Susan Hayward and Her Hair Strike Back

Thanks to Turner Classic Movies, I got to see I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955) once again. The film is a great showcase for Susan's loveliness, charisma and unbelievable screen presence. She is simply mesmerizing every second she's on screen. I just couldn't take my eyes off her! She radiates power, sizzles with her wonderfully husky voice, and it's no wonder that she was so popular in the 1950s. There's a sequence towards the end of the movie where she's at an Alcholics Anonymous meeting where she (playing singer Lillian Roth) sings a medley of her hits (all sung for real by Hayward) to her beau and future husband, played by Eddie Albert. The two actors have a great rapport and I wonder how well they got along off screen. Susan is particularly effective when she makes the standard, "Happiness is a Thing Called Joe" her own. She owns that song. Just seeing Hayward again gets me excited about exploring her movies and life once more. She is a 1950s icon worthy of rediscovery by today's classic film lover. She worked with nearly every leading man of the 1940s and 50s, although not Burt Lancaster; that's a pairing I'd love to have seen.

Poll Results II: Joan Fontaine

The tie breaker for the June Poll is over. The majority of you think that Joan Fontaine should have won the 1940 Academy Award for Best Actress. The votes:

Joan Fontaine, Rebecca: 14 (60%)

Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story: 9 (39%)

What happened to all the Kate Hepburn fans? The Philadelphia Story was her big comeback part and yet she couldn't compete with Olivia DeHavilland's little sister! Rebecca was that year's Best Picture winner (Hitchcock's only) and while I'm not a Joan Fontaine fan, I can see how her role in this beautiful movie could have won. It's probably her defining performance, though she would win her Oscar the next year for Suspicion, another Alfred Hitchcock film. The lady was at her career peak, and yet she barely registers among the general public when appraisals of Golden Age actresses are made. It's difficult to get past the Barbara-Bette-Joan-Kate quartet, but whatever it is about Fontaine that her fans like, she delivers it full tilt in Rebecca. I'd love for anyone reading this to do a guest post here on why they love this film and Fontaine as they do. Consider it an open invitation...

Miami During the Golden Age of Hollywood

A bit of a departure today…

Part of my fascination for the Golden Age of Hollywood is the actual era itself. I love the architecture, music, politics, and styles of the 1930s and early 1940s, and I often think about what was going on in my own (nearby) fair city of Miami while Hollywood was creating its very best movies with my favorite stars. Miami, Florida was already booming as a luxury tourist destination by the 1930s and would be the nation’s playground in the subsequent decades. Today, I present some snapshots of Miami as it appeared during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Here, take a look at these pamphlets. Perhaps they will entice you to make the trip.

Welcome to Miami: Here’s an Alfred Eisenstaedt aerial photograph of the Magic City, 1940.

Brrr: I forgot to tell you that we're having unusually cold weather this month! This stylish beachgoer sports a fur coat over her bathing suit in February, 1940 when tourists and locals alike were shocked with 30 degree Fahrenheit temperatures during a particularly potent cold snap that lasted three weeks.

The Miami Pan-Am airport terminal: Look at the design and the contrast between the dark surfaces of the terminal and the light, airy tropical attire of the passengers. I wish people dressed up today...I guess there's just no competing with ragged jeans and T-shirt...

Collins Avenue, 1940: Get a load of that bustling city! Cue the Gershwin music as everyone moves about in this subtropical paradise. Collins Avenue runs parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. This entire environment as it was during this time floods me with many images and fantasies, especially my Husband and Wife Detectives strolling along the sidewalks at night and taking in Miami’s typically balmy summer evenings—actually, they’re downright hot!

The traffic is relatively unchanged considering the time, population, and degree of urban expansion. It’s all in proportion, isn’t it? Miami seemed just as crowded then as it is today.

Here’s the Edsinger Hotel, where I live and write this blog—really! See? Right next to that typewriter is my stack of Ginger Rogers jpegs.

Off the Beaten Path: A trip to neighboring Fort Lauderdale finds us in a beautiful deco-designed club, The Club Keller. What’ll you have to drink?

To be continued...

Shame On You, Susan Hayward--and on me, too!

"Everybody gets a book; the ex-wife, the cook, the nanny..."

~John Lennon, on the perils of celebrity


That bad old Susan Hayward. Here she is, circa 1961, rich, famous, and an Academy-Award winning actress, and yet her poor poor sister can barely make ends meet. So claimeth this hatchet job from the evil that was Confidential magazine. Susan's older sister Florence was involved in a custody battle for her 17-year-old son in late 1960 and was trying to publicly guilt Susan into helping her. "I can sew...and I can do general housework and I can work as a saleswoman. If someone would only give me a job I could earn enough money to support my two children." Florence claimed that she hadn't seen Susan since their mother's funeral in April, 1958. Another article claimed that Florence wandered the fringes of skid row with her teenage son.

Being a celebrity sure is a lousy way to live one's life. If you happen to have a falling out with a sibling or parent, they can access the press and for a chunk of change can lob a Molotov Cocktail at you and all your shortcomings. Celebrities get partial treatment in the courts, but they also get that celebrity used against them, with hangers on, disgruntled relatives, and psychopathic "fans" (remembering John Lennon again) all taking their toll. Susan wisely didn't comment on her sister's accusations, and whatever feud that the two sisters had going was deep. However, I believe that just because you happen to share an accident of birth with someone and through the randomnity of some great cosmic lottery you happen to share the same parents, doesn't mean you'll get along with, or even like those in your family. Those of us schlubs who aren't rich and famous never have to worry about a disgruntled somebody publicly taking us to task, though with the internet, I guess it's possible to some degree, but not on this blog--too small an audience!

Sorry for the rant today, but I needed to bring Susan's name back on this blog, seeing as I've essentially left her in the dust what with my Susan Hayward Craze not taking off like I'd hoped, but seeing as Hayward was at her peak in the 1950s, and Hollywood Dreamland tends to concentrate on the 1930s-40s, Susan is omitted by default. But when I get into a 1950s mood, you can bet that the tough and lovely Susan will be back at center stage. After all, I think she's the Bee's Knees.

I also hope that they caught that Nazi fugitive...

Young and Lovely: Ingenue Susan, back when she was still considered a Vivien Leigh lookalike, though not so much here.