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Then Brennan finally was awarded a bravura role, winning his second Academy Award for his Technicolor performance as Peter Goodwin in Kentucky (December 30, 1938). Goodwin is an unreconstructed Confederate who can never forget that a Unionist killed his father. Loretta Young and Richard Greene are the ostensible stars of this horse opera, but as the Newsweek reviewer put it, the romance is a "synthetic affair."
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Carl Rollyson |
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Then we got round to Michael's health. "He's reached a rather difficult stage," Julie said and began to talk about Michael's digressions, his seeming inability to get to the point or stay on it. It was so. But I added: "If you call him up and you say, 'I want to ask you about this, this, and this and give him the night to think about it, he'll come in the morning and for an hour or two he will do perfectly well." Michael recognised the prob..
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Carl Rollyson |
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CR] Tony Benn seems to have been an incredible headache. [MF] Yes, he was. [CR] She asks this question: "Should Michael be tougher on Benn and the other trouble makers?" But she fears that if you do, there will be a party split. Do you know what she said about your speeches? When you dealt with other people's writing, they didn't allow at all for your own speaking style. She felt you were constrained by that. [MF] Well, that's true, no doub..
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Carl Rollyson |
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William Brennan did not live to see his son, now a remarkable transformative actor, win his first Academy Award, for Come and Get It, the first time the award for supporting actor was given. Edward Arnold's superb performance of a less than sympathetic character was not even recognized with a nomination. Walter said he was surprised at receiving the award and had not planned to attend the ceremony, but his studio insisted, giving him evenin..
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Carl Rollyson |
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CR] What about Barbara Castle. You never had a sexual relationship with her? [MF] No. Never. I wanted to, maybe, but in 1938 we went across the channel together, waiting to start on our new jobs. I had asthma terribly then. I had it that night. She did not know what it was. She thought the boat was sinking or something.
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Carl Rollyson |
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Sam Goldwyn had a long-standing business partnership with Twentieth Century-Fox, the studio making Tobacco Road. As a contract player, Walter had to do what he was told. The system usually suited him. He was never one to gripe about servitude; indeed, he always seemed happy to serve. He might imitate the autocratic Sam Goldwyn, calling up Gary Cooper and convincingly fire the studio's star in Goldwyn's voice. But Walter also told a reporter..
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Carl Rollyson |
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period (1981-83), when Michael was Labour Party leader, had been devastating: Some things helped me--the Byron Society--Byron helped me to recover from that. He never gave in. Just after the election, I was becoming quite active in it [the Society]. I read, by the way, Don Juan, in hospital after I had been elected leader of the Labour Party. I had slipped coming down the stairs and broken my ankle [and surgery was necessary to put it right..
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Carl Rollyson |
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So how could Walter Brennan possibly dominate Gary Cooper? It would be virtually unheard of in Hollywood to reverse the natural order of things and have a character actor outshine the star. Who would want to do that? What director or producer would take such a risk? It just wasn't done, unless that character actor possessed that rare quality that could translate to leading roles. Even then, why build a picture around Brennan? As Walter Bren..
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Carl Rollyson |
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T]HE LEATHER, SUN-DRENCHED FACE THAT MOST COMMONLY HELPED tame the wild frontier was that of Walter Brennan," writes critic Manny Pacheco. Not Gary Cooper, not John Wayne, not Randolph Scott--or any other star--meant more to the western than Walter Brennan, who played every sort of character, good and evil, and everything between."
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 23: Isidore Miller writes to Marilyn, "I can't tell you how much your trip to Florida meant to me. I don't ever remember having such a good time! The guests of the Sea Isle Hotel can't get over how beautiful you looked the night there."
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 24: Marilyn is the honored guest at the home of Mexican actor, writer, and director Emilio Fernandez Romo and his wife, Colunga. Marilyn is introduced to Jose Bolanos, a well-dressed, twenty-six-year-old actor and screenwriter.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 24: Marilyn and Joe return to the mainland.
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Carl Rollyson |
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Michael was a gallant campaigner--not just a politician, but a human being who tried to make every day an event. He would rise as high as possible to the occasion, drawing on whatever last reserves he had. He was not a man to hold anything back. The heroic way he confronted each day was what made it such an honour to be in his company.
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Carl Rollyson |
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Never meant to be more than a B picture entertainment produced on the Universal International backlot and at the Iverson Ranch (a five-hundred-acre family property often used for location shoots), it is one of those unexpected surprises that make you want to know about everyone who had a part in creating such a diverting picture. The film has no single star, but rather an ensemble of superb actors: Vincent Price (Tracy Holland), hamming up ..
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 25: With Frederick Vanderbilt Field, Marilyn attends a reception for Princess Antonia De Braganza of Portugal at the home of Mexican actor Dennis Bourke. Some reports say she cancels at the last minute, angering Field.
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Carl Rollyson |
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February 25: Mr. and Mrs. Rupe write to Marilyn about their son's reaction to her Korean trip. They quote his letter to them: "When she appeared on the stage, there was just a sort of gasp from the audience--a single gasp multiplied by the 12,000 soldiers present, was quite a gasp. . . . She is certainly making a lot of friends here . . . unlike the other entertainers . . . after the show she autographed, chatted, and posed for pictures. Th..
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 22: Dr. Marianne Kris calls her colleague Dr. Ralph Greenson, asking him to attend to Marilyn, who is having anxiety attacks. Greenson is well known because of patients such as Frank Sinatra, Peter Lorre, and Vivien Leigh. The psychiatrist begins work with Marilyn, visiting her in her bungalow, in an effort to reduce her reliance on drugs, advising her to rely for prescriptions only on him and an internist, Dr. Hyman Engelberg.
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 28: Marilyn arrives in San Francisco the day before embarking for Japan, where DiMaggio has been invited to make appearances. She breaks her thumb, although a DiMaggio relative said Joe was responsible for her injury. He seems to have been taken by surprise when she came up behind him, and he instinctively grabbed her hand and bent back her thumb. Dr. Clifton Bennett vaccinates Marilyn for her trip.
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 28: Marilyn attends a March of Dimes fashion show at the Waldorf Astoria, held to benefit children with polio. She is photoraphed with several children, smiling and talking with them, as well as posing for the camera.
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Carl Rollyson |
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Second only to the royals in Michael's gallery of good-for-nothings were, of course, the Tories. John Major occupied a special page in Michael's book of bad ones. The trouble began when Suraj Paul, a staunch Labour Party backer and friend to Michael, invited him to the festivities celebrating his twenty-five years of doing business in Britain. Lord Paul had built a factory in Michael's constituency and another one in John Major's. A fortnig..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Under contract to Sam Goldwyn for a decade beginning in 1935, he nevertheless saw himself as independent--in part because so many studios used him, and he was not part of the star machine "If you're not the star, you don't get the blame if it's a lousy picture," he pointed out. "They always blame the star. They say, 'But that old man was great!' That's how I kept going." He was quite content to walk beside his friend Lewis Stone, who would ..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Back to Jill's diary and her comments on Michael's sartorial difficulties: "Jennie Lee used to say, 'Don't let the Tories dress Michael.'" He got a big kick out of that. She also mentions meeting Denis Thatcher and finding him "deadly and quite cheerless." "He was, too," Michael agreed. Jill used to imitate him, Michael told me: We went to Downing Street twice when she [Thatcher] was there. In Private Eye they have him [Denis] calling for a..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Walter Brennan was now making as much as $5,000 a week, an incredible sum for a character actor, and he was in a position to fulfill a cherished dream. He bought a twelve-thousand-acre ranch near Joseph, Oregon, for $72,800, with a down payment of $15,000 and the remaining $57,800 secured by a mortgage.
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Carl Rollyson |
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Nothing much changed in Walter Brennan's domestic life even after he won his Academy Award and received rave reviews for both Come and Get It and Banjo on My Knee. He remembered hurrying home with his gold statuette, strutting in his borrowed tuxedo, and asking his wife how it felt to be married to an Academy Award winner. Ruth gave him a look and said, "Turn out the lights and go to bed. I lived with you when you didn't have a dime." His r..
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Carl Rollyson |
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We were invited to some of these royal functions," Michael said. Jill wanted to see what they were like. They had gone to Prince Charles's wedding to Diana. "There was a lot of nonsense about it. We had to be there two or three hours early. I took a book with me, as I always do on such occasions and I read Hazlitt's 'Spirit of the Monarchy."
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 21: Marilyn returns to New York and visits Lee Strasberg.
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Carl Rollyson |
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mentions Michael going to a reception with Prince Charles and Diana: "All the women were in semi-formal dress, so I was surprised to see Diana resplendent in a low-cut off the shoulder evening dress of taffeta. She has lovely shoulders and arms and looked quite beautiful and talked to everyone with animation, charm, and enjoyment. It was easy to see why people do go mad about her." Michael had no gift for calling up or appreciating such obs..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Although Grandpa hits on the blonde next door, he does it with such charm and perkiness that Brennan gets away with playing what is essentially a dirty old man part. It is worth watching the movie to see him dance with his blonde pickup, clicking his heels, and then sitting her down at a table and showing her his $32,000 bank account--actually just a little notebook, although he claims to have the money (which turns out to be Confederate cu..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Tony sometimes talks as if he is the only just man. ... He's a very persuasive speaker. You think he believes every word of it and I think he does, actually. That's why he comes across. There's no fake in it. But my impression is that his family--two or three of them--don't agree with him. They don't say it because they don't want to hurt him. In the first cabinet where I was--who you sit next to is quite important--you see how the other ch..
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Carl Rollyson |
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On one of his trips with Jill they visited Montaigne's tower, "twenty miles outside Bordeaux," said Michael, who liked to pinpoint the author's biographical geography. We also went about to several of the other places where he had been and so I read every Montaigne essay in a year or two either at the place he'd written about or in the vicinity. I have it marked. It changed my life. Mostly I was reading it with Jill. It's got the whole huma..
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Carl Rollyson |
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as Brennan's roles became more important, he acquired the services of a stand-in. Years later, he recalled learning from his first stand-in, Dick Dickinson, about lighting and blocking. An alert stand-in observes everything on the set, functioning sometimes as an acting coach. "Watch out," Dickinson warned Brennan. "The dame can walk right in and cut you to pieces if you don't back up an inch or two as you deliver the line."
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Carl Rollyson |
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Motion picture producers were well aware of audiences who now looked to Walter Brennan to spice up the action, to do something that would entertain them in pictures that were otherwise commonplace. Even in a major A film starring Spencer Tracy as the explorer Henry M. Stanley, Brennan was added for comic relief--in effect because he was Walter Brennan, screenwriter Philip Dunne recalled. When Brennan and Tracy, both Academy Award winners, a..
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Carl Rollyson |
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I mentioned a television documentary Julie and I had watched at Gilly's house and that Jill remarked on how his Park Street flat was filled with women's cosmetics and perfume bottles in the bathroom. "What?" Michael exclaimed. Sometimes I thought the word was not a sign of deafness but of stalling. Jill had suggested Michael had quite a full love life before she met him. "Did she?" Michael asked mildly. "So what I want to know," I said rais..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Just then I felt I must confront the question of whether I was to do Michael's biography as well as Jill's. From our first meeting, Julie had been urging me to do so, to make sure I got my place in line ahead of everyone else. I took to the idea, since I had always wanted to write a biography of a political figure and I had such unprecedented access to Michael. But Julie, in her typical eagerness, had been pressing Michael: [CR] Julie said ..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Walter Brennan was always in demand and gave the lie to the Hollywood cliche that you are only as good as your last picture. He never delivered anything less than a competent performance, but he never deceived himself when he was playing in lousy pictures.
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Carl Rollyson |
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appearing. After seeing the completed film, Brennan thanked Goldwyn for persuading him to do it. "It's stories like these," he told Hedda Hopper, "that make you realize it isn't all beer and skittles in the life of a producer. I don't mean our people should be mollycoddles and do things against their will, but they should listen to men who back their own opinions with their own cash." Brennan always had a healthy respect for businessmen and..
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 24: Gossip columnist Earl Wilson interviews Marilyn at the Sherry-Netherlands Hotel, dubbing her "the Mmmmmmmm Girl."
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 24: Marilyn and Joe return to Los Angeles, and she finds a script of The Girl in Pink Tights that has been sent to her Doheny Drive apartment.
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 24: Time publishes "Dostoyevsky Blues."
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 24: Stella Yusko writes to Arthur Miller asking if he and Marilyn might be interested in adopting a "healthy and beautiful baby, and the mother feels that you people would really make a good happy home for her, which she cannot do because of her other problems."
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 24: Marilyn agrees to do Something's Got to Give, providing that the script changes are acceptable to her. Advice columnist Ann Landers writes Marilyn a note: "Just read where you are back in Hollywood. Since I haven't seen or heard from you in a so long a time--naturally wondering how you are. . . . If you make another film in Hollywood I hope I can be with you again."
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Carl Rollyson |
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January 26: The Women's Division of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York presents Marilyn with a citation, "In recognition of her unique ability to bring pleasure to millions of Americans through her abundant talents, her glowing personality, her open heart and her generous spirit. . . . In gratitude for her cooperation in helping to make this day a success and thereby bringing hope and comfort to thousands of men, women, and..
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Carl Rollyson |
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One of Michael's favourite pastimes was hauling books down from his shelves and reading to me, or pointing out comments he had made on the flyleaves. The astringent Brigid Brophy never failed to amuse him. Her invective, he claimed, "would put anybody in a good temper. It's my favourite cure for any kind of depression." Michael read out a newspaper clipping reporting an apology concerning something Brophy had written that the press council ..
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Carl Rollyson |
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Walter also kept himself going by keeping an account book recording his earnings, starting from the first day he showed up on a movie set. He liked to turn the pages and see the entries for $7.50 until he got to one in which he had written "with giddy gayness" $15.00 for one day's work. Subsequent pages still had entries for $7.50, but more frequently, he noted earnings of $50.00 and $75.00, after which the pay continued to increase. But he..
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Carl Rollyson |