Tag Archives: Film

A Year in Books/Day 171: Walking with Garbo

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  • Title: Walking with Garbo Conversations and Recollections
  • Author: Raymond Daum
  • Editor and Annotator: Vance Muse
  • Year Published: 1991 (HarperCollinsPublishers)
  • Year Purchased: 1993
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Greta Garbo. The Swedish Sphinx. She of eternal mystery. One half of the most famous screen (and real-life, but that’s another story) couple of the 1920s. The great actress may have valued her privacy, both before and after retirement, but she was no shut-in. Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 170: Sophia Style

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  • Title: Sophia Style
  • Author: Deirdre Donohue
  • Year Published: 2001 (Barnes & Noble Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: In the physical sphere, Sophia Loren is everything I am not: tall, leggy, busty. Sure, we have a tiny waist in common but, on her, because of her height, it is more of a thing. Her style, on camera but especially in life, matches her features: striking, angular, and beautiful. Of course, even if she wore a potato sack (like Marilyn in that famous early cheese-cake photo) she would out-shine us all. Sophia Style examines and connects her characters’ wardrobes with her personal clothing choices, resulting in a book that is a melange of fashion, film, and personal history: it is really more interesting than it probably sounds.  Whether you love film or fashion, or are just looking to shade your brain from the reality of an ugly word for a couple of hours, it is a quick and fun read. It’s full of gorgeous photos from her first five decades in the spotlight.
  • Motivation: Sometimes I just like to look at pretty people in pretty clothes. It’s a nice break from thinking too much, which is how I usually spend approximately 95% of my waking hours.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 81: “(Marc) Bohan’s white slip gown in A Countess from Hong Kong is a unique creation, having an exceptional relationship to both Loren’s body and the character she portrays. This quality was requested by the director, Charlie Chaplin, as well as by Loren. Chaplin was very earnest and exacting about the countess’s look, and Loren, awed by this iconic film figure, uncharacteristically deferred wholly to his authority.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++
    Cropped screenshot of Sophia Loren from the fi...

    Cropped screenshot of Sophia Loren from the film Five Miles to Midnight (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

I’m Sensing a Trend

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I’m lucky enough to share a birthday with one of my favourite actors (John Gilbert), one of my favourite writers (Marcel Proust) and the possessor of one of the most brilliant (recorded) minds in history (Nikola Tesla). What else do they have in common? Hmmm, let’s see.

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I’ve found that frivolous observations are best made on serious days. I’m off to celebrate with the husband at the newest contemporary Indian restaurant/bar in town. Toodles.

A Year in Books/Day 128: Fast-Talking Dames

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  • Title: Fast-Talking Dames
  • Author: Maria DiBattista
  • Year Published: 2001 (Yale University Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller Company
  • About: The best part of screwball comedies is, of course, the dialogue. The plots are usually superfluous and in soft-focus; the snappy writing and whirlwind performances are what make these staples of the 1930s and 1940s so entertaining and timeless. While the male performers were no slouches, the women killed it time and again, routinely giving some of the best comedy turns in film history. The actresses discussed include Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy and Barbara Stanwyck. Whew, what a list! Are you interested yet?
  • Motivation: The title alone was allurement enough. Throw in the snazzy cover photo of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell from His Girl Friday (1940) and I was a goner. Oh, and then there is the subject itself.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 103: “Like Harlow, Carole Lombard is often impatient or unhappy with the way her life is going, but her comic response to her predicaments is more rambunctious than raffish. Her sexual morals are definitely higher, but she is also the more accomplished liar. Or should we say, in a more generous mood, that where Harlow makes candor her comic calling card, Lombard is the great pretender.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8 1/2
    Cropped screenshot of Carole Lombard from the ...

    Cropped screenshot of Carole Lombard from the trailer for the film Nothing Sacred (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 120: Cannes

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  • Title: Cannes Fifty Years of Sun, Sex & Celluloid
  • By: The Editors of Variety
  • Year Published: 1997 (Variety, Inc./Miramax Books/Hyperion)
  • Year Purchased: 2000?
  • Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
  • About: The Cannes Film Festival is as much about the shenanigans of the beautiful movie stars as it is about the actual films vying for the prizes. Or, at least it was. In recent years (decades?) the whole enterprise seems stale and tepid. You have to go back to the 1950s and 1960s  to find the truly interesting stories and dazzlingly cheesy stunts. This thin volume, covering the first five decades of the festival, gives readers a light-hearted, conspiratorial look behind the scenes. The photos are exceptional.
  • Motivation: Film buff and writer in the house.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 19: “Ironically, Cannes was not created for the film buff at all, but to lure attention away from Venice, the granddaddy of all film festivals, as well as to increase tourism, image and the sheer gloire of the host country, ever a fervent combatant for culture. (Not coincidentally, the Cannes festival jury was all-French until 1952, when some carefully screened outsiders were admitted.)
  • Happiness Scale: 7 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 108: On the Other Hand A Life Story

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  • Title: On the Other Hand A Life Story
  • Author: Fay Wray
  • Year Published: 1989 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: ??
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Fay Wray was much more than the beautiful blonde love interest of King Kong. She was multi-talented, whip-smart and determined; she made the tough transition from silent films to talkies while still in her early twenties; she fell in love with men of true intellect and ability (including the tragic Academy Award winning writer John Monk Saunders, her first husband). She was as ridiculously lovely at 90 as she was at 20, which I think speaks to certain rare inner qualities. She was working on a follow-up autobiography at the time of her death on August 8, 2004.
  • Motivation: If you’ve ever seen Fay Wray on film-or even a still photograph (see below)-you have the answer.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 56: “I rode a supposedly runaway horse and lay across the saddle, my head hanging down on one side of the horse, one foot tied to the stirrup on the far side. A crew member behind the camera shook his head, asking me silently not to do it.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2
    Publicity photo of Fay Wray for Argentinean Ma...

    Publicity photo of Fay Wray for Argentinean Magazine. (Printed in USA) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 96: Marilyn Mon Amour

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  • Title: Marilyn Mon Amour The Private Album of Andre de Dienes, her preferred photographer
  • Author: Andre de Dienes
  • Year Published: 1985 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: 1991
  • Source: I bought this book in high school. I remember the mall (City Center) and who I was with (my mom and her best friend Debbie) but I cannot recall the name of the book store!
  • About: However slight the connection, men just love to claim that they had an affair with Marilyn. Usually in book form. Fancy that. It’s almost a sub-category of the cottage industry that is the Marilyn biography. And they were never simply lusty flings or misbegotten one-night-stands. They were all, pretty much to a man, life-altering, planet-shifting Love Affairs. According to the gents in question, that is. The reality must be very different. Out of all of these claimants, Transylvania-born photographer de Dienes stands out as one of the most believable. The hundreds of photographs he shot of Marilyn between the years 1945-1953 testify to the fact that they had a viable working relationship; there’s obviously a sense of trust and friendship between photographer and subject. Since I don’t want to turn this from a review into a treatise, we’ll leave the veracity of his story for another day and another form. Instead, we’ll hone in on the real focus of his book: the photographs. What photographs they are! The majority date from the earliest days of her modeling career; they are undoubtedly the best pre-stardom images ever taken of her. They’re lovely. That’s right. Lovely. No big, loftily descriptive words are necessary, not when one word is so wholly perfect and concise. Her wardrobe of all-American basics (she was broke and had to supply her own clothes for the road-trip shoot of 1945) remain fresh and alluring; they set off her glowing, innocent beauty without detraction. This is the definitive Marilyn Monroe book.
  • Motivation: I was a teenage girl, studying acting. This play world was extremely compelling to me at that time.
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt: “I was impatient to train the camera on her, to choose the right light to set off her skin and her hair, to capture her expression, to make her move, run, stand still, arch her back, stretch. I wanted to catch hold of whatever it was I sensed lay behind that candid smile, those blonde curls and the pink sweater. In one fell swoop I was intrigued, moved and attracted by her.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++