) in Rome.

Beat the Devil is the first of a string of English-language films that propel her to megastar status in the US. Indeed such a desirable property that, in an interview quoted in The Scotsman:

When I finally returned to America to do a film with Sinatra, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had to pay $75,000 to Howard Hughes. The Hollywood contracts I had were truly a dream. They gave me everything I wanted. I had approval of the cast, the director, the producer, and I got quite a significant percentage of overall earnings. When I went to do a film, I’d take my husband, my son, my nanny, my seamstress, my hairdresser, and my ‘lady-in-waiting’, a French countess who helped me perfect languages.

During the sixties, Gina stars in one movie after another, many of them romantic comedies, opposite the likes of Ernest Borgnine, Sean Connery and Bob Hope. Most of those films are both unmemorable and lucrative.

1956. Gina Lollobrigida as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Gina Lollobrigida – anything but “the girl next door”

The emergence of Silvana Mangano, Anna Magnani, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren as major stars prompts a piece in the August 1957 issue of Photoplay magazine titled What has she got that Hollywood hasn’t?:

While there is a great shortage of female stars in Hollywood the dismal truth is that there hasn’t been a major American actress of star calibre to burst on the scene, outside of Kim Novak, since Grace Kelly. Part of the answer seems to be that all the girls who show up in Hollywood these days turn out to be a replica of the girl next door. And about as glamorous. Pigtails and jeans may turn a head or two on Main Street but they don’t cause a stampede at the box office. … In the impact of the foreign stars on the American public, Italy continues to play the biggest role.

Three years earlier, Gina’s arrival in the US was hotly anticipated in an article in the January 1954 edition of Screenland magazine – It’s true what they say about Gina:

Fortunately for 150 million Americans, particularly the masculine half of the population, this tantalizing Roman dish of potent anatomical force, already considered Europe’s Queen of Perfect Pulchritude, will be paying our shores a visit around the first of the year. Luscious new star of the Italian cinema, Gina is probably the most perfectly formed creature Europe has ogled since Aphrodite. Her challenge for the title of Number One International Pin-Up Girl is a formidable one. In the six years since this Roman tidbit was chosen Miss Italy, she has become one of Europe’s biggest box-office attractions. …
There is no question that her extraordinary appeal has also had a profound effect on some of filmdom’s outstanding connoisseurs of female attributes. Errol Flynn, who chose Gina as his leading lady in “Crossed Swords,” had this to say: “What a department store this lovely is! She has everything you could want on every floor, and plenty of overstock, too.” Humphrey Bogart, soon to be seen with Gina and Jennifer Jones in John Huston’s “Beat The Devil,” was overheard muttering these lava-soaked words: “This gal is molten ore. What an ingot! She burns me, burns me, burns me. Look at me, I’m a crisp!” And John Huston himself had this point to make: “In any serious discussion of Gina’s talent, you can’t ignore her bosom. That, my friend, is an extraordinary talent to have and to hold. In fact, every time I recall Gina to mind, I must confess that even her elbows seem to be bosoms.”

1. A look back at the life and films of Gina Lollobrigida

A brief biography of Gina Lollobrigida illustrated by stills and video clips assembled by The Guardian.

2. Trapeze (1956)

Extracts from one of the movies that made Gina Lollobrigida a star in the US. The trapeze scenes are enough to make your fingertips tingle. Scroll forward to 9:30 if you want to get straight to the action.

3. Solomon and Sheba (1959)

The original trailer for the biblical blockbuster, promising a vibrant melodrama with plenty of sexual tension and action.

4. Top 10 Gina Lollobrigida Movies of All Time

Introductions to and extracts from ten of Gina Lollobrigida’s films assembled by Stream TV.

The piece goes on to recount how Gina’s male leads reacted to their first encounters with her:

When she first met Bogart and Flynn and John Huston, they did not understand her. They could not see how a woman who, when she was before a camera was a Latin volcano, could, when she was by herself, be so demure. They used to call her Lollofrigida or Lollofrigidaire. But once they found out that she was naturally shy with anyone not her husband, and was not a snob at all, everyone became good friends.

Indeed Humphrey Bogart revises his opinion and memorably observes that “She makes Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple.”

The overt sexism is particularly striking given that the magazine’s readers are predominantly female. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most perceptive analysis of Gina’s appeal to her male fanbase comes from her husband:

She is every man’s ideal come to life. She is the epitome of woman, caught at that moment when her beauty and femininity are at their zenith — rich, full and ripe. Her greatest appeal is with married men. They see in her the wife incarnate, beautiful, ever-appealing, always fertile.

Gina’s second career

With the advent of the 1970s, Gina Lollobrigida’s career as a movie star is petering out and she embarks on a new life. In 1971 she and Milko divorce (they separated in 1966) and she plunges into a second career, reprising the interest in fine arts she gave up to become a star and building on what she learned during her time on sets talking to directors and cinematographers.

Perhaps her most striking achievement is to get an exclusive interview in 1972 with reclusive Cuban revolutionary and prime minister Fidel Castro. She uses this as the basis for Ritratto di Fidel, a short documentary written, directed and produced by herself.

Gina Lollobrigida at The Prado, Madrid

1958. Gina poses in front of three Velasquez portraits of dwarfs: Juan Calabazas, Francisco Lezcano and Diego de Acedo. Photo by Leo Fuchs.

Gina Lollobrigida at The Prado, Madrid

1958. Gina tours one of the galleries at The Prado. But who is her companion? Is he the museum director or one of the curators? Photo by Leo Fuchs.

Gina Lollobrigida at The Prado, Madrid

1958. What would Goya have made of Gina? Here she looks admiringly at a sex symbol of a previous era, the artist's Naked Maja. Photo by Leo Fuchs.

Gina Lollobrigida at The Prado, Madrid

1958. It looks like Gina (or someone else) has been making a copy of Titian's painting of Salome with John the Baptist's head on a plate. Photo by Leo Fuchs.

She also turns her hand to photography and sculpture. Italia Mia, published in 1973 is the first of five books of photos, while in 2003 a collection of 38 of her bronze sculptures is exhibited at a number of venues including the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

She still has time to become a voracious collector of glitzy jewellery – opulent creations of gold and precious stones. In 2013, she auctions 23 of her Bulgari gems, worn at landmark moments during her career, at Sotheby’s in Geneva, using the proceeds to donate £3.2 million to stem cell research.

1958. Gina Lollobrigida poses in front of Hieronymus Bosch’s *The Garden of Earthly Delights* at the Prado. Photo by Leo Fuchs.

And then there’s the gossip and scandal surrounding her liaisons, many with much younger men. Well, we won’t go down that rabbit hole except to note Gina’s disputed marriage to Spanish businessman Javier Rigau y Rafol, 34 years her junior, whom she originally met at a party in Monte Carlo in 1984.

Want to know more about Gina Lollobrigida?

Gina Lollobrigida died on 16 January 2023 and there are plenty of excellent and informative obituaries, notably in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, The Economist and The Scotsman.

For a somewhat drier account replete with sources, look no further than Wikipedia. And for a catalogue of her films, go to IMDb.

Unlucky in love

1939. Pretty Helen Gilbert is getting the star treatment from MGM. Having made her screen debut in Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever she’s being touted as “the new personality” in the trailer for The Secret of Dr Kildare. But she makes a fatal mistake.

Hot on the heels of her divorce in November from her first husband, orchestra leader Mischa Bakaleinikoff, she gets involved with inveterate womanizer Howard Hughes. The entanglement may have cost her a leading role in The Wizard of Oz, according to an article by Lou Lumenick on the website of the New York Post:

Shortly after a young MGM contract player named Helen Gilbert was cast as Glinda, the inveterate girl-chaser Howard Hughes spirited her away for a fling … Gilbert was suspended, and the studio, which had been building her as a leading lady, allowed her contract to lapse after 1940.

Another one bites the dust. But the truth is that Helen’s love life will leave little room for her career. She will feature more in gossip columns than onscreen, and she will be known mainly for her affairs, her seven marriages, her separations and divorces. Her husbands will include Johnny Stompanato, the notorious gangster stabbed to death by Cheryl Crane, the teenager defending her mother, Lana Turner, during a violent attack. Police intelligence records quoted in the August 1958 issue of Modern Screen describe Stompanato’s modus operandi:

He acquaints himself with females of wealthy means. He courts them and after he is deeply involved borrows money and never repays the loan. When the victim’s money is dissipated, he becomes interested in another woman. Usually he frequents expensive night spots to meet wealthy female types.

It all started out so promisingly. Here’s Helen discussing her career to date in an article in the November 1939 issue of Silver Screen:

Here is the one who didn’t want to be an actress, never once thought of being an actress, because she was a cellist and all her background was music, just nothing but music. Helen Gilbert was born in Warren, Ohio, went to school in Minneapolis and in Superior, Wisconsin. Her father, Vaughn Gilbert, was a concert pianist and a music publisher. And Helen studied violin and piano and then, one day, heard Pablo Casals play The Swan on the cello and knew what she wanted to be!
“I’ve never deviated from that wanting,” Helen told me (you may note that not one of the four ever deviated once they found their Ambition). “I studied cello in Minneapolis. Then I went to Philadelphia, played for Felix Salmon, the great English cellist there, and won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music. I graduated with honors and then I began to make a little name for myself, in concert, as a soloist, as guest artist on some coast-to-coast broadcasts.
“Then my mother became ill, lung trouble, and a warmer climate ‘was necessary. I came to Hollywood with her.
I felt, then, that the most terrible thing in the world had happened to me – my mother’s illness, having to leave my work and come to Hollywood where, I knew, I would have to take a job in some orchestra, and give up my career on the concert stage, as soloist. I did play, as soloist, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic but such opportunities are very few out here and very soon I had to take a job with the orchestra at Columbia Studios. I began to lose my ambition and my dreams, playing Yankee Doodle, plunk, plink, plunk, fifteen hours on end. Then my mother passed away … and, two years ago, I married. My husband is a Russian. He is assistant to Morris Stoloff, musical director at Columbia. Well, I played in the orchestra here at M-G-M, too. I’ve watched most of the famous actresses upon the screen of the darkened sound stages while our music was being cued in to atmospheric backgrounds. But I was a part of my instrument, that’s all. Becoming an actress myself never once occurred to me! I am a rabid movie fan. I never miss any picture. But I have always been a fan, never movie-struck for myself.
“Then, one day. Director ‘Woody’ Van Dyke happened to come on the sound stage where we were recording Sweethearts. He looked at me, just once. He suggested to our conductor that I be advised to make a screen test. I said no, thanks, I didn’t want to make a fool of myself. Then Freddy Wilcox talked with me, said that he could arrange for me to coach before I made a test. So I said, all right, why not, I’ll try anything once!
“I coached with Lillian Burns here at M-G-M. I made my test, two little scenes from Florian, and within four days after I made the test, I had my contract and the next thing I knew I was being directed by Mr. Van Dyke in Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever. And I call it Fate, in my case. Just nothing but Fate!
“Why, just imagine me, a few months ago, seeing the Hardy pictures, which I love, and the next thing I know, Andy Hardy is making love to me! And I thought that coming to Hollywood was the End for me. Instead of which it’s the Beginning, for I may do Florian. And now Mr. Mayer has assigned a special writer to write a story around me, as a cellist – now I can be a soloist again, bring my music to the screen – now everything I ever hoped for in my life is coming true, in the very last place I ever expected, in pictures. And all I can feel now is gratitude and the desire to prove to Mr. Mayer and the others who have such faith in me that their faith is not misplaced.

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Brenda Mee by Thurston Hopkins – a glimpse into another world

Whoever’s heard of Brenda Mee? I hadn’t until I came across this image, which gave me waves of nostalgia. It’s such a time-capsule image – her demure look, the bowler-hatted, be-suited pedestrian, the vintage car. And she turns out to be Miss Great Britain 1953.

It’s a classic case of what, for me, makes collecting photos so compelling. You see an image and want to find out the story behind it. Before long, you’re pursuing all sorts of lines of inquiry and making all sorts of discoveries. In this case, the lady herself, the times in which she lived, the news media in which the photo appeared, the guy who snapped the photo, and the world of beauty contests and the holiday camps, which hosted many of them.

The subject – Brenda Mee

The image is published in Picture Post to illustrate an article about The Beauty Contest Business. But for the scoop on Brenda Mee, look no further than the Sunday 30 August 1953 edition of London’s Weekly Dispatch:

A LOVELY girl stepped off the train at Euston Station one day last week. In her handbag was a cheque for £1,000. In her luggage was a magnificent silver bowl. In her eyes was the sparkle and delight of a girl who had just won the Sunday Dispatch-Morecambe National Bathing Beauty Contest. Brenda Mee, a 20-year-old blonde who was born at Derby but lives at South Kensington, is a photographers’ model and mannequin. She was chosen as the 1953 winner from among 40 finalists from all over Britain at Morecambe last week.
“What am I going to do with the money?” said Brenda. “First I shall go on a mild shopping spree and buy some clothes. Then I shall bank the rest of the money and think about it.”
Television newsreel as well as Movietone, Gaumont-British, Universal, Pathé, and Paramount news reels recorded her success at Morecambe. “I hope my newsreel and television showing is good,” says Brenda. “I would like to have a film test. It is one of my ambitions to get into films.” … In October Brenda will be “Miss Great Britain” in the “Miss World” contest in London.

1948. Fashion shot at the Victoria & Albert Museum, close to Brenda Mee’s flat. Photo by John Deakin. Read more.

The Miss World title and film-star ambition will prove a step too far. Still, Brenda Mee is currently sharing a cosy little basement flat in Drayton Gardens, South Kensington with Marlene Dee, 1951’s Miss Great Britain. How many hopeful Romeos must be beating their way that front door?

Our Brenda has come a long way in a short time. She’s first mentioned in the Saturday 15 April 1950 edition of the Derby Daily Telegraph, which announces that she’s just won the Derby finals of the nationwide contest to find Britain’s “Neptune’s Daughter.” The pageant is named after the Esther Williams film of the same name that’s just been released in the UK:

Sponsored by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Ltd., and the Associated British Cinemas, Ltd., in conjunction with a firm of American soft-drink manufacturers, the prizes for the winner of the national contest include a two-week trip to Hollywood, with air transport, perfume, wardrobe and even luggage cases provided free of charge.

The article also reveals (can you believe it?) that she’s living with her parents at 11 Swinburne Street, Derby, a modest Victorian semi. During 1951 she gains more experience but limited success as a beauty contestant before making her breakthrough in 1952.

1953 will prove to be her glory year though she will continue as a beauty contestant and model for a while longer. She will even appear as a lovely on a TV quiz show. Then she disappears from view, except for a brief mention in the Thursday, 5 June 1958 edition of the Birmingham Daily Post, where we learn that she “has brought with her on a visit to England, from her home in Melbourne, her three-month-old son Lloyd Anthony, who will be christened in August at Derby, where Miss Mee formerly lived.” Her husband is Mr. Ludwig Berger, an Australian company director. And that’s that.

The times

So, what’s going on around Brenda Mee? Inspired by 1951’s Festival of Britain, the country is gradually rebuilding after the bombing raids, privations and misery heaped on it by World War II. Still, London is a very different city from now. There are gaping holes where bombs fell, shop windows are dark at night, luxury goods are in short supply, and traffic is a thing of the future. It’s a world that’s buttoned up literally and metaphorically. Except, that is, for the likes of Francis Bacon, Augustus John and John Deakin who frequent bohemian Soho’s notorious Colony Club.

1951. Picture Post prepares the nation for the Festival of Britain.

This year, 1953, the big event in London and the UK is the coronation of Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey. Also in the news are Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. And Ian Fleming publishes his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. For the proverbial man on the Clapham omnibus, some of the most welcome news may be that the rationing of sugar and sweets are coming to an end (food rationing won’t end completely until next year) and the emergence of the pneumatic Sabrina.

The news media and photojournalism

Although 1953 is the year that the House of Lords votes in favour of commercial television, only about one in three households have a TV and there’s only the one TV channel. Forget daytime TV – that’s decades away (27 October 1986 to be precise). Children’s programmes begin late afternoon followed by “Toddler’s Truce,” a TV blackout from 18:00 to 19:00 so that parents can put their children to bed before prime-time television kicks in. It’s a classic case of Auntie’s (as the BBC is affectionately known) paternalism!

So the main sources of news are newspapers, magazines, radio (wireless in the lingo of the day) and newsreels. Newsreels are short documentary films, containing both news stories and items of topical interest. They are shown in cinemas before the film the audience has come to see. And in the fifties, people do flock to the cinema.

The leading British news magazine is Picture Post (LIFE magazine is its US equivalent). As well as providing insights into the big social and political issues of the time, it covers many aspects of day-to-day life – from Life in the Gorbals to The Beauty Contest Business.

At the peak of its popularity in the 1940s, Picture Post is read by almost half the UK population, making it the window on the world for “the man on the street.” But a combination of the left-leaning views of its editors and the growth of TV ownership will bring about the magazine’s decline and, in 1957, its ultimate demise.

One of the things that’s remarkable about Picture Post is its pioneering approach to photojournalism. It pairs its writers and photographers and sends them out to work together as colleagues rather than as competitors. The result more often than not is a combination of words and pictures that creates compelling, immersive stories. The contributing photographers include Bill Brandt, Bert Hardy and Thurston Hopkins. They are in certain respects the British equivalents of the French humanist photographers who roamed Paris after World War II.

**The Cats of London.** Photos by Thurston Hopkins published in the 24 February 1951 edition of Picture Post.

According to David Mitchell, writing in The Guardian:

Stefan Lorant, first editor of Picture Post and pioneer of photo-journalism, had an unusual interviewing technique: “A photographer would come to me and I would say, ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’. If he did not know of him, I would realise he had no intellectual background. If he was ignorant of Shakespeare or Mahler – out! Never mind what his pictures were like.” Thurston Hopkins would have passed such a cultural inquisition with flying colours.

The photographer

Thurston Hopkins is born in 1913 and grows up in Sussex, the son of middle-class parents (his father is a prolific author and enthusiastic ghost hunter). On leaving school he heads for Brighton College of Art to study graphic art. During his time there, he teaches himself photography.

This turns out to be a smart move because the career he envisaged – as a commercial illustrator – fails to take off. During the 1930s newspapers and magazines are switching from illustration to photography, and Thurston follows suit, joining the PhotoPress Agency.

After a stint in the RAF Photographic Unit during World War II, he takes a break, hitchhiking around Europe with his camera. On his return to England, he joins Camera Press (a new agency) but soon decides the place he’d really like to work is Picture Post.

So he creates a dummy issue of the magazine, composed entirely of his own features, and persuades the proprietors to take him on as a freelancer and then, in 1950, as a full-time employee. His most celebrated features include cats of London, children playing on city streets (making the case for dedicated playgrounds) and the Liverpool slums.

When Picture Post shuts its doors for the last time, Thurston will become a successful advertising photographer, working in his studio in Chiswick, west London, and will take up teaching at the Guildford School of Art. In retirement, he will return to painting and live to age 100, survived by his wife Grace, also a photographer, and their two children.

Dorothy Lamour promotional shot for Paramount Pictures — 1937. Dorothy Lamour – from beauty queen to movie star. Read more.

Beauty contests

Beauty contests have a long history – it’s possible to trace them back to the Middle Ages. But the birth of the version we recognize today dates from 1921, according to the Pageant Center’s The History of Pageants. That’s the year when Atlantic City hotel proprietors come up with a ruse to tempt tourists to stick around after Labor Day. They organize a “pageant” that includes a “National Beauty Tournament” to choose “the most beautiful bathing beauty in America.”

The branding is a masterstroke. Take a bow, Herb Test, a local newsman, who comes up with a killer name: “Let’s call her Miss America!” Eastern newspaper editors are invited to run photo contests to pick winners to represent their communities, and eight finalists compete for the honour to be the first Miss America.

After a promising start, the pageant goes offline for four years following the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. But by the mid-1930s it has come roaring back and, surprise, surprise, attracted the attention of Hollywood studio bosses such as Howard Hughes. Winners of the new, optional talent competition can now expect invitations for screen tests – but they’d better beware of the starlet’s dilemma. A few beauty pageant contestants, Dorothy Lamour a notable case in point, go on to become movie stars.

The Miss America pageant continues through World War II and in 1948, to the outrage of the photographers, Bebe Shopp becomes the first competition winner to be crowned in a gown rather than a swimsuit.

In 1951, we come full circle back to Great Britain. The first Miss World Pageant is held to promote none other than the Festival of Britain. It’s the brainchild of Eric Morley, who happens to be involved with the Mecca Dance Halls that host many of the country’s beauty contests. Sadly, Marlene Dee, Miss Great Britain that year, loses out to Miss Sweden, Kiki Haakonson.

Picture Post’s take on The Beauty Contest Business appears in the 7 November 1953 edition. It is written in a nicely trenchant style by Robert Muller with photos by Thurston Hopkins. Here’s an extract:

**The Ballyhoo Business.** Bare legs, fanfares and revolving stages, flags of all nations and gala press receptions … the sponsors pay out, the public gazes. Photo by Thurston Hopkins published in the 7 November 1953 edition of Picture Post.

Who, you may well ask, pays for these beauty feasts, what do they get out of it, and who wants them anyway? Catch-phrases from pseudo-psychological treatises on the subject (“sublimated virgin worship,” etc.) don’t tell the whole story, for the big beauty contests are run by hard-headed businessmen. It cost Mecca Dancing, Ltd., more than £3,000 to find ‘Miss World,’ and thereby harvest a bushel of publicity. Even if the newspapers ignore Mecca when printing news and pictures of the girls, Morley of Mecca assures us that he possesses “ways and means of telling the country that these wonderful girls everybody is reading about are here because Mecca put them there.”
But Mecca is only an incidental link in a world-wide network of beauty contest sponsors. In most countries the big national beauty competitions are organised by newspapers and magazines as a circulation stunt. The newspapers link up with commercial firms, who offer facilities and pay costs, in the hope of publicising their goods. Beauty winners have thus become a new travelling publicity medium. Travel agents, fashion houses, bathing-suit manufacturers, motion-picture firms adorn beauty queens with their goods, decorate them with their messages. …
The girls themselves, probably unaware that they are exploited as mobile billboards for commercial concerns, are flattered and lulled by the fuss and adoration in which the competitions bathe them, and the models among them – and most beauty queens are models – appreciate the value of a better-class title. An important beauty title is to a model what a university degree is to a young professional man. Even a Miss Liechtenstein would find her services in increased demand, her fees rising. And the girls with film aspirations know that the uphill road to stardom without talent is usually paved with beauty crowns. Finally, a contest as big as the election of ‘Miss World’ carries with it prizes up to £500, for the duration of the contest all expenses are paid, fashion houses occasionally supply dresses, and firms like Mecca pay each girl £1 a day pocket money during the week in which the contest takes place.
But few of the girls give a thought to the back-stage commercial activity that buzzes around their exploits. Some of them are shrewd business-women, but the majority ride a vanity-driven coach, which, they hope, will one day pull up at a film studio, where a Prince Charming producer will offer them stardom and happiness.

**The Beauty Contest Business.** A page from the feature in the 7 November 1953 edition of Picture Post. Photos by Thurston Hopkins.

Want to know more about Brenda Mee, her life and times?

Pretty much the only place to find out more about Brenda Mee is at The British Newspaper Archive, for which you’ll need a subscription.

If you’re wondering about Britain in the 1950s, there’s a brief and entertaining overview at Retrowow. For something a bit more substantial, check out the series of articles at Historic UK’s Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. And for a year-by-year listing of key events, go to Wikipedia, starting at 1950.

The John Deakin archive is held by bridgeman images, who also have a piece on 60s Soho and the London Art Scene.

Learning On Screen has a history of the British newsreels, while you can watch a selection of examples at British Pathé’s 1950s Britain page. Photoworks provides an introduction to The Picture Post Photographers, which also touches on the history of the publication itself. For more about Thurston Hopkins and Picture Post – see The Guardian obituary and Getty Images’ Picture Post Collection.

The place to find out more about beauty contests is Pageant Center. For the specialist and researcher, there’s also Records of Miss Great Britain at Archives Hub, where there may just be further photos or material about Brenda Mee herself.

Fashion and movie photos – why collect them?

Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy

Sabrina – Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe

Hedy Lamarr – beauty, brains and bad judgment

Hedy Lamarr had it all: beauty, brains, fame and fortune. For a few years she had the world, or at least Tinseltown, at her feet. And she blew it. So what went wrong? Was Hedy the victim of forces beyond her control or of her own character flaws. Or was she just plain unlucky?

Hedy Lamarr arrives in Hollywood in October 1937. She has just fled Vienna, her husband Fritz Mandl, and the looming threat of a Nazi invasion. Taking the train to Paris and then crossing the Channel to England, she has discovered that Louis B Mayer, MGM’s head honcho, is in London and looking for talent. Somehow, she manages to arrange a meeting with him. He’s worried about the scandal surrounding her appearance in Ecstasy but not blind to her charms (how could he be?). So he offers Hedy a bulk-standard, six-month contract with MGM at $125 a week. Which she flatly rejects. She’s has her own idea of what she’s worth and she’s not going to be pushed around.

Still, Hedy is in a pretty desperate situation and, after a meeting with Robert Ritchie, one of Mayer’s talent scouts, she changes her mind. But then it turns out that the mogul is leaving the next day for France in order to catch the superliner Normandie back to the US. Getting a berth requires the sale of most of her jewels as well as some subterfuge (the voyage is already fully booked). On board, Hedy, in a gown by Alix, dazzles her fellow passengers, and the effect is not lost on Mayer, who ups his offer to a seven-year contract beginning at $550 a week.

So by the time Hedy Lamarr arrives in Hollywood (her name changed by MGM from Hedwig Kiesler to Hedy Lamarr), she has proved that she is daring, ambitious, determined and resourceful. Those are qualities she is going to need in spades. But that’s far from the whole story. Ever since she was a little girl, she’s wanted to be an actress in spite of being, by all accounts, a very private person. Is that because acting can be a form of escapism for her and, if so, what demons is she struggling with? Well, for one thing she believes that her mother wanted a boy and didn’t really like her. Then, married at age 19 and dominated by her husband Fritz Mandl, she likely feels she needs to take back control of her life.

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. It's possible that this photo is from the same sitting as the

Hedy Lamarr, glamour shot

Around 1943. A classic glamour shot of Hedy Lamarr, the background thrown out of...

Hedy Lamarr as Irene in The Conspirators

Hedy Lamarr, power dresser

1944. Hedy Lamarr wears this costume in The Conspirators. With its exaggerated shoulder pads...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. This photo of Hedy Lamarr is one of a series of three on...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. In White Cargo, for which this photo is advance publicity, Hedy Lamarr is...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for White Cargo

1942. The caption on the back of this photo refers to three Hedy Lamarr...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. The Heavenly Body is little more than a bit of froth, with one...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. Pencilled on the back of this photo are the words “BY CARPENTER.” That...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. According to IMDb, Joan Crawford was offered the lead role...

Now, put yourself in her shoes for a minute. She’s 23 years old. She’s in a strange city with a culture very different from that in which she’s grown up. She can speak only a few phrases of English so she struggles to communicate with those around her. And she knows no-one. Columnist Sheilah Graham, out on the town at the Beverly Hills Brown Derby one Saturday evening that winter, spots Hedy at a table all by herself. Her partner, F Scott Fitzgerald, wryly observes: “How typical of Hollywood, the most beautiful girl in the world alone on a Saturday night.”

Hedy Lamarr with a bust by Nina Saemundsson — *1939. Hedy Lamarr poses beside a bust of her by Nina Saemundsson.* *Read more*.

Hedy Lamarr – beauty

And beauty is a recurring theme, the dominant theme, when it comes to Hedy Lamarr. Jet-black tresses, cherry-red lips, porcelain complexion… Hedy’s looks are classic and exotic, innocent and alluring, making her the perfect model for two very different movie legends: Disney’s Snow White on the one hand and, on the other, Catwoman in the original Batman comics.

What immediately strikes you when you look at Hedy in her movies or her stills is just how staggeringly beautiful she is – drop-dead gorgeous. And a different kind of beauty from the blondes who have been fashionable through the thirties, a fact that’s not lost on her audiences or the other Hollywood actresses.

In Those Glorious Glamour Years: Classic Hollywood Costume Design of the 1930s, Margaret J. Bailey, a historian of film costume, observes:

After her ﬁrst appearance on the screen in Algiers, drugstores experienced a run on hair dyes, and soon everybody, including starlets and established luminaries like Crawford and Joan Bennett, had changed their locks from blonde or brown to jet black. The Lamarr hairdo with the part in the middle and the tall Lamarr look became the new standard of glamour. Shock waves were felt not only in personal beauty, but also in the realm of fashion, in particularly, the hat. Somehow that three letter word seems inadequate when describing what Lamarr wore in her ﬁrst ﬁlms. Lamarr veils, snoods, turbans, and such swept the fashion world and millinery companies would overnight ﬁll the hunger for the new cinema image. Not everyone could affect the Lamarr styles, but just about everyone tried. Turbans and snoods became the fashion for Forties headgear.

Suddenly, Hedy’s image is everywhere. Overnight she becomes a star. In December 1938 she is named Glamour Girl of 1938 by the popular press. Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper describes Hedy as “orchidaceous.”

Hedy Lamarr modelling a Grecian gown

1939. After her success in Algiers, Louis B Mayer (head honcho at MGM) envisages...

Hedy Lamarr’s golden “bib”

1939. The ornamental "bib" that adorns Hedy Lamarr's black crepe evening gown is in...

Hedy Lamarr kneeling on a couch

1939. The photographer is not one of Hedy's fans and it does look a...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for Lady of the Tropics

1939. The bamboo screen and prop give it away – this is a publicity...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for I Take This Woman

1940. Another photo that showcases Hedy Lamarr's luxurious tresses and porcelain complexion. A caption...

Hedy Lamarr in a dress decorated with spangles

Hedy Lamarr’s spangles

1940. Is that a palm frond in the upper left corner? And if so,...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity shot for The Heavenly Body

1943. A dramatic vision of Hedy Lamarr, with strong overhead lighting and a faux...

Hedy Lamarr wrapped in ostrich feathers

1943. Most of the other images of Hedy Lamarr on aenigma are studio issues....

Hedy Lamarr with a pearl necklace and earrings

Hedy Lamarr wears pearls

1943. This photo of Hedy Lamarr may have been taken on the set of...

There’s no doubt that she looks gorgeous in stills. In fact, David O Selznick, producer of Gone with the Wind, refers in a memo to Hedy as having “actually been established [as a Hollywood star] purely by photography.” And yet, the photographers themselves are less than enthusiastic. Hungarian lensman Laszlo Willinger, who has photographed Hedy in Vienna as well as in Hollywood, complains to John Kobal:

How do you make Hedy Lamarr sexy? She has nothing to give. It wasn’t as simple as showing legs or cleavage. She was not very adept at posing. She was just… She felt if she sat there, that was enough. You try to bring it to some life by changing the lighting, moving in closer to the head, whatever, because nothing changed her face. It never occurred to me that one could wake her up… and nobody ever did.

Then there’s Virgil Apger, another MGM snapper who remembers:

She thought she knew it all and was forever telling you what to do. She was beautiful – she had great skin texture – but I don’t recall anybody saying they enjoyed shooting her. She never came alive, except to keep making damned uncouth remarks to the people I had around me.

Legendary photographer George Hurrell feels much the same way, having ﬁrst photographed Hedy soon after her arrival in Hollywood. He tells John Kobal:

I didn’t get too much out of Hedy because she was so static. Stunning. But it was the nature of her, she was so phlegmatic, she didn’t project anything. It was just a mood thing. And she had just one style. It didn’t vary particularly. She had a pretty good body. But she wouldn’t dress for it. She was always dressing in black. She liked suits. You can’t do anything – a woman in a suit is a dead duck.

Hedy Lamarr, still a Hollywood wannabe

1938. Hedy Lamarr's first movie after arriving in Hollywood is Algiers, for which MGM...

Hedy Lamarr wears a black sequin dress and pearls

Hedy Lamarr, sequin chic

1938. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM's stills studio, gets to work glamming up...

Hedy Lamarr, sequin chic

1938. This photo looks like it comes from the same sitting as another in...

The loveliness of Lamarr

1939. There's something cat-like about Hedy Lamarr's pose, and her bare shoulders intensify the...

Hedy Lamarr relaxes

1940. Hedy Lamarr relaxes in an armchair while a back light casts a soft...

Hedy Lamarr in profile

1941. An arresting shot of Hedy Lamarr that, unusually, showcases her profile. A caption...

Hedy Lamarr, glamour goddess

1941. With its dramatic use of highlights and shadows, this image pulls out all...

Hedy Lamarr, her hair pulled back

1941. Hedy's long tresses, centrally parted and cascading over her shoulders, are such a...

Hedy Lamarr, publicity portrait for The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr, lady of the pearls

1943. Hedy looks dreamy in this publicity portrait for The Heavenly Body. Perhaps she's...

Some clues there to what Hedy is like and why her career will crash and burn. But on a more positive note, when Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM’s stills studio, visits Hedy to take some shots of her at home, she prepares lunch for him herself. “This is the ﬁrst time a star’s ever done this for me,” he remarks. “Oh, I always ﬁx my lunch by the kitchen sink when I’m alone. It’s easier,” says Hedy (Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 1941).

Hedy is a looker and knows how to turn it to her advantage. According to June Allyson, “No doubt about it, she was stunning and she knew how to look at a man with an intimate little smile that turned him on.” Men are drawn to her like bees to honey, and people are so blinded by her beauty that they struggle to see beyond it. The default response seems to be that she’s just decorative, should stick to being an ornament, should not get involved in “real” acting. Bosley Crowther, notorious critic of The New York Times, is typical in his review of Lady of the Tropics, admittedly a lousy movie:

Now that she has inadvisedly been given an opportunity to act, it is necessary to report that she is essentially one of those museum pieces, like the Mona Lisa, who were more beautiful in repose.

But Hedy Lamarr can act. She may not have the dramatic prowess of a Bette Davis or a Barbara Stanwyck, but watch her in The Strange Woman and you’ll see a subtle and nuanced performance that brings to life Jenny’s (her character’s) ambiguity. What’s more, it seems there is more to Hedy Lamarr than just a perfect face.

1943. Hedy Lamarr with her stand-in, Sylvia Hollis, on the set of The Heavenly Body

Hedy Lamarr – brains

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Hedy Lamarr, and it would certainly have baffled Bosley Crowther, is that her name is on the patent for a technology which would pave the way for both cellular networks and Bluetooth. Hedy, it turns out, is a smart cookie.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Hedy Lamarr, and it would certainly have baffled Bosley Crowther, is that her name (as Hedy Kiesler Markey) appears on the patent for a technology which will pave the way for both cellular networks and Bluetooth. So what’s going on here?

One day in 1940, dress designer, Adrian, one of Hedy’s closest friends, asks her along for dinner. Also there is the multi-talented George Antheil, not just the self-styled Bad Boy of American music (and partner in crime of Orson Welles for The Lady from Shanghai) but also something of an expert on endocrinology – he’s published three books about glands. Hedy’s interest is in finding out about the possibility of breast enlargement – something that Louis B Mayer has suggested to her. Antheil assures her that that would not be a problem. According to his autobiography, at the end of the evening, Hedy leaves before him and uses her lipstick to scrawl her phone number on his car window.

That’s not an invitation to be taken lightly. So he invites her round to his place for dinner and discussion. Fascinating as Hedy’s breasts undoubtedly are, the conversation does eventually move on to the prospect of the US entering the war in Europe. Hedy feels she should be doing something to help the Allies. She is also convinced she has something to offer in that regard because she used to eavesdrop on Fritz Mandl’s (her munitions manufacturer ex-husband) discussions about weapons technology.

She said she knew a good deal about new munitions and various secret weapons, some of which she had invented herself, and that she was thinking seriously of quitting M.G.M. and going to Washington, D.C., to offer her services to the newly established Inventors’ Council.

The challenge they set themselves is to find a way to stop the Germans from jamming the signals controlling the radio-guided torpedoes fired at their U-boats, which are playing havoc with the British shipping trying to cross the Atlantic. The solution the pair come up with is a radio-directed torpedo based on a transmitter and receiver, programmed to shift continually and at random through 88 different frequencies. The programming is done by paper tape inspired by the paper-rolls Antheil has used to synchronise player pianos. This is the invention they submit to the government for a US patent under the title of Secret Communication System.

The invention is covered in the October 1 1941 edition of The New York Times:

HEDY LAMARR – Actress Devises ‘Red-Hot’ Apparatus for Use in Defense
So vital is her discovery to national defense that government officials will not allow publication of its details. Colonel L. B. Lent, chief engineer of the National Inventors Council, classed Miss Lamarr’s invention as in the ‘red-hot’ category. The only inkling of what it might be was the announcement that it was related to remote control of apparatus employed in warfare.

Hedy Lamarr in her garden

Around 1942. According to the person from whom this photo was acquired, it was...

Hedy Lamarr with cinematographer Ray June

1941. Based on Internet searches, this shot appears to have been taken on the...

Hedy Lamarr boosts war-bond sales

1942. Asked on radio about her attitude to war-bond sales, Hedy Lamarr doesn't mince...

Hedy Lamarr at home

24 January 1942. A glimpse of Hedy Lamarr in her kitchen before going to...

Hedy Lamarr with cinematographer Bud Lawton

1940. The other side of the lens. On the set of I Take This...

Hedy Lamarr – Uncle Sam’s saleslady

1942. Hedy Lamarr is delighted to accept the challenge when the Treasury Department asks...

When their patent application is approved in August 1942, Hedy and Antheil offer it to the US government. But the powers-that-be just sit on it, regarding the device as too unwieldy. They are more interested in having Hedy do some tours to sell war bonds. She accepts the invitation and throws herself wholeheartedly behind the initiative.

All the ships dispatched to defend the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis will be equipped with frequency-hopping technology (the paper rolls replaced by electronic circuitry) to secure their communications. But the technology itself will remain a secret until it is declassified in 1981. By the time its commercial potential is realized, the patent will have expired and others will profit hugely from it. It will not be until 1997 that Hedy and Antheil (by this time deceased) will be officially recognized for their invention and receive the sixth annual Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Hedy will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame posthumously in 2014.

Is the idea behind spread spectrum a one-off for Hedy? It’s difficult to know. There’s a story about her at age five taking apart and reassembling a music box. Antheil is certainly impressed by her inquisitiveness and ingenuity. And in interviews towards the end of her life she talks about how, while she was dating Howard Hughes, she designed a new wing shape to make his planes more aerodynamic. That’s about the size of it. Whatever her credentials as an inventor, though, Hedy Lamarr is no airhead. When she leaves MGM in 1945, she partners with Jack Chertok, producer of The Conspirators (one of her 1942 movies) to set up Mars Productions, a production company. She goes on to produce The Strange Woman (1946 – arguably the showcase for her finest performance) and Dishonored Lady (1947) as well as attempting to make further movies in Italy. She amasses a considerable art collection that includes works by the likes of Modigliani, Chagall, Rodin, Dufy, Vlaminck, Rouault, Utrillo and Renoir. And late in life she proves herself to be quite an astute investor so that when she dies in 2000, she leaves behind an estate worth $3.3 million – mainly shares.

Hedy Lamarr – bad judgment

Unfortunately, intelligence doesn’t necessarily translate into good judgment, let alone wisdom. Hedy is not afraid to make decisions and in too many cases she opts for the wrong course of action. This is the case with regard to both her professional and her private life. With the benefit of hindsight, Hedy will admit that she had poor taste both in scripts and in husbands. It’s difficult to argue with that.

Let’s start with her career. The movies in which an actor or actress appears can make or break their career. When she arrives in Hollywood, Hedy realizes that the place is full of wannabees looking for roles, that her contract makes no guarantees and that if she’s to be successful she has to engineer an opening.

She’s fortunate to run into Charles Boyer at a party; it is thanks to him that she gets a starring role in Algiers, her first and breakthrough Hollywood movie. She’s unfortunate that even after she makes headlines, her employers, Louis B Mayer and MGM, have pretty much no idea how to use her. They do a great job of building her image through a stream of glamorous stills. But the films in which they cast her range from second-rate to downright bad.

Hedy Lamarr in Algiers

1938. In February, Hedy gets her first break. She meets Charles Boyer at a...

Hedy Lamarr alongside Judy Garland and Lana Turner in Ziegfeld Girl

Hedy Lamarr in Ziegfeld Girl

1940. Here's Hedy Lamarr alongside her co-stars, Judy Garland and Lana Turner. Looking back...

Hedy Lamarr in Tortilla Flat

1942. Tortilla Flat, based on an early novel by John Steinbeck, gives Hedy Lamarr...

Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body

1943. The title says it all – Hedy Lamarr is cast in an essentially...

Hedy Lamarr as Tondelayo in White Cargo

1942. Hedy Lamarr covered in brown make-up as Tondelayo in White Cargo. She appears...

Hedy Lamarr in the Conspirators

1944. The Conspirators is a tale of romance, intrigue and adventure set in Lisbon...

Hedy Lamarr on the set of Experiment Perilous

1944. For Experiment Perilous, a psychological mystery set in the early years of the...

Hedy Lamarr in The Strange Woman

1946. In late summer 1945, Hedy partners with Jack Chertok, producer of The Conspirators...

Hedy Lamarr in Dishonored Lady

1947. Dishonored Lady was always going to struggle to be a success given its...

Worst of all, in 1942 Mayer turns down Warner Bros when they come calling, refusing to loan Hedy out to star opposite Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Instead, she ends up in the toe-curling White Cargo. Two years later, Hedy has opportunities to star in Laura and Gaslight. She rejects both of them (Gene Tierney and Ingrid Bergman say hi!). Had she appeared in just one of that trio of films, how different might her career trajectory have been and how differently might she be remembered? As it is, how many Hedy Lamarr movies can you remember off the top of your head? None, right?

Relatively early in her career, a certain litigiousness starts to characterize Hedy’s affairs. In 1943, she sues Loew’s and MGM for failing to pay her the $2,000 a week stipulated in her contract. They claim that the reason for this is a wartime executive order, issued by President Roosevelt, limiting salaries to $25,000 a year. The case is settled out of court. But as time goes by, it does seem as if Hedy is rather too keen on litigation, and this tendency will dog her for pretty much the rest of her life because all too often courts will fail to find in her favour.

More often than not, Hedy’s litigation has to do with money. Hedy’s attitude to it is ambiguous. On the one hand, money matters to her and she worries about not having enough of it. On the other, she spends lavishly, which for a time she can afford to do. She gets into the habit of living in the best homes with the finest furnishings, amassing an amazing art collection, and travelling whenever and wherever she wants.

Hedy Lamarr with Charlie Chaplin at the LA Tennis Club — 1942. Hedy Lamarr with Charlie Chaplin

After she leaves MGM in late summer 1945, she sets up her own production company, Mars Productions, in partnership with Jack Chertok, producer of her 1944 film, The Conspirators. They manage to find financial backing from producer, Howard Stromberg and their first film, The Strange Woman, is a bit of a triumph even though Hedy doesn’t get on with chosen director Edgar Ulmer. But their second movie, Dishonored Lady, is a turkey.

Hedy’s career is brought back from the brink by her appearance in Cecil B DeMille’s outrageous biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1949), the highest grossing movie of the decade. But she falls out with Paramount by refusing to help promote the film unless paid top dollar to do so.

Soon she is sinking her fortune into her own productions, taking advantage of the facilities offered by Rome. She’s well out of her depth, her projects end in failure and she runs out of road. She’s over-reached herself – spent too much money, fallen out with too many people (she’s acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with), burnt too many bridges.

In her autobiography she summarizes her attitude to money:

I figured out that I had made—and spent—some $30 million. … I advise everybody not to save; spend your money. Most people save all their lives and give it to somebody else. Money is to be enjoyed.

Hedy Lamarr’s private life is messy and sad. She is married and divorced six times: to munitions magnate Fritz Mandl: screenwriter Gene Markey; actor John Loder; nightclub owner Ernest Stauffer; oil millionaire W Howard Lee; and lawyer Lewis W Boies Jr. None of her marriages last more than six years and she doesn’t always maximize what she could get from her divorce settlements. Meanwhile, she has many affairs. Sadly, such turmoil is not unusual for attractive women trying to make careers in Hollywood.

By the mid-1960s, Hedy struggles to pay her utility bills and doesn’t always know where her next meal is coming from. Her ghost-written, sexed-up autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, published in 1966, is a pretty desperate attempt to raise some much-needed money. But she’s horrified when she reads it and (surprise, surprise!) contests its accuracy in court. Much of the content is indeed dubious and sensational.

She reaches her nadir when she is arrested for shoplifting in 1966 and again in 1991. She is fortunate to get away with it on both occasions.

Hedy Lamarr – what to make of her?

Let’s be clear from the outset. Hedy Lamarr is no angel. She has quite a temper and can be difficult to live with – John Loder, her third husband, should know. And as she establishes herself as a star, she gains a reputation (dubious at first but increasingly credible) as a real prima donna.

But it would be unfair to see her as just a spoiled diva who gets what’s coming to her. There are certainly some extenuating factors. Let’s start with her looks. Reflecting on her life, Hedy would suggest that:

My face has been my misfortune. It has attracted six unsuccessful marriage partners. It has attracted all the wrong people into my boudoir My face is a mask I can’t remove. I must live with it. I curse it.

She embodies the fate of so many beautiful women drawn to Hollywood, preyed upon and spat out. And it’s worth adding that, as Richard Avedon observed, beauty can be isolating. Hedy is undoubtedly lonely in the US and it’s easy to imagine that her looks and her shyness being a fatal combination for her. In 1952, actor Farley Granger attended a private party at which he recalled seeing Hedy:

She was very shy, very quiet, and very retiring. She just kind of receded almost into the woodwork. She kept very much to herself, you know.

Indeed, what comes through as you read Hedy Lamarr’s biographies and interviews with those who knew her is that she is a very private person. So, while acting may provide a channel for the more extrovert side of her personality, perhaps it turns out not to be the ideal career for her. In Hedy Lamarr Reveals She’ll Retire from Films in the January 24 1951 edition of the Los Angeles Examiner, gossip columnist Louella Parsons quotes a letter:

Dear Louella,
To straighten out all various statements about my retiring from the screen I want you to know it is true for the simple reason that I would like the privilege of a private life. As for marriage it is the normal desire of any woman, when I find the man I love enough to be my husband and father of my children.
Fond love to you,
Hedy Lamarr

By the late-1940s if not before, perhaps because of the mounting pressure and expectations, Hedy’s mind seems to be in a fragile state. Again, her public confidante is Louella Parsons, who reveals in The Strange Case of Hedy Lamarr (Photoplay, September, 1947) that, “with all the things in her past, and all she still holds of the material things of life, Hedy has been dangerously close to a nervous breakdown for the past year and she is still far from well.”

Her former co-star, John Fraser, paints a harrowing picture of Hedy’s mental decline in an email to Stephen Shearer:

In 1952 Hedy was neurotic and completely unable to communicate socially. In company, she was unaware of anyone but herself. Her need to be the centre of attention meant that whenever she appeared in public, she launched into a meaningless monologue. She was accompanied by her PA, Frankie Dawson and sometimes by her psychiatrist, who wasn’t doing her much good.

From around the mid-1950s to the early-1970s, Hedy is treated by New York physician Max Jacobson, nicknamed “Miracle Max” and “Dr Feelgood.” He has arrived in New York from Berlin in 1936 and his practice attracts the rich and famous including an impressive roster of Hollywood movie celebrities – Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Yul Brynner, Montgomery Clift, Cecil B DeMille, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Marilyn Monroe, David O Selznick, Elizabeth Taylor and Billy Wilder. According to Wikipedia, Jacobson is known for his “miracle tissue regenerator” shots, which consist of amphetamines, animal hormones, bone marrow, enzymes, human placenta, painkillers, steroids, and multivitamins.

Add to such a lethal cocktail of drugs the shock Hedy suffers when, in December 1958, her 11-year-old son, Anthony, out riding his bike, is hit by a car and seriously injured, and her erratic behaviour is hardly surprising. To compound matters, as her looks fade in the 1960s she undergoes some pretty disastrous cosmetic surgery that leaves her reluctant to show her face in public.

The last word on Hedy Lamarr goes to John Fraser:

She had been fawned upon, indulged and exploited ever since she had reached the age of puberty. Her extraordinary intelligence did not encompass wisdom. How could she have learnt about the values that matter, about kindness and acceptance and laughter, in the Dream Factory that is Hollywood? She had been thrust into the limelight at a pitilessly early age, been devoured by rapacious lovers and producers who saw her ravishing beauty as a ticket to success, and who looked elsewhere when she began to grow older. Beauty and money in moderation are undoubtedly a blessing. In excess, they are surely a curse.

Want to know more about Hedy Lamarr?

The two main sources for this piece are Hedy’s autobiography Ecstasy and Me (to be read with a large pinch of salt) and Stephen Michael Shearer’s Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr. Other titles are available at Amazon and elsewehere. Alexandra Dean’s documentary film, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, provides an overview of her life, shining a spotlight on her prowess as an inventor.

Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Around 1950. A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Ress by Janis Paige. Read more.

In the aftermath of World War II, unmarried women faced a hard dilemma when it came to sex. Damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.

In the words of a 16-year-old girl quoted by Michael Phillips in his article Women and the Sexual Double Standard of the 1950s:

How are you supposed to know what they want? You hold out for a long time and then when you give in to them and give your body they laugh at you afterwards and say they would never marry a slut, and that they didn’t love you but were testing because they only plan to marry a virgin and wanted to see if you would go all the way.

The pressures could be especially intense in the torrid and ultra-competitive world of the Hollywood studios, where the casting couch cast a long shadow and having a flexible attitude to sex could be the route to stardom or the road to perdition.

The inspiration for this piece is a collection of photos given to Dr Irving Ress by his clients. Dr Ress was an obstetrician who worked in Hollywood. Among the women who came to him for advice on pregnancy and childbirth were a number of movie stars and actresses. Perhaps they dedicated their photos to him spontaneously. More likely he was susceptible to their charms and asked them to contribute to his collection. Flattered by the request, they were happy to do so.

The predicaments and concerns they confided in him we can only imagine. But that’s not difficult in the context both the time (the 1940s and early ’50s) and the place (Hollywood).

Betty Grable by Frank Powolny — 1943. Weapons of mass seduction. The image that made Betty Grable the number one pin-up girl of the World War II era. Read more.

Unsafe sex – the sexual revolution of the 1940s

20 years before the permissive society of the 1960s, a sexual revolution is taking place in the US in the 1940s.

The war years have already seen the flowering of the pin-up, perfected by the Hollywood studios and designed both to market their product and to boost morale by presenting an all-American view of the sweetheart waiting back home for the soldiers and sailors — the girls worth fighting for. As the GIs return, they also bring with them pornography from Europe and Asia.

In the late-1940s “camera clubs” are formed to get around laws restricting the production of nude photos. The clubs claim they exist to promote “artistic photography”, but in reality… The years 1952 through 1957 see Bettie Page posing for Irving Klaw, who distributes his pin-up and bondage shots by mail-order. And in 1953 Hugh Heffner publishes the first issue of Playboy.

At the same time, researchers are taking a new, more scientific interest in sex and sexuality. In 1948 the Kinsey Report, Sexual Behaviors in the Human Male and Sexual Behaviors in the Human Female, is published, shining a light on topics that have hitherto been taboo. Around this time, courses on human sexuality begin to appear on college campuses.

Sex is in the air. And in this context and after 15 years of depression and war, it’s hardly surprising that young people are less inclined than their parents to defer to traditional restraints on their behavior. Between 1941 and 1953, the overall rate of single motherhood more than doubles. But it’s not a straightforward matter of celebration, liberation and hedonism holding sway.

The post-World War II years bring with them a new period of economic and sexual anxiety. The US faces a major housing crisis. Juvenile delinquency supposedly reaches epic proportions. Both Republicans and Democrats go after Alfred Kinsey and comic books (Batman and Wonder Woman are accused of promoting homosexuality and lesbianism). The mood is one of pride and depression, valour and self-doubt, stoicism and vulnerability. Welcome to the heyday of film noir.

Unsafe sex – damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t

Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls — *1947. In The Two Mrs Carrolls, Barbara Stanwyck is a victim of her husband. But his portrait of her seems to reflect the period’s underlying ambivalence and paranoia about women.*

Meanwhile, women face a tricky dilemma. Leaving aside social attitudes to women having sex outside marriage (boys will be boys so that’s okay), contraceptive techniques are crude and unreliable. So women in relationships are playing with fire – always susceptible to getting pregnant or picking up a sexually transmitted disease.

It’s no wonder that women are strongly motivated to get married at the first opportunity (during the 1950s, the average age of women at marriage is 20). But there’s always the chance that they’ll make a bad choice and end up with a violent and abusive partner. And guess what? Domestic violence is rarely punished and there are no laws against rape in marriage. Which is hardly surprising given that police forces have no special domestic-violence units or policies.

The alternative – walking out – is unlikely to be a bed of roses. Single mothers and divorcees don’t have the same rights to state aid as widows with children so money is a problem. If they can get a job, it’s likely to be menial and low-paid. In other words, there’s a good chance those women end up ostracized and impoverished.

*1950. Like most Hollywood actresses, Marilyn Monroe is a manufactured product.* *Read more. Photo by Frank Powolny.*

Unsafe sex – the honey trap

Pretty girls are drawn to Hollywood like gazelles to a watering hole, where the lions and hyenas lie in wait. Some wannabes, such as Judy Garland, arrive under the influence of ambitious and domineering parents. Most are talent-spotted – Ava Gardner via a portrait photo in a New York photographer’s studio window, Lana Turner at a soda fountain – or so the story goes. Models (like Hazel Brooks) and theatre actresses (like Ella Raines) are popular prey.When they arrive in Tinseltown, they are young and innocent. And, like lambs to slaughter, onto the production conveyor-belt they go. Each is given a name (Frances Ethel Gumm becomes Judy Garland, Betty Joan Perske is rechristened Lauren Bacall ), a more or less fanciful back-story, a makeover and a contract.

What next for our aspiring starlet? A series of photo sessions with plenty of cheesecake shots and, if she’s lucky, a few bit parts. Her fate is down to a combination of factors, not the least of which is the relationships she manages to establish. Which brings us, or rather her, to the casting couch. Three of Hollywood’s foremost lechers in the 1940s are Harry Cohn, Darryl F Zanuck and Howard Hughes.

Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, is a blustering, foul-mouthed, abrasive taskmaster and acts like a tyrant. His office contains an enormous desk for him, and small seats for his visitors, enabling him to tower over them. On his desk is a photo of Benito Mussolini, whom he greatly admires. He also has ties to organized crime and is friendly with mobsters such as Chicago gangster John Roselli. Cohn enjoys using concealed microphones to eavesdrop on employees’ conversations, such as those of Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth during the filming of Gilda. Rita, Joan Crawford and Kim Novak are three of the better-known actresses who manage to build careers for themselves in spite of rejecting his advances.

Bette Davis and Howard Hughes — *1938. Bette Davis with predator Howard Hughes.* *Read more*.

Darryl F Zanuck, Cohn’s counterpart at 20^th Century-Fox, is widely credited with inventing the “casting couch”. In Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Last Tycoon, Leonard Mosley quotes a startling recollection of the mogul’s long-term associate Milton Sperling:

You know that Darryl was mad about women. Everybody talked about it in Hollywood and the rumor was that his prowess as a cocksman was just unbelievable. I don’t know whether it was true or not. I was a shy young man, a bit backward in that regard. I guess, but even I knew that every day at four o’clock in the afternoon some girl on the lot would visit Zanuck in his office. The doors would be locked after she went in, no calls were taken, and for the next half hour nothing happened – headquarters shut down. Around the office work came to a halt for the sex siesta. It was an understood thing. While the girl was with Zanuck, everything stopped, and anyone who had the same proclivities as Zanuck, and had the girl to do it with, would go off somewhere and do what he was doing. I honestly think that from four to four-thirty every day at Fox, if you could have harnessed the power from all the fucking that was going on, you could have turned the tides at Malibu. It was an incredible thing, but a girl went in through that door every day.

Howard Hughes is not just a film producer and the owner of RKO Pictures; he is a business tycoon, engineer and pioneering aviator. He has a “secret” house near his LA home where he “interviews” would-be starlets. Rumour has it that he’s had affairs with a host of young actresses including Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Ava Gardner, Carole Lombard and Ginger Rogers. Jane Greer’s career hits the buffers when she rejects his advances.

It’s not just the studio heads and producers who are in on the act. Agents, actors, publicists and others are all circling.

But back to our aspiring starlet… Assuming she makes it onto the big screen, the studio, fan magazines and gossip columnists work together to paint an attractive picture of her. By providing details of her domestic life, the studio enables fans to feel as if they can get close to the real person. Articles and photos of her home, her clothes, the events and parties she attends and so on, add grist to the mill. As does the slightest suggestion of romance – but only if our starlet is single.

It’s essential that there’s no hint of scandal. To that end, the studio enlists “fixers” to clean up potential embarrassments such as a drug addiction or an extra-marital affair. That is why it’s important for our starlet to tow the line and keep on the right side of her bosses. Otherwise they could hang her out to dry.

Jane Greer by Ernest A Bachrach — 1945. Jane Greer, a talented actress as well as a beautiful woman, has her career wrecked by Howard Hughes, whose advances she rejects. Photo by Ernest A Bachrach.

The trouble is that temptation is everywhere. If you want to get a sense of the corrupt and corrupting forces that are rife, just read the novels of Raymond Chandler. Carmen Sternwood, for example, Lauren Bacall’s wild, drug-addicted younger sister exploited by pornographers and blackmailers in The Big Sleep, is an object lesson in what can become of a girl who gets in with the wrong crowd. In My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, Scotty Bowers, an ex-Marine who works as a bartender at Hollywood parties, paints a picture of the LAPD vice squad prowling the hills in their patrol cars, looking for parties and opportunities to arrest the participants.

Even big stars are vulnerable to scandal. Ingrid Bergman is one of the most-loved stars in America but all that changes overnight when, in spite of having a husband and a daughter, she gets pregnant by Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Colorado Senator Edwin C Johnson takes to the floor of the Senate to denounce her as “a powerful influence for evil.”

And if our starlet fails to make the grade? She might be relegated to the stock character pool, kept around to “pleasure” visiting executives, or just spat out.

Unsafe sex –and what of Dr Ress and his clients?

It is in this glittering and sleazy environment laced with opportunity and danger that some at least of Dr Ress’s clients seek to make their way.

Of the twelve young women who dedicate photos to Dr Ress, seven taste a modicum of success, meet and romance a few of the ‘beautiful people’ and come through (relatively) unscathed, as far as we can tell. “Tommye” Adams crashes and burns – hers is a cautionary tale if ever there was one. Virginia Walker dies tragically young. The other three are mysteries.

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Angela Greene

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "For Doctor Ress With sincere thanks and appreciation – Always, Angela."

Angela Greene is born in 1921, grows up in Flushing, New York,...

Constance Dowling

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Dear Dr. Ress – I hope this was worth waiting for – Love, Connie Dowling".

Constance Dowling has come to Hollywood via...

Doris Dowling

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress. With great affection and appreciation. Doris Dowling (yr. new daughter)".

Doris Dowling has followed her sister, Constance, from Broadway to...

Kay Aldridge

1947. Inscribed “Irving Ress, With great appreciation, Kay Aldridge, 1947”.

Kay inscribes this photo two years after retiring. Her career began 13 years earlier –...

Janis Paige

1945. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress, My dearest thanks and appreciation for being such a wonderful friend to me. With love, “The Brat” Janis Paige"

Janis...

Lynn Merrick

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "If there’s a doctor in the house, I hope it’s DR. RESS! Best Always, Lynn Merrick"

Lynn, blonde and blue-eyed, dedicates this photo...

Charmaine du Rois

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To my favorite Doctor and friend, sincerely always, Charmaine Du Rois".

Diane

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "For my beloved doctor – the best in the world and a dear friend – Thank you for my beautiful little girl –...

Abigail “Tommye” Adams

8 March 1944. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress:– All my deepest affection. Tommye".

In May 1944, three months after inscribing this photo to Dr Ress, Tommye...

Marta Linden

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Irving. On account you’re such a love! Marta".

Marta Linden doesn’t hang around for long in Hollywood. Between 1942 and 1945 she...

Liliana Chanel

Around 1950. Inscribed "A Irving, sperando di conservare per sempre la sua meravigliosa amicizia. Liliana".

A label on the back of the photo identifies the...

Virginia Walker

1945. Inscribed "For my very favorite doctor. Virginia".

This photo is issued by 20th Century-Fox to promote A Royal Scandal (1945), a film about the...

Information about the doctor himself is thin on the ground, apart from a brief entry in Wikipedia. But we do catch a tantalizing glimpse of him in Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946 by Tom Weaver and Michael Brunas. They recount an incident involving Australian actress Betty Bryant, cast by Universal as the female lead in The Jungle Captive (1945).

Around 1948. A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Ress by Betty Bryant. Read more.

Australian actress Betty Bryant, recently signed by Universal to a term contract, was originally chosen to play the female lead in The Jungle Captive (1945).
On August 30, 1944, one day before production began, she appeared in the office of associate producer Morgan B. Cox and informed him that she didn’t know whether she could find a babysitter to stay with her two year old on certain nights she was scheduled to work. On the first day of shooting she was unprepared, and on the second day she arrived 40 minutes late, just in time for a reprimand from director Harold Young.
To quiet the actress’ maternal apprehensions, her physician Dr Irving L. Ress, Hollywood’s “obstetrician to the stars,” was summoned. In private, Dr. Ress emphatically told Cox that there was nothing about motion pictures or motion picture people that he could admire. According to Ress, all the men in the movie business were concerned primarily with “making” any and all women in any way connected with the industry. Bryant was drawn into the argument and Ress nearly succeeded in creating a scene.
Over the next several days this embarrassing situation continued, with Ress hanging around the set, creating disturbances, careening around the darkened lot in his car and, in the words of Cox in a 16-page September 12 memo), “acting more like a thwarted lover than a reputable doctor.” Cox concluded in his memo that Bryant, slightly ill throughout much of this ordeal and genuinely apologetic for the entire situation, was a victim of circumstances over which she had little control. Of course the boom was inevitably lowered on the hapless actress, and she was bumped. (In his September 9 Los Angeles Times column, Edwin Schallert sugar-coated the incident, reporting that Bryant had gotten ill and “has to go in the hospital for observation and treatment.”) Amelita Ward replaced her in the picture, which ran two days over schedule (wrapping on September 16), probably as the result of the turmoil created by the mysterious Dr. Ress.

Clearly the good doctor has a jaundiced view of the industry. And who, other than the studios and their stooges, could really blame him?

Want to know more?

Two important sources for this piece are a blog about Women and the Sexual Double Standard of the 1950s (apparently no longer available online) and “Silent” Sexual Revolution Began In 1940’s and ’50s, an article by Alan Petigny.

For the lowdown on Hollywood, Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema by Anne Helen Petersen is a great read. Or you could take a look at Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers. For an online article, there’s a Daily Express article on Hollywood’s dirty little secret.

For more about the individual actresses, Wikipedia, IMDb and Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen are excellent starting points.

Jane Greer

1945. Jane Greer, a talented actress as well as a beautiful woman, has her career wrecked by Howard Hughes, whose advances she rejects. To discover her story, take a look at Jane Greer – the queen of film noir. Photo by Ernest A Bachrach.

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Liliana Chanel

Around 1950. Inscribed “A Irving, sperando di conservare per sempre la sua meravigliosa amicizia. Liliana”.

A label on the back of the photo identifies the sitter as “Liana Chanel” but the only other information is about the photographer – Wallace Seawell at Paul Hesse Studios.

Wallace Seawell is a celebrity photographer who until recently has been producing publicity stills for RKO Pictures, whose owner Howard Hughes says that he “could make a pig look beautiful.” Now he’s working for Paul Hesse, a leading West Coast commercial photographer.

He is, by all accounts, a dapper dresser with a very proper manner and a way of working with celebrities that draws memorable expressions and poses from them.

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Jean Simmons and Claire Bloom – adventures of two north London girls

Jean Simmons and Claire Bloom were born within two years of each other to families living in London just a few miles apart.

Both would sign contracts with J Arthur Rank. Both would audition to play Ophelia to Laurence Olivier’s on-screen Hamlet – Jean would get the role. Both would go on to become movie stars. And both would fall for that arch-Casanova, Richard Burton.

Jean Simmons

Jean is born in 1929 and becomes one of J Arthur Rank’s “well-spoken young starlets”. Her big break comes when David Lean casts her as Estella in Great Expectations (1946). It’s this experience that leads her to pursue an acting career more seriously:

I thought acting was just a lark, meeting all those exciting movie stars, and getting £5 a day which was lovely because we needed the money. But I figured I’d just go off and get married and have children like my mother. It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on.

Jean Simmons as Ophelia

1947. Publicity portrait for Laurence Olivier's Hamlet.

Jean Simmons as Kanchi

1947. Jean Simmons on the set of Black Narcissus.

Jean Simmons, black hat

Around 1955. Jean Simmons' profile is beautifully set off by her broad-brimmed hat in this almost abstract portrait.

Jean Simmons, all wrapped up

Around 1955. Jean Simmons looks chic and cosy in a stylish sheepskin jacket.

Jean Simmons, fashion model

Around 1952. An image that would be a shoe-in for a Vogue editorial. Anthony Beauchamp, the photographer, was born in England and married Sarah Churchill, the actress daughter of Winston Churchill, before moving to Los Angeles, where this shot was likely taken.

The next year, she’s the subject of a pitched battle between Laurence Olivier, who wants her to play Ophelia in Hamlet, and Michael Powell, who wants her for Kanchi in Black Narcissus. Michael Powell recalls:

Jean Simmons, Victor Mature and Richard Burton — 1953. Jean Simmons lunching with Victor Mature and Richard Burton while filming The Robe.

Over Jean Simmons there was war between Larry and me, as I have already said. Messages flew to and fro between the opposing camps:
“Dear Larry, anybody can play Ophelia. I can play Ophelia. How about Bobby Helpmann? Love Micky.”
“Dear Micky, how you could imagine that a typical English teenager, straight from the vicarage, can play a piece of Indian tail, beats me. I enclose a book of erotic Indian pictures to help your casting director. Love Larry.”
“Dear Larry. Thanks for the book. I do my own casting, but it will come in handy for the make-up department. Micky.”
“Dear Micky. Viv has read Black Narcissus. She wants to know if you are serious about Jean playing Kanchi?”
“Perfectly serious. Micky.”
“Dear Micky. Arthur Rank suggests that our two production managers get together over Jean Simmons. Do you agree? Larry.”
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Love Micky.”
In this way did the two plum parts of the year fall into Jean Simmons’s luscious lap. She was lovely in both of them. I don’t think that she was ever quite so good again.

In 1950, Jean Simmons marries Stewart Granger, with whom she has fallen in love on the set of Caesar and Cleopatra, but she’s been spotted already by Howard Hughes, a notorious lothario. His company, RKO, buys her contract and he lays siege to her romantically and professionally. In his autobiography, Sparks Fly Upward, Stewart Granger describes a phone conversation in which Hughes propositioned Jean. On hearing Hughes say, “When are you going to get away from that goddamned husband of yours? I want to talk to you alone, honey,” he grabbed the phone and shouted, “Mr Howard Bloody Hughes, you’ll be sorry if you don’t leave my wife alone!” For over a year, she doesn’t work – she gets off lightly compared with Jane Greer, who just a few years earlier suffered a similar but more protracted fate at Hughes’ hands.

Mid-1950s. Jean Simmons and Stewart Granger filming an episode of Person to Person. Read more.

At a 1952/53 New Year’s Eve party, Jean is kissed by Richard Burton. And, according to Tom Rubython (And God Created Burton), one thing leads to another… The Burtons are house guests staying in a cottage in the grounds of the Grangers’ sumptouous Beverley Hills mansion. Richard waits until Sybil is asleep, then creeps out to the woodshed. Silently, one by one, he moves the logs so as to squeeze through a flap at the back of the shed that provides a way to the main house, where the Grangers sleep in separate bedrooms.

Stewart is completely unaware of what ensues. Richard slinks to Jean’s bedroom, pushes open the door, sweeps her into an embrace and makes love to her on a big sheepskin rug before creeping back to his still sleeping wife. And it’s not a one-off. The clandestine nocturnal encounters go on for months — yet neither Richard’s nor Jean’s spouse ever suspects a thing.

Claire Bloom

Claire is born in 1931 and, age 10 and at the height of the Blitz, is sent to Florida to stay with her uncle. She returns two years later, having made her radio debut. She follows it up on stage age 15 and within just two years she’s playing Ophelia opposite Paul Schofield and Robert Helpmann at Stratford-upon-Avon. A year later she makes her West End debut in The Lady’s Not For Burning opposite the up-and-coming Richard Burton. “I thought how beautiful he was with those green eyes.”

In 1950 she’s contacted by Charlie Chaplin, who is looking for an English actress who is “small, dark and very young”. Claire, as it turns out, bears an uncanny resemblance to his wife, Oona. She flies to New York, with her mother as a chaperone, for an audition. Four months later, she’s offered the part of Theresa, a young, suicide-bent ballerina saved from despair by an aging music-hall clown (Chaplin).

Claire Bloom on board the Mauretania

1951. Claire Bloom arrives in New York on her way to film Limelight. In her memoirs she writes:

…we discovered that there was enough money in the bank for me to buy one beautiful dress to take with me to Hollywood. I went to Victor Stiebel, I bought the beautiful dress, and there in the fitting room had the first full realisation of what had happened. This time we were to travel by sea to New York and then by train to California.

Could this be that dress? Photo by W A Probst.

Claire Bloom as Theresa

1951. Publicity portrait for Charlie Chaplin's Limelight. Photo by Bob Willoughby.

Claire Bloom on set with a cat

1951. Claire Bloom runs through her script. Her friend steals the show. Or should we say the "limelight"? Photo by Leslie H Baker.

Her autobiography gives a fascinating insight into Chaplin’s working methods:

When we did begin, all that meticulous rehearsing paid off – we played beautifully together. He was happy with me and I was thrilled. But then came the true test when we moved from the simple dialogues to the scene where Theresa discovers (hysterically) that she can walk again. As a young actress I had difficulty in weeping and I dreaded the scene. I knew that the tears wouldn’t come when needed. The morning of the shooting, at the height of my panic, I was summoned to Chaplin’s dressing room. He said he wanted to go over the scene purely for the moves and the words. “I want no emotion. Save that for the floor.” I obeyed. Suddenly Chaplin was furious with me, as though I’d shattered a second mirror. “But, Mr Chaplin,” I weakly protested, “I thought that was what you wanted – just a technical run-through of the scene.” This remark drove Chaplin into a greater fury. “There is no such thing as technical acting, only bad acting!” I started to weep, and was steered by him onto the floor, where the crew, notified beforehand of his plan, were ready to begin filming immediately. We shot the scene in one take.

Claire Bloom with Vivien Leigh in a scene from Duel of Angels — 1958. Claire Bloom (right) with Vivien Leigh in a scene from Duel of Angels. Photo by Angus McBean. Read more.

It’s 1954 and Claire is once again on stage with Richard Burton. She’s playing Ophelia to his Hamlet at the Old Vic. William Squire, one of her co-actors, recalls in an interview shortly after Richard’s death:

Richard was mad about her and wanted her, but I told him, “It’s no good, Rich, she won’t have you. She won’t have anybody.” He said, “I bet I’ll have her.” I said, “You won’t, you know.” He asked, “What do you bet?” This was a matter of his honour now. A challenge! So I said, “A pint.” … It didn’t take Claire long to become attracted to Richard without him doing anything. She was sitting with me in the stalls watching him rehearse on stage, and she said to me, “He is really rather marvellous, isn’t he?” I knew then I’d soon be owing Rich a pint.

And Richard does indeed win his bet and take Claire’s virginity:

We made love quietly in my room with my mother sleeping upstairs. Richard left me in the early morning to go back home, and I went to sleep happy and childishly thrilled that I was a “woman” at last.

Claire gives Richard the key to her house, and he often sneaks into her bedroom. Before sunrise, he goes back to his wife, Sybil, telling her he’s been out drinking all night with friends. And that’s not all. According to Richard, “We’d make love in our dressing rooms between the matinee and the evening performance”.

In his later years, Burton told his biographer, Michael Munn, “’I only ever loved two women before Elizabeth (Taylor), Sybil was one, Claire Bloom the other.”

Jean Simmons and Claire Bloom on screen

You’ve read the stories and looked at the pictures.

1. Black Narcissus (1947)

Jean Simmons stars as Kanchi, a dancing girl. "It is the most erotic film that I have ever made," wrote Michael Powell of Black Narcissus. "It is all done by suggestion, but eroticism is in every frame and image, from the beginning to the end." Despite the poor quality of this video, this essay – Kanchi: Sexuality in Black Narcissus – by Shalane Degruyter is well worth watching.

2 Hamlet (1948)

“Get thee to a nunnery.” Hamlet’s (Laurence Olivier) treatment of Ophelia (Jean Simmons) in Act 3, Scene 1 is shockingly cruel.

3. Limelight (1952)

The final scene of Claire Bloom’s breakthrough movie, Limelight, in which she stars with Charlie Chaplin.

4. Look Back in Anger (1959)

Richard Burton is the original angry young man in John Osborne’s ground-breaking, kitchen-sink drama. Claire Bloom and Mary Ure are his co-stars.

Now deepen your appreciation with a glimpse of both actresses on screen. Jean Simmons is wonderfully sensual as Kanchi and vulnerable as Ophelia. Claire Bloom shows her versatility, equally at home with stylized melodrama and gritty realism.

1972. Innocent abroad or on his way to an assignation? Richard Burton prowls the streets of Italy. Photo from the Lino Nanni photography agency.

Postscript

Jean will go on to become one of Hollywood’s most popular leading ladies. But despite a dazzling start to her career, she will rarely find roles to match the talent so many colleagues and critics recognized in her. She will divorce Stewart Granger in 1960 and marry Richard Brooks, an American screenwriter, film director, novelist and occasional film producer.

Claire will become a movie star with regular appearances on TV as well as developing a serious career on the stage. She will marry three times: to Rod Steiger, to Hillard Elkins and to Philip Roth.

In 1963 on the set of Anthony and Cleopatra, Richard will meet and fall in love with Elizabeth Taylor, another north London girl, and embark on one of the 20^th century’s great romantic entanglements. But that’s another story.

Want to know more?

There’s plenty on all three characters in Wikipedia and IMDb. If you want to go beyond those sources and various online obituaries, it’s worth getting hold of:

Claire Bloom’s autobiographical Limelight and After: The Education of an Actress
Michael Mann’s biography, Richard Burton – Prince of Players
Michael Powell’s A Life in Movies.

Lauren Bacall – a dream come true

Around 1943. Lauren Bacall poses for John Engstead. Read more.

Lauren Bacall’s incendiary debut on screen in To Have and Have Not brings to pulsating life a fantasy of legendary Hollywood director, Howard Hawks.

He has created a new kind of heroine – one who is every bit the equal of her leading man. At the same time he has launched the career of a movie legend and lit the touch paper to one of Hollywood’s most celebrated off-screen romances. But even as the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall begins to fizz, it threatens to derail Hawks’ ambitions for his new star.

After a slow start, Lauren Bacall’s life is careering along at breakneck speed.

Lauren Bacall, lost girl

Rewind the clock a couple of years to 1942, and Lauren Bacall (then Betty Joan Perske, 17 years old, ambitious and totally unknown) is sitting in a movie theatre with her Mother and an aunt:

One Saturday morning in 1942, Mother and Rosalie took me to the Capital Theatre to see a movie called Casablanca. We all loved it, and Rosalie [Lauren’s aunt] was mad about Humphrey Bogart. I thought he was good in it, but mad about him? Not at all. She thought he was sexy. I thought she was crazy. Mother liked him, though not as much as she liked Chester Morris, who she thought was really sexy – or Ricardo Cortez, her second favorite. I couldn’t understand Rosalie’s thinking at all. Bogart didn’t vaguely resemble Leslie Howard. Not in any way. So much for my judgment.

She’s determined to be an actress (she has the stage rather than the screen in mind though she worships Bette Davis) and has been doing some pretty unglamorous modeling for the garment trade to earn a few cents. She’s had little success but things are about to change…

This year she has been introduced to Diana Vreeland, the fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar, who organized a test shoot with Louise Dahl-Wolfe, one of the leading fashion photographers of the day. It was the first of a series of sessions for Bazaar, including a tricky one with George Hoyningen-Huene.

The following year (1943) Lauren’s career ignites:

In January I posed in a blue suit with an off-the-face hat, standing before a window with “American Red Cross Blood Donor Service” lettered on it. It was a color picture and would be a full page.…
About mid-February Diana called my mother to tell her there were stacks of letters on her desk asking who I was and where I could be reached. She said, “Listen, Mrs. Bacall, I think Betty’s too young to make these decisions, so I’m sending it all on to you.” Diana was always terrific to me and about me. She was so smart, had such wisdom. Also it turned out that the Blood Donor picture was going to be on the March cover. The cover! I couldn’t believe it when I heard; there’d be no living with me now.

Inquiries flood in. Lauren is invited to meet the head of David O Selznick’s office in New York. Columbia Pictures want her to be the Harper’s Bazaar cover girl in Cover Girl – an offer enthusiastically endorsed by Diana and Carmel Snow (the editor at Bazaar). Howard Hughes expresses an interest (well, there’s a turn up for the books!). But it is an invitation from Howard Hawks that Lauren accepts on the advice of her uncle Jack. So, age 18, she boards the train with her mother and heads for the West Coast.

Lauren Bacall, dream girl

To prepare for her screen test, Howard Hawks takes Lauren Bacall to see Perc Westmore.

He walked me over to make-up so that Perc Westmore could have a look at me and said, “You know, Perc, the test is tomorrow morning, see what color Betty will need, and that’s all.” Westmore took me into his room, sat me before his make-up mirror, and examined my face. He said, “Umm-humm” and pushed my hair back. “We can pluck your eyebrows and shave your hairline, straighten your teeth.” I was terrified and very upset. I said I’d like to call Howard, which I did practically in tears and repeated it all. I said, “You don’t want that, do you?” He said absolutely not and spoke to Westmore, saying, “I want her exactly as she is, nothing changed, a light natural make-up for tomorrow.” Perc understood, he only thought some of those touches would be an improvement. But no, Howard had chosen me for my thick eyebrows and crooked teeth and that’s the way they would stay.

[As an aside, this is a perfect example of how the studios, even back in the 1940s, were geared up to manufacture identikit stars – Lauren Bacall’s graphic eyebrows are one of her most distinguishing features.] Then there’s a portrait session with John Engstead, a photographer who works for the Hollywood studios and for various fashion magazines:

John Engstead arrived with cameras, and my first portrait sitting began. … He was marvelously easy to work with—not unlike Dahl-Wolfe. … The portraits were the best I’d ever had, and still are.

Out of the unknown

1944. Lauren Bacall emerges from obscurity into the limelight. She's modelling the vermillion dress she wears in some of the posters for To Have and Have Not. Photo by John Engstead.

Best foot forward

1944. In this publicity shot for To Have qnd Have Not, both the tilt of her head and the spotlight are designed to highlight 'The Look' that will become Lauren Bacall's trademark. Photo by John Engstead.

Sitting pretty

1946. The geometry of the lighting in this portrait of Lauren Bacall is quite superb. She's modelling the fabulous metallic jacket she wears in The Big Sleep.

Full metal jacket

1946. Another shot portrait of Lauren Bacall modelling the fabulous metallic jacket she wears in The Big Sleep.

The sleeve

Around 1945. Is it too far-fetched to conjecture that the photographer might have been inspired by Titian's portrait of a man with a quilted sleeve? Whatever. With the sleeve itself slightly out of focus, the eyes definitely have it. Photo by Eugene Robert Richee.

Girl with a pearl earring

Around 1945. Lauren Bacall is quite the classy dame pairing a pearl necklace and earrings with an off-the-shoulder black gown.

Glossy image-making

Around 1944. The make-up team (headed perhaps by Perc Westmore) haven't stinted on the lip gloss for this portrait of Lauren Bacall. Photo by Bert Six.

Returning the look

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

RETURNING
Lauren Bacall, here demonstrating that “look” which made her famous, returns to the screen this September in Warner Bros.’ romantic mystery thriller, “The Big Sleep.” In it Humphrey Bogart portrays the man she’s after, just as in their original triumph, “To Have and Have Not.”

Howard can see Lauren’s potential to become his dream girl and offers her a personal contract.

I learned much later that he had always wanted to find a girl from nowhere, mold her into his dream girl, and make her a star—his creation. He was about to begin. … Howard’s idea was always that a woman should play a scene with a masculine approach—insolent. Give as good as she got, no capitulation, no helplessness. … A perfect example of Howard’s thinking was His Girl Friday, which was a remake of The Front Page, but changing the star reporter to a woman – Rosalind Russell. And it couldn’t have worked better.

Howard doesn’t go for shrinking violets. To complement the look and the attitude he has in mind, he tells Lauren to cultivate a lower, more throaty voice, which she does by finding a spot on Mulholland Drive where she can read The Robe aloud, keeping her voice lower and louder than normal (the smoking probably helps too). So Lauren’s voice becomes what Howard calls “a satisfactorily low guttural wheeze”. He insists that in future she should always speak naturally and softly. Above all, she should ignore suggestions for “cultivating” her voice.

Hello, soldier

1944. Lauren Bacall and soldiers in a scene from To Have and Have Not.

Chemistry lesson

1944. Harry approaches "Slim" in a scene from To Have and Have Not. Photo by Max Julian.

Taking the lead

1944. Lauren Bacall acting as Howard Hawks' dream girl in the notorious whistle scene from To Have and Have Not. The caption on the back reads:

On your mark! Apparently, Lauren isn't afraid of Bogart, the Bogie Man.

Making all the right moves

1944. Bogart and Bacall are totally in synch on the set of To Have And Have Not. The caption on the reverse reads:

STRONG ARM METHOD – If this picture is any indication, there's nothing very subtle about Humphrey Bogart's love making to Lauren Bacall in Warner Bros. "To Have and Have Not." The bewitching Bacall, former model, makes her film debut in the Bogart starrer.

It all comes together in her screen debut opposite Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not. In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, Lauren’s character says to Bogart’s:

You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve, you don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.

Her acting, with its insinuating sexuality and offhand independence, causes a sensation. For Howard, it’s a dream come true. The Big Sleep will follow.

What to do with Carmen?

1946. Private detective, Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and his client's daughter, Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) confer about the antics of her nymphomaniac little sister (Martha Vickers) in this scene from The Big Sleep.

Banter

1946. Vivian (Lauren Bacall) gives Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) a cheque in an attempt to get him off the case he's investigating. But business quickly turns to flirtation in this classic scene from The Big Sleep.

Dénouement

1946. Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and Vivian (Lauren Bacall) prepare for the final showdown in this scene from The Big Sleep.

Lauren Bacall, gone girl

21 May 1945. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall cut their wedding cake. Read more.

Lauren’s first encounter with Bogie, set up by Howard, is unpromising.

He wanted to use Humphrey Bogart as the male lead. Bogart was making a film called Passage to Marseille at the time and Howard said, “Let’s go down on the set and see what’s going on.” Not a word about the possibility of my working. … He introduced us. There was no clap of thunder, no lightning bolt, just a simple how-do-you-do. Bogart was slighter than I imagined—five feet ten and a half, wearing his costume of no-shape trousers, cotton shirt, and scarf around neck. Nothing of import was said—we didn’t stay long—but he seemed a friendly man.

Perhaps that’s not surprising. Bogie is 25 years Lauren’s senior and married to Mayo Methot, a stage and screen actress but also an alcoholic and a depressive. Their relationship is, to put it mildly, stormy.

As filming gets underway for To Have and Have Not, Bogie and Bacall begin to fall for each other, they organize surreptitious rendezvous and they share private jokes in their scripted exchanges. Indeed their very real palpable mutual attraction is one of the factors that contribute to the film’s success with audiences.

Their happiness alternates with despair. Howard becomes increasingly jealous and warns Lauren not to risk ending her career just as it is taking off. He can see that Bogie does not want her to be actor first and wife second. Meanwhile, Bogie returns to Mayo several times, leaving Lauren in desperate suspense. All this is going on during the filming of The Big Sleep, with Bogie drunk, depressed and missing days on set.

Finally, he makes up his mind, and as his divorce edges forward, he sends Lauren a wire: “Please fence me in Baby – the world’s too big out here and I don’t like it without you.” The couple are married on 21 May, 1945 at Malabar Farm in Lucas, Ohio, the home of Bogie’s close friend, the writer Louis Bromfield.

Angry and resigned, Howard accepts that he’s lost his dream actress and sells Lauren’s contract to Warner Brothers.

Lauren Bacall on the silver screen

In To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, Bogie and Bacall played some of the greatest scenes of the era (and arguably in movie history). The atmosphere is electric, the dialogue sizzles. This is the stuff of Hollywood legend, as recognised at the time by Warner Brothers’ spoof, Bacall To Arms.

1. The whistle scene

In this notorious scene from her debut movie, To Have and Have Not, Bacall is all over Bogart. She's 100 percent vamp, totally in control and the realisation of a dream for director, Howard Hawks. Watch this and then the parody, Bacall To Arms.

2. Bacall To Arms

A re-edit of the 1946 Warner Bros cartoon Bacall To Arms, directed by Bob Clampett. This is just a superb parody of the "whistle" scene in To Have and Have Not.

3. Restaurant repartee

If you want a quick insight into what made the Bogart-Bacall onscreen partnership so fantastic, take a look at this scene from The Big Sleep: 0:00–0:20 Bacall makes her entrance. 0:20–0:45 She greets Bogie and they make their way to a table. 0:45–1:45 They talk business – highlight at 1:14–1:20. 1:45–3:00 They flirt, with Bacall in the driving seat. 3:00–4:05 Bogie turns the tables. 4:05 Electric moment as she's knocked into his arms.

Postscript

Had she not married Bogart, Lauren told The New York Times in 1996, her career would probably have flourished, but she did not regret the marriage.

I would not have had a better life, but a better career. Howard Hawks was like a Svengali; he was molding me the way he wanted. I was his creation, and I would have had a great career had he been in control of it. But the minute Bogie was around, Hawks knew he couldn’t control me, so he sold my contract to Warner Bros. And that was the end.

It’s also worth noting that Lauren was not quite as confident filming as she appears on screen. In her autobiography, June Allyson, a close friend, remembered working with her in 1954:

I had seen the real Betty when we filmed Woman’s World together and we were doing a scene in which we each had to pick up champagne glasses and turn and survey the room. I looked at Betty’s glass and her had was shaking – I couldn’t believe it. She saw my look and whispered, off camera, “I am so nervous.” That was when I realized Lauren Bacall did not have the inner security she displayed to the world. Inside she was very vulnerable.

Want to know more?

The quotes are from Lauren’s autobiography, Lauren Bacall By Myself. For an overview and appreciation of her life and work, there are obituaries worth reading in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The New York Times and Variety. There’s also a fascinating article about The Big Sleep on Cinephilia & Beyond.

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