10th Anniversary at Lake Powell: June Allyson & Dick Powell (Modern Screen)

The Powell family sets out for an angling afternoon. The Powells have a lake right on their property so all they have to do is roll out of bed and make with the lines and sinkers. The lake is well stocked with bass and blue gill, contributed by the government as insect insurance, plus goldfish contributed by the Powells. Lake Powell is teeming with finny folks.

The privacy of Lake Powell suits June and Dick just fine because they’ve had more than their share of prying eyes over ten years of marriage. The Powells have had some troubles and arguments, whether more or less than any other Hollywood couple they wouldn’t be telling. “I can say this, though,” Dick remarks wryly, “both of us have taken our marital obligations and our try at happiness with considerable and determined seriousness. Ten years, two children and intact marriage vows add up to quite a respectable achievement. In some cases, I think it even surpasses that of the few writers who have chosen to throw harpoons in our direction.” Counting’ their blessings on this their tenth year of marital bliss, June and Dick didn’t forget Lake Powell. The Powells’ three-quarter acres of rippling, sky-blue water has been a source of joy and contentment for the whole family. 

Sportsman Dick instructs his willing wife in the fine art of casting. “See . . . it’s easy, all in the wrist . . . just sort of flick the line out over the water and wait for the fish to bite.”

Ricky has even made friends with a fish. He runs to the edge of the water, night and morning, with bread crumbs. He calls and whistles and in a few moments up swims a little black fish about ten inches long. Then, little Bosco, his name, turns and swims away. June and Dick swear they’ve seen it happen. Dick Powell is a truly kind man, as indicated by his casual reference to the annual rash of stories to the effect that he and June might not be long for this domestic world. They never quite get used to the attacks, but the nearest Dick has come to wrath on the subject was just after he and June had returned from their “tenth honeymoon,” spent aboard a yacht in Fourth of July at Cove off Catalina Island. A columnist asked how he and June were doing marriage-wise. “Fine,” Dick replied. “Just fine!”

Jubilant June shows off a ring that Dick gave her as a present for their tenth anniversary.

“But,” interjected the reporter, with a smirk, “what about tomorrow?” “Who knows about tomorrow?” Dick responded, “but as long as you’re making a sardonic approach, let me tell you about a friend of mine. He was getting along perfectly with his wife one day, and the next morning...” “Yes,” the reporter broke in, sensing a bit of gossip, “what happened then?” “Nothing happened, not much,” Dick replied, before walking away. “He just got out of bed the next morning and fell out of an open window. Now tell me, how’ll things be with you tomorrow?” There has been a big change in the life of June and Dick, though, in recent weeks. That anniversary celebration aboard a chartered yacht was the most fun they’ve had since Dick owned his own boat, the Santana. “I sold the Santana,” he says, “because it was so expensive to keep up, and only a real rich guy like Humphrey Bogart could afford yachting that often.”

June and Dick are silent about the week they spent to celebrate the beginning of their eleventh year of marriage. “I had quite a time getting June to go, in the first place,” he recalled. “June is a girl who hates to go anywhere, but when she gets there, she always hates to leave. When it came time to weigh anchor, her excuse was, ‘Hadn’t we better stay awhile longer? It’s liable to be rough sea on the way back!’ ” But the Powells had to come home, for a new and important chapter was about to begin in their lives, marked by Dick’s decision to produce and direct the remake of It Happened One Night. They had worked together as actor and actress before, but June had never worked for Dick under his direction. She had some surprises in store. For one thing, he looked at her critically one day, then said, “We’re going to change your make-up.”

 

June grinned and retorted, “Yes, boss.” For years she’d been made up by the all-time Hollywood experts. Dick felt she just didn’t come alive under that treatment. After long hours of experimentation with a new type of make-up, tests showed that June blossomed like a rose. She admitted that she was glad Dick has been so persistent, but she was really worried when he went after her hair styling. That very nearly brought on an argument of the type any director can have when a big star backs up and puts her foot down. But when Dick came home with some sketches, which showed her with a sort of “modified Claudette Colbert” hair do, she surrendered. And these changes went back to the big shift of June's featured part in Best Foot Forward in 1943. Allyson had a rocky start in Tinsel Town and, after playing supporting roles, was nearly dropped by MGM. But very wise counsel from her future husband Dick Powell led to her taking the “plain Jane” sister lead in Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), which was a big hit and made her a star.

With location scenes in San Diego and Phoenix now finished and shooting going on apace at Columbia studios for interiors, the rushes indicate that Dick Powell hasn’t done wrong by the new June Allyson. Rumor has it Dick wanted a minimum of kissing, since he was afraid his wife would fall in love with Jack Lemmon like her last leading man. As for You Can't Run Away from It, completely new in color and wide screen, plus the hit title song and other musical numbers by Johnny Mercer and Gene De Paul, the word is out that the remake of this famous picture is liable to duplicate if not exceed the roaring success of Oklahoma! June said: “No one could have done it but Dick.” Dick says: “No one could have done it without June.” In the serious parts, June Allyson is just as serious as Claudette Colbert, but her Ellie is less refined; she is believable as a frustrated Texas girl as opposed to a New York heiress. Ellie is funnier in the remake, and June’s brilliant comedic timing and humorous antics make her so. And on a recent evening when Mr. Powell came home, he said to Mrs. Powell, “We’ve been working pretty hard. Let’s take a trip somewhere.” Mrs. Powell said “Oh, now, Richard, do we have to—you know how I hate to travel,” replied in jest. “Hear, honey. We’ve never been to Europe, or Timbuktoo for that matter. You name the place and let’s go!” And they probably will. —Modern Screen magazine (January 1956)

The hypnotic sensibility of Taxi Driver (1976)

The hypnotic sensibility of Taxi Driver attempts to incubate the viewer in a limbo state between sleeping and waking. Paul Schrader, the screenwriter, cited the assassination attempt of Arthur Bremer as inspiration for Travis’s destructive ambition. He also drew from Dostoevsky’s Notes From The Underground, where an isolated and bitter narrator delivers rambling monologues similar to Travis’s diary entries. “All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention. I believe that someone should become a person like other people,” writes Travis Bickle in his diary. Many artists process their traumatic experiences through writing, a sort of self-therapy. Screenwriter Paul Schrader’s life had some parallels with Travis Bickle's. “Life dealt me a few blows, and I found myself in a dark place. So I realized I had to turn to fiction to get out of this place. I had to create this character, or else I was going to become him,” Schrader said in an interview at the TIFF in 2019. “I was out of work; I was in debt. I fell into a period of isolation, living more or less in my car. A grim time. And out of isolation came Taxi Driver,” Schrader said in 1992. “I was writing fairly soon for LA Free Press, which was the alternative paper. I got involved in anti-war protests at UCLA, and I got arrested. So all of a sudden I was in this world that’s not who I was. In reflection I think the origins of that character come from the origins of that dislocation.” 

Travis Bickle suffers from a similar existential crisis as Schrader, his catalyst being the Vietnam War. His character study is unequivocally about a man's loneliness. In the original script, it begins with Thomas Wolfe’s poem God’s Lonely Man. The main reason why Travis is a misanthrope is because he forces a negative mindset upon himself. He forces himself to bear witness to the most miserable parts of humanity, and sometimes it seems Travis only sees the bad side around him. Travis’s cab is the symbol for Travis’s isolation, drifting through the streets, watching the people through his adjusted rearview and the rain-drenched windows. He puts Palantine stickers all over his apartment. Why? Simply because Betsy is a political supporter of him. His whole courtship with Betsy is based around this notion that Travis is desperate to fit in, to re-assimilate himself into a normal life after his time in Vietnam. Taxi Driver is, at its heart, about Travis’s relationship with two women, whether it be the sexualized world of Iris or the politicized world of Betsy. Betsy is introduced to the audience in an angelic manner, as a woman who seems unattainable. Travis remarks on this in one of his first journal entries, saying “they cannot touch her.” Travis only looks at her from afar. After Betsy rejects him romantically, Travis is incapable of facing Betsy's dismissivenes objectively, telling her with fury: “You’re in hell, and you’re going to die in hell like the rest of them. You’re like the rest of them.” 

Travis expresses this frustration early in the film, ironically to Palantine: “I think that the President should just clean up the whole mess here; you should just flush it right down the f***ing toilet.” Palantine’s reaction is to feed him a political line to flex his personality: “Well, uh, I think I know what you mean, Travis, but it’s not going to be easy. We’re going to have to make some radical changes.” Travis decides that he must defeat Sport and Palantine in this westernized battle in order to give his life a sense of purpose. In a 1976 interview with Martin Scorsese by Roger Ebert, Ebert: “In Taxi Driver, the hero can’t relate to the women at all.” Scorsese: “I don't see it that way. I think he relates to Iris. But that takes him to its logical conclusion. The better man is the man who can protect a woman and kill another man. This guy shows that kind of thinking, shows the kind of problems some men have. You’ve been raised to worship women, but you don’t know how to approach them on a sexual level. The girl he falls for, Betsy,   it’s really important that she’s a blue-eyed blonde goddess.” Pity might lead to self-sympathy, which Travis finds unacceptable, so he's projecting his merciless self-criticism onto his bleak and unwelcoming environment. And it is something he is actively inflicting to himself.

That's why Travis reacts so harshly and compulsively to Betsy's rejection, he can't accept her reasoning on face value. He's making these desperate attempts for connection when he is at such an absurdly low point. When he implies he wants to be normal, he's coming from a place of isolation that he probably can't escape without help. In the same interview with Roger Ebert in 1976, Schrader said, “He goes from a goddess to a child goddess. The teenage prostitute he’s trying to rescue — she’s unapproachable, too, for him.” In Travis’s mind, Betsy and Iris have become symbols of status and purity. Especially Iris, whom he wants to protect and send her back home. But also, his actions are larger attempts to display his masculinity towards the aggressors/rivals in his life. Because he has been romantically rejected by Betsy, he resorts to expressing his masculinity in a psychosexual form of violence. And directly in front of Iris, Travis tries to kill himself, but he is out of bullets and he fails. The fact he was going to kill himself in front of Iris shows that Travis convinced himself that he was going to die with a purpose. Iris might symbolize America's endangered soul and Travis is its patriotic, dark avenger, because in his delusional way he wants to save America, irregardless of New York's rotten core.

Pauline Kael's review on The New Yorker: Taxi Driver has a relentless movement. Travis has got to find relief. It’s a two-character study—Travis versus New York. As Scorsese has designed the film, the city never lets you off the hook. There’s no grace, no compassion in the artificially lighted atmosphere. The neon reds, the vapors that shoot up from the streets, the dilapidation all get to you the way they get to Travis. He is desperately sick, but he’s the only one who tries to save a young hooker, Iris (Jodie Foster); the argument he invokes is that she belongs with her family and in school—the secure values from his own past that are of no help to him now. Some mechanism of adaptation is missing in Travis; the details aren’t filled in—just the indications of a strict religious background, and a scar on his back, suggesting a combat wound. The city world presses in on him, yet it’s also remote, because Travis is so disaffected that he isn’t always quite there. We perceive the city as he does, and it’s so scummy and malign we get the feel of his alienation. Scorsese’s New York is the big city of the thrillers he feasted his imagination on—but at a later stage of decay. 

The street vapors become ghostly; Sport romancing Iris leads her into a hypnotic dance; the porno theatres are like mortuaries; the congested traffic is macabre. And this Hell is always in movement. Some actors are said to be empty vessels who are filled by the roles they play, but that’s not what appears to be happening here with De Niro. He’s gone the other way. He’s used his emptiness—he’s reached down into his own anomie. Violence is Travis’s only means of expressing himself. He has not been able to hurdle the barriers to being seen and felt. When he blasts through, it’s his only way of telling the city that he’s there. And given his ascetic loneliness, it’s the only real orgasm he can have. The violence is so threatening precisely because it’s cathartic for Travis. And it’s a real slap in the face when we see Travis at the end looking pacified. He’s got the rage out of his system—for the moment, at least—and he’s back at work, picking up passengers in front of the St. Regis. It’s not that he’s cured but that the city is crazier than he is. —The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael (2011)

Liberals are not afraid of revolution. But liberals will remain reluctant revolutionaries. It is one reason why the American Revolution went so much better than the French one. What is liberalism, then? A hatred of cruelty. An instinct about human conduct rooted in a rueful admission of our own fallibility and of the inadequacy of our minds to be right frequently enough to act autocratically. A belief that the sympathy that binds human society together can disconnect us from our clannish and suspicious past. A program for permanent reform based on reason. The opposite of humanism is fanaticism; the opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. Liberalism is an evolving political practice that makes the case for the necessity and possibility of (imperfectly) egalitarian social reform and ever greater tolerance of human difference through reasoned and unimpeded demonstration and debate. The contemporary left can sometimes seem to have an insufficient respect for the fragility of the very same liberal institutions that allow its views to be broadcast without impediments. Marxists called this “heightening the contradictions” of the system. But no good has ever come from heightening these contradictions. All that happens is that the institutions get weaker, and authoritarians become stronger in the weakened spaces. There’s really an awful lot of stuff about life now known that once was not. Whenever we look at how the big problems got solved, it was rarely a big idea that solved them. 

It was the intercession of a thousand small sanities. Skepticism, constant inquiry, fallibilism, self-doubt—these don’t mean not knowing. They mean knowing more all the time. Liberal cities and states are the tiny volcanic islands risen on a vast historical sea of tyranny. And that fight will never end. Liberalism is the work of a thousand small sanities communicated to a million sometimes eager and more often reluctant minds. That’s the work of liberalism, and even if the worst happens, as it may, it is work that won’t stop, can’t stop, because it is also the real work of being human—all those enforced acts of empathy, where we had to make bargains in the company of people we couldn’t stand—people fundamentally unlike yourself, in order to live at peace. —"A Thousand Small Sanities" (2019) by Adam Gopnik

The Myth of Raymond Chandler's "unsolved" murder in The Big Sleep (1946)

Every time The Big Sleep is mentioned one of the biggest myths of the story tends to also be mentioned: That Chandler wrote such a convoluted story that one of the character’s murders (Owen Taylor, the Sternwood’s chauffeur) is never explained. Not so. This is the relevant passage from The Big Sleep novel, where detective Phillip Marlowe is brought in as the Sternwood’s chauffeur has been found dead: "The plainclothesman scuffed at the deck with the toe of his shoe. Ohls looked sideways along his eyes at me, and twitched his cigar like a cigarette. ”Drunk?” he asked, of nobody in particular. The man who had been toweling his head went over to the rail and cleared his throat in a loud hawk that made everybody look at him. “Got some sand,” he said, and spat. “Not as much as the boyfriend got—but some.” The uniformed man said: “Could have been drunk. Showing off all alone in the rain. Drunks will do anything.” ”Drunk, hell,” the plainclothesman said. “The hand throttle’s set halfway down and the guy’s been sapped on the side of the head. Ask me and I’ll call it murder.” Ohls looked at the man with the towel. “What do you think, Buddy?” The man with the towel looked flattered. He grinned. “I say suicide, Mac. None of my business, but you ask me, I say suicide. First off the guy plowed an awful straight furrow down that pier. You can read his tread marks all the way nearly. That puts it after the rain like the Sheriff said. Then he hit the pier hard and clean or he don’t go through and land right side up. More likely turned over a couple of times. So he had plenty of speed and hit the rail square. That’s more than half-throttle.”

So, in a few paragraphs, Chandler offers three theories as to what happened to the chauffeur: 1) He was drunk and ran off the pier. 2) He was murdered, hit on the side of his head and the car run off the pier with him in it to make it look like an accident. Finally, 3) He committed suicide. The first explanation, that he was drunk, is quickly debunked. He “plowed an awful straight furrow down the pier” and this shows someone who was in control of the car until it smashed through the pier and into the water. The second explanation is also discarded because not only did the car “plow an awful straight furrow,” but also the car was moving very fast. So fast that it was the only way it could smash through that pier and land “right side up.” Thus Chandler clearly offers the third explanation, that the chauffeur committed suicide, as the one that makes the most logical sense. The car was going very fast (and straight!) to the end of the pier and had to ram through it to hit the water upright so someone was driving the car through but if there was a murderer inside the car that seems awfully dangerous to do at night. They couldn’t “jump out” before hitting the pier because they could injure themselves. Further, smashing through the pier and landing in the water before “swimming away” was also an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Therefore the most logical explanation is the third one and clearly that’s the one Chandler was going for. 

Further, suicide makes sense as we find the chauffeur was in love with Carmen Sternwood and attempted to help her because she was being blackmailed. His help wound up being for naught and it made sense he was despondent and did himself in. The bump on Owen’s head is also explained later in the novel: Brody confronted Owen and “sapped” him but he swore he left him alive. This makes sense as Brody got what he wanted and had no real reason to kill Owen. Now many people are curious why this story has had such traction. I suppose it’s a fascinating thing to say that an author created such a “complex story” that he somehow forgot to explain away one of the deaths within it but considering how easy it is to verify this by going to the novel itself and seeing the relevant passage it must have been more than that. Raymond Chandler was dismissively viewed around Hollywood at the time. While he was a great writer, he was also a difficult person to work with, especially because he was snarky and a heavy drinker. So we souldn’t be shocked if this story kept making the rounds as a way to insult Chandler, to say “hey Mr. Brilliant writer... you couldn’t figure out one of the deaths in your very own story! What a bozo!”

As for Chandler supposedly stating he “didn’t know” who killed Owen Taylor when asked by the studios… We have yet to see any concrete evidence or printed interview where Chandler or anyone of the crew involved in the making of The Big Sleep who stated this is what actually happened. We only have read vague stories about people “overhearing” Chandler say he didn't know, of Chandler writing the studios a letter when asked about the chauffeur's death and saying he “had no idea,” and how others “discovered” this element but it all feels really like tall tales. Another possibility is that Chandler’s response was just a snarky way of shading the film version of Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep. The movie made some important changes from the novel and perhaps when Chandler said he “had no idea” (if indeed he said this) about Owen’s death he was shading the film version rather than his novel. 

Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet and Hawks' The Big Sleep not only simplify Chandler's novels but also defuse Chandler's social critique, transforming plot and adapting characters when not eliminating them outright. Chandler was very critical of other writers. For example, he lamented Hemingway’s poor performance in the late 1940s. James M. Cain, the author of the novel Double Indemnity that Chandler adapted for the screen, was akin to a pornographer. Chandler did, however, praise some writers such as Somerset Maugham, who set the gold standard for spy novels. And he was particularly admiring of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald and Chandler make an interesting comparison. Although Fitzgerald had a much more rosey-eyed view than Chandler, both were capable of poetic atmosphere. Toward the end of his life, Chandler came to feel that L.A. had become a grotesque and impossible place to live. It was a “jittering city,” sometimes dull, sometimes brilliant, but always depressing to him. In his later years, Chandler commented that he felt L.A. had completely changed in the years since he’d arrived. Even the weather was different. “Los Angeles was hot and dry when I first went there,” he said, “with tropical rains in the winter and sunshine at least nine-tenths of the year. Now it is humid, hot, sticky, and when the smog comes down into the bowl between the mountains which is Los Angeles, it is damned near intolerable.” Source: www.judithfreemanbooks.com

Hollywood's Glitz, Triumphs & Tragedies

Lucille Ball fared well in her show Lucy goes to a Hollywood Premiere (February 7, 1966). The script was weak but enlivened by the guest appearances of such big name stars as Edward G. Robinson, Kirk Douglas, and Vince Edwards, with whom she had co-starred in the past. Later, Lucille made two TV appearances, each with Dean Martin. The first, on February 10, was on The Dean Martin Show, with other guests who included Kate Smith, Dan Rowan and Martin. Dean Martin had long been one of Lucille’s admirers. Martin always had the same greeting for her, “Hi ya, Redhead!” Dean had once joked with her over lunch, “In Hollywood, if a guy’s wife looks like a new woman, she probably is.” Allegedly, June Allyson asserted that one night, she wanted to talk with Dino after they’d been messing around, but Martin curtly told her, “Wanna talk? Call your stuffy husband.” Dinah Shore had warned Lucille and June, “Dean Martin is a bastard. At night, it’s wine, roses, and champagne. But in the morning, it’s a pat on the ass with the promise, ‘See you around, gal.’”

During one of their skits on the Dean Martin Show, Martin and Kate Smith delivered a duet of songs from the early days of 20th Century vaudeville. As a chorus girl in the background, Lucy had acted her way through a pantomime of their lyrics. As “repayment” for agreeing to star on his show, Martin returned the favor by appearing in an episode of her show in Lucy Meets Dean Martin (February 14). There’s a zany aspect to its plot, as always. Lucy wants him to take her out on a date, but he’s too busy. He tells her that he’s going to fix her up instead with his stunt double, Eddie Feldman. But at the last minute, Eddie is not free, so Martin goes instead. Without knowing it, Lucy dates the real Dean Martin, thinking the man she’s with is merely a stand-in. According to its scriptwriter Bob O’Brien, “I didn’t think it was any good.” On Sunday afternoons, Desi Arnaz often retreated to his kitchen, where he turned out Cuban specialties introduced to him in Santiago, Cuba, when he was a boy. “I challenge anyone to make a better black bean and rice casserole than ‘yours truly.’” One night at a party in Palm Springs, he told Dean Martin, “I hear Don Juan seduced 1,003 gals. I never bothered to count my seductions. My highlights besides Lucy were Betty Grable, Lana Turner, and Ginger Rogers.” 

“How about you?” “Oh, it’s hard to say,” Martin answered. “Marilyn, certainly, but June Allyson ranks at the top of my list. That gal was a real challenge for me. Lana, too, was a treat for me. But so was Rita Hayworth. And Judith Campbell Exner. She was sleeping with both Jack Kennedy and with Sam Giancana, maybe passing messages between them. What the tabloids never knew was that I was also bedding her. She assured me that my dick was bigger than JFK's and Giancana’s.” Eventually, Martin went mute about June Allyson, probably intimidated by her very jealous and proprietary husband Dick Powell's scolding. Hedda Hopper had advised Powell to broke the nose (job) of Dino, but it's likely Powell instead used his sharp tongue to demolish Martin's ego. Mel Tormé appeared as a regular on CBS’s The Judy Garland Show (1963-64). In the aftermath of many wrenching arguments and disputes, Garland fired him. In episode 87 of The Lucy Show, Lucille is working for the president of a record company. Tormé, her neighbor, is an aspirant songwriter. They went over so well together that she would invite him back later on. 

For the two episodes that followed, Joan Blondell, who had desperately wanted to permanently replace Vivian Vance, was hired. The first, released on October 11, was entitled Lucy and Joan. In it, Lucy tries to fix her up with studly Keith Andes, a man who had sustained a friendship with her since they’d co-starred together on Broadway in Wildcat. In The Lucy Show’s next episode, Lucy and the Stunt Man (telecast October 18), Blondell returned to the series. In this episode, Blondell has a boyfriend who is a stuntman. Lucy replaces the injured man and saves the day by performing (with disastrous but occasionally comic results) his dangerous stunts. All did not end happily for the two female leads. At the end of Blondell’s big scene, Lucy confronted her. “So you think you know how to do comedy?” she asked. “You didn’t make one of your lines the least bit funny.” “That’s because your writers only fed me straight lines to deliver to you,” Blondell protested. At this point, Lucille mockingly mimed the act of pulling the “flush” chain of an old-fashioned toilet and imitated the sound of flushing. “Why are you doing that?” Blondell asked. “Because you stink and I’m flushing it.” “Fuck you, Lucille Ball!” Blondell shouted at her before storming off the set, never to return. Later, members of that day’s live audience spoke to the press, relaying what had happened: “We were stunned,” said a fan from San Diego. Joan Blondell learned that Vance’s slot might be still available, and although she promoted herself, she was rejected. “Blondell is a fine actress, and I’ve worked in the past with her and would again in our future. But there is just no chemistry between us,” Lucille said.

Despite his own marriage to Zsa Zsa Gabor, the hotel mogul Conrad Hilton, warned his stubborn son Nicky Hilton that he was “falling in love with a photograph” when he started dating Elizabeth Taylor. But Nicky married her anyway. Taylor later told her friend June Allyson that “it was well worth the wait.” Sinatra had become the leader of the Rat Pack band. It would be easier to draw up a list of actresses he didn’t seduce. Included among the more famous of the women he conquered were Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Natalie Wood, Lauren Bacall, Shirley McLaine, Judy Garland and possibly Nancy Reagan. “When Sinatra dies, they’re giving his zipper to the Smithsonian,” claimed Martin. After hawking his talents at several different studios, Sinatra finally signed a contract with RKO, and was immediately cast in the film version of Higher and Higher (1943). It had originated as a Broadway musical in the spring of 1940, starring June Allyson. For $15,000, RKO had purchased the rights to this film specifically as a vehicle starring Frank Sinatra, featuring him singing four songs by Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson. However, because of pre-existing contracts with Michèle Morgan and Jack Haley that gave these performers the star spots, Frank received third billing. For some reason Variety magazine's review was cruel: “At least Frank Sinatra gets in no one’s way.”

Peter Lawford, a self-loathing heel supposedly said to Sinatra's valet George Jacobs: “Frank and I ended up seducing some of the same women, like Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Marilyn Maxwell, Dorothy Dandridge, and June Allyson.” Jacobs didn't put much stock on Lawford's drunken confessions. According to James Spada, some of Lawfords’s female conquests might have included June Allyson, Janet Leigh, Lucille Ball, Anne Baxter, Judy Holliday, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Lee Remick, Elizabeth Taylor, and even Nancy Davis Reagan. On Rita Hayworth, Lawford went on another limb: “She was the worst lay in the world. She was always drunk.” It seems that didn't stopped Dean Martin of bragging of his own pretense fling with Hayworth. Certainly both Lawford and Martin were often inveterate liars. After Frank Sinatra’s breakup with Ava Gardner, Lawford asked her out on a “date” in 1954. It seemed relatively harmless, and apparently did not lead to a renewal of their sexual trysts of the 1940s. But that is not how Sinatra viewed it. Peter recalled that he was in bed alone when a call came in from Frank who did not identify himself. “Listen, creep, and listen good. You wanna keep your nuts intact? Stay away from Ava. I’m warning you only this one time. Got that, faggot?” 

By the time Dean had actually passed his prime, his drinking-for-show had evolved into drinking-for-real. He was in pain, having developed ulcers and several liver problems. He’d also become addicted to Percodan, which he had originally taken as a pain-killer for alcohol-induced headache. “I like Judy a lot, and, except for me, she’s the most popular singer in America,” Sinatra told Ava Gardner. “I called it off with Judy because hysterical women are not my cup of tea.” One night, back in Hollywood, Judy called Joan Blondell at around 10pm. She contacted Joan only when something major was going on in her life. Judy begged her to come over for dinner, and after listening to her protests, Joan finally gave in. When she arrived at Judy’s home, she found an elegantly set table, still under the glow of candlelight. Judy confided in her, “Frank was due here for supper. He stood me up.” An hour later she disappeared into her bathroom and emerged looking drugged. Whatever she’d taken seemed to have loosened her tongue. “I’m in love with Frank. He’s going to be my next husband.” “But he stood you up tonight,” Joan said, trying to bring reality into the conversation. Judy insisted that Joan go into Liza’s room where the little girl was sleeping. Later Judy collapsed on the floor of her living room, and Joan covered her with a fur and quietly left the house. 

It would be later June Allyson who became Judy's main confidante after Blondell's rushed flight. On MGM’s set of Annie Get Your Gun, Judy often arrived drugged after a night of heavy boozing. It was a western, and she had a phobia about guns and horses. After spending a million dollars (in 1949 money), there were only six minutes of usable footage. Judy’s contract was suspended as of May 10, 1949. Judy placed an urgent call to Frank Sinatra, although his career also seemed in a hopeless slump. This time, he took her call, hoping to cheer her up. He didn’t want to marry her, but he sure as hell didn’t want her to despair, either. “We’ll come back,” he told her. “We’ll show the bastards. One day in the near future we’ll come back bigger than before,” before finally claiming, “Let’s just be friends.” In spite of their occasional rifts, Frank was always there for Judy when she faced her latest crisis. During her stay in a Boston hospital, he did more than send flowers every day. He even flew in a plane load of friends from Hollywood to cheer her up. Frank Sinatra was always protective of Judy, the way he had been with Marilyn Monroe. He spoke frequently about Judy to his fourth and final wife, Barbara Marx. One night, he introduced Judy to Barbara. “She was so enormous and puffy-faced,” Barbara recalled. “It was sad to see her like that.” Frank was such a loyal friend that he opted to be with Judy the night Liza Minnelli was born. “I ordered pizzas for the waiting group of Judy loyalists,” he said. “When I first heard cries from Lisa’s throat, I knew a star had been born.”

Because of film offers on the horizon from both RKO and MGM, Sinatra had moved to California with his family in the spring of 1944. Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra starred with Esther Williams in Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), a Technicolor period piece set in 1908. Betty Garrett returned to the screen to work with Frank in this ode to the nostalgic fun of baseball. Esther was a last-minute choice. Originally, the role had been intended for Judy Garland, who had become undependable because of her drug habits. The part then went to June Allyson, who had became pregnant from Dick Powell. The film grossed four million dollars, which defined it as a hit in those days. Frank Sinatra also seemed to have known June Allyson, in what capacity it's kind of a mystery. When Peter Lawford allegedly asked Sinatra if he’d ever had a fling with her, Frank said, “I’m not dodging the question. I truly don’t remember.” Although for some folks Frank was falling in line with Dean Martin's sudden silence, it's much more probable that Sinatra was just teasing and mocking Lawford. Indeed, June Allyson never mentioned Sinatra in a romantic context, and she never mentioned Martin, for whatever reason. As a young man, Freddy Frank worked as an extra, mainly on every picture Bud Abbott and Lou Costello made. Costello seemed intrigued with Freddy’s endowment. Costello spread the word that it was “The Eighth Wonder of the World,” using the same claim used by Chaplin about his own endowment. In private, Costello revealed the names of some of Freddy’s conquests. The honor list would have shocked the Hollywood censors: Lucille Ball, Lana Turner, Tallulah Bankhead, Lynn Bari, Wendy Barrie, Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Paulette Goddard, Betty Grable, Norma Shearer, Ann Sheridan and maybe June Allyson!

Virginia Gregg joined up with 5 other young female musicians. They called themselves The Singing Strings and they were fortunate to be hired as staff at CBS-Radio and after a year, as staff at Mutual Broadcasting. Though she loved music she had dreamed of being an actress. In 1938 Virginia played twenty shows a week at the studio and had to rehearse for all of them, but she still managed to find enough time to play a few small parts and one lead at the Pasadena Playhouse. Virginia had listened to enough rehearsals to know the script and she asked if she could read it. The director didn't like the idea, but there wasn't anything else for him to do, so he gave her the script. Virginia played the part on the air, taking her cues from a very nervous director. It wasn't until after the broadcast that she had time to tell him about her acting experience. Virginia credits Calling All Cars as being the first radio show she appeared in regularly. She most likely joined it in the late 1930s. Around 1941 other radio worked followed. Fortunately she had friends who were already in the radio business and they helped her get started in shows like the prestigious Lux Radio Theater.  

Dick Powell and Virgina Gregg during the ABC run of Richard Diamond from KECA Studio X in Hollywood. She was "Helen Asher" to Dick Powell's Richard Diamond, Private Detective on NBC-Radio from 1949 to 1952, then on CBS-Radio for the 1952-53 season. "Helen" was the Park Avenue girlfriend who was always trying to lure Diamond up to her gorgeous digs, where, if he ever did have time to get there he would head for her baby and burst into song! Virginia also guest-starred on The Adventures of Philip Marlowe (CBS-Radio 1948-51) starring Gerald Mohr (Dick Powell was actually radio's first "Marlowe") for which Mohr, in 1950, was named Best Male Actor on Radio by Radio and Television Life Magazine. Virginia was also "Betty Lewis" on the radio series Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, under production of her husband Jaime Del Valle. Virginia witnessed how steeply Powell's marriage to Blondell crumbled. She hinted that Blondell left Powell for Mike Todd in 1943. When Lux Radio Theater was purchased in 1954 by philanthropist Huntington Hartford, it was briefly called the Huntington Hartford Theater and then the Doolittle Theater. 

Gracie Allen played a piano concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Allen hired a composer to write the "Concerto for Index Finger," a joke piece in which the orchestra would play madly, only to pause while Allen played a one-finger scale with a final incorrect note. The orchestra would then play a musical piece that developed around the wrong note. On her final solo, Allen would finally hit the right note, causing the entire orchestra to applaud. The actual index-finger playing was performed offstage by a professional pianist. The concerto was featured in the film Two Girls and a Sailor (1944) starring June Allyson. Allen found Allyson refreshing, and like Virginia Gregg, she couldn't understand the vitriol that Joan Blondell spread behind her back. Jane Wilkie hints that June had an ease to form female friendships that eluded Blondell. June identified easily with other female stars in Hollywood: Marie McDonald, Ginger Rogers, Rosemary Lane, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Gloria DeHaven, Claudette Colbert, Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Lana Turner, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Virginia Mayo, etc. 

Patricia Dorothy Douglas (1917–2003) was a dancer and movie extra. Douglas was the subject of the documentary Girl 27 (2007) documenting her sexual assault in 1937 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer salesman David Ross. Douglas was one of the first people to come forward after experiencing sexual assault in the film industry, leading to a massive scandal. Douglas retired from the industry after the scandal, but appeared on camera 65 years after being contacted by biographer David Stenn, who learned about her while uncovering the story of the 1937 assault and the MGM cover-up. Speaking out against her rapist was reevaluated with the emergence of the Me Too movement. Actresses such as Jessica Chastain and Rose McGowan praised the documentary and the telling of Douglas's story. “You’re trusting with the studios. You’re not expecting anything except to work in a movie. That’s what you’re there for,” explained Patricia Douglas, who remembered that one of the few sympathetic stars was Dick Powell (at the height of his fame after starring in Gold Diggers of 1937). Powell offered her a compassionate ear and a lunch serving her a milkshake to console her. Yet Powell was tied up because he belonged to another studio Warner Bros. MGM treated Patricia Douglas like trash, but she outlived all her abusers. Louis B. Mayer died from leukemia in the 1950s. Burton Fitts died by suicide in the 1970s. And David Ross died from rectal cancer in the 1960s. Douglas, meanwhile, became a great-grandmother until 2003 when she died at the age of 86.

As his marriage to Jane Wyman deteriorated, Ronald Reagan spent more time socializing with MGM star George Murphy, featured with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in For Me and My Gal (1942). Dick Powell also became part of that circle. Both he and Murphy were staunch Republicans who greatly influenced Reagan’s new political direction. Although firmly entrenched as the Democratic President of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan would eventually switch his allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans. Preoccupied with her own career, Jane Wyman resented Reagan’s attempts to enlight her on every matter. One evening while Reagan was debating with Dick Powell about politics, Wyman leaned over to Powell’s wife, June Allyson, and told her, “Don’t ask Ronnie what time it is because he will tell you how a watch is made.” George Murphy entered politics before Reagan, running successfully for the seat of a California senator. He later urged Reagan to enter politics by running for the governor of California. —Sources: "Frank Sinatra: The Boudoir Singer" (2011) and "Hollywood Remembered: Glamour, Glitz, Triumph & Tragedy: All the Gossip from the Glory Days of Hollywood" (2024) by Blood Moon Productions

Dick Powell & June Allyson: A Marriage on the Rocks (Modern Screen magazine)

The Powell marriage is in bad trouble. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise—not that they’re likely to. Around Hollywood everyone is talking about it. The people who, a few years ago, were claiming that the Powell home was Paradise and Junie the Angel-in-residence, are now the first to voice the gossip and the rumors—in private and in print. But the real story of this marriage-gone-awry is not a vicious one. It is instead one of Hollywood’s real tragedies—the story of a girl who has had to learn how to live with fame and wealth and servants—and somewhere along the way lost the ability to mature as a wife. Go back a ways. Ten years ago, in August, 1945, June and Dick were married—to the accompaniment of the usual dire predictions. June’s too young for Dick, they were saying. Not only is there an age difference, hut she’s immature even for her years. Certainly she won’t be able to adjust to a man of forty, set in his ways. They have no interests in common. 

And there’ll be clashes in their careers. At first it looked as if they were wrong. It was just these disparities that kept the marriage happy. June, young and desperately insecure, clung to Dick as she might have to a father. He made the decisions, she followed his lead. The more his famous friends frightened June, the more she relied on Dick. He in turn seemed content with the arrangement. It may not have been the best, but somehow June and Dick gave each other what they needed. As for careers, June was heading hard for stardom with no detours. Dick, whose career had been in something of a slump, couldn’t help but profit from the publicity that followed his marriage, even though he said—and meant—that he hated every word of it. He’s always hated publicity while he established himself as an actor and became as successful as he had been as a singer. Their first home, small though it was, frightened June—it was the first real house she had lived in. Although no one talked about it then, she fell into frequent black moods. The only real success she knew was on screen, playing to perfection the bubbly, tender, bright-eyed youngsters. Off-screen she felt gauche, inefficient. Gradually—how could she help it?—she began to carry her roles over into real life, looking for the same admiration and confidence that they brought her in the movies. 

For a while it worked. But only recently one of Dick’s friends felt forced to say, “I’ve never seen anything like Dick’s patience. June is like a kitten, adorable when she wants to be. But when a husband has to keep getting his wife out of scrapes and defend her idiosyncrasies and repair broken friendships, the kitten act isn’t so charming any more. At parties she’d insist on going her own way, and many’s the time I’ve seen Dick patiently waiting for her to stop captivating everybody and get in the mood to go home.” So that was an effort that not only did it hurt, rather than help her marriage, but it left June inconsistent and unreliable in most of her social contacts. A photographer who has known her for years says frankly, “You can’t help liking her little character, but neither can you help the feeling that she’s insincere. She really doesn’t like attention in public or to be bothered about pictures, and it’s as though she liked the fact of fame, but was bored by the work that goes with it. She can always put on an act when she wants to, though. I’ve seen her greet people I know she can’t stand as though they were her long-lost sisters, when it didn’t even seem necessary. On the other hand, when she’s in one of those steely moods of hers, she can freeze people who matter to her, for hours on end. I guess she thinks there will always be people to drool over her.”

Those are harsh words. Her great failing has been that she did not—or could not—know when to stop. Mothers have always told their children, “Don’t make faces. You might freeze that way.” Perhaps someone should have told June that, ten years ago. They said instead, “It’ll never work. They have no interests in common.” It was true enough that their hobbies were different. But again, they tried. Dick had long since settled on sailing and flying and Junie took a crack at both. But you can’t manufacture a passion out of thin air, and eventually Dick sold his boat and stopped insisting that June fly with him. June hunted diligently for something they could do together. In rapid succession she tried golf, painting, skiing, music, tennis. She bought mountains of the best equipment and propelled Richard into one fad after another. But June is and always was flighty and changeable. Her interest never lasted long enough to take root. She picked up one novelty after the next, played with each for a while, devoted the whole of her amazing energy to it, then discarded it for something new. Dick’s friends felt that he couldn’t share her interests—there was nothing really there to share. “Junie’s easy to love,” they said, “but hard to live with. Bubbles are pretty and enchanting, but no one ever caught a bubble.”

By the time the Powells moved to their second house, in Bel-Air, June had learned a lot. Dick had taught her to dress and entertain, to run a house and handle servants. Pamela and Ricky arrived while they lived there and the marriage was at its happiest. June made quite sincere statements to the press about the joys of marriage. “I wanted a career and a husband,” she said, “and when I got Richard as a husband the career suddenly seemed unimportant.” She gave a successful dinner party, all by herself, and was as pleased as if she’d won an Oscar. No one, certainly not June, suspected that she was only in another of her phases, that in a matter of months the role of Happy Housewife would have palled. It did. By the time they moved to Mandeville Canyon, their current home, things had changed for the worse. “Mrs. Powell,” one of her ex-servants reported about the subsequent progress of her mistress, “wasn’t what you’d call a homemaker. I remember reading about how she went up to St. George in Utah when Mr. Powell was making The Conqueror, and how Mrs. Powell made such a home for him at the motel. I guess that was one of her spells. Most of the time Mr. Powell did every thing that had to be done around the house. He made all the decisions and maybe she resented it, but if she did all she had to do was pay some attention to running the house. I’m sure it would have been all right with him. There was something, too, about her redecorating the house recently. That’s probably all publicity, because they have a decorator do most of that sort of thing. Mrs. Powell never did do much about the house.”

Yes, things had changed, in more ways than one. For the growing-up that June had done, although perhaps inadequate for the needs of her marriage, was enough to change her attitude toward Dick. She still let him run things—but not because she couldn’t handle them herself. She just didn’t want to be bothered. At the same time, she resented Dick’s decisions, but refused to make them instead. Dick Powell is one of the best-liked men in Hollywood. No one has ever said a word against him as a husband. But he is also a successful businessman, now firmly established in his third career—as a fine director and producer. He works late hours and spends much of his time at home conducting business on the telephone. He’s busy and often tired. But June's youthful dream of marriage as a perpetual romance does not quite fit the facts. Perhaps this is as much the fault of Dick Powell as of June. What Dick should have taught June is how to use the strength he gave her with wisdom. The crowning blow came recently: the rumors about June and Alan Ladd weren't as easy to dismiss as those stories that had circulated in the past about June and Peter Lawford or June and Dean Martin. The greatest significance of these latest tales is that people believe them—and discuss them aloud. 

Dick has always advised June about her career. Under his influence June became the number one box-office star in the country—and stayed there. One of the greatest stabilizing forces in their marriage has been her acknowledgement of his help and her real gratitude for it. When, with considerable self-confidence, she left MGM, she proved that she had a business head of her own and was capable of using it. But Dick was still beside her, offering reassurance and advice. But over The Shrike they disagreed. “I think when June made The Shrike it was a real turning point in her attitude,” a close friend says. “Dick didn’t want her to do it, said she wasn’t ready for such a subtle acting chore. But she went ahead and did it, and when the kudos came pouring in for the job she did, June figured Dick’s advice wasn’t any good to her any more. You can bet there was a lot of ‘I-told-you-so’ around the house after the reviews came out. This kind of thing happens a lot around town. I can name a dozen actresses who figured their husbands weren’t worth much to them once there’d been talk of an Oscar. When they’re really career-conscious, they’d rather have an Oscar on the mantel than a husband in the house.” Around town everyone knew that something was brewing—long before the Alan Ladd stories started. 

Friends noticed that June’s moody periods, the tantrums that had almost disappeared, returned. At Universal-International, where she made The Glenn Miller Story and later The Shrike, they said, “We didn’t know what to expect. She’s so darned cute on the screen that you can’t believe reports that she’s hard to get along with. But we found out. It depends on Junie’s mood, you see. Sometimes she’s a doll, and then one day she’ll walk in and the fur will fly. And you wish you’d stayed in bed.” At Paramount, where she made Strategic Air Command, they said, “This kid is a show all by herself. It’s amazing the way she can get what she wants. She seems to sense right away the best way to get around a person. If she has to be nice, she’s nice, if she has to be cute, she’s cute, and if she has to be nasty, she’s nasty. The result’s always the same, though—what Junie wants, Junie gets. In a way, you have to admire her for it, but I’ll tell you this. I’d never want to get on the wrong side of that one. Br-r-r-r!” And at MGM, when she returned to make Executive Suite: “Long before she left here she was starting to be difficult, but she’s so damned cute that it’s hard to hold anything against her for long. And then when she came back, well, I can’t say that her working at other studios has improved her disposition. Let’s just say that she’s a moody character, and the guys on the set sort of hold their breaths to see what frame of mind Allyson is in that day.”

Around town, many are saying it’s only a matter of time until Dick Powell agrees with that final sentiment. By the time this is printed, they say, he may have echoed those words in a divorce court. Others say that the marriage will last—but only until the completion of It Happened One Night, which Dick plans to produce—with June as the star. But there are those who say that this marriage deserves—and will get—another chance. When two people have tried as long and as hard as June and Dick to overcome the obstacles in their way, there must be a reason, a great real love and need for each other that causes them to keep trying. If they have failed it is not for lack of love, but because they have gone about it clumsily. If June can learn to use her new maturity and confidence as efficiently and wisely in her marriage as in her career, she and Dick may yet make a go of it. They have two children and a long life together to make it worthwhile. We wish them all the luck in the world. —Article by William Barbour for Modern Screen Magazine (September 1955)

Ann Sheridan: Hollywood's Oomph Girl

While her movie fame has been eclipsed by the mega-watt glare of Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Joan Crawford, Ann Sheridan is no less revered by film historians and classic movie buffs of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She is perhaps the most versatile and talented of all the great movie actresses from that era. That she achieved stardom at all, despite overwhelming odds, is a testament to her indomitable Texan spirit and appealing screen personality. In the hard-hitting dramas They Drive by Night (1940) and Kings Row (1942), she was the no-nonsense, street-smart heroine who knew her way around in difficult situations. With her gift of tossing sarcastic, biting lines at a hapless recipient, she proved equally at home in comedy. Her comic performance in Torrid Zone (1940) is a gem. Likewise, her tart portrayal as Cary Grant’s wife in I Was a Male War Bride (1949) is sheer delight from the beginning to the final credits. Not to be overlooked are her complex, conflicted characters in the unjustly neglected film noir classics The Unfaithful (1947) and Woman on the Run (1950). If that wasn’t enough, it turned out the lady could sing in a voice pleasantly reminiscent of Alice Faye’s warm contralto. When she sang, she elevated the silliest plot contrivance in films like Navy Blues (1941) into a moment of unadulterated joy. 

Ann Sheridan had a tremendous appeal that went beyond a striking beauty and shapely figure. Just as she wouldn’t fit into a screen type, she would not be hampered by efforts to mold her into a sex symbol via the “Oomph Girl” label. As pal Humphrey Bogart noted in 1943, the label “has not affected her a bit; by hard work and determination to be a good actress she has managed to rise above it.” Yet it was the “Oomph Girl” designation that highlighted Sheridan’s zest for living life to the fullest. When Joseph Breen’s Production Code took effect in mid–1934, the sexy, playful and naughty qualities of actresses like Norma Shearer and Kay Francis were sanitized and a veneer of respectable glamour was heavily applied. With her breakthrough turn in It All Came True (1940), Sheridan flipped glamour off its high heels. In one fell swoop, the “Oomph Girl” brought sex back at full force onscreen.

Search for Beauty, based on the obscure play Love Your Body by Schuyler E. Grey and Paul R. Milton, was earmarked as a showcase for the American film debut of Ida Lupino. Lupino, billed as the “English Jean Harlow” later called the film “a darling little thing” and noted, “The greatest thing about it was that I met my best girlfriend, Ann Sheridan…. We were both so homesick. We didn’t want to be stars, we just wanted to meet some nice guy and settle down.” Sheridan likewise had fond memories of her association with Lupino. “Ida is a dear, close friend,” she told interviewer Ray Hagen. “I adore her. And she’s a damn fine actress, too.” Sheridan was one of 30 beauty contest winners who made their screen debut in Search for Beauty (1934). Only Sheridan achieved film stardom. Variety prophetically noted, “There’s a girl in an earlier sequence bit, Ann Sheridan, who should be an important screen personality someday if her work here is any criterion.” 

During the 1930s, three studios dominated: MGM, Paramount and Warner Brothers. In terms of star power and box office revenue, no other Hollywood studios came close. Each had its specialty. MGM produced lavish prestige films; Paramount offered sophisticated dramas and comedies, and Warners specialized in backstage musicals, raucous comedies and gritty melodramas “ripped from the headlines.” As child actor Sybil Jason reflected in her autobiography, “In the 1930s, Warner Brothers was like a well-cogged wheel that continually churned out a product that America and the rest of the world clamored for. While watching those movies today, we discover that a good percentage of them have a quality and an appeal that holds up in this era.” This is the main reason why many of Sheridan’s Warner Brothers features still deserve to be seen today.  Jane Wyman recalled in a 1995 Turner Classic Movies interview that working for Warner Brothers was like working as a family. “We all helped each other… and the big stars would help when we were working with them.” James Cagney told TV Guide in 1966, “When Ann came to Warners, she was just a nice kid—chumming around with the working staff… There was nothing aggressive about her.” 

“The good thing about working at Warner Brothers was the spirit at the studio,” Sheridan told John Kobal. “It was a very good group. An absolute family. It was just incredible.” In this environment, Sheridan flourished as a movie actress of box office value. Bogart was likewise fond of Sheridan because of her raunchy sense of humor and ability to out-drink him. Of course, he could not disclose these aspects of her personality publicly. In a 1943 article titled “Sister Annie,” Bogart said that when he met her for the first time on the set, she was a “scared kid, self-conscious and unsure of herself.” He took the time to coach her on her lines and helped ease her nervousness. This act of kindness endeared him to her and they became fast friends. “Sheridan is one of the nicest girls in Hollywood,” Bogart asserted, “because she is real, honest, unassuming, friendly, and natural.”  Edward Norris told Van Neste, “Annie was scared of the camera, she used to walk around the set with a bottle of Coke which was really rum in a Coke bottle. She was very nervous and upset.” During her Warner Brothers years, Sheridan was well-known for her excessive drinking on the set. “She used to be able to drink me under the table,” Norris marveled. “She was such a great gal, the love of my life!” Cagney proved especially helpful in coaching the young actress. “He was grand to me. I was so nervous about everything,” Sheridan told Modern Screen in 1940. In another interview, Sheridan revealed her admiration for Cagney’s professional conduct: “He’s the sort of star who will sit down with you and explain in detail why you should do a thing a certain way. He’ll give you the benefit of everything he’s learned.” Sheridan later became known for exhibiting the same kindness and courtesy to other actors. 

Sheridan was assigned to another inconsequential role in a Dick Powell musical comedy, Always Leave Them Laughing (apparently a favorite title at Warner Brothers as many musical comedies bore this title early in production). The film was based on the same-name original story by Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald. By this time, Powell was tired of trifling stories like this one and decided not to renew his contract after seven years with the studio. When the film wrapped its shoot in mid–December, the executives, out of pure spite, put the film on the shelf with no intention of releasing it. Department head Bob Taplinger finally struck gold merely by changing the spelling of “umph” to “oomph.” He then staged a “contest” to spotlight the Hollywood actresses who best embodied “oomph.” The publicity stunt was rigged to crown Sheridan victor and boost publicity coverage for Warners. Taplinger assembled a panel of 25 judges (including Busby Berkeley, Bob Hope, Earl Carroll, the Earl of Warwick and Hollywood’s pre-eminent glamour photographer George Hurrell) to “select” the star most deserving of the coveted “Oomph Girl” title. Each contestant had to submit a photograph to be judged by the committee. Hurrell was commissioned by Warners to take Sheridan’s photographs. For the photo shoot, Sheridan recalled that her outfit “had a roll-back collar and long sleeves. It was a crepe negligee, covered all the way up.” 

Hurrell reminisced that Sheridan “was very good-natured about the whole thing. I played rumba and samba records and she was totally responsive. We laughed a good deal because the beauty mark, courtesy of Perc Westmore, kept sliding down her cheek from the heat of the lights.” Years later, Sheridan told Hagen that Hurrell “was the greatest.” Taplinger arranged an award dinner that was held at the Los Angeles Town House on March 16, during which Sheridan was officially declared the winner. Reflecting on that evening years later, she admitted, “It was one of those nerve-wracking things and I actually can’t remember very much of it.” She received a certificate and a bracelet along with the “Oomph Girl” title. It was revealed in 1945 that Jane Wyman and Margaret Lindsay were also under early consideration for the title. Many of the judges offered up their takes on what “Oomph” meant. Busby Berkeley stated, “Oomph is the quality that drives girls to stardom and men to distraction.”

Soon the term was being used to denote “a certain indefinable something, something that commands male interest.” In a 1940 Modern Screen article, Sheridan described her ideal man: He doesn’t have to be handsome, but not ugly, either. An older man, preferably, maybe around 35 or 40, ambitious, interesting, and with a sense of humor. Someone who would be a gentleman at all times, would be careful about his appearance and would not take me, or himself, too seriously! Enter George Brent. Sheridan’s lively personality managed to bring out Brent’s light-hearted nature. He even started frequenting night clubs with his new love. Brent revealed there were several qualities which drew him to Sheridan: “She works hard and enjoys life; she’s more fun to be with than any woman I have ever known; I think, on the whole, the quality of excitement which she possesses and generates is what makes her different from the standard glamour girls—that, and her earthy simplicity.” Sheridan found Brent intriguingly different from her usual night clubbing escorts. “He’s a lot of people—rebel, hard-working artist, playboy, hermit, intellectual, athlete … and what’s most disconcerting, he manages to be a combination of these things all at once. George has an enormous awareness, a flair for being very much alive during every waking hour.” While they shared much in common, it was the classic case of opposites attracting. 

Sheridan ranked as the 18th most popular box office draw in 1940 and was one of the studio’s top-drawing actresses behind Bette Davis. But her salary was hardly commensurate with her new box office standing. Warners was paying Bette Davis $4000 weekly and Olivia de Havilland $1250 weekly, while Sheridan earned a paltry $500; even her pal Ida Lupino was receiving $2000 per week. Based on the commercial successes of her 1940 features, the studio decreed that Sheridan would be given a raise which would bring her weekly salary up to $600 at her contract renewal on April 1, 1941. To Sheridan, this was no April Fool’s Joke. “When I realized that my pictures were making big money at the box office,” she explained to Photoplay, “it seemed no more than right to me that I should have a better salary, particularly in view of the fact that I had been promised raises several times, but hadn’t gotten them.” Sheridan was disgruntled by the studio’s lowball offer of $600 per week and insisted on $2000 weekly. Watching from the sidelines, Brent was displeased with how Warners was handling Sheridan’s career. He gallantly declared to Photoplay, “There is no doubt that, if she is given half a chance, she will become one of the foremost screen actresses. She has all the star qualities: beauty, vividness, intelligence, talent and above all, a realness that the cameras capture.” Having waged many battles of his own with Warners, Brent encouraged Sheridan to refuse all movie projects until her salary demands were met. Among the films she turned down: The Bride Came C.O.D. (replaced by Bette Davis), Million Dollar Baby (Priscilla Lane) and Out of the Fog (Ida Lupino). 

By early fall, the Sheridan-Brent romance continued to baffle Hollywood insiders and gossip columnists. Some predicted nuptials, while others foresaw the relationship’s demise. In a Photoplay article tantalizingly titled “George Tells Why, ‘Ann Sheridan and I Won’t Marry,’” Brent pointed out that the combination of two film careers and marriage rarely succeed. He offered as proof his three failed marriages and Sheridan’s own marriage to Norris. “We’re very happy as it is,” he said. Maude Cheatham told her readers, “This romance has steadied Ann: she’s gained poise and assurance from George’s strength and masculinity.” Cheatham also noticed a difference in Brent as he was “more approachable, laughs easily and often, and the old hurts seem to have faded away.” As the Sheridan-Brent romance was dissected in the gossip columns, Sheridan finally began preparations for her dream role: Randy Monaghan in Kings Row, the best role of her career. It would also provide the clearest rebuttal to those who had downplayed her dramatic abilities. Sheridan later told Hagen, “I loved it. I worked so hard, I worshipped the part.”

Asked about Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan said: “She was just—temperamental? Who wasn’t temperamental? All of us had the greatest admiration for her. She was the queen. One of my greatest, greatest favorites.” Upon the completion of both features, Sheridan barely had enough time to close her makeup kit before assuming a role previously turned down by Ida Lupino. The new project Juke Girl was based on a Theodore Pratt story, “Jook Girl,” which, in turn, was based on Pratt’s Saturday Evening Post article “Land of the Jook.” Motion Picture Herald marveled, “Kings Row comes to the screen as a star-studded, superbly mounted Warners production which has an emotional impact few pictures have ever had.” It emerged as the studio’s third highest grossing movie that year. With box office returns of over $5 million, the feature ranks today as Sheridan’s most financially successful film. Performances from top to bottom received excellent reviews. Dependable actors Rains, Coburn and Anderson garnered their usual fine notices. It was the younger actors, however, who caught the critics off guard. The biggest surprise of all was Sheridan. Motion Picture Herald effusively noted, “Miss Sheridan may now be forgotten as the ‘oomph girl’ and be billed as a top flight actress because of her characterization of Randy.” Variety was likewise impressed: “Miss Sheridan rises admirably to the emotional demands of the later scenes and gives one of her most effective performances thus far.” Photoplay called her portrayal one of the month’s best and the National Board of Review cited it as one of the best of the year. 

Sheridan’s Randy Monaghan rightfully remains one of her best dramatic performances. Kings Row received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (James Wong Howe). By mid–August, Sheridan was on location filming another wartime propaganda film, Edge of Darkness, opposite pal Errol Flynn. This situation did not sit well with Brent as rumors quickly circulated about a torrid affair between the two stars. Reportedly, Brent once discovered the two in bed and received a sound beating by Flynn for his untimely interruption. Brent made one final attempt at a reconciliation. Sheridan recalled to Screenland that Brent hadn’t spoken to her for a month. His main complaint: She was more concerned about her career than their marriage. After Brent had finished, Sheridan accepted the futility of the situation and simply stated, “Well, George, it looks like this is it.” It was decided that Sheridan would contact Alex Evelove, the head of Warners’ publicity department and give him a statement for the newspapers. In late December, Sheridan traveled to Mexico for a divorce decree. She was granted her freedom on January 5, 1943, by Civil Judge Acuna Pardo in Cuernavaca. She had been married to Brent for exactly one year. She still maintained a friendly relationship with her ex, Norris, but Sheridan never resumed her friendship with Brent and they rarely spoke well of each other in private. Sheridan often referred to their marriage as a mistake. Once, near the end of her life, she publicly admitted, “I can’t stand my ex-husband.”

For his part, Brent chose to remain tight-lipped about his four former wives. When Don Stanke interviewed him in the 1970s for the book The Debonairs, Brent took the opportunity to reflect on Sheridan’s passing: “What a waste of what could have been a good life.” Sure enough, it was soon discovered that the pitchers of “iced water” that both Sheridan and Errol Flynn drank from on the set actually contained pure 90-proof vodka. Sheridan had also learned from Flynn the trick of injecting vodka into oranges, which she ate on the set. According to Longstreet, “The stars’ behavior resulted in delays, which led to cost overruns, which forced the studio heads to declare Silver River finished. It is the only major studio film I know of for which there is no ending.” By late 1948, her special friendship with her publicist Steve Hannagan was in a rut with no foreseeable resolution. Hannagan had been pressuring Sheridan to give up her acting career and move to the East Coast. There was also the occasional rumor that Hannagan had become jealous of her friendships with several handsome, younger men. All of the expensive gifts could not buy her faithfulness, even though he professed a willingness to overlook her indiscretions. Hannagan headed the nation’s top publicity agency; its biggest client was the Union Pacific Railroad. Although he was in a financial situation to support both of their lavish lifestyles, she was not ready to entertain the notion of giving up her career. 

“I’d like another five years in pictures with good stories,” she said. Sheridan wasted little time in playing the field with the likes of Bill Cagney (James’ brother), Franchot Tone, Cesar Romero and Bruce Cabot. She was at the peak of her beauty and had little trouble attracting men. Rex Harrison was one of many who found her enchanting. “I was struck by her extraordinary magnetism and directness,” Harrison said. “Her distinctive quality of earthiness that never transcends to blatant sexiness.” Sheilah Graham took a rather perverse interest in chronicling the star’s romantic escapades in the gossip columns and magazine features, including one called “Annie, Get Your Guy” for Modern Screen magazine. When asked by Graham if she ever intended to re-marry and settle down, Sheridan replied, “I am too busy to settle down. And why must I get married? A woman can have an enduring friendship with a man and not be married to him, I hope. I like being single because I have so many things to do.” The most persistent suitor was set designer Jacques Mapes, who met Sheridan on the Good Sam set. Sheridan enjoyed Mapes’ sense of humor and good looks. Mapes said he found Ann’s sense of humor “one of her most remarkable qualities. That, and her complete honest sincerity about people and everything she does.” 

Ann Sheridan made her television debut on The Ed Wynn Show on February 11, 1950. Her friend Lucille Ball, who also made her TV debut on that show, may have convinced Sheridan that the new form of entertainment would provide her a new career. The Variety TV critic reported favorably on Sheridan’s brief appearance: “Ann Sheridan, one of the top-billed film stars yet to appear on television proved again the old adage that a talented performer in any part of show business will show well on tv.” In January 1953, Steve Hannagan was on a trip promoting Coca-Cola products in several countries in Europe and Africa. After his arrival in Nairobi on February 2, he cancelled a dinner engagement with famed author Robert Ruark. Hannagan explained that he was experiencing uncomfortable pressure in his chest. Ruark arranged for him to see a local doctor. The next morning, Hannagan was found on the bathroom floor, dead at the age of 53. His body was wrapped like a mummy in preparation to be flown to New York City. A funeral mass, held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, was attended by over 1500 mourners, including film and stage personalities, presidents of major corporations, business associates and close friends. When Sheridan learned of Hannagan’s death, she was devastated. After a few days, she mustered up the strength to issue a statement for the press: "Once in a while the world is blessed with a man born with great understanding. This is attested to by the number of true friends he gathers during his life. Such a man was Steve Hannagan. My personal loss and feelings, which are extremely deep, must therefore be shared by many others around the world by those who knew, loved and were influenced by the greatness of this man." -"Ann Sheridan: The Life and Career of  Hollywood's Oomph Girl" (2024) by Michael D. Rinella