James Saburo Shigeta was born in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, on June 17, 1929, to Satoko Tamura Shigeta and Howard Koichi Shigeta. His father was a contractor who immigrated from Japan.
Shigeta was a third-generation Japanese American, graduating from President Theodore Roosevelt High School and studying drama at New York University. When completing ROTC, he enlisted in the Hawaii National Guard’s 258th Infantry, ultimately enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War. He served for two-and-a-half years, achieving the rank of Staff Sergeant.
Prior to enlisting in 1951, he won first prize on Ted Mack’s The Original Amateur Hour television show in 1950. He soon embarked on a singing career, teamed with Charles K.L. Davis, a Hawaiian operatic tenor. Their agent gave them the “non-ethnic” stage names for Guy Brion (Shigeta) and Charles Durand (Davis). They performed at superclubs in the United States, singing at the Mocambo, Los Angeles Players Club, and more.
During the war, he entertained troops in California. While on the way to Korea, the ceasefire led him to Japan. He was discharged from the Marines and hired by the theatrical division of Japan’s Toho Studios. He did not speak Japanese until Toho Studios invited him to be a musical star, working under his real name. He soon became a success and was dubbed “The Frank Sinatra of Japan.”
In 1958, Tokyo’s Nichigeki Theater starred Shigeta as the lead in their Cherry Blossom Show, bringing the show to Australia. The production toured throughout the country and Shigeta received many positive reviews.
Shigeta returned to the United States to perform on The Dinah Shore Show and later performed in Holiday in Japan at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Shigeta made his screen debut in Crimson Kimono (1959). This role was progressive for its time, as Shigeta, an Asian American, portrayed an Asian American detective with typical American speech patterns, rather than a non-Asian actor passing as Asian American and speaking in broken English.
He also appeared in Walk Like a Dragon (1960) while also continuing his Holiday in Japan performances. He was even transported by ambulance from his last Holiday in Japan show to Paramount’s studio to ensure that he would arrive on time.
Additionally, Shigeta appeared in Cry for Happy (1961) alongside Glenn Ford, Donald O’Connor, and Miyoshi Umeki. He also appeared as Wang Ta in the Academy Award-nominated film version of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (1961) with Nancy Kwan and Umeki. He appeared in Bridge to the Sun (1961) with Carroll Baker and Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1965) with Elvis Presley.
Miyoshi Umeki and James Shigeta, Flower Drum Song
He also secured the lead in The King and I, touring the United States as part of the production in 1969.
Shigeta carried out many guest appearances and recurring roles on television, including a guest appearance on Perry Mason and a recurring role in Medical Center. He continued his film work with Midway (1976), Die Hard (1988), Cage II: The Arena of Death (1994), and a voice role in Mulan (1998). His final film role was in The People I’ve Slept With (2009).
Shigeta passed away in his sleep on July 28, 2014, in West Hollywood, California. He was 85 years old. His funeral service was held at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, and he was interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.
In 1930 and 1940, the family resided at 1625 Liliha St., Honolulu, Hawaii. Shigeta’s father worked as a plumber and pipefitter at this time. In 1950, the family moved to 419A Liliha Court Ln., Honolulu, Hawaii. At this point, Shigeta’s father worked as a shop foreman for an engineering company and his mother worked as a salesperson at a bakery. Both homes no longer stand.
President Theodore Roosevelt High School continues to operate and is located at 1120 Nehoa St., Honolulu, Hawaii.
President Theodore Roosevelt High School
The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific is located at 2177 Pūowaina Dr., Honolulu, Hawaii.
Annette Bochenek, Ph.D., is a film historian, professor, and avid scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the “Hometowns to Hollywood” blog, in which she profiles her trips to the hometowns of classic Hollywood stars. She has also been featured on the popular classic film-oriented television network, Turner Classic Movies. A regular columnist for Classic Movie Hub, her articles have appeared in TCM Backlot, Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, The Dark Pages Film Noir Newsletter, and Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine.
With a title like Ball of Fire, you expect real fireworks, and this 1941 screwball comedy delivers them with spectacular energy and skill. There’s so much to love about the film that it’s hard to know where to start, much less how to boil it down to a single, short discussion of the picture’s many outstanding qualities. We start with a modernized twist on the Snow White fairy tale penned by Billy Wilder, Thomas Monroe, and Charles Brackett, which is brought to life by direction from Howard Hawks and the acting talents of a first-rate cast, including Barbara Stanwyck as the titular (and titillating) ball of fire and Gary Cooper as the academic bachelor who gets overheated in her presence. Supporting the two leads are iconic classic stars like Dana Andrews, Dan Duryea, Henry Travers, S.Z. Sakall, Oscar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, and Richard Haydn, each of them giving memorable performances that keep the large ensemble from becoming muddled. As a former academic myself, I love the re-imagining of the fairy tale dwarfs as scholars and the ways in which their intellectual specialties drive both the dialogue and the plot, and I find their found family dynamic a deeply moving element of the story. With Gary Cooper’s character specializing in language, it’s little wonder that language and love are entwined in this story, and those two elements seem worthy of some additional examination, given the many ways they manifest in the picture.
This promotional still highlights the romantic chemistry of Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper as the leads and also the beautiful Edith Head gown Stanwyck wears in her first scenes.
Cooper plays Professor Bertram Potts, a former child prodigy now grown and leading a group of scholars in their creation of a large encyclopedia on which they have already been working for nine years. The men, all bachelors except for the widower, Professor Oddly (Richard Haydn), live together and commit all their energy to their work until Bertram accidentally gives night club singer Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) the idea of hiding out from the police in their house. Sugarpuss is already involved with wanted gangster Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews), but that doesn’t stop her from lighting a fire in Bertram’s inexperienced heart. Unfortunately, Joe realizes that a wife can’t be made to testify against her husband, so Sugarpuss has to choose between marrying the mobster or the scholar, and Joe is willing to take extreme measures to influence her decision.
Sugarpuss (Stanwyck) and her cold foot appeal to the assembled scholars for mercy after Bertram Potts (Cooper) says she can’t stay overnight in their house.
Bertram’s desire to learn modern American slang creates the opportunity for Sugarpuss to enter his life but also hints at his unconscious urge to leave his monastic confinement for a freer, more fully realized existence in the world. As a linguist, Bertram knows many words and their meanings, but his brief summary of his own life reveals that he has been constantly locked away with his studies since early childhood, leaving little time for him to comprehend words like “passion” and “sex,” much less “love” in a romantic context. If Sugarpuss is Snow White (albeit rather drifted, as the joke goes) then Bertram is Rapunzel or Sleeping Beauty, awaiting rescue from the imprisoning tower of a dry scholarly life. He ventures into the nightclubs and city streets to find a living language at work and play, but he doesn’t really begin to imagine having that kind of life for himself until Sugarpuss boogies her way into his heart.
The most important word that Sugarpuss and the other consultants teach Bertram is “corn,” a slang term that classic movie fans know well from the description of Frank Capra’s sentimental movies as “Capra-corn.” Critics originally meant the term derisively, but Ball of Fire argues that corn can be endearing and lovable, especially when embodied in a package that looks like Gary Cooper. For all its gangsters and third act hijinks, Ball of Fire is an unabashedly corny movie, one that sees its heroine exchange her jaded view and materialist aims for true love with a shy, naïve scholar who, as she says, “doesn’t know how to kiss, the jerk.” Bertram’s love for her is passionate, but, ironically, the linguist can’t find the words to express that to her. It’s shown not told, in the way sunlight on her hair mesmerizes him, in the way he rushes off to cool his neck after she kisses him, and in the way he literally learns to fight for her by studying a boxing guide on his way to stop her from marrying Joe Lilac.
Bertram and the professors find themselves held hostage by gangster Duke Pastrami (Dan Duryea).
While Sugarpuss and Bertram teach each other about romantic love, they also come to appreciate the different kind of love experienced in the found family of scholars. It’s clear that the older scholars regard Bertram not only as their leader but also as a beloved younger brother or even son. They delight in the rambunctious energy Sugarpuss brings into their lives and root enthusiastically for the young couple. They even join Bertram’s heroic quest to save his lady love from forced marriage to Joe, although instead of a white charger they all ride a white garbage truck to the rescue. In a cast of veteran character actors and scene-stealers, it’s Richard Haydn, really the same age as Cooper but made up to look elderly, who gets the best bits of both physical comedy and sentiment. His Professor Oddly, the sole widower of the group, struggles to explain romantic love to Bertram given his Victorian sensibilities, but his tender memories of his long-dead wife are deeply moving to the audience and his fellow characters. When the scholars join together to sing “Sweet Genevieve” in tribute to Oddly’s lost love, it’s the epitome of corn in the very sweetest sense, old-fashioned and utterly sincere but so emotional for Oddly that he leaves the room because of the depth of feeling the gesture stirs. It’s clear that his friends love him very much, just as they love Bertram and extend their affection to Sugarpuss, who is no more immune to their corny charms than she is to those of Bertram. We don’t see their future together, but the other professors will always be part of the life Sugarpuss and Bertram share because they really are a family.
Bruised but victorious, Bertram wins his lady’s hand as Professors Oddly (Richard Haydn) and Magenbruch (S.Z. Sakall) react to the scene.
Ball of Fire earned four Oscar nominations, including a nod for Stanwyck as Best Actress, but it went home empty-handed in a year that also included Citizen Kane, How Green Was My Valley, The Maltese Falcon, and Sergeant York, for which Gary Cooper actually won Best Actor. Other screwball comedies from director Howard Hawks include Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), and His Girl Friday (1940). For more comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck, see The Mad Miss Manton (1938), The Lady Eve (1941), and Christmas in Connecticut (1945), and for more of Cooper’s comedy roles, try Design for Living (1933), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938). Stanwyck and Cooper also star together in Meet John Doe (1941) and Blowing Wild (1953). In 1948, Hawks directed Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo in a musical remake of Ball of Fire called A Song is Born, in which the focus shifts from language to music. Mary Field plays the same character, Miss Totten, in both versions.
Vera-Ellen was born Vera-Ellen Rohe on February 16, 1921, in Norwood, Ohio, to Alma Westemeier and Martin Rohe. Her father worked as a piano tuner. Both parents were of German descent.
Her mother wished to one day have a girl named Vera-Ellen, insisting that the hyphen be included in the name.
Rohe began dancing by the age of 10, attending dance classes at the Hessler Studio of Dancing in Cincinnati, Ohio, alongside fellow Ohioan, Doris Day—then still Doris Kappelhoff. The girls would often carpool together. At the age of 13, she placed as a winner on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, soon initiating her professional career.
Vera-Ellen dropped her last name and was billed solely by her hyphenated first name when she made her Broadway debut in 1939 in the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein musical Very Warm for May. She was also among the youngest Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. These experiences soon led to more Broadway roles, including participating in productions of Panama Hattie, By Jupiter, and A Connecticut Yankee.
Vera-Ellen married fellow dancer, Robert Hightower, in 1941. They divorced in 1946.
While performing in A Connecticut Yankee, she was noticed by producer Sam Goldwyn. He ultimately cast her opposite Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo in Wonder Man (1945). While her singing voice was dubbed in Wonder Man, her vocals can be heard in two songs on the Decca Broadway Original Cast Album of the 1943 revival of A Connecticut Yankee: “I Feel at Home with You” and “You Always Love the Same Girl.”
Vera-Ellen danced with Gene Kelly in Words and Music (1948) as well as On the Town (1949). She also performed in the final Marx Brothers film, Love Happy (1949). Vera-Ellen worked alongside Fred Astaire in Three Little Words (1950) and The Belle of New York (1952). She co-starred with Donald O’Connor in Call Me Madam (1953). Her penultimate film role was in White Christmas (1954), co-starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Rosemary Clooney. Her final film role was in Let’s Be Happy (1957).
Vera-Ellen married oilman Victor Bennet Rothschild in 1954. In 1963, she gave birth to a daughter, Victoria Ellen, who passed away at just three months old from SIDS. The couple divorced in 1966.
In addition to her film roles, Vera-Ellen also made frequent guest appearances on television. Some of her final performances include her appearances on The Perry Como Show and The Dinah Shore Show, before retiring.
Vera-Ellen maintained a slim figure as she never discontinued her dance lessons and was an avid swimmer. Rumors of an eating disorder have not been proven and have been discredited by several of her friends and her niece by marriage.
Vera-Ellen passed away at the Los Angeles County General Hospital on August 30, 1981, from ovarian cancer. She was 60 years old. Her memorial service was held at Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary. She is at rest at Glen Haven Memorial Park in Sylmar, California, next to her daughter and parents.
Hessler School of Dance has since been converted into a private residence. The structure stands at 1033 Monastery St., Cincinnati, Ohio.
Hessler School of Dance
In 1930, she and her parents lived at 2218 Cathedral Ave., Norwood, Ohio. This home stands.
2218 Cathedral Ave., Norwood, Ohio
In 1941, she and Hightower lived at 37 W. 88th St., New York, New York. This also remains.
37 W. 88th St., New York City
By 1945, she lived at 1414 E. 14th St., Long Beach, California, which also stands.
1414 E. 14th St., Long Beach, California
In 1950, she and her mother resided at 4557 Camellia Ave., North Hollywood, California, which stands.
4557 Camellia Ave., North Hollywood, California
In 1958, she, Rothschild, and her mother lived at 1451 Miller Way, Los Angeles, California, which stands.
She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, honoring her work in motion pictures. It is located at 7083 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, California.
[star]
Glen Haven Memorial Park is located at 13017 N. Lopez Canyon Rd., Sylmar, California.
Annette Bochenek, Ph.D., is a film historian, professor, and avid scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the “Hometowns to Hollywood” blog, in which she profiles her trips to the hometowns of classic Hollywood stars. She has also been featured on the popular classic film-oriented television network, Turner Classic Movies. A regular columnist for Classic Movie Hub, her articles have appeared in TCM Backlot, Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, The Dark Pages Film Noir Newsletter, and Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine.
Over the last few months two prominent Southern California museums have featured exhibits on cowboys.
To varying degrees, the exhibits included memorabilia about Western movies and movie cowboys. In this month’s column I’ll be sharing photos from my visits.
In December I visited the Autry Museum of the American West, which some readers may recall from photos I shared here in a 2019 column. The museum has just concluded hosting a traveling exhibit, Black Cowboys: An American Story, for the past six months.
This was a very interesting, informative exhibit about the history of black cowboys throughout the United States. Here I’m focusing solely on a small section of the exhibit featuring “B” movie Western star Herb Jeffries. Jeffries was also sometimes billed as Herbert Jeffrey.
Jeffries, of mixed-race ancestry, chose to reflect his black heritage by portraying a black cowboy in a series of Westerns beginning with Harlem on the Prairie (1937). Jeffries, an accomplished singer, specifically created his musical cowboy persona to acknowledge the history of black cowboys and provide a role model for children.
The Autry exhibit shared a poster for Jeffries’ The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) alongside another poster for a Western with an all-black cast, Black Gold (1928).
Although I sadly neglected to take a close-up photo, Jeffries’ own boots and holster were also on display, seen to the left of this wide shot. The boots were worn in Harlem on the Prairie (1937).
I haven’t yet seen any of Jeffries’ Westerns yet, but I intend to do so in the future! He’s immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which by chance I saw the same day as this exhibit. His remains are interred in a columbarium with a lovely marker at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Black Cowboys: An American Story is currently on exhibit at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in Michigan through July 2026.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library & Museum has also been hosting a six-month exhibit, Cowboys: History & Hollywood.
Ronald Reagan himself starred in a small handful of Westerns during his movie career, including Law and Order (1953), Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), and Tennessee’s Partner (1955).
Cowboys: History & Hollywood was an extensive exhibit spread across several rooms. As the title implies, it chronicled the history of “real” cowboys alongside movie cowboys, which is my focus here.
In a nice bit of serendipity, the Reagan Library exhibit showcased a different Herb Jeffries poster, for Harlem Rides the Range (1939).
It also featured a Gene Autry guitar, a nice coincidence given that this column began with a visit to the Autry Museum! A lunchbox from the Autry-produced Annie Oakley TV series, which starred Gail Davis, can be spotted in the background.
The Reagan Library exhibit also featured a poster for Gene Autry in Blue Montana Skies (1939).
Visitors of a certain age, who grew up watching Roy Rogers movies or TV shows, were moved (and perhaps a bit startled!) to see Trigger, Buttermilk, and Bullet alongside original Roy Rogers and Dale Evans costumes.
There were also some striking foreign Tom Mix posters.
A Winchester ’73 (1950) poster was side by side with a poster for a Winchester rifle search done to publicize the film.
There were also some actual Winchester rifles!
The many posters on display also included Decision at Sundown (1957), starring Randolph Scott, and the all-star How the West Was Won (1962).
There were props from Tombstone (1993), a film I wrote about here three years ago.
Numerous costumes on display included Clint Eastwood costumes from Pale Rider (1992), below left, and Unforgiven (1992), seen on the right.
My very favorite thing in the exhibit was John Wayne’s battered hat from Hondo (1953), a film I love which I wrote about here in 2018, in a column on favorite John Wayne leading ladies, and in 2024, in a post on Westerns for young viewers.
I hope readers have enjoyed a “virtual tour” of these terrific exhibits!
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– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub
Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.
Buster Keaton’s Motion Picture Debut: The First Five Films
From our 21st century perspective, Buster Keaton’s upbringing was certainly unusual. Born to parents who made a modest living performing in travelling medicine shows, he became a performer himself at a very young age. Arguably a child prodigy with exceptional comedic and acrobatic skills, he soon became the highlight of the family act. In time the Keatons were able to work their way to the vaudeville stage as “The Three Keatons,” specializing in slapstick comedy. The family act became so well known that none other than William Randolph Hearst offered to star them in a film series based on the comic strip Bringing Up Father. This being an era when motion pictures were considered beneath the stage, Buster’s father Joe indignantly turned the offer down: “You want to show The Three Keatons on a bedsheet for ten cents?”
The Three Keatons performed in countless theaters across America until disbanding in 1917. Looking for a fresh start, the 21-year-old Buster signed up to perform with the prestigious revue The Passing Show of 1917 in New York City. While waiting for rehearsals to begin, he was invited to tour comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s nearby movie studio where a series of comedy shorts was about to start production. Already fascinated by cinema prior to his visit, Buster decided he wanted to leave the stage and “cast my lot with the pictures.”
The Butcher Boy (1917)
The Butcher Boy
Buster’s very first film appearance was in The Butcher Boy (1917), Roscoe Arbuckle’s first independent two-reeler. Arbuckle had been a popular performer and director for Mack Sennett for years before going solo in 1917, bringing along fellow Sennett performers like rubber-limbed nephew Al St. John and former prop man Joe Bordeaux to his new “Comique” studio. A generous soul and a patient mentor, Arbuckle had seen the Three Keatons act in the past and was happy to have the talented Buster onboard, allowing him to come up with funny “bits of business” for the screen.
The Butcher Boy is set in a small-town general store where Roscoe works behind the counter. For Buster’s entrance, he’s shown walking into the frame with his back to the camera and examining a barrel full of brooms. Picking up one of the brooms, he then turns and faces the camera. Since The Three Keatons frequently used brooms in their act as slapstick tools, this was probably to help audiences recognize him from the stage. Dressed in overalls and slapshoes, he also sports his familiar little porkpie hat. He and Roscoe then share a simple, but expertly-timed scene involving mishaps with a bucket of molasses. The film also gave Buster multiple opportunities to do impressive pratfalls, the first involving a bag of flour straight to the face.
The Rough House (1917)
Buster Keaton (r) and Al St. John in The Rough House
Buster’s second film appearance was in Arbuckle’s second Comique The Rough House (1917), which packed in even more slapstick mayhem than The Butcher Boy. Arbuckle’s shown enduring a prickly relationship with his domineering mother-in-law, while the cook Al St. John picks a fight with delivery boy Buster over the hand of the pretty household maid. Soon the fight spills out of the kitchen and throughout the house, destroying the dining room. The second half of the film shows Roscoe having to wait on guests–the staff naturally having been fired–and the cops being called after some jewelry goes missing.
This short has a distinct Sennett film flavor, especially in the final sequence showing Al, Buster and Joe Bordeaux as cops racing to the rescue (the station was low on recruits). Supposedly this sequence used to be even longer, and showed the trio repeatedly emerging from the wrong subway stations. Like all the Comiques The Rough House is lively and thoroughly unpretentious, and gave Buster many opportunities to use his pratfalling skills, well-matched by Al. Their ferocious kitchen fight has been described as a slapstick ballet.
His Wedding Night (1917)
His Wedding Night
His Wedding Night is set in another small-town store: a pharmacy called Koff & Kramp where Roscoe works the front counter. Roscoe proposes to his sweetheart (played by the spunky Alice Mann) and angers his romantic rival Al St. John. Al hatches a wild plan to kidnap Alice and force her into marriage. Buster pops up as another delivery boy character, this time to deliver Alice’s wedding dress. Alice excitedly asks Buster to model the dress for her, and this being a silent comedy short and all, he cheerfully obliges. Al’s dastardly plan is put into motion, but he doesn’t realize that the “girl” he just kidnapped was actually Buster in drag.
By now Buster was hitting his stride as a series regular, and certainly seems to have contributed some ideas, such as having a folding screen drop down dramatically to reveal him modeling the wedding dress. He hams it up delightfully, smiling onscreen several times (yes, you’ll notice that he smiles in all the Comiques), and looking completely at ease in the surreal world of silent comedy–a world where the villain seemingly can’t hear Buster’s voice when he finds himself getting kidnapped!
4. Oh, Doctor! (1917)
Buster Keaton (r) and Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle in Oh Doctor!
This fourth Comique short was a decided change of pace and a bit more plot-heavy. Roscoe plays the well-to-do Dr. I. O. Dine who takes his wife and pampered young son to the horse races. A smartly-dressed Al shows up at the track with his vamp-ish, attractive wife, and Roscoe secretly strikes up a flirtation with her. Both Roscoe and Al lose all their money betting on a losing horse. Trying to cover their loss, Al and his wife hatch a plot to steal jewelry from the wealthy Roscoe. And of course, this risky plan goes awry.
Buster has the unusual role of playing Roscoe’s bratty son, laughing and bawling and getting constantly smacked around by the old man. The histrionics can seem pretty startling to fans used to his subtle, straight-faced persona of the 1920s.
5. Coney Island (1917)
Buster Keaton and Agnes Neilson in Coney Island
This is the short where Buster (and yes, that’s him laughing in the above photo!) truly feels like an essential cog in the Comique machinery. A breezy short with a relaxed feel, Coney Island simply follows the adventures of Roscoe, Al and Buster at the famous amusement park. Buster loses his girl Alice Mann to rival Al St. John and decides to pursue them in the park, while at the same time Roscoe sneaks away from his nagging wife to have a high ol’ time. One thing leads to another and soon Roscoe, Al and Buster are all rivals for the hand of the fickle Alice.
The actors play off each other’s skills well and share equal amounts of screentime, and as a bonus we get to enjoy footage of a sunny Edwardian-era Coney Island and Luna Park. Buster does a standing backflip at one point, just because he can. With such a creative training ground and such good-natured talent all around him, it’s not hard to see why he was happy with his decision to leave the stage for motion pictures–and never look back.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
Noir Nook: Ripped from the Headlines Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
If you know your Alfred Hitchcock, you might be aware that of all the movies he directed between 1925 and 1976, he considered his favorite to be Shadow of a Doubt (1943), starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. What you might not know is that the murderer at the center of the film was inspired by real-life serial killer Earle (some spell it “Earl”) Nelson, who embarked on a crime spree during the 1920s that started in Philadelphia and wound up in Winnipeg, Canada.
Shadow of a Doubt focuses on Charlotte “Charlie” Newton (Wright), whose humdrum life gets more of a jolt that she bargained for in the form of her beloved uncle and namesake, Charles (Cotten). Charlie is delighted when her relative pays an unexpected visit to her hometown of Santa Rosa, California, and she’s not alone – his charms have the town’s female population clinging to him like Saran Wrap to a lemon meringue pie. Still, before long, red flags start popping up and swiping at Charles’s stellar image, beginning with the ruby ring he gives to Charlie – which bears someone else’s initials. As the days pass and the flags further unfurl, Charlie is forced to admit that there’s far more to her uncle than meets the eye – like, a penchant for MURDER.
And speaking of murder, the inspiration for the deadly Uncle Charles – Earle Nelson – kicked off his career in crime in the fall of 1925, when he was almost 30 years old; in the span of less than a month, he left the bodies of three middle-aged women in his wake. From Philadelphia, Nelson worked his way from coast to coast, attacking and killing a total of 24 women and one child in Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, Oakland, and Buffalo before making his way to Canada, where he was finally captured nearly two years later.
The Hitchcock film fleshes out the story of Charles Newton to include his relationships with his niece, his sister (Patricia Collinge), and other family members; one of the added storylines focuses on Charlie’s father (Henry Travers) and his best friend (Hume Cronyn, in his screen debut), who wile away their hours together by pondering the perfect murder. But Charles Newton and his real-life counterpart have several important qualities in common. First off, when Earle Nelson was 10 years old, he ran into a streetcar while riding his bicycle – the accident left him with a hole in his temple, and he was unconscious for six days. Afterwards, he suffered from frequent headaches and memory lapses, and displayed odd behaviors, like talking to invisible people and impulsively quoting verses from the Bible. Nelson’s screen counterpart was involved in a similar accident, crashing into a streetcar while on his bicycle and fracturing his skull. His sister, Emma, recalled that before the accident, Charles was a quiet boy with an affinity for books, but after his lengthy recovery, he became boisterous and full of mischief: “He didn’t do much reading after that, let me tell you,” Emma said.
Another significant likeness between Earle Nelson and Charles Newton focuses on their murderous modus operandi. Nelson zeroed in on houses that displayed a “Rooms for Rent” sign and carried out his deadly deeds after gaining access as a potential tenant. And although Newton spends most of the movie with his family in Santa Rosa, the establishing shot in his first scene shows that he is residing in a house that rents rooms. Finally, both Nelson and Newton had a nickname based on their criminal deeds; Nelson was known as “The Gorilla Strangler” (among others), and Newton was “The Merry Widow Killer.”
Shadow of a Doubt started from a nine-page treatment called “Uncle Charlie,” by novelist Gordon McDonell. The idea first came to McDonnell when his car broke down near the small town of Hanford, California, during a vacation to the Sierra Nevada mountains. McDonnell’s wife, Margaret – who worked as head of the story department for producer David O. Selznick – told Hitchcock about her husband’s idea, and McDonnell pitched it to the director over lunch at the famed Brown Derby restaurant. After McDonnell submitted his treatment to Hitchcock, the director reached out to Thornton Wilder – Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Our Town – and he and Hitchcock worked on scouting locations and building the story into a screenplay. Other collaborators on the film’s script were Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville; and Sally Benson, perhaps best known for writing the young adult book, Junior Miss.
Incidentally, both Earle Nelson and Charles Newton met with an untimely end – Nelson was hanged after he was found guilty by a jury that deliberated for less than an hour. And Uncle Charlie . . .
Well – in case you haven’t seen the movie, I’ll leave you to discover Uncle Charlie’s demise on your own.
Stay tuned for my next look at a film noir Ripped from the Headlines!
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– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub
Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages. If you’re interested in learning more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them on amazon here:
Silver Screen Standards: The Mirror Crack’d (1980)
While it’s not actually a film from the Golden Age of Hollywood, the 1980 Miss Marple whodunnit, The Mirror Crack’d, is set in 1953 and boasts a cast of powerhouse classic stars from that era, including Angela Lansbury as Agatha Christie’s iconic detective. It belongs to the vogue for lavish, star-studded Christie adaptations that produced Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978) and preceded Kenneth Branagh’s revival of those Hercule Poirot adventures starting in 2017. Of course, we can trace the roots of Rian Johnson’s tremendously successful Benoit Blanc movies to these pictures, too, so it’s well worth the effort to revisit the earlier Christie adaptations in order to better appreciate the evolution and enduring appeal of this particular subgenre of murder mystery. The Mirror Crack’d is especially suited to the interests of classic movie fans because its plot revolves around movie actors and filmmaking, with Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, and Geraldine Chaplin enthusiastically skewering the stereotypical characters of their own industry. While Hollywood has certainly produced more lauded Christie adaptations, The Mirror Crack’d remains one of my personal favorites for its cast and the opportunity to see Angela Lansbury tackle a different detective from the one she famously played on the television series, Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996).
Makeup helps to transform the 55-year-old Angela Lansbury into the elderly Miss Marple.
Taking its title from Tennyson’s poem, “The Lady of Shalott,” The Mirror Crack’d sees Miss Marple’s village, St. Mary Mead, in a flutter over the Hollywood crowd who are in town to shoot a movie about Mary, Queen of Scots, starring celebrated actress Marina Gregg (Elizabeth Taylor). Miss Marple (Angela Lansbury) twists an ankle and misses the party where a local guest suddenly dies, but that doesn’t stop her from investigating the crime with some help from her maid, Cherry (Wendy Morgan), and her nephew, Inspector Dermot Craddock of Scotland Yard (Edward Fox). Soon, it looks like Marina must have been the intended target, but her circle includes many suspects who might have a motive for wanting her dead.
Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor play rival actresses who passionately hate each other.
The cast of this picture is just packed with A-list stars, even in places you might not expect them. Angela Lansbury was only 55 when she played the elderly Miss Marple, but makeup and costume help her look decades older than Elizabeth Taylor, who was really just seven years younger than Lansbury. The pair had even played sisters in National Velvet (1944), which was Lansbury’s second screen role and the fifth for Taylor. Due to Miss Marple’s injury, the two leading ladies don’t get much screen time together in this picture, but Taylor does have lots of scenes with Rock Hudson, who plays her husband/director, Jason Rudd, and with Kim Novak, who plays her hated rival, Lola Brewster. Taylor and Novak lean into the trope of rival actresses who absolutely loathe one another, trading barbs and loaded lines in every scene they share. Tony Curtis is also hamming it up in his role as the film’s shallow, jaded producer, Marty Fenn, leaving Hudson’s character as the only likeable one of the group, which partly explains the devotion of his loyal assistant, Ella (Geraldine Chaplin). The supporting players include a number of well-known English actors, including Edward Fox and Charles Gray, and you will even find a very young Pierce Brosnan making his second screen appearance in an uncredited but easily spotted role. Of the less familiar actors, Fox gives an especially fun performance as Miss Marple’s nephew, who gushes about movies like a true film fan but also uses his knowledge to help his investigation.
Ella (Geraldine Chaplin) answers questions for Scotland Yard inspector Dermot Craddock (Edward Fox).
Lansbury is another in a long line of actresses to play Miss Marple, from Margaret Rutherford and Helen Hayes to Joan Hickson, Geraldine McEwan, and Julia McKenzie, and of course fans have their favorite incarnations (personally I like both McEwan and McKenzie very much). While it’s true that Lansbury was really too young for the part in 1980, she’s such a dedicated actress that I think she manages to be convincing, even though it would have been fascinating to have her return to the role several decades later, perhaps around the time she appeared in Nanny McPhee (2005). Lansbury’s career saw her tackle a wide variety of roles on film, stage, and television, but she has a special place in the mystery genre thanks to her long-running role as Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, and it’s worth noting that her very last screen appearance was a cameo as one of Benoit Blanc’s friends in Glass Onion (2022). Unlike Peter Ustinov, who got to play Hercule Poirot six times between 1978 and 1986, Lansbury only played Miss Marple once, perhaps because The Mirror Crack’d didn’t do very well at the box office. That’s a shame, too, because Christie wrote so many great Miss Marple mysteries that don’t sideline the heroine with an injury, and it would have been wonderful to see Lansbury put more of her own stamp on the role in adaptations of The Murder at the Vicarage, A Pocket Full of Rye, or Sleeping Murder. Lansbury does, however, appear in a different Agatha Christie adaptation, the 1978 version of Death on the Nile with Ustinov as Poirot, in which Lansbury appears as Salome Otterbourne.
An uncredited Pierce Brosnan makes a brief but memorable appearance in a scene with Elizabeth Taylor.
Agatha Christie’s works continue to inspire new adaptations, including the most recent 2026 Netflix miniseries, Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials, but the best classic movie adaptation of a Christie story is the gripping 1957 version of Witness for the Prosecution starring Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, and Charles Laughton. For more of my favorite Angela Lansbury films, see Gaslight (1944), The Harvey Girls (1946), The Court Jester (1955), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). For more star-studded mysteries, check out The Last of Sheila (1973), Gosford Park (2001), and the 2025 Netflix adaptation of Richard Osman’s novel, The Thursday Murder Club. I don’t want to spoil a major plot twist, but I will close by mentioning that certain events in the 1962 novel, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, and the 1980 adaptation closely resemble a real-life Hollywood tragedy involving Gene Tierney that many classic films fans will recognize immediately.
Classic Horror Movies Gain New Life on Physical Media
Just because we love classic horror – especially low-budget B-movies – doesn’t mean we have to watch bad prints of the films that we’re used to seeing online or in a public domain version.
While searching for new video releases of old horror films to add to my collection, I was surprised at how much new is on the horizon thanks to the ongoing efforts of Film Masters, Kino Lorber, Arrow Video and the legendary Hammer Films.
These labels don’t only release the films on physical media, they are usually remastered or restored, so you’ll often see the best available version of the film. Plus they come with all-important exclusive extras like interviews, featurettes, collectible booklets and image galleries. You would be pleased to see how much new content is included. Here’s a quick look at some of what I’ve found with additional info about the extras.
The new Monster Mayhem Collection is the first home video release in the Wade Williams Collection from Film Masters. (Image courtesy of Film Masters.)
Film Masters is one of my favorite places to look for classic horror films because the label is focused on film preservation and restoration. Plus I’m a big fan of one of its specialties: B-horror movies from the 1950s. It recently announced an exclusive distribution deal with the estate of late filmmaker and film collector Wade Williams.
Two of the movies are by director Richard E. Cunha, nicknamed the “six-day wonder” for how quickly he could make a film. In Frankenstein’s Daughter an innocent California teen is experimented on by a man continuing his ancestor’s experiments set against the backdrop of pool parties and hot rods. Giant from the Unknown finds a 500-year-old Conquistador resurrected by a lightning strike.
Fans of big-bug movies can see giant wasps in Monster from Green Hell, part of the Monster Mayhem Collection. (Image: Film Masters)
In Monster from Green Hill, wasps sent into space to test radiation exposure turn into giant creatures. The Brain from Planet Arous has two alien brains – one evil and one good – arriving on Earth.
The four movies are presented in a 4K scan from 35mm archival prints in their original, theatrical aspect ratios. Special features include full-length archival commentaries by film historians Tom Weaver, Stephen R. Bissette and Gary Crutcher, and four original mini-documentaries from Ballyhoo Motion Pictures (Richard E. Cunha: Filmmaker; Missouri Born: The Films of Jim Davis; The Man Before the Brain: Director Nathan Juran; and The Man Behind the Brain: The World of Nathan Juran). Also included is a collectible booklet insert with a new essay by Tom Weaver on the films.
In a press release announcing this distribution deal, Film Masters mentioned future restorations and releases in the Wade Williams Collection could include Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Crawling Eye, Champagne for Caesar and The Day It Came to Earth. Yes, please.
Coming in April from Hammer Films is the two-disc set Blood from The Mummy’s Tomb. (Image: Hammer Films.)
HAMMER FILMS
Since being acquired in 2023 by British theater producer and lifelong Hammer Film fan John Gore, Hammer has been busy getting movies into the hands of fans through home video releases.
As part of its limited collector editions that debuted last fall, Hammer released a spectacular six-disc set of The Curse of Frankenstein with a 168-page booklet, 68-page comic and many commentaries, interviews and featurettes. Hammer also has also a great series of very affordable one- and two-disc sets with impressive extras.
An archaeologist’s daughter may be the reincarnation of a queen whose tomb was discovered by her father in this film based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars. The double-disc set includes a 64-page booklet with new essays and the original press kit, along with new features such as “Valerie Leon: Inside the Mummy’s Tomb” and “That’s a Wrap: Kim Newman explores Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb.” It also has an audio commentary with author/film historian Steve Haberman, and interviews with Valerie Leon and Christopher Wicking.
Crucible of HorrorAKA The Corpse (1971). Available April 20.
This is part of The Hammer Presents Collection which was started in late 2025 to showcase British horror films that weren’t made by Hammer, but “are similar in style and substance to the classic Hammer horrors,” according to the Hammer Films website which is well worth checking out to learn more about Hammer.. These films are restorations scanned from the original film negatives.
Crucible of Horror is a 2K restoration from the original negative and includes new commentary with William Fowler and Vic Pratt who are co-authors of The Bodies Beneath and creators/curators of the British Film Institute’s ongoing Flipside video series.
The Snake Woman was not made by Hammer Films, but since it carries “the spirit” of the legendary studio, it was chosen to get a restoration on Hammer Presents home video.
Also in Hammer Presents are these two films directed by Sidney J. Furie that are getting separate releases with restorations from original scans.
In Doctor Blood’s Coffin, a doctor sets up a lab in a small Cornish village to revive the dead – with unwilling victims, of course. Hazel Court co-stars. It has a new commentary with Jonathan Rigby, an actor, film historian and author (English Gothic), and Kevin Lyons, editor of the website Encyclopedia of Fantastic Film and Television.
The Snake Woman is born after a doctor injects his wife with snake venom to cure her insanity and she gives birth to a baby born ice cold and without eyelids – like a reptile. You can see where this is going. It has a new commentary by writer, filmmaker and film programmer Heidi Honeycutt and TV and film critic Sarah Morgan.
Actors are stalked while rehearsing for a mysterious theater group at a deserted seaside resort. It has an audio commentary by film historians Kat Ellinger and Martyn Conterio; “Flesh, Blood and Censorship,” an interview with director Pete Walker; and interviews with actors Jenny Hanley and Stewart Bevan, and third assistant director Terry Madden. For this Kino Cult release, the 3-D sequences have been newly aligned by the 3-D Film Archive and are presented in both stereoscopic and anaglyph formats.
Things go horribly wrong when a film crew makes a movie inside a mansion where seven members of a family died. When will people learn not to read The Tibetan Book of the Dead? The cast starsJohn Ireland, Faith Domergue and John Carradine. Extras include new audio commentary by author and film historian David Del Valle with producer and director David DeCoteau. There’s also an archival interview with John Carradine and commentary by associate producer Gary Kent.
Hold that Ghost is the first “comedy-horror” film from Abbott and Costello. (Image: Kino Lorber.)
Abbott and Costello in Hold That Ghost (1941). Available April 28.
In their first comedy-horror film, the affable duo inherits a mobster’s abandoned roadhouse where loot is rumored to be hidden. Chaos will ensue. Joining them are Richard Carlson, Joan Davis, Evelyn Ankers and the Andrews Sisters. It’s from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative. New commentaries are by author and film historian Alan K. Rode and another by film historian Samm Dighan.
Arrow Video is a British film distribution label that specializes in cult, classic and horror movies. Here’s one release that caught my eye.
Salem’s Lot (1979). Coming March 31.
Tobe Hooper’s terrifying TV miniseries with its chilling Nosferatu-like character gets a4K restoration in this two-disc set that also includes the shorter international theatrical cut. It’s absolutely packed with extras including fun stuff like a Salem’s Lot town sign sticker, a double-sided fold-out poster, the original shooting script gallery and a booklet with new writing on the film by critics Sean Abley, Sorcha Ni Fhlainn and Richard Kadrey,
Archival material includes interviews with director Tobe Hooper and stars Lance Kerwin and Julie Cobb. New features are plentiful and include commentaries by film critics Bill Ackerman and Amanda Reyes, another by film critic Chris Alexander. “King of the Vampires” is an interview with Stephen King biographer Douglas Winter. “New England Nosferatu” is an interview with filmmaker Mick Garris. “Fear Lives Here” looks at the locations of Salem’s Lot today. “Second Coming” is a new appreciation by author and critic Grady Hendrix.
Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever and is a member and board chair of the Classic Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and led the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs. She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto or on Bluesky at @watchingforever.bsky.social
Every year or so I like to review a new-to-me Audie Murphy film in my Western RoundUp column.
My previous Murphy review, Apache Rifles (1964), was published last April. This year I’ve watched one of Murphy’s more unusual Western films, Walk the Proud Land (1956), for the first time. My late father told me Walk the Proud Land was “a superior film,” and I agree.
Audie Murphy was one of our greatest Western stars, yet even so I feel he’s somewhat underappreciated. Thanks to Kino Lorber Studio Classics, his films have become easier for home viewers to obtain — and what’s more, in wonderful copies. It’s my hope that these fine Blu-ray releases will bring more attention, along with new admirers, to Murphy’s films.
Walk the Proud Land is part of Kino Lorber’s Audie Murphy Collection V, along with two other strong entries, Seven Ways From Sundown (1960) and Bullet for a Badman (1964). A link for my past Western RoundUp review of Seven Ways From Sundown is at the bottom of this post.
Murphy was 31 when he made Walk the Proud Land. He plays John Philip Clum, a religious Easterner who in 1874 becomes an agent on an Arizona Indian reservation, where he helps the tribe return to self-governing principles.
Audie Murphy and Charles Drake
The screenplay by Gil Doud and Jack Sher was inspired by a biography by John Clum’s son Woodworth, titled Apache Agent.
For those who are interested, over a decade ago the late Western historian Jeff Arnold, who passed away in 2024, wrote about this film at his site, Jeff Arnold’s West, and shared some of the history of the real John Clum. Suffice it to say that Walk the Proud Land seems to have done a fairly reasonable job accurately depicting parts of Clum’s story, while dramatizing other aspects.
As the movie opens, Clum (Murphy) arrives in Tucson looking very much like an Eastern dude, complete with bowler hat.
Addison Richards, Audie Murphy, and Morris Ankrum
Despite initially seeming rather out of place, Clum proves to be an unflappable man of principle, guided by his Dutch Reformed Church beliefs. The governor (Addison Richards) and Army General Wade (Morris Ankrum) are highly skeptical of the Department of Interior putting churches in charge of Indian reservations, but Clum is firm about his plans to treat the Indians on an equal basis as fellow human beings.
Upon arriving at the San Carlo Apache reservation, Clum orders Chief Eskiminzin (Robert Warwick) and his men unchained and tells Eskiminzin that the chief will govern his people once more.
There is ongoing conflict with the military over how to treat the Indians, but Clum persists in making changes, including re-arming the Apaches.
Disalin (Anthony Caruso), a member of the tribe, takes advantage of this and tries to encourage his fellow tribe members to kill Clum, but instead Disalin is killed by his own brother, Taglito (Tommy Rall). After this incident Clum and Taglito become blood brothers in a formal ceremony.
Clum also has conflict on the home front, as Tianay (Anne Bancroft), an Apache widow with a young boy (Eugene Mazzola), wants to be Clum’s wife but has to settle for keeping house for him.
Clum’s fiancée Mary (Patricia Crowley) arrives but after the wedding is shocked to realize Tianay has been living under the same roof as her new husband. Indeed, Tianay makes clear to Mary that she would also like to be Clum’s wife.
Matters come to a head in terms of both military-Indian relations and Clum’s relationships with Mary and Tianay when Clum courageously sets out to capture Geronimo (Jay Silverheels).
Geronimo (Jay Silverheels)
I found Walk the Proud Land quite engrossing. It’s an interesting story, well told over its 88 minutes, and most of it was filmed in authentic-looking locations at Old Tucson and other areas in Arizona.
Murphy is outstanding as a quietly determined man who repeatedly won’t take “no” for an answer. While he does have a couple brawling action scenes, Clum is a man of peace and his character patiently and repeatedly does what he believes is right, hoping for the best outcome.
Pat Crowley, Charles Drake, and Audie Murphy
It takes Clum’s bride Mary (Crowley) a bit of time to catch up with her husband’s attitudes; she loves him but is dismayed by the way his refusal to offend the Apaches extends to not wanting to offend Tianay with overt rejection. He instead lets Tianay know that in his tradition he can have only one wife and trusts her to eventually work things out from there and move on.
Besides the conflict with another woman, Mary is also frightened her husband’s actions could leave her widowed. In a scene reminiscent of Katy Jurado’s confrontation with Grace Kelly in High Noon (1952), Tianay convinces Mary that it’s her role to stand by her man.
Pat Crowley and Anne Bancroft
Murphy’s good friend Charles Drake, who appeared with him in multiple films, here plays a former Army sergeant who becomes his aide. Drake is relaxed and engaging, providing a supportive contrast to Murphy’s quieter character.
As was common for the era, many of the Indian roles, with the exception of Jay Silverheels, were played by non-Indian actors. I thought Robert Warwick was excellent as the aging Indian chief.
I was also fascinated by the casting of dancer Tommy Rall as Taglito, who becomes Clum’s blood brother. Rall is best known for his exceptional dancing in movie musicals such as Kiss Me Kate (1953), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and My Sister Eileen (1955).
Tommy Rall
Except for a brief scene where Rall performs a war dance, this is strictly a dramatic role, and I found him quite credible.
Walk the Proud Land was well directed by Jesse Hibbs. It was filmed by Harold Lipstein in Technicolor. The movie was shot in late 1955 and released in the fall of 1956.
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray has an excellent widescreen print with a strong soundtrack. The disc includes the trailer, which was newly mastered in 2K, plus five additional trailers for other Audie Murphy films. There’s also a commentary track by Gary Gerani.
Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.
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– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub
Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.
Silent Superstars: Rudolph Valentino, The Ultimate Screen Idol
Rudolph Valentino
How fortunate it was that a young Italian movie actor christened Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguella settled on the elegant “Rudolph Valentino” for his screen name. Not many people today are familiar with images of Valentino’s face, but everyone’s heard of the romantic name, and some will perhaps recognize vague descriptions of him as the “Great Lover” from the long-ago days of the silent screen. One of the near-mythical film icons who tragically passed away far too young, he made an extraordinary impact in his day and those who take the time to view his best films will doubtless understand why.
Posing as Julio in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921).
He was born to a middle class family in Castellaneta, Italy, in 1895, the same year films were first being exhibited. He and his siblings Alberto and Maria were very close to their mother, especially after their father tragically passed away from malaria. The teenaged Rodolfo preferred the outdoors and working with his hands to sitting in school, and while he tried studying professional landscaping he couldn’t shake off his longing for a greater adventure. At age 18 he boarded a ship to New York City to seek his fortune.
The young Italian would work a series of odd jobs, and thanks to his natural grace and coordination became a dance instructor and taxi dancer (a “for hire” dancing partner, a mildly frowned-upon occupation at the time). This line of work led to his first brush with public drama when he became a witness in the sensational divorce trial of heiress Blanca de Saulles. Seeking a fresh start–on the opposite side of the country–he dabbled in the California theater scene and decided to try breaking into motion pictures. He shyly but insistently hung around Hollywood movie studios until he started getting work as an extra. His first modest break was as an extra in the feature Alimony (1918), where he was paid five dollars a day.
Still from A Married Virgin (1918).
It only took a few small roles for directors to typecast the young Italian as a “Latin” villain in films like The Married Virgin (1918), Eyes of Youth (1919), and Once to Every Woman (1920). He attempted to work with the renowned D.W. Griffith, but the director infamously dismissed him as “too foreign looking” and felt certain that “The girls would never like him.” Nevertheless, Rodolfo persisted–and he also managed to settle on a screen name. Few actors had their names so prone to different spellings: “De Valentina,” “Volantino,” “di Valentina,” and “Valentine” would be paired variously with “Rodolfo,” “Rodolph” or “Rudolpho.” Finally he chose the catchy “Rudolph Valentino,” although he liked the nickname “Rudy.”
With Dorothy Phillips in Once to Every Woman (1920).
In early 1918 Valentino’s beloved mother died, devastating him. He would also enter a doomed marriage with actress Jean Acker, part of the inner circle of the theatrical queen bee Alla Nazimova. But luck finally came his way: in 1921 the great screenwriter June Mathis recommended him for the role of the fiery libertine Julio Desnoyers in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). His impressively charismatic performance was a sensation, particularly his sensuous tango scenes. Mathis had correctly sensed that female audiences were tired of the pale, well-starched heroes on the screens and wanted something new. Valentino’s Four Horseman costar Alice Terry would recall, “I always had the impression that I was playing with a volcano that might erupt at any minute. It never did, but that was the secret of his appeal.”
After this breakout role Valentino appeared in the Art Deco drama Camille (1921) starring Alla Nazimova. He was drawn to its set designer, the statuesque Natacha Rambova, and it wasn’t long before they were in a relationship despite his shakey marriage to Jean Acker. He then signed with Famous Players-Lasky, which promptly starred him in the romance The Sheik (1921). The film’s tale of an impetuous young Englishwoman captured by a sensual desert sheik was a huge sensation, although Valentino’s performance is somewhat giggle-worthy today thanks to director George Melford’s liking for histrionics.
Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres in The Sheik (1921).
The Sheik would leave a major mark on 1920s pop culture, coinciding with the era’s interest in “exotic” Eastern cultures. Young men who styled their hair like Valentino, slicked back and very glossy, were dubbed “sheiks,” and young flappers were called “shebas.” “The Sheik of Araby” was a hugely popular song, and desert romances were all the rage on screen–even the reputable Milton Sills tried his hand at being a dangerous screen sheik.
Rudolph Valentino and Lila Lee in Blood and Sand (1922).
Valentino’s subsequent films had him star in Gloria Swanson in Beyond the Rocks (1922) and play the red-blooded toreador Gallardo in his personal favorite film, Blood and Sand (1922).
Thanks to his success and likely also to Rambova’s influence, Valentino began asking for larger salaries and more artistic control over his films. Butting heads with the studios led to going “on strike” from films for a time and going on a tour with Natacha, who was now his second wife. Dubbed the Mineralava Dance Tour (sponsored by a beauty company), it featured the famous couple giving demonstrations of the famous tango. They attracted massive crowds wherever they went.
With Natacha Rambova
Back in Hollywood he would star in films like the historical drama Monsieur Beaucaire (1924) and popular action drama The Eagle (1925), but by this point the strain of his fame was beginning to show. His marriage to Natasha would crumble in 1926, another shattering personal event. He told one reporter frankly: “A man should control his life. My life is controlling me.”
In 1926 he decided to star in The Son of the Sheik, the sequel to The Sheik. Beautifully shot and full of drama, romance and action, it was promising to be a sensational hit. Valentino’s performance was nothing short of magnificent, full of all the charisma, menace and sensual allure his fans could desire. It also presented a unique challenge since he played a dual role of both the elderly sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan and his virile son, Ahmed.
Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Bánky in The Son of the Sheik (1926).
As the film was rolled out to the first run theaters, Valentino embarked on a promotional tour that was packed with social events. In mid-August 1926, he was at a party in New York City when he became seriously ill. At the hospital doctors discovered a perforated stomach ulcer the size of a dime. He had been suffering stomach pains for a long time, attempting to treat himself with bicarbonate of soda. Despite an operation he developed severe peritonitis, and on August 23, 1926, Rudolph Valentino passed away at 12:10 p.m. His last words may have been: “Don’t pull the blinds! I feel fine. I want the sunlight to greet me.”
The hysteria that attended his death is remembered even today. The public was allowed to view his body lying in state at Frank E. Campbell’s Funeral Church and a reported 100,000 people showed up, leading to a riot. His funeral train heading to Hollywood was visited by countless fans at each stop along the way, from the East to the West coast of the country. He was finally laid to rest in the Cathedral Mausoleum at the Hollywood Forever cemetery, in a chamber donated by June Mathis.
The fame in his lifetime, reputation for being the greatest “Latin Lover” of the screen, and sudden, shocking death have all naturally catapulted Rudolph Valentino to “icon” status, a status which has practically become mythical. Images of his face rarely circulate among the regular public nowadays and his movies may be known mostly to film buffs, yet mercifully, that legendary status remains.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
