Category: Watch of Fame

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Libeled Lady and Jack Conway

    William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, and Spencer Tracy in Libeled Lady.
    Myrna Loy, William Powell, Jean Harlow, and Spencer Tracy in Libeled Lady.

    One of the best things about this Walk of Fame project is seeing classic actors do things I didn’t know they did. I’ve seen William Powell do a bunch of suave & sophisticated parts, but I’d never seen him do broad physical comedy. Watching him try to fish was a whole new experience.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Jack Conway's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the Right, a black and white portrait photo of Jack Conway.

    Before Jack Conway (1500 Vine Street) started directing, he was a silent film actor. Most of his parts were in Westerns, which explains his cowboy outfit in this picture.

    Today’s fake poster is based on one for a movie that as far as I can tell has zero connection to this one.

    A fake poster for Libeled Lady mimicking the poster for Paranormal Activity.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Devil’s Doorway and Robert Taylor

    Robert Taylor and Paula Raymond in Devil's Doorway.
    Robert Taylor and Edgar Buchanan in Devil's Doorway.

    While it’s pretty impressive that this 75 year old movie says “hey, the USA did handle indigenous populations correctly,” it’s also a movie with a very white lead actor in full on red face.

    Also: it’s certainly not the fault of the movie, but it is weird that the subtitles for a film about people being forcibly ejected from their land choose to show all the Shoshone dialogue as “SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE.”

    Another thing that’s not the fault of the movie: Every time I hear “Devil’s Doorway” I think of Satan’s Alley.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Robert Taylor's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Robert Taylor.

    Robert Taylor (1500 Vine Street) looks plain silly in his dark makeup and light eyes, but his actual performance isn’t as stereotypical as you might expect.

    OH LOOK A POSTER!

    A fake poster for Devil's Doorway mimicking the poster for Breakfast at Tiffany's.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: The Squeaker and William K. Howard

    Alastair Sim and Gordon McLeod in The Squeaker.
    Tamara Densi in The Squeaker.

    If your whodunit only has one reasonable suspect, it’s not much of a whodunit. Even the characters in the movie know it’s a flimsy story; the lead detective’s method to sole the crime is pretty much “I’ll stand near that guy until he screws up.”

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of William K. Howard's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of William K. Howard.

    William K. Howard (1500 Vine Street) directed over 50 movies, and at his peak was considered a leading director. Not that you can tell that from this movie. ZING!

    Today’s fake poster might make you think of merlot.

    A fake poster for The Squeaker mimicking the poster for Sideways.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Lights of New York and Helene Costello

    Cullen Landis and Helene Costello in Lights of New York.
    Helene Costello, Wheeler Oakman, and Gladys Brockwell in Lights of New York

    Lights of New York is the first “all-talking” picture. Other movies had synchronized sections, but this is the first one that synchronized the whole movie. It’s a pretty terrible movie, but that’s no surprise. Most of the effort probably went into capturing sound, and it was probably very expensive to do multiple takes or camera angles; it’s full of stiff, unbroken scenes.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Helene Costello's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Helene Costello.

    Helene Costello (1500 Vine Street) is another casualty of the jump from silent films to talkies. She’s buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Calvary Cemetery, one of the oldest cemeteries in Los Angeles. And she wasn’t related to Lou Costello, but he claimed he changed his last name to Costello to honor her.

    Today’s fake poster is based on one from a different story of New York.

    A fake poster for Lights of New York mimicking the poster for Escape from New York.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: The Devil’s Needle and Norma Talmadge

    Norma Talmadge in The Devil's Needle
    Tully Marshall, Marguerite Marsh, and Norma Talmadge in The Devil's Needle

    Things I learned from this movie:

    • Don’t take medical advice from a model
    • If you get hooked on drugs, just go work on a farm for a bit and you’ll be cured.

    The most interesting part of this movie was seeing how the restoration team dealt with the degraded film stock.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Norma Talmadge's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Norma Talmadge.

    Norma Talmadge (1500 Vine Street) was one of the top silent film stars. Like many other actors, her popularity fell with the rise of talkies. Unlike many others, she had saved a ton of money and was happy to get out of the public eye.

    If you’ve ever driven down Talmadge Street in Los Feliz and wondered who it was named after, now you know.

    Today’s poster makes a morality tale about drug abuse look like a rom-com.

    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Kansas City Confidential and Edward Small

    Mr. Big from Kansas City Confidential
    Three masked criminals from Kansas City Confidential

    A fun little caper flick. Does it make sense? No, but everyone in the movie believes it does, and that’s enough to make it work. Jack Elam is a glorious twitchy rag doll of creepiness.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Edward Small's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Edward Small.

    Edward Small (1501 Vine Street- I accidentally did this one early) produced about a billion movies, mostly westerns. There are very few pictures of him online. I guess he was camera shy, but you wouldn’t guess that from his production company’s logo:

    The logo for Edward Small Productions. Giant letters "ES" fill more than half the screen. Below them are the words "EDWARD SMALL PRODUCTIONS"
    I guess “Small” didn’t refer to how he wrote his initials.

    Today’s source poster was pretty obscure, but it looked cool so I went for it.

    A fake poster for Kansas City Confidential mimicking the poster for Atlantis: The Lost Continent.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Postal Inspector and Ricardo Cortez

    Bela Lugosi, Patricia Ellis, and David Oliver in Postal Inspector.
    Michael Loring and Patricia Ellis in Postal Inspector.

    Well, this one’s a stinker. More than once it tries to make asking someone “Did any of this happen by mail? Do you have the correspondence?” seem really exciting. It feels like a particularly dull episode of Dragnet. It also features the lead actor complaining about his little brother’s girlfriend for no reason.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Ricardo Cortez's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Ricardo Cortez.

    Ricardo Cortez (1500 Vine Street) plays Inspector Bill Davis. He was born Jacob Kranze (or Krantz), but the studio thought he’d sell better as a Latin Lover than a Jewish guy. He had a long career: mostly as a character actor, but he was also the first Sam Spade in the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon. I’m not sure how I landed on this dud to watch him.

    Today’s fake poster is all about the inspectors, baby:

    A fake poster for Postal Inspector mimicking the poster for Inspector Gadget.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Dance, Girl, Dance and Dorothy Arzner

    Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara in Dance, Girl, Dance.
    Lucille Ball, Maureen O'Hara and Virginia Field in Dance, Girl, Dance.

    Maureen O’Hara and Louis Hayward might be top billed, but this is Lucille Ball’s movie. I really only knew her work from I Love Lucy onward, so it was kind of wild to see her as a sexy burlesque star dancing the hula.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Dorothy Arzner's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Dorothy Arzner.

    Dance, Girl, Dance was directed by Dorothy Arzner (1500 Vine Street) and HOLY CRAP WAS SHE AWESOME. The first woman in the Director’s Guild of America, the first woman to direct a sound film, and the inventor of the freaking boom mic!

    She had a 40 year relationship with choreographer Marion Martin. She tried to keep her private life private, but she never hid who she was.

    Today’s fake poster comes from a different Girl movie.

    A fake poster for Dance, Girl, Dance mimicking the poster for Girl, Interrupted.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: I’m No Angel and Mae West

    Mae West and Cary Grant in I'm No Angel.
    Mae West and a Lion in I'm No Angel
    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Mae West's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Mae West.

    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.

    A fake poster for I'm No Angel mimicking the poster for No Country For Old Men.
    Fediverse reactions

  • Walk of Fame Movies: Jewel Robbery and Helen Vinson

    Kay Francis and William Powell in Jewel Robbery.
    William Powell and Kay Francis in Jewel Robbery.

    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.

    Composite picture. On the left, a mockup of Helen Vinson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On the right, a black and white portrait photo of Helen Vinson.

    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.

    A fake poster for Jewel Robbery mimicking the poster for Serpico.
←