Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Marilyn Monroe & Tony Curtis (who I choose to believe is throwing horns) on the set of Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder) “[The tailor on Some Like It Hot] measured me, 16, 34, 43, 18, 19, 18,” Tony Curtis later recalled, “and then he goes to Marilyn - this is all in the same day and this is the truth…He comes in to Marilyn’s room and Marilyn had on a pair of panties and a white blouse and that’s all. He put the tape around her legs, looked up at Marilyn and said, ‘You know, Tony Curtis has got a better-looking ass than you.’ She was standing there, she unbuttoned her blouse, and said, ‘He doesn’t have tits like these!’” For once, I think we need these salty stories, because Monroe needs all the salt she can get. The Marilyn industry is so deeply soaked in her crack-ups -shaking the poor woman until we can hear the slosh of booze and the rattle of pills -that it’s a relief to get back to the floozie with the forked tongue. -Anthony Lane, excerpted from “On Billy Wilder”, The New Yorker

Marilyn Monroe & Tony Curtis (who I choose to believe is throwing horns) on the set of Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder)

“[The tailor on Some Like It Hot] measured me, 16, 34, 43, 18, 19, 18,” Tony Curtis later recalled, “and then he goes to Marilyn - this is all in the same day and this is the truth…He comes in to Marilyn’s room and Marilyn had on a pair of panties and a white blouse and that’s all. He put the tape around her legs, looked up at Marilyn and said, ‘You know, Tony Curtis has got a better-looking ass than you.’ She was standing there, she unbuttoned her blouse, and said, ‘He doesn’t have tits like these!’”

For once, I think we need these salty stories, because Monroe needs all the salt she can get. The Marilyn industry is so deeply soaked in her crack-ups -shaking the poor woman until we can hear the slosh of booze and the rattle of pills -that it’s a relief to get back to the floozie with the forked tongue.

-Anthony Lane, excerpted from “On Billy Wilder”, The New Yorker

Marilyn Monroe - Some Like it Hot

Anouk Aimée & Jean-Louis Trintignant in Un homme et une femme (1966, Claude Lelouch)

Anouk Aimée & Jean-Louis Trintignant in Un homme et une femme (1966, Claude Lelouch)

Francis Lai - Un homme et une femme (Un homme et une femme: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Alla Nazimova in Camille (1921, dir. Ray Smallwood) Photo by Arthur Rice (via)

Alla Nazimova in Camille (1921, dir. Ray Smallwood) Photo by Arthur Rice

(via)

Jimmy Smith - Mission Impossible

Composed by Lalo Schifrin.

Die Nibelungen (1924, dir. Fritz Lang) (via) Siegfried (Paul Richter) bathes in the blood of the dragon he has killed to become invincible, “forever safe against sword and spear”. Scene online here. 

Die Nibelungen (1924, dir. Fritz Lang) (via)

Siegfried (Paul Richter) bathes in the blood of the dragon he has killed to become invincible, “forever safe against sword and spear”. Scene online here. 

Gregory Peck & Mary Badham in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, dir. Robert Mulligan) “I put everything I had into it – all my feelings and everything I’d learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.” -Peck (1989) (via)

Gregory Peck & Mary Badham in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, dir. Robert Mulligan)

“I put everything I had into it – all my feelings and everything I’d learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.”

-Peck (1989) (via)

Assorted Jets warm up for rehearsal on the set of West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins) (photo by Gjon Mili for LIFE, 1960)

Assorted Jets warm up for rehearsal on the set of West Side Story (1961, dir. Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins) (photo by Gjon Mili for LIFE, 1960)

Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim - Gee, Officer Krupke 

Blow-up (1966, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni) “You knew you were in the presence of a great man with Antonioni; he was an auteur supreme. He wanted everything exactly right. We had also heard how particular he was about colours. I’m colour-blind so I can’t tell, but he was supposed to have sprayed the grass at Greenwich Park because he wasn’t happy about the green. He was even said to have changed the colour of the marijuana in Blow-Up because he thought it was the wrong shade. I have never had such close coaching from any other director, and many actors wouldn’t stand for it. Finally, on take 13: ‘Cut. Print. Good. Peter, come with me.’ So he took me off set and said to me, ‘Peter, I understand. You wish to show the world what a fine actor you are.’ He got that right. ‘When you work with other directors you give them your performance and they film it. Not with me, Peter. You see I have chosen you for how you look. I have chosen all your clothes. If I move my camera six inches, I would ask you to do that line in a different way.’ Upon this, he put his arms around me and held me close to him and said, ‘Peter, believe in me. Trust me. I am not God, but I am Michelangelo Antonioni.’ -Peter Bowles on the making of Blow-up (via)

Blow-up (1966, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)

“You knew you were in the presence of a great man with Antonioni; he was an auteur supreme. He wanted everything exactly right. We had also heard how particular he was about colours. I’m colour-blind so I can’t tell, but he was supposed to have sprayed the grass at Greenwich Park because he wasn’t happy about the green. He was even said to have changed the colour of the marijuana in Blow-Up because he thought it was the wrong shade.

I have never had such close coaching from any other director, and many actors wouldn’t stand for it. Finally, on take 13: ‘Cut. Print. Good. Peter, come with me.’ So he took me off set and said to me, ‘Peter, I understand. You wish to show the world what a fine actor you are.’ He got that right. ‘When you work with other directors you give them your performance and they film it. Not with me, Peter. You see I have chosen you for how you look. I have chosen all your clothes. If I move my camera six inches, I would ask you to do that line in a different way.’

Upon this, he put his arms around me and held me close to him and said, ‘Peter, believe in me. Trust me. I am not God, but I am Michelangelo Antonioni.’

-Peter Bowles on the making of Blow-up (via)

Herbie Hancock - Bring Down the Birds (Blow-Up: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

“Creation is a drug I can’t do without.” -Cecil B. DeMille 

“Creation is a drug I can’t do without.”

-Cecil B. DeMille 

Giant killer squid vs. John Wayne and Ray Milland in Reap the Wild Wind (1942, dir. Cecil B. DeMille)

Giant killer squid vs. John Wayne and Ray Milland in Reap the Wild Wind (1942, dir. Cecil B. DeMille)

Moira Shearer & Robert Helpmann in The Red Shoes (1948, dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) (via) “I am often asked why The Red Shoes, of all our films, became such a success in every country of the world. More than a success, it became a legend. Even today, I am constantly meeting men and women who claimed that it changed their lives. This is natural enough for women who were girls at the time, and who were growing up in countries that had been wracked by war. But my friend Ron Kitaj, who was thinking of becoming an art student at the time, has told me the same thing. ‘It changed my direction,’ he said. ‘It gave art a new meaning to me.’ These are personal reactions, but I think that the real reason why The Red Shoes was such a success was that we had all been told for ten years to go out and die for freedom and democracy, for this and for that, and now that the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art.” -excerpted from Michael Powell’s A Life in Movies

Moira Shearer & Robert Helpmann in The Red Shoes (1948, dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) (via)

“I am often asked why The Red Shoes, of all our films, became such a success in every country of the world. More than a success, it became a legend. Even today, I am constantly meeting men and women who claimed that it changed their lives. This is natural enough for women who were girls at the time, and who were growing up in countries that had been wracked by war. But my friend Ron Kitaj, who was thinking of becoming an art student at the time, has told me the same thing. ‘It changed my direction,’ he said. ‘It gave art a new meaning to me.’

These are personal reactions, but I think that the real reason why The Red Shoes was such a success was that we had all been told for ten years to go out and die for freedom and democracy, for this and for that, and now that the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art.”

-excerpted from Michael Powell’s A Life in Movies