Old Hollywood Inspiration: Carole Lombard

Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the neighborhood boys by a film director, Carole was signed to a one-picture contract in 1921 when she was 12.

The film in question was A Perfect Crime (1921). Although she tried for other acting jobs, she would not be seen onscreen again for four years. She returned to a normal life, going to school and participating in athletics, excelling in track and field. By age 15 she had had enough of school, though, and quit. She joined a theater troupe and played in several stage shows, which were for the most part nothing to write home about. In 1925 she passed a screen test and was signed to a contract with Fox Films.

Her first role as a Fox player was Hearts and Spurs (1925), in which she had the lead. Right after that film she appeared in a western called Durand of the Bad Lands (1925). She rounded out 1925 in the comedy Marriage in Transit (1925) (she also appeared in a number of two-reel shorts). In 1926 Carole was seriously injured in an automobile accident that resulted in the left side of her face being scarred. Once she had recovered, Fox canceled her contract. She did find work in a number of shorts during 1928 (13 of them, many for slapstick comedy director Mack Sennett), but did go back for a one-time shot with Fox called Me, Gangster (1928). By now the film industry was moving from the silent era to "talkies". While some stars' careers ended because of heavy accents, poor diction or a voice unsuitable to sound, Carole's light, breezy, sexy voice enabled her to transition smoothly during this period.

Her first sound film was Wanted (1929) at Pathe (her new studio) in 1929. In 1931 she was teamed with William Powell in Man of the World (1931). She and Powell hit it off and soon married, but the marriage didn't work out and they divorced in 1933. No Man of Her Own (1932) put Carole opposite Clark Gable for the first and only time (they married seven years later in 1939). By now she was with Paramount Pictures and was one of its top stars. However, it was Twentieth Century (1934) that showed her true comedic talents and proved to the world what a fine actress she really was. In 1936 Carole received her only Oscar nomination for Best Actress for My Man Godfrey (1936). She was superb as ditzy heiress Irene Bullock. Unfortunately, the coveted award went to Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which also won for Best Picture.

Carole was now putting out about one film a year of her own choosing, because she wanted whatever role she picked to be a good one. She was adept at picking just the right part, which wasn't surprising as she was smart enough to see through the good-ol'-boy syndrome of the studio moguls. She commanded and received what was one of the top salaries in the business - at one time it was reported she was making $35,000 a week. She made but one film in 1941, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941). Her last film was in 1942, when she played Maria Tura opposite Jack Benny in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Tragically, she didn't live to see its release.

The film was completed in 1941 just at the time the US entered World War II, and was subsequently held back for release until 1942. Meanwhile, Carole went home to Indiana for a war bond rally. On January 16, 1942, Carole, her mother, and 20 other people were flying back to California when the plane went down outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. All aboard perished. The highly acclaimed actress was dead at the age of 33 and few have been able to match her talents since.

Biography: Taken from Imdb
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Old Hollywood Inspiration: Mae West

Mary Jane West was born in Brooklyn, New York, on August 17, 1893, to parents involved in prizefighting and vaudeville. Mae herself worked on the stage and in vaudeville from the time she was five years old. She never was academically inclined because she was too busy performing. She studied dance as a child, and by the time she was 14 she was billed as "The Baby Vamp" for her performances on stage.

Later Mae began writing her own plays. One of those plays, "Sex", landed her in jail for ten days on obscenity charges in 1926. Two years later her play "Diamond Lil" became a huge Broadway success. Mae caught the attention of the Hollywood studios and was given her first movie role with George Raft in Night After Night (1932). Although it was a small role, she was able to display a wit that was to make her world-famous. Raft himself said of Mae, "She stole everything but the cameras." She became a box-office smash hit, breaking all sorts of attendance records.

Her second film, She Done Him Wrong (1933), was based on her earlier and popular play that she had written herself. The film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture. It also made Cary Grant a star. Her third film later that year was I'm No Angel (1933). The controversy aroused by these two films resulted in the studios establishing the Motion Picture Production Code, which regulated what content could be shown or said in pictures. As a result of these codes, Mae began to double-talk so that a person could take a word or phrase any way they wished. This was so she could get her material past the censors, and it worked.

She really felt she had a vested interest because it was her written work being scrutinized. She had already written and performed these for the stage with the very material now being filmed. Her next film, Belle of the Nineties (1934), was an equal hit. By 1936, with Klondike Annie (1936) and Go West Young Man (1936) she became the highest paid woman in the US. After 1937's Every Day's a Holiday (1937), she didn't make another film until 1940, when she co-starred with W.C. Fields in another film she wrote herself, My Little Chickadee (1940). It was well known she had little use for Fields and his ways, which were crude even for her.

After Tropicana (1943), Mae took a respite from the film world, mainly because the censors were getting stricter. She decided she would be able to have greater expression in her work if she went back to the stage. Mae continued to be a success there. When censorship began to end in the 1960s, she returned to film work in 1970's Myra Breckinridge (1970). Her last film was 1978's Sextette (1978). Mae suffered a series of strokes which finally resulted in her death at age 87 on November 22, 1980, in Hollywood, California.

She was buried in New York. The actress, who only appeared in 12 films in 46 years, had a powerful impact on us. There was no doubt she was way ahead of her time with her sexual innuendos and how she made fun of a puritanical society. She did a lot to bring it out of the closet and perhaps we should be grateful for that.

Biography: Taken from Imdb
Photos: Taken from here

Old Hollywood Inspiration: Jayne Mansfield

One of the leading sex symbols of the 1950's 1960's and movie and B movie actress, Jayne Mansfield was born in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, 19 April 1933 and as a child she was a talented pianist and violin player.

Amazingly her IQ was reported to be a 163 and she attended the University of Dallas and participated in little-theatre productions. In 1949 at age 16 she married a man 8 years her senior named Paul Mansfield the next year when Jayne Mansfield was 17 the two had a child named Jayne Marie Mansfield. She landed a small but sexy role in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), which led to roles that were more prominent in several ways also when she started her movie career she played in movies with popular actors and actresses to help kick start her movie career.

A job in the Broadway production of "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" brought her a good deal of attention for her scantily clad appearance, and she repeated the role in the film version with CoStar Tony Randall (A actor who would later on CoStar in a movie with Marilyn Monroe in 1960 called "Let's Make Love"). Her high-pitched squeal of delight and the studied ease with which she flaunted her more than obvious pulchritude led to a succession of roles as sex kittens and dumb blonde bombshells. She occasionally appeared in films of some quality, but though she apparently aspired to respectability as an actress, her public persona was too extreme to be taken seriously, and she became a sort of poor man's 'Marilyn Monroe' or as the backup or second star for Marilyn Monroe, without the vulnerability and ability that Monroe possessed also the popular movie studios did not think she was that much of a dumb blonde because she knew her movies lines easily.

In the early 1960's she began affairs with many famous individuals like 35th President JFK and his younger brother RFK. By the 1960s Mansfield's career had options that grew lower. She made somewhat embarrassing guest appearances like on the 1950's popular game show "What's My Line?" she appeared on the show 4 times 1956, 1957, 1964, and 1966 and many other 1950's and 1960's game shows also by 1962 she was dropped from 20th Century Fox and the rest of her career had smaller options like being in B movies and low budget movies or performing at food stores or small nightclubs.

On June 29, 1967, Jayne was killed when the car in which she was riding crashed into the back of a semi on the road near Slidell, Louisiana. Her lawyer Sam Brody also perished in the accident. The beautiful woman who starred in 31 movies, the woman who fought so hard for respectability, the woman who, in her own right, was a very good actress was dead at the age of 34. Her final film, Single Room Furnished (1968) was released the following year.

Biography: Taken from Imdb
Photos: Taken from here

Old Hollywood Inspiration: Olivia De Havilland

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born to a British patent attorney and his wife on July 1, 1916, in Tokyo, Japan. Her sister, Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her parents divorced when Olivia was just three years old, and she moved with her mother and sister to Saratoga, California.

After graduating from high school, where she fell prey to the acting bug, Olivia enrolled in Mills College in Oakland. It was while she was at Mills that she participated in the school play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and was spotted by Max Reinhardt. She so impressed Reinhardt that he picked her up for both his stage version and, later, the Warner Bros. film version in 1935.

She again was so impressive that Warner executives signed her to a seven-year contract. No sooner had the ink dried on the contract than Olivia appeared in three more films: The Irish in Us (1935), Alibi Ike (1935) and Captain Blood (1935), the latter with the man with whom her career would be most closely identified, heartthrob Errol Flynn. He and Olivia starred together in eight films during their careers.

In 1939 Warner Bros. loaned her to David O. Selznick for the classic Gone with the Wind (1939). Playing the sweet Melanie Hamilton, Olivia received her first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, only to lose out to one of her co-stars in the film, Hattie McDaniel. After GWTW, Olivia returned to Warner Bros. and continued to churn out films.

In 1941 she played Emmy Brown in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which resulted in her second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. Again she lost, this time to her sister Joan for her role in Suspicion (1941). After that strong showing, Olivia now demanded better, more substantial roles than the "sweet young thing" slot into which Warners had been fitting her. The studio responded by placing her on a six-month suspension, all of the studios at the time operating under the policy that players were nothing more than property to do with as they saw fit.

As if that weren't bad enough, when her contract with Warners was up, she was told that she would have to make up the time lost because of the suspension. Irate, she sued the studio, and for the length of the court battle she didn't appear in a single film. The result, however, was worth it. In a landmark decision, the court said not only that Olivia did not have to make up the time, but that all performers were to be limited to a seven-year contract that would include any suspensions handed down. This became known as the "de Havilland decision"; no longer could studios treat their performers as mere cattle.

Returning to screen in 1946, Olivia made up for lost time by appearing in four films, one of which finally won her the Oscar that had so long eluded her. It was To Each His Own (1946), in which she played Josephine Norris to the delight of critics and audiences alike. Olivia was the strongest performer in Hollywood for the balance of the 1940s. In 1948 she turned in another strong showing in The Snake Pit (1948) as Virginia Cunningham, a woman suffering a mental breakdown. The end result was another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but she lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948).

As in the two previous years, she made only one film in 1949, but she again won a nomination and the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Heiress (1949). After a three-year hiatus, Olivia returned to star in My Cousin Rachel (1952). From that point on, she made few appearances on the screen but was seen on Broadway and in some television shows. Her last screen appearance was in The Fifth Musketeer (1979), and her last career appearance was in the TV movie The Woman He Loved (1988) (TV). During the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of GWTW in 1989, she graciously declined requests for all interviews as the only surviving one of the four main stars. Today she enjoys a quiet retirement in Paris, France.

Biography taken from Imdb
Images taken from here

Old Hollywood Inspiration: Kim Novak

Kim Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 13, 1933 with the birth name of Marilyn Pauline Novak. She was the daughter of a former teacher turned transit clerk and his wife, also a former teacher.

Her first job, after high school, was modeling teen fashions for a local department store. Kim, later, won a scholarship in a modeling school and continued to model part time.

Ultimately, her modeling landed her an appearance as an uncredited extra in The French Line (1953). Later a talent agent arranged for a screen test with Columbia Pictures and won a small six month contract. After taking some acting lesson, Kim appeared in her first film, Pushover (1954), which was a critical and financial failure.

Later that year, Kim appeared in Phffft (1954) with Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday. Her next role was as "Kay Greylek" in 5 Against the House (1955), followed by the Otto Preminger film The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). Kim's next film, Picnic (1955), became her best film to date and was her breakthrough to stardom.

Kim did a superb job of acting in the film as did her costars. In 1957, Kim played "Linda English" in the hit movie Pal Joey (1957) with Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth. The film did very well at the box-office, but was condemned by the critics. Kim really didn't seem that interested in the role. She even said she couldn't stand people such as her character.

In 1958, Kim appeared in Vertigo (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film was one in which a retired detective, played by James Stewart, follows a suicidal blonde half his age (Kim). He later finds out that Kim was only masquerading as that person, and is actually a brunette shopgirl who set him up as part of a murder scheme. The film was a flop upon release, but is now considered a classic.

By the early 1960s, Kim's star was beginning to fade, even though she was still only in her 20s. She was being overpowered by the rise of new stars or stars that were remodeling their status within the film community. With a few more nondescript films between 1960 and 1964, she landed the role of "Mildred Rogers" in the remake of Of Human Bondage (1964).

Kim married Richard Johnson whom she met while filming The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965). They divorced a year later, but remain friends. Kim stepped away from the cameras for a while, returning in 1968 to star in The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968). It was a resounding flop, perhaps the worst of her career.

After that, Kim basically didn't see herself as having a career, even though she was only 35. For the rest of the eighties, Kim was out of movies and only had a few television gigs.

From 1986 to 1987, Kim played "Kit Marlowe" in 19 episodes of the TV series "Falcon Crest" (1981). In 1990 she had a leading role in the little-seen movie The Children (1990), where she starred opposite Ben Kingsley. Kim's last film to date was 1991's Liebestraum (1991), in which she played a terminally ill woman with a past. The film was a major disappointment in every aspect. Since then, she has rejected many offers to appear in films and on TV.Since 1976, Kim has been married to Robert Malloy (born 1940), a veterinarian. She now lives on a ranch in Oregon and is an accomplished artist who expresses herself in oil paintings and sculptures. Kim and her husband raise lamas and horses, and frequently ski and go canoeing.

Kim began writing an autobiography in 2000, but it was lost when her house caught on fire, destroying the computer that contained her only draft. She later said that the fire was a sign that she shouldn't be writing an autobiography. In a rare 2007 interview, the still-stunning former actress said she would consider returning to acting "if the right thing came along".

Biography taken from Imdb
Photos taken from here

Old Hollywood Inspiration: Judy Garland

Frances Ethel Gumm was born in 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

Her family life was not a happy one, due largely in part to her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town due to her father's illicit affairs with other men and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile.

However in September 1935 the Gumm's, in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular 30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.

Tragedy soon followed however in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935 and, having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs "You Made Me Love You" at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.

Following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You", MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This proved to be the downward spiral that resulted in her life-long drug addiction

In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song 'Over The Rainbow' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29th February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for more meatier, adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14.

She was now taking an interest in men and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to band leader David Rose in May 1941. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on 28 July 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions'. The couple separated in January 1943.

By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Girl (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own, instead of the influence of the domineering MGM and her mother. Their affair ended in November 1943 and soon afterward, Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to make her a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.

On 12 March 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter Liza Minnelli via Caesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the Caesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time re-cooperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations of people, especially of her husband, making the filming a nightmare.

She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which proved a successful comeback, despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again, before making her final film for MGM entitled If You Feel Like Singing (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM and her second marriage was soon dissolved.

Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce to Vincente Minnelli was finalized on 29th March 1951 after almost 6 years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she fell pregnant by her new lover Sid. She made him her third husband on 8 June 1952 at the age of 30 after tying the knot with him at a friend's ranch in Pasadena.

Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began and as a result, set off an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra and after filming was complete, Judy was yet again immortalized for being a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out to Grace Kelly for the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). It is still argued today that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly.

In 1961, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961) at the age of 39, for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time lost out to Rita Moreno for the coveted Academy Award, due to her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy making thousands of headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently and on 19 May 1965, their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage.

She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her her whole life, on the 22nd of June 1969 at the age of 47.

Biography taken from IMDB
Images taken from here