Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Hollywood's Golden Age Edition

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies

Hollywood's Golden Age Edition

Hollywood's Golden age captures the time period when silent films blossomed into talkies. While one of these films predates that period, it's still a golden time, when stars had to truly hustle and the entire industry would spin on a dime.

Then, during the mid-70's through the early '80's, Hollywood became truly enamored with its own past, spinning out picture after picture about the making of motion pictures before WWII. Today, we take a look at a few of those and one which predates that craze by a good twenty years. 

And speaking of crazed...

Cocaine? Divas? Egos? Bad Behavior?

Some of these are chockful of the kind of lore I adore... down and dirty behind-the-scenes gossip which will leave you begging for more. I did my best to dig up all the dirt I could find. If you know something more, please share it in the comments section.

That said, let's turn back the clock and get a taste of a time 'when pictures were pictures'.  

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Singin' In The Rain

(1952)

A silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his delusional, jealous screen partner are trying to make the difficult transition to talking pictures in 1920's Hollywood.

This romantic comedy musical  was directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and stars Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds along with Jean Hagen, Millard Mitchell and Cyd Charisse.

Most of the characters are based on actual people: 

R.F. Simpson, the studio head, is obviously a parody on Louis B. Mayer, with touches of Arthur Freed.

Dora Bailey is an obvious caricature of Louella Parsons.

Zelda Zanders, the "Zip Girl" is based on Clara Bow, the "It Girl".

Roscoe Dexter, the director is based on eccentric director Erich von Stroheim.

Olga, the vamp at the premiere, is based on Pola Negri and Gloria Swanson, both of whom landed royalty as husbands.

Howard Keel was the original choice to play the male lead, but was replaced by Kelly once the screenwriters evolved the character from a Western actor to a song-and-dance vaudevillian.

This was Gene Kelly's trump card to get out of his contract with MGM. He later stated that he was angry that MGM had repeatedly prevented him from accepting lead roles in other films, such as Guys and Dolls. Kelly got his wish: the star's extremely hostile attitude throughout the filming of Singin' in the Rain resulted in MGM releasing him from his contract.

The role of Cosmo was written with Oscar Levant in mind, but eventually given to Donald O'Connor.

For the Make 'em Laugh number, Gene Kelly asked Donald O'Connor to revive a trick he had done as a young dancer: running up a wall and completing a somersault. The number was so physically taxing that O'Connor, who smoked four packs of cigarettes a day at the time, ended up in a hospital bed for a week after its completion. He suffered from exhaustion and painful carpet burns. Unfortunately, a camera slip-up rendered all the initial footage unusable, so after a brief rest O'Connor agreed to do the difficult number all over again.

As Donald O'Connor recalled: "I was smoking four packs of cigarettes a day then, and getting up those walls was murder. They had to bank one wall so I could make it up and then through another wall. We filmed that whole sequence in one day. We did it on a concrete floor. My body just had to absorb this tremendous shock. Things were building to such a crescendo that I thought I'd have to commit suicide for the ending. I came back on the set three days later. All the grips applauded. Gene Kelly applauded, told me what a great number it was. Then Gene said, "Do you think you could do that number again?" I said, "Sure, any time." He said, "Well, we're going to have to do it again tomorrow." No one had checked the aperture of the camera and they fogged out all the film. So the next day I did it again! By the end my feet and ankles were a mass of bruises."

In order to avoid creating scenes on the set, Kelly would use O'Connor as his whipping boy when he was frustrated with Debbie Reynolds. Kelly knew O'Connor could take the tongue lashing he really wanted to lay on Reynolds, who was only 19 at the time of filming. This fact was revealed to Reynolds by O'Connor years later.

Both O'Connor and Reynolds admitted that they did not enjoy working with Kelly, because Kelly was frequently verbally belittling and a total tyrant. O'Connor said that for the first several weeks he was terrified of making a mistake and being yelled at by Kelly.

During the pre-production stage, Judy Garland, June Allyson and Ann Miller were up for the female lead, but were considered 'too old' by the powers that be. Jane Powell and Leslie Caron were also considered before Debbie Reynolds was finally cast.

Prior to filming, Gene Kelly had a meeting with studio head Louis B. Mayer in his office to discuss casting. Mayer had Debbie Reynolds enter during the meeting. When Kelly rose to greet her, Mayer said "I'd like to introduce you to your leading lady." Kelly stared at Mayer for a minute, looked at Reynolds and asked, "Can you dance?" To which Reynolds responded, "Well, a little." Gene then turned to Mayer and said "L.B., what are you doing to me?" Throughout the film, Kelly was unhappy with the casting of Reynolds, and he worked her hard and brutally during production. So hard that Reynolds (in addition to O'Connor) was hospitalized during production for exhaustion.

Reynolds had no professional dancing experience. She pointed this out when she was asked to be in the film. Gene Kelly decided he could teach her as he had done with Frank Sinatra for Anchors Aweigh in 1945. Reynolds had been a gymnast, so she wasn't unfamiliar with physical movement requiring grace and stamina. Ever the trouper, she buckled down and rehearsed day and night until she could share a dance floor with Kelly and O'Connor.

One day, during filming, Fred Astaire, who was in an adjacent dance studio, found Reynolds crying under a piano and reassured her that all of her hard work was worth the effort. When she told him what had happened, he offered to tutor her and helped elevate her dancing performance.

After they finished the Good Morning number, Debbie Reynolds had to be carried to her dressing room because she had burst some blood vessels in her feet. Despite her hard work, Gene Kelly ultimately decided to dub the sound of her feet.

Only 19 years-old when cast in the film, Reynolds lived with her parents and commuted to the set. She had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and ride three different buses to the studio; sometimes, to avoid the commute, she would simply sleep on the set.

Debbie Reynolds remarked many years later that making this movie and surviving childbirth were the two hardest things she'd ever had to do. The filming experience was particularly unpleasant due to her harsh treatment by perfectionist Gene Kelly. Decades later, Kelly expressed remorse about his behavior: "I wasn't nice to Debbie. It's a wonder she still speaks to me."

The role of the ditzy movie diva was written with Judy Holliday in mind. Holliday was a close friend of Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the screenwriters, and the duo modeled the character on routines they had worked up with Holliday back when the three of them were part of a satirical group called The Revuers in New York. Timing was everything, however, and the idea of casting Holliday was vetoed after she hit it big in Born Yesterday. Everyone figured Holliday would be uninterested in a supporting part. Instead, they turned to Jean Hagen, who had been Holliday's understudy when Born Yesterday was a stage show on Broadway. Hagen didn't base her character's voice on any actual silent film stars. The entire performance: the squeaky, raspy voice; the Sunnyside, Queens, accent; the hair, makeup and body language - was based on characters Judy Holliday typically portrayed, especially Holliday's Oscar-winning performance in Born Yesterday.

In the looping sequence, Reynolds is seen dubbing the dialogue for  Jean Hagen's character because the actress's voice is shrill and screechy. However, it's not Reynolds who is speaking, it's actually Hagen herself, who in real life possessed a beautiful deep, rich voice. So you have Jean Hagen dubbing Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen. And when Reynolds is supposedly dubbing Hagen's singing voice for the number Would You?, the voice you hear singing actually belongs to Betty Noyes, who had a much richer singing voice than Reynolds. However, other than that one number, Reynolds' own singing voice is used in all the other numbers in the film.

Kathleen Freeman's performance of a vocal coach to the stars was patterned after Constance Collier, who came to Hollywood in the late 1920's to work with the likes of Marion Davies and Norma Talmadge. Oddly, Kathleen Freeman, despite having dialogue in several scenes, went uncredited in the film. Also uncredited: Gene Kelly for choreography and accomplished Broadway dancers Carol Haney and Gwen Verdon, who served as choreography assistants to Kelly.

The Broadway Melody Ballet was a late addition to the film. Producer Arthur Freed was so impressed with how well a similar sequence in An American in Paris had turned out, he suggested that Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen conceive a similar scene-after most of the rest of the film had been shot.

The sequence took a month to rehearse, two weeks to shoot, and cost $600,000 - almost a fifth of the overall budget. Originally, it was to feature Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor, but the latter was unavailable due to a prior television commitment, so Cyd Charisse was tapped to replace him. She was made up to look like Louise Brooks and had to diet off the extra pounds she'd gained during her recent pregnancy. Charisse, a ballet dancer who had never before worked in heels, had to adjust her dancing style considerably to mesh with Kelly's jazz background. In turn, Kelly had to choreograph the number to mask the fact that Charisse was taller than he was; to keep the height difference from being obvious, Kelly staged the routine so that the two were rarely upright when standing next to each other, always bending toward or away from one another. 

Filming of the Crazy Veil section of the ballet had to be stopped for several hours after it was discovered that Cyd Charisse's pubic hair was clearly visible through her costume. When the problem was finally fixed, the film's costume designer Walter Plunkett said, "It's okay, guys, we've finally got Cyd's crotch licked." Charisse said that the long veil she wore during the sequence caught enough breeze from the fan that the pull almost caused her to lose her balance during some of the steps.

For the title number, studio technicians had to cover two outdoor city blocks on the backlot with tarps in order to make them dark for a night scene, and then equipped them with overhead sprays for the rain. Their efforts are all the more remarkable since there was a severe water shortage in Culver City the day the sequence was shot - they had to get local homeowners to forego watering their lawns in order to have enough. Ironically, with the way it was lit, for decades many people thought that the number was actually shot inside, in a street set built inside one of MGM's vast soundstages.

Kelly was suffering from a temperature of 103 F (39 C) when filming the title number.

The film rang up a final price tag of $2,540,800, $157,000 of which went to Walter Plunkett's costumes alone. Although the final price overshot MGM's budget by $665,000, the studio quickly realized the wisdom of its investment when the film returned a $7.7-million profit upon its initial release. Costume designer Walter Plunkett said that this was the most work he ever did on a film, including Gone with the Wind. Both films were period pieces, but this one required a greater number of elaborate, ornately detailed costumes. They had to be more accurate, too, since 1952 audiences remembered Hollywood of the late '20's more clearly than 1939 audiences remembered the Civil War. All told, Plunkett designed about 500 costumes. 

Most of the costumes from this film were eventually acquired by Debbie Reynolds and housed in her massive collection of original film costumes, sets and props. Many of these items were sold at a 2011 auction in Hollywood.

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The Party

(1968)

With the arrival of talking pictures, a silent film comedian throws a lavish party to try and save his failing career. His plan is to release one last, great silent epic.

 

This comedy-drama film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. for Merchant Ivory Productions was loosely based on Joseph Moncure March's narrative poem of the same name. The screenplay is written by Walter Marks, who also composed the score. It stars James Coco, Raquel Welch, Perry King, Royal Dano, Tiffany Bolling and David Dukes.

The film had a difficult, complicated, twisted birth, best summed up by Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, who in 1981, stated: "The Wild Party was made in 1975 but is only now receiving its New York premiere is the result of one of those not atypical fallings-out between the people who actually make movies and those who finance them. The original distributor, American International Pictures, didn't like Mr. Ivory's version and released, instead, a drastically cut, re-arranged version that did poorly at the box-office. The movie was then put on the shelf for four years. The film being shown... is the one Mr. Ivory and Mr. Merchant wanted released in the first place."

The film started life as a musical in the hands of composer Walter Mark. He took it to Edgar Lansbury and Joseph Beruh, producers of Broadway musicals such as Godspell. Then Ivory and Merchant got involved and the idea of it being a musical was dropped, and once Welch signed on the budget blossomed.

Two test screenings in Santa Barbara and San Diego in late January/early February 1975 went badly; the Santa Barbara preview audience, consisting mostly of University of California students, reported liking the orgy and fight scenes but hated Perry King and the new 'serious' Raquel Welch, while the San Diego audience of mainly middle-class people had the exact opposite reaction. Unsure about how to handle the contradictory results, AIP (the film's distributor) heavily re-edited the film. "They did more than recut it," said Ivory. "They turned it upside down and they distributed two versions. I never knew which is being shown." There was talk within the company of showing one version in cities and the other in small towns.

Ivory said the main changes were softening James Coco's character, adding discarded sex scenes, and introducing flashbacks and flashforwards. Ivory wrote that the "patched-together remnants" of the film "proves once more that you cannot effectively re-edit a picture and change its character in order to 'save' it." While Lansbury, Beruh and Marks approved of the re-cut, Welch hated it.

Not that it mattered... the film was a financial flop. Ivory thought the problem, apart from the re-editing, was that the audience could not identify with any of the characters. "I think its mixed style - part musical, part melodrama, part character piece - would have gone down better if the audience could have entered more into those characters' lives."

The part played by James Coco is partly inspired by silent film star Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, who had been accused of raping and accidentally killing bit player Virginia Rappe during a party he threw on Labor Day weekend of 1921. However, the movie had nothing to do with the Arbuckle/Rappe case.

Coco once said of this picture, "There isn't anything I don't get to do and that's terribly appealing to any actor. It's full, fleshed out. And part of it is silent. I get to do love scenes with Raquel, I don't get that opportunity too often. I usually get the mule. She isn't what I expected. She's small. She's very serious, an organic actor and I love that. We have a marvelous relationship."

Producer Edgar Lansbury wanted to cast actress Deborah Darr in the female lead. However, she proved unavailable due to scheduling conflicts while appearing on Broadway in the 1974 stage revival of Candide. In the end, the character was cast with actress Raquel Welch.

File this under: Oh, Diva, Puh-leeze!

Ivory became another in a long line of film professionals to have remarked how Raquel Welch was very hard to work with, saying she... "was a very, very difficult actress to work with."  At one point, Welch tried to fire cinematographer Walter Lassally, co-star Perry King, and even tried to replace Ivory as director with her boyfriend at the time, the film's costume designer, Ron Talsky, until the Directors Guild of America stepped in with a warning letter. Said Ivor, "I did not enjoy making The Wild Party."

During shooting, director James Ivory called one of the takes of a scene with Raquel Welch "a bit dull" and asked for a retake. Because of this, Welch walked off the set and refused to return until Ivory apologized to her in front of the entire cast and crew. Ivory capitulated and they continued with the scene.

One of the producers, Edgar Lansbury agreed with Ivory's assessment, saying, "She's very insecure when she's working." 

Co-star Tiffany Bolling said in a 1991 interview that James Coco was a prince who was always kind and professional, but she didn't get along with Raquel Welch. There was one scene in particular where Bolling's character is tipsy and holding a glass of vodka - which was actually water - when she greets Welch's character. Before filming it, Welch told Bolling to be careful about spilling anything on her $5,000 dress. While filming, when Bolling did spill water on the dress, Welch got angry, halted filming and walked off set.

Ivory later said "the egos and temper tantrums in the heat of May and June, the large crowds of extras, the festering atmosphere reminded me of working among those tempestuous movie stars in Bombay."

Raquel Welch

Reportedly, Raquel Welch and costume designer Ron Talsky were in a personal relationship around the time this movie was made and released. Talsky also designed Welch's clothes for The Last of Sheila, Kansas City Bomber, The Three Musketeers, and The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge.

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Hearts Of The West

(1975)

AKA: Hollywood Cowboy

The writer of Wild West dime novels dreams of becoming a cowboy. When he goes west to follow his dream, he falls into possession of a box of loot belonging to two crooks who tried to rob him. During his escape, Lewis stumbles onto the set of a Wild West movie, and through mishap and chance, becomes the star of a Hollywood Western.

A remake of 1932’s Make Me a Star, this comedy was directed by Howard Zieff, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and stars Jeff Bridges, Andy Griffith, Blythe Danner, and Alan Arkin. 

Screenwriter Rob Thompson launched a successful career with this film. He went on to be a major creative talent on the television series Northern Exposure (for which he won an Emmy) and Monk.

Alan Arkin won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Hearts Of The West was named one of the National Board of Review's Top Ten Films for 1975.

Despite good reviews, the film was a financial disappointment for MGM upon release in 1975, but has since developed a significant cult following.

 

Blythe Danner and Jeff Bridges

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Nickelodeon

(1976)

A Chicago lawyer and a snake-oil salesman from Florid accidentally get involved in the moving-picture-making business, creating 1-4 reelers which are shown at nickelodeons. The lawyer writes 'em and the salesman performs 'em - despite not knowing anything bout cameras, story, plot, or acting. They join the industry at a time when the big moving-picture companies formed the Patents Company, which used heavy-handed tactics to prevent small companies, like the one these two work for, from being able to make pictures. The Patents Company would frequently prevent small film companies from using cameras due to a supposed patent. This resulted in the smaller companies filming on the sly. When a klutzy Chautauqua girl happens to wander onto such a set, she becomes involved in the film, stealing the hearts and affections of both men.

This comedy was directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and stars Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds and Tatum O'Neal with John Ritter, Jane Hitchcock, Brian Keith, and Stella Stevens. According to Bogdanovich, the film was based on true stories told to him by silent film directors Allan Dwan and Raoul Walsh.

Peter Bogdanovich wanted Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, John Ritter and Orson Welles for the lead roles. However, Columbia Pictures head David Begelman refused and Burt Reynolds and Ryan O'Neal were cast instead. He also refused to allow Bogdanovich's then-girlfriend Shepherd have the female lead due to the poor box office performance of Daisy Miller and At Long Last Love - both of which starred Shepherd and were directed by Bogdanovich.

This is another picture which had a bit of trouble getting to the big screen.

In his memoirs, Irwin Winkler says he wanted to make a movie about the silent film era. He took the idea to W.D. Richter, with whom he had worked a number of times, and Richter agreed to write the project on "spec". Richter's final script was called Starlight Parade, and attracted interest from United Artists and Columbia. David Begelman at Columbia suggested Peter Bogdanovich as director.

Winkler later stated:

"[Bogdanovich] made David come to his office and wait until the receptionist said: 'Mr. Bogdanovich will see you now.' As soon as we came inside, we were very haughtily told that he thought the script was a piece of shit. I'd been around long enough to know that I should take that as a bad sign. I remember coming out of the meeting, saying, 'David, why should we make the movie with someone who hates our script?' And all David said was, 'Hey, he's a genius.' What he filmed had nothing to do with the original script. I know it meant a lot to Peter to have all of the authentic stories about the silent period in the film, but Rick's script, authentic or not, was terrific. It was just a great drama. By the time Peter was done with it, it was authentic, but it wasn't dramatic anymore. Peter hadn't really experienced any failure yet - we hired him before At Long Last Love had come out - so he was easily the most arrogant person I'd ever met in the business, before or since. When we shot the picture, he actually directed some of the scenes on horseback. When I asked him why he was on horseback, he said: "Because that's the way John Ford did it."

Bogdanovich remembers it differently:

"I should have never gotten involved, I should have done it myself. I'd been planning to do a big picture about the silent era, largely based on the interviews with Dwan, Walsh and McCarey. I was preparing it and I got a call from my agent and she said they're preparing a movie called Starlight Parade, there's another director involved but they want you. I said, "Well, I don't really want to do their script, I'll have to rewrite it completely." "They'll let you rewrite it, whatever you want." Basically I rewrote the whole damn thing and never used any of Starlight Parade. The trouble was, again, the picture had a balance between comedy and drama and it was a comedy-drama, no question about it, and I had wanted to do it in black and white. It was very important to do it in black and white and Columbia, the studio, wouldn't let me. I had a big fight about that and they cancelled the picture. Then Barry Spikings at British-Lion came in and funded some of the picture, threw in a few million dollars. It ended up being a Columbia-British Lion picture and but when it was all done it was a difficult picture."

More from Bogdanovich:

"The previews were edgy and the studio wanted me to take most of the drama out, play it more comedy and turn it more into a What's Up Doc?, which it really wasn't. So that threw it off and it got fucked up. Again, the picture came out not at all the way I wanted. I tried to recut that one and I couldn't get back to it. There's about five minutes I'd like to put back that really makes a difference, some heavy stuff where you find out that Ryan O'Neal has an affair with Stella Stevens, it becomes very clear, and you see that John Ritter knows it, all that stuff. It was just much heavier and darker. So the picture got screwed up and that's why I took three years off and went away."

"I couldn't seem to get anything across to them. I felt like I was talking into a void. When you've had a few successes you can say the stupidest things in the world and people will think it's clever. When you've had a few flops, you can say something perfectly reasonable and they look at you as if they had no idea what you are talking about."

Orson Welles had urged Peter Bogdanovich to photograph the film in black and white.

Ryan O'Neal's character Leo Harrigan is based on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.

During filming, Burt Reynolds collapsed on set one day. Doctors could not figure out what was wrong with him and the film had to be postponed for two weeks while he recovered. When the film went over schedule and over budget, director Peter Bogdanovich had to forfeit $500,000 of his $700,000 fee per his contract.

This movie has yet to be released on home video. Peter Bogdanovich has ownership and has refused to release it. It was briefly known to be available on one streaming service and as a DVD, packaged with The Last Picture Show.

And it seems W.D. Richter sort of had the final word: 

"After it became clear the picture was a failure, the most amazing thing happened: I got more job offers than ever before in my life. People seemed so mad at Peter that they were eager to make excuses for me and help me out. And they all wanted to hear about working with him."

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Under The Rainbow

(1981)

The manager of the Culver Hotel in Los Angels leaves his nephew in charge for a weekend. The nephew changes the name to the Hotel Rainbow and overbooks the place, filling it with royalty, assassins, secret agents, Japanese tourists, and munchkins from the cast of The Wizard of Oz which is currently being filmed. Amidst the intrigue, chaos and confusion, a handsome Secret Service agent and a casting director with more on her hands than she can handle find romance.

This comedy was directed by Steve Rash and stars Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher, Eve Arden, and Billy Barty.

According Mutant Reviewers, "part of the inspiration for Under the Rainbow comes from rumors that the little people did party hard and tear apart the hotel they stayed at during filming of The Wizard of Oz. Those rumors do not seem to be true, but were used as basis of this film."

Jerry Maren, who plays the pitcher in the kitchen baseball scene, had previously played a member of the Lollipop Guild in 1939's The Wizard of Oz. Maren later said he regretted making this film, because it was in such poor taste, and nothing remotely like what happened while filming The Wizard of Oz. 

Some location filming occurred at the Culver Hotel, where the actors playing Munchkins had actually stayed during the production of The Wizard of Oz.

The film was a box office disappointment grossing $8.3 million in its initial run. The film was nominated for Razzie Awards for Worst Musical Score by Joe Renzetti and a Worst Supporting Actor nod for Billy Barty. It received extremely negative reviews, many of which condemned the various sight gags involving the little people.

When Carrie Fisher was a guest on the The Tonight Show, she admitted that this was one of the worst movies she ever starred in. Additionally, Chevy Chase described the film as "one of the worst movies ever made."

Film debut of Zelda Rubinstein.

According to legend, the cocaine use on the set was quite profuse. Fisher later said that while filming Under The Rainbow, "I was completely crazy. I was on drugs, I started losing a lot of weight. I was not sleeping. I had a seizure on the set."

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next time...

Same channel, same place.

Singapore Sally - Raquel Welch

from the 1975 motion picture The Wild Party