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aenigma – Images and stories from the movies and fashion

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Behind the scenes

Corinne Calvet – men behaving badly

Around 1946. Corinne Calvet by Sam Lévin. Read more.

Corinne Calvet was a smart and ambitious actress, whose talents were squandered by a Hollywood system that failed to see beyond her obvious sexual allure.

Corinne was no dumb blonde. She hung out in Paris after World War II with Jean Cocteau, Jean Anouilh, Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialist set. She also had the intellect and eloquence to win a place at the Sorbonne to study criminal law before deciding to become an actress. As she herself pointed out:

A lawyer needs exactly what an actor needs: strong personality, persuasive powers and a good voice.

Now, it has to be said that Corinne was no saint. She was well aware of her very considerable charms and not averse to deploying them when it suited her. If a décolleté dress would increase her chances of gaining the attention of a director or producer who could help her further her career, then so far as she was concerned that was all in a day’s work.

She bares all in Has Corinne Been A Good Girl?, the autobiography she published in 1983. Among other things, it’s a strikingly candid exposé of the predatory behaviour of the moguls, directors and producers who had it in their power to make or break her career. They come across as a group with a sense of entitlement and no moral compass.

Corinne Dibot becomes Corinne Calvet

Corinne Dibot is born in 1925, the youngest of four children. Her father is an impoverished count, her mother, Juliette, an heiress as well as being one of the scientists who contributed to the invention of Pyrex glassware, seemingly at the expense of spending time with her children. Corinne is devastated when Juliette suddenly and unexpectedly dies in 1935. 

She becomes something of a wild child, hanging out with the local boys. Age 15, she’s expelled from the convent school she’s been attending after she’s found with an erotic book from her father’s office. Her sexual adventures result in two very unpleasant backstreet abortions.

1954. Corinne’s friend Martine Carol as Annamaria in La Spiaggia. Photo by G B Poletto. Read more.

By the time she sets out around 1947 to find fame and fortune in Hollywood, she’s had stints at art school, law school, theatrical school and the École du Cinéma; she’s made her stage debut, worked as a radio hostess and had a few small film roles. And she’s adopted the surname Calvet because her father doesn’t want their aristocratic family name associated with acting.

Corinne goes to Hollywood

One day a friend from her student days, Martine Carol, asks Corinne to go with her to a party hosted by Paramount. Apparently they’re looking for a leading lady to play opposite Ray Milland. She’s introduced to him and when she comes to leave, she’s informed that Paramount want her to come to their office the next day. She’s presented with a form:

1949. Corinne Calvet kicks off her career. Read more.

I started filling in the answers, but soon the questions began to probe into my private life, asking for details in personal taste, my thoughts on marriage and children, my sleeping habits. Did I wear pyjamas or a nightgown? What was my preference in men, short, tall, fat, skinny, hairy or bald? … It seemed more like the kind of questionnaire a madam might use in selecting girls to work in a brothel.

She tears up the form and flounces out. In spite of (or perhaps because of) which, Paramount decide to offer Corinne a seven-year contract. Jean-Pierre urges her to accept and put her career first.

On arrival in the New York in 1947, she’s surprised and not entirely delighted that the American press and studios seem to be interested in her almost entirely as a sex symbol. 

I was already encountering the stereotyped notions American men had about French women. Their eyebrows would go up and they would leer sideways as they greeted me. American GIs, soldiers whose experience with French women was usually limited to girls of questionable repute, had been partly responsible for this reaction. But such impressions were entirely false. Most French women were raised with an emphasis on being good wives and mothers, and it was absurd to conclude that they were in any way promiscuous. Immediately I realised that in the minds of many American men, however, French women were decidedly over-sexed, and that I was a prime example of French womanhood.

As she departs on the train for Hollywood she’s warned warned to be on her guard against the wolves she will encounter.

1949. Corinne Calvet in Rope of Sand. Read more.

Corinne Calvet and William Meiklejohn

One night soon after she’s arrived in Hollywood, after dinner at Romanoff’s, William Meiklejohn, Paramount’s head of talent and casting, suggests the party adjourns to the Mocambo. He ushers Corinne into the larger of the two waiting cars and lets the other five studio executives take the other.

15 minutes later, she realises the car is heading neither for Mocambo nor for the house she’s staying at. Meiklejohn tells her he thought they’d go and have a tête-à-tête on the beach. She asks him to have the car turn round and take her home. Instead, he puts his hand between her legs, forcing them apart. She grabs one of his fingers and twists it hard until he tells the driver to make for Mocambo.

Now she’s out of favour at Paramount and her career is on hold.

Corinne Calvet, Rory Calhoun and Harry Cohn

It’s around this time that she falls in love with actor Rory Calhoun and embarks on an affair with him. Then she gets a summons from Harry Cohn, boss at Columbia via his sidekick, Walter Kane. Cohn has plans for four movies in which Rita Hayworth was going to star. But now that she’s left the studio, he’s looking for a replacement. Join him this afternoon on his yacht for a trip to Catalina Island.

When she boards the boat, “Cohn’s snakelike eyes were piercing my clothes, examining each part of my body.” It turns out that Mrs Cohn will not be joining the jaunt. They reach Catalina Island, have dinner and then Kane goes ashore – he says he can’t get to sleep on a rocking boat. With Kane out of the way, Cohn makes to kiss Corinne and she flees to her cabin, only to discover there is no lock on the door. In due course, Cohn turns up in his pyjama bottoms, “his eyes narrowed with lust.” As he approaches her, she knees him in the groin, yells for help and the deckhands arrive.

1950. Corinne Calvet beside her bust. Read more.

“Call the shore boat and get this French bitch off my yacht,” Cohn said with vicious finality.

Our heroine takes the first flight home only to find Rory in the middle of trashing the place, having assumed she’s capitulated to Cohn’s advances. When she tells him what happened, he drives her straight out to the harbour, rents a boat and sails it to Catalina Island (though Corinne has to take the wheel when the conditions deteriorate and Rory gets seasick).

On arrival, Rory moors the boat next to Cohn’s, takes Corinne down to the cabin and undresses her, then takes her back on deck to make noisy love to her. At which point, the lights go on in Cohn’s yacht, the crew emerge and lean over the railing to see what’s going on. When Cohn himself appears, Rory shouts, “Take a good look, Mr Cohn. This is the closest you’ll ever get.”

A few days later, Rory instructs Corinne to buy a new dress and have her hair done. He’ll pick her up at 18:00, take her out for dinner and announce their engagement to the press. But he doesn’t turn up. She waits and she waits. And then she goes in search of him, finally tracking him down at Ciro’s, where he’s at a table with his agent, Henry Willson.

She persuades him to dance with her and asks him why he’s stood her up. Henry has told him that marrying Corinne would be bad for his career. Rory refuses to kiss her and, as the saying goes, Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. When the couple return to the table, she pours the open bottle of champagne over Rory’s head and flounces out to her car.

Up the road, she lays in wait for him to leave and then follows him back to Henry’s house. She rings the bell and demands a kiss. She’s parked her car across the drive and won’t move it until she gets satisfaction. Rory goes inside and comes back with a pistol. He fires a warning shot over the bonnet of Corinne’s car, then holds the gun to her head. Henry, meanwhile, is on his knees, holding onto Rory’s leg and pleading with him. Police sirens wail in the distance – the neighbours have heard the shot and called them. Corinne flees to her apartment.

1949. Corinne Calvet as Suzanne Renaud in Rope of Sand. Read more.

Corinne Calvet and Hal Wallis

It’s 1948. When someone reports Corinne to the House Un-American Activities Committee for her association with the existentialist movement in France, the only way she can stick around is to get a US husband. In the teeth of his mother’s opposition, actor John Bromfield comes up trumps. The pair are married in Boulder City and spend their honeymoon night at Las Vegas’ Flamingo Hotel – a venue you’ll be familiar with if you read about Virginia Hill, a seriously bad good-time girl.

On their return from honeymoon to Los Angeles, John is sent off to do location shooting in Arizona. They both have contracts with Hal Wallis Productions and one evening while her husband’s away, Hal Wallis, best known now as the producer of Casablanca, drops by their apartment. After a bit of banter he makes a lunge for Corinne. When she locks herself in the bathroom and points out she’s a married woman, he tells her he told John to propose to her – it was a marriage of convenience to suit the studio. She’s devastated.

Wallis goes on to punish Corinne by cancelling John’s contract and putting her in My Friend Irma Goes West (1950), a comedy starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Rope of Sand [her previous film] had made me a valuable property. Doing this film would ruin my chances of rising higher as a dramatic star.

For his birthday, Corinne gives Wallis a picture she’s painted of him as a clown. In her memoir, she protests that it’s an innocent, well intentioned gift and she’s astonished to hear that he’s furious. Really???

So Wallis puts her into another Martin and Lewis comedy, Sailor Beware (1952). With John out of work, once again she can’t afford to say no to it.

1952. Corinne Calvet. Read more.

On the set one morning as Dean and I were rehearsing our duet, Wallis stopped the routine. The playback had stopped. The set was silent.

“Corinne,” Wallis’ voice boomed. “I’ve told you, I don’t want my actresses to wear falsies.”

“I’m not wearing any.”

“Go and take them out,” he ordered.

“Mr. Wallis, are you calling me a liar?”

I spoke in a menacing tone as I approached him. I grabbed his hand, and in front of everyone, put it inside my dress and made sure he felt that I had nothing there but my own breasts.

“Are you finding anything there but my flesh? No? Then thank you.”

Dropping his hand, I returned to stand next to Dean Martin, who looked extremely amused.

After she completes Flight for Tangier (1953), Wallis reveals that Corinne is one of a number of stars whose contract he will not be renewing.

Two or three years later, she finds herself in a New York club having dinner at the same table as Wallis. When he starts to grope her under the table, she goes off to “powder her nose.” It’s at this point that she realises that she’s running a very high fever and decides it’s payback time. When she returns to the table, she leads Wallis to believe he has a chance with her. She gets him to take her for a romantic ride in a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park, during which she does what it takes to pass her infection on to him. Three days later, she sends him four dozen red roses with an accompanying note: “Next time I’ll give you something worse. Best wishes for your recovery.”

1960. Darry Zanuck (background) shares a table with Juliette Greco and Orson Welles. Read more.

Corinne Calvet and Darryl Zanuck

Back in 1950, Corinne’s agent manages to get her a contract shared between Hal Wallis and Darryl Zanuck, head honcho at 20th Century-Fox. The first movie in which they cast her is When Willie Comes Marching Home. Director John Ford was hoping to get Maureen O’Hara for Corinne’s part, so he’s a bit disappointed and hostile. To make matters worse, Corinne’s interpretation of her role is different from his. It turns out that Zanuck likes her take and tells her to persist with it, so she’s caught in the crossfire between two big egos.

One day, Zanuck summons her to his office.

Zanuck got up from behind his desk. I sat down, and he started to pace up and down in front of me, making small talk.

“Wasn’t the weather cold this week in Los Angeles,” he said, looking out the window. “The Palm Springs sun should be very pleasant.” Dramatically, he turned on his heels and stood a few feet away from me with his erect penis standing proudly out of his unzipped pants.

“How do you like that?” He was smiling proudly.

When Corinne fails to respond as expected, Zanuck implies that if she agrees to have sex with him, he will offer John a contract at 20th Century-Fox. She tells John about the meeting.

And when I finished saying that I was willing to do it with his consent he looked at me in total disgust.

“You bitch. You could have done it without telling me.”

Really, what’s a girl to do?

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corinne calvet martin lewis

1950. My Friend Irma Goes West

This is the movie to which Hal Wallis relegated Corinne as a reprisal for rejecting his advances. It dashed her hopes of becoming a dramatic actress following her success in Rope of Sand.

Her co-stars here are Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, who performed in nightclubs and on radio before branching out into TV and films. Popular with US audiences at the time, it feels pretty cringeworthy now.

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corinne calvet tv show

1952. The Name’s the Same

Corinne Calvet tries to stump the panel in this extract from The Name’s the Same.

The host is Robert Q Lewis, the panelists writer Abe Burrows, actress Joan Alexander and composer Meredith Willson.

Here again, there’s lots of embarrassing flirting and suggestiveness. How times have changed!

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corinne calvet argument

1989. Corinne Calvet vs Cesar Romero

Talkshow host Joe Franklin sits down with five Hollywood veterans.

The discussion gets cantankerous around 1:15 when Corinne claims that her career suffered after she fended off the advances of mogul Harry Cohn and producer Hal Wallis. Cesar Romero responds by suggesting that she shouldn’t be making such a fuss about it – that she not they was the problem.

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corinne calvet interview

1992. Corinne Calvet TV interview

The unctuous interviewer is actor and talk-show host, Skip Lowe.

Feel free to skip (pun intended) the unbelievably cheesy introduction and bear in mind that this appears to be an unedited recording, complete with blank screens and off-screen discussion.

What to make of Corinne Calvet?

1952. Corinne Calvet goes to war with Zsa Zsa Gabor. Read more.

Of course, Corinne Calvet gives us only her side of the story. And reading between the lines and taking account of various contemporary articles and reports, she comes across as a pretty feisty and litigious individual, often well able and willing to give as good as she gets. Good for her!

Her writing style can be an obstacle to taking her seriously:

I looked up at Rory Calhoun as he introduced himself. I tumbled into the dazzling whirlpool of his eyes. It was as refreshing as the light green spring meadows when the leaves are still new. There was a fire in the depth of his glance that consumed my resistance. It was too strong, too intoxicating.

Nevertheless… Corinne Calvet’s story is one woman’s case study of the starlet’s dilemma and a reminder of just how exploitative the movie industry was back in the day (which is not to say that it’s exactly spotless today, witness the #MeToo movement). She suffered the same fate as many beautiful women prepared to exploit their physical attributes as part of their acting repertoire, eliciting from critics a kind of lecherous glee on the one hand and sneers of contempt on the other.

On IMDb she has 49 credits as an actress, including appearances in TV series as well as roles in feature films. But sadly, her dreams of a career as a serious dramatic actress went up in a puff of ooh la la, double entendre and mediocre movies. Ultimately, she became known to the public primarily for her combustible private life and a number of headline-grabbing legal battles.

1961. Corinne Calvet at a Beverly Hills party with Don Scott. Read more.

As well as having various love affairs, she had three failed marriages and a son by her second husband. In an interview quoted in the 21 April 1960 edition of the Los Angeles Times, Corinne Calvet wryly observed:

American men make wonderful husbands if you don’t love them. But if you love them, don’t marry them. I don’t mean they are lousy lovers. I just think they are little boys who don’t know what they want. In America, you don’t have romances, you have affairs. And these affairs really lack class.

Want to know more about Corinne Calvet?

The main source of information about Corinne Calvet is her autobiography, Has Corinne Been a Good Girl? I made quite extensive notes as I read it. If you’d like a copy of them, please contact me.

The best factual overviews are at Wikipedia and Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. You can find obituaries is, among others, The Guardian, New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Variety.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy
The paparazzi – shock horror birth of a monster
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Crew, Stars Tagged With: Corinne Calvet, Corinne Dibot, Darryl Zanuck, Don Scott, G B Poletto, Hal Wallis, Harry Cohn, Henry Willson, John Bromfield, Juliette Gréco, Martine Carol, Rope of Sand, Rory Calhoun, Sailor Beware, Sam Lévin, William Meiklejohn, Zsa Zsa Gabor

Brenda Mee by Thurston Hopkins – a glimpse into another world

Brenda Mee by Thurston Hopkins
1953. Brenda Mee. Photo by Thurston Hopkins. Read more.

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.

Related Posts

Fashion and movie photos – why collect them?
Paris after World War II – fact, fashion and fantasy
Sabrina in a black strappy dress
Sabrina – Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Collecting, Events, Photographers, Press, Stars Tagged With: beauty pageants, Brenda Mee, Dorothy Lamour, John Deakin, Miss Great Britain, Picture Post, Thurston Hopkins

Claudine Auger – young, beautiful, trapped, could be dangerous

Claudine Auger makes an entrance
Around 1965. Claudine Auger makes an entrance.

“Young, beautiful, trapped, could be dangerous” is how the trailer of Thunderball introduced Claudine Auger to mainstream movie audiences.

A classically trained actress fluent in several languages like Yvonne Furneaux, but also a Miss World runner-up, she’s instantly recognisable for the mole she sports below her right lip. As Sophie Schulte-Hillen points out in The 9 Greatest Beauty Marks of All Time, From Cindy Crawford to Madonna, “The inexplicable magnetism of a well-placed beauty mark, of course, has been a phenomenon throughout history.”

Claudine Auger was the first French actress to be cast as a Bond girl, years ahead of Corinne Cléry (Moonraker, 1979), Carole Bouquet (For Your Eyes Only, 1981), Sophie Marceau (The World Is Not Enough, 1999), Eva Green (Casino Royale, 2006) and Léa Seydoux (Spectre, 2015).

Claudine’s career spanned almost four decades and, according to IMDb, encompassed 80 film and TV appearances. But Thunderball is what she’s remembered for.

Thunderball

Thunderball is based on a novel of the same name by Ian Fleming. We’ll let him introduce Domino, the character played by Claudine Auger in the movie version:

She had a gay, to-hell-with-you face that, Bond thought, would become animal in passion. In bed she would fight and bite and then suddenly melt into hot surrender. He could almost see the proud, sensual mouth bear away from the even white teeth in a snarl of desire and then, afterward, soften into a half pout of loving slavery. In profile, the eyes were charcoal slits … fierce and direct with a golden flicker in the dark brown hair that held much the same message as the mouth … a soft, muddled Brigitte Bardot haircut … the sunburn was not overdone … her breasts, high and riding and deeply V-ed.… The general impression, Bond decided, was of a willful, high-tempered, sensual girl…

So, gorgeous, wild and waiting to be tamed by the (implicitly) superior Bond. Pure, deranged sixties male fantasy. In your (wet) dreams, Mr Fleming.

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Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde

Faye Dunaway

1968. Faye Dunaway is the first actress to be offered the role of Domino. Instead she opts to star in Elliot Silverstein’s crime comedy The Happening (1967). Success for her...

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Raquel Welch posing on a diving board

Raquel Welch

1967. Raquel Welch is also a front runner for the role of Domino but she’s lured away to star in Twentieth Century Fox’s sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). Twentieth Century...

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Julie Christie seated on the ground in a chemise

Julie Christie

1965. Julie Christie has previously been in the running for the role of Honey Rider in Dr No but lost out to Ursula Andress. Her success in Billy Liar apparently...

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Luciana Paluzzi photographed by Angelo Frontoni

Luciana Paluzzi

Around 1965. Luciana Paluzzi is one of the bevy of fetching actresses who audition for the part of Domino in Thunderball. Although the role goes to Claudine Auger, Luciana is...

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Martine Beswick standing in a lake

Martine Beswick

Around 1966. Former Miss Jamaica, Martine Beswick is one of Raquel Welch’s co-stars in One Million Years B.C., for which this is probably a publicity shot. In Thunderball, she plays...

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Suzy Kendall, publicity shot for Fraulein Doktor

Suzy Kendall

1967. Though uncredited, Suzy Kendall plays the role of Prue, one of the casino patrons in Thunderball. She trained as a fashion designer and worked as a model to help...

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Domino is the most complex and demanding female role to date in a Bond movie. Needless to say, the part, which is central to the plot, requires an exceptionally beautiful and talented actress, and no doubt the production team has the time of their life initiating a worldwide talent search and auditioning candidates. They show admirable devotion to the job by considering 100, perhaps as many as 150 candidates according to Luciana Paluzzi.

Claudine Auger photographed by Peter Basch
Around 1965. Claudine Auger. Photo by Peter Basch.

First to be offered the role is Faye Dunaway, but on the advice of her agent she decides instead to accept the role of Sandy in Elliot Silverstein’s crime comedy The Happening (1967).

Next up is Raquel Welch. Not surprisingly, Harry Saltzman, founder of EON Productions, who own the film rights, can’t forget a photo of the bikini-clad actress that featured in the October 2, 1964 issue of LIFE magazine. She’s the first to be offered the role of Domino but there’s a problem. Richard Zanuck, one of Darryl Zanuck’s sons and studio head at Twentieth Century Fox, wants her for their upcoming sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage (1966). He knows Salzman’s partner, Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, and persuades him to release Raquel from her contract as a favour to him.

On paper, Julie Christie seems like a promising candidate but apparently she flunks her interview, turning up dishevelled and nervous; plus Albert Broccoli is disappointed that she doesn’t have bigger tits. Other shortlisted lovelies include Luciana Paluzzi, Yvonne Monlaur, Marisa Menzies, Gloria Paul and Maria Buccella.

So how does the relatively unknown Claudine Auger get involved? Putting together different versions of the story from different sources, this seems to be how things worked out…

She’s on holiday in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, at the same time as the crew who are preparing to film Thunderball. She enjoys swimming underwater and one day, by happy coincidence, she surfaces at the same time as and near to the film’s producer, Kevin McClory. He appreciates her potential and makes sure he has her contact details.

Claudine returns to Paris where she’s a member of the Théâtre National Populaire. As she explains to Photoplay magazine in 1965, she gets a call from London asking if she would like to audition for a role in Thunderball. The theatre director refuses to give her time off so she arranges a day-trip to London, enabling her to be back in Paris the same night. Result! Movie director Terence Young calls her a few days later to offer her the role. She has the blend of innocence and sex appeal he is looking for. Once again the theatre director proves intransigent. So Claudine ups sticks and heads off to join Thunderball’s cast and crew.

The 15 March 1965 edition of the Herald Express reports that:

Filming of 007’s latest tussle with the international crime syndicate Spectre began this month and after four weeks of interior work at Pinewood the 82-strong production unit will fly to Nassau by chartered aircraft. I gather that Nassau luxury hotels and beach clubs will figure prominently in the plot. So will 22-year-old auburn-haired Claudine Auger, Miss France of 1952–59, who is said to have learned excellent English when she was a teenage au pair girl in London.

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Claudine Auger poses on a diving board

Claudine Auger goes swimming

1965. Claudine poses on a diving board at a swimming bath. A man in the background admires the view. The back of the photo is annotated in pencil “CLAUDINE AUGER / FOR LIFE COVER FEATURE / STAR of BOND FILM.” Photo by Peter Basch.

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Claudine looking winsome

Claudine looks winsome

Claudine Auger gazes at the camera, hair tumbling fetchingly around her face. Note the cropping marks on this working print. Photo by Peter Basch.

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Claudine Auger wrapped in fur

Claudine Auger wrapped in fur

1965. Perching on a sofa, Claudine is very much the seductress. Later in life, she will have her distinctive beauty mark removed. A typed paper label on the back of the photo reads:

BOND-STUNNER…CLAUDINE AUGER
James Bond holds no terrors for this girl.
Please acknowledge: photograph by LOOMIS DEAN
CAMERA PRESS LONDON. 10155-9

Photo by Loomis Dean.

Originally, the idea has been for Domino to be Italian. Now the screenplay is modified to make her French and Claudine is given a series of English lessons to prepare her for her part. Well, that’s a waste of time. Although her English proves to be more than satisfactory, it’s subsequently decided that her voice is too low. So in the end her voice is dubbed by Nikki van der Zyl, who dubbed Ursula Andress’s character, Honey Rider, in Dr No.

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thunderball official trailer

1. Thunderball official trailer

A nice compilation of sixties graphics, action sequences and Bond girls shot through with Sean Connery’s 007 and John Barry’s soundtrack, this is impossible to resist.

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thunderball underwater + beach

2. Sean Connery and Claudine Auger underwater and on the beach

Quintessential Thunderball – romance underwater, drama on the beach and a cool one-liner to cap things off.

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thunderball casino

Behind-the-scenes footage of Thunderball’s casino scene

Beautiful people, high stakes and smoochy music make this sequence ever so sexy – just like Richard Avedon’s shoot at the Casino at Le Touquet.

In an interview in a December 1965 issue of the New York Daily News, Claudine talks about the extensive underwater shooting for the film:

…I was never frightened of it. I took to it like a fish. It’s beautiful down there and peaceful and I get a sense of freedom I don’t get on land or in the air. One has to be more careful skin diving in the Caribbean than in the Mediterranean because of sharks … close to shore there are lazy sharks and we were assured they wouldn’t attack us if we remained calm. Fortunately, I didn’t meet one to test my nerve.

Filming, especially around Nassau, is a joy, as Martine Beswick recalls:

The best of the best was at our disposal. I remember our dressing rooms when we were working on the streets for the carnival scenes –they rented a yacht on which we would go between takes. When we had to work on a beach, they would have tents, champagne would be there and the best of wine. That was Terence [Young], that was his style, that was the way things were done.

The rest is history. Claudine displays her charms in a succession of fetching bikinis, which she apparently helps to design. And Thunderball goes on to be the box office hit of 1965 as well as winning an Academy Award for its special effects.

Claudine Auger modelling an evening dress
Around 1958. Claudine Auger models an evening dress.

Claudine Auger pre-Thunderball

Claudine Auger is born in 1942 in German-occupied Paris. As she grows up, she experiences, first-hand, life in Paris after World War II, first at school, then at the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique, France’s national drama academy. There she learns to act, playing a variety of roles, her repertoire including classical plays by the likes of Racine and Molière.

Looking back in 1965 to those days, she remembers in an interview in the New York Journal-American that “When I was 13 I wasn’t very pretty. I was slim, how you say, like a matchstick…”

Claudine turns out to be a quick developer. In no time she becomes a model and in 1957 she’s named Miss Cinémonde by the movie magazine. In 1958, still just 16 years old, as Miss France she represents her country at the Miss World pageant and is voted runner up. It proves to be a turning point in her personal and professional lives, as she explains in an interview with an Associated Press journalist in 1966:

I had just won the ‘Miss France’ contest with all its publicity and one of the prizes was a role in one of Pierre’s pictures, it was love at first sight.

The movie in question is Christine, which stars Romy Schneider and Alain Delon. Claudine’s small part is uncredited. But it’s a start, and the following year she marries the film’s director, Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 25 years her senior. Apparently Claudine, like Domino, is partial to older men! He will go on to give her roles in several of his films, including a costume drama, Le Masque de fer (The Iron Mask, 1962), and an epic adventure, Kali Yug, La Dea Della Vendetta (The Vengeance of Kali, 1963).

But before then, her arthouse career begins and ends when she catches the eye of avant-garde film director Jean Cocteau, who casts her in the illustrious company of Yul Brynner, Charles Aznavour, Brigitte Bardot and Pablo Picasso in Le Testament D’Orphée (1960).

In all, she makes 15 film and TV appearances before Thunderball.

Claudine Auger post-Thunderball

Claudine hopes that Thunderball will enable her to break through into US movies. With that in mind she poses for a shoot in Playboy magazine and makes a guest appearance on US TV in a Bob Hope special. But it’s not to be. She fails to make an impact on Hollywood in spite of being in demand in Europe and the UK.

Building on her success in Thunderball, she appears in a number of adventure films. The plot of L’homme de Marrakech (1966) revolves around a heist. Triple Cross (1966) is a Word War II spy saga starring Christopher Plummer and Yul Brynner.

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Claudine Auger seated on a carved baroque chair

Claudine Auger inspired by Paco Rabanne

1966. Claudine’s earrings and dress look like they’re either Paco Rabanne originals or inspired by them. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

VITTORIO GASSMAN, MICKEY ROONEY...

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Claudine Auger in a floral dress

Claudine Auger in a floral dress

Around 1967. Claudine poses for the camera, raising her left arm above her head as instructed by the photographer. She’s doing her best to look at ease on what must...

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Claudine Auger perched on a stone seat

Claudine Auger perched on a stone seat

1967. Wrapped in a shawl, the French movie star favours the unknown photographer with an enigmatic smile. On the back of the photo is a Pierluigi agency copyright stamp together...

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Claudine Auger by candlelight

Claudine Auger by candlelight

1967. Another publicity photo for Italian comedy Anyone Can Play (Le dolci signnore), one of three movies released this year in which Claudine stars. On the back of the photo...

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Claudine Auger poses in front of a wall, her hands above her head

Hands up, Claudine!

1967. Claudine Auger wears a somewhat revealing dress for this publicity shot, her silky curves contrasting with the jagged wall decoration. On the back of the photo is a Pierluigi...

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Claudine Auger perched on a windowsill

Claudine Auger perched on a windowsill

1967. Clad head-to-toe in a cat suit (echoes of Emma Peel’s costumes in The Avengers), Claudine wraps her fingers around the sill on which she’s sitting. She doesn’t look totally...

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Among her many subsequent credits are two movies featuring other Bond girls: Ursula Andress in Le dolci signore (Anyone Can Play, 1967), and Barbara Bach and Barbara Bouchet in La tarantola dal ventre nero (Black Belly of the Tarantula, 1971), one of a number of giallos in which she appears.

It’s testament to Claudine Auger’s acting abilities that, with the passing of her youth, she continues to play mature character roles right up to the mid-1990s.

She divorces Pierre Gaspard-Huit in 1969 and remarries in 1984. She gives birth to her first and only child in 1991 at age 49, and she remains with her second husband, businessman Peter Brent, until his death in 2008. Claudine Auger passes away in 2019.

Around 1965. Claudine Auger. Photo by Giancarlo Botti.

Want to know more about Claudine Auger?

There are short pieces about Claudine in Wikipedia and IMDb. A slightly longer one is at MI6 The Home of James Bond 007.

Fuller accounts are available in online extracts from two books: Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films and Television, 1962-1973 by Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul; and Deadlier Than the Male: Femme Fatales in 1960s and 1970s Cinema by Douglas Brode.

Most of Claudine’s obituaries are cursory affairs. The most ambitious was published by The James Bond Fan Club, A Woman of the Nuclear Age: Claudine Auger (1941-2019).

I was hoping to find a few interviews with Claudine Auger in The British Newspaper Archive and The Times Archive but the pickings were disappointingly thin. If you’re just looking for pictures, you could head for Claudine Auger’s Facebook page.

On the other hand, there’s lots of information out there about Thunderball. IMDb has quantities of Trivia and on YouTube there’s a fascinating 35-minute documentary narrated by Patrick Macnee (Steed in sixties cult classic TV series, The Avengers), Behind the scenes with THUNDERBALL part 1. The title is misleading. This is actually two documentaries run together. The second, which starts at 28:10, covers Bond’s life up to the point where he becomes 007, some observations by Ian Fleming and a brief profile of director Terence Young and his contribution to James Bond’s onscreen persona.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Françoise Dorléac – what might have been
Monica Vitti
Monica Vitti – a sad childhood, a glittering career and a bitter old age
Sex and power – Nazism in 1970s cinema
Yvonne Furneaux as Emma in La Dolce Vita
Yvonne Furneaux – glamorous English export

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Films, Stars Tagged With: Claudine Auger, Faye Dunaway, Ian Fleming, Julie Christie, Luciana Paluzzi, Martine Beswick, Pierre Gaspard-Huit, Raquel Welch, Suzy Kendall, Thunderball

Irene Lentz – pioneer of an American luxury fashion brand

When it comes to luxury fashion brands, the US can’t hold a candle to Europe, particularly France. Crucially, the US has no tradition of couture. But, in the mid-20th century, one US luxury brand flickered into life and burned brightly and briefly. Its name: Irene, after its founder, Irene Lentz.

Evening gown by Irene Lentz photographed by Cecil Beaton
1951. Evening gown by Irene. Photo by Cecil Beaton. Read more.

Irene grew up on a ranch. As well as establishing her own brand, she was one of Hollywood’s busiest and most influential costume designers, with two Oscar nominations and 123 credits on IMDb. Those scandalous high-waist shorts and midriff-baring top in which we first encounter Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice are down to Irene.

Irene Lentz managed to build her brand in what was, before the 1960s, a sector dominated by men. That’s a distinction she shares with a handful of talented women, notably Jeanne Lanvin, Madeleine Vionnet, Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparell. In the US back then, the other notable dress designer was Claire McCardell, but she was working behind the scenes and aiming for a more casual, mass market.

Irene was a master of her craft, in touch with the zeitgeist and with a flair for marketing. She’s a remarkable and tragic figure, whose story falls into five chapters.

Chapter 1 – Irene Lentz gets going

Irene Lentz is born in 1901 in Brookings, South Dakota, then, in 1910, moves with her family to Baker, Montana. Nine years later she’s on the move again, this time with her mother and younger brother to Los Angeles.

In 1921, she’s working as a full-time sales girl in a drug store, when F Richard Jones (Dick to his friends) drops by and takes a shine to her. He’s a director of silent films at the Mack Sennett Studio and helps Irene to get a job there, initially as a production assistant, later as a star. IMDb lists eight movies in which she appears between 1921 and 1925. During that time she features as one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties – a bevy of scantily-clad (for the period) eye candy who keep popping up in his Keystone comedies and at any other opportunity.

Irene Lentz photographed by John Engstead
Around 1950. Irene Lentz. Photograph by John Engstead. Read more.

During her acting stint, Irene Lentz spots an opportunity to design and sell clothes to the growing movie community and from 1924–26 studies at the Wolfe School of Design. Dick Jones is still there in the background (or perhaps even the foreground, who knows?) and in 1926 they set up their first shop, on South University Avenue.

By 1929, the business is thriving, they relocate the shop to larger premises and get married. Then tragedy strikes. The following year, just 11 months after their wedding, Dick dies of tuberculosis age 37. Irene closes the shop and leaves for Europe, where she discovers the wonderful world of Paris couture.

Irene Lentz’s account of how she got started demonstrates her skill at building a brand story. Here it is, as reported by Frederick C Othman in Behind the Scenes, Hollywood in the 7 June 1942 edition of The Press Democrat:

She left the ranch when she was 16 to study music here at the University of Southern California. Had a roommate who was too timid to attend night school classes in dress design alone. Miss Lentz went along. After two nights she knew she was going to be a dress designer herself. She finished the course, dropped the music and set up a dress shop on the university campus, with the sign, “Irene.” That’s all the name she’s had since then. Just Irene.

“The campus shop was a great success from the beginning,” she said. “The dresses were cheap, and I do think they had a certain flair, but the real reason for my rushing trade was the fact that my store was the only place on the campus where the girls could smoke. Cigarettes were strictly against the rules everywhere else. So I always had a shop full of prospective clients, smoking. The place was so full of smoke so much of the time that my doctor wouldn’t believe it when I told him I didn’t smoke.”

The coeds smoked and bought dresses and received one of their major thrills when Dolores Del Rio walked into the store and bought an evening gown for $45.

“I never did learn how she heard about me,” Irene said. “But she was wonderful. Many a woman would not have told a soul where she’d bought that dress. But Dolores told everybody she knew. After that I got plenty of movie trade.

“One of my best customers was Lupe Velez. She refused to try on dresses in the fitting room. She tried them in the front room, by the plate-glass window. She always had a gallery.”

What a great account and love the sketches of Dolores and Lupe – the two Mexican superstars pretty much at the peak of their popularity. But, interestingly, no mention of Irene’s acting exploits or, indeed, of Dick Jones. Perhaps she feels that these would detract, or at least distract, from the narrative she wants to promote.

Irene’s tale of how “one day I discovered my passion and, through a combination of dedication and luck, built a business” is a kind of blueprint for so many subsequent start-ups. Notable practitioners are the likes of Markus and Daniel, the eponymous creators of Freitag, and Phil Knight whose memoir, Shoe Dog, recounts his adventures as founder of Nike.

Dolores Del Rio, a loyal Irene Lentz customer
1937. Dolores Del Rio, a loyal Irene customer and adovate. Photo by A L Whitey Schafer. Read more.

Chapter 2 – Irene goes into couture

Following the death of her husband, Irene Lentz goes to France for five weeks and while she’s there she visits the salons run by the Paris couturiers. She returns to the US, her head spinning with ideas. In 1931 she opens Irene Ltd on Sunset Boulevard and it’s a big hit. Within two years, it’s being eyed up enviously by the guys at Bullocks Wilshire, a Los Angeles department store that’s the pinnacle of style and opulence. They’re attracted by both the quality of her product and her stellar clientele.

There’s clearly synergy here and they persuade Irene to move her operation to the department store and open up a kind of French salon. This is a ground-breaking development – the first designer/retail store partnership of its kind. From now on, her clothing label, copied from a logo created by Dick Jones, simply reads “Irene.” Could her original inspiration have come from Gilbert Adrian Greenburg, known simply as Adrian, at MGM?

As a customer, the service you receive is as lavish as the clothes you’re buying. You can see Irene’s original creations modelled in-store. As at the salons in Paris, the team you meet for your fitting includes the designer herself as well as a tailor and a pattern cutter. You also get to have shoes and jewellery picked from elsewhere in the store to complement your ensemble.

The Irene brand already has a following in the film community and the move to Bullocks raises its profile, prestige and prices – one of those tailored suits will set you back $400–700. For the remainder of the decade, Irene Lentz continues to build her clientele among the stars and wealthy wives of studio executives as well as landing commissions from production companies to design the wardrobes for their movies. One of the first is Flying Down to Rio (1933), whose leading lady, Dolores del Rio, insists that Irene design her costumes.

Other divas whose film wardrobe she ends up designing include Constance and Joan Bennett, Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, Hedy Lamarr, Claudette Colbert and Ingrid Bergman. By the late-1930s she is travelling to Paris for the spring fashion shows. And by 1941, even British Vogue refers to Irene’s “Californian elegance.”

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irene lentz picking peaches

1. Irene Lentz in Picking Peaches

A chance to see Irene on the silver screen as a flapper. In this scene from Picking Up Peaches (1924), her co-star is Harry Langdon.

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irene lentz for lana turner

2. Irene’s scandalous costume for Lana Turner

Lana in a two-piece by Irene is as sizzling as the steak her co-star John Garfield is supposed to be keeping an eye on in this scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

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irene lentz by lavoi

3. Irene by Greg LaVoi Lookbook

This is Hollywood costume designer Greg LaVoi's Fall 2013 Lookbook Video for his Irene by GV line, taking its inspiration from her creations.

Meanwhile, at a party thrown by her customer, fan and friend, Dolores del Rio, Irene Lentz meets Eliot Gibbons. This is no coincidence. During the 1930s, Dolores is the wife of Cedric Gibbons, the head of MGM’s art department (after their divorce in 1940, he will be seen out with, among others, Carole Landis before getting hitched to Hazel Brooks). Eliot is Cedric’s brother.

Eliot, an erstwhile assistant director, is working as a writer of short stories for newspapers and screenplays for movies. He’s also a keen aviator. So, when Irene expresses an interest in becoming a pilot, he offers to help her finish her required flying hours – a great pretext for spending lots of time together. On New Year’s Eve 1934 he proposes to her and they tie the knot in 1936. The flying lessons continue and, ironically, she gets her private pilot’s license just a couple of days before civilian flying on the West coast is prohibited following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

A member of the wardrobe team makes final ajustments to Ava Gardner’s gown by Irene
1949. A member of the wardrobe team makes final ajustments. Ava Gardner’s gown is by Irene. Read more.

Chapter 3 – Irene Lentz goes to the movies

That attack also proves to be the catalyst for a career change. For a while, Irene has been unhappy with her financial arrangements with Bullocks. She’s been contemplating her next move, including setting up her own manufacturing company. But with the US being drawn into World War II, that seems too risky. So, she’s open to new ideas and approaches.

Louis B Mayer is also in a quandary. He’s facing a raft of departures from his wardrobe team including Adrian, his head costume designer. Irene Lentz is ideally qualified to rescue the situation: she has the talent, she has the profile and she’s not going to be drafted. Encouraged by his wife, one of her many friends and clients, Mayer proposes that Irene join MGM and run its costume department. She accepts but on her own terms.

On arrival, Irene quickly assembles a team around her. The challenges they face are formidable. A multitude of warring individuals and factions to finesse. A hectic and dynamic schedule that requires working all hours. And constant changes of stars, directors and producers that disrupt the best-laid plans.

Easter Parade (1948) is a case in point. When Charles Walters replaces VIncente Minnelli as director, songs have to be rearranged, Judy Garland’s opening scene reworked (so the original costumes for it are no longer needed) and two of Judy’s key ensembles have to be changed. Further wardrobe modifications are required when Ann Miller replaces Cyd Charisse. Then Gene Kelly gets injured and Fred Astaire steps in. Cue further changes to the dance sequences and costumes.

1943. Marlene Dietrich as Jamila in Kismet. Costume by Irene Lentz. Read more.

Another challenge is dealing with stars’ anxieties about their clothes. The studio is full of starlets desperate to impress and established stars worried that their careers may be on the slide. Irene’s combination of empathy and decisiveness are just what’s needed to reassure them.

In spite of all the distractions, though, there are movies for which Irene manages to get her ideas through. In the case of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), one of those ideas is to associate Lana Turner’s character with a colour, as a composer might with a musical theme. So, Cora wears white in every scene except two.

Finally, in June 1949 Irene falls victim to MGM’s internal politics, her departure apparently triggered by her nemesis, Katharine Hepburn (read on for more on her), outraged by Irene’s failure to show up for a fitting. She still seems to be hanging on in there, though, in early 1950, when Doris Koenig’s Vagabondia column in the 2 March edition of Monrovia Daily News Post reports that:

She Is now an executive designer of MGM Studios, besides having her own wholesale manufacturing business – Irene Inc.

So far as her studio is concerned, Irene has no last name. Her driver’s license lists her as “Mrs Eliot Gibbons,” but she has built “Irene” into such a trademark that if you ask the studio operator for “Mrs Gibbons” you draw a blank. Ask for “Irene” and you will be connected with her office…

Consistency is one of the hallmarks of great brands!

Diamond-print suit by Irene Lentz
Early/mid-1950s. Diamond-print suit by Irene Lentz. Read more.

Chapter 4 – Irene goes into ready-to-wear

Back in July 1946, Neiman Marcus let Irene Lentz know that, alongside Christian Dior, Salvatore Ferragamo and Norman Hartnell, she has been chosen as a recipient of their Award for Distinguished Service in the field of fashion. It gets her thinking. She’s sick and tired of dealing with internal politics and having to compromise her designs: “I want to create designs that reflect my taste, rather than cater to those of a director or producer.” She’s also got to the point where she’s established the reputation, the relationships and the team to make her ambition to set up her own manufacturing company realistic.

The one thing Irene lacks is financing. With the help of Harry Cohn at Columbia, she assembles a group of over 20 luxury department stores including Bergdorf Goodman (New York), Marshall Field (Chicago) and Neiman Marcus (Dallas). She keeps 51% of the ordinary shares of Irene, Inc while her backers take the other 49%. As part of the arrangement, the stores get exclusives to her designs.

In 1947, Irene Lentz reveals her plans to begin designing her own range of clothes as well as continuing to work at MGM – she has negotiated a new contract to facilitate this. This time around she will be turning her attention to ready-to-wear rather than couture – “…marketing genius. Upscale stores could offer clients the Irene garments that stars loved,” says Mary Hall, founder The Recessionista.  In its Apr 1, 1948 issue, Vogue US, announces the launch:

NEW DESIGN

It is not news that Irene is a designer. Of all the women who design in America today, her clothes have had, in one sense, the widest public: she makes the screen-life clothes for stars of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where she is head costume-designer. But now the news is that Irene has turned her strong, fresh hand, again, to clothes for private lives, and her first ready-to-wear collection is now in several shops across the country. Consciously limiting her sphere, Irene makes no attempt to cover every phase of her new public’s life; she refuses to touch casual clothes, sports clothes. Instead, she makes the strict but feminine day-suit she is famous for, turns out beguiling afternoon print dresses, establishes her formal evening clothes as events.

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Pale grey suit with shutter neckline by Irene Lentz

Pale grey suit with shutter neckline by Irene Lentz

Late-1940s/early-1950s. The jacket's nipped-in waist seems to show the influence of Christian Dior’s New Look but its structured shoulders and the narrow skirt appear to be moving away from it....

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Check silk day dress with black taffeta trim by Irene Lentz

Check silk day dress with black taffeta trim by Irene Lentz

Late-1940s/early-1950s. The setting for this shoot may have been Irene’s boutique at Bullocks Wilshire. A paper label on the back of the photo reads:

5170 Check silk day dress...

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Brocade-trimmed suit by Irene Lentz

Brocade-trimmed suit by Irene Lentz

Early/mid-1950s. Irene’s trademarks were hand stitching, exquisite buttons and luxurious fabrics such as the brocade for this suit. An Irene garment was not cheap, but it was high quality and...

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Check suit by Irene Lentz

Check suit by Irene Lentz

Early/mid-1950s. Irene suits were designed and constructed to show off a woman’s waist. She used plaids, stripes and seaming to help achieve the effects she was looking for. It’s possible...

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For 15 years Irene continues to head up her own business, latterly being persuaded to design costumes for a select number of leading stars.

Chapter 5 – Irene Lentz throws in the towel

On 15 November 1962, with rave reviews from her latest show ringing in her ears, Irene Lentz heads for Hollywood’s Knickerbocker. It’s not a propitious place. In the early 1940s when it was still glamorous, actress Frances Farmer was tracked down there by police and sent to a mental institution. Later in the 1960s, William Frawley of I Love Lucy fame, will be dragged there to die after he collapses from a heart attack on the street.

Irene checks in to the now-faded hotel under an assumed name. That night she consumes two pints of vodka, tries to slit her wrists, then jumps out of an 11th-floor window. Hours later, her body is found on an awning. She has left a brief note: ““I am sorry to do this in this manner. Please see that Eliot is taken care of. Take care of the business and get someone very good to design. Love to all. Irene.”

Early/mid-1950s. Dark suit by Irene Lentz. Read more.

Why? Why? Why?

When you come across a tragedy like this, you search to make sense of it. How could such a talented woman do this to herself? But then how could the likes of Alexander McQueen and Kate Spade follow in her footsteps? Well, in one sense you can never know what’s going through someone’s mind when they make that decision.

The police suggested that Irene was “despondent over business problems and her husband’s illness.” According to her business manager, “Irene had been under a terrific strain. She had been in ill health for about two years.” What more can we say?

She was a woman operating in a man’s world – a fundamentally lonely undertaking. What’s more, she was working in an incredibly stressful environment with all sorts of budgetary, scheduling and interpersonal pressures quite apart from the need for relentless creativity – a killer in itself. On the surface, Irene was self-confident, but under the surface she had her insecurities. This example from Irene – A Designer from the Golden Age of Hollywood: The MGM Years 1942-49 is shocking in its brutality:

On August 2 1944, Irene and Virginia Fisher, her sketch artist, had a meeting with Katharine Hepburn to discuss the sketches for Without Love. Nothing Irene showed Hepburn seemed to meet with her approval. Before leaving, Hepburn quickly listed her ideas, reiterating sharply that she would return the following Monday and hoping Irene “will have designs that are in keeping with my character in the story.” It was the first time that Virginia saw Irene, who was always self-assured, physically shake. “Intimidation couldn’t describe what I witnessed. Irene was terrified by Hepburn’s stinging remarks,” Virginia confided.

Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body
1943. Hedy Lamarr in The Heavenly Body – gown by Irene. Read more.

In the early days there was Dick Jones, and he seems to have been something of a buttress and a Svengali for her as well as the love of her life. They really do seem to have shared a dream. It’s probably no coincidence that reports of Irene hitting the bottle begin to emerge in the early-1930s – soon after his death. The problem got worse and worse as time went by.

Irene’s motives for marrying Eliot may have been praiseworthy but they proved to be a poor foundation for marriage. Around the time of her engagement, she told friends “I felt a need to take care of him.” Then, a year after their wedding, she had a skiing accident, which caused a miscarriage. She was devastated and never forgave herself.

On the other side of the marriage bed, it’s quite likely that Eliot – also an alcoholic – felt outclassed and overshadowed by his brother. World War II might have provided a distraction for him, but within a month of his return rumours began to circulate that he was going out with other women. Shortly before Irene’s suicide, he suffered a stroke (from which he recovered).

If by that time Irene Lentz had fallen out of love with her husband, she had fallen into love with Gary Cooper, according to her friend Doris Day. In her biography, Doris Day: Her Own Story, she remembers:

Irene designed the clothes for several of my pictures so I got to know her very well. She was a nervous woman, introverted, quite unhappy, and at times she drank more than was good for her. She had an unhappy marriage to a man who lived out of the state and only occasionally came to visit her. One time, toward the end of a long evening, when she had been drinking quite a bit, she confided in me that the love of her life was Gary Cooper. Irene was a very attractive woman, a lovely face, and when she talked about Cooper her face glowed. She said he was the only man she had ever truly loved. There was such a poignancy in the way she said it. It really broke my heart.

After that, she several times confided in me about Cooper. I got the impression that she had never mentioned him to anyone before me, and she was so happy to declare her love for him. Thinking about it now, I cannot honestly say whether Irene’s love was one-sided or whether she and Cooper had actually had or were having an affair. But the way she loved him touched jealousy in me, for I had never loved a man with that much intensity.

Cooper had died the year before Irene’s suicide.

Want to know more about Irene Lentz?

If you’re serious about Irene Lentz, you have to get hold of Frank Billecci and Lauranne Fisher’s Irene – A Designer from the Golden Age of Hollywood: The MGM Years 1942-49. Although it’s mostly about her years at MGM, it contains a well-researched chapter on her life up to that point. It has been the main source for much of this piece.

Online sources I have consulted include:

  • Various articles at Newspapers.com
  • Various articles by Mary Hall at The Recessionista
  • California Couture: Irene at Bullocks-Wilshire by Mary Hall for HuffPost
  • Irene Lentz by Hollis Jenkins-Evans for Vintage Fashion Guild
  • The Chic Life and Tragic Death of a Revered Costume Designer by Elizabeth Snead for The Hollywood Reporter
  • A sequel for Irene Lentz fashion line by Vincent Boucher for the Los Angeles Times.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.
Andrea Johnson – forgotten supermodel of the 1940s
The Fashion Flight – California comes to Paris
Wilhelmina modelling a chiffon evening dress
Wilhelmina – glamour and tragedy

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Crew, Fashion Tagged With: Cedric Gibbons, Dolores del Rio, Eliot Gibbons, Irene, Irene Gibbons, Irene Lentz, The Postman Always Rings Twice

Shooting for the stars – insights from four leading Hollywood cinematographers

Four leading cinematographers talk about their work and the stars they’ve filmed in this article published in the February 1941 issue of Modern Screen.

Here, then, in their own words are some revealing insights into how they see their work, observations of some of the stars they’ve filmed and revelations of tricks of the trade. And an opportunity to showcase a series of behind-the-scenes images of various cinematographers and crew at work.

Jack Cardiff
1950. Jack Cardiff, one of the great 20th century cinematographers, on the set of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

But first a brief introduction to the cinematographers themselves:

  • Gregg Toland. Orson Welles once said that Gregg taught him everything he knew about the art of photography. Before filming Citizen Kane, Gregg spent a weekend giving him a crash course on lens and camera positions. Orson would never lose his admiration for Gregg, saying on many occasions, “Not only was he the greatest cameraman I ever worked with, he was also the fastest.” Gregg’s advice to aspiring cameramen was simple: “Forget the camera. The nature of the story determines the photographic style. Understand the story and make the most out of it. If the audience is conscious of tricks and effects, the cameraman’s genius, no matter how great it is, is wasted.”
  • James Wong Howe. In the 53 years he spent developing and perfecting his craft, “Jimmy” Howe was nominated for 16 Academy Awards and won two Oscars. In his ongoing quest for realism, he strove to make all his sources of light absolutely naturalistic and developed various filming techniques. For example, to get the audience as close as possible to John Garfield in a boxing scene in Body and Soul, he got up into the ring on roller skates and scooted about the fighters to capture the most evocative shots of their struggle.
  • Rudolph Maté. Rudy worked in Europe with Carl Theodor Dreyer on both The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr before migrating to the US in 1934. During the 1940s he received five consecutive Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography, the last of them for the Rita Hayworth vehicle, Cover Girl. He also worked with her on Gilda and (uncredited) The Lady from Shanghai. He went on to direct a series of movies including DOA.
  • Ernest Haller. Ernie is best known for his Oscar-winning work on Gone With The Wind (over the years he had six other Oscar nominations). He was admired within the industry for his expert location shooting and his ability to balance make-up and lighting to bring out actors’ best features. He shot 14 of Bette Davis’ movies and was her favourite lensman. During the 1930s and ’40s, he worked at Warner Bros. His later movies included Rebel Without a Cause and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Shooting for the Stars by William Roberts

They make fat stars thin and old stars young! Who? Those magnificent Merlins of Movietown – the unsung cameramen.

These fellows are pretty tough, believe me. They’re banded together in a secret organization called the ASC, and it’s not that they try to be secret but just that no one knows much about them outside of Hollywood. Movie stars dread them and, privately, call them super-assassins.

The leaders of the ASC have committed many drastic deeds. They have literally taken flesh off Myrna Loy’s legs. They have flattened Brenda Marshall’s nose. They have removed pieces of Madeleine Carroll’s cheeks They’ve reduced Priscilla Lane’s mouth, narrowed Zorina’s forehead and changed Vivien Leigh’s blue eyes to pure green. And for committing these atrocities they have been paid as much as $1,500 per week.

However, if truth will out, the secret organization referred to is actually a staid labor union, the American Society of Cinematographers. The members, merchants of mayhem, are the very expert and very well-paid cameramen of Movieland who, with thick ground glass and well-placed kliegs, have made ordinary faces beautiful and have converted terrible defects into gorgeous assets.

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Ava Gardner filming Singapore

John Brahm and Maury Gertsman shoot a scene for Singapore

1947. Perched above a courtyard entrance, director John Brahm and cinematographer Maury Gertsman prepare to shoot a scene for Singapore. The writing on the clapperboard reads

SINGAPORE
1540
DIRECTOR BRAHM
CAMERA GERTSMAN
SET DRESSER EMERT
PROP MAN BLACKIE
SET NO. 10 SCENE 29

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Rita Hayworth filming Affair in Trinidad

Rita Hayworth films a scene for Affair in Trinidad

1952. Cinematographers go flat out to get the right angle. Here the glamorous focus of attention is Rita Hayworth. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

RITA’S BACK – Rita Hayworth does a torrid dance in a night club scene on her first day before the cameras for Columbia’s “Affair in Trinidad,” a Beckworth Production in which she co-stars with Glenn Ford.

Photo by Irving Lippman.

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Ann Sheridan and Sidney Hickox on the set of Silver River

Sidney Hickox chats with Ann Sheridan on the set of Silver River

1948. Cinematographer Sidney Hickox was brilliant at shooting gritty, moody crime films and melodramas for Warner Bros. His movies included three Lauren Bacall vehicles – To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947). A caption on the back of the photo reads:

Ann Sheridan and cameraman Sid Hickox chat between scenes on the set of “SILVER RIVER,” Ann’s current picture with Errol Flynn for Warner Bros. Star is pictured here at the Warner Bros. ranch near Calabasas, California, where extensive exterior sets of Nevada’s sliver mining town were reproduced for the picture.

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Grace Kelly at ease

Grace Kelly at ease

1956. Aspiring cinematographer Grace Kelly strikes a pose, as the caption on the back of the photo points out:

ACTRESS AT EASE....It’s Grace Kelly perched on the camera boom between scenes on the set of M-G-M’s “The Swan”.

If any one class of worker in Hollywood does not get credit where credit is due, if any one class of laborer is hidden behind the star-bright glare of publicity, obscure, unsung, unknown – it is the cinema cameraman.

“It’s this way with us,” Gregg Toland told me. “They’ve got us wrong, entirely wrong, everywhere. They think cameramen are low-grade mechanical morons, wearing overalls and stupid grins, existing on starvation wages and merely grinding 35 mm. toys. Well, maybe. Only we don’t like that impression. Maybe we are technicians. Nothing wrong with that. But sakes alive, man, tell ’em we’re creative artists, too!”

And so, I’m telling you. They’re creative artists, too. They’re makers and breakers of thespians and pictures. They’re the Merlins behind the movies.

Take that fellow Gregg Toland who just had the floor. A lean little man in brown clothes – cultured, brilliant and active. Twenty-one years ago he obtained a job during a summer vacation as an office boy at the old Fox Studios. The film stars on the lot didn’t impress him, but the intent cameramen, cranking their black-sheathed boxes, hypnotized him. He decided to skip school and become a photographer. The result? Well, the last I heard, he had prepared for canning such products as “The Grapes of Wrath,” “The Long Voyage Home” and “Citizen Kane.”

I talked with Toland in the comfortable study of his sprawling Benedict Canyon home. He downed a long beer with a practiced gulp and explained the qualifications and duties of the cameraman.

“A first-rate cameraman must realize,” said Toland, “that while some scenes of a film might be shot much, much better, much more artistically, those scenes are worth neither the extra time nor extra cash investment. The cameraman must have a strain of the economist in him, and get speed into his picture without sacrificing quality. After all, time becomes a paramount item when you realize that a single day on a certain picture may run to $22,000 in expenses!

Merle Oberon and Turham Bey filming Night in Paradise
1945. William H Greene, director of color photography, does a last-minute check on the set of Night in Paradise prior to filming a scene starring Merle Oberon and Turham Bey.

“As photographer on a major movie, my first job is to manage my camera crew. I have a special crew of seven men. All specialists. I take them with me wherever I go. There’s an operator and two assistants. There’s a grip, a gaffer or electrician, a standby painter and a microphone boy. But that’s only the beginning of my job. I must see that there is efficiency. Speed, again. And, with things as they are, I must practice economy by being artistic with one eye on the production budget. These days a cameraman is actually a producer, director, photographer, actor and electrician. The out-and-out old-fashioned photographer who just had to maneuver a camera is as extinct as the dodo bird.”

With two decades behind a Hollywood camera, I wondered just which particular feminine face Gregg Toland considered the best he had ever brought into focus.

His answer, like his personality and his pictures, was direct.

“Anna Sten,” he replied. “She was by far the most photogenic woman I ever shot. She didn’t have an insipid baby doll face, you know the type. She had a face full of good bones and character. Her cheeks caught the lights well, and her nose was so tilted as to place attractive shadows beneath. Frances Farmer was another face I enjoyed working on and, of course, if you want to go way back into ancient history, there was no one like the incomparable Gloria Swanson.

“On the other hand, an actress like Merle Oberon gives the photographer a good deal of work. Her countenance can only be photographed from certain angles. And as to clothes, her body requires that she wear either fluffy dresses or evening gowns to show her up to advantage. Jean Arthur, a dear friend of mine, won’t mind my mentioning that her face is also a lighting job, but, when it comes to attire, she is perfectly photogenic in anything from a cowboy costume to a bathing suit.

Ingrid Bergman filming a scene for Arch of Triumph
1946. Ingrid Bergman filming a scene for Arch of Triumph.

“Thinking back on personalities, I recall that I had difficulties with Ingrid Bergman when I worked on ‘Intermezzo.’ Ingrid is really two persons. Shoot her from one side and she’s breath-takingly beautiful. Shoot her from the other, and she’s average.”

Toland paused for punctuation, then smiled.

“Of course,” he said cheerfully, “I’d rather photograph girls like June Lang and Arleen Whelan with their pretty little faces, than any. Because they’re no work at all. You set your camera and your lights anywhere, and they still look cute. If I shot them constantly, though, I’d become far too lazy.”

Now he spoke of the stronger sex.

“The most photogenic male is Gary Cooper. But he looks best when he isn’t photographed well! Here’s what I mean. If he’s shot casually and naturally, without frills or fuss, he has plenty of femme appeal. He doesn’t have to be dolled up like the juvenile leads. If you don’t believe me, just take a gander at him in ‘The Westerner.’ He’s grand in it and without special lighting or any make-up.

“Henry Fonda is another I enjoy working with. He also doesn’t require makeup. And he’s so damn intelligent. Understands props, stage business, electricity. You know, Fonda’s main hobby is photography, and on ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ he spent half his time looking through my camera, which, of course, gave him a better understanding of what I was after.”

I inquired about Toland’s most recent and celebrated patient, Orson Welles.

Orson Welles directing Carl Frank and Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai
A caption on the back of the photo reads: MENACE .. This is the picture you won’t see on the screen. It shows Orson Welles, his usual mug of steaming coffee in hand, directing Carl Frank and Rita Hayworth in a dramatic courtroom cross-examination scene for Columbia Pictures’ “The Lady from Shanghai.” Orson is producer, writer, director and co-star with Rita in “The Lady from Shanghai.” Frank plays the role of a tough district attorney. Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

“Shot ‘Citizen Kane’ in sixteen weeks,” explained Toland. “It’s an unusual picture. For example, we worked with no beams or parallels (to hold spots) for the first time in Hollywood history. All sets were given natural ceilings, which made bright lighting difficult but also made for realism.

“Orson Welles was an interesting type to shoot, especially his characterization, changing from a lad of twenty-five to an old man of seventy, and wearing, in old age, blood-shot glass-caps over his eyes.

“His problem, today, will depend on whether audiences prefer him as a character actor or as himself. I like one quality in his acting and direction. Stubbornness. He would bitterly fight every technical problem that came up. Never say die. Never.”

Gregg Toland confessed that the one defect he’d found in most actors and actresses was discoloration and lines or wrinkles under their eyes. “Were we to leave them natural, it would make them appear tired and haggard on the screen, especially since they are amplified so greatly. So, I place bright spotlights directly in their faces, which wash out these lines and make their faces smoother.”

Then Toland began discussing technical problems in a very untechnical manner. It was a liberal education in cinema craft. He spoke fondly of “The Grapes of Wrath.” Said he enjoyed much of it because he was able to shoot his favorite type of scene – building somber moods through shadowy low-keyed lighting, such as the opening candlelight scene in that classic of the soil. “We slaved, Jack Ford and I, to make that picture real,” Toland revealed. “We sent the cast out to acquire good healthy sunburns. We threw away soft diffusion lenses. We shot the whole thing candid-camera style, like a newsreel. That’s the trend today in Hollywood. Realism.”

“Of course,” he added, “sometimes realism is attained only through complete trickery. Remember the third or fourth shot in the beginning of ‘The Long Voyage Home?’ The scene of the ship floating and rocking on the water? Here’s how that was done. I had the studio build half a miniature boat, set it on a dry stage. Then I took a pan full of plain water, placed it on a level with my lens – and shot my scene over this pan of water, catching the boat and giving the perfect illusion of its being in the water. But I better not tell you too much of that. Trade secrets, you know. You better have another beer …”

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Mervyn Leroy and Harold Rosson filming a scene for Johnny Eager

Mervyn Leroy and Harold Rosson filming a scene for Johnny Eager

1941. Director Mervyn Leroy, crouching, oversees the shooting of a scene for Johnny Eager.

...
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Douglas Sirk conferring with Hazel Brooks

Douglas Sirk conferring with Hazel Brooks

1947. Director Douglas Sirk briefs Hazel Brooks prior to filming a scene for Sleep,...

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Ava Gardner filming The Angel Wore Red

Ava Gardner filming The Angel Wore Red

1960. Ava Gardner seems to enjoy being the centre of attention as she emerges...

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George Cukor filming Marilyn Monroe

George Cukor filming Marilyn Monroe

1962. A bird's eye view of George Cukor directing Marilyn on the set of...

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But, instead of another beer, I indulged in something equally stimulating. I saw another ace cameraman. I left Toland, drove out into the Valley north of Hollywood and halted before an intimate Oriental restaurant bearing a blinking neon that read “Ching How.”

This restaurant was the hobby and hide-out of the cherubic Chinese cameraman, James Wong Howe, the place where he came in the evening, to chat with old friends or supervise a steaming chow mein after a hard and tiresome day with Ann Sheridan, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr or Loretta Young!

Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve
1950. Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve.

Looking at Jimmy Howe, you’d never know what he’s been through and what his keen eyes have seen. Not because he has the “inscrutable” yellow man’s face of fiction, the traditional face that hides feelings and emotions, but because he is so cheerful, so friendly, so disarmingly sincere.

You wouldn’t know that he once fought gory battles in the fistic arena for ten bucks a knockout, or that he got his first job in Hollywood as a camera assistant at that same price. But you would know, immediately, that Jimmy Howe is as American as you or I, born in Pasco, Washington, of a farmer father; and you would know, too, immediately, that he understands more about Hollywood stars than any photographer alive.

I found Jimmy Howe a little interview shy when it came to discussing personalities. That was because he’d been burned once. Recently, a reporter asked him about Bette Davis, and Howe told the reporter that Bette’s enormous eyes were her finest feature, and that they must be emphasized by lighting, whereas her long thin neck must be shadowed. The reporter misquoted him as stating that Bette was badly pop-eyed. Ever since, Howe has been afraid to explain the truth to Bette – and if she reads this – well, hell, Bette, the guy thinks you’re the greatest actress on earth!

Over a delicious dish of aged Chinese eggs, bamboo shoots and other Far Eastern delicacies, in a nook of his popular eatery, Jimmy Howe softened sufficiently to discuss the women he had captured for celluloid.

He digressed on the subject of glamour gals.

“Hedy Lamarr has more glamour than anyone in Hollywood. Her jet black hair and fine light complexion, marvelously contrasting, requires no faking soft diffusion lens. But, like all glamour ladies, she must be aided by the cameraman. First of all, I took attention away from her lack of full breasts by playing up her eyes and lips. With a bright light I created a shadow to make you forget her weak chin. Then, I really went to town! I planted an arc on a level with her eyes, shadowing her forehead and blending it and her hair into a dark background. Now, all attention was focused on her eyes. Remember her first meeting with Boyer in ‘Algiers?’ Her eyes got away with lines that would never have passed Mr. Hays.

Portrait of Myrna Loy by Clarence Sinclair Bull
1936. Myrna Loy by Clarence Sinclair Bull.

“It’s an old glamour trick. The average girl should learn it. For example, when you wear a hat with a low brim, and then have to peer out from under the brim, it makes you more interesting, centers attention on your orbs. When you sport a half-veil, you have to look from behind it and thus become an exciting and intriguing person. There’s no question about it. The eyes certainly have it.

“Now Ann Sheridan. Her gorgeous throat and shoulders, and those lips. I light them up and disguise the fact that her nose is irregular and her cheeks overly plump. Incidentally, to correct her nose, which curves slightly to the left, I put kliegs full on the left side of her face, pushing her nose perfectly straight. Once, on ‘Torrid Zone,’ when Annie arrived on the set with a pimple on her chin, I had the make-up man convert it into a beauty mark, and then viewing her through the camera, realized that this concentrated attention on her full lips, which made her even more glamorous!

“Each actress, no matter how beautiful, becomes a problem. Madeleine Carroll has a good and bad side to her face, like so many others. I always shoot her threequarters, because it thins her out. A full face shot makes her too fleshy. With Myrna Loy, there must not be white around her neck, because it’s too contrasting to her complexion. Moreover, lights must be low, shooting upward, to reduce the size of her underpinnings.

“Zorina, off-screen, relaxing, is an ordinary woman, with a good-sized healthy body. But, the minute she dances before the camera, her true personality grows. Her face turns from good looking to gorgeous. Her body becomes smaller and willowy. She’s easy to work with, except that an enthusiastic uncle of hers, a doctor, gave her four vaccination marks when she was young, and we have to get rid of them with make-up and special lights.

Vera Zorina on the set of On Your Toes
1938. Vera Zorina on the set of On Your Toes. Photo by Madison Lacy

“But you want to know the most photogenic lady I ever set my lens upon? Priscilla Lane. An absolutely eye-soothing face, despite a generous mouth. A fine skin texture. A rounded facial structure. Mmm. Lovely to look at.

“There is no perfect camera face, Confucius say. Not even Loretta Young, who is reputed to have a camera-proof face. Why, she wouldn’t want a perfect face and neither would any other actress. A perfect face, without irregular features, would be monotonous and tiresome to observe. Of course, a well-balanced face is another thing. Oh, I’ve seen so-called perfect faces – those composite photographs showing Lamarr’s eyes, Leigh’s nose, Dietrich’s lips – but the result is always surprisingly vacant!

“Most women must be photographed with flat lights, shooting down from a forty-five degree angle, because this lighting washes out any defects. Whereas, a cross-lighting from either side, while it makes the face natural and round and real, also accentuates wrinkles, blemishes and bad lines. There are exceptions. Flat lighting would wash Joan Crawford’s face clean to the point of blankness. Crosslighting chisels her beautifully. But others can’t stand up as well.

“I’m not telling you these inside items on the stars to give you a sensational story. I’m trying to point out this – that while the Chinese author, Lin Yutang, wrote a book called ‘The Importance of Living,’ I should like to write one called, ‘The Importance of Lighting.’ It’s all-important. Take a look at the way celebrities appear in a newsreel, without careful kliegs adjusted to them. They seem messy.

“Why, the only newsreel personages I ever saw who looked decent without expert work on them, and who were, in fact, once offered a million dollars to come to Hollywood, were the Windsors. Now Wally Simpson is a bit too thin in the face and has some blemishes. But this could be corrected by shooting her three-quarters, the lights flat against her. She should never be shot in profile. As to the Duke, Edward himself, well, while he often appears a bit weary and haggard, he would have to be kept that way in Hollywood. It’s part of his adult charm. We wouldn’t want to wash that out with faked brightness.”

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Esther Williams filming Jupiter's Darling

Esther Williams filming Jupiter’s Darling

1955. Well, here's a different cinematographic challenge – underwater filming for Jupiter's Darling, a Roman...

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Dorothy Lamour on a location shoot

Dorothy Lamour on a location shoot

Around 1940. Most Hollywood movies made in the forties and fifties were shot in the...

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Shooting a scene for A Matter of Life and Death

Shooting a scene for A Matter of Life and Death

1946. A Matter of Life and Death, a Powell and Pressburger production, was shot primarily...

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Joseph Ruttenberg filming Ava Gardner

Joseph Ruttenberg filming Ava Gardner

1948. Joseph Ruttenberg homes in on Ava Gardner in this scene for The Bribe. Another...

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Now the little man expounded on picture-making. He told exactly the way pictures should be made. Here’s Howe:

“My theory of picture -making is that a movie must run true. It must be real. You must not feel that it is obviously a movie. A big fault is that photographers often try to make their photography stand out. That is bad. If you go away raving about the photography of certain scenes, you’ve seen a bad photographic job.

“When I was a beginner, way back, I had that common failing. I never gave a damn about the actor. All I wanted was to get those fat beautiful clouds in, so people would say, ‘Some shot. Some photographer.’ But now I know that’s not professional.”

There was one more thing. I had a hunch a lot of photographers, like producers, were repressed actors at heart. Did James Wong Howe ever aspire to histrionics?

“Oh, once I almost became an actor. The late Richard Boleslavsky wanted me to play with Greta Garbo in ‘The Painted Veil.’ Just a bit part. I refused. My place is behind the big machine, not in front of it. Besides I’d be scared stiff. Me, Wong Howe, an actor? Hell, the boys would rib the pants off me!”

To continue my scientific study of the lads behind the lenses, I went to a party of General Service Studios. There, on the lavish set of “Lady Hamilton,” Vivien Leigh was passing out cake to celebrate her birthday, and a stocky, dark-haired handsome man named Rudolph Mate was celebrating his first year as a full-fledged American citizen.

Rudolph Maté on the set of Gilda
1945. Rudolph Maté on the set of Gilda with Rita Hayworth and Russ Vincent.

Rudolph Mate, born in Poland, student of philosophy, lover of fine paintings, was the cameraman on the newest Leigh-Olivier vehicle. His previous pictures had been movie milestones – “Love Affair,” “Foreign Correspondent” and “Seven Sinners.”

I asked Mate about the ingredients that make a tip-top photographer, and he answered very slowly and very precisely. He spoke slowly to prevent becoming mixed in the languages he knows – French, German, Hungarian, Russian, Polish, English and pinochle – all of which he speaks fluently.

“To become a good photographer, one must have a complete knowledge of the technical end,” stated Mate. He pointed toward his $15,000 movable camera. “One must make everything about that instrument a habit, a second nature, as natural and uncomplicated as walking. This complete technical knowledge gives one time, on the set, to think in terms of the story being shot. A photographer must be creative, imaginative. Above all, he must have a talent for continuity.

“What do I mean by continuity? The celluloid mustn’t be scatterbrained. For example, every day a cameraman looks at the daily rushes of the footage he’s shot. Some photographers have excellent daily rushes, excellent separate scenes – but, when the film is cut, patched together, it’s mediocre and without full meaning because the cameraman had no feel of harmony, no sense of continuity. “A cameraman must be thorough. I study a script page by page and solve each problem as I study it. Also, on the side, I study oil paintings and works of art. In fact, I have a big collection of my own, because this study gives a cameraman knowledge of composition and color.”

Rudolph Mate was ecstatic about Vivien Leigh as Lady Hamilton.

“A marvelous subject. Cool. Positive. The certain beauty of a steel dagger. No bad facial angles. And an actress in her head and in her heart. Laurence Olivier is fine for me to shoot, too. His face is so expressive. It has so much character.”

Marlene Dietrich as Jamilla in Kismet
1944. Marlene Dietrich as Jamilla in Kismet.

Mate admitted that he had enjoyed toiling with Marlene Dietrich on “Seven Sinners,” and that he was scheduled to do her next opus at Universal.

“She has a wonderful head. I mean both brains and shape. Furthermore, like no other actress, she understands lighting problems and angles, and takes all suggestions without a fight. She is cooperative despite the nonsense you read. She will pose for fifty different takes if need be. The reason she knows so much is that she acquired her photographic education from Josef Von Sternberg, her first director, who still has the best pictorial mind in the cinema business.”

Mate, I understood, was a master magician at trickery. He could make anything real. In “Lady Hamilton,” you’ll see the Battle of Trafalgar, when Olivier as Lord Nelson is killed. It’ll be a terrific scene, realistic as war and death – but remember, it was made with miniature boats, only five feet tall, costing $1,000 each, and the cannon balls were tiny marbles shot into thin balsa wood.

Remember, too, that Mate can – and often has – made mob scenes involving thousands of people with just a half dozen extras. This he has accomplished with a special “button lens,” one with 220 separate openings for images, thus multiplying anything it is focused upon.

Rudolph Mate had a date with Vivien Leigh, in front of the camera, and I had one, at Warner Brothers Studio, with a gentleman named Ernie Haller, a studious architect who wound up by becoming the genius to put that little tidbit labeled “Gone With the Wind” on celluloid.

Good-natured, bespectacled Ernie Haller didn’t waste words. “The cameraman’s main duty is to tell a story with lighting. Next, he must have a thorough understanding or feeling for composition; you know, how to group and balance people and objects properly. It’s like salesmanship – you create a point of interest, and you try to sell the fans a star or an idea by subtly focusing attention on this point of interest.”

Haller referred to a few tangible points of interest.

Ann Sheridan filming Nora Prentiss
1946. Ann Sheridan filming Nora Prentiss.

“I’m not merely being loyal to Warners when I tell you Ann Sheridan is the most photogenic female in this town today. Her features are well proportioned and take lighting easily. The most photogenic man is Errol Flynn. His oval face stands up from any angle or under any lighting condition.

“But, as you know, we have our sticklers, too. There’s Clark Gable. I always shoot him three-quarters, so that you see only one of his ears. If you saw both at once, they’d look like mine do – stick out like the arms of a loving cup.

“Brenda Marshall, whom I’m working with at present, is a fine actress. Her only defects are a slightly crooked nose and eyes set too closely together. I light up one side of her face more fully to straighten the nose, and push inkies square into Brenda’s face to spread her eyes.

“When I shot GWTW, I found Vivien Leigh ideal for Technicolor. But I learned too much light was extremely bad for her. Her face was delicate and small, and full brightness would wash out her features and spoil the modeling of her countenance. Another thing. She has blue eyes. David Selznick wanted them green. So I set up a baby spot with amber gelatine, placed it under my lens, and Scarlett wound up with green eyes.

Franz Planer preparing to shoot a dancing scene starring Ava Gardner and Robert Walker
1948. A rare behind-the-scenes shot of cinematographer Franz Planer preparing to shoot a dancing scene starring Ava Gardner and Robert Walker. Director William A Seiter looks on.

“Listen, they all have handicaps that we have to correct. Most have square jaws, which must be softened and rounded. Some have prominent noses, which requires a low light set at the knees to push up their noses. Some actresses have thin legs. We plant spots right at their feet to fill ’em out.

“There’s no limit to what we have to do. We keep middle-aged actresses young by using special diffusing lenses that make faces mellow, hazy, soft, foggy, ethereal. We use these lenses on mood scenes, too, thus enabling us to create cold, crisp mornings on hot, sultry days.

“In my time, I’ve put them all in my black box. Some who were difficult and some who were easy, ranging from Mae Murray and Norma Talmadge to Dick Barthelmess and Bette Davis. I’ve never had trouble because I knew sculpturing, knew the basic foundation of the human face and was able to become, literally, a plastic surgeon with lights.”

Says Haller:

“Most trick stuff is in the hands of the Optical Printing Department of any studio. This is conducted by specialized cameramen and special effects men who manufacture 75% of the mechanical trick scenes. Most impossible scenes are done in miniature, caught by a camera that blows them eight times normal.”

Ernie Haller, with an eye for the unusual, summarized some of the crazy paradoxes he’d run into during his many semesters in the movie village. He said that big banquet scenes were always filmed right after lunch, because the extras weren’t so hungry then and wouldn’t eat so much expensive food! Moonlit night scenes were taken in the daytime with a filter, because real moonlight was not photogenic. Faked fights photographed better than real ones, because real ones appeared too silly. Sequences on an ocean liner had to be faked on dry land, because an honest-to-goodness boat pitched and heaved too much for the average camera. Blank cartridges recorded better on the sound track. Real ones were too high-pitched.

“In barroom sequences,” concluded Haller, “cold tea is better than whiskey, not because it photographs better but because actors have to drink a lot of it – and tea, sir, keeps them sober!”

So there. You’ve met some of the boys from the ASC. Now paste Gregg Toland’s classical outburst into your hat –

“Tell ’em we’re not low-grade mechanical morons, we cameramen. Tell ’em we’re creative artists, by God!”

And, by God, they certainly are!

Other topics you may be interested in…

George Hoyningen-Huene – from film to fashion and back again
Perc Westmore – makeup king of Hollywood
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Crew, Stars Tagged With: Ann Sheridan, Ava Gardner, Bette Davis, Carl Frank, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Douglas Sirk, Eddie Cronenweth, Ernest Haller, Franz Planer, G B Poletto, George Cukor, Giuseppe Rotunno, Grace Kelly, Gregg Toland, Harold Rosson, Hazel Brooks, Ingrid Bergman, Jack Cardiff, James Wong Howe, John Brahm, Joseph A Valentine, Joseph Ruttenberg, Lana Turner, Madison Lacy, Marlene Dietrich, Maury Gertsman, Merle Oberon, Mervyn Leroy, Myrna Loy, Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Robert Sterling, Robert Taylor, Rudolph Maté, Russ Vincent, Sidney Hickox, Turham Bey, Vera Zorina, William A Seiter, William H Greene

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