Classic_Daily

Olive Thomas childhood portrait

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:06:53 GMT

Often easy to forget movie stars were children once...

Taken with brother Michael at the turn of the century in what had to be the Duffy family's one 'splurge' for the year.

The coroner's private report on the death of Natalie Wood.

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 06:12:02 GMT

With news that the LA County DA has reopened the case of Natalie Wood's death we bring you...

The coroner's private report on the death of Natalie Wood.

From the book Coroner - by Dr. Thomas Noguchi M.D.

When Paul Miller's report on the real facts of the death of Natalie Wood arrived, I read it - and decided not to release the document to the press. It added details the media would only call "gory" and "sensational." The report did not alter the official coroner's conclusion of an accidental drowning. So, rather than create more media indignation over "too many details," I reluctantly filed away that report. This is the first time the facts it uncovered, which re-create Natalie Wood's last moments, have been revealed by me. And it is both a tragic and a heroic story.

Rereading the report today, I can see Isthmus Bay again in my mind's eye, dark and threatening in the night, the cold rain slanting down upon ships rocking in the water. And I recall the day Miller brought me the report. We sat in my apartment in Marina Del Rey, overlooking the same ocean which broke against the shores of Santa Catalina thirty miles to the west.

Miller leaned toward me earnestly as he said, "You had it wrong, Tom. Natalie Wood didn't die like you think. She had class."

He drew a map of Isthmus Bay showing where the boats, including Splendour, were moored that night. Then he drew an arrow from the west, passing through the island mountains and pointing toward the ships in the bay. "The basic factor is the wind funnel," he said.

From my own observations of the island on my trip three years before, I knew the phenomenon to which he referred. The jet stream sweeps from the west over Catalina Island, and in the mountains it forms a funnel which blows straight down into the bay where the Wagners' yacht was moored. Splendour faced in the wind, as did its dinghy tied to the stern.

"After she untied the line," Miller continued, "the dinghy would have been blown out toward the mainland. It would never have made a ninety-degree turn and headed down the coast with the wind funnel hitting it from the side. Remember, an inflatable boat in the water is like a balloon with the wind blowing it."

It was cold that night when Natalie Wood, dressed only in a nightgown, wool socks and a down jacket, appeared on the deck of Splendour and descended the swimming step to the dinghy. Was she angry at her husband and rushing off alone? Forensic evidence, such as the fingernail scratches on the side of the dinghy, the brush-type abrasion on her cheek, and the untouched algae on the swim step, seemed to indicate that she was trying to board the dinghy, not just adjust its rope, when the accident happened.

But Miller's evidence provided the possibility of a third explanation, which, according to my interpretation, confirmed Wagner's story of the accident. Considering the wind funnel, when Natalie Wood, for whatever reason, untied the boat, the wind was strong and would have pushed it away from the yacht. And it is quite possible that, instead of trying to step into the dinghy, she might have been reaching for it and lost her balance.

Whatever her purpose, she fell - and the cold water closed over her head. But when she bobbed to the surface, she must have felt there was no danger. She was still only a few feet away from the safety of the yacht. Not only that, she had taken hold of the inflatable boat. The widespread bruise on her right arm showed that she hooked her arm over the side of the dinghy, knowing the boat would hold her up safely until she caught her breath.

Too late, she must have realized something strange was happening. She and the dinghy were being swept swiftly away from the yacht - ten yards, twenty, thirty. She hadn't realized the strength of the wind funnel. Within seconds the dinghy was moving farther and farther out in the water, too distant for her to swim back to the yacht.

She must have called out for help at that point. But her cries went unheard on Splendour, and on other vessels too. The rock music blaring from loudspeakers at the party ashore drowned out Natalie Wood's desperate calls from the surface of the dark sea. Yet there was still hope. Miss Wayne and her friend did hear her shouts. But when they looked outside, they could see nothing in the dark, and they thought they heard people on a neighboring boat say they were coming to her rescue.

Now Natalie Wood was no doubt becoming really frightened. Her cries were going unheard. No lights played across the water, no boats started out to her rescue. Still, she felt she was safe because of the dinghy. She could crawl into it, start its engine, and be back to the warmth of the yacht in minutes.

But it was then that she must have suffered her most terrifying shock. She tried to climb aboard the dinghy which would save her, and discovered she couldn't do it. The rubber sides of the dinghy were large and cylindrical; it would have been difficult in the best of circumstances for her to reach over them from the water to hoist herself up. Forensic evidence revealed that she may have gone to the rear of the boat and used the motor for leverage. There was a metal frame beneath the motor in which you can place your foot. Swimmers often use this technique: with your back to the dinghy, you place one arm around the motor and a foot in the brace, and push up to board the dinghy from the water. The bruises on the back of Natalie Wood's lower legs suggested she may have tried to do that.

But it didn't work. She couldn't make it into the boat. Frantically, she attempted again and again to hoist her body up into the safety of the dinghy - but the jacket dragged her back down into the water every time.

Finally she realized she was being swept into mortal danger as the dinghy pulled her farther and farther out toward the open sea. She might drown or die of hypothermia, the loss of body temperature, in the icy water. What could she do?

Natalie Wood fought for her life in that cold November ocean. She did not give, up. Instead, she began to perform a feat that was both unique and gallant. And she almost achieved a miracle.

Clinging to a boat being swept out into the open sea, her body already becoming numb in the cold water, she decided that her only hope was somehow to propel that dinghy into the teeth of the wind, back toward the shore of Catalina. It must have seemed hopeless at first. The wind pushed the boat like an air bubble. But, desperately, she started kicking her legs as hard as she could, and paddling the water with her free arm. And it worked. The boat ceased its movement out to sea and started, ever so slowly, back toward the island - and safety.

A mild current of one knot was running south, and, paddling in a dark, windy sea beside the dinghy, she pushed the boat along with the current, edging it ever closer toward the shore. But the southern drift took her away from the safe harbor with its yachts whose lights shone in the distance. In fact, the bay was now behind her. But she was approaching closer and closer to the beach - four hundred yards, three hundred fifty yards. If she could just hang on, she would be safe on the shore.

But numbness now crept all through her body. The heavy jacket pulled her down, and its weight sapped her strength. Fighting in the ocean, she saw the cove ahead. Blue Cavern Point. No boats lay at anchor there, but it was a haven from the wind which was her enemy. Minutes to go. She must keep paddling.

Natalie Wood, a brave young woman, tragically lost her fight against the specter, death, less than two hundred yards from shore. Hypothermia caused her to lose strength, then consciousness, then finally her last feeble grip on the boat. She sank beneath the waves and drowned. Only minutes later, the boat she had so painfully and courageously maneuvered for a mile landed safely on the beach.

Tura Satana (July 10, 1938-February 4, 2011)

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 23:14:33 GMT

Tura Satana was a Japanese-born American actress and former exotic dancer. She was best known for her role as "Varla" in Russ Meyer's 1965 cult film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

Satana danced at the Club Rendevouz in Calumet City, Illinois, where she was known as Galatea, the Statue that Came to Life. She was offered a raise to become a stripper. She eventually became a successful exotic dancer, traveling from city to city and working with Rose Le Rose, Maxine Martin The Skyscraper Girl, Tempest Storm, Candy Barr and Stunning Smith the Purple Lady. Because of her dancing, face and figure, she was ultimately voted one of the 10 Best Undressed Burlesque Dancers of the 20th Century by Bill Hanna of Hanna-Barbera.

During her early career, Satana appeared on television shows such as Burke's Law, The Greatest Show On Earth, Hawaiian Eye, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. She also appeared as a dancer in Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? with Dean Martin and Elizabeth Montgomery. That same year, she had a cameo as a Parisian prostitute in the musical Irma La Douce with Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine.

After starring in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Satana worked mainly with cult film director Ted V. Mikels in such films as The Astro-Zombies (1968), The Doll Squad (1974) and Mark of the Astro-Zombies (2002). She has also appeared as herself in various documentaries and TV shows including The Incredibly Strange Film Show (1988), A & E's documentary called "Cleavage"(2003),Strip de velours (2005) and Sugar Boxx (2007) which is currently in post production and co-stars fellow Russ Meyer alumna Kitten Natividad.

Gee.. I wonder who's coming to TCM's Silent Sundays...

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 02:07:38 GMT

Pandora's Box

Sunday, January 30,2011 12:00 AM

Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Louise Brooks came from Kansas. Dorothy rode a tornado. Brooks was one. Intelligent, temperamental, quick on the trigger, at the forefront of liberated behavior for women between the wars, she made 24 films between 1925 and 1928, all but three made in Hollywood. But it was in Germany that she starred in the film that transported her to immortality, Pandora's Box (1929), for Georg Wilhelm Pabst. After combing through scores of candidates in search of the quintessential femme fatale - Lulu -- Pabst's instincts told him he had what he was looking for when Brooks caught his eye in Howard Hawks's A Girl in Every Port (1928). Negotiations dragged on, then happened fast. When Brooks quarreled with Paramount studio head B.P. Schulberg and quit, Pabst got a cablegram informing him of Brooks's availability while Marlene Dietrich was sitting in Pabst's office waiting to sign a contract. Scarcely did he meet Brooks at the Berlin railroad station with an armful of roses and begin rehearsing that he realized how right his instinct was. Brooks was, and remains, a lulu of a Lulu.

Pabst, who soon afterward filmed Brooks in the barely less potent Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), later wrote that Dietrich would have been all wrong for Lulu, that Dietrich's seductiveness was stamped with too knowing a look, that her performance would have seemed a burlesque (not that Dietrich stayed down - she went on to make The Blue Angel [1930] and never looked back). Dietrich seemed a type. Brooks was extraordinary and unique. The sexual power she projected seemed utterly unselfconscious. She could stretch out on a settee, languid as a cat, with the best of them. But Brooks came to film from dance -- not just Broadway hoofing, but the expressive modern dance of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. She moved with quickness and spontaneity, bringing a feline immediacy to Lulu's hedonism. Brooks, later to become a witty, insightful memoirist, wrote that she felt sorry for trained actresses who froze in front of the camera. Pabst, something of a choreographer as a director, was delighted to discover Brooks's aptitude for dance. He attuned himself to her way of working, made sure Lulu expressed a lot of what she was in movement, made sure to keep Brooks on target by never giving her more than one emotion to play per scene, infusing it with movement and sometimes vertiginous editing. Brooks's Lulu seems elemental, never calculated, a force of nature (except in one funny scene of backstage opening night tumult -- never bettered! -- in which Brooks's showgirl stages a tantrum to get her way with a wealthy newspaper publisher and divert him from marriage to a respectable bourgeois fiancée to marrying her instead).

With her black lacquered bobbed hair, ending in sword's-point spit curls beneath her prominent cheekbones, Brooks's Lulu seemed a sexual warrior, an Amazon, sending women by the thousands to their hairdressers for a Lulu makeover. Her shiny hair seems a helmet, dominating each frame in which she appears. Pabst often crops her close-ups, making her embodiment of modernity seem even more spontaneous. Pandora's Box, based on a pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, also the source of Alban Berg's Expressionistic opera, Lulu, must have hit Germany -- rigidly paternalistic on the outside, shaky on the inside after losing World War I and sensing the crumbling of the old order -- like a depth bomb, with its eruption of female sexuality coming on the heels of a nationwide male identity crisis, as Germany dissolved from the bourgeois rigidities and repressions of Bismarck and the Kaiser that made Wedekind so notorious to the anything-goes sexuality of Weimar Berlin. With her wide face and huge eyes, Brooks's direct gaze into the camera cements her authority. More than Clara Bow, or any of the iconic sex kitten flappers of the 1920s, Brooks is the quintessential embodiment of the liberated libido, routing any lingering notion of Germany as Fatherland.

Moving with darting quickness, she destroys most of the men who come near her, starting with the publisher (Fritz Kortner) who caves in and plummets downhill. "You're next," he prophetically tells his sensitive but weak son (Franz Lederer). A mannishly-costumed designer who also happens to be an influential countess (Alice Roberts) has no better luck, despite film's first lesbian dance scene. Brooks's forward-tilting head, with its cropped hair emphasizing her powerful neck and predatory body language, consumes the men in her life in a way that seems to come naturally, unthinkingly. She's an amoral killer because her actions are guided from an unerringly efficient subterranean level. She's quite passive, despite her high spirits. She hasn't a particle of the coyness or premeditation of the usual sex goddess. She's as terrifying as she is because she's as innocent as she is. Pleasure-oriented and living for the moment, she doesn't have passions, she has impulses, and ultimately they destroy her.

After Lulu reduces a string of men to rubble, Pabst, the social critic who also filmed the Brecht-Weill version of their play The Threepenny Opera (1931), closes the film with mordant irony. It could not have been accidental that the film's only tenderness and real eroticism come in the last scene with Jack the Ripper (Gustav Diessl) in a fogbound London garret after Lulu flees a floating gambling den and prostitution parlor where she is sold by one pimp to another, who promptly resells her, as the publisher's son loses their money at the gambling tables. When on Christmas Eve the now-impoverished and hungry Lulu propositions Jack, and he says he has no money, she throws greed and self-preservation to the winds and says, "Come just the same - I like you." Jack, fighting his impulses, throws his knife away. But when he sees a sharp bread knife on Lulu's table, he reverts to form.

The twin plot pillars on which the film rests are a pair of killings that follow an embrace. Today, it would be Lulu who'd kill Jack the Ripper. But in 1928, whenPandora's Box was filmed, the world was not ready to accept the atomic bomb of women's sexuality, and so Lulu is dispatched in the manner of a morality play, descending from the Bauhaus chic of the deluxe apartment where her rich lover has installed her, as she and her little entourage flee the consequences of the publisher handing Lulu a loaded gun and telling her to shoot herself to save his reputation - one of the great wrong moves in cinema history! In neither death scene, by the way, do we see the killing. In the first, shot over the publisher's shoulder, we see a puff of gun smoke seem to gently blow him and Lulu apart as he staggers backward and dies. The fatal embrace with Jack the Ripper is similarly filmed over his shoulder. We don't see the stabbing. We see Lulu's fingers, which had closed around his neck in embrace, slowly loosen and fall away as she expires. In between is a sort of Hogarthian descent, as she moves from a Paris-bound train to a starkly lit, claustrophobic pleasure boat, and finally to the Dickensian garret where she's snuffed out, paying the price for being a woman unapologetically sexually self-determining, one iconic archetype of destruction brought down by another.

About that entourage: one can only admire Pabst's diplomatic (and linguistic!) skills as he cajoled and instructed the skittish Belgian actress Roberts in lesbian demeanor, repeatedly defused Kortner, who openly disliked the free-spirited Brooks, and hired musicians to play tango music to keep Brooks in the mood between takes. The Czech actor playing the publisher's weak son, Lederer - born Frantisek, changed to Franz in Germany, and again to Francis in the U.S. -- went from embodying exhausted, bankrupt German manhood in Pandora's Box to enjoy a long, prosperous Hollywood career, which is more than Brooks did, leaving Hollywood in 1938 after a string of mostly mediocre films there. Pabst treated Brooks as an artist - which was more than Hollywood could bring itself to do. There is no record of what Pabst said, if anything, to Carl Goetz, who plays the debauched pimp, Schigolch, who introduced Brooks to love for sale and never let her stray far from it, invoking the borrowed authority of a father figure. Goetz plays Schigolch as an evil dwarf, tumescent with corruption. The only time Pandora's Box gets squirmy is when she jumps into his lap for a cuddle.

Although she went broke, at one time working as a salesgirl in a Manhattan department store, and never worked in film during the last 47 years of her life (1906-1985), Brooks had the last laugh twice over, wittily skewering Hollywood's ruling philistines in her autobiographical essay collection, Lulu in Hollywood, after having enjoyed belated worldwide acclaim, launched by the critic Lotte Eisner, Andre Langlois' Louise Brooks revival series at the Paris Cinematheque, and above all James Card's ongoing supportiveness at Eastman House in Rochester. There, Brooks, decades after making them, belatedly saw for the first time Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl in their entirety. Few are elevated to film's pantheon on the strength of a single film. But Brooks, in Pandora's Box, is one of them.

Producer: Heinz Landsmann; Seymour Nebenzal (uncredited)
Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Screenplay: Joseph Fleisler (titles, uncredited); Ladislaus Vajda (scenario); Frank Wedekind (plays "Erdgeist" and "Die Büchse der Pandora"); Georg Wilhelm Pabst (uncredited)
Cinematography: Günther Krampf
Art Direction: Andrejew, Hesch; Ernö Metzner (uncredited)
Music: Stuart Oderman, William P. Perry (both uncredited)
Film Editing: Joseph Fleisler (uncredited)
Cast: Louise Brooks (Lulu), Fritz Kortner (Dr. Ludwig Schön), Franz Lederer (Alwa Schön), Carl Goetz (Schigolch), Krafft-Raschig (Rodrigo Quast), Alice Roberts (Gräfin Geschwitz - Countess Anna Geschwitz), Daisy d'Ora (Charlotte Marie Adelaide v. Zarnikow - braut Dr. Schöns - Dr. Schön's Bride), Gustav Diessl (Jack the Ripper), Michael v. Newlinsky (Marquis Casti-Piani), Siegfried Arno (Der inspizient - the instructor).
BW-110m.

by Jay Carr

classical hollywood art

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:45:56 GMT

♥ multifandom icons

( includes: lauren bacall, vivien leigh & jean seberg ) find it here @ rouugeamour
+ banners

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:36:52 GMT

I really hope no one minds me asking but I'm on a pursuit for anything and everything Orson Welles.Especially personal or candid photos, and so in turn I ask this wonderful community (which I just recently discovered!) if they had anything they could share image wise and such, please.

Also I'd like to share some pics of my favorite actress as well

thank you for the help and your time!

oh and P.S: if you're a fan of Mr. Welles like I am and have a tumblr account then feel free to follow the wonderful fan blog for him here.

grace daily

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:03:13 GMT

heya, i don't know if many of you are fans of grace kelly
and i do not know if i'm allowed to do this (if not tell me
i'll simply delete this message), but with the help of a friend
we've just made this daily grace kelly community and i'm really
hoping to gather some grace kelly fans, so if you love her feel free to join :)

gracedaily

Come frolic with Ollie!

Mon, 18 May 2009 20:08:25 GMT

Olive Thomas in the Frolics of 1915/6

with 'Don the inibriate dog'

New moderator - how's about a post about Louise Brooks?

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:52:03 GMT

Today's bleat features commentary on Pandora's Box...

http://lileks.com/bleat/?p=1718

Standards of beauty change, though - the heroine of Metropolis seems plain by
current glamour standards:

At the same time, though, in the same country, they had the startlingly modern
Louise Brooks, who I suspect would be catnip in any era:

I can't think of anyone from the silent era who seems so alive, even over the
distance of eight decades. (Yes, that's a menorah behind Miss Brooks. It's from
"Pandora's Box." She's a woman of loose morals, and perhaps the menorah is
intended to tell us why. Oh those crrrazy Germans.)

From article, "Calling All Girls"

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:36:35 GMT

Tab Hunter and Roddy McDowall

Classic World Cinema!

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:26:28 GMT

A new place I've made which gold is to have in depth discussions on world cinema. We search for fans of 1920s. So join if you'd like:

Please delete this if it's not allowed!!!!

_@_v - epic louise brooks picspam!

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:13:59 GMT

louise brooks picspam

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:01:45 GMT

"THE MARK OF ZORRO" (1940) Photo Gallery

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:43:34 GMT

"THE MARK OF ZORRO" (1940) Photo Gallery

Here is a GALLERY featuring photos from the 1940 swashbuckler classic, "THE MARK OF ZORRO". The movie starred Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell and Basil Rathbone.

Louise Brooks birthday picspam!

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:49:05 GMT

Modified Brooksie birthday cards from Chris Hornyak

Can you smell what the Brooks is cooking?

"They tried to make me go to rehab but I said,'No-o-o-o! No! No!"

If I ever bore you, it'll be with a knife... or these scissors. I'm not picky...

On the set of 'Beggars of Life'

Beautiful plumage on that bird, right...

C'mon... Let me take you on a sea cruise... Hoowee! Hoowee, baby!

Kiss me... my fool!

Do I hafta come right out and tell you... Gimmee some money! Gimmee some money!

From Diary of a Lost Girl

olive thomas piccys she'd autographed and given to her brothers...

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:16:45 GMT

cutesey inscription sez "to my big budder from sissie"

olive gave this to her brother james & wife margaret

James Dean

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:32:58 GMT

Happy Birthday Ollie!

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 05:20:31 GMT

_@_v - olive in the garden of good and evil... by the fountain...

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:46:57 GMT

ollie's pimped out ride...

scene from 'the flapper'

this can't be good...

Caroleeeee

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:00:06 GMT

In honor of what would have been her centennial.

(x-posted to vintagephoto ♥)

"CAPTAIN BLOOD" (1935) Review

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:06:35 GMT

"CAPTAIN BLOOD" (1935) Review

Here is my REVIEW of the 1935 Errol Flynn classic - "CAPTAIN BLOOD".

"MIDNIGHT" (1939) Review

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 02:57:34 GMT

"MIDNIGHT" (1939) Review

Here is my REVIEW of the 1939 screwball classic, "MIDNIGHT", which starred Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore and Mary Astor.

I'm reviving the Rita Hayworth LJ community.

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:45:22 GMT

I'm reviving rita_hayworth. So if you're a fan, then join (click on the pic) and post picspams, icons, graphics, fanart, fanfiction, any thoughs on Rita's films, etc. Basically anything Rita Hayworth related on your mind that you would like to share. I read the rules and it doesn't say anything about promoting other communities but if this isn't allowed please let me know and I'll be happy to delete this or just edit it into a Rita picspam instead. :)

Happy birthday, Jane!

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:17:18 GMT

Jane Russell turns 87 years old today! I'm so glad she's still with us.

Photograph by George Hurrell

In Honor of Cyd Charisse: A Pic Spam

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:51:06 GMT

Now I *know* I wasn't the only little girl who used to sit watching ~~old~~ classic movies and wishing I could dance like this!!!

We'll miss you, Cyd!!!!