Howard Hawks

Dusty Anderson – the life of a starlet

For a few brief years, dazzling, dusky, model-turned-starlet Dusty Anderson was up there in the public gaze – on magazine covers and the silver screen. But as a model her shelf-life was finite, while her acting talents were limited – she was never going to make it big as a movie star.

Her marriage to Jean Negulesco transformed her life and enabled her to pursue her interest in painting. It has also given us a window onto the life of a starlet who might otherwise have sunk into oblivion.

Dusty Anderson as Toni in Tonight and Every Night — 1945. Dusty Anderson publicity shot for Tonight and Every Night. Photo by Ned Scott.

Dusty Anderson grows up

Like so many models and movie stars of the 1940s, “Dusty” is not Dusty Anderson’s real name. Born in 1918, she’s christened Ruth Anderson. Her mother is of Cherokee origin and has given up her career as an opera singer to marry a Swede who has settled in the US.

Dusty attends De-Vilbiss High School in Toledo, Ohio, where she becomes president of the dramatic association. She also studies for six years at the Museum of Art of Toledo. During her time at the University of Toledo and photography school, she scrimps and saves in order to buy a couple of expensive cameras. Unfortunately, during a canoe trip along the shores of Lake Erie, a sudden squall overturns her canoe, and the cameras sink to the bottom of the lake.

To earn the money she needs to replace her equipment, she does some part-time modelling for local artists and photographers. She proves so popular that she decides to make a career of it. When she wins a $400 jackpot on Bank Night at her local movie theatre, she heads for New York. There, she gets a contract with Harry Conover, who rechristens her Dusty and makes her a Conover cover girl. It’s in New York that she meets newspaperman Charles Mathieu, and in 1941 the couple get married.

In April 1943, with her husband overseas with the US Marines Corps, Dusty and 15 other models are cast in Columbia’s Cover Girl, one of Rita Hayworth’s triumphs. In Hollywood, Dusty goes on to land a contract with Columbia Pictures, and features in a handful of movies including Tonight and Every Night (another Rita Hayworth vehicle), A Thousand and One Nights (1945) and The Phantom Thief (1946). She also appears on the cover of the October 27 1944 and December 14 1945 issues of Yank, The Army Weekly.

Dusty Anderson becomes Dusty Negulesco

Dusty Anderson is doing okay if not spectacularly, but her career as an actress is about to take second place to her love life. In February I945, two months after her husband returns from the war with malaria, Dusty Anderson files for divorce. Apparently, in the course of an argument he’s given her a black eye.

Dusty Anderson keeps fit

Around 1945. The angle at which this photo is taken makes it look like Dusty Anderson has freakishly short arms! Fortunately, she is in fact perfectly formed.

Dusty Anderson with bicycle

1945. Love Dusty Anderson's bicycle with its cyclops headlight! This photo is reproduced at the Ned Scott Archive, where it is identified as a shot to promote Dusty in her role as Toni in Tonight and Every Night. Photo by Ned Scott.

Dusty Anderson keeps fit

Around 1945. Looks like all that exercise pays off, judging by Dusty Anderson's awesomely flat tummy. But close inspection of the original print reveals traces of subtle retouching.

Soon after that, she finds herself at an auction in Beverly Hills. Attending the same auction is director Jean Negulesco, who spots:

…a tall shapely beauty, wearing a black hood, a black turtle-neck sweater, and black leather slacks. A tasteful blue turquoise Navajo necklace was dangling between her lovelies.

1946. Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief.

The girl in question is, you’ve guessed it, our Dusty. Her companion at the event, publicist Dorothy Campbell, obligingly makes an introduction. Dusty plays it cool and returns her attention to the auction to bid on an antique mirror. But she fails to win it because, you’ve guessed it again, she’s outbid by Jean, who plans to invite her round to his place for dinner and make a gift of it for her. But she’s vanished off the scene before he can make his move.

Jean is not the kind of guy who lets a small setback like that get in his way. He makes a few enquiries, discovers her phone number and asks her out. She says no, she’s in the middle of a divorce and her attorney has instructed her to keep a low proﬁle so as not to complicate proceedings. But a few weeks later, she calls him back to accept his invitation.

What draws them to one another? Well, clearly she’s gorgeous and he fancies her – there’s no doubt he has an eye for the girls, as will become apparent. He, meanwhile, is arguably the most eligible bachelor director in Hollywood and therefore not without his attraction for any aspiring starlet. But perhaps there’s more to it than that simple, ages-old equation. They share a strong interest in fine art. Jean has come to Hollywood from Romania, where he was a successful painter. Dusty has studied for six years at the Museum of Art of Toledo and has tried her hand at both painting and photography.

Anyway, from that night on, the two become inseparable. The main obstacle blocking the path of true love at this point is Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, to which Dusty Anderson is contracted . He disapproves of the relationship and reminds her repeatedly of Jean’s playboy reputation. He even suggests to her that Jean is bisexual. Dusty is devastated and ready to leave, but discovery that she’s pregnant puts paid to that.

Dusty Anderson’s divorce becomes ﬁnal in June 1946, and on 21 July the couple tie the knot. Their wedding is an informal affair held in the back garden of the West Los Angeles home of director Howard Hawks, Jean’s best man. Dusty’s attendants are Howard’s wife Slim, Joan Perry (Harry Cohn’s wife) and Dorothy Campbell. Pianist Jose Iturbi gives the bride away. Because of Jean’s commitments at Warner Bros, the couple go on just a brief honeymoon to Laguna Beach. The plan is to have a longer honeymoon in Europe the following year

1944. Two shots of Dusty Anderson with her personal collection of magazines

Dusty Anderson has a family

Jean and Dusty badly want to have children but they are out of luck. After five months of pregnancy, Dusty has a miscarriage, which makes her very ill. They try again and the same thing happens. At this point, their doctors advise them to give up their efforts so as not to endanger Dusty’s health.

So the couple turn their parental yearnings elsewhere, supporting orphans under the Foster Parents for War Children plan. On a visit to Italy in August 1953, they invite nine-year-old war-orphan Adelina Peluso from Naples to Rome to meet them. They have supported her for three years and on this occasion Dusty buys her a whole new wardrobe. Four years later, while in Greece, they meet 12-year-old Chryssoula Yannidaki, a fatherless Greek girl whom they have been supporting for two years.

Then, in 1959 while Jean is away in Hong Kong, Dusty hears about illegitimate children born during the American occupation in Germany after the War and abandoned by their mothers. She finds out that there’s a three-month-old girl in a hospital in Stuttgart and, after consulting with Jean, takes the next plane to Germany to adopt Christina. While she’s at it, she discovers another little girl, Gabrielle, whom she adopts to be Christina’s “sister.”

It’s not until May 1961 that all the paperwork is completed. Jean and Dusty are reunited in Rome with “’Tina” and “Gaby.” Their arrival at Rome’s airport is captured by the local press and shown in Italian newsreels.

Dusty Anderson asserts herself

A news snippet in the September 1949 issue of Screenland magazine, reveals that:

Mrs Negulesco, who is Dusty Anderson, has given up acting for painting. Had her first art show and we understand Greta Garbo has bought one she did of a whole flock of cats.

Dusty Anderson as a pretty kitty

1946. Now that's what I call a catsuit! And that's Dusty Anderson larking about...

Dusty Anderson as a pretty kitty

1946. It looks as if the success of Dusty Anderson's Hallowe'en shoot last year...

Dusty Anderson as a pretty kitty

1946. Dusty Anderson is the subject of this typical mid-1940s kitschy cheesecake shot, with...

Dusty Anderson as a broomstick-bearing witch

1945. The first in a sequence of three pin-ups featuring Dusty Anderson as a...

Dusty Anderson as a witch bestride her broomstick

1945. The second in a sequence of three pin-ups featuring Dusty Anderson as a...

Dusty Anderson as a broomstick-bearing witch

1945. The third in a sequence of three pin-ups featuring Dusty Anderson as a...

In October 1950, Dusty presents 15 of her latest paintings at a big show at the Drouant-David gallery in Paris. “Her pictures include scenes of London’s River Thames, conventional flowers and fruit, a study of her two Siamese cats, and a self-portrait.” She’s enjoying her new career as a painter and lets Jean know that she would like to go to Paris to study art and improve her technique. Jean is not in favour because he reckons it would require at least two years of study and practice.

This becomes a topic of ongoing friction between the couple. Another is Jean’s constant philandering. His bungalow on the 20^th Century-Fox lot, where he invites stars and starlets for lunch, is known as “bangalow.” “Poor Dusty,” says producer Jerry Wald’s wife, Connie. “[She] had to put up with a lot.”

Dusty Anderson as a glamorous witch — 1945. Dusty Anderson provides a touch of Hallowe’en glamour. Photo be Robert Coburn

The marriage goes downhill. In 1953, columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reports that the Negulescos “are writing the Unhappy Ending after all these years.” In May, Dusty Anderson ups and leaves for Paris with Dee Hartford, Howard Hawks’ latest wife.

In order to try to win back his Dusty, Jean persuades Darryl Zanuck, his boss at 20^th Century-Fox, to give him an assignment in Europe and chooses to work in Italy on Three Coins in the Fountain. Before leaving, he confides in columnist Harrison Carroll:

I don’t pretend she went to Paris with my blessing, I thought it was a stupid expense. But Dusty wanted to study painting, and when one of those Cherokee Indian girls makes up her mind, nothing is going to stop her.

En route to Rome to scout for locations, he stops off in Paris to talk Dusty into a reconciliation. The couple make up and a few days later Dusty joins Jean in Rome.

Jean’s love affairs are something Dusty Anderson has to cope with throughout their marriage but she goes some way to getting her revenge. When she suspects that he has a crush on Sophia Loren while making Boy On a Dolphin, she travels around the world on his credit card, expense no object (or perhaps even THE object). Jean will later remark: “I am still paying the bills. My weakness for my stars cost me a fortune.”

But, to return to Dusty’s career as an artist, in August 1955 it is reported that “Dusty Negulesco has made much progress as a painter and her pictures have received good notices from the art critics.” And her paintings appear in at least two of Jean’s movies: Daddy Long Legs and The Best of Everything.

Dusty Anderson gets around

Dusty Anderson’s first trip abroad is in May 1948, accompanying her husband who’s off to research his next film, Britannia Mews. This is presumably the pretext for their extended honeymoon. With the job complete, Jean takes her to Paris for some sightseeing, not least to visit the most important museums and art galleries. On their itinerary is Galerie Drouant-David in the fashionable rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where Jean buys all the paintings they have by then unknown expressionist painter Bernard Buffet.

In 1950, Jean gets a new, more lucrative contract with 20^th Century-Fox, which means the couple can now afford a new home. After viewing a series of properties in and around Bel Air and Beverly Hills, they decide to buy the house that Greta Garbo has put on the market. Having lived there for 14 years, first with actor John Gilbert, then with conductor Leopold Stokowski, she’s decided to leave Hollywood and move to New York. Latterly, she’s been using only a part of the house, sharing it with a maid and a gardener, and leaving the remainder of the property empty. By the time the Negulescos get their hands on it, the huge, mostly abandoned living room is covered by such a thick layer of dried leaves that it takes seven people to clean it up. The house will be their home for 13 years.

Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief

1946. Dramatically lit and wrapped in a cloak, Dusty Anderson is ready for the...

Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief

1946. Dusty Anderson stars in The Phantom Thief (original title Boston Blackie's Private Ghost)...

Dusty Anderson as Sandra in The Phantom Thief

1946. The dramatic lighting, exaggerated eyelashes and exotic costume including two outré neck pieces,...

In 1963, Jean and Dusty move to Madrid. It’s a joint decision, although partly the result of Jean’s desire to work in Europe, where there are opportunities to get involved with projects that are less commercially driven. Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Hedda Hopper reports that Dusty has told her that, having rented their Beverly Hills house:

We are traveling light to Madrid, with two small children, trunks full of photographs, records and paintings, one small Rolls, and a secretary with our casting files. The airplane couldn’t make it, and I am not sure we won’t sink the boat.

Jean brings his career to a close in 1970 with the release of Hello-Goodbye. It’s time to retire and enjoy the fruits of his efforts. At 71, he is a wealthy man with a fabulous art collection and a number of houses in different parts of the world as well as a beautiful wife. In the 1970s, the couple are living in Marbella, on the southern coast of Spain, in a house they have had built for themselves not far from the sea. The house is always full of friends visiting from all over the world.

Dusty Anderson’s last days

In 1993, Jean’s health suddenly deteriorates. On 18 July, three days before their 47^th wedding anniversary, he dies at home of heart failure. Dusty is at his bedside. The last news we have of her comes in an email message from Malcolm Abbey to Michelangelo Capua, Jean’s biographer. He reports that she was “sent away” to a nursing home.

Last I heard, and this was 20 years ago, she was severely alcoholic and unable to remember from moment to moment who she was talking to. Very tragic.

But hold on. An article about Dusty Anderson’s 99^th birthday published on Fabiosa in December 2017 suggests that she “is peacefully enjoying her advanced years.” Let’s hope so.

Want to know more about Dusty Anderson?

There’s not a whole lot of information about Dusty Anderson out there on the Internet. The most informative source is Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen. There are two books about Jean Negulesco though, which provide most of the material on which this piece is based:

Jean Negulesco: The Life and Films by Michelangelo Capua
Jean Negulesco’s autobiography – Things I Did … and Things I Think I Did – a good read but with disappointingly little about Dusty Anderson.

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.

Martha Vickers, pin-up

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

Martha Vickers, dream girl

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

Martha Vickers, bathing beauty

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

Martha Vickers, babe

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

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...

Martha Vickers, tomb maiden

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

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...

Martha Vickers, menace

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

Martha Vickers, baby doll

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

Martha Vickers, blonde bombshell

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

Martha Vickers – a good bet for stardom

Martha Vickers reclines in a lamé dress — Around 1945. Martha Vickers – a favourite subject with photographers.

Martha Vickers, like many other starlets, came to the attention of the Hollywood studios because of her looks.

With her cascade of brown-blonde tresses, blue eyes and svelte figure, she had no problem turning heads, as evidenced by the photos here.

An article about Martha Vickers in the October 1945 issue of Pic magazine, no doubt promoted by Warner Bros as part of their publicity drive for their upcoming movie, The Big Sleep, predicts great things for her. It also charts her early career.

The caption under the leading photo (not reproduced here) reveals that Martha “has long been a favorite subject with photographers the country over and the reasons here are obvious. Typical of America’s young womanhood, she is 5 feet 4 and weighs 104 pounds.”

Martha’s A Good Bet For Stardom

Little Miss Vickers Has Stepped Boldly From Being an Artists’ Model to Top-Flight Movies BY DON ALLEN

The career of Martha Vickers is perfect evidence that the “if at first you don’t succeed—” method is still a good one. After a couple of unsuccessful starts in Hollywood, Martha is now under contract to Warner Bros. studios where she is considered to be an excellent bet for stardom.

Her first picture at Warners was “The Big Sleep” under the guiding hand of Director Howard Hawks. The picture, as yet unreleased, stars the famous team of Bogart and Bacall. Miss Vickers played the part of the schizophrenic young sister, a highly dramatic part that gave her a fine opportunity for emotional acting. Studio executives who have seen it are very enthusiastic over her work.

Martha Vickers, innocent abroad

1944. Martha Vickers, 19 years old and still under her birth name. A caption on the back of the photo...

Martha Vickers, ingenue

1944. Martha Vickers, RKO promotional photo for Marine Raiders. Marine Raiders was Martha's second credited appearance (the first being in...

Martha Vickers, starlet

1944. Martha Vickers poses demurely in front of a zebra-print background. A caption on another photo from the same shoot...

Martha Vickers, fashion model

Around 1945. Martha Vickers models a printed cotton day dress with padded shoulders and belted waist. In September 1945 her...

Martha Vickers, sweetheart

1945. Martha Vickers smoulders in a fitted lamé bodice. Seaman Cal Kerry clearly has a lot to look forward to,...

Martha Vickers, European traveller

Around 1945. In this "leg art" shot, Martha Vickers poses in a skimpy ensemble in front of a map of...

Martha Vickers, Mexican heroine

1944. Martha Vickers, Warner Bros promotional photo for The Falcon in Mexico. No wonder that she worked as a model...

Martha Vickers, pin-up

Around 1946. Martha Vickers flirts with the camera in an outrageous ensemble that pairs black velvet gloves with a diaphanous...

Miss Vickers has completed one picture since “The Big Sleep” and is currently working in a third, so there is a possibility that she will have completed three films before the public gets a glimpse of her on the screen. Her second picture is called “The Time, the Place and the Girl” in which she has the leading feminine role opposite Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson. She is currently working in the picture called “The Man I Love” in which she will have featured billing along with such other important players as Ida Lupino, Robert Alda and Andrea King.

Martha got her first start in pictures through her work as a photographer’s model. When she was 15 she was sitting in a drive-in in Long Beach and a famous cover photographer saw her. He asked her if she would pose for him. She did, and the result was a cover picture on Liberty. After that she worked for most of the well known Hollywood cover and fashion photographers such as Hurrell, Hesse and Engstead.

1945. Martha Vickers luxuriates in ostrich feathers. Photo by Scotty Welbourne.

A color photograph of her was seen by David Selznick, who forthwith signed her. Selznick gave her drama and diction lessons for a year without casting her in a picture, and when option time came up her contract was dropped. That, naturally, was a great disappointment to her, but she went back to modeling and it wasn’t long before a well-known Hollywood agent took her under his wing and got her a contract at R-K-O studios. Here again she took lessons but did little actual work. However, she did play small parts in two pictures, but again when option time came up her contract was not renewed.

This was disappointment No. 2 and Martha was beginning to feel she could not make a career of the movies. She returned again to modeling and did considerable work for Tom Kelley the well-known cover artist. One day Howard Hawks called Kelley and asked him if he knew any girls who might be good possibilities for a part in his new picture. Kelley suggested Miss Vickers and, as a result, Hawks tested her and finally assigned her to the part. The result is history.

Miss Vickers was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., on May 28, 1925. Her father worked for the Ford Motor Co. and, consequently, Martha spent her early years in Chicago, Miami, St. Petersburg, Detroit and Dallas before going west with her family in 1940.

Want to know more about Martha Vickers?

You can see a scan of the original article, complete with photos, at Old Magazine Articles. The big question, though, is: could she act? Find out in Martha Vickers – the starlet who dared to upstage Lauren Bacall.

Lauren Bacall – a dream come true

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

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

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

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

Lauren Bacall, lost girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lauren Bacall, dream girl

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

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

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

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

Out of the unknown

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

Best foot forward

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

Sitting pretty

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

Full metal jacket

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

The sleeve

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

Girl with a pearl earring

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

Glossy image-making

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

Returning the look

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

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

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

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

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

Hello, soldier

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

Chemistry lesson

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

Taking the lead

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

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

Making all the right moves

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

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

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

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

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

What to do with Carmen?

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

Banter

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

Dénouement

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

Lauren Bacall, gone girl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lauren Bacall on the silver screen

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

1. The whistle scene

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

2. Bacall To Arms

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

3. Restaurant repartee

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

Postscript

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

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

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

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

Want to know more?

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

Ella Raines – out of the frying pan and into the fire

1944. Ella Raines on set with Robert Siodmak.

After a false start, Ella Raines’ career took off like a rocket. Over the course of eight years, from 1943 to 1950, she starred in 22 films and appeared twice on the cover of Life magazine.

Ella combined looks, talent and guts. Here’s an insight into her character from an interview in 1946.

I think really the toughest thing about this business is making your own decisions, and that you have to do. Lots of people will advise you, or try to, and you’ll hear so many different opinions that you finally realize nobody can advise you—that you have to learn to make your own decisions, and learn fast.

She’s best known for her role as Carol “Kansas” Richman in Phantom Lady (1944) which, as she herself pointed out, was really four roles in one film: the prim, efficient secretary; the woman in love; the pretend femme fatale in a provocatively tight black dress, fishnet stockings and heavy makeup; and the intelligent and resourceful amateur sleuth chasing down suspects.

Phantom Lady was the first of three films noirs she made with legendary director Robert Siodmak. Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, spoke for many enthusiasts in admiring Ella Raines’ impressive talent within the genre.

My biggest regret is that Ella Raines was not better utilized in the noir era. She was so smart and sexy— a real Hawks dame in the Bacall mode— but she ended up playing mostly opposite leading men with little sex appeal: George Sanders, Charles Laughton, Brian Donlevy, Edmond O’Brien, George Raft. If she’d been trading one-liners with Dennis O’Keefe and Dan Duryea, she’d have a much more memorable screen persona.

But Ella was a versatile actress with a talent for comedy as well as drama.

She was ‘discovered’ by Howard Hawks, who also ‘discovered’ Lauren Bacall. Here’s how it happened according to an article in the December 1945 issue of Screenland. The year is 1942 and she’s 21 years old…

A friend of hers who’d learned of her illness at the same time he’d heard that Hollywood agent Charles K. Feldman was in town scouting for new talent, dispatched Mr. Feldman (properly impressed) up to the Plaza. Whereupon Mr. Feldman (still more impressed) met Miss Raines, borrowed two of her photographs and showed them to Charles Boyer and Howard Hawks who were then forming their million dollar B-H producing corporation back in Hollywood. The aforementioned gentlemen took one long look, the kind of look that comes out like a whistle, and sent a telegram. Would she like to sign a contract? She would. (Fanfare, bugles blowing.) So on February second, 1943, Ella arrived in Hollywood, February third she had a screen test. February fourth she started work on “Corvette K-225,” the picture Hawks was currently producing at Universal.

Corvette K-225 was held for release, so the public was unaware of Ella Raines, but news of her spread on the Hollywood grapevine. In the space of 12 months, MGM loaned her for Cry Havoc!. Paramount cast her to play the lead opposite Eddie Bracken in Hail the Conquering Hero. And Universal put her centre-stage in Phantom Lady.

Rather than a potted biography, here are a couple of incidents that illustrate Ella Raines’ not-so-straightforward journey to stardom, having decided at high school to become an actress.

Ella Raines – out of the frying pan

Well, not so much frying pan as oven…

The year before she went to Hollywood (1941), Ella’s acting career was almost over before it began. Another extract from that article in the December 1945 issue of Screenland…

She and Virginia Booker, an old friend who’d already achieved some success as a comedienne, took a bungalow at the beach, excitement running through them like quicksilver. A summer was a lifetime, there was no limit to the glories they could perform, today they had Fate in their hands — tomorrow the world! Until Fate decided that the fun had gone far enough. It was Labor Day and the girls were having some of the Little Theater gang up for dinner. Nothing elaborate, a simple throw-together meal. So simple that Virginia, “the cook of the family,” shooed Ella off to the beach.
Ella’d come home sand-gritty and dripping with sun tan oil, dying to get under a shower but also anxious to get he ham started. Impatiently, she lighted a match for the oven and ducked her lead down to make sure the flame had caught. A split second, and then torrents of pain. And through it all, nothing except the smell of flesh burning and the crackle of burnt hair. And her voice thin and hollow and insistent in the stillness.
The doctors said she’d die. Or be disfigured. Six months later she was back on the campus, eight months later the bandages came off and the campus was sure she’d be all right. Because Ella was calling herself “Curly” and she had no hair or brows or lashes. Because Ella was still determined to be an actress.

Ella Raines modelling a black crepe dress from Saks Fifth Avenue

1943. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

Ella Raines wearing a peplum dress

1947. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

Ella Raines in shirt and slacks

1945. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

Ella Raines en déshabillé

1946. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

With her green eyes, high cheek-bones and svelte figure, she had previously been elected one of the six most beautiful girls on the campus at the University of Washington. It must have taken a good deal of pluck and determination to face her college mates in such a state – qualities she would need to make it in Hollywood.

It was a hard thing to do but I was lucky. I soon found out those who liked me for my appearance and those who cared for me for what I really was.

Ella Raines – into the fire

In her first year at Hollywood, Ella found herself caught in the crossfire between a super-talented and super-sensitive director, Preston Sturges, and his strong-willed executive producer, Buddy DeSylva. Here’s how Diane Jacobs describes what happened in The Life and Art of Preston Sturges…

To play Libby in Hail the Conquering Hero, Sturges picked a dark-haired ingénue, Ella Raines, who’d just made her film debut at Universal. Sturges discovered her at a casting call. … Buddy DeSylva from the start was wary about Ella Raines. So DeSylva reluctantly let Preston cast this new actress.
Then, the early rushes came in and Ella Raines looked stiff and fearful. She herself realized she was not doing her best. It was her first leading role, her first time off the Universal lot. She wasn’t long out of college and she “simply froze,” she recalls. “The first scenes for me came out awful.”

Ella Raines – publicity shot for Phantom Lady

1944. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

Ella Raines with roses in her hair

1943. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

Ella Raines – publicity shot for The Suspect

1944. Ella Raines. Photographer unknown.

Ella Raines in a wool sweater

1947. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

Ella Raines with a pearl necklace

1943. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

Ella Raines with a pearl necklace

1943. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

Ella Raines in a wool sweater

1947. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

Ella Raines in a striped top

1946. Ella Raines. Photo by Ray Jones.

This time, it was not Buddy DeSylva, but Henry Ginsburg, an executive known as Paramount’s “Hatchet Man,” who confronted Sturges. By the fourth day of shooting, Ginsberg was not only insisting that Ella Raines leave the cast, he had himself appointed a Paramount contract player to replace her. Sturges was furious. Just before lunch, he came up to Ella, explained Ginsberg’s position, and promised that he would refuse under any conditions to capitulate. “Don’t worry,” he said, when Ella burst into tears. “I will not continue with this picture without you.” He then went off to Ginsburg’s office to talk. Whatever these two men said that day was so traumatic that it in effect ended Preston’s career at Paramount. More than Ella was at stake, a friend of Preston’s recalls. Firing his star was a personal affront to Preston, one that he would not tolerate, He won his point; Ella Raines stayed on.

And I bet that wasn’t the first or the last time a director and producer clashed like that.

But Ella came through, the reviews were favourable and she went on to make another 18 films before decamping to England in 1950 to join her husband, Robin Olds.

Want to know more about Ella Raines?

There are brief biographies of Ella Raines at wikipedia and IMDb. There’s also an obituary in The New York Times. The most helpful account of her life I’ve come across, though, is in Femme Noir – Bad Girls of Film by Karen Burroughs Hansberry.

Ella Raines was the subject of four articles in Screenland and you can find them at the Media History Digital Library. I’ve transcribed the one I found most engaging and illustrated it with photos from my archive. Its called Girl With A Glint.