Montez and Miranda were important escape fantasies of World War II. Both were strong Latin representatives during the years of our Good Neighbor Policy. Montez admitted she had limited talent, getting by on her very genuine beauty, but Miranda was a certified first-rate musical performer, and a sensation in her home country of Brazil as well as in Hollywood. Neither’s fame lasted very long. Sadly, both women died young. (Montez had a heart attack in a saline reducing bath in 1951 at the age of thirty-one, and Miranda also died of a heart attack at the age of forty-six in 1955.) But while they were on top, and while the world needed them, they were sensational, stars of the moment in an era that needed their humor, their color, and their considerable pizzazz. When time passes them by, exotics are always doomed to seem passé, but who dares to put Maria Montez and Carmen Miranda in the bottom drawer? And who would want to? They remind us that people can have fun during dark times. They sent up things with a deadly seriousness that is only to be admired.
DOGS AND KIDS
While working overtime to manufacture new stars for the war effort, Hollywood also found time to return to two box office bonus staples they could always count on not to be drafted: dogs and kids. There was a new run of animal films: horse stories like My Friend Flicka (1943), Black Beauty (1946), National Velvet (1944), Home in Indiana (1944), Smoky (1946), and a new big-time dog star, Lassie. During the war, MGM released Lassie Come Home (1943) and Courage of Lassie (1946), and began a run of Lassie movies that would ultimately translate into a popular weekly TV show. Child stars like Natalie Wood, Connie Marshall, Butch Jenkins, and others emerged, as well as young Elizabeth Taylor, who, contrary to popular opinion, was never really what you could call a child star. Despite small roles in such movies as Jane Eyre (1944, unbilled), The White Cliffs of Dover, and Courage of Lassie, she was never a star until she played the leading role in National Velvet. She was twelve years old at the time. Within less than four years—only four roles later—she was a teenage femme fatale in A Date with Judy (1948) and at the age of seventeen was tearing herself out of the arms of Robert Taylor in Conspirator (1949), throatily observing, “I’m trying to decide if I love you or if I’m just obsessed by you.” Elizabeth Taylor entered movies as a child, found a great role in Velvet, but became a gigantic name because of her mature beauty and luscious body when she was still a teenager. Authentic child stars begin as tots, milk the ten years or so they have, and usually disappear after they hit their teens. Taylor reversed the process, and milked four decades of stardom out of us after she became an adult.
MARGARET O’BRIEN
Margaret O’brien
One great child star emerged in the wartime years: Margaret O’Brien, the only sound-era brat to ever really rival Shirley Temple.* Temple had many imitators in her day, and, of course, there had been great child stars before her, but O’Brien was the only other little girl who seriously challenged Temple’s throne. She came along just as Temple herself had gotten too old for her roles, but, because of the war, the public wanted a child to worry over. Shirley was a cheerful little optimist for the dark days of the Depression. She made musicals. She teared up but trucked on. O’Brien had breakdowns and real hysteria. She represents all the sadness and loss of the wartime, our determined little survivor no matter what happens. They are two different little girl stars for two different decades. O’Brien was developed to be the anti-Temple, but Temple remains America’s greatest child star and will undoubtedly retain that title unless the world undergoes an amazing cultural shift. The time of the innocent plots and attitudes toward children that made Temple’s films possible is long gone. In 1942, when Temple was fourteen years old (the public still thought she was only thirteen) and was entering the difficult teen years, Louis B. Mayer (still chafing over not having his own little girl star) released a movie called Journey for Margaret (1942). It starred Robert Young and Laraine Day, and “introduced” Margaret O’Brien as a little waif orphaned in the London blitz,† and who wears an empty incendiary bomb casing around her neck. O’Brien was not a musical performer, and she was not a pretty little creature with ruffled dresses and piles of curls. She had braids and a serious demeanor, with a little touch of sadness (or even oddness) in her countenance. She’s unquestionably a movie star during this period—not just a child star, a movie star. She’s intense, a little actress, not a child personality. Life magazine’s Noel Busch describes her as “woebegone…a master of facial hydraulics” and describes her image as “the kindergarten version of the Bacall look, a modified Garbo brood, and a Bette Davis wariness.” Unlike Shirley Temple, who was an adorable little girl, O’Brien is an adorable little adult. Her films contain real sadness and trouble, not just a temporary problem to be gotten over. (Shirley’s nanny can be run over and killed and she’s left on her own in the streets and it’s always just heigh-ho, let’s have a tap number.) Serious stories fit O’Brien, because serious stories fit the times. She matched her era. There’s something deeply sad, slightly off-base, about her. She’s on the edge. This, too, separates her from Temple.
Proving her chops, little Miss O’Brien not only broke down and cried in Meet Me in St. Louis, but also stepped out in a highly respectable cakewalk with none other than Judy Garland, who played her sister.
The success of Journey for Margaret led Metro to put O’Brien into another film set in England, with Robert Young again as her co-star. The Canterville Ghost (1944) was based on an Oscar Wilde story, and it mixes comedy, light drama, and patriotism in equal parts. O’Brien plays Lady Jessica de Canterville and the studio made the assumption that casting her as a lady automatically would charm the dickens out of the audience. She’s surrounded by a strong cast of character actors, including Una O’Connor, Robert Young, Rags Ragland, Reginald Owen, William Gargan, and a young Peter Lawford, beginning his star grooming. Cast in the plum role of the ghost is none other than Charles Laughton, the old ham born to put child stars in their place,* but O’Brien is given the star treatment. She’s backlit like a glamour girl, with subtle shadows molded over her little cheekbones. Her eyes are made up to be emphasized, and she wears impeccable clothes, including a perfectly tailored riding habit and a Scotch kilt ensemble. As the owner of the Canterville haunted castle, she serves tea to the American soldiers billeted there, and the tea set is bigger than she is. Everything is designed especially to remind audiences, Hey, she’s a kid!
In Canterville, O’Brien takes the floor to jitterbug with a soldier (in her role as hostess), and her musical participation is the exact opposite of Temple’s. Temple was a professional, and she knew how to put over a number. O’Brien takes the floor embracing the idea of herself as polite amateur. She follows the dance as best she can, maintaining a certain dignity in her white organdy dress, two large hair ribbons, and little white shoes and socks. She very carefully watches everything the soldier does, and suddenly gets it, swinging out into a wild twist. For the rest of the dance, she’s always just a half a beat behind, studying carefully, maintaining dignity, but participating with controlled grace. This little dance is fabulous and shows why audiences loved her.
O’Brien’s ability as a tragedian was effectively used by MGM. In her very best movie, Meet Me in St. Louis, director Vincente Minnelli exploited her emotional intensity in two musical sequences with the great Judy Garland. No one upstaged Garland, but when the two of them, playing sisters, present an “impromptu” performance at a party, O’Brien doesn’t lose her share of the scene. Singing and dancing to “Under the Bamboo Tree,” she is charmingly amateur, yet startlingly professional. Later, when Garland sings to her the melancholy “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” the two actresses are in perfect sync. It’s one of Hollywood’s most memorable moments. O’Brien sniffles and looks forlorn,* and Judy Garland sings with trembling sincerity. In considering how most child stars would have either been unable to hold the screen against Garland singing that song (or any song) or would have ruined it by cheap child star tricks, one has to respect little Margaret
O’Brien. Her sincere emotions blend with Garland’s song: She supports its performance, reflects its feeling, bends to Garland’s needs, yet is ready for her own hysteria when her turn comes and she runs outside to “kill” her snow people. O’Brien was no ordinary child actor. She seemed real, the hallmark of the wartime star, and she gave her pain and her tears to the audience, releasing the pain and tears the audience had to give back. The war audience needed a crazy emotional kid, and Margaret O’Brien was there when they needed her.
O’Brien continued to act as she matured, playing the occasional role in a movie (Heller in Pink Tights, 1960) and on television (Hotel; Murder, She Wrote). She married and divorced twice, became a mother, and today lives quietly in California. She has become an expert on pre-Columbian art and sometimes appears in documentaries to discuss Hollywood’s history and her own career as a child star, a phenomenon she seems to have in clear perspective.
THE ERA’S EMBLEM: BETTY GRABLE
Betty Grable
World War II was the high point of the Hollywood studio star system. Old stars—Hepburn, Tracy, Bogart, Crawford, Davis, Stanwyck, Powell, Boyer, Loy, Grant, Cagney, Dunne—became even greater. Stars developed exclusively because of and during the war found a chance, but only a few lasted past it and most didn’t. Of all of these, one star stands apart. She is the official icon of World War II, a nicely rounded little girl in a white bathing suit, standing with her back to the camera but peeking saucily over her shoulder, her hair upswept into a pile of fake blond curls that were a popular “do” of the day. She’s Betty Grable, the GI favorite, the Queen of the Pinup Girls.
Grable wasn’t the only movie star to have a pinup photo, of course. All the major female stars posed for these cheesecake shots if they were young and pulchritudinous. But it was Grable’s photo that became the emblem of World War II. This photo was very popular with GIs and because her home studio (20th Century–Fox) wanted it to be even more popular, the star machine made a clever move and cast Grable in a quickie musical called Pin Up Girl (1944). This cemented her status as the girl of World War II. The closest rival to Grable’s pinup was the stunning shot of Rita Hayworth sitting on a bed in a silk nightgown. (Hayworth was a major star of World War II and beyond, but never in the top ten box office rankings. She was also an iconographic figure, and her films have more depth and range than Grable’s.) There’s a tendency to dismiss the female stars of the war—the Dorothy Lamours, Veronica Lakes, Hedy Lamarrs—and to say they were limited, yet Lamour was a perfect foil for Hope and Crosby. Lake was unique in looks, a perfect leading lady for Alan Ladd, and terrific in Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (1941). Lamarr was one of the most beautiful women to appear on the screen, and as we’ve now learned, a mad scientist who invented a device that could have helped us win the war! (You never know, do you?)*
Grable is more than a short-term pinup girl, however. Her stardom was linked to an accident of history. As was mentioned earlier, it was an appendix, not the Axis, that catapulted her into the top ranks. In 1940, when Alice Faye, the delightful leading lady of 1930s 20th Century–Fox musicals, was stricken, the studio couldn’t hold up shooting Down Argentine Way. They quickly found a replacement, a girl who had been around Hollywood since she was an underage kid in the early ’30s† but never quite made the grade. She had appeared in the chorus in Goldwyn movies, played bits in Astaire-Rogers musicals for RKO, and become a second-string star at Paramount in a series of college musicals. She’d been in a Bob Hope movie (Give Me a Sailor [1938]) and a Jack Benny vehicle (Man About Town [1939]), but she wasn’t able to get her foot up on the top rung. She could sing, dance, twirl a baton, roller-skate, and play the saxophone. She was cute, sparkly, and loaded with sex appeal. But as was true for many young girls who had all that, or even more, it didn’t happen. Despairing, and pushed by her mother, she accepted a showcase role on Broadway in Du Barry Was a Lady, and her sassy rendition of “Did Yah Evah?” with co-star Bert Lahr landed her on the cover of Life magazine. Suddenly everything was different for Betty Grable, and when Fox went looking, there she was.
Betty Grable posed for more pinups than any other movie star in the 1940s. Every film she made had something to show her off:
• a bathtub vocal number, the hit song “My Heart Tells Me,” from Sweet Rosie O’Grady;
• her little kitty-kat ensemble from Mother Wore Tights;
• and her Gibson Girl shortie from Coney Island.
But the definitive Betty Grable pinup picture, and the definitive World War II pinup, is this iconographic image of Grable, her hair upswept, peeping back over her shoulder at the United States of America.
Down Argentine Way was a big hit, and Fox was happy to have a new blonde on its roster. In fact, the studio felt Faye’s appendix had done them a favor. Two movie star blondes meant twice as much money at the box office, and besides, Alice Faye had been making noises about wanting to quit the movies. If she left after her contract expired, Fox would still have one popular blonde left. Grable had a very strong presence in the frame. She was self-confident, standing firmly on her two shapely legs. (Fox had them insured by Lloyd’s of London for $1 million.)
There was one factor other than Alice Faye’s appendix that elevated Grable to star status: Technicolor. When those vibrant colors were added to escapist musicals, particularly by 20th Century–Fox, Grable moved up. She was fabulous in color. A strawberry cream puff. Her blond hair, her creamy complexion, her full and sexy mouth made up in vibrant reds, and the red-white-and-blue outfits she wore—not to mention the lime green, the hot pink, the shocking aqua, the cherry red, and the royal purple—knocked audiences out. Grable had real energy on the screen, and in Technicolor, the energy was electrified.
After Down Argentine Way in 1940, Grable quickly scored in Tin Pan Alley (also 1940) and Moon Over Miami, A Yank in the Raf, and I Wake Up Screaming (all in 1941). She was a star before the war started for America. That was why she was asked to pose for a pinup picture, and why GIs wanted her on their walls and in their foxholes. Her early movies of 1942, Song of the Islands, Footlight Serenade, and Springtime in the Rockies, pushed her over the top, and by 1943 she was the highest-paid female star in the business. When she married the popular bandleader and trumpeter extraordinaire Harry James, she passed into the realm of movie star legends. To say Grable became a star only because of World War II and her pinup pose is wrong. She was a star prewar, during the war, and after the war. She was ranked in the top ten of box office draws in 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, and 1951—ten straight years, unbroken.* Her stardom came from her talent and personality and the help the star machine gave her. It was her legend, her iconic image, that came from World War II.
Grable never had any fancy ideas about her own abilities. She said, “I can sing a little, dance a little, and act a little…I was just lucky, I guess.” It was this very modesty, this down-to-earth attitude that endeared her to audiences. They felt it on-screen. And it was this sense of democracy—“I’m just another blonde hoofing away”—that endeared her to everyone during the war. Grable was healthy and hearty; she projected nothing even remotely neurotic. She had a pouty, sexy mouth and a dynamite body, and yet she looked an audience right in the eye like a good girl would even as she wiggled her little behind, shook herself all over, and invited whatever was on their minds to come right on out. She was a girl next door and a sexpot.
The characters she played were feisty and independent, which differentiated her from Alice Faye, who was a great singer and often played women badly used by men (so she could warble a heartfelt tune about it). Grable was more dancer than singer, so Fox cast her as a tougher, sassier female. This suited her, and no man pushed her around. Although this type had been determined for her before the war, it was developed even more strongly during the war since it was perfect for those times. Being a musical sex symbol would have drawn a large male audience to her, but being a feisty female also drew the women. In fact, her stardom was fi
rmly grounded in the fact that she could be all things to all people. She was a girl you could take home to Mother—and hope Dad would keep his hands to himself. Her fans were men and women, old and young, as well as children.
During the war, Betty Grable was like Brooklyn—shorthand for “all things American.” A popular song was “I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Harry James.” Her photo was used to teach navigators how to identify target areas (they sectioned her off and referred to parts). Her pinup or name appeared in movies with GIs whether the film was made by Fox or not. Her face appeared on more movie magazine covers than any other female movie star. Her films all made money. Betty Grable was America in World War II. She was honest, warm, modest, reliable, and tough. Whatever came her way, she was going to win. She was the perfect icon for the times.*
* America’s participation in World War II (1941–1945) was actually good for Hollywood. Movie attendance rose higher than ever before because everyone needed entertainment and escape. In 1943 and 1944, 84 million people went to the movies every week. (It was down to 30 million by 2002.) Hollywood produced 538 features in 1943 alone, importing another 240 for a total release to the public of 778 feature films. Despite hardships—no new materials for building sets, shortages and rationing, festering labor problems, specific ceilings set by government on the amount of money that could be spent on any kind of purchase—Hollywood thrived. As they had done when threatened by censorship, a Hollywood faced with government regulations and “guidelines” about what was appropriate for audiences during the war cooperated (and quickly co-opted any interference). The movie business stood up for America. When called on to make a major contribution to the war effort, it met the challenge. The movies made during World War II have been analyzed for everything from the role of women to political subversion to wartime propaganda to governmental interference to modes of escapism and surrealism, theories of reception, noirish reflections of a disintegrating society—the works. Curiously, no one has talked much about what World War II did to the efficiently functioning star machine.
The Star Machine Page 66
