Scandal! Charlie Chaplin - Part 1

Welcome to 2013 - a year of scandals at A Person in the Dark. Yes, I love movies, but I confess I am a sucker for those juicy Hollywood scandals of old.

March's scandal: Charlie Chaplin & Lita Grey

Charlie and Lillita Louise MacMurray

In 1924 Charlie Chaplin was one of the world's most beloved stars. Having transformed his Little Tramp from a crude Keystone prankster into a lovable character of pathos and universal appeal, his artistry was admired, his celebrity almost without equal.

Besides being well-known as the Tramp, Charlie was also known as a ladies man. His many romances included Edna Purviance, Pola Negri and Marion Davies, as well as his recently divorced child-bride, Mildred Harris. His attraction to teen-age girls was known, but, as of yet, he had managed to skirt disaster.

After the triumph of his first feature, "The Kid," he began work on his next feature, "The Gold Rush." His former leading lady, Edna Purviance, was deemed too old at 29, and Charlie was on the look-out for a new leading lady. But, it turned out he had already met her.

The Flirting Angel

The angel tempts charlie with sin

in 1921, a 12-year old Lillita MacMurray accompanied her friend, Myrna Kennedy, to the Chaplin lot looking for work. The dark-eyed almost-teen caught Charlie's eye and he cast her as his flirting angel in "The Kid."

Charlie and his angel

Charlie was taken with his little angel, but he was in the midst of a contentious divorce from Mildred Harris. And so, she finished her part (as well as another part in the Chaplin short "The Idle class") and went back to school.

The Gold Rush

Chaplin directs Lita Grey in "The Gold Rush"

When Chaplin began work on "The Gold Rush," his mind turned again to his flirting angel, who was now 15 years old. He tested her, renamed her Lita Grey, and signed her to a contract (against the advice and opinions of wiser and cooler heads). Chaplin told the press she was 19 years old. The stage was set for disaster.

Chaplin was serious about his film by day, but was equally in serious pursuit of Lita by night. All those concerned had their own side of the story to tell, but the fact remains that, shortly after filming began, the now 16-year old Lita was pregnant and her 35-year old seducer and director was the father. Chaplin reportedly wanted Lita to terminate the pregnancy, but she refused. Her family smelled a payday and Lita was counselled by them to hang tough.

Facing a charge of statutory rape and unthinkably bad publicity, Chaplin agreed to marry Lita. In an almost surreal series of events, the couple slipped into Mexico and were married in November 1924. When their son, Charles, Jr., was born in May 1925, the news was withheld from the press. Mother and child emerged a month later and little Charlie's birth date was changed to June.

Charlie, Lita & Charlie, Jr.

Despite the birth of a second son, Sydney, in 1926, the marriage was never a happy one. Lita was miserable and Charlie was unfaithful.

Divorce

Lita's Complaint: published for all the world to see

In 1927, Lita had had enough and filed for divorce. If Chaplin thought the marriage was a misery, he had no idea what was in store for him with the divorce. "Lita's Complaint," a blow by blow vivisection of Chaplin's reputation was published and the scandal made the headlines for months. Apparently, Lita's greatest complaints were that Chaplin demanded oral sex, was cheap, cheated on her and generally abandoned her and her sons. A restraining order was placed on Chaplin's considerable assets. For the first time, the public turned on Charlie who, claimed Lita, barely gave her enough money to by milk for the babies.

Lita testifies

The Chaplin divorce makes the headlines

All of this took a tremendous toll of Chaplin, who suffered a nervous breakdown. When Lita threatened to name the women with whom Charlie had slept with during their marriage (among them friend Myrna Kennedy, Georgia Hale, Edna Purviance and Marion Davies - which must have raised the wrath of W.R. Hearst), Chaplin caved. In August 1927 Lita received her divorce on the grounds of extreme cruelty. Her $825,000 settlement was the largest to date.

Aftermath

Was Lita a gold-digger? While it seems her family clearly had their eye on the bank account, it is doubtful that a 15-year old star struck girl could have been so calculating. And, even if she was, Charlie should have known better. But,  it appears he could not help himself. Some say this story was Nabokov's inspiration for "Lolita."

After the divorce, Charlie Chaplin got his first taste of public disapproval. But, "The Gold Rush" was a roaring success and Chaplin quickly regained the affection of the public. For his part, Charlie pretty much went back to his old ways. But the love affair was tainted and couldn't stand much more scandal.

To Be Continued....

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Castle on the Hudson: I'll Do Anything To Get Outta Here!

This is my contribution to the John Garfield 100th Birthday Blogathon, hosted by They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To.  Please take the time to read all of the wonderful tributes to this very special actor.

Let's see.... tough but charming hoodlum lives the high life in the Big Apple. He is a swell dresser, has a load of untrustworthy "friends," and a swell dish for a girlfriend. A bit of bad weekend luck (Saturday is always his bad luck day) gets him sent up the river to that famous Castle on the Hudson known as Sing Sing. He thinks he can run the joint, but soon the reforming warden sets him straight. After some drama, a few laughs, and ultimate redemption, the mug goes to the chair a better man. Plus, everyone talks very fast and a 2-hour movie is condensed into 77 minutes. Must be a Warner Brothers production, right? Right.

1940's "Castle on the Hudson" is a remake of 1932's "20,000 Years in Sing Sing." I'm not really sure why Warner felt it necessary to recycle the story, but perhaps it seemed a good fit for its stars John Garfield and Ann Sheridan.

Garfield plays Tommy Gordon, an almost unlikable hood who went to the James Cagney school of cockiness (and graduated at the top of the class). There is no doubt that Garfield can handle the little tough but tender guy role with ease, but it has all been done before. He is wonderful but wasted. Wasted, too, is Ann Sheridan as Kay, at the peak of her celebrated "oomph" but required only to look beautiful and sincere while gazing through tear-glistened orbs.

But it's a good, professional Warner product with the usual wonderful group of supporting players, so let's focus on the fun things:

Tommy is a very natty dresser and prides himself on his good taste. In fact it is a lost shirt stud that is found at the scene of the crime that does him in. Tommy's vanity is rather adorable and Garfield puts it over with great charm.

Tommy after the heist - well dressed and ready for fun

Kay has a really neat wardrobe, too. The costumes by Howard Shoup are beautiful and I wish I could have found some better photos to illustrate how lovely Sheridan looked in them.

It always amazes me how these molls seem to
have evening gowns at the ready

An interesting cast member here is Burgess Meredith as an intellectual fellow inmate who organizes a break but ends up choosing a dramatic death over the chair. He is a bit out of  sync with the rest of the Warners rhythm section and shakes the film up a bit by his presence.

A publicity photo of the 3 stars

Following the story of Tommy's love of good clothes, there is a fun scene where he has to submit to the prison issued uniform. He goes from baggy, to union suit to rags before we finally see him in a better fit.

Tommy in rags: still cute

The ever-reliable Pat O'Brien as the warden who finds the good in Tommy. Sure, we've seen it before, but he always makes things better just by being there, doesn't he?

It is exhausting trying to reform all of these A-list stars!

Ann Sheridan, looking beyond beautiful after she leaps out of a speeding car to avoid Jerome Cowan's animal advances. She also lives in a beyond swank apartment that looks big enough to host the Superbowl. How does she afford it?

Right after the leap from the car and right
before she plugs Cowan. What a gal.

While the film is fun in an ordinary sort of way, the genre is tired. At one point Tommy Gordon cries "I'll do anything to get outta here!" and you get the feeling Garfield is saying the same thing. He can do this sort of role with his hands tied behind his back. He is ready for something better, something more challenging, something more modern. He belongs to the future, not to the past.

Happy birthday, Johnny Boy - you look great at 100.

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City For Conquest: Cagney gets some angst

This is my contribution to the Classic Movie Blog Association's Fabulous Films of the 1940s Blogathon. Who doesn't love the films of the '40s? Click HERE and check out all of the wonderful entries about some of the greatest (and best loved) films ever made

CITY FOR CONQUEST (1940)

For my money, the James Cagney of the 1930s is one of the greatest movie stars of all time. It's hard to find anyone who comes close to his personal charisma, charm, danger, grace and magnetism (not to mention talent). His cheerful amorality was irresistible and, no matter what side of the legal fence he was on, you had to love him. This was one guy who you just knew spent almost no time contemplating his navel. He was all action.

After the watershed year of 1939, Hollywood films took on a heavier tone and even Cagney, who was always fast on his feet, was slowing down a bit (although at 40 he got himself into fine fighting shape for this film).

City for Conquest is the perfect Warner Brothers story. Based on the novel by Aben Kandel, it is set in familiar Warners social commentary territory - the throbbing streets of New York City's poor, the city that rewards the strong and devours the weak. This time up, the neighborhood is Forsyth Street and Delancey.

The Story
Danny Kenny is a regular guy who is content with his lot as a truck driver. He boxes on the side and could be a champion, but Danny is not particularly ambitious.  His two passions are his girl, Peggy Nash (and who wouldn't be sweet on Ann Sheridan?) and the musical education of his talented brother, Eddie (Arthur Kennedy in his screen debut). Danny decides to enter the fight game as "Young Samson" to get money for Eddie's future. After all, the kid is not truck driver material.

Danny and Peggy share their dreams for the future

Eddie Kenny: that kid's got something

But Peggy has a passion, too. Not content to win neighborhood dance contests, she sees her name in lights on Broadway. She has ambition and is not all that pleased that Danny seems to have none. One night, at a local dance contest/beet soiree, Peggy meets professional dancer Murray Burns (well played by an oily, scene stealing Anthony Quinn). Murray promises her the fame she wants and Danny sees that, if he is to keep Peggy in his life he will have to step it up. He promises to use his fists to beat a path to success for both of them.

Could Cagney fight without Frank McHugh at his side?

So, Peggy dances, Eddie composes and Danny fights, but suffer they must. Peggy turns down Danny proposal of marriage. The lure of fame and fortune are too strong. Burns turns out to be a heal who abuses Peggy, and Danny - oh poor Danny. A shady opponent rubs rosin dust in his gloves and blinds Danny after a brutal 15-round fight. Only Eddie fulfills his dream and writes a symphony of the city, one filled with all of the heartbreak, longing and glory that Danny, Peggy and Eddie know all too well. The ending? More about that later.

Anthony Quinn comes between Jimmy & Ann

This film holds a very special place in my heart. Before I saw it (as an impressionable, tender-hearted teen) I was already a Cagney fan, but this one cemented my total adoration for him. Ann Sheridan also wowed me here and I still haven't recovered. Those first loves always stay with you to some degree. So, maybe it's not a masterpiece, but I was never one for masterpieces.

Cagney went on record saying he was quite disappointed in the film. Directed with a poetic touch by Anatole Litvak, it might have fallen short of Cagney's expectation, but it gives him a chance to give of his most moving, heartfelt and deep performances. John Garfield is already on the payroll, Bogart is rising and Brando, Clift and Dean are coming.

Chief Pleasures

James Cagney and Ann Sheridan

Cagney and Sheridan are one of my favorite screen couples. She is one of the few actresses that could hold her own with him. She had his number but was sweet on him anyway. He never got all mushy, but you knew he was crazy about her. They compliment one another perfectly and when he tells her that she will always be his girl, well, you know he means it from the bottom of his heart.

That old Warner Bothers Gang of Mine

I always feel warm and cozy when Frank McHugh, Donald Crisp, George Tobias, Jerome Cowan, Lee Patrick and Joyce Compton are on hand. I'll bet Cagney and Sheridan did, too.

Faux-Gershwin Score

That overture! Thanks, Max Steiner, for channeling your inner Gershwin and giving us that inner city heart-on-the-pavement rhapsody in blue collar (known as the Magic Isle Symphony).

Great Trivia Question
Who played Goggi Zucco in City for Conquest?

Yup - that's Elia Kazan in one of his only 2 movie roles. I've won a few trivia contests with this one!

Best Tear-Jerker Ending
So, this is how it all winds up. Danny, now nearly blind, is working at a newspaper stand. The night Eddie debuts his symphony at Carnegie Hall, Danny prefers to listen on the radio. He has sacrificed his sight for his brother's dream. 

Peggy, whose dreams have been crushed after Murray tossed her aside, approaches Danny at the news stand. Seeing his condition, she breaks down. But Danny is philosophical. He tells her that he is happy because he knew that one day she would walk up to him here; he knew that because, no matter what, she would always be his girl.

And she is. And together they listen as Eddie dedicates his music to his big brother Danny.

The Warners Gang is all there, more or less, but now it is 1940. Everything is a little darker, a little heavier, a little older. But beautiful, still. Noir is falling, and war is coming. Goodbye, old friends.

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A Lover's Scandal! Ingrid Bergman: Influence of Evil

Welcome to 2013 - a year of scandals at A Person in the Dark. Yes, I love movies, but I confess I am a sucker for those juicy Hollywood scandals of old.

February's Scandal: Ingrid Bergman - from Saint to Whore

WTF?

It is hard to believe that this woman was once denounced on the US Senate floor as an "influence of evil." Her sin: falling in love and running off with a man not her husband. 

Now, this is Hollywood we are talking about. Let's look back: in the 1920s, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, both married to others, engaged in a hot extra-marital affair that tore both their marriages apart. They subsequently became the king and queen of Hollywood. Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier began their epic love affair when married to others and Humphrey Bogart was still married when he fell for the 19-year old Lauren Bacall. All three couples were much beloved. Their romances were seen as proof of the triumph of true love against all odds (even though 2 of the 3 divorced).

Enter Ingrid Bergman in 1939, the year the Swedish beauty was introduced to American audiences in "Intermezzo: A Love Story." Her natural, healthy beauty that radiated purity was an immediate hit with the public and soon her husband, Dr. Petter Lindstrom and infant daughter, Pia, joined her in a permanent residence in Hollywood. Ingrid could do no wrong. Her career was in high gear and her image was spotless.


The Ingrid Bergman the world fell in love with in "Intermezzo"

 Like most stars, Ingrid's image was at odds with her reality. Though she was portrayed as a happily married wife and mother, the truth was that Ingrid was one lusty lass and the good doctor did not like being known as Mr. Ingrid Bergman. At some point he made a decision to spend a great deal of his professional time in San Francisco and Ingrid was free to engage in affairs with Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler and photographer Robert Capa (to name just a few). Life was a breeze for Ingrid: she was a 100% Ivory Soap Pure Saint to her public (even though she was equally adept at playing bad girls), her career was on fire and she easily managed her husband, child and extra curricular affairs. 

Ingrid in 1948's "Joan of Arc" - her last appearance as a saint

In 1949, the new "It Boy" of cinema was Italian filmmaker, Roberto Rossellini. Rossellini, a notorious playboy, was riding high on the universal acclaim of his neo-realist classics "Open City" and "Paisan." Ingrid, like so many, was enthralled with Rossellini's bold new style. She was so taken with him that she penned a fan letter and offered her services:

If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French and who in Italian knows only "ti amo," I am ready to come make a film with you.

And so she did. Rossellini promptly dropped the 5 women he was seeing at the time (including his "Open City" star actress Anna Magnani) and fell for Ingrid's charms. For her part, Ingrid fell madly, passionately in love and left her husband. And she got pregnant. All the while they worked together to film "Stromboli."

Roberto Rossellini directs Ingrid Bergman

Meanwhile, back in the USA a firestorm of criticism erupted over the actions of a Hollywood actress. Returning to Hollywood after filming "Stromboli" (and 3 months pregnant at the time), Ingrid refused to confirm her pregnancy to the vituperative gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper. When rival Louella Parson scooped Hopper on the out-of-wedlock bambino in the oven, Hopper trashed Saint Ingrid without mercy.

Hedda Hopper: cross her and she destroys

Before she knew what hit her, Ingrid Bergman went from saint to slut. Outrage over her infidelity made the papers, church pulpits and even the floor of the US senate. Incredibly, politicians took the time out of their busy schedule to weigh in on Ingrid Bergman. Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado condemned her as a "free-love cultist" and "a horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence of evil." Yikes! No doubt her sainted image worked against the real woman, and Ingrid had no choice but to high-tail it back to Italy. Because a nasty divorce and custody battle ensued while Ingrid was pregnant, her son, Robertino Rossellini, was born a week before the divorce became final and Ingrid and Rossellini finally married. During that same month "Stromboli" was released internationally, where, banned and boycotted, it bombed.

Like many great love affairs, this one, too, petered out. Ingrid and her Italian made 2 more children (twins Isabella and Isotta) and five more unsuccessful films before they called it quits in 1957. Ingrid said that the Swedish and Italian temperaments were not a good match.

But Hollywood loves a happy ending, and, in 1956 Bergman won her second Academy Award for her performance in "Anastasia." The award was accepted by her good friend, Cary Grant. Ingrid made an appearance at the Oscars in in 1958, where she presented the award for Best Picture. When introduced to the audience by Grant, she received a standing ovation. The love affair with the public was back on again. In 1972 a formal apology was entered into the Congressional Record.

Much ado about nothing, don't you think?

Ingrid and one of her friends who always stood by her
in one of my favorite films, "Notorious"

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Garbo vs. Gable: The Talkies Have Won

Susan Lenox (Her fall and Rise)....the fall of silence, the rise of sound
Garbo and Gable: what a pair! MGM was notoriously dense when providing Garbo with a suitable leading man, but here they nailed it.

They walk in beauty

In 1931, Greta Garbo was more than a queen of the movies. Like the empress of some remote, exotic land, she retained her air of mystery and wonder as talking pictures smashed, as Norma Desmond said, “the idols of the world.” Garbo survived sound. Her deep, accented growl complimented her image. But sound, combined with the changing tastes of depression-era audiences, also robbed her of some of her power. She moved with authority in the movie-worlds of satins and furs, of heavy sighs and sophisticated shrugs. But by 1931, audiences craved something more realistic, something grittier, something so un-Garbo.

She had proved that she could knock back a viskey with the best of them in her first talkie, Anna Christie (1930). After a few more sophisticated roles, MGM again walked the pre-code tightrope with Garbo in 1931’s Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise).

Garbo and Gable play house

Based on a scandalous book of the same name, Garbo plays an illegitimate and abused farm girl who is sold into marriage to a man she finds repugnant and who tries to rape her before their wedding. Determined not to marry the lout, she rushes off into a storm and lands in the nice comfy home of none other than Clark Gable. And here the story become unlike anything Garbo did before or since.

In 1931, the pre-mustache Gable was just beginning his long rein as the king of Hollywood. No matter how ordinary Garbo is made to look in this film, she is never just a regular gal. Can you imagine finding Garbo in your barn in a storm? Gable, however, no matter how gorgeous, always comes across natural and at ease and just an ordinary guy who happens to to look like a movie star. He is modern, she is timeless.

Mustache or no mustache - HOT

Garbo as the farmer's daughter

The story is wild, with Garbo joining a circus, living as the mistress of a crooked politician and finally chasing Gable, who has rejected her,  to the jungles of South America where both (he a drunk and she a not-quite prostitute/dancer) are reconciled. She gets to wear an array of fantastic Adrian designs and is more "regular" than she ever appeared before or since. The scene where Gable teaches her to fish is adorable. Garbo is many things, but she is rarely cute or adorable. It is great fun to see her this way.

Garbo laughs - and fishes!

Hard working circus professional

A celestial vision

So, here is Garbo, giving her usual  fine performance, looking spectacular and having a grand old time and it is Gable who, I think, dominates. He is new, he is bright and, yes, he is the future and there is no turning back.

Passing the torch

While is has been said that Garbo and Gable did not like one another, their chemistry is undeniable. So much so that Garbo was given first crack at re-teaming with Gable in Red Dust. After Garbo declined, the role went to Jean Harlow, another nod to the future. Garbo would go on to give 10 more magical performances before retreating to the realm of the gods - her true home. Gable would continue as a star of the first magnitude for another 30 years.

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Scandal! Roscoe Arbuckle's Day Off

Welcome to 2013 - a year of scandals at A Person in the Dark. Yes, I love movies, but I confess I am a sucker for those juicy Hollywood scandals of old.

January's Scandal: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle

Hollywood in the early part of the twentieth century was a tough place. The work was hard and the conditions hardly up to OSHA standards. But, for those lucky enough to gain fame and fortune, the fun and play was just as rough and tumble. Roscoe (he hated being called "Fatty") Arbuckle was the comic darling of the Keystone lot in the early teens. He and Mable Normand delighted the public with their adorable antics. Before Chaplin, before Keaton and before Lloyd, it was Fatty that tickled the movie-goers fancy. Arbuckle eventually left Keystone to produce his own films.

Mabel and Roscoe

By all accounts, Roscoe was a lovely man, kind and well-liked by his peers. Even his ex-wife,  actress Minta Durfee, proclaimed him the nicest man in the world. His friendship with Buster Keaton was rock solid and he served as a mentor to both Charlie Chaplin and, much later, to Bob Hope (encouraging Hope to seek his fortune in motion pictures). If Roscoe had a fatal flaw, it was his love for alcohol and an addiction to morphine (as the result of a serious leg injury). Those flaws didn't stand in his way when showing generosity to his friends, which lead him to plan a fun getaway to San Francisco to blow off some steam on September 5, 1921.

The plan seemed like a good one. San Francisco was often used by the movie stars as a place to let their hair down. So, Roscoe rented several rooms at the St. Francis Hotel for a group of his friends, who were all invited to a party. A little Labor Day r&r with alcohol and women was just what the doctor ordered. But, in the midst of the partying, something went horribly wrong.

Virginia Rappe

While the guests partied, one guest lay writhing in pain in one of Roscoe's rooms. Virginia Rappe was a model, sometime actress and girlfriend of director Henry Lehrman. She was also a notorious party girl who, as they used to say, was no better than she should be. Virginia, who was seriously ill before she even came to the party, was admitted to the hospital 2 days after the party, where she died on September 9, 1921. Her friend, Bambina Maude Delmont, told Virginia's doctor that Roscoe had raped her friend, who died of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder.

Here's what happened:
* Virginia Rappe, already suffering from and poor health due, in part, from too much drinking and too many abortions, became seriously ill at the party. The hotel doctor determined that her condition was caused by an over consumption of alcohol.
* Roscoe, among others, tried to help her and tried to cool her overheated body with ice cubes and a bath.
*Maude Delmont, a known, said that Virginia told her Roscoe "hurt her," which meant rape. Delmont, a known professional correspondent for blackmailers who had been targeted by the police for fraud, bigamy, extortion, and racketeering, was not even present in the room when Virginia became ill.

Bambina Maude Delmont

Here's what the public was told:

Fatty Arbuckle, host of a wildly out of control party, savagely raped and caused the death of poor Virginia Rappe with his massive weight. Not only did he rape her, but the beast also abused her with either a Coca-Cola or champagne bottle.

On September 11, 1921, Roscoe Arbuckle was arrested for the murder of Virginia Rappe.

Roscoe's Mug Shot

For 2 excruciating trials, Roscoe's name and reputation was slandered while the prosecution paraded liar after liar before the jury. The wild partying ways of the the movie colony was exposed and morality groups called for Roscoe's  execution. Both trials resulted in a hung jury. Roscoe Arbuckle was finally cleared and found innocent at a third trial. At the end of the mercifully swift third trial, a verdict was rendered in 6 minutes, with the jury foreman reading this statement: "Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done to him... there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story which we all believe. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgement of fourteen men and women that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame." District Attorney Matthew Brady had pressured witnesses to lie under oath and it was revealed that Maude Delmont was attempting to extort money from Arbuckle's attorneys. But, exoneration came too late. Both his career and his spirit were ruined. William Randolph Hearst made hay of the scandal and made a fortune off of these lies in the process. He never apologized to Roscoe for gleefully destroying him. The public and Hollywood turned their back on the man who had brought joy to so many. He was innocent and he was a pariah.

Roscoe did have some loyal friends. Buster Keaton stood by him to the end and tried to give him work when no one else would. Buster, by the way, was asked to attend the party at the St. Francis that fateful weekend, but was unable to go due to other plans (plans for which he was eternally grateful). Roscoe turned to alcohol in a big way, but still managed to find work, directing low budget films under the pseudonym William Goodrich ("will be good").  By all accounts, he was a broken man. Things finally seemed to be looking up in 1933. One June 29, 1933 he was signed by Warner Brothers for a feature length film. But resurrection was not to come. Roscoe died of a heart attack that same night. Some may agree that cause of death was a broken heart.

The Arbuckle scandal, along with the scandal concerning the mysterious death of director William Desmond Taylor, put the morality (or immorality) of Hollywood in the spotlight forever and all time. For a deeper dive into the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal, check out Frame-Up, The Untold Story of Roscoe "Fatty Arbuckle," by Andy Edmonds.

Remnants of Roscoe are still among us. Click here and check out his beautiful 1919 custom made Pierce Arrow, currently at auction. He sure had good taste!

Said Louise Brooks, who, at the tail end of her career, found herself playing a part in the cheaply-made Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood (1931, director: William Goodrich):

"He made no attempt to direct this picture. He sat in his chair like a man dead. He had been very nice and sweetly dead ever since the scandal that ruined his career. But it was such an amazing thing for me to come in to make this broken-down picture, and to find my director was the great Roscoe Arbuckle. Oh, I thought he was magnificent in films. He was a wonderful dancer—a wonderful ballroom dancer, in his heyday. It was like floating in the arms of a huge doughnut—really delightful."

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Book Review: "Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" by Michael G. Ankerich

Like the fictional Lina Lamont of “Singin’ in the Rain,” the real-life Mae Murray was “a shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament." While real people walked on the ground, Mae Murray fluttered above it on gauzy fairy wings. While real people breathed oxygen, Mae Murray inhaled the rarefied air of the gods. While real people ate, slept and aged. Mae faced each morning ageless and dewy-fresh, a vision of perpetual loveliness. So believed those wonderful people out there in the dark (for a time) and, sadly, so believed Mae Murray (all of the time).

“I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
Norma Desmond

Although it is not proven that Mae Murray was the inspiration for Norma Desmond, it is almost impossible not to see a resemblance between the two. However, the real-life Mae made the fictional Norma seem almost normal. The real-life silent screen queen of the 20s was defined, not only by her screen allure, but also by her fabrications, her fictions, her pretenses, her litigiousness and her decidedly odd behavior. The real story of the girl with the bee-stung lips has lied buried beneath Mae’s attempt to artfully obscure the truth. She has remained an unsolved crackpot mystery. Unsolved, that is, until the seven veils of artifice have been lifted, one my one, by author Michael G. Ankerich in the aptly-titled “Mae Murray: The Girl With the Bee-Stung Lips.”

Author Ankerich gives us the Mae we know and the Mae we did not know. We know she was a Ziegfeld performer and successful dancer, we know she was a successful movie queen, we know she was bilked out of her fortune by faux-royalty, we know she lost custody of her son, and we know she descended into poverty and madness. What we did not know is that Mae, born Marie Koenig, came from poverty, that she was remarkably hard working and a team player (at her best), and that she tried, she really tried, to make it all work. The author also reveals that she had a family whose existence she denied as long as possible. Ankerich hit a homerun by interviewing her son Koran/David, a main player in Mae’s life who has, up until now, refused to be interviewed. He sheds invaluable light on his mother who, though she might have loved him, could not let go of the fantasy that Hollywood had, at first, so willingly helped her to create and, at last, destroyed any hope of her leading a normal life out of the spotlight.

“You know, a dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit.”
Cecil B. De Mille speaking of Norma Desmond

Like a circus performer whose spangles look glamorous from afar, but tawdry and tacky at close range, Ankerich gives us the sad, sad story of Mae’s decline. But, Mae is clearly a likeable gal, and the author likes her, too. When her life was secure and centered (especially during her marriage to director Robert Z. Leonard), she was fun, generous and a serious artist. He treats her with great compassion always, even when she was at her most unlikeable. The memories of George Hamilton, whose mother befriended Mae in her old age and who George knew (and tangoed with) as a youth, are tender and revealing (it was George’s mother who paid for Mae headstone upon her death).

“You were silly like us, but your gift survived it all.”
W.H. Auden, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”

Yes, she was silly, but her gift still lives on. It is on display in many silent films still available, but in full flower in 1925’s “The Merry Widow.” She and director Erich Von Stroheim (oh the irony) butted heads, but in the end they produced her greatest achievement, the one she lived off the rest of her life.

"Where are the cameras? Where are my flowers? I must be photographed with flowers! Get them before I’m surrounded by cameramen!"

Mae Murray at the end of the long, dark journey

This book, bedsides being a swell read, is a must for all silent film lovers and for those who love the larger-than-life characters that made that era golden.

“Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips” is available at Amazon.

For more about the irrepressible Mae, visit Michael G. Ankerich’s blog "Close Ups and Long Shots" by clicking HERE.

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