I woke up late this morning and got the shocking but not surprising news that Elizabeth Taylor was dead.  I immediately went around to all my blog buddies to see what was posted; read the reactions.  Many beautiful, sad, funny things were said, and the general consensus seems to be that she will be greatly missed. I was not inclined to do my own post at first, but it turns out there is something that I would like to say.

I will not miss Elizabeth Taylor.  Put down that dvd of "X, Y and Zee" that you've got aimed at my head for a second and let me explain.  When someone that I've known, publicly or personally,  has died I get the feeling that I will miss them generally when their potential was clipped.  When there was more that they could have expressed. But Miss Taylor lived a blockbuster, Cinemascopic, Stereophonic, balls-out, no-stone-unturned, great big fat (sometimes literally) life.

Unlike most celebrities of her era, she never went through an "item in the columns" period.  From her pre-pubescence she was headlines all the way.  She has run the gamut of appearing in lousy pictures to great ones.  She has given everything from walk through performances to shuddering, shattering clinics in the art of motion picture acting.  She somehow managed, at various times, to become the toast of Hollywood, New York, Washington DC, London and Paris.  She's been the Queen of the Nile for chrissakes!

Many years ago she became legendary for her selfishness and for her compulsive acquisition of enough fine jewelery to open a very well appointed shop.  With a stockroom in back.  In more recent years she became just as legendary for her giving, both of time and money. 

Also headlined, of course, were the zany hijinks and madcap merriment of her romantic life.  She was a gal who believed in the 'now' of love.  She understood that there is nothing remotely logical about love and to try to bring logic and appropriateness to it was a futile exercise, and she lived accordingly.

It's also important for me to remember:  She Wasn't Like The Rest Of Us.  I'll never forget a piece of a Vanity Fair article on her many years ago.  It was sometime after the forming of AMFAR.  She was probably in her early sixties at this point. She was to attend a meeting with the Board of Directors of her Foundation that was being held at the downtown Bank of America building.  Afterwords, some of them were going someplace locally for lunch.  Her driver deposited her at the elevators in the parking garage and up she went to the penthouse boardroom.  After the meeting, it was decided that since the restaurant was a few doors away, they would walk to it.  This meant leaving the building by going through the bank lobby.  All these 'suits' and Elizabeth were walking through the bank when suddenly the guys became aware that she was not in their group any more.  They looked back and there she was, standing alone in the middle of the enormous bank, a look of wonder on her face.  They rushed back to her and asked if everything was alright.  More to herself then to them she muttered, "So this is what a bank looks like"!

In more recent years, she quieted down.  No more movie product - headlines few and far between.  She became a maternal homebody in the very same house that she had lived in for many of the spectacle years.  The house that has seen it all.  I find myself thankful that she got to add quietness and mundane to her repertoire of experiences.

In the end, if there's one line of dialog from her career to sums her up it would be from 'V-Woolf':  "I am the Earth Mother".  The earth is a vast and beautiful and horrifying and kind thing.  I will remember Elizabeth Taylor.  I will celebrate her.  But I will not miss her.  She did everything she came here to do.  She was complete.

In 1927, megastar Gloria Swanson moved into a new phase of her sizzling career by producing her first picture, "The Love Of Sunya".

Swanson wears typically understated jewelry in 'Sunya'

Perhaps it's fitting that her film was selected to open the brand new Picture Palace to end all Picture Palaces, The Roxy.  It's cutesy little, term of endearment, nickname was "The Cathedral Of The Motion Picture".  Here's why:

The Roxy was thrown together for the tidy sum of  $12, 000, 000 (that's 150 million in today's dollars). 

Opening Night

The Grand Foyer contained 'the worlds largest oval rug' and sported a massive organ on the mezzanine for the sole purpose of entertaining people as they entered.

Lobby

The house seated a mere 5920 patrons (though extra seats were installed for the opening to accommodate 6200).

The entire theater house was designed on a diagonal thus tucking the stage in a corner.  As a result the stage (which was built not only for movie screening but also for live productions) was not a large as you might think.

Despite the stage limitations, the theater had a couple of  support facilities including two stories of private dressing rooms, three floors of chorus dressing rooms, huge rehearsal rooms, a costume department, staff dry-cleaning and laundry rooms, a barber shop and hairdresser, a completely equipped infirmary, dining room, and a menagerie for show animals. There were also scores of offices, a private screening room seating 100, and massive engine rooms for the electrical, ventilating and heating machinery. The Roxy's large staff enjoyed a cafeteria, gymnasium, billiard room, nap room, library and showers.

The theater's stage innovations included a rising orchestra pit which could accommodate a symphony orchestra of 110 and a Kimball 5 keyboard pipe organ.


"The Roxy Hour" was broadcast weekly to a nation wide audience on the NBC radio network from the theater's own broadcast studio.

The place was grand, massive, solid and seemly built to last forever.  But as the Studio System was wheezing it's last gasping breaths, just 33 years and 18 days after it's grand opening, The Roxy closed on March 29th, 1960.

The bad news is, by October of 1960 it was being demolished (this, I believe, is what they call progress).  The good news is, the ever-spectacular Gloria Swanson had a keen understanding for a dramatic historical moment, and God knows, that dame could take a picture.  So, with Life Magazine photographer Eliot Elisofon in tow, La Swanson showed up with all of the same fabulosity she'd possessed in 1927:

Lucy's having quite a day, don't you think we should too?

Billy and Marilyn during the 'subway grate' re-shoots on the Fox lot.  With the stress of principle shooting, New York, and DiMaggio behind, this looks like a much easier time for them both.

Upon hearing of the death of Calvin Coolidge, Dorothy Parker quipped, "How can they tell?"  To which Robert Benchley replied, "He had an erection."

Robert Benchley passed away on this date in 1945

"Toward the end of her life she looked like a hungry insect magnified a million times."
Quentin Crisp on Joan Crawford

Quentin Crisp died on this date in 1999

One of Felix In Hollywood's favorite glamor girls, Edna Mae Oliver, celebrates her 127th birthday today!


My affection for this 'voice of snarky reason' is so great that she was the topic of a post in my first thirty days of life here in blogland.  To re-live the glory and excitement, go here.

Can't trust that day....

There are times when words add nothing the impact of a picture(s).

So, with no further comment, ladies and gentlemen:

Young Tyrone Power.



All photos (and many, many more) found here.

You're Welcome.

Cranberry was William Haines' nickname for his lifelong friend Joan Crawford, and today is Joan's special day.  (I'm goin' with 105)

They can say what they want.  That bitter, money grubbing adopted orphan of  hers can write whatever she wants (I don't care how many anniversary editions she puts out), I ain't buyin' it.  Sure Joan was tough and at times could be prickly, and it's true that in later years she was a tad liquor addled, but over all, she was a swell dame and a damn fine actress.


This is my all time favorite picture of her.  Here I see a young woman who is beautiful, rich, talented and absolutely in love with her experience.

Raise your glasses people, it's Joan Crawfords Birthday!

With the three little words, "Yes I do," today's birthday girl Janis Joplin holds her own against the titanic Gloria Swanson.

Of course the real victor of this tete-a-tete was the viewer.  As Dave, Jay and Conan battle for supremecy in the watered down prescripted informercial world that is now late night talk television, we fondly remember a time when mighty forces, and polar opposites like Swanson and Joplin would come together for a chat with Cavett.  EVEN WHEN THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING TO SELL!

Today is the 90th anniversary of the beginning of Prohibition in the US.  Intending to do a post about it, I got sidetracked (I love when that happens) when I bumped into the life and career of someone who, without the freewheeling mood of the Prohibition and certainly the popularity of Harlem, may have never had success.  But I doubt it. So....

Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Florence Mills!



To begin at the beginning, Florence was born to former slaves in Washington DC in 1896.  At age five, having won contests for Buck & Wing dancing, she was invited to do a dance exhibition for the diplomatic circle and the British Ambassador's wife presented her with a gold bracelet.  Shortly thereafter this photograph was made.

When the photographer asked her to remove the bracelet, Little Miss said, "No bracelet, no picture!"

Singing and dancing her way through childhood and adolescence on various Vaudeville tours as a member of various groups, Mills moved to Chicago at 20 and joined the Panama Trio (Bricktop, who became a lifelong friend was also in the group).  Already an extremely accomplished dancer, she received lessons in tap while there from none other than Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.

The following year, she joined The Tennessee Ten and fell in love with fellow "Ten" dancer, Ulysses 'Slow Kid' Thompson.  After touring the US and Canada, Florence and Kid move to New York and marry.  Though a brilliant showman in his own right, Kid sees Mills' potential and quits performing to become her manager.  

Fortune smiled when she replaces Gertrude Saunders in "Shuffle Along" and overnight she's a star.

At the Plantation Restaurant on Broadway an all black show is built around her.  Billboard Magazine notes  she has " her name in lights on Broadway . . . an even hundred of them"  She becomes the first black to be featured in both Vogue and Vanity Fair.  She will eventually also become the first black to play and headline The Palace.

The next three years are a dizzying string of smashes.  She introduces what becomes her theme song "I'm Just A Little Blackbird Looking For A Bluebird" a melodic little ditty that is actually a  subtle protest song. The message that people of any color or creed have the right to search for "the bluebird of happiness" was well understood by her audiences, and contains the line "Building fairy castles just like all the white folks do".  Later the sanitized version "Just like all the other folks do" became the popular way to sing it.  With the Cafe Society happily kneeling at her feet, she took her new show "Blackbirds" abroad and conquered London and Paris.

About her dancing, ballet critic Arnold Haskell wrote, "I would put Florence Mills, as a dancer, on a par with any of the admittedly great artists of the dance. She had much to express, and the power and the means technically to express it."

And a Daily Sketch review said,  "It is notable how much the show attracts other dancers.  Anton Dolin has not missed a Tuesday matinee since the start and Massine, who saw it for the first time last week said 'After this all other dancing is futile. Never before have I seen creative artists able to achieve all they imagined'".

By 1927, exhausted, depleted from her breakneck schedule and ill with Tuberculosis, she was back in New York in the hospital.  But bed rest and even two surgeries don't help.  Knowing she is dying, she sings songs to cheer her nurses & husband.  At 4:00 am on November 1st, Florence Mills dies.  Her last words were "I don't want anyone to cry when I die.  I just want to make people happy, always" 

Florence Mills funeral was the largest Harlem had ever seen.  There is a legend that a flock of blackbirds flew over the funeral cortege.

Criminally, no recordings or film exist for us to discover the marvel of her performances for our selves.  But had she lived today, I suspect some of our self proclaimed pop divas would opt for an early retirement program.


  **If you would like to know more of dear Florence try going here.  It is a website compiled by biographer Bill Egan.  Of the many sources I went to in researching her this is a fine and complete one.