Tag Archives: Production Code

The Idle Rich Are a Strange Breed

Posted on by
Reply
Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Colbert, center top) finds herself an unexpected guest of millionaire J.D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee, top right) at his lavish estate in THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942).

In 1942, director Preston Sturges was rapidly approaching his career peak in Hollywood. Not only was he riding high from the critical and box office success of The Lady Eve (1941), but his esteemed reputation at Paramount Studios had given him the creative freedom to complete a film project dear to his heart – Sullivan’s Travels (1941), starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. So what to do for an encore? At first, Sturges toyed with the idea of doing another film with Lake called The Passionate Witch. But that project was soon handed off to French director Rene Clair with Sturges’ blessing (it was released as I Married a Witch, 1942) while Paramount’s “in-house genius” came up with a new script, tentatively titled Is That Bad?, that poked fun at the idle rich, a class of people with whom Sturges enjoyed some familiarity. After all, his former wife – Eleanor Hutton – was an heiress who was once wooed by Prince Jerome Rospigliosi-Gioeni, among other international aristocrats. This new project – which came to be known as The Palm Beach Story (1942) – would soon prove to be his most expensive undertaking to date.

Continue reading →

Crossing the Color Line

Posted on by
Reply
This film poster for IMITATION OF LIFE (1934) was an alternate version that was targeted toward black audiences.

“The only Hollywood movie of its era that even suggested the existence of such a thing as a race problem in America, the film set off sparks within the black community. Black ministers preached sermons about it while black intellectuals wrote about the film as well. And the movie acquired a legend of its own that still lives today.” – Donald Bogle on Imitation of Life (1934) in Blacks in American Films and Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia

Less well known than the 1959 Douglas Sirk remake starring Lana Turner and Juanita Moore, the first film version of Imitation of Life, directed by John M. Stahl, is actually more faithful to the Fannie Hurst novel (except for the ending) and in many ways presents a much more socially progressive viewpoint than the Sirk version as noted in the below article.

Continue reading →

Before Bogart Became Bogie

Posted on by
Reply

For that small number of gifted actors who become screen legends, the path to stardom is rarely predictable. Sometimes it’s a case of pure luck. Other times it’s achieved after years of honing their craft and screen persona through hard earned experience. I can’t think of a better example of the latter than Humphrey Bogart who made twelve films (two of them short subjects, 1928’s The Dancing Town and 1930’s Broadway’s Like That) before his breakout supporting role as the vicious gangster Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936). The irony is that despite playing that same character on Broadway where he won unanimous critical acclaim, Warner Bros. wanted Edward G. Robinson for the role. If it hadn’t been for the film’s star, Leslie Howard, who played opposite Bogart on Broadway and demanded that he be cast in the film or he would quit, Bogart might not be as famous today.  Continue reading →