In Memoriam: Ricardo Montalban

Most people from my generation remember the late, great Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009) as the villainous madman hell bent on vengeance in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), (which this blogger can quote at will), and dozens of scene-stealing TV appearances in the 1960s and 1970s. Those with a longer memory can recall Montalban as a pioneering Latin leading man in some excellent crime dramas: Border Incident (1949) and 1950's Mystery Street. Montalban worked with Lana Turner in 1953's Latin Lovers; I loved the way he says her name--in fact, hearing him say anything was a privilege. One that we'll enjoy as long as his filmed legacy remains.

Turner Classic Movies is rescheduling its programming January 23 in tribute to Montalban:

7:30 AM Fiesta (1947)
9:30 AM Neptune’s Daughter (1949)
11:15 AM Latin Lovers (1953)
1:00 PM Border Incident (1949)
2:45 PM Battleground (1949)
4:45 PM Across the Wide Missouri (1951)
6:15 PM The Singing Nun (1966)

Barbara, Bette, Joan, and Kate

In The Golden Age of Hollywood, there’s only so much room at the top, not just career-wise, but historically speaking. Memory is embarrassingly limited when it comes to the once-popular, and some of Hollywood’s most popular and beloved actresses have been relegated to bloggers’ fantasies or the occasional TCM “Star of the Month” tribute. Yes, we film buffs know and love them, but the majority of actresses aren't as well known and just don’t measure up to the four who remain the quintessential icons of their (and every subsequent) generation.When discussing the Golden Age, four actresses loom large above all others. Let’s call them The Big Four. Listing them by just their first name (though I've included their mugshots, too) is just one indication of their stature:

Barbara

Bette

Joan

Kate

…and then there’s everyone else: I might as well include 1950s & 1960s actresses in this latter category, because no matter what their achievements, those women just don’t stack up to the four, first-name basis luminaries. When looking at The Big Four’s contemporaries, I find it hard to believe that these diversely talented Golden Age “heavyweights” haven’t enjoyed the same recognition as The Big Four. I will limit them to the 1930s-40s. The notable also-rans:

Ginger Rogers- Equally adept at light comedy and melodrama. She won an Academy Award over Bette and Kate in 1940. Oh, and she danced & sang a little in ten movies with Fred Astaire. Her solo career has been largely dismissed.

Irene Dunne- Another triple threat: hilarious in comedies, effective in dramas, and sang like an angel. In fact, Dunne really wanted to be an opera singer.

Carole Lombard- She’s known more nowadays for being Clark Gable’s wife than she is for being the greatest screwball comedienne ever. She was excellent at dramatic parts, and she died young. World events “upstaged” her untimely death.

Jean Harlow- Comedic brilliance and stylistic immortality; known more for the latter than the former. Too bad.

Myrna Loy- Surprisingly modern but pretty tame, Loy was the most popular female star in 1937; she was “Queen” to Gable’s “King” title. Maybe it was playing the ideal wife in so many movies that did her in, even though she began her career playing exotic vamps. In real life she was as gutsy as The Big Four in battling studio heads for pay befitting her status.

Claudette Colbert- This Oscar winner who could charm you (Midnight) or make you cry like a baby with her dramatics (Since You Went Away). Today, people are apt to think she’s Stephen Colbert’s grandmother.

Joan Fontaine- She and hated sister Olivia De Havilland were wildly popular Oscar winners and both had long-running careers. Now just a footnote, though both are still living. Probably because both are waiting for the other to die; hatred’s funny that way.

Rosalind Russell- Four-time Oscar nominee. Roz epitomized the strong, independent career woman. But her choice of roles did her in, as she only has four or five bona fide classics to her name.

Greer Garson- Always seemed to land all the melodramatic “women’s pictures” and was a perennial contender at Oscar time.

Greta Garbo- She quit making movies by 1941 and has been reduced to a punch line for shut-ins (“I vant to be alone...")

Marlene Dietrich- Best known for her sexually ambiguous attire and being a stylistic influence on pop star Madonna.

Honorable Mentions: Norma Shearer, Janet Gaynor. Their careers reach back to the Silent Era. That probably hurts them.

What made The Big Four so great? Why does the mainstream remember them over the rest? They certainly weren’t the most beautiful, and didn’t sing or dance with any great ability. Bette and Joan weren’t comedic actresses, at least not intentionally. Barbara and Kate excelled in the few they did. Bette and Joan were raconteurs of the highest order, so it would seem that comedy came naturally to them. Was it their longevity? All four were active for at least forty years. How about their twenty-nine combined Oscar nominations? Maybe it’s just the fact that no other actresses produced that high a quality of work for such a long period of time. Maybe it’s the public’s notorious short-term memory. Perhaps it’s because their off-screen lives were infinitely more interesting than anyone else’s. It was probably all of these things, and a hundred more variables I haven't thought of yet. Or, maybe there’s just only so much room at the top. I don’t think that there’s a definitive answer, but it’s a question worth asking, and a fun one to ponder.

And I apologize for having put Bette and Joan adjacent to one another, given their history...

Recommended Reading: The Citadel Film Series

In the days before the internet, The Citadel Press Film Series (aka: "The Films of...") was a Godsend to classic movie lovers, with each volume providing the details of a particular star’s credits along with a brief, but thorough biography in a time when career retrospectives were limited (though there was always plenty of gossip available). When the series took off in the early 1970s, it was no doubt due to the revival in interest in Golden Age movies. Film schools such as the program at USC helped lead to a scholarly publishing boom during the mid-1970s. The Citadel series' quality was uniformly excellent, as a knowledgeable film historian or entertainment writer covered an individual performer’s career, but the best books were often the ones written by fans with an encyclopedic knowledge of a star’s life and career. The typical Citadel Press book would include detailed film credits, numerous high-quality black & white photographs, and review excerpts during the time a specific movie was in release. Author Tony Thomas, whose The Films of Kirk Douglas (published 1972) was the first of the series I found. It even included an introduction from The Intense One himself! There were also tributes from Vincente Minnelli, William Wyler, and Stanley Kramer. This led me to believe that an actor receiving The Films of… treatment may have been a big deal. Anyway, it turned out that all of the movie stars I like have been given the Citadel treatment. The books were in print for years and as recently as the late 1990s updated editions could be found at major bookstores, though I haven't seen them lately.

My interest in the series just got a boost because I now have *Drum Roll* The Films of Susan Hayward, and it’s hands down the most exhaustive book ever written about her. It’s not merely a complete filmography, but more like a bio-filmography. It contains dozens of black & white photographs throughout its 280 pages, including several culled from author Eduardo Moreno’s collection, many of which are unavailable anywhere else (take that, internet!). There are print ads Susan did during the 1930s, publicity stills, full-page glamour shots, and photos of her Academy Awards appearances, including her last-ever public appearance in early 1974. The Citadel Film Series (over 100 titles) has always been a good read, but this volume is infinitely superior to any other I've seen, and that's not just because I’m on a Susan Hayward bender!

No Scanner Blues: Photo courtesy ebay

Susan Hayward's Wonderful LIFE

One of the many great things that have come out of the LIFE Magazine photo archive is the slew of previously unpublished images. I'm not certain if these Susan Hayward photographs taken on November 11, 1949 fall into the "unreleased" category, but they sure are revelatory. These truly wonderful pictures (the one above is my favorite) find thirty-two year old Susan at the beginning of her run as one of Hollywood's most popular and respected actresses. By the time of this photo shoot, she had already received her first Academy Award nomination for Smash Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) and would earn another in 1949, for My Foolish Heart. So when LIFE photographer Edward Clark went out to the Hayward homestead to shoot these photographs, he was capturing Hayward at her unadorned best: no makeup, freckles in plain view, and looking absolutely beautiful.


In the search for All Things Susan Hayward, I've looked through LIFE's Hayward collection numerous times and I think that new images are continually being added. There are more "Susan Variations" of the actress in her dude-ranch style western wear; white blouse, slacks, and belt buckle, plus "domestic" pics of her doting over her two young sons. It's all so darned charming that the gal from Brooklyn, New York could look so right in those clothes. The overall spirit of the photos is one of a happy young woman just a few years before becoming a major star and Hollywood icon.

More to come...