Category: Photoshop

Normally I write a little blurb about the movie and a second blurb about the featured Walk of Fame person, but I don’t think it’s possible to separate these two.

Mae West (1560 Vine Street) isn’t my cup of tea, but she was an undeniable powerhouse. She was a woman in her forties (who didn’t try to hide her age) who wrote her own movies, and and didn’t shy away from sex right as the Hayes Code was cracking down on movie content.

Part of the problem I had with this movie was I kept thinking “She’s just doing a Mae West impression.” She made her self into such an icon that watching her movies now feels like a parody, even though she’s the source.

Today’s fake poster is based completely on both movies having “No” in the title.

Some clues that this is a pre-Code film:

• The first scene is two scantily clad women talking about cheating on their husbands.
• Two men are openly pursuing one of the married women.
• One of the men is a charming jewel thief, and the woman is into it big time.
• The thief casually hands out weed, and it gets smoked.
• All law enforcement is either inept or corrupt

…and of course the thief gets away.

This was Helen Vinson’s first movie role. She acted for a dozen or so years before retiring. Her star is at 1560 Vine Street.

Today’s poster is based on a very similar film about police corruption.

I wonder if this was originally written as a play. Almost every scene is shot in the same room from the same angle. It’s supposed to be a murder mystery, but that’s really just an excuse for Raymond Griffith to do his shtick.

Eleven years before this movie, Earle Williams (1560 Vine Street) was voted America’s number one star. A year after it was released, he was dead from pneumonia.

Today’s fake poster is my second James Bond ripoff homage.

Okay, I’ll admit it: sometimes I’m dumb. The whole idea of this movie is that Rex Harrison has fantasies about dealing with his possibly cheating wife, but I didn’t realize they were fantasies until the first one ended. This is even though the camera literally zooms right up to Harrison’s face and into his eye before each vignette.

This movie is a lot of fun if you disregard the sudden turn from the most devoted husband ever to would-be murderer and back over the course of a few hours.

Kurt Kreuger (1560 Vine Street) plays Harrison’s assistant. This is a change from a lot of the roles Kreuger was getting. He was just the right look and age to get cast as a bunch of Nazis, and he wasn’t thrilled about it.

Today’s poster reminds us that what’s mine is yours, and what’s enemy is unfaithfully.

A movie made by a very conservative director starring two very conservative actors that says you can’t trust the rich and you can’t stop ordinary people from doing good. I wonder how they’d feel about today’s political climate?

Rod La Rocque (1580 Vine Street) plays Ted Sheldon, the nephew of the richest man in the movie, and the closest thing Gary Cooper has to a romantic rival. In real life he had been a popular silent film star ho transitioned into character roles in talkies, then retired in his fifties. His marriage to fellow silent film star Vilma Banky (who I recently saw in Son of the Sheik) was huge, and they stayed together until his death in 1977.

Today’s fake poster is another “Meet [name of person]” movie, but I doubt anyone will recognize it.

Walk of Fame Progress Report

Depending on how you look at it, I’m either very far along or just getting started. There are 1227 motion picture stars. If you look at contiguous stars, I’ve only completed 142, or about 11.5%. That’s the part in red. But if you don’t worry about them touching, I’ve seen 876, about 71%. And a lot of these old movies cover more than one star, so it should only go faster as I see more stuff. That’s good, because at the rate I’m going this thing is going to take me four years!

Whoever designed the original poster for this sure had fun adding not-very subtle subtext:

Richard Dix (1608 Vine Street) is Duke, a bank robber on a brutal chain gang. He plans an escape, but when Johnny, his brother, gets put in the same gang, Duke decides to stay in to protect him. He doesn’t do a great job.

Today’s fake poster is a David Lynch ripoff: