As an LA native, I’ve watched in horror along with everyone else at the fire-related destruction in Los Angeles this last week. Some of my friends have lost their home and all possessions, particularly in Pacific Palisades. For my friends here in the industry, fellow film historians, and fans of classic movies, there’s an added layer of shock as chunks…
Category: Classic Hollywood Stories
Phantom of the Opera (1943), 80th anniversary podcast interview
Last night (Friday the 13th) I was a guest on Tommy Kovac’s horror film podcast “Splat From the Past”. We celebrated the 80th anniversary of the release of Nelson Eddy’s starrer “Phantom of the Opera” (1943) featuring Claude Rains as the Phantom. The gorgeous Technicolor film (nominated for two Oscars) had a rocky beginning, first envisioned as a comedy for…
Jeanette, Judy, Deanna, Susanna and Kathryn – A Tale of Five Singers
Jeanette MacDonald, the “Queen of Hollywood”, is pictured above with the younger generation of singing stars. All of them are smiling and happy-looking. From left to right: Susanna Foster, Kathryn Grayson, Jeanette, Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin. What all five singers had in common were amazing voices and private lives quite different than what the public knew. Susanna Foster and…
Clark Gable, Loretta Young and out-of-wedlock Hollywood children
Some time after Sweethearts was published in 1994, I did a joint book signing with Judy Lewis, the illegitimate daughter of Loretta Young and Clark Gable, at the Beverly Hills Woman’s Club. Her story was poignantly told in her autobiography, Uncommon Knowledge. In a nutshell, this is Judy’s story as noted in Publisher’s Weekly, ©1994: Born in 1935, Lewis was…