Chaplin’s cast-off. Born in Great Neck, New York, probably the only reason the name of Paulette Goddard is known today is because she was the third wife of comedian Sir Charlie Chaplin. On October 1, 1937, she screen-tested unsuccessfully for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind (1939). Paulette was somewhat famed for her collection of jewels, all of which she had managed to cadge from a bevy of husbands and assorted lovers. Goddard once told Marlene Dietrich, “Never, ever sleep with a man until he gives you a pure white stone (diamond) of at least ten carats.” Her third husband was actor Burgess Meredith, and her fourth the novelist Erich Maria Remarque, who wrote All Quiet On The Western Front. Paulette’s first husband was one Edgar James, whose true occupation was uncertain. Rumour had it that Mr James was a professional gambler who used Paulette as a ‘shill’ in some of his games to extract takings from suckers. They met when she was appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies in Palm Beach. He followed her back to New York, where they were married in November 1927. Her films included Berth Marks (1929), Young Ironsides (1932), Pack Up Your Troubles (1932), Modern Times (1936), Dramatic School (1938) as Nana, The Women (1939) as Miriam Aarons, The Cat And The Canary (1939) as Joyce Norman, The Ghost Breakers (1940) as Mary Carter, The Great Dictator (1940) as Hannah, North West Mounted Police (1940) as Louvette Corbeau, Second Chorus (1940) as Ellen Miller, Nothing But The Truth (1941) as Gwen Saunders, Hold Back The Dawn (1941) as Anita Dixon, Reap The Wild Wind (1942) as Loxi Claiborne, The Forest Rangers (1942) as Celia Huston, So Proudly We Hail! (1943) as Lieutenant Joan O’Doul, I Love A Soldier (1944) as Eve Morgan, The Diary Of A Chambermaid (1946) as Célestine, the lead in Kitty (1946), Suddenly, It’s Spring (1947) as Mary Morely, Unconquered (1947) as Abby Hale, On Our Merry Way (1948) as Martha Pease, the title role in Anna Lucasta (1949), Bride Of Vengeance (1949) as Lucretia Borgia, Babes In Bagdad (1952) as Kyra, Sins Of Jezebel (1953) as Jezebel, Paris Model (1953) as Betty Barnes, Vice Squad (1953) as Mona and Charge Of The Lancers (1954) as Tanya.
CAUSE: She died in Ronco, Switzerland, of heart failure aged 84.
Alexander Godunov
Born November 28, 1949
Died May 18, 1995
Blonde balletomane. Born in Sakhalin and raised in Riga, Latvia, 6́ 2˝ Boris Alexander Godunov was the first Bolshoi Ballet dancer to defect to the West (on August 21, 1979) although his wife and co-star Ludmila Vlasova refused to join him. He joined the American Ballet Theater but was fired in 1982. He became an actor linking up (in 1982 following his divorce) with beautiful British actress Jacqueline Bisset (in 1985 People called them “the most torrid twosome in showbiz”) and appeared in Witness (1985) as Daniel Hochleitner, The Money Pit (1986) as Max Beissart, Die Hard (1988) as terrorist Karl, Waxwork II: Lost In Time (1992) as Scarabis and The Zone (1995) as Lothar Krasna.
CAUSE: He died of heart failure coupled with acute alcoholism aged 45, in Shoreham Towers, 8787 Shoreham Drive West Hollywood, California. He lay dead for two days before his corpse was discovered.
Samuel Goldwyn
(SCHMUEL GELBFISZ)
Born July 1879
Died January 31, 1974
Film producer and malapropist. Goldwyn was born in Warsaw, Poland, the eldest child of Hasidic Jews. He migrated, alone, to Birmingham, England, when he was 14. Two years later, he travelled again alone to Castle Garden, New York, where he eventually became an expert glove cutter and then glove salesman. On May 8, 1910, he married Blanche Lasky and in December 1913, calling himself Samuel Goldfish, he formed, along with brother-in-law Jesse Lasky and Cecil B. DeMille, the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Their first film, The Squaw Man (1913), was such a success it allowed the company to make over 20 films in their first 12 months of business. On March 14, 1916, Goldwyn was divorced. Three months later, on June 28, 1916, the company merged with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players. The same year, after some in-fighting, Goldfish (given a $900,000 golden handshake) formed a new partnership with Edgar Selwyn and others calling their company Goldwyn. On December 16, 1918, he legally adopted the name Goldwyn. Despite high ideals, the company suffered financially in its formative years. In April 1924 the Goldwyn company merged with Metro Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Productions to form Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, although Goldwyn had nothing to do with the new company; he had been bought out with a million dollars. The same year he formed his own company and quickly the legend “Samuel Goldwyn Presents” came to represent great entertainment. On April 23, 1925, he married the Broadway actress Frances Howard (b. Nebraska, 1903, d. 1976). However, Goldwyn is probably equally well known for the malapropisms he made throughout his life. Most of them are almost certainly apocryphal. Goldwyn complained in his high-pitched, Polish-accented voice, “None of them are true. They’re all made up by a bunch of comedians and pinned on me.” Here are some of the best known:
“And don’t try coming back to me on bended elbows.”
“Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.”
“Anything that man says, you’ve got to take with a dose of salts.”
“Even if they had it in the streets, I wouldn’t go ” – on Mardi Gras.
“Frances (Howard, his second wife) has the most beautiful hands in the world and someday I’m going to make a bust of them.”
“Gentlemen, for your information, I’d like to ask a question …”
“Gentlemen, include me out.”
“Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.”
“Go ahead but make some copies first ” – to his secretary when asked if she could destroy some old files.
“He’s living beyond his means, but he can afford it.”
“I am going out for some tea and trumpets.”
“I am very sorry that you felt it was too blood and thirsty” – telegram to James Thurber, who supposedly replied, “Not only did I think so, but I was horror and struck.”
“I can get [Red] Indians – all I want. All I’ve got to do is ring up the reservoir” – after being told that the Western he was working on needed some extra Native Americans.
“I feel the same sort of victim as Frankenstein.”
“I had a great idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.”
“I love the ground I walk on. Just look at what it has done for me.”
“I never put on a pair of shoes until I’ve worn them for five years.”
“I ran into George Kaufman last night.
He was at my house for dinner.”
“I read part of it all the way through.”
“I want you to cohabit with me ” – to a female writer with whom he wanted to collaborate on a story.
“I was always an independent, even when I had partners.”
“I will not stand to have you treat me like the dirt under my feet.”
“If you can’t give me your word of honour, will you give me a promise?”
“I’ve been laid up with intentional flu.”
“I’ve gone where the hand of man has never set foot.”
“I’ve just returned from 10 Drowning Street, so I know what I’m talking about.”
“If I entered into an agreement with that man, I should be sticking my head in a moose.”
“It rolls off my back like a duck ” – on criticism.
“It will create an excitement that will sweep the country like wild flowers.”
“It’s more than magnificent. It’s mediocre!”
“It’s not worth the paper it’s written on” – on a verbal contract. Although this is usually reported as the Goldwynism, a slightly different version is also said to have been: “That fellow is a crook. His word isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”
“Let’s bring it up to date with some snappy nineteenth-century dialogue.”
“Modern dancing is so old-fashioned.”
“My! What will they think of next ?” – on seeing a sundial at Jack Warner’s house (or possibly at Sam Harris’ home).
“My autobiography shoul
d only be written after I’m dead.”
“Our comedies are not to be laughed at.”
“Sex will outlive us all.”
“(These people) are always biting the hand that laid the golden egg.”
“To hell with the cost – we’ll make it anyway” – when told a story was too caustic.
“Tomorrow we shoot, whether it rains, whether it snows, whether it stinks.”
“What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.”
“When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you ” – to a young writer.
“When it comes to ruining a painting, he’s an artist ” – on an abstract artist.
“Why call him Joe? Every Tom, Dick and Harry is called Joe.”
“Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and watch bad television for nothing?”
“You are partly one hundred per cent right.”
“You just don’t realise what life is all about until you have found yourself lying on the brink of a great abscess.”
“You write with great warmth and charmth.” (Very apocryphal.)
“You’ve got to take the bull by the teeth.” Of his rival Louis B. Mayer, Goldwyn supposedly commented, “We’re like friends. We’re like brothers. We love each other. We’d do anything for each other. We’d even cut each other’s throats for each other.” He detested being taken for an ill-educated buffoon, but sometimes he was his own worst enemy. One day Goldwyn approached newspaper columnist and What’s My Line?’s resident panellist Dorothy Kilgallen and told her he was to be the mystery guest on her show. Kilgallen could do nothing except disqualify herself from the broadcast. Later Goldwyn confessed his folly to Bennett Cerf. “I told Dorothy Kilgallen I was going to be a guest on her show.” That week Dorothy Kilgallen and Bennett Cerf both disqualified themselves from What’s My Line?
CAUSE: In 1969 Goldwyn suffered a severe stroke that left him mute and partially paralysed. He was bedridden or confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In January 1974 he was admitted to St John’s Hospital, Santa Monica, “for treatment of a kidney ailment”. Goldwyn died at 2am of heart failure in his home in Laurel Lane, Los Angeles. He was just six months short of his 95th birthday. He was buried in a short, private ceremony in Crypt B of Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks, 1712 Glendale Avenue, Glendale, California 91209. His estate was worth $16,165,490.24.
FURTHER READING: Goldwyn: A Biography Of The Man Behind The Myth – Samuel Marx (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976); The Goldwyn Touch: A Biography Of Sam Goldwyn – Michael Freedland (London: Harrap, 1986); Goldwyn: A Biography – A. Scott Berg (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989).
Cliff Gorman
Born October 13, 1936
Died September 5, 2002
Powerful stage presence. Born in Queens, New York, Gorman was educated at the Manhattan High School of Music and Art and later got a B.Ed. from New York University. Before turning to acting he worked as a trucker, an ambulance driver and a probation officer working with juvenile delinquents. He then landed a job with Jerome Robbins’ American Theater Lab. This led to the role of Emory in Mart Crowley’s gay play The Boys In The Band at the Theater Four from April 15, 1968. Written in five weeks, the play was said to have earned Crowley more than $1 million. The play ran for 1,002 performances, finally closing on September 6, 1970. A film version opened on March 17, 1970 with Gorman reprising his role. Gorman had made his film début playing a gay character in George Cukor’s Justine (1969). Gorman’s next big role was playing the comedian Lenny Bruce in the Julian Barry play Lenny. However, when Bob Fosse came to make the film version in 1974 he overlooked Gorman in favour of Dustin Hoffman. However, Hoffman had seen Gorman on stage and told Fosse that Gorman was the only man for the part. It was only when Fosse said that Gorman was not a big enough “name” that Hoffman finally relented and agreed to make the film. In 1980 Fosse attempted to make up for his decision by casting Gorman as a Lenny Bruce-type comedian in All That Jazz (1980). In 1977 Gorman was nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of Leo Schneider in Neil Simon’s play Chapter Two. Gorman’s other films included Cops And Robbers (1973), An Unmarried Woman (1978), Hoffa (1992), Ghost Dog; The Way Of The Samurai (1999) and King Of The Jungle (2001). He was married to Gayle.
CAUSE: Gorman died aged 65 of acute leukaemia.
Betty Grable
(RUTH ELIZABETH GRABLE)
Born December 18, 1916
Died July 2, 1973
‘Million Dollar Legs’. Betty Grable was born at 3858 Lafayette St, St Louis, Missouri. A sister, Marjorie, was born on April 17, 1909 (d. 1980 from a stroke), and a brother, John Karl, was born in 1914, but died in 1916 of bronchial pneumonia. Betty began her Hollywood career before she was 14, thanks to a pushy mother who was adept at falsifying documents, including legal ones when it suited. Lillian Grable, known as Billie, listed her 13-year-old daughter as 16. Billie appeared in black face in the chorus of Let’s Go Places (1930) at Fox, but when the executives discovered her true age after the film, she was sacked. Undeterred, Lillian took her along to the Goldwyn Studios, where Betty was one of 20 (along with Lucille Ball, Ann Dvorak, Virginia Bruce and Paulette Goddard) chosen to be the original Goldwyn Girls. She appeared in bit parts in films such as Palmy Days (1931) and The Kid From Spain (1932). She was in a crowd scene in Kiki (1931) and played a model in The Greeks Had A Word For It (1932). It was while filming Palmy Days when she was only 15 that she started dating actor George Raft, who was some 21 years older than her. However, she was closely chaperoned by her mother and Raft finally gave up, saying, “I’m giving her back till she grows up.” Her next boyfriend was 19-year-old Kansas-born drummer Charlie Price, to whom she lost her virginity, aged 16. Arranging a date in San Francisco’s foggy beaches, Price took Grable, her chaperoning mother and another couple out in his 1933 Oldsmobile convertible and gave Mrs Grable rather a large amount of wine to drink. So much, in fact, that she passed out and that’s when Price made his move on Betty; her mother lay nearby in a drunken slumber as the two couples made out in the sand dunes. Betty originally appeared in films under the name Frances Dean before reverting to her real name for Hold ’Em Jail (1932). In the latter part of 1932 Betty joined the Frank Fay musical Tattle Tales. Fay was an alcoholic and this caused the play to close not long after it opened. Betty subsequently landed a job as a singer with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. In the summer of 1933 they let her go, claiming her voice wasn’t suitable for recording, though she did appear in the film The Sweetheart Of Sigma Chi (1933) as part of the orchestra. She relocated to San Francisco and joined the Jay Whidden Orchestra who were resident at the city’s Mark Hopkins Hotel. Over the next five years Betty featured in 16 films including two – The Gay Divorcee (1934) and Follow The Fleet (1936) – that starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. RKO was so impressed by her performance in The Gay Divorcee they signed her to a contract, plucked her eyebrows, dyed her hair platinum and put her in The Nitwits (1935) as Mary Roberts, Old Man Rhythm (1935) as Sylvia and Don’t Turn ’Em Loose (1936) as Mildred. In the late summer of 1935 Betty met and fell in love with 20-year-old Jackie Coogan. (Lillian was not slow to grasp that Jackie would inherit a $4-million fortune when he turned 21 later that year.) The publicity generated by the affair made Betty a household name. It resulted in a national tour with Coogan, but still the studios didn’t seem to know what to do with her. RKO lent her to 20th Century Fox for Pigskin Parade (1936). On November 20, 1937, she married Jackie Coogan at St Brendan’s Catholic Church, Los Angeles. Finally, Paramount offered her a two-year contract and she appeared in This Way Please (1937) as Jane Morrow, Thrill Of A Lifetime (1937) as Gwen, College Swing (1938) as Betty, Give Me A Sailor (1938) as Nancy Larkin, Campus Confessions (1938) as Joyce Gilmore (the first film that gave her top billing), Million Dollar Legs (1939) as Carol Parker and Man About Town (1939) as Susan Hayes. While filming the latter, Betty collapsed on set and was rushed to hospital with acute appendicitis. P
roduction resumed a month later, with Dorothy Lamour playing Betty’s part, though Betty was well enough to appear in a speciality number. On October 11, 1939, Betty and Coogan were divorced, due to financial worries. When she completed Million Dollar Legs (the legs in question belonged to a racehorse) Paramount dropped her contract. However, Darryl F. Zanuck was always looking for new talent for 20th Century Fox and he offered Betty a contract. Zanuck did not have a specific project in mind for Betty when he signed her, so she was immediately loaned to Broadway for the show Dubarry Was A Lady. It was a smash, one of the highlights being Betty’s duet with Charles Walters on ‘Well Did You Evah’. Although the musical ran for a year Betty left the cast in June 1940 to appear in the film that made her a fully fledged film star, Down Argentine Way starring as Glenda Crawford opposite Don Ameche. Making her Hollywood début in the film was Carmen Miranda. She only landed the part because the original choice, Alice Faye, fell ill. As soon as filming was completed, Betty went on to play Alice Faye’s sister in Tin Pan Alley (1940). Many thought there would be fireworks between the two leading ladies, but they got on splendidly, becoming lifelong friends. Betty then went on a working holiday to Chicago with boyfriend Victor Mature and met bandleader Harry Haag James (b. Albany, Georgia, March 15, 1916, d. July 5, 1983, of cancer). Betty was voted Best Figure of 1941 and back in Hollywood she made Moon Over Miami (1941), playing the part of Kay Latimer. The film was a hit but then Betty appeared in three turkeys – A Yank In The RAF (1941) as Carol Brown, I Wake Up Screaming as Jill Lynn and Footlight Serenade (1942) as Pat Lambert. She hit the big time again with Song Of The Islands (1942) as Eileen O’Brien, in which she co-starred with Victor Mature. In Springtime In The Rockies (1942), in which she played Vicky Lane, her co-stars were Cesar Romero, Carmen Miranda and Harry James, whom she by now fancied something rotten. In 1943 she made Sweet Rosie O’Grady (1943) as Madeleine Marlowe/Rosie O’Grady, and became the top box-office draw. Her footprints were enshrined at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, she married Harry James on July 5 at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas and her legs were supposedly insured for $1 million by Lloyds of London. One of the most famous images of World War II was a portrait of Betty taken from behind, which subsequently adorned many a fighter plane. Photographed by Frank Powolney (b. 1899, d. January 1984 of a heart attack), the publicity department at Fox labelled it “the picture that launched a million dreams.” The stories about how the pic came to be taken are legion. One has it that Betty was pregnant or had a flabby tummy and didn’t want to be photographed from the front. Another reports Fox chief Darryl Zanuck entering the studio and Betty turning round to say hello as the picture was being taken. Photographer Powolney insists that Betty was trying on different swimsuits and as she was walking away to change she looked over her shoulder. Powolney thought it would make a good shot and that was that. Not long after the shoot Betty underwent an abortion (her second). At 4.45am on March 3, 1944, at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Betty gave birth to Victoria Elizabeth James. Five months later she began work on Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe (1945). Next up was her least favourite of her own films, Pin-Up Girl (1944) in which she played Lorry Jones. Critics gave it mixed reviews but it was a box-office hit. Zanuck cast Betty and June Haver in The Dolly Sisters (1945) and, for once, Betty did not gel with a co-star. Nevertheless, Fox and Betty had another hit on their hands. Zanuck decided he wanted to enlarge Betty’s appeal and suggested the lead in The Razor’s Edge. Betty demurred, saying: “I’m a song and dance girl. I can act enough to get by. But that’s the limit of my talents.” No one said no to Darryl F. Zanuck, and he suspended Betty until virtually the end of 1946 when she began to film The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947) as Cynthia Pilgrim. The film had a Victorian setting, which meant Betty didn’t show her legs, and Fox was inundated with thousands of letters of complaint. In Mother Wore Tights (1947) Betty played Myrtle McKinley Burt opposite Dan Dailey, who became her close friend. On May 20, 1947, after a difficult labour, Betty bore her second daughter, Jessica, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Harry James could not be reached in Atlantic City to be told about his daughter’s arrival and Betty took out her fury on the medical staff. Sensing an apparent indifference in James, she began smoking heavily and drinking too much. Her next film, That Lady In Ermine (1948), was not a success (“Audiences stayed away from The Lady In Ermine like it was ‘The Lady With Leprosy’. I thought, well there’s one consolation, it can’t get any worse than this. Then along came The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend ”) and probably heralded the beginning of the end of her career. She also did not like her co-star Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. When My Baby Smiles At Me (1948) in which Betty played Bonny was a mild hit but the next film, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949), flopped. The following year she remade one of her earlier pictures, Coney Island (1943), as Wabash Avenue. Zanuck, ever fearful of diminishing box-office returns, introduced a newcomer, Mitzi Gaynor, in Betty’s next movie, My Blue Heaven (1950). Call Me Mister (1951) saw her fourth and final pairing with her pal Dan Dailey. Zanuck put Betty in the strenuous Meet Me After The Show (1951) and then ordered her to work on a similarly energetic film immediately afterwards. When Betty refused, he suspended her again. Returning, she appeared in The Farmer Takes A Wife (1953) as Molly Larkin and How To Marry A Millionaire (1953) as Loco Dempsey, starring opposite Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall. As with Alice Faye, studio gossips believed Grable and Monroe would hate each other but as with Faye, Marilyn and Betty became firm friends. In July 1953 Betty walked out of her Fox contract, having been suspended for a third time when Zanuck wanted to lend her to Columbia. Two years later, Zanuck asked her to appear in How To Be Very, Very Popular (1955) as Stormy Tornado after Marilyn Monroe had nixed the part. When it was released in July 1955 the critics were unimpressed. It was over. She turned to theatre and began appearing in shows such as Guys And Dolls with Dan Dailey and Hello Dolly. In October 1965 she and Harry James were divorced. Some shows were more successful than others.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 78
