Born Today June 3: Paulette Goddard

1910-1991

Pauline Marion Goddard Levy was born to a Jewish father and Episcopalian mother in Whitestone Landing on Long Island in New York.  She was a childhood model who would make her stage debut in 1926 at the age of 16 in Florenz Ziegfeld's summer review, in a production of No Foolin'.  She had gotten her start when her mother went to work for Saks Fifth Ave., and a great-uncle, Charles Goddard, a wealthy druggist, introduced her to Ziegfeld.  It was in this production that one of them suggested that she be billed as "Paulette Goddard" instead of Pauline Levy; obviously the name stuck.  She made he film debut in 1929 in a Laurel & Hardy late silent/early sound comedy short:  Berth Marks.  Also in 1929, she landed a role in an early full mono talkie:  The Locked Door, a Barbara Stanwyck crime vehicle.  Both roles went uncredited.  From these fortunate, but rather humble beginnings, started a long career that would see her as the belle of Hollywood by the mid-1930's, provide her both fame and infamy, and bring her high critical praise (she was nominated for 1 Oscar).  She married young, and would go on to marry 4 times, with only her last marriage "taking" (two of her husband's included Charlie Chaplin and Burgess Meredith).  With her marriage to Chaplin she starred in his film from 1936 Modern Times, which for all intents and purposes was a very late silent.  Chaplin, still not then comfortable with the wordy dialogue of talkies, shot the film with the barest minimum of spoken lines.  By the 1950's her acting career had slowed considerably, and by the mid-1950's she started to get into television work.  By the 1960's, she was all but retired.  The last film appearance that she made was in 1964; with her last acting job on television came in 1972 in the series The Snoop Sisters. After this she retired for good, having received a massive inheritance from her last husband, the German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, who had died in 1970.  In 1975 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and went into extensive treatment, including very invasive surgeries to combat the disease.  The treatment was a success.  However, by the late 1980's, she was suffering from emphysema and died from heart failure on 23 April 1990 while undergoing respiratory treatments near her home in Switzerland.  She is buried a short distance from her residence next to Remarque and her mother in the Ronco Village Cemetery.

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Born Today June 2: Thomas Hardy

1840-1928

Famed British novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was born in Higher Bockhampton in the hamlet of Stinsford, Dorset, England in the UK (today the town is Upper Bockhampton, in Dorchester), to a stonemason and local builder and his well read wife.  His mother, Jemima, educated Thomas herself, until he was old enough, at age 8, to attend school.  The family did not have the means to send him for higher education, so his formal schooling ended at the age of 16, when he was apprenticed to local architect James Hicks.  He remained in the position until 1862, when he moved himself to London and was able to enroll in King's College.  While there, he won prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects and from the Architectural Association.  He was then put in charge of excavation of the graveyard at the St. Pancras Old Church, one of the oldest--if not the oldest--Christian places of worship in England.  The graveyard was later destroyed to make way for the local Midland Railway.  Also while living in London, he was introduced to the literary works of several influential authors, including John Stuart Mill.  Never fully feeling at home in London, and with his health worsening, he returned to Dorset just five years later; settling in Weymouth.  It is here, at this time, that he decided to devout his life to writing.  After marrying his first wife, the couple moved into a home in Max Gate that he had designed and built by his brother.  This is where the writing really took off; he would remain in the home for the rest of his life.  Films of his work were produced during his lifetime; the first of which came in 1913 with Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a film directed by one of Edison's men J. Searle Dawley (unfortunately it is a lost film).  In all, 5 films were made from his work before 1930; with The Greenwood Tree, released a year after his death, being the first in sound.  The latest films based on his work include: Far From The Madding Crowd (2015) and North Of Cheyenne (also based on Madding Crowd) having just been announced.  In December of 1927, Hardy became very ill with pleurisy; he lingered until around 9PM GMT on 11 January 1928.  His funeral was held on the 16th at Westminster Abbey; the end of which proved to be controversial.  Hardy had always expressed a wish to be interred with his first wife in Stinsford. An argument ensued between his remaining family and the executor of his will over interment; so a brokered compromise had to be reached.  His heart was buried in Stinsford, and the rest of his remains, in the form of ashes were interred in the "Poets Corner" within the Abbey.  

Stinsford Memorial in Dorset

Plaque at Westminster Abbey

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Born Today June 1: Frank Morgan

1890-1949

Francis Philip Wupperman was born in New York City; the youngest of 11 children.  The family was in the bitters business; they were under contract to sell the still popular Angostura Bitters from Trinidad & Tobago, earning the family a small fortune.  This allowed for paid education for the children, and Francis attended Cornell University. While there, his older brother Ralph went into show business, so upon his graduation Francis followed him.  He first debuted on the Broadway stage, and then quickly went on to make appearances in films.  His first film was The Suspect (1916), a drama romance that was based on a play (it now on the lost film roster), he is credited as "Frank Wupperman."  Taking another cue from his older brother Ralph, he then changed his last name to "Morgan." From this film in 1916 up through the year 1919, he had steady work in film.  He then had a five year hiatus from film work, returning in 1924 with an appearance in Manhandled.  After this, he had only a few roles in films for the remainer of the 1920's; being primarily a live stage performer, he found silent film work tedious.  By 1930, early talkies had pretty much taken over all silent film in the U.S., and Frank Morgan finally found himself in his element on film.  He then became a kind of work-a-holic.  Morgan is, by far and away, most famous for his role(s) in The Wizard Of Oz, most notably, The Wizard, in 1939. He continued to act in films right up until his untimely death, with his last film appearance in A Key To The City (1950) being released posthumously. He died suddenly of a heart attack while filming Annie Get Your Gun (1950) on the 18th of September 1949.  He is interred in the historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY.  In 1956, The Wizard Of Oz premiered on television; at the time, he was the only cast member not to live long enough to see the huge revival of the film's popularity.

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Born Today May 31: Fred Allen (Not So Silent Edition)

1894-1956

John Florence Sullivan was born in Cambridge, Mass to a staunch Irish family.  His mother died when he was only 3 years old and the family (Allen, dad and infant brother Robert) had to move in with one of his mother's sisters, who had a disabled husband.  Allen later remembered these hard times in a second memoir that he would pen; both his father (due to drinking) and his uncle (due to lead poisoning) could not work.  Eventually, his father remarried and things stabilized for the two boys. Both boys were offered the chance to go with him and his new wife, or to stay with their aunt--Allen chose the latter; later saying that he had not one single regret for doing so. One thing that did come of the family moving into such close quarters, is that his father purchased a Emerson upright piano when they moved--Allen took piano lessons, but only managed to learn two songs.  It was, however, the beginnings of his performance exposure.  When older, he took a job at the Boston Public Library and found a book on the origins and development of comedy that was hugely influential on him.  To help with family money troubles, he also took up juggling.  As fate would have it, the library decided to put on a stage show for patrons and asked him to do some juggling and a bit of comedy. A young girl in the audience liked his routine so much that she told him he shouldn't be a library employee--he should be on the stage!  He determined that this is what he wanted to do with his life, but it took some time to realize.  In 1914, at the age of 20, in addition to his library work, he added working in a piano repair shop to his daytime work, and taking parts in amateur stage competitions to his night time activities.  At first, he took the stage name of Fred St. James and soon found himself on a $30 a week vaudeville circuit.  This then morphed into "Freddy James: World's Worst Juggler."  He went out on wider and wider traveling vaudeville shows.  In 1917, he returned to New York and substituted the last name "Allen" after a booker for Fox theaters (not Edgar Allan Poe, as has been suggested) so that he would be paid more by theater owners--had they billed him under his original name, he was sure to get a lower salary.  Throughout the 1920's he continued to develop his stage act, including a few truly original and bizarre touches (a cemetery gag amongst them).  He made his Broadway debut in 1922; he then gravitated to early radio.  In the 1920's radio was beginning to really show it's promise with staged shows being broadcast to a growing audience that no longer had to pay up to attend live shows in theaters.  The radio work then led to two short film appearances in 1929, both were early talkies.  The first was The Installment Collector, a ten minute comedy voice-over featuring Allen talking a mile an hour (a contrast from his later radio persona, for which he is best known); the second is Fred Allen's Prize Playlets (1929), and even shorter film featuring some of his fellow radio players.  The first was produced by Paramount, the second by Warner Bros.  Both are in mono.  If you look up Allen's film credits, they are quite short--just a little over 10 appearances; however his radio work, which began full time in 1932, was extensive!  In fact, one of his shows featured bogus news desk coverage, something that everyone from the likes of Johnny Carson to Lorne Michael's of Saturday Night Live, would go on to imitate.  To read more about his immense radio career, please see the Wikipedia link below.  Starting in 1953, he was a panelist on the popular television program What's My Line--his comedy was then introduced to a whole new generation of people.  On the 17 of March in 1956 he suffered a shift and fatal heart attack, much to the shock of everyone who knew him.  His wife insisted that Fred would have wanted the show to go on as planned--remember, this is when television was live--so Steve Allen took his place on Line and the panel proceeded as usual, until the last 90 seconds of the broadcast, when everyone offered their fondest memories of Fred Allen.  He is buried in the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorn, New York.  Both his birth name and the name that the rest of world knew him by are engraved on his marble marker.  He was 61 years of age at the time of his death.

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Born Today May 30: Howard Hawks

1896-1977

Howard Winchester Hawks was born into a wealthy industrial family in Goshen, Indiana; the eldest of five children.  In 1898, the family relocated to Neenah, Wisconsin so that Howard's father Frank could go to work in the mill that his father-in-law owned. Winters there were very harsh, which by 1906, saw the family annually escaping by over-wintering in Pasadena, California.  In 1910, the family moved there permanently due to Howard's mother's ill-health.  In 1912, the family relocated again to Glendora, where Frank Hawks owned orange groves.  By the time Howard was old enough to attend high school in 1913, he was sent away to the prestigious private Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.  While there, began to attend theatrical shows in Boston; the first real evidence of his being interested in performance art.  After finishing high school back in California, Howard went on to attend Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he majored in mechanical engineering.  College friends remember him as an average student that spent basically no time applying himself; but everyone did notice that he was an extremely avid reader of English language novels.  Back in California, Howard's grandfather purchased a Mercer race car for him (in his youth Hawks had discovered Coaster Racing, a form of gravity racing). It was because of this car that he crossed paths with Victor Fleming.  It wasn't long after this that Fleming, a former auto mechanic, quickly found himself in the position of cinematographer to film director Allan Dwan, after Fleming quickly fixed a faulty film camera for him.  Through this connection, Hawks got his first job in the film industry; that of prop boy to Douglas Fairbanks on the film In Again, Out Again (1917), which Fleming shot (Hawks is sometimes credited as assistant director of the film).  He very quickly worked his way up to set designer.  He was next hired, in more or less the same capacity, by Cecil B. DeMille. Also in 1917, he supposedly worked on the Mary Pickford film The Little Princess.  He would go on to have 3 more assistant director credits by 1921.  During this time, he also applied to Sanford University, but returned to Cornell instead in 1916.  In 1917, he joined the armed forces with the U.S. joining the effort in 1917, finally received his degree in absentia.  A lot to cram into such a short period of time.  In 1923, Hawks received his first writing credit, penning the story that the film Quicksands is based on.  He made his directorial debut at the age of 21, when he and a cinematographer attached to the project, filmed a strange double-exposed dream sequence for another Mary Pickford film. His first formal director credit came the next year in The Road to Glory, which he also wrote the story for (this is, unfortunately, a lost film). The film was made for Fox Film Corp. During the time in-between, he was just one of rebel-rousing group of young men kicking around Hollywood up to all sorts of antics; more can be read about that below by clicking the Wikipedia link below.  He would continue with Fox throughout the remainder of the 1920's; making 8 films for them.  The first time he worked with sound came in 1928 with Fazil, the soundtrack and sound effects provided by MovieTone. His first full sound film came with The Air Circus (1928), yet another lost film (note: amazingly only two of Hawks' film are lost to us). The last film that Hawks made in the 1920's was a return to the partial silent format; Trent's Last Case (1929), a mystery, utilized soundtrack and sound effects only, with sound by Western Electric.  As the 1920's ended, so did his association with Fox Films.  He bounced around from production company to production company in the early 1930's (this includes the time period when Scarface (1932) was made). Finally in 1933, he, and most of his old gang, landed at MGM; though most of greatest and well known films were made at other studios.  Such as:  Bringing Up Baby (1938)--RKO, His Girl Friday (1940)--Colombia, Sergeant York (1941)--Warner Bros., The Big Sleep (1946)--Warner again, The Thing From Another World (1951)--back to RKO, etc.  He became one Hollywood's most sophisticated and prolific directors during it's Golden Age.  The last film that Hawks directed came in 1970 with Rio Lobo, starring an aging John Wayne.  Like many directors, Hawks also got into the world of film production, but unlike other directors, his production credits fail to outnumber his directorial credits.  A couple of weeks before his death, Hawks accidentally fell over his dog; already suffering from vascular disease, the fall caused complications that led to a stroke.  He passed away on 26 December 1977 at the age of 81 in Palm Springs, CA.  He was cremated and his ashes were scattered.

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Born Today May 29: Josef von Sternberg

1894-1969

Born Jonas Sternberg in Vienna, then Austria-Hungary (now just Austria) to a Jewish family whose father was a former soldier in the army.  When he was just two years of age, his father left for the United States in search of work; when Jonas was 7, the entire family joined him in the U.S., only to have to migrate back to Vienna 3 years later.  Still little Jonas had gotten his first taste of the place that would shape the rest of his life.  Four years later, when Jonas was 14, the whole family again set out for the U.S., settling in New York City.  He later dropped out of high school to work as an errand boy for the lace factory where his father had found work as a lacer.  He moved on to a cleaning job in a film factory that lead to work in film repair.  By 1915 he was working for the World Film Company under William A. Bradley in Fort Lee, NJ (the first "Hollywood").  The company had a cache of French directors and cinematographers; Sternberg was mentored by one of them:  Émile Chautard.  In 1919, Chautard hired Sternberg as an assistant director on The Mystery Of The Yellow Room, after founding his own production company: Emile Chautard Pictures Corp. (though, this film is considered by some film historians as being the first independent film).  Thus comes his first actual credit.  He would continue as assistant director until 1925.  In 1924, his first writing credit came in By Divine Right, a film for which he was also assistant director to director Roy William Neill.  It was in the credits for this film that Co-producer (and actor) Elliott Dexter added noble "von" to Sternberg's name, supposedly to even up the titles; Sternberg did not object (this also appears to around the time that he changed his first name).  In 1925 he took to the director's chair for the first time; directing his own project The Salvation Hunters, which he also wrote and produced.  The film was shot in Los Angeles Harbor.  Charlie Chaplin saw the film and was impressed enough to urge both Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to acquire the rights to the film.  Pickford, suitably impressed with Sternberg, then hired him to direct a film starring her (he wrote a scenario for it, which she rejected). In the meantime, he shadow directed The Masked Bride (1925), a Chester Conklin film, that sports an early appearance by Basil Rathbone.  Chaplin then commissioned Sternberg to direct a film starring his current lover Edna Purviance, after Sternberg had been fired from a previous directing job.  A Woman of the Sea (1927) (AKA The Sea Gull) has since become one the most infamous lost films in history.  In fact, it was never really properly released; Chaplin simply destroyed the film--no known copies where made (note:  in 2008, still photographs from the film did surface and were published, giving temporary hope that a copy had been made).  Starting in 1927, however, he began to get some commercial success, starting Underworld, a gangster film starring George Bancroft. He went to work for Paramount in the late 1920's and directed several late silent films during that time that are considered classics of the era.  They include:  The Docks Of New York (1928), considered a very early film noir, and Thunderbolt (1929), a film with an alternative mono sound version provided by Western Electric.  Both films starred Bancroft.  Thus ended Sternberg's career in silent films, and almost ended his tenure in the directors chair.  His career hit a serious slump after the making of Thunderbolt, so he accepted a invitation to work in Berlin. This is where his film making legend began to take shape.  He cast a little known German actress by the name of Marlene Dietrich and things turned around for him.  He would go on to contribute to the careers of other legendary actresses, including:  Rita Hayworth and Carole Lombard.  His film making slowed considerably during the 1940's and he only made 3 film in the 1950's; with his very last being Ana-ta-han in 1953; made in Japan about Japanese soldiers who refused to believe that the war with the U.S. was over; he had written, directed and produced it--the film had a limited release and was a financial failure.  The last film by year that he is credited with comes in 1957 with Jet Pilot, a film he was hired for by it's producer Howard Hughes, starring John Wayne; but the film was shot a full seven years before it release.  Between the years 1959 and 1963 he taught film aesthetics at UCLA. Two of his students, Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison, would go on to their own fame the band The Doors.  Before his death, Sternberg was able to pen an autobiography.  He died in Hollywood of a heart attack at the age of 75 on 22 December 1969.  He is interred at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles.

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This is his new memorial marker added in 2017, when his widow passed away at the age of 97 in June.

Born Today May 28: Minna Gombell

1892-1973

Born in Baltimore, Maryland into a prominent doctor's family; Gombell had by 1912 made her successful stage debut. The following year, she made her Broadway debut, realizing success there quickly.  She specialized in comedic roles and had a very well known and regarded run as a stage actress all the way up through the 1920's in many such role.  This garnered the attention of Hollywood and by 1930 she had signed with Fox Film Corporation.  It was not Fox Films, however that produced her filmed debut in 1929; that fell to Franklin Warner Productions.  Gombell had married playwright Myron C. Fagan sometime well before 1929 and had starred in his play The Great Power in 1928 on Broadway; the cast was approached to make a film of the play, which was released the following year.  It was a strange early talkie, and like a good number of small budget early talkies, it had and alternative silent version.  What makes this film strange is the sound mix for the talking version.  The sound mix for that was provided by Bristolphone Sound, not your ordinary Hollywood talking sequencers at all! For more on this, please click here.  After this, she did continue her stage career, mostly along side her husband,  but also made a prolific number of early talking films under her contract with Fox.  She appeared in more than fifty films, including some real blockbusters such as The Thin Man, from 1931 through 1951, when she retired.  Gombell remained married to Fagan until his death in 1972.  She followed him in death on 14 April 1973 at the age of 80, passing away in Santa Monica, CA.  She is buried in Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland.

  

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Yorkshire Silent Film Information

Thursday and Friday 16 & 17th June screening (and future screening) information can be found here. Found on the website of Silent Pianist Jonathan Best.  Ticket information can be found here.

Born Today May 27: Lucile Watson

1879-1962

Born in Québec City, Canada, she was the daughter of a British Army officer stationed there. Watson is almost completely recognizable for her character acting in role of mothers and matrons in the talking era; but her career started much earlier.  She became interested in acting at a very early age; being independent minded she had hopes of attending a dramatic arts school in New York City; a move that her military father completely disapproved of.  Despite this, she left for New York anyway and did enroll in school there.  She made her Broadway debut in 1902 in a production of Hearts Aflame.  She went on to find roles in several Broadway productions over the next two years.  Along the way, she worked in plays that starred early motion picture actors such as Robert Warwick and John Barrymore.  Her stage career continued to grow over the years, culminating with an appearance in a silent short film in 1916 The Girl with the Green Eyes, a production of Popular Plays and Players, Inc. This was the extent of her film work in the silent era.  She would not appear in film again until 1930 in an early Western Electric talkie, The Royal Family of Broadway, a New York based production partially directed by George Cukor.  She chose instead to stay on the stage; and she stayed there until 1934. She started taking film roles in the few movies that were still being produced in the New York area and found herself with a whole new career on hands.  By the end of 1934, she was making films in Hollywood.  She would continue to act in films right up into the early 1950's, and then even moved on to a little television work, before retiring in 1954 and moving back to her beloved New York.  Watson passed away there of a heart attack on 24 June 1962; she was 83 years of age. She is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, in Hastings-on-Hudson, Westchester Co.  

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Up Coming Blogathon

I will a participant in this upcoming blogathon Royalty On Film, over at the The Flapper Dame blog site.  Please check it out.  Wado/Thanks.