• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

aenigma

  • Home
  • About
  • Instagram
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy
  • Contact

Behind the scenes

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.

Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more

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.

Enlarge
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.

Enlarge
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.

Enlarge
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.

Show more
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.

Show more
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.

Show more
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.

Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more

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…

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.”

Show more
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.

Show more
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).

Show more
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 Newman 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.

Enlarge
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....

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more

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.

Enlarge
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

Enlarge
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.

Enlarge
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.

Enlarge
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 …”

Enlarge
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.

...
Read more
Enlarge
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,...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more

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.”

Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more
Enlarge
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...

Read more

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

Martha Vickers – the starlet who dared to upstage Lauren Bacall

Martha Vickers, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep
Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) and Vivian (Lauren Bacall) discuss what to do with the delinquent Carmen (Martha Vickers) in The Big Sleep (1946).

Martha Vickers was one of the most tantalizing actresses of the 1940s. Today, she’s remembered for her firecracker portrayal of Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep and for her turn as the third of Mickey Rooney’s eight wives.

The story of Martha Vickers’ early career is told in an article published in the October 1945 issue of Pic magazine – available for you to read as a separate, illustrated article on aenigma.

What’s so intriguing about Martha is what might have been. In The Big Sleep (1946) – Howard Hawks’ great film noir based on Raymond Chandler’s novel of the same name, she is fabulously slutty as Carmen Sternwood, Lauren Bacall’s out-of-control, drug-addicted, nymphomaniac little sister.

Indeed, according to Martha’s brief biography on Turner Classic Movies, Raymond Chandler claimed that she gave such an incredible performance that she upstaged Lauren Bacall. Since the movie was intended as a vehicle to promote the Bogart Bacall chemistry that had been such a success for Warner Bros with audiences of To Have and Have Not (1944), many of Martha’s scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Enlarge
Martha Vickers, pin-up

Martha Vickers, pin-up

1945. Martha Vickers' costume, a kind of cross between a bustier and a swimsuit, and the setting carry overtones of...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, dream girl

Martha Vickers, dream girl

Around 1945. Dream, baby, dream. Martha Vickers gets into the zone for Jack Woods, as the caption on the back...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, bathing beauty

Martha Vickers, bathing beauty

Around 1945. Martha Vickers models a lurex bathing suit that might be suitable for sunbathing but might not survive a...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, babe

Martha Vickers, babe

Around 1944. For some reason, photographers seem to have a penchant for shooting Martha Vickers supine – which with a...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, cover girl

Martha Vickers, cover girl

Around 1946. That made-to-measure, body-hugging, ruched top that Martha Vickers is modelling is quite something. It's the perfect foil for...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, tomb maiden

Martha Vickers, tomb maiden

1944. Seated in a tomb and flanked by a pair of Egyptian statues, could Martha Vickers be an offering to...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, porn star

Martha Vickers, porn star

1945. Martha Vickers as Carmen Sternwood in The Big Sleep sits beneath a lowering Buddha. She’s come for a pornographic...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, menace

Martha Vickers, menace

1945. Martha Vickers' character in The Big Sleep, Carmen Sternwood, is a loose cannon. Here, pistol at the ready, she...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, baby doll

Martha Vickers, baby doll

1945. Martha Vickers is irresistibly cute in a sequined and feathered costume. The caption on a variant of this photo...

Read more
Enlarge
Martha Vickers, blonde bombshell

Martha Vickers, blonde bombshell

Around 1947. It looks like Martha Vickers has been on the receiving end of a decision by Warner Bros that...

Read more

So how did an apparently unremarkable, albeit very attractive, ingénue come to threaten to steal the show? The anecdotes that swirl around the making of The Big Sleep offer some revealing insights. In Hawks on Hawks, the director recalls:

We had a great start for that little girl, where Bogart said, “Somebody ought to housebreak her.” I made her sit around almost a day trying little things, taking a piece of hair and bringing it down and looking at it, you know. Because I didn’t want her to be Stella Stevens or somebody like that. I wanted her to be a well-dressed little girl who just happened to be a nymphomaniac.

Show more
1 marlowe meets carmen

1. Marlowe meets Carmen

In the opening scene of The Big Sleep, private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) arrives at the mansion of General Sternwood where he meets his provocatively flirtatious daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers).

Show more
2 carmen off her head

2. Carmen off her head

Marlowe breaks into the house of Arthur Gwynn Geiger, where he finds Carmen doped up to the eyeballs with a corpse at her feet. The quality of the video doesn't do justice to the quality of the scene.

Show more
3 eye of the beholder

3 The eye of the Beholder

In The Eye of the Beholder (1953), Richard Conte plays Michael Girard, who is viewed by the other characters as everything from a philanderer to a murderer, and we see the story played out from each of the character’s point of view. It’s worth a watch but if you’re pressed for time, fast forward to 21:40 to see Martha Vickers in the dénouement. Don't be put off by the lip sync!

It must have been quite an experience for the inexperienced Martha Vickers, as this anecdote related by Sheila O’Malley reveals:

Howard Hawks had an idea for one of the scenes – where Marlowe (Bogart) comes into the house, and finds Vickers sitting, all dressed up in the empty house – drugged out, sexed up, in the aftermath of some sexual event. Marlowe can immediately tell that obviously some kind of porno photo shoot had been going on. And Marlowe comes upon her, she is high on drugs, and completely out of it. Anyway, Hawks had an idea for this scene (which ended up not making it into the movie – no wonder, with the censorship of the day!): He wanted Vickers to simulate an orgasm, as she sat there, looking up at Bogart. He wanted her to be in that quivery zone where you basically don’t even need physical contact to “get there” – he wanted her to be the kind of woman who lives in that state.

So Hawks asked her to do so. He gave her this piece of direction in front of Bogart, Regis Toomey (who plays the DA – wonderful stolid character actor), and a couple of other people, members of the crew, etc. You know, moviemaking has a mystique about it but there is also a no-nonsense quality to it that I find refreshing.

Hawks said, “Sweetheart, what we want here is for you to simulate that you’re having an orgasm.”

Martha Vickers asked, “What’s an orgasm?”

Nobody spoke. Nobody knew what to do. They all just stood there, awkward as hell, stunned to silence. Hawks, Bogart, and Toomey – grown men – standing there with a teenage actress – who was asking them (in all innocence) what an orgasm was. Dead silence. Hawks called a 10-minute break. (hahahaha) I mean – what else could you do? Hawks then pulled Toomey aside and asked Toomey to please go and “explain to Miss Vickers what an orgasm is”. I love that Howard Hawks, supposedly the most macho guy in the universe, couldn’t bring himself to go explain it to her – he had to have someone else go do it.

Toomey, who apparently was a good-natured fellow, married with a bunch of kids, the product of a strict Irish Catholic upbringing, gamely went over to Martha and explained to her what an orgasm was. (Wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that one.)

Toomey said later to Bogart, “The girl didn’t know anything. I asked, ‘Are you a virgin?’ ‘Uh yes.’ ‘Do you know what an orgasm is? Mr. Hawks wants you to be having an orgasm here.’ ‘No, I don’t know what it is.’ ‘You don’t know what an orgasm is?’ ‘No.’ And so, dammit, I explained to her what an orgasm was. And she got the idea all right. Howard liked the scene very much.”

Martha Vickers and Louis Jean Heydt in The Big Sleep
Carmen (Martha Vickers) threatens Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt), a gambler who has been blackmailing her father in The Big Sleep (1946).

How embarrassing was that? Still, judging by her performance, Martha was a quick learner. But perhaps only on quite a superficial level. She would go on to make another 11 movie appearances including in three more noirs, but in none of them would her performance come anywhere close to what she achieved in The Big Sleep. Luck and the vagaries of the Hollywood studios no doubt played their part but it seems that Martha Vickers needed a great director to conjure a great performance from her. That is certainly the impression given by Hawks in an interview with John Kobal:

Now … in The Big Sleep I used a little round-eyed girl to play a nymphomaniac … Martha Vickers … I think she married Mickey Rooney at one time … Lovely. And I made her cut her curls off and gave her … a kind of close … boyish haircut and I taught her two or three things. She played a nymphomaniac, and the studio signed her for a long-term contract with more money than she’d ever gotten. … Okay, she got her first salary check and went down and bought a lot of girly dresses with a lot of … little bows and ruffles and … She started playing a nice girl, and they fired her after six months. And she came to me and said, “What happened?” I said, “You’re just stupid. Why didn’t you keep on playing that part?” “Well, that was a nymphomaniac.” “Look, it’s only a nymphomaniac because I told you so. They liked you on the screen. And you did such a great job of it because you weren’t trying to get sympathy or anything. You were a little bitch. Why didn’t you keep doing that?”

Too bad Martha Vickers didn’t get to work again with Howard Hawks and we never get to see more of her undoubted talent.

Want to know more about Martha Vickers?

1945. Mischievous Martha Vickers. Photo by Scotty Welbourne.

The two Howard Hawks quotes are from Hawks on Hawks by Joseph McBride and People Will Talk by John Kobal. You can find the orgasm anecdote at The Sheila Variations. The best source for the reported facts of Martha Vickers’ life is Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen and there’s a nice appreciation by Jake Hinkson of her performance in The Big Sleep at criminalelement.com.

Other topics you may be interested in…

Carole Landis publicity photo for Secret Command
Carole Landis – die young, stay pretty
Lauren Bacall poses for John Engstead
Lauren Bacall – a dream come true
Movie stars of the 1940s – talent, savvy, looks and luck

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Films, Stars Tagged With: Howard Hawks, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, The Big Sleep

Short stories – for a quick break

Aenigma is all about images from the the worlds of fashion and the movies and the stories behind them.

Short stories is a good place to come if you don’t have time for one of the longer pieces. Below you’ll find a selection of shots that illustrate the range of subjects covered by aenigma. It’s a deliberately eclectic mix with, hopefully, something for everybody.

Use the filter buttons to home in on topics that might interest you, and then the Read more button to go to the whole story.

AllBehind the scenesEventsFashionFilmsPhotographersPressStars
Enlarge
Bull shoots Gardner

Bull shoots Gardner

1945. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM's stills department, with his thumb on the shutter-release button, looks intently at Ava Gardner. The year is 1945, Ava is 23 years old...

Read more
Enlarge
Marilyn Monroe nude

Naked and glistening

May 1962. Marilyn Monroe sits on the edge of a swimming pool on the set of Something’s Got To Give. In the film she swims naked, and to generate advance...

Read more
Enlarge
Age after beauty

Age after beauty

1956. Odile Rodin is well aware of her greatest assets and dresses to set them off to perfection. Born Odile Bérard, she has adopted the artistic name of Rodin to...

Read more
Enlarge
Photography as a sex act

Photography as a sex act

1966. David Hemmings, as Thomas, straddles the writhing Veruschka in a scene from Michelangelo Antonioni's cult film, Blow-Up. It's about a hip fashion photographer who believes he has unwittingly caught...

Read more
Enlarge
Halloween in Hollywood

Halloween in Hollywood

1941. Ava Gardner and friends at an MGM Halloween party. This is Ava's (front left) first year in Hollywood and it will be another six until she makes her breakthrough...

Read more
Enlarge
Picasso chats up Bardot

Picasso chats up Bardot

April 1956. Brigitte Bardot takes time out from the Cannes Film Festival to visit Pablo Picasso in Vallauris. In the sunny garden outside his studio, Picasso, one of the 20th...

Read more
Enlarge
Marriage on the rocks

Marriage on the rocks

November 1945. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, at the zenith of their careers, are out on the town. But things aren't going well. He is giving her the most furious...

Read more
Enlarge
Romantically linked

Romantically linked

1963. One of the 20th century's greatest, most glamorous and tempestuous romances, played out in the glare of the media spotlight. Lust, booze, ­diamonds, yachts, jealousy – it had them...

Read more
Enlarge
Dressed to thrill

Dressed to thrill

1999. Sophie Marceau steals the show as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, the 19th James Bond film. Beautiful, elegant, sophisticated, complex – really just your average Bond...

Read more
Enlarge
Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) cools off in the Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita

Midnight fantasy

1959. Dawn has yet to break as Anita Ekberg (as Sylvia in Federico Fellini's iconic movie, La Dolce Vita) wanders into the Trevi fountain in Rome. This iconic scene in...

Read more
Enlarge
Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini at a fancy-dress party

Gene Tierney and Oleg Cassini at a fancy-dress party

26 January 1941. Gene Tierney, dancing with Oleg Cassini, exchanges smiles with actress Ruth Hussey (dressed as a rag doll) and producer Raphael Hakim (a sheik), reputed to be...

Read more
Enlarge
Ludmilla Tchérina with Salvador Dali

Truly, madly…

11 December, 1969. Salvador Dali and Ludmilla Tchérina attend The Paris Lido's new show, The Grand Prix. Dali, the mad surrealist artist, attributed his "love of everything that is...

Read more
Enlarge
Not what the studio ordered

Not what the studio ordered

8 April 1937. Two Tinseltown stars are caught off guard – no artful lighting, considered poses, careful composition. A true candid and not what the studio ordered. Here's the story,...

Read more
Enlarge
Fashion and film

Fashion and film

May 1956. Richard Avedon looks over photographs with Arlene Dahl. Avedon, one of the 20th century's greatest photographers, is in Hollywood as technical advisor for Funny Face, starring Fred Astaire...

Read more

Other topics you may be interested in…

Donyale Luna – the fashion world’s wayward moon-child
Movie stars of the 1940s – talent, savvy, looks and luck
Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls
Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

Filed Under: Behind the scenes, Events, Fashion, Films, Photographers, Press, Stars Tagged With: Anita Ekberg, Ann Rutherford, Ava Gardner, Barbara Stanwyck, Bill Josephy, Blow-Up, Brigitte Bardot, Clarence Sinclair Bull, David Hemmings, Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Tierney, La Dolce Vita, Ludmilla Tcherina, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Rooney, Odile Rodin, Oleg Cassini, Orson Welles, Pablo Picasso, Raphael Hakim, Richard Avedon, Richard Burton, Rita Hayworth, Robert Taylor, Ruth Hussey, Salvador Dali, Sophie Marceau, The World Is Not Enough, Veruschka, Virginia Field, Virginia Hill

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to Next Page »

© 2021 - aenigma some rights reserved under a creative commons attribution-noderivs 3.0 unported license

  • Home
  • About
  • Instagram
  • Disclaimer
  • Privacy
  • Contact