Pre-Code's Sex Slant, Carole Landis ('sex-loaded'), Homefront's Lemo Stars

‘I like restraint,” Mae West once said, “if it doesn’t go too far.” It went a long way during the so-called Golden Age of the Hollywood studio system, from 1934 to 1968. During those years, there were exact limits on what could be shown on screen, as specified in the Hollywood Production Code. The period came to an end in 1968 when something like the present ratings system came into effect, partly in response to a new generation of films full of nudity, obscenity and bloodshed that scarified the bourgeois, films such as 1966’s Blow Up and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It had begun four years after the formal end of silent cinema in 1930.

So what happened between 1930 and 1934? A rich, 21-film season at BFI Southbank in London next month provides an answer, mapping the turbulent, fascinating period of studio history known as ‘Pre-Code Hollywood’. Familiar stars appear in these often dazzling early talkies – James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis and Clark Gable among them – but the films aren’t standard Hollywood fare. As James Bell says in the season programme, it was ‘a naughtier, rougher-edged and more shocking cinema than anything audiences would see again until the 1960s’. It treated with arresting frankness, and often visual inventiveness, subjects as delicate – or as crude – as lust, violence, drugs, alcohol, adultery, bestiality, rape and homosexuality. Gangsters shot or lied their way to the top in a desperate Depression-era world; but women could be just as hard-bitten.

A film like Jack Conway’s Red-Headed Woman (1932), starring the usually blonde Jean Harlow as Red, a promiscuous predator sleeping her way up the financial food chain to millionaires, is based on the premise that men can’t resist her body. The hero’s estranged wife accuses Red right out: “You caught him with sex!” This isn’t the kind of line we would hear film characters deliver much post-1934. Red later crows, ‘I’m the happiest girl in the world. I’m in love and I’m going to get married!’ She’s in love with a handsome chauffeur – and is marrying his aged millionaire boss. Yet, to suggest that this was a film revelling in a world before censorship would be wrong. In March 1930 the studios had already pledged to observe a new, elaborate Production Code associated with Will Hays, President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.

Not all the ‘sex slant’ was so serious. The German director Ernst Lubitsch constantly flirted with the transgressive – in for instance the still-unsettling ménage à trois of Design for Living (1933). Musicals could also raise an erotic frisson – like the delightful girls-on-the-make entertainment Gold Diggers of 1933 by Mervyn LeRoy and Busby Berkeley, with songs such as ‘Pettin’ in the Park’ (‘Come on, maybe this is wrong, / But, gee, what of it? / We just love it.’) After all, the subtleties of coded suggestion in Hollywood’s Golden Age have enriched the cinematic heritage just as much as the startling achievements of this heady era. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Carole Landis - Ping Girl at Roach Studios (1939–1940): With dubious logic, Roach created the slogan, “The Ping Girl: She Makes You Purr.” But for those in the know, ping had a less respectable meaning. Although the word does not appear in standard slang dictionaries, an Internet dictionary defines it as an exclamation accompanying an erection, as in, “I saw her, and ping.” One can well understand why Carole, presumably aware of this usage, would have found the title unacceptable. At the same time, the fact that Roach was able to use the term in publicity suggests that its slang meaning was not widely known among the general public, who were expected to be duped by the motor-oil red herring.

The awkwardness of the episode, which would be writ large in the uneasiness of Carole’s entire film career, is one more demonstration that the kind of overt sexual appeal that had flourished in the days
of first Clara Bow and then Jean Harlow (who never needed a slogan to project it) was no longer possible. The 1930s image of the desirable woman had been divided between the ethereal sexuality incarnated by Greta Garbo and a pointedly sluttish style typified by Harlow and raised to the level of caricature by Mae West (who, we should not forget, turned forty in 1933). In contrast, 1950s sexuality, reflecting the budding postwar youth culture, would cater less to adult desires than to adolescent wet dreams. The sexuality of the 1940s was more restrained, less explicit.

Especially after the war, actresses such as Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth evolved a sexiness that was suggestive rather than direct. In Gilda (1946), under the direction of Charles Vidor, Hayworth inaugurated a new art of playing seductively to the camera—the implicit eye of the spectator—that in the following decade Marilyn Monroe would perfect and Jayne Mansfield parody.

Despite Carole’s penchant for low-cut gowns, modesty was an important trait of her character; she loved to tell jokes, but according to at least one credible witness, these were never off-color, nor was she known to use foul language—in contrast to her notoriously salty-tongued namesake, Carole Lombard.

I Wake Up Screaming, Carole’s second turn as Betty Grable’s sister, was not a film Carole claimed to have particularly enjoyed making, yet it is the most biographically significant motion picture of her career. Vicki, Carole’s character in I Wake Up Screaming, was almost certainly the inspiration for Jerome Charyn’s obsessively counterfactual portrait of Carole in Movieland (1989): “almost pathological coldness... frozen beauty... coolness that was outside any art.”

Although the Landis:Grable::beautiful:pretty paradigm had been marked in Moon over Miami, it was incidental to the substance of Carole’s role, merely a way of justifying and mitigating her presence on screen. I Wake Up Screaming does something different, and rather daring: it foregrounds Carole’s beauty not simply as an empirical reality of the fictional world but as a transcendental difference reflected in the formal structure of the narrative. Carole was uniformly praised for her performance, as “properly hard and brittle.”

On the final pre-shooting script of I Wake Up Screaming in the Fox archives at the University of Southern California, one of Darryl Zanuck’s thick-penciled notes describes the still uncast character of Vicki Lynn as “sex-loaded.” Whatever the truth about Zanuck’s 4 p.m. trysts, it could not have escaped him that no one on the Fox lot fit that description better than Carole. But a woman whose sex appeal is so excessive that she must be expelled from the film before it begins is not compatible with very many movie plots. In Carole’s Fox career, I Wake Up Screaming was in the nature of an exorcism. In the script conferences, various names had been suggested for both roles: Rita Hayworth or Gene Tierney as Jill, Lucille Ball as Vicki. Zanuck’s choice of Carole for this “sex-loaded” role had been an afterthought. -"Carole Landis: A Most Beautiful Girl" (2008) by Eric Gans

Ginger Szabo (Tammy Lauren) has just told Jeff (Kyle Chandler) that they would like her to sing a love song on the next "Lemo Tomato Juice Hour". -Jeff: At this rate, you'll be bigger than Betty Grable! -Ginger: You think so?

Review: ‘Homefront the Traveling Lemo All-Stars’: It is the fall of 1946. The nation is just getting used to the idea that nylon stockings are plentiful and has rediscovered that there is actually an organization called the Republican party. Meanwhile, in a farcical turn away from their usually serious and oftentimes traumatic post-war adjustments, the denizens of “Homefront” Ohio are enduring the joys and sorrows of America’s rush to embrace the free enterprise system.

The laughs are few in this hit-and-miss episode centered around Cleveland Indians baseballer Jeff Metcalf’s (Kyle Chandler) ill-fated journey as a member of “The Traveling Lemo All-Stars,” but the series still deserves high marks for its well-defined characterizations and rich attention to detail. All Metcalf wants to do is earn enough postseason money to keep the payments going on his car until spring training; but his reluctant participation as a member of the Lemo Tomato Juice all-star baseball team turns into the barnstorming-tour-from-hell. Kyle Chandler and Tammy Lauren are totally likeable as the on-again-off-again lovers... Source: variety.com


Ginger Szabo and Jeff Metcalf talk about their plans for a honeymoon. (from "Can't Say No" -'Homefront' episode). Jeff tries to cheer Ginger up after the screen test (from "Szabo's Travels"). Ginger is sitting at the bar looking very glum; Eddie (comes up behind Ginger): -For whatever it's worth, you reminded me of Carole Lombard. -Ginger (excited): Really?

Carole Landis was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin, as Frances Lillian Mary Ridste. Some time after her arrival in San Francisco, Frances tells us she chose her stage name. Carole was her “favorite name,” clearly borrowed from Carole Lombard, the first Hollywood star to spell her name that way, although Carole herself “never gave this story credence.”

Frances was surely aware that, like herself, her chosen namesake, née Jane Alice Peters, was born in the Midwest (in Fort Wayne, Indiana), the child of a broken home, had come to California as a girl, and had dropped out of high school to pursue an entertainment career; above all, Frances, whose best acting would be in comedy, must have admired Lombard’s mastery of the screwball genre. Carole explained the choice of “Landis” as one of two hundred names she found in the San Francisco telephone directory; some writers claim that she made her selection on seeing the name of baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in a newspaper. -"Carole Landis: A Most Beautiful Girl" (2008) by Eric Gans

Mad Men's Monolith, The Melody of Heartache (Kyle Chandler/Homefront), Sex & Character

Eternal Male/Female Difference Revealed: The recent telephone conversation between Megan and Don, when he finally tells her that he has been given a leave from the firm he helped build from ashes highlights a universal male/female communication challenge that life partners who are intimate and committed face, understand, and work through. Megan cannot understand why Don did not love and trust her enough to tell her the truth. Don could not tell Megan the truth because he felt if he did she would no longer see him as potent and strong and would stop loving and desiring him.

Taking Stock of Who We Really Are Involves Pain: Why isn't Don going elsewhere? Why is he accepting horrific, disrespectful treatment? Sterling and Cooper was a launching pad for him, and his life's blood went into Sterling and Cooper and Draper. He has been able to do brilliant work because of innate ability to combine art and manipulation, as well as the love of the woman who had been the wife of the man whose identity he had stolen --- the first love he has ever known from anyone. Perhaps Don will be able to build on this, and work toward becoming a true person. Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

"A man’s attempt to find himself in a woman, rather than simply seeing Woman in a woman, necessarily presupposes a neglect of her empirical person, which regards Woman as a completely dependent possession and does not consider her inner life at all. This is where the parallel between the cruelty of eroticism and the cruelty of sexuality becomes complete. Love is Murder." -Sex & Character (1906) by Otto Weininger



As Mad Men is (slowly) wrapping up, it’s looking more and more at whatever the future is going to bring, and much like that huge IBM computer, the future is a looming, loud presence that will, inevitably, displace them entirely. The monolith is a memento mori. Really, that’s what “The Monolith” is about underneath it all. The characters are pushing toward the things that will let them move past the failed versions of themselves, past all of the wrong versions of events, toward something right. Deep down, I think that Matt Weiner and his writers don’t want to punish these characters or even have them see a real comeuppance. That comeuppance came last season, for the most part, and now, they’re heading into a new era, one that may bring new consciousness or a dream of men who’d dare walk on the moon. Source: www.avclub.com

But it is 1969, the year that is often cited as the one when the cultural landscape dramatically shifted in America, and Roth’s novel was a big part of that. The thing about Portnoy’s Complaint is that, unlike some books we’ve seen Don reading, like Dante’s Inferno, there isn’t an obvious meaning to Don’s choice of reading, unless you want to get into the mommy/sex issues that both Don and Roth’s most famous character have.

It’s difficult to find an allegory in Don opening up Portnoy’s, but a book about a descent into hell, that’s something we can understand: women, to Portnoy, are the root of all pleasure and all pain.
Source: flavorwire.com


Jeff and Ginger ending their romance - "Man, This Joint is Jumping", "Szabo's Travels", and "Appleknocker To Wed Tomatohawker" inspired this very short 'Homefront' story by Tracey Diane Miller, "The Melody of Heartache" (2005): "Jeff Metcalf wasn't always the most sensitive guy in the world but his Achilles heel was his intense and unquestioned love for Ginger. Sometimes the depths of that love scared him. Sometimes he felt as if something were tugging at his gut. And so began the melody of heartache, swelling into a full blown overture of pain. It was a melody that had been introduced by that first note that echoed within the young couple during a fateful day in Hollywood park months ago. Jeff had become a casualty in the war of the broken-hearted."

Kyle Chandler: -"I look at those celebrity magazines and I'm jealous. There are pictures of late-night partying at nightclubs and I wonder who's taking care of the kids. I'm boring compared to those people. And my beautiful wife, Kathryn, and I will be coming to Los Angeles, seeing friends we haven't seen in a while and be two adults in the city of Hollywood, living it up while the kids are at home kicking back."

"Of course, my wife has to be there. The person you say goodnight to last is the one you want to say thank you to last." But the fact is, Chandler admits, "I wouldn't trade anything for what I've got right now. I appreciate everything in my life. Every time I turn on TV and see how difficult things are for some people, I'm just grateful for what I've got. I wouldn't trade my life for anyone's." Source: www.creators.com

"Schopenhauer (author of “Metaphysics of the Love of the Sexes”) had very little appreciation of a higher kind of eroticism, and only really appreciated sexuality. Schopenhauer’s face showed little kindness and a great deal of cruelty (from which he himself must have suffered most terribly: one does not devise an ethic of compassion if one is very compassionate. The most compassionate individuals are those who most resent their own compassion: Kant and Nietzsche). But it may already be indicated at this point that only those who have a strong tendency toward compassion are capable of a fervent eroticism. Those who “couldn’t care less” are incapable of love and they have no appreciation of a supra-sexual relationship. True love, like true compassion, is modest. Rather, beauty itself is a projection, or emanation, of the desire to love. Therefore, the beauty of Woman is not something different from love, not an object to which love is directed. The beauty of Woman is the love of Man. Love and beauty are not two different facts, but one and the same. Just as ugliness derives from hate, beauty derives from love. Beauty is something untouchable, inviolable, which cannot be mixed with other things. Love is modest because, by loving, I place myself below others. Love makes the individual most forgetful of his pride. Therefore compassion is related to love, which is why only those who know compassion know love. In compassion I am the giver, in love I am the beggar. Love is the most modest of all requests, because it begs for the most, the highest." -"Sex & Character" (1906) by Otto Weininger

Kyle Chandler and Jon Hamm: Baseball Heroes

-What's your favorite sport? / -Kyle Chandler: Baseball, baseball, baseball. (TVGen-Yahoo! Chat Session, 1999). In "Homefront" (ABC) Kyle Chandler would play Jeff Metcalf, a professional baseball player with the Cleveland Indians. The scripts for "Homefront" were written (even more than "Mad Men") in the slang and vintage turn-of-phrases of the 1940's era.

On television’s “Mad Men,” Jon Hamm plays Don Draper -- the clever and creative advertising man who can sell just about anything. But in his new movie role as a down-on-his-luck sports agent, he’s making his wildest pitch yet: a contest to find major league-caliber pitching stars in a country where almost no one has ever seen a baseball.

Only this time, the character Hamm plays is real -- and is now the subject of an upcoming Disney film, “Million Dollar Arm,” in theaters nationwide May 16. The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of ABC News. “Anyone can make this stuff up, but when it happens to real people, in real life, I think the emotional impact is even more so,” Hamm told "Nightline" during filming in Atlanta last summer. “It’s just a very interesting story for me, especially as someone who gets to play maybe not the most wholesome person on the planet, six months out of the year,” Hamm said. Source: abcnews.go.com

He's suave, sophisticated, and undeniably sexy. But Jon Hamm says he just can't understand why anyone would find his Mad Men alter ego Don Draper attractive. Talking to Glamour magazine, the actor explains: 'He’s a terrible guy. It’s not his fault he’s damaged, but he’s a terrible guy.'

(seen in the show with co-star Jessica Pare). Despite being lusted after by his fans, Jon, 43, doesn't understand the seemingly universal appeal of the flawed advertising exec. 'With men, it’s like, "That’s the guy you want to be?" Go buy a nice suit and comb your hair, but don’t do the other parts of the character [the cheating, the lying]. 'And I find it crazy when women like Don. There are better dudes.'

But it seems modest Jon may be discounting a hefty part of his character's appeal - his own good looks. Jon revealed his childhood dreams were quite different. 'I wanted to be a professional baseball player when I was a little kid. I still play in a league out here [in L.A.]—a bunch of old dudes who get together on Sundays. Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

​Weiner tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that he's still conflicted about Don and his secretive, promiscuous ways. "I don't really have a lot of judgment for Don," he says. "He makes me nervous. I feel bad for him. I want him to be able to get out of things. I know that he has a lot of love in his heart. I just don't know if it's possible to stand up and rectify everything by telling the truth." Jon had a depth and maybe carries — even if it's fictional — a sense of a wound, a sense of a conscience, a sense of conflict. You're seeing it on the show all the time. He brought that to it. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I think, "Oh my God, what if I didn't cast him?" You know? Well, I wouldn't have a show. Source: www.npr.org

Talking about the ending of "Friday Night Light": "Bittersweet. Saying goodbye to the Taylor house hurt a lot. Our final scene there we shot on a hot, muggy night, and everyone was exhausted. And I was thinking, “I want to get home.” But as we got into the van to leave, I looked back at the Taylor house, and it brought up a lot of memories. It stung. I grabbed my phone, stuck it out the window and took a picture of the house. I’m going to put it in a tiny little frame and keep it my home. That will be “Friday Night Lights” for me, whenever I look at it." -Kyle Chandler (Coach Eric Taylor in FNL)

"It's probably a personality flaw in a business like mine, but I prefer to avoid fuss and flash," says Chandler, enviably handsome. In the dim light of the oak room, with yellowing photos of Seabiscuit and the 1951 Rams behind him, it's easy to imagine a time when guys like Chandler pursued acting simply as an excuse to ride horses and chase pretty girls. He's gracious enough, but you get the sense he would rather be having a root canal than blathering on about himself." Source: www.menshealth.com

Hear us out: he may not be the first actor that comes to mind, but Kyle Chandler could play the weathered older version of The King - Elvis Presley. It’s definitely out of the mold of government officials and coaches (Coach!) we’ve seen him play in the past, but maybe a fat suit and a new role is just what Chandler needs. Not to mention we’d take every word he says very seriously, because, well, clear eyes, full hearts, you know the rest. Source: www.mtv.com

Jessica Chastain will play 'Blonde' Marilyn Monroe, Carl Rollyson's 'Monroe: A Life of the Actress'

Two-time Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain is nearing a deal to play Marilyn Monroe in Andrew Dominik's passion project “Blonde,” multiple individuals familiar with the project have told TheWrap.

First announced in 2010, “Blonde” is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ 700-page novel of the same name, which reimagines the inner, poetic and spiritual life of Norma Jeane Baker — the child, the woman and the fated-celebrity better known by her studio name of Marilyn Monroe.

Oates drew on biographical and historical sources to paint an intimate portrait of Marilyn that reveals a fragile, gifted young woman who repeatedly remade her identity to overcome the odds and define stardom in the 1950s. In 2001, Oates’ imagined memoir was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and the prolific author believes it may be the book for which she will be best remembered. Dominik adapted “Blonde” on spec and his agency, CAA, will represent the film's domestic distribution rights.

While Michelle Williams recently played Monroe in “My Week With Marilyn,” Chastain's portrayal is expected to be much different, as “Blonde” will take an unconventional approach to examining the Hollywood starlet's life and career. “It's a really sprawling, emotional nightmare fairy-tale type movie… about an abandoned orphan who gets lost in the woods,” Dominik told The Playlist at Cannes in 2012. Source: www.thewrap.com

Kyle Chandler said it was "difficult" to work with rising star Jessica Chastain in "Zero Dark Thirty," but not for any the reasons that immediately spring to mind when someone uses that word.

Jessica Chastain and Kyle Chandler attending the "Zero Dark Thirty" photocall on December 4, 2012 in New York City.

"She is very difficult to work with and I'll tell you why. The scene, especially when you get up close to her, it's very hard to do because her eyes are so intensely blue you fall into them. Literally," he said of Jessica's peepers. "When you watch the scene where we go at each other... [I can watch myself and know], that's when I was like, 'OK, how deep do your eyes -- how far do they go? My God! I see the back of your skull. It's incredible.' "She's very beautiful," Kyle added of the actress. "I had a lot of fun working with her." Source: movies.yahoo.com

"I'm very sensitive in real life. I will start to cry if someone is crying, even if it's not appropriate. I have that thing in me, a weakness or sensitivity." -Jessica Chastain

"Acting, for me, is about exploring things I don't understand in myself. I did not feel like a beautiful woman that people would kill each other for. I'm very shy, I feel very awkward, I don't feel like a femme fatale at all." -Jessica Chastain

In American popular culture, Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) has evolved in stature from movie superstar to American icon. Monroe's own understanding of her place in the American imagination and her effort to perfect her talent as an actress are explored with great sensitivity in Carl Rollyson's engaging narrative. He shows how movies became crucial events in the shaping of Monroe's identity. He regards her enduring gifts as a creative artist, discussing how her smaller roles in "The Asphalt Jungle" and "All About Eve" established the context for her career, while in-depth chapters on her more important roles in "Bus Stop, Some Like It Hot," and "The Misfits" provide the centerpiece of his examination of her life and career.

Through extensive interviews with many of Monroe's colleagues, close friends, and other biographers, and a careful rethinking of the literature written about her, Rollyson is able to describe her use of Method acting and her studies with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg, head of the Actors' Studio in New York. The author also analyzes several of Monroe's own drawings, diary notes, and letters that have recently become available. With over thirty black and white photographs (some published for the first time), a new foreword, and a new afterword, this volume brings Rollyson's 1986 book up to date. From this comprehensive, yet critically measured wealth of material, Rollyson offers a distinctive and insightful portrait of Marilyn Monroe, highlighted by new perspectives that depict the central importance of acting to the authentic aspects of her being.


Carl Rollyson on Marilyn Monroe from University Press of Mississippi

"Rollyson takes her and her talent seriously and what he has to say is enlightening and often surprising... no matter how many more books are written about her... none will provide the insights this does into the person, the persona and the work of Marilyn Monroe." -Variety

" A scholar's analysis of Monroe as an actress, written engagingly enough to tempt Monroe fans... His analyses of her movie roles and how she filled them are crucial to understanding Monroe, the woman and the actress. Rollyson's achievement is his dedication to examining Monroe from every conceivable angle."--The Baltimore Sun Source: www.carlrollyson.com

Debonair Air: Robert Taylor and Kyle Chandler

This year marks the 70th anniversary of one of the greatest film noirs of all time, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity—an occasion celebrated this week by the release of a commemorative Blu-ray. Fred MacMurray (The Caine Mutiny, The Apartment) and Barbara Stanwyck (The Lady Eve) in a suspenseful tale of lust, betrayal and murder, directed by Billy Wilder. Screenplay by Raymond Chandler, this intrigue-filled tale of a double-dealing dame and her murderous lover was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture. The Limited Edition Blu-ray comes with lobby cards, poster reproductions and a rare alternate ending still in an archival envelope. Bonus features include: Special Introduction by TCM host and film historian Robert Osborne, Shadows of Suspense Plunges viewers into the world of 1940s Hollywood, Feature Commentary with film historian Richard Schickel, Feature Commentary with film historian and screenwriter Lem Dobbs and film historian Nick Redman Source: www.broadwayworld.cm

At a crooked gambling club run by "Fish-Eye," Chris Claybourne (played by Robert Taylor) loses five thousand dollars on credit. That same night he meets model Rita Wilson (Barbara Stanwyck), who has refused Fish-Eye's proposition that she lure wealthy escorts to his gaming tables for a percentage. Though they are strongly attracted to each other, Chris and Rita agree not to fall in love, but spend his spree together, having fun and swiping unusual hats. As Chris's departure day approaches, however, they realize that they are in love and Chris promises not to go to the jungle. That same night, Fish-Eye forces Chris to sign a check for his debt, and gives him until the next afternoon to make it good. As Dr. Claybourne's money is all used to support his hospital, Chris' only hope is his staid brother Tom. When Chris takes Rita to meet Tom, however, Tom tells his brother that he will only help him if he goes to the jungle and waits to marry Rita, whom he considers socially inferior, until he returns. Rita, enraged, tells Chris that they are through and secretly goes to Fish-Eye to arrange to pay off Chris' debt by working for him.

On Christmas Eve, Chris suddenly returns to New York on a leave-of-absence and learns that Tom has broken with his fiancée and has just been asked to resign from the hospital for neglect of duty. Though Dr. Claybourne does not know what has happened to Tom, Tom privately tells Chris that he fell in love with Rita and secretly married her, after which she laughed at his stupidity and refused to see him. Now believing that Tom's original opinion of Rita was true, Chris goes to Fish-Eye's club and finds her. She confesses her mistakes and is remorseful, and, because she still loves Chris, agrees to his plan that she accompany him back to the jungle, on a platonic basis, to wait for Tom to agree to a divorce. Source: www.tcm.com

Robert Taylor made a list of ten things that made his heart beat faster for "Good Housekeeping Magazine" in May, 1956. His tenth answer was Barbara Stanwyck's eyes.

Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck on the liner Queen Mary on February 4, 1947. "Barbara would arrive at the Trocadero or Ciro’s in an evening gown, her hair done up, and would see Claudette (“looking divine”) or Dietrich (“looking like something out of this world”) or Hedy Lamarr and feel awful about herself, like a shopgirl. “It’s no use,” Barbara would say. “I know what I look like. I like comfort too well to fix and fuss.” Barbara and Robert Taylor had permanent ringside seats for fight night at the Hollywood Legion Stadium and went regularly to Hollywood Baseball Park to watch a game and eat hot dogs and peanuts, often taking Dion with them." -A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 by Victoria Wilson

-"It's a big help to an actor if people like to look at him but it has nothing to do with acting." -Robert Taylor

[Before meeting his wife]: -"There's always a special woman out there somewhere, but you don't know it at the time." On being labeled a hunk: "I don't see any hunkdom in my future. I'll be anti-hunk. Instead of working out, I'll sit around drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. That'll show 'em." -Kyle Chandler


Jeff tipped his baseball cap and smiled into the camera, just the way Ginger had coached him backstage. He hadn't had a serious bout of stage fright since Ginger had helped him get over it nearly two years ago, but she knew that there were still times he got a little uneasy with the thought of so many people watching them all at once. She felt his hand go to the small of her back to pull her in closer to him -partly for moral support, and partly just to have an excuse to touch her -and with a cool debonair air that even Robert Taylor would have killed for, he said, "From our family to yours... have a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year! Bye for now!" Ginger released the breath she'd been holding for the last few minutes and looked up at Jeff. "I hate being live," she muttered, as he came in for a kiss. "Well I thought you did fantastic," he told her. Somehow, when Jeff said so, she could believe it. Source: lemogrrl.tripod.com


The first tell-tale notes of 'Sentimental Journey' wailed from the living room, reaching Ginger Metcalf in the kitchen. She swallowed hard as she heard Doris Day's voice, but it did little to get rid of the fist-size lump in her throat. "I've still got time for a quick dance," he whispered, his breath tickling her ear. He turned her around and led her by the hand to the living room, where WREQ was now playing 'You Made Me Love You.' "You know in a few weeks you won't be able to do that anymore," Ginger said. "Don't be silly," Jeff leaned in and said in his husky baritone, "you'll still be as sexy as Hedy Lamarr." Source: lemongrrl.tripod.com