Belinda Lee: from the new BFI website:

Of all the Rank Organisation's starlets, Belinda Lee stands out as the most notorious, yet paradoxically anonymous, British actress of the 1950s. At the 1955 Cannes film festival she led Rank's glitterati during the studio's uncharacteristic attempt to generate British Cinema glitz. This may well have promptedDiana Dors' outrageous mink bikini at the same event - a barely concealed method of stealing back the limelight. But while Dors remained in the public eye well beyond her cinematic heyday, Lee's fame died with the car crash that killed her at the age of 25.

Spotted by Val Guest at RADA, her career began in comedy with a cameo in his Frankie Howerd vehicle The Runaway Bus (1953) and as one of The Belles of St. Trinian's (d. Frank Launder, 1954). Her 1954 marriage to Rank photographer Cornel Lucas pushed her into greater prominence and she landed bigger comedy roles opposite stars like Benny Hill and Norman Wisdom.

The studio was keen to raise her profile but struggled with its direction. Despite glamour-girl publicity shots highlighting her undoubted beauty, her first dramatic roles were of wholesome but naïve young women, creating a star profile that was at once compassionate and understanding, yet containing a frank sexuality. Miscasting often blighted the promise of this persona, her performances never really breaking from her privileged Budleigh Salterton upbringing. It was only when on loan to Italy for La Venere di Cheronea (1957) that her talent for more sensual roles emerged.

During her time in Italy she started an adulterous affair with aristocratPrince Filippo Orsini, which resulted in international scandal when the two of them made a suicide pact. Allegedly, Lee took this more seriously than the Prince, but both were physically unscathed. However, the events significantly damaged the image that Rank had built for Lee and, by the end of 1958, her contract was terminated, with Lucas filing for divorce.

Remarkably, this personal drama worked to Lee's advantage. Avoiding the complete obscurity suffered by many Rank starlets, the European film industry offered her a range of riskier roles that played on her previously contained sexuality. From the murderous vamp of Le notti di Lucrezia Borgia (Italy/France, 1959) to the wayward prostitutes of Ce corps tant désiré (France, 1959) and Die Wahrheit über Rosemarie (West Germany, 1959), more challenging dramatic roles began to come her way and for two years European audiences embraced her.

But at the time of her death in 1961, she was already a fading memory in her native country, with many of her late films failing to get British distribution. It is difficult to say whether this cut short a promising career, since she was reportedly losing interest in acting at the time of her death. Nevertheless, the films that constitute her legacy are an intriguing mix of prestige and tat, ambition and failure - revealing the grittier side of the glamour of studio filmmaking as it began its long decline.

Robert Spencer

A bit player/extra of the 1940s and 1950s, Robert Spencer (1909-2003) was also Rpbert Montgomery's stand-in in the intricate p.o.v. Philip Marlowe noir Lady in the Lake (1947).

     

                                                                    

Stars of Public Domain: Alene Carroll in RIOT SQUAD (1933)

No, blonde Alene Carroll doesn't play the lead in Riot Squad, this typical early 1930s "crime meller" from Gower Gulch producer Harry S. Webb, that dubious distinction instead going to silent screen ingenue Madge Bellamy. Who, once again, proves that she may just have been the worst actress in Hollywood history. (With an apology to film historian extraordinaire William Drew, who has long championed Miss Bellamy.) Alene plays the film's victim, the daughter of a judge (Ralph Lewis) kidnapped to influence the death penalty trial of gangster Harrison Greene. This particular damsel is eventually freed by demoted detectives James Flavin and Pat O'Malley, recently of the Riot Squad of the title, who briefly take a breather from their fighting over the dubious charms of Miss Bellamy. Riot Squad, which was filmed on location in Hollywood and at Ralph M. Like's Tec-Art studio on Sunset Drive (later Monogram and public station KCET), survives under its later television title, Police Patrol, and is available for streaming or download at www.archive.org. Alene Carroll, meanwhile, remains a cipher, turning up as "chorus girls," "blondes," or simply "girls" in films 1932-1940.

                                     

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CHICK CARTER, DETECTIVE (Columbia, 1946) and Julie Gibson

                                                                  

What would you have done if you had very little money to produce a 15 chapter serial in 1946? Well, you could have done much worse than "Jungle" Sam Katzman did with Chick Carter, Detective, one of the better examples of what I like to term "serial noir," i.e. a modern dress chapterplay set among the less than honorable denizens of a big city. Instead of gambling on inexpensive neophytes to fill the top roles of hero, heroine and sidekick(s), Sam turned to experienced "has-beens" like Lyle Talbot (in the title role), Douglas Fowley (the nominal hero who does all the derring and the do) and Eddie Acuff (comedy relief), all of whom by this late day and age could be obtained just as cheaply and who could do the job in one take and with absolutely no fuss. So what if everybody was a bit long in the tooth for this kind of action fare - even the girl, Julie Gibson, frankly looked like she'd been around the block a time or two - you relied mostly on stunt people to begin with. Katzman surrounded his august cast with even more august serial regulars such as Charlie "Blackie" King and Jack Ingram, who actually got to use their thespian skills without a single horse in sight. Pamela Blake, who was no newcomer to the serial word either, and steely-eyed George Meeker rounded up the better-than-average cast and a good time is had by all.

Julie Gibson, playing a duplicitous nightclub chantoose [sic], gets to sing a jaunty ditty, "I'm Gonna Roll Me a Snowball," that even includes props. One of these, a fake snowball thrown at the audience, knocks an old gent right off his seat to the visible delight of his wife. Much to the regret of front row kids everywhere, I'm certain, she warbles again in chapter 5, a little something entitled "Once Around the Clock." Julie, who had been around films since 1941, also turned up in a Bowery Boys entry and appeared twice with the Three Stooges: Three Smart Saps (1942) and Sock-a-Bye Baby (1942). Her career lasted well into the 1950s. Divorced from a previous husband, Julie Gibson married again late in life, in 1973 becoming the wife of B movie director Charles Barton, who left her a widow in 1981. As far as can be determined, she is still with us as of this writing, living in Glendale, CA. Julie Gibson Barton is set to turn 100 on September 6, 2013.

fig. 2 Julie Gibson (far left) with fellow Columbia starlets Noel "Lois Lane" Neill, Gloria Saunders and Kay Scott.

                                            

                         

    

    

King of the Congo (Columbia 1952) and Gloria Dea

In King of the Conga, his very last serial adventure, Buster Crabbe, formerly both Tarzan and Flash Gordon for the uninitiated among us, crash lands in Darkest Africa (i.e. the well-travelled Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, CA) and is promptly captured by the local Rock People tribe. Sartlingly, considering this is supposed to be sub-Saharan Africa, the Rock People are played by Hispanic performers wearing badly fitted black wigs. Not so startlingly considering that this is a Sam Katzman chapterplay from Columbia, the heads of the tribe are a white girl in full Max Factor makeup and the latest in Wild African Queen coiffure, and a medicine man (elderly William Fawcett) don up in what for all the world looks like a blond peek-a-boo wig a la Veronica Lake. Princess Pha, as the girl is named, gestures her way though the opening chapter but her command of English reveals itself in chapter 2 when she proclaims Buster "Thunda, King of the Congo," which is also the serials pulp fiction provenance. Our hero achieves said honor after gonging a gong that hadn't been gonged for centuries. Or something like that. This viewer was distracted by the sheer madness of the piece to take it all in. But there you are.

Princess Pha is played by Miss Gloria Dea, who hails from Alameda, CA, an exotic-looking dancer who later shows up in a bit in Ed Wood's much-maligned Plan 9 From Outer Space (released 1959). King of the Kongo was Miss Dea' only leading role. But Gloria was no Miss Nobody.

She was actually Gloria Metzner, aka Gloria de Werd, and the wife of band leader slash composer Hal Borne, formerly the music director at RKO. Miss Metzner was the daughter of a stage magician and had herself started in that profession at the ripe old age of 7. She later performed in the Earl Carroll's Vanities in Hollywood and even did the Billy Rose Aquacade at the San Francisco World's Fair in 1939 opposite another screen Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller. She disappears from entertainment news after her run-in with Ed Woods and Plan 9.

Full disclosure: The above essay was "lifted" from "Braunhart Mania," an ancestry blog run by Gloria Metzner's relative Kenneth R. Marks. I am indebted to Mr. Marks.

From my collection: Lois Best

This is truly random and apropos nothing in particular, but I like the still. Singer Lois Best was Lawrence "Wunnerful, Wunnerful" Welk's very first "Champagne Lady."