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{Hollywood} Forest Lawn Glendale: The Great Mausoleum and The Church of the Recessional
Continuing on in Forest Lawn Glendale… Before we venture over to the Great Mausoleum, we have one important pitstop: The Church of the Recessional, where both Clark Gable and Carole Lombard’s funerals were held–Clark on November 19, 1960 and Carole (with her mother) on January 21, 1942. Naturally, we tried to see inside but there wasn’t much to see through the windows and all the doors were locked. Here is a photo of the inside, from Forest Lawn’s website: And now…onto the Great Mausoleum. A place I have thought of often and had always hoped to visit. It is absolutely gorgeous to behold in person.The building is huge…
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{Hollywood} Forest Lawn Glendale: The Lawn and Freedom Mausoleum
Forest Lawn Glendale is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous! I have heard this before, of course, but this is one of those times where words don’t do it justice. Founded in 1906, the memorial park is famous for its vast collection of sculpture and art, as well as for being one of the first cemeteries to not allow upright headstones, giving the park a smoother look and appeal. There truly is no other cemetery like it, not that I have ever seen in my life. Of the five we visited, this was the first one (for obvious reasons) and we said later on that we shouldn’t have visited it first since it…
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{Hollywood} The Former Homes of…
Instead of hopping on a tour bus to be driven around, snapping photos and hoping to catch today’s stars in their bathrobes watering their front lawns, we were on a mission to find the homes of the past. Let’s start with two of Clark’s wives… Here is the house on Landale that Clark’s first wife Josephine Dillon lived in from her arrival in Hollywood until her death. Clark owned this property, paid the property taxes and let Josephine live there rent-free. He left her the house in his will. After Clark’s widow Kay Williams sold the Encino ranch to developers in 1970’s, she moved into posh Beverly Hills to this house on…
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{Hollywood} Clark Was Here
Let’s follow Clark around Los Angeles… Culver Studios. Formerly Selznick International Studios, this is where Gone with the Wind was filmed. The white house and manicured gardens are well-remembered as the opening shot of GWTW, then with a white sign in front that said, “A Selznick International Picture.” The scene where Mammy, Prissy and Pork stand in front of Scarlett and Rhett’s enormous Atlanta mansion and exclaim over its size (“Lordy, she sure is rich now!”) was filmed right here, in front of this building, with a matte painting standing in for Scarlett and Rhett’s mansion. Carole Lombard made Nothing Sacred and Made for Each Other here. It was later home…
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CONTEST: Win an Autographed Copy of “Harlow in Hollywood”!
That’s right, you can win a free copy of the fabulous new book on Jean Harlow, “Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital 1928-1937”, signed by the authors Mark A.Vieira and Darrell Rooney! This hefty coffee table book is meticulously researched and chock full of extremely rare Harlow photographs–and yes there are many of Gable that I had never seen before too! It is an absolute pleasure and is the perfect centennial birthday present for The Baby. How do you win? Simple: Post a comment below telling us what your favorite Harlow/Gable movie is! You get an extra entry if you mention this contest on your blog, fan page, or…
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Gossip Friday: On the “Saratoga” set
Since “Saratoga” is Movie of the Month and we’re celebrating Jean Harlow’s centennial… From August 1937: On the “Saratoga” set, watching Clark Gable and Jean Harlow emote, the onlookers snicker when Gable does an impromptu imitation of the Harlow walk. Sitting on the sidelines, Peggy, Jean’s hairdresser, is wearing that super-colossal star sapphire ring. The scene is shot and lunch is called. Before she leaves for the commissary Peggy slips the ring off her finger and hands it to Jean, but Jean returns it. “Wear it to lunch, Peggy,” she says. “Maybe you’ll do yourself some good.” So Peggy rushes off to startle her friends, and Jean turns to us.…
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Movie of the Month: Saratoga (1937)
As we wind up our parade of Gable and Harlow pairings, it is only natural that the last one is their last film together and, sadly, Harlow’s last film period. Gable is Duke Bradley, a bookie who acquires the deed to the Brookdale horse ranch because the owner, Mr. Clayton (Jonathan Hale) owes him a lot of money. When the Clayton dies, his daughter Carol (Harlow), who dislikes Bradley, is determined to get the horse ranch back in the family by winning horse races to pay Bradley back. Meanwhile, Bradley tries to bait Carol’s rich fiancée (Pidgeon) to place bets with him. Jean, looking bloated and tired, was struggling…
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Gossip Friday: Miss Harlow and Mr. Taylor
In salute of Jean Harlow, here’s some scoop about her from the set of one of her last films, “Personal Property”: The reported “romance” between Jean Harlow and Bob Taylor was a custom-built item direct from their studio. It was a perfect set-up, what with Jean and Bob typifying all that’s tremendous and colassal in sex appeal, adn what with the two fo them co-starring in “Personal Property.” We snooped around the set for several days just to make sure and we regret to report that all of the necking was right there in the script. When “Personal Property” finished shooting, Jean Harlow dragged out the festive board and tossed…
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Happy 100th, “Sis”!
“She never wanted to be famous. She wanted to be happy.” Clark said this of Jean Harlow after her untimely death at age 26, and it appears to be true. Jean Harlow was a sweet, good natured girl, someone who everybody liked. Affectionately called “The Baby” (by everyone but Clark, who called her “Sis”), she was far from the harlot she portrayed on screen in her early pictures. To understand Jean’s hectic life, her film “Bombshell” is pretty much it in a nutshell—relatives and friends hanging on like leeches, sucking away her money and fame for their own benefit; the press and studio pigeon-holing her into an image that really wasn’t…
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Movie of the Month: China Seas (1935)
China Seas is a real MGM high octane thriller, set on the high seas, with… Romance! Pirates! Deception! A torrid love triangle! Gable is Alan Gaskell, a roguish captain of a ship that sails between Hong Kong and Shanghai. It’s established pretty early on that he’s been having some adult fun ashore with a Shanghai harlot, Dolly, who goes by the name China Doll (Harlow). So imagine his surprise when setting his ship off to sea that she is on board as a passenger! She confesses she is madly in love with him; he is weary of her and rejects her advances. She is green with jealousy upon the arrival onboard…