Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Lucille Ball, 1979 (via) “People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don’t strive or exert themselves. They’re moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field- not only show business- often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood. I wasn’t an unloved or an unwanted child, but I was moved around a lot, and then death and cruel circumstances brought many painful separations.” -Ball, in her autobiography Love, Lucy (via)

Lucille Ball, 1979 (via)

“People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don’t strive or exert themselves. They’re moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field- not only show business- often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood. I wasn’t an unloved or an unwanted child, but I was moved around a lot, and then death and cruel circumstances brought many painful separations.”

-Ball, in her autobiography Love, Lucy (via)

On Aging: ”Love affairs, adventures - these become less important and your work takes on greater meaning because it gives you the illusion of still being young. So you have a growing sense of security there - and less in life, where I am increasingly insecure. The public says bravo, but those close to you say, ‘You’re past 60 and you still have the brain of a 10-year-old. How is it possible? How else could it be? The Madonna, when I was born, said, ‘That one, he’s to remain forever a baby and become an actor.’  I work overtime with my fantasies and always have. Fellini said that when we got past 60, there’d be less trouble, more peace. Women are beautiful, but they complicate life. At night, you don’t sleep, you talk, you argue, you make love at 5 in the morning, then drag yourself off to the studio - a madhouse! But now, there’s still no peace, it’s even worse. Sunday morning, at the beach at Ostia, I see these pretty girls in bathing suits and I go crazy. With my fantasies, it’ll never end, even at 100! Women see more clearly - too clearly sometimes, especially for an actor who does everything to make real something which, in reality, does not exist. In the theater, you turn a lie, a fiction, into a truth, an illusion into a reality. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been attracted to actresses. They understand this.” -Marcello Mastroianni, 1987 (via)

On Aging:

”Love affairs, adventures - these become less important and your work takes on greater meaning because it gives you the illusion of still being young. So you have a growing sense of security there - and less in life, where I am increasingly insecure. The public says bravo, but those close to you say, ‘You’re past 60 and you still have the brain of a 10-year-old. How is it possible? How else could it be? The Madonna, when I was born, said, ‘That one, he’s to remain forever a baby and become an actor.’ 

I work overtime with my fantasies and always have. Fellini said that when we got past 60, there’d be less trouble, more peace. Women are beautiful, but they complicate life. At night, you don’t sleep, you talk, you argue, you make love at 5 in the morning, then drag yourself off to the studio - a madhouse! But now, there’s still no peace, it’s even worse.

Sunday morning, at the beach at Ostia, I see these pretty girls in bathing suits and I go crazy. With my fantasies, it’ll never end, even at 100! Women see more clearly - too clearly sometimes, especially for an actor who does everything to make real something which, in reality, does not exist. In the theater, you turn a lie, a fiction, into a truth, an illusion into a reality. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been attracted to actresses. They understand this.”

-Marcello Mastroianni, 1987 (via)

Marcello Mastroianni in Le Notti Bianche (1957, dir. Luchino Visconti)

Marcello Mastroianni in Le Notti Bianche (1957, dir. Luchino Visconti)

Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir.Stanley Kubrick) “Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I’m interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it’s a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.” -Stanley Kubrick, 1972

Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir.Stanley Kubrick)

“Man isn’t a noble savage, he’s an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved—that about sums it up. I’m interested in the brutal and violent nature of man because it’s a true picture of him. And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure.”

-Stanley Kubrick, 1972

Stanley Kubrick & Giant Penis* on the set of A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir. Stanley Kubrick) (via) “I haven’t come across any recent new ideas in films that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it.” -Kubrick, 1960 *Rocking Machine by Dutch sculptor Herman Makkink. 

Stanley Kubrick & Giant Penis* on the set of A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir. Stanley Kubrick) (via)

“I haven’t come across any recent new ideas in films that strike me as being particularly important and that have to do with form. I think that a preoccupation with originality of form is more or less a fruitless thing. A truly original person with a truly original mind will not be able to function in the old form and will simply do something different. Others had much better think of the form as being some sort of classical tradition and try to work within it.”

-Kubrick, 1960

*Rocking Machine by Dutch sculptor Herman Makkink. 

Marketa Lazarova (1967, dir. Frantisek Vlácil)

Marketa Lazarova (1967, dir. Frantisek Vlácil)

Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity (1946, dir. Billy Wilder) “How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”

Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity (1946, dir. Billy Wilder)

“How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?”

“Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don’t care what happened before. I don’t even care if I was in the rest of the damned thing - I’ll take it in those fifteen minutes.” -Barbara Stanwyck (photo by George Hurrell)

“Put me in the last fifteen minutes of a picture and I don’t care what happened before. I don’t even care if I was in the rest of the damned thing - I’ll take it in those fifteen minutes.”

-Barbara Stanwyck (photo by George Hurrell)

This is your brain on tannis root & Satanism: Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski)

This is your brain on tannis root & Satanism: Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby (1968, dir. Roman Polanski)

Marlene Dietrich in The Scarlett Empress (1934, dir. Josef von Sternberg)

Marlene Dietrich in The Scarlett Empress (1934, dir. Josef von Sternberg)

“Gentleman: A man who buys two of the same morning paper from the doorman of his favorite nightclub when he leaves with his girl.” -Marlene Dietrich (photo by Eugene Robert Richee)

“Gentleman: A man who buys two of the same morning paper from the doorman of his favorite nightclub when he leaves with his girl.”

-Marlene Dietrich (photo by Eugene Robert Richee)

Different From the Others (1919, dir. Richard Oswald) Different From the Others, initially released in Germany in 1919, may be the first feature-length film to address homosexuality.The silent film stars Conrad Veidt as Paul Korner, a renowned concert pianist & closeted homosexual who falls in love with his student (Fritz Schultz). Their secret romance is discovered by a blackmailer who threatens to expose Korner as a gay man, which in 1920’s Germany meant public disgrace & possible incarceration. The story ends tragically with Korner being shunned by society & driven to suicide. Different From the Others had a specific gay rights law reform agenda - director Richard Oswald & co-screenwriter Magnus Hirschfeld, a prominent sexologist/gay rights activist, made the film as a response to Germany’s Paragraph 175, a law which made homosexual acts between men a crime (and which also had the effect of making gays vulnerable to blackmail). Different From the Others was banned shortly after its release and prints of the film were among the “decadent” artworks burned by the Nazis after they came to power in the 1930s. As a result, only fragments of the film remain available for viewing.

Different From the Others (1919, dir. Richard Oswald)

Different From the Others, initially released in Germany in 1919, may be the first feature-length film to address homosexuality.The silent film stars Conrad Veidt as Paul Korner, a renowned concert pianist & closeted homosexual who falls in love with his student (Fritz Schultz). Their secret romance is discovered by a blackmailer who threatens to expose Korner as a gay man, which in 1920’s Germany meant public disgrace & possible incarceration. The story ends tragically with Korner being shunned by society & driven to suicide.

Different From the Others had a specific gay rights law reform agenda - director Richard Oswald & co-screenwriter Magnus Hirschfeld, a prominent sexologist/gay rights activist, made the film as a response to Germany’s Paragraph 175, a law which made homosexual acts between men a crime (and which also had the effect of making gays vulnerable to blackmail).

Different From the Others was banned shortly after its release and prints of the film were among the “decadent” artworks burned by the Nazis after they came to power in the 1930s. As a result, only fragments of the film remain available for viewing.

Welles arrives at the premiere of Citizen Kane at New York’s Palace Theater (1941, photo by Peter Stackpole) On creating popular art: Nothing has ever been too good for the public. Nothing has ever been good enough for the public. -Orson Welles, 1942

Welles arrives at the premiere of Citizen Kane at New York’s Palace Theater (1941, photo by Peter Stackpole)

On creating popular art:

Nothing has ever been too good for the public.
Nothing has ever been good enough for the public.

-Orson Welles, 1942

Julie London - Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night of the Week)

Eddra Gale as La Saraghina in 8 1/2 (1963, dir. Federico Fellini) “She is sex seen by a child. Hence she is grotesque, but also seductive to one so innocent.” - Fellini

Eddra Gale as La Saraghina in 8 1/2 (1963, dir. Federico Fellini)

“She is sex seen by a child. Hence she is grotesque, but also seductive to one so innocent.” - Fellini