Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Sonja Henie in My Lucky Star (1938, dir. Roy del Ruth) (photo by John Mescall)

Sonja Henie in My Lucky Star (1938, dir. Roy del Ruth) (photo by John Mescall)

Akira Kurosawa standing before a projected image of his favorite leading man, Toshiro Mifune (1963, photo by Brian Bake) “During youth the desire for self-expression is so overpowering that most people end up by losing all grasp on their real selves.” -Kurosawa, in his 1982 memoir Something Like an Autobiography 

Akira Kurosawa standing before a projected image of his favorite leading man, Toshiro Mifune (1963, photo by Brian Bake)

“During youth the desire for self-expression is so overpowering that most people end up by losing all grasp on their real selves.”

-Kurosawa, in his 1982 memoir Something Like an Autobiography 

Masayuki Mori & Machiko Kyō in Rashomon (1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa) (via) Marge: C’mon, Homer, Japan will be fun. You liked Rashomon. Homer: That’s not how I remember it. -The Simpsons, Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo

Masayuki Mori & Machiko Kyō in Rashomon (1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa) (via)

Marge: C’mon, Homer, Japan will be fun. You liked Rashomon.

Homer: That’s not how I remember it.

-The Simpsons, Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo

Akira Kurosawa standing before a projected image of his favorite leading man, Toshiro Mifune (1963, photo by Brian Bake) “During youth the desire for self-expression is so overpowering that most people end up by losing all grasp on their real selves.” -Kurosawa, in his 1982 memoir Something Like an Autobiography 

Akira Kurosawa standing before a projected image of his favorite leading man, Toshiro Mifune (1963, photo by Brian Bake)

“During youth the desire for self-expression is so overpowering that most people end up by losing all grasp on their real selves.”

-Kurosawa, in his 1982 memoir Something Like an Autobiography 

The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929, dir. Arnold Fanck)

The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929, dir. Arnold Fanck)

via The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929, dir. Arnold Fanck)

via The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929, dir. Arnold Fanck)

Diana “Baby Peggy” Cary, age 5, in Darling of New York (1923, dir. King Baggot) (via) And today’s child stars think they have it rough: “[While filming a fire sequence for Darling of New York], King Baggot and my father walked me through the set and showed me how the crew had lined the windows & the only door with sawdust soaked in kerosene, which would be set afire for the scene. I was warned it would only be “one take” as the set would be completely burned. I was shown the two different windows in the kitchen which would be ablaze when the camera rolled. I was to look at them but turn away and run to the door. It would not be torched by the crew, Baggot said, and I was to escape immediately through that door.  But when filming began and I reached the door I found the crew had mistakenly set it ablaze. The door knob was already too hot to touch. But the camera, Baggot, and my father, shooting from a distance through the window above the kitchen sink, could not see the flames. I knew I could not spoil the scene by explaining the situation to them. So while they kept shouting at me to “GO OUT THE DOOR!” I ran back to the sink & the window above it, which was not burning as fiercely as was the door. Moving fast I clambered through the burning open window and gave the camera an unexpected close up of me escaping through the flames! …Surprising as it seems, I worked with fire even as a toddler, and in other dangerous situations often over the years. I learned that my guides did not always see the dangers I saw up close. I realized early on that it was up to me to take care of myself and do whatever it took to get through a scene safely without ruining the film.” -excerpted from Diana Cary’s piece on the good old days before child labor legislation at Starts Tuesday

Diana “Baby Peggy” Cary, age 5, in Darling of New York (1923, dir. King Baggot) (via)

And today’s child stars think they have it rough:

“[While filming a fire sequence for Darling of New York], King Baggot and my father walked me through the set and showed me how the crew had lined the windows & the only door with sawdust soaked in kerosene, which would be set afire for the scene. I was warned it would only be “one take” as the set would be completely burned. I was shown the two different windows in the kitchen which would be ablaze when the camera rolled. I was to look at them but turn away and run to the door. It would not be torched by the crew, Baggot said, and I was to escape immediately through that door. 

But when filming began and I reached the door I found the crew had mistakenly set it ablaze. The door knob was already too hot to touch. But the camera, Baggot, and my father, shooting from a distance through the window above the kitchen sink, could not see the flames. I knew I could not spoil the scene by explaining the situation to them. So while they kept shouting at me to “GO OUT THE DOOR!” I ran back to the sink & the window above it, which was not burning as fiercely as was the door. Moving fast I clambered through the burning open window and gave the camera an unexpected close up of me escaping through the flames!

…Surprising as it seems, I worked with fire even as a toddler, and in other dangerous situations often over the years. I learned that my guides did not always see the dangers I saw up close. I realized early on that it was up to me to take care of myself and do whatever it took to get through a scene safely without ruining the film.”

-excerpted from Diana Cary’s piece on the good old days before child labor legislation at Starts Tuesday

Masayuki Mori & Machiko Kyō in Rashomon (1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa) (via) Marge: C’mon, Homer, Japan will be fun. You liked Rashomon. Homer: That’s not how I remember it. -The Simpsons, Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo

Masayuki Mori & Machiko Kyō in Rashomon (1950, dir. Akira Kurosawa) (via)

Marge: C’mon, Homer, Japan will be fun. You liked Rashomon.

Homer: That’s not how I remember it.

-The Simpsons, Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo

Alain Delon in Le Samourai (1967, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) (via) “I don’t want to situate my heroes in time; I don’t want the action of a film to be recognizable as something that happens in 1968. That’s why in Le Samouraï, for example, the women aren’t wearing miniskirts, while the men are wearing hats—something, unfortunately, that no one does anymore. I’m not interested in realism. All my films hinge on the fantastic. I’m not a documentarian; a film is first and foremost a dream, and it’s absurd to copy life in an attempt to produce an exact re-creation of it. Transposition is more or less a reflex with me: I move from realism to fantasy without the spectator ever noticing.” -Jean-Pierre Melville (via)

Alain Delon in Le Samourai (1967, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) (via)

“I don’t want to situate my heroes in time; I don’t want the action of a film to be recognizable as something that happens in 1968. That’s why in Le Samouraï, for example, the women aren’t wearing miniskirts, while the men are wearing hats—something, unfortunately, that no one does anymore. I’m not interested in realism.

All my films hinge on the fantastic. I’m not a documentarian; a film is first and foremost a dream, and it’s absurd to copy life in an attempt to produce an exact re-creation of it. Transposition is more or less a reflex with me: I move from realism to fantasy without the spectator ever noticing.”

-Jean-Pierre Melville (via)

François de Roubaix - Le Samourai (Le Samourai: Original Motion Picture Score)

Alain Delon in Le Samourai (1967, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) (via) “I don’t want to situate my heroes in time; I don’t want the action of a film to be recognizable as something that happens in 1968. That’s why in Le Samouraï, for example, the women aren’t wearing miniskirts, while the men are wearing hats—something, unfortunately, that no one does anymore. I’m not interested in realism. All my films hinge on the fantastic. I’m not a documentarian; a film is first and foremost a dream, and it’s absurd to copy life in an attempt to produce an exact re-creation of it. Transposition is more or less a reflex with me: I move from realism to fantasy without the spectator ever noticing.” -Jean-Pierre Melville (via)

Alain Delon in Le Samourai (1967, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) (via)

“I don’t want to situate my heroes in time; I don’t want the action of a film to be recognizable as something that happens in 1968. That’s why in Le Samouraï, for example, the women aren’t wearing miniskirts, while the men are wearing hats—something, unfortunately, that no one does anymore. I’m not interested in realism.

All my films hinge on the fantastic. I’m not a documentarian; a film is first and foremost a dream, and it’s absurd to copy life in an attempt to produce an exact re-creation of it. Transposition is more or less a reflex with me: I move from realism to fantasy without the spectator ever noticing.”

-Jean-Pierre Melville (via)

Rose Hobart & the erupting Mt. Bombalai in Rose Hobart (1936, arranged/edited by Joseph Cornell) “Salvador Dali was beside himself with envy. He had always been prone to jealous rages, and Rose Hobart provoked his full malevolence. Halfway through the movie, there was a loud crash as the projector was overturned. ‘Salaud (Bastard)!’ came from Dali. Dali’s wife, Gala, pushed her way toward him and pleaded, ‘Calme-toi.’ But Dali could not be placated. ‘Salaud and encore salaud!,’ he shouted again and again, while members of the audience rose to restrain him. Dali had good reason for envy. As critics would later remark, Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart ranks with Dali’s Un Chien Andalou as a masterwork of Surrealism - and in some ways it is a more radical work. Dali lamented: ‘My idea for a film is exactly this, and I was going to propose it to someone who would pay to have it made….I never wrote it or told anyone, but it is as if he had stolen it.’ (Dali would later accuse Cornell of being “a plagiarist of my unconscious mind.”) Cornell was deeply aggrieved by the incident. It had never occurred to him that someone as marginal as he could excite the envy of a world famous Surrealist. Thus Cornell was instructed firsthand in the unkindness of fellow artists. To the end of his life, he would recount the story whenever he was asked to screen his films, usually as a way of explaining why he must decline.” -excerpted from Utopia Parkway:The Life & Work of Joseph Cornell

Rose Hobart & the erupting Mt. Bombalai in Rose Hobart (1936, arranged/edited by Joseph Cornell)

“Salvador Dali was beside himself with envy. He had always been prone to jealous rages, and Rose Hobart provoked his full malevolence. Halfway through the movie, there was a loud crash as the projector was overturned. ‘Salaud (Bastard)!’ came from Dali. Dali’s wife, Gala, pushed her way toward him and pleaded, ‘Calme-toi.’ But Dali could not be placated. ‘Salaud and encore salaud!,’ he shouted again and again, while members of the audience rose to restrain him.

Dali had good reason for envy. As critics would later remark, Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart ranks with Dali’s Un Chien Andalou as a masterwork of Surrealism - and in some ways it is a more radical work.

Dali lamented: ‘My idea for a film is exactly this, and I was going to propose it to someone who would pay to have it made….I never wrote it or told anyone, but it is as if he had stolen it.’ (Dali would later accuse Cornell of being “a plagiarist of my unconscious mind.”)

Cornell was deeply aggrieved by the incident. It had never occurred to him that someone as marginal as he could excite the envy of a world famous Surrealist. Thus Cornell was instructed firsthand in the unkindness of fellow artists. To the end of his life, he would recount the story whenever he was asked to screen his films, usually as a way of explaining why he must decline.”

-excerpted from Utopia Parkway:The Life & Work of Joseph Cornell

“Joseph Cornell holding an Untitled Bottle Object” (photographer: Duane Michals, c. 1969) (via Joseph Cornell: Stargazing in the Cinema)

“Joseph Cornell holding an Untitled Bottle Object” (photographer: Duane Michals, c. 1969) (via Joseph Cornell: Stargazing in the Cinema)

Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed (1956, dir. Mervyn LeRoy) as Rhoda: gifted pianist, rollerskating aficionado, serial killer (photo by Nina Leen for LIFE)

Patty McCormack in The Bad Seed (1956, dir. Mervyn LeRoy) as Rhoda: gifted pianist, rollerskating aficionado, serial killer (photo by Nina Leen for LIFE)

Some last minute advice for tonight’s festivities: “Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table.” -William Powell

Some last minute advice for tonight’s festivities:

“Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table.”

-William Powell