Around 1950. A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Ress by Janis Paige. Read more.In the aftermath of World War II, unmarried women faced a hard dilemma when it came to sex. Damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.In the words of a 16-year-old girl quoted by Michael Phillips in his article Women and the Sexual Double Standard of the 1950s:How are you supposed to know what they want? You hold out for a long time and then when you give in to them and give your body they laugh at you afterwards and say they would never marry a slut, and that they didn’t love you but were testing because they only plan to marry a virgin and wanted to see if you would go all the way.The pressures could be especially intense in the torrid and ultra-competitive world of the Hollywood studios, where the casting couch cast a long shadow and having a flexible attitude to sex could be the route to stardom or the road to perdition.The inspiration for this piece is a collection of photos … [Read more...]
Jean Simmons and Claire Bloom – adventures of two north London girls
Jean Simmons and Claire Bloom were born within two years of each other to families living in London just a few miles apart.Both would sign contracts with J Arthur Rank. Both would audition to play Ophelia to Laurence Olivier’s on-screen Hamlet – Jean would get the role. Both would go on to become movie stars. And both would fall for that arch-Casanova, Richard Burton.Jean SimmonsJean is born in 1929 and becomes one of J Arthur Rank’s “well-spoken young starlets”. Her big break comes when David Lean casts her as Estella in Great Expectations (1946). It’s this experience that leads her to pursue an acting career more seriously:I thought acting was just a lark, meeting all those exciting movie stars, and getting £5 a day which was lovely because we needed the money. But I figured I'd just go off and get married and have children like my mother. It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on.The next year, she’s the subject of a pitched battle between … [Read more...]
Jane Greer – the queen of film noir
It’s 1947. Out of the Past has just been released to huge critical acclaim. Its leading lady, Jane Greer, appears on the front cover of Life magazine. Time will rate her as one of Hollywood’s six most promising actresses alongside Ava Gardner and Elizabeth Taylor.She’s attractive, intelligent and seriously talented. She has what it takes to make it big in Tinseltown. And she is about to see her career crash and burn. In just a few years’ time, she will have all but faded from public consciousness.Use the suggestions at the bottom of this page if you want to read a detailed biography. What follows is a drama in three acts that encompasses some big early turning points in Jane Greer's life told as far as possible in her own words and those of her contemporaries.Act 1 – Jane makes the most of an early setbackBorn in 1924, by age 12 Bettejane Greer (she will drop the Bette in 1945 – “a sissy name … too Bo-Peepish, ingenueish for the type of role … [Read more...]
Marguerite Chapman – a real trooper
1946. Lady of mystery – Marguerite Chapman in The Walls Came Tumbling Down. Photo by Bob Coburn. Read more.Marguerite Chapman wasn’t just a beautiful, blue-eyed brunette. She was a fun, sassy actress who put in a shift to graduate from ‘B’-star to ‘A’-star status – no mean achievement.Age 21, at the behest of Howard Hughes, movie mogul, business tycoon, aviator and all-round eccentric, she arrives in Hollywood on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1939 ‘lonelier than I had ever been in my life’.Hughes had arranged for Pat di Cicco, Cubby Broccoli and Bruce Cabot to squire me here and there. When I met Ruth and Hoagy Carmichael, they gave me advice appropriate for a young girl visiting Hollywood for the first time. They told me to keep away from my three escorts and to stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I did everything they told me not to…Cubby Broccoli will go on to produce many of the James Bond films.Things don’t work out with Hughes, … [Read more...]
