Friday, March 29, 2013

Faith Domergue (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film of ..."

As Faith Dorn, Faith Domergue was put under contract by Warner Bros. in 1941 but it wasn't until she met Howard Hughes that her career really took off. Or that, at least, was what Hughes publicity claimed. In reality, Domergue, like another Hughes discovery, Jane Russell, mainly hung around performing cheesecake duties while the eccentric producer tinkered with both his high flying aeronautical ideas and how best to display her shapely features. Hughes, who had bought her contract from Warners for an impressive $50,000 (that, too, could easily be just publicity, however), finally cast her in a throwaway film, YOUNG WIDOW (1943), and that, as they say, was that. The next project, a Corsican feud melodrama, dragged on and on, Howard Hughes-style, and Domergue had plenty of time to marry bandleader "Teddy" Stauffer in January of 1946 and make endless gossip column copy. Meanwhile, VENDETTA, the Corsican movie, continued filming and re-filming and Faith blamed the strain of all this for suffering a miscarriage. Divorcing Stauffer, she then wed director Hugo Fregonese but continued to do retakes for VENDETTA, a truncated, black and white version of which finally sneaked into theaters in 1950. Severing all ties with Hughes, and, soon enough, Fregonese, Domergue went on to make her only truly memorable screen appearances in three of the best remembered horror/sci-fi thrillers of the decade: CULT OF THE COBRA (1955), THIS ISLAND EARTH ((1956) and IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1956), in the latter two playing those seemingly competent 1950s women scientists who nevertheless prove highly inefficient in a crunch. Television guest spots and European schlock followed but hers was one "name" that belonged firmly to the 1950s. Domergue died at the age of 74 in 1999 in Santa Barbara, CA.

The final film of Faith Domergue:

THE HOUSE OF SEVEN CORPSES (1974, TCA Productions) D: Paul Harrison. CAST: John Ireland, Faith Domergue (Gayle), John Carradine, Carole Wells, Charles Macauley, Jerry Strickler, Ron Garcia. Domergue plays a catty Hollywood has-been in this "Night of the Living Dead Goes Hollywood" thriller. A movie production crew descends on a notorious mansion high in the Hollywood Hills and is met by a murderous ghoul. Old-timer John Carradine plays the cautionary caretaker but both he and Domergue are upstaged by plenty of gratuitous reading from "The Tibetan Book of the Dead."


Marie McDonald (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film Of ..."

Ann Sheridan would overcome Warner Bros.'s silly "Oomph Girl" publicity campaign by sheer determination and Lana Turner eventually discarded MGM's "Sweater Girl" designation. Paramount's Marie "The Body" McDonald, a blond former beauty queen and chorus girl, was not so fortunate and the silly tag remained her biggest claim to fame along with a seemingly endless parade of husbands and failed opportunities. While she did turn up in various low budget escapist fare, and exhibited a finely-tuned flair for comedy in GETTING GERTIE'S GARTER (1945), McDonald is really a case of what might have been. Among the many opportunities she subsequently missed was playing Billie Dawn in BORN YESTERDAY (1950), a great role that actually mirrored her own brief involvement with gangster Bugsy Siegel. That liaison, however, had turned violent, and violence seems to have been part of her psychological makeup. McDonald's relationship with her third husband, shoe magnate Harry Karl (whose high living would later bankrupt another screen-actress wife, Debbie Reynolds), proved especially rocky with numerous public breakups and reunions. Her screen work soon took a decided backseat to her private battles, and in January of 1957 she staged her own kidnapping to bolster whatever acting career was left. And, she later admitted, to get back at Karl, from whom she was once again estranged. Several failed marriages followed their divorce in 1964, all of them of startlingly brief, and a series of nervous breakdowns necessitated prolonged hospitalizations. Her death in 1965 from an overdose of Percodan was officially ruled accidental but was most likely suicide. She was 42. Tragically, her seventh and final husband joined her in death in the identical manner little more than a year later.

The final film of Marie McDonald:

PROMISES! PROMISES! (NTD, 1963) D: King Donovan. CAST: Jayne Mansfield, Marie McDonald (Claire Banner), Mickey Hargitay, Tommy Noonan, Fritz Feld, T.C. Jones. When buxom Mansfield fails to get pregnant by hubby Noonan, the couple go on a boozy cruise with McDonald and Hargitay (Mansfield's real-life husband at the time). Both wives end up expecting but who fathered what child? McDonald replaced Mamie Van Doren in this tasteless "comedy" best known for Mansfield's frontal nudity, a Hollywood "first," and the on-the-set battles between the two leading ladies. PROMISES! PROMISES! was co-produced by actor Tommy Noonan and Donald F. Taylor, who became McDonald's last husband the following year.

Florence Marly (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: The Final Film Of ...")


Nee Hanna Smeklova and hailing from Czechoslovakia, Florence Marly became a French movie star after being discovered studying at the prestigious Sorbonne. Or that is what her publicity claimed and who are we to contradict anything at this late day and age? We know that she escaped the Nazi occupation of Paris ("in the nick of time," of course) and made a couple of films in faraway Argentina before returning to liberated France. By 1949 she had secured a contract with Hollywood's Allied Artists (the former Monogram) and was seen opposite no less than Humphrey Bogart in TOKYO JOE, where she looked Garboesque in an Ingrid Bergman kind of role but without Ingrid's warmth. Yet despite such high profile assignments she kept hightailing it to South America and was at one point suspected of being a communist sympathizer and refused re-entry. That finally cleared she did her fair share of ooh-la-la parts on television, and through marriage to an Austrian nobleman became the Countess Wurmbrand-Stuppach. Off-screen, she feuded with Ursula Andress and was squired around town by (the gay) director Curtis Harrington, who would eventually cast her as his titular QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966). Sadly, she died of a heart attack at the young age of 59.

The Final Film of Florence Marly:

DOCTOR DEATH: SEEKER OF SOULS (Cinerama, 1973) D: Eddie Saeka. CAST: John Considine, Barry Coe, Sheryl Miller, Stewart Moss, Leon Askin, Jo Morrow, Florence Marly (Tana). After answering an ad from a reincarnation expert (Marly), Barry Coe enlists the help of a stage magician cum mystic (Considine) who can bring dead people back to life. Sort of. Moe Howard of the Three Stooges, in his final feature film performance, plays a member of Dr. Death's audience, verifying that the corpse on stage is "sointenly" very dead indeed. Prior to this fiasco, Florence Marly produced, wrote and starred in Space Boy, a science-fiction short subject that still manages to evoke groans among even the most ardent fans of the genre.


Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Serial vixen Ruth Royce


Ever since I saw her in the feature version of the 1924 serial CALIFORNIA IN '49, I have been keenly interested in silent screen femme fatale Ruth Royce. Ruth hailed from Versailles, MO (pronounced Versayles according to my Missouri born husband, Theo) and was educated at Kansas City, MO. She performed with various stock companies, e.g. Woodward Stock and Lewis Stock, before heading for Hollywood and the screen in around 1919. In addition to '49, Ruth may also be seen today in the serials THE POWER GOD (1925) and OFFICER 444 (1926). As I'm getting increasingly lazy in my dotage, I shall refer you to my Royce essay on the All Movie Guide website:

A dark-haired, slightly Eurasian-looking American screen actress, Ruth Royce was arguably the best serial and western villainess of the silent era, eclipsing, in sheer wickedness, that earlier prairie vamp, Louise Glaum. Royce modelled her sagebrush vixens more after Harry Woods than Theda Bara, it seems, rarely lusting after the hero's body but what he could do for her wealth or power. Unfortunately, neither Royce's own career nor female serial dominance in general survived the changeover to sound, and the screen would have to wait until the 1940s, and the likes of Lorna Grey and Carol Forman, to resurrect the action-packed femme fatale.

Ruth Royce retired before sound and died in total obscurity age 78 in 1971 in Los Angeles.

Even more obscure today than Ruth is another Western femme fatale, Gene Crosby. Gene may be seen today in a couple of very cheap oaters featuring the equally obscure William Mix, aka Dick Carter. Who, I suspect, may have been Ms. Crosby's husband. If anyone, anyone at all, have any information regarding this slightly hawk-nosed actress please send me a hint.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Margie Hart in LURE Of THE ISLANDS (1942)

With the increasing notoriety in Hollywood of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, it was of course natural that some of her Burlesque competitors would drift into fillums as well. Ann Corio, who later penned a tell all book about her burleycue experiences, "This Was Burlesque" (1961), took off very little clothes in no less than five wartime sarong thrillers, two for bottom feeder company PRC and three for neighboring poverty row company Monogram. Also landing at the latter was Margie Hart, a redhead from (of course) Missouri who, according to Ann, completely dispensed with a G-string in her popular act. Margie contorted in something called LURE OF THE ISLANDS (1942). I reviewed this little "gem" while toiling for the All Movie Guide:

Billed as "The Girl who Stopped a Thousand Shows" and "The Poor Man's Garbo," burlesque dancer Margie Hart made her feature film debut in this ultra low-budget World War II romance. In an attempt to determine whether fifth columnists are persuading the natives to work for the Japanese, American government agents Robert Lowery and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams arrive on the tropical island of Tanukai. Befriending two beautiful island girls (Hart and Gale Storm), our heroes trudge through the jungle hotly pursued by a Nazi saboteur (Ivan Lebedeff) and several downed Japanese pilots (one of whom is played by an actor named Angel Cruz!).

I can add that Gale Storm and Big Boy Williams are the comedy relief here and what a relief they prove to be. Miss Hart never filmed again and when New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia, in one of his many uplift attempts, banned bumps and grinds in the city, she retired to become a very sociable Bel Air matron. Margie Hart, nee Edna Margaret Cox, died in Los Angeles in 2000 aged 86.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Marion Michael: Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald (1956)

In case you wondered about Marion Michael - and I know you did! - this 16-year old German girl frolicked, topless in a few shots, in a Hamburg jungle in 1956. Naturally, being topless and all, Liane made the US grind-house circuit in a badly dubbed version in the early 1960s. The result - which is no worse than "Jungle Sam" Katzman's Monogram efforts about Bomba, the Jungle Boy and sundry other rainforest dwellers, and a lot sexier - may actually be viewed free of charge and quite above board on the Internet Archive:

http://archive.org/details/liane_jungle_goddess.

A quick glance at the Imdb reveals that Fraulein Michael, nee Marion Michaela Delonge, died aged 66 in 2007.


My collection: the early years.

I became interested in movie stars, and, of course, later the films they appeared in, when at the age of 7 or so, I purchased a package of chewing gum that contained a colorful portrait of a lady with a bouffant hairdo. The year was 1960 or thereabouts and the lady was Brigitte Bardot. The trading card is long lost - I don't even recall what it really looked like - but some of these early ones I purchased I schlepped around for years, if not decades. Sandra Dee, for example, and German starlet Marion Michael who popularized a Teutonic jungle gal named Liane. A couple of years later we began collecting Dutch-made cowboy star bubblegum cards. The most prized ones depicted French actors Pierre Brice and Marie Versini from the German Karl May Winnetou films helmed in Yugoslavia and environs. But I especially recall one showing "Walter Breiman," a misprint obviously, but one that may still be found on a google search. The performer, needless to say, is Walter Brennan, but there you are. He will forever be "Walter Breiman" to me.





From my collection: Richard Allan


The handsome boy dancing with Susan Hayward, as star-crossed songstress Jane Froman, in the "The Right Kind" number in With a Song in My Heart (1952) and later dueting with her in the title song was Fox contract player Richard Allan. This and playing Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend in Niagara (1953) were the highlights of Allan's Hollywood career and he later enjoyed more success in, of all things, German musical films. Residing in the show business hinterland of Kentucky, Richard Allan passed away at the age of 76 in 1999. But who was he really? We find some of the answers from a surprising place, a neighbor of Allan's in Prospect, KY, who answered a question about the former male starlet's sexuality on the Imdb:

erichmclaren replied Sep 6, 2009
"Richard lived in my neighborhood until his death in 1999. He lived in the Hunting Hills Condominiums in Hunting Creek just outside of Louisville Kentucky in the suburbs of Prospect. Richard was very nice and soft spoken. He would hang out at the complex's pool with us throughout the summer. He lived alone and some people suggested he may be gay but we never knew for sure. He said he did not recieve any royalties from his films but still recieved fan letters even that late in life. One of my neighbors at the time said that Richard was married years ago to a Mexican woman who was a dancer. I guess they met each other while both were in show business. Obviously the union did not last. Richard told me that he enjoyed working with Gregory Peck and said that Marilyn Monroe was incredible in real life. He said she was beautiful and nice. As far as I know Richard worked right up until the end of his life. He was a greeter at the Wal Mart off Westport Road in Louisville and later quit that job to work at the Springhurst Meijer down the street. I remember asking him at Meijer one time if he liked the job and he just smiled and told me in all honesty no. We both had a laugh about that one. He went quick it seemed like I heard he was sick and hardly any time later he passed. He told me he moved to the Louisville area to be around his brother who was retired from the military. A really intesting man. Of course all the women in the complex could not believe how handsome he was in his younger days. Richard aged well and you could easily recognize it was him in the scenes from Niargra. He was a good guy. RIP Richard."


Thursday, March 7, 2013

Stars of Public Domain: Vanessa Brown & THE BASKETBALL FIX (1951)

Playing opposite John Ireland, Marshall Thompson and Johnny Sands in THE BASKETBALL FIX as the pert college girl dating pro basketball player Thompson, Vanessa Brown, nee Smyla Brind, was the Austrian-born daughter of Jewish refugees. Smylla Brind became Tessa Brind as Ann Blyth's understudy on Broadway in Lillian Hellman's WATCH ON THE RHINE and then toured with the play; and she was Tessa Brind again when appearing on the California radio show "Quiz Kid." David O. Selznick noticed her on that and secured her an auspicious screen debut in the juvenile delinquency drama YOUTH RUNS WILD (1944), the forerunner of the many post-war teenage angst films to come. As Vanessa Brown she played first teenagers and then young adults – including "Jane" to Lex Barker's "Tarzan" in TARZAN AN THE SLAVE GIRL (1950) – but with few exceptions you'd be hard pressed to remember what she did or said, and she was always much better used on Broadway, where she originated the Marilyn Monroe role opposite Tom Ewell in "The Seven Year Itch" (1952), and on television, where she replaced Joan Caulfield in the final season of "My Favorite Husband" (1955). She then left it all to dabble in politics (as a Democrat) and to marry producer-director Mark Sandrich, Jr. (Brown had previously been married to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, divorcing him, or so the story went, when he implored her to get under the knife.) She died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Stars of Public Domain: Johnny Sands & THE BASKETBALL FIX (1951)


Before Franke & Annette; before BEACH BLANKET BINGO; indeed, before Tommy Sands, there was Johnny Sands, nee Elbert John Harp, Jr. and of Lorenzo, Texas. Young Elbert had apparently hitchhiked to Los Angeles where he found employment as a cinema usher. But Elbert loved the beach and it was there, in Santa Monica, that he was spotted by a talent scout. He reportedly chose the name "Sands" to commemorate the discovery on that Southern California beach.

The newly named Johnny Sands played the boyfriend of an awkwardly adolescent Shirley Temple in THE BACHELOR AND THE BOBBYSOXER (1947), a supporting role if a prominent one, but he was star-billed in something called BORN TO SPEED (1947), and later played the title role in ALADDIN AND HIS LAMB (1952).Sands, alas, never enjoyed the success of other hunky bobbysox idols like Guy Madison or Bill Williams.

By the time of THE BASKETBALL FIX, Johnny wasn't even the top male ingenue - that honor going instead to Van Johnson lookalike Marshall Thompson - but played a dim country club lifeguard completely baffled when would-be femme fatale Hazel Brooks tells him that she would learn how to swim quite easily considering that she's a Pisces. Marshall Thompson, meanwhile, is a semi-professional basketball player getting himself in trouble with a match fixing racket headed by Miss Brooks' boyfriend, William Bishop. Enter muckraking reporter John Ireland and everything works out in the end. Naturally, considering that this is the early 1950s, the basketball world is a lily-white world of young WASPS.

Johnny Sands ended his seven year or so screen career playing Clayton "Lone Ranger" Moore's sidekick in a dreary Republ, JUNGLE DRUMS OF AFRICA (1953). Perhaps in an attempt to escape playing dimwitted lifeguards for the rest of his life, or simply out of embarrassment of being caught in the dreaded serial department, Sands billed himself Johnny Spencer this time only.
§After that he sought greener pastures selling real estate in Hawaii. He died age 75 in Ainaloa, HI.


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

The intriguing Barbara Payton

Much have been written through the decades about the star-crossed Barbara Payton. And much of it, including an "autobiography," almost Angerish in proportions. But it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to Miss Payton. I therefore defer you to Mr. John O'Dowd who has come closest.

Monday, March 4, 2013

I'm back -- again.

What I believed was my very last post due to Blogger's new and not at all improved interface proved to be premature. I looked for other ways to blog but they all wanted money. How very dare they? Anyway, Blogger has a new Ipad app that it at leat tolerable o I may stick around a bit longer. Thanks for your upport!

Stars of Public Domain: Liev de Maigret

Wanted: information about the so-called Countess Liev de Maigret, a good friend of Frances Goldwyn, who turned up as "the other woman" in the 1935 public domain title One Rainy Afternoon.