Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Vivien Leigh as Lady Macbeth in a publicity still for a 1955 production of Macbeth at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.  (via)

Vivien Leigh as Lady Macbeth in a publicity still for a 1955 production of Macbeth at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. 

(via)

Chet Baker - My Funny Valentine

Duke Ellington - Anatomy of a Murder (Anatomy of a Murder: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Julie London - In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning 

Peggy Lee - You’re My Thrill

Joan Crawford, 1959. Photographer: Eve Arnold (via) 

Joan Crawford, 1959. Photographer: Eve Arnold (via) 

Christopher Lee & Carol Marsh in Horror of Dracula (1958, dir. Terence Fisher) (via)

Christopher Lee & Carol Marsh in Horror of Dracula (1958, dir. Terence Fisher) (via)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, dir. Robert Wise) (via)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, dir. Robert Wise) (via)

Dorothy Dandridge on the set of Porgy and Bess (1959, dir. Otto Preminger)  “Dandridge was a staggeringly beautiful actress. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, in an upper-middle-class family. In the late 1940s or early 1950s, one of her uncles died and the family went to Augusta, Georgia, for the funeral. She described the utter terror she felt in that small Southern city – the looks the people gave her, the comments they made, the blatant racism and hatred she encountered there.” -photographer Phil Stern (via)

Dorothy Dandridge on the set of Porgy and Bess (1959, dir. Otto Preminger) 

“Dandridge was a staggeringly beautiful actress. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, in an upper-middle-class family. In the late 1940s or early 1950s, one of her uncles died and the family went to Augusta, Georgia, for the funeral. She described the utter terror she felt in that small Southern city – the looks the people gave her, the comments they made, the blatant racism and hatred she encountered there.”

-photographer Phil Stern (via)

Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Suddenly, Last Summer (1959, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Photographer: Burt Glinn (via)

Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Suddenly, Last Summer (1959, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Photographer: Burt Glinn (via)

Jimmy Stewart & Grace Kelly on the set of Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

Jimmy Stewart & Grace Kelly on the set of Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

(via)

Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh in the “Wheatfield with Crows”: Lust for Life (1956, dir. Vincente Minnelli) (via)

Kirk Douglas as Vincent Van Gogh in the “Wheatfield with Crows”: Lust for Life (1956, dir. Vincente Minnelli)

(via)

Billie Holiday, 1958. Photographer: Dennis Stock (via) “I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do. Or the word ‘love.’ Maybe I remember what those words are all about. Maybe I’m proud enough to want to remember Baltimore and Welfare Island, the Catholic institution and the Jefferson Market Court, the sheriff in front of our place in Harlem and the towns from coast to coast where I got my lumps and scars, Philly and Alderson, Hollywood and San Francisco, every damn bit of it. All the Cadillacs and minks in the world - and I’ve had a few - can’t make it up or make me forget it. All I’ve learned in all those places from all those people is wrapped up in those two words. You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave. Everything I am and everything I want out of life goes smack back to that.” -Holiday, quoted in Lady Sings the Blues (1956)

Billie Holiday, 1958. Photographer: Dennis Stock (via)

“I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do. Or the word ‘love.’ Maybe I remember what those words are all about. Maybe I’m proud enough to want to remember Baltimore and Welfare Island, the Catholic institution and the Jefferson Market Court, the sheriff in front of our place in Harlem and the towns from coast to coast where I got my lumps and scars, Philly and Alderson, Hollywood and San Francisco, every damn bit of it.

All the Cadillacs and minks in the world - and I’ve had a few - can’t make it up or make me forget it. All I’ve learned in all those places from all those people is wrapped up in those two words. You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave. Everything I am and everything I want out of life goes smack back to that.”

-Holiday, quoted in Lady Sings the Blues (1956)

Billie Holiday - (In My) Solitude

Robert Mitchum in publicity still for Night of the Hunter (1955, dir. Charles Laughton)  “You’re staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I’ll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one against the other.” (via)

Robert Mitchum in publicity still for Night of the Hunter (1955, dir. Charles Laughton) 

“You’re staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand? The story of good and evil?

H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I’ll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one against the other.”

(via)