Born Today December 22: Lucien Hubbard

Lucien Hubbard on left, with William A. Wellman and John Monk Saunders 

1888-1971

Screenwriter, producer and occasional director Lucien Hubbard was born on this day in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.  Hubbard started his professional career out as a writer; working as a night editor of the New York Times in the 1910's, while writing screenplays in the time he had to himself.  Despite that some sources cite 1923 as the year his professional career in Hollywood was launched, he actually landed on the west coast years prior to this, probably in 1916 (maybe earlier).  The first scenario that he wrote that was made into a film actually came in 1917 with The Angel Factory, a tenement drama made by Asta Film.  In fact, by 1923 many, many scenarios that he penned had been filmed.  It was around the year 1923 that he career as a Hollywood producer did indeed take off; his first production credit came as the supervising producer on Wanderer Of The Wasteland (1924); based on a Zane Grey novel the film was made at Paramount and filmed on location at Death Valley and in Nevada.  This did not keep him from writing however--he wrote and sold several screen plays in 1925 and a couple in 1926. He returned to production work on the huge project that was William A. Wellman's Wings (1927) [see the photo above], but his work on the film went uncredited.  His work as a producer on the Victor Fleming film The Rough Riders, also from 1927, did not go uncredited, but his work as a script doctor on the project did.  He was hired as an upper level executive at Paramount  after the release of Wings.  In 1928 and 1929 he was hired on as a director (had worked as director on at least 3 films, but was only openly credited with just two).  The first of these film was Rose-Marie which he adapted from a play and made at MGM and starred Joan Crawford. The second was The Mysterious Island, which he adapted from a Jules Verne novel, starred Lionel Barrymore and had a silent version and a partial sound version (it was also shot in the start of the art color process of the time and incorporated film work by Maurice Tourneur and Benjamin Chirstensen). His work as a producer on the partial silent The Wolf Song starring Gary Cooper and Lupe Velez cemented his work as a producer in the 1930's.  He was a very active producer during that decade, and along with his studio work, this was his most prolific decade in the business.  He was lured to MGM in 1933 and this resulted in legal action by Paramount due to Hubbard's contract as an assistant to Darryl Zanuck--the whole affair ended with Zanuck absconding to Twentieth Century Fox; and it would be that studio and Zanuck that Hubbard to turn to in the later days of his work as a producer.  The last film that he has a production credit on is as an associate producer on the 1941 comedy For Beauty's Sake.  Through all of this, he had never stopped writing.  During the silent years, among the many writing credits that he amassed, one has become a bit of a stand out on cultural grounds.  He has been given sole credit in some places (or blame depending on how you view the matter) wrongly for writing the script from scratch (which is just strange) for The Vanishing American (1925), when in fact, he adapted it from another Zane Grey novel (the film/book was remade 1955 with one shared actor and sported a very different plot).  His writing during the 1930's consisted of doctoring a number of scripts that needed work--for these he mostly didn't get credit, and probably, given his executive positions, didn't want credit.  The last film that he wrote came when he penned the script for Gung Ho!: The Story of Carlson's Makin Island Raiders which was based on a true memoir; the film starred Randolph Scott and featured Noah Berry Jr., son of Noah Berry who would appear in several Paramount films that Hubbard penned in the 1920's.  Hubbard passed away in 1971 on the 31st of December, just days after his 83rd birthday, having lived the rest of his life on the property that he purchased in the 1920's in Beverly Hills.  As of this writing, there is no information as where he was interred.  

1919 film that was based on one of his stories (co-penned with W.A.S. Douglas) which distributed by Pathe.

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Born Today March 12 (Not So Silent Edition): Thomas Augustine Arne

1710-1778

English composer Thomas Augustine Arne was born in Convent Garden, London, UK on this date to an Catholic mother and an Anglican father.  Despite that his grandfather and father, both ulpholsterers, had fallen on hard times (his grandfather actually died in a debtors prison), his father had saved enough monies back to have young Thomas educated at Eton.  The young Arne showed a very early interest in music and smuggled a spinet into his room to practice on during the night when the rest of the family slept.  He also would dress up as a liveryman to gain access to the opera, which eventually lead to his having an apprenticeship of sorts with musician and composer Michael Festing; who among other things, taught Arne to play the violin.  When he finished school, he was articled to a solicitor for a period of three years.  He had, though, continued to work with Festing; a situation that his father found out about.  Festing was mostly likely the person responsible for persuading Arne's father to allow him to leave the legal service and pursue a career in music instead.  What Arne is by far and away most famous for is his composition Rule Britannia; he also penned A-Hunting We Will Go and a version of God Save The King (which in movies, he is also credited for when it is listed as God Save The Queen).  Three partial-sound or full sound films made use of his Rule Britannia and one short featuring "Hunting" were made in the late 1920's.  The first of these is a very famous, one could say infamous, film:  the Paramount produced, William A. Wellman directed (at least most of...) Wings, starring Clara Bow and Charles Rogers.  The film was made in 1927, but not released formally until 1929.  The mono musical score and sound effects were furnished by Western Electric.  The Divine Lady (1929) was also a partial sound film.  The first full sound film featuring his music also came in 1929, with the Mickey Mouse short animation When The Cat's Away, featuring sound from the Powers Cinephone Sound System; this marks the first use in a film of A-Hunting We Will Go.  Finally, the first all sound feature film to use the work was Disraeli (1929). Rule Britannia was used next in King Of Jazz  in 1930.  Of course, over the decades, such well known music has been used in dozens of films from the likes of The King and I  to Minions.  The most recent use came last year in the series The Crown.  Arne died at the age of 67 close to the place of his birth in London on the 5th of March, just shy of his 68th.  He is buried in St. Paul's, Covent Garden, a church designed by the renowned Inigo Jones; it is known as "The Actors Church."

Scene from When The Cat's Away (1929)

For More:

Wikipedia

List Of Compositions--Wikipedia

Britannica

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Born Today May 2: Hedda Hopper

1885-1966

Born Elda Furry in Hollidaysville, Pennsylvania to a "Pennsylvania Dutch" (German) family that was staunchly German Baptist Brethren; an influence that would stay with her all her life, especially in role as a notorious Gossip Columnist.  She had six siblings and the family resided in Altoona as of Elda's third birthday.  Before transforming into the columnist that she became (in)famous for, she had quite a long acting career. This started in New York City, where she had relocated in order to break in chorus line work on Broadway.  She did manage to get parts in this capacity, but was not very good at it and was famously fired by the renowned Broadway big-wig the Shubert Brothers.  She eventually found work in a staged matinee where she met it's owner DeWolf Hopper, whom she would later marry and have her only child with--famed Perry Mason actor William Hopper.  She began then to hone her acting skills and was eventually awarded a lead role in a touring stage production of The Country Boy.  It was at the time of her marriage to DeWolf Hopper that she changed her first name to Hedda, as her real first name was too similar to several of his previous 5 wives!  It was also at this time that she started acting in motion pictures.  The first film that she appeared in was in 1916, The Battle of Hearts, and was billed under her birth name.  The next two films in which she appeared, both in 1917, she was, for some reason, billed as "Elda Millar" (her mother's maiden name was Miller, why the change in spelling is a mystery).  It wasn't until the next year that she was finally billed under married name in Virtuous Wives, when she was credited as "Mrs. DeWolf Hopper."  From then on, she was credited as Hedda Hopper.  Her first partial sound film came in 1927 with an uncredited role in the huge production that was Wings; however there was no dialog in sound, only sound effects and a soundtrack by Western Electric Sound System.  It would be fully two years later before she would appear in another sound film, with many appearances in late silents in between.  That came with her role in Girls Gone Wild (1929) (a most unfortunate title since the schmuck that was filming girls on spring break in the 90's called his series the same thing!).  The film was in full mono sound provided by MovieTone.  Though she continued to appear steadily in films right up through the year 1940 (and would, indeed, accept a few scant roles right up to the year she died); her acting career started to slip in the mid-1930's.  She began to look for alternative sources of earned income.  Hopper was known as a notorious gossip, so when the Los Angeles Times offered her the opportunity to write a Hollywood gossip column, she naturally jumped at it.  Thus she began the career that she is most known for.  Her first column appeared in the Valentine's Day edition of the paper in 1938, and things took off from there. She became quite the vicious writer, and was reportedly quite vicious person in actual life.  She started a rivalry with Louella Parsons, who had arguably created the role of the film columnist, and with whom Hopper had been friendly with when she was acting.  The column would soon lead her to radio, where she had a spot on Hollywood romance and scandalous divorces.  Her strict religious upbringing "informed" her politics, about which she was very vocal; she was an unrepentant Republican.  Her darkest moments in the political arena came in the era of communist scares in Hollywood, when she basically came up with name after name, with no evidence, to hand over the Hollywood Blacklist.  She was also a very strong supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which had origins in congressional committees going back to the 1910's and created the Hollywood Blacklist.  It was also closely associated in the popular mind and in the press with Senator Joseph McCarthy, the infamous Junior Senator from Wisconsin--though he never had anything officially to do with the committee, and, indeed, had never served in the House of Representatives.  Future disgraced president Richard Nixon however, did serve on the committee; being that he was from California, Hopper was a supporter.  Hedda Hopper died on February 1, 1966 of double pneumonia at the age of 80.  Her body was sent back to her home state for burial.  Her last acting role came earlier that same year, when she played the role of "Hedda, the Mad Hatter" in in a musical television adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, starring Zsa Zsa Gabor and Sammy Davis Jr.  Hopper had long been known for her very large hats. She is buried Rose Hill Cemetery in Altoona, Penn. where she grew up.  Her grave marker states that she born in 1890, which does not match her birth certificate.  She was succeeded in death in 1970 by her only child William. Just as side note:  she was recently played by the great Helen Mirren in the 2015 release Trumbo, about blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, assayed by the equally great Bryan Cranston (an interesting recently published article about her in the 1960's in Variety can be found here.)

Wikipedia

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