OLYMPICS SPECIAL

Many of the Olympic athletes and medal winners over the past 112 years have become household names including Jim Thorpe, Jesse Owens, Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali), Joe Frazier, Mark Spitz, Peggy Fleming and Bruce Jenner, just to name a few. However, only a handful have gone on to successful film careers. Following are five Olympic medalists who also made a name for themselves on screen:

 Johnny Weismuller

JOHNNY WEISMULLER (June 2, 1904, Freidorf, Banat, Austria-Hungary (now Romania) — January 20, 1984, Acapulco, Mexico).

He won five gold medals as a swimmer at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, setting many free-style records. Weissmuller appeared in several sports shorts, then was hired by MGM to play Tarzan onscreen. Beginning in 1932, he starred in 12 Tarzan adventures, meanwhile doing almost no other film work. In the late ’40s he quit Tarzan and began starring in a new series, Jungle Jim, while occasionally appearing in other films through the mid ’50s, after which he retired from acting. He was married six times. His stormy marriage to actress Lupe Velez (1933-38) received much coverage in scandal sheets. He authored an autobiography, Water, World and Weissmuller (1967). ~ All Movie Guide 

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 Sonja Henie

SONJA HENIE (April 8, 1912, Kristiania (Oslo), Norway — October 12, 1969, en route by air to Oslo, Norway)

Upon receiving a pair of skates for her sixth birthday, Norwegian entertainer Sonja Henie decided to forego a dancing career for a life on the ice. To refine her technique, Henie continued taking ballet lessons, at one point studying with a former teacher of Anna Pavlova. She won the first of her ten World Skating titles in Oslo at age 14; she went on to win honors at the 1928, 1932 and 1936 Olympics. In 1936 she turned professional, touring the world in her own ice show. Thus, Henie was already a very wealthy woman when she was signed to a Hollywood contract at 20th Century-Fox. From her American film debut in One in a Million (1936) onward, Henie was one of Fox’s biggest box-office attractions. Her film career waned in the late 1940s, but Henie retained her popularity through her sellout appearances with the Hollywood Ice Capades and via sporadic television appearances. In 1960, Sonja Henie retired, a millionaire many times over; nine years later, she died of leukemia while flying on an ambulance plane from Paris to Oslo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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 Buster Crabbe

BUSTER CRABBE (February 17, 1907, Oakland, California — April 23, 1983, Scottsdale, Arizona) 

Athletic actor Buster Crabbe, born Clarence Crabbe, grew up in Hawaii where he developed into a first-rate swimmer and athlete, going on to win the gold medal in 400-meter swimming at the 1932 Olympics (he broke the record held by another actor-athlete, Johnny Weissmuller). After the Olympics he found work in Hollywood playing Tarzan, branching out from this character to eventually play Flash Gordon, Billy the Kid, and Buck Rogers, among other action heroes. He became enormously popular with young audiences for his appearances in many serials and action flicks of the ’30s and ’40s, and ultimately starred in over 100 films. He also made westerns (in the ’40s he was teamed with sidekick Al “Fuzzy” St. John), and was on the list of Top Ten Western Stars at the box office in 1936. Crabbe went on to star in the ’50s TV series Captain Gallant, which also featured his son Cullen “Cuffy” Crabbe. He considerably slowed down his acting output in the ’50s and ’60s, becoming the athletic director for a resort hotel in the Catskills and investing in the swimming pool business. He also authored ~Energetics, a book on physical fitness for people over 50. Crabbe later returned to the screen once, for a large role in The Alien Dead (1980). ~ All Movie Guide

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 Herman Brix (Bruce Bennett)

HERMAN BRIX / BRUCE BENNETT (May 19, 1906, Tacoma, Washington — February 24, 2007, Santa Monica, California)

When Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs set about to produce his own talking pictures based on his jungle-man creation, he decided to emulate the example of the MGM Tarzan pictures, which starred Olympic champion Johnny Weissmuller. Using the 1932 Olympics as his talent pool, Burroughs selected shot-put champ Herman Brix, who’d already played a few bits in such films as Student Tour (1934) and Death on the Diamond (1934). Brix was quickly dispatched to Guatemala to film the 12-chapter serial The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935). In 1937, Brix took some time off to learn the rudiments of acting, then re-emerged on screen in 1938 with a new name: Bruce Bennett. His parts increased in size and importance when he moved to Warner Bros. in 1945; here he was assigned such choice roles as Joan Crawford’s ex-husband in Mildred Pierce (1945) and the lone prospector who is killed off in the middle of Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). A ubiquitous second lead and character actor throughout the 1950s, Bruce Bennett left films in the early 1960s to make a bundle in real estate, briefly returning before the cameras in 1972. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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 Duke Kahanamoku

DUKE KAHANAMOKU (August 24, 1890, Honolulu, Kingdon of Hawaii — January 22, 1968, Honolulu, Hawaii)

The winner of the 100-meter freestyle swimming event at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, Hawaiian star athlete Duke Kahanamoku repeated that feat at the games at Antwerp, Belgium, six years later, finishing second to Johnny Weissmuller at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Kahanamoku attempted to cash in on his fame by appearing in such Hollywood potboilers as Lord Jim (1926) and the Mascot serial The Isle of Sunken Gold (1927), but screen producers saw him mostly as an exotic villain or the odd South Seas Island native and true stardom eluded him. Better known perhaps for his surfing ability, Kahanamoku continued to make screen appearances through John Ford’s Mister Roberts (1955), in which he once again played a Native chief. His death in 1968 was attributed to a heart attack. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

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New US postage stamps honor early black cinema

(click on image to enlarge) 

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Josephine Baker looks straight at you with bright eyes and shining smile, fearless and demanding attention.

The time is 1935, and the St. Louis native who transfixed France and much of Europe with song and dance stares out from a poster advertising the film Princess Tam-Tam. Baker starred as a simple African woman presented to Paris society as royalty.

Baker’s movie is one of five recalled on a set of U.S. postage stamps being released Wednesday to honor vintage black cinema. Ceremonies marking the sale of the stamps will be held at the Newark Museum in New Jersey, which is holding a black film festival.

“So many things happened in her life that she had never expected,” her son Jean-Claude Baker said Tuesday.

“I guess that if she was with us today she would be very honored. At her death she was a French citizen, but she never forgot she was born in America,” he said in a telephone interview. “She would be delighted and very moved.”

“Despite all the difficulty of colored people in her time, she triumphed over all the adversity that she and her people had to endure,” he added.

Another poster, for a 1921 release, provides a taste of the racial divide that sent the young Baker to Europe to pursue her career.

The Sport of the Gods, the poster proclaims, is based on a book by Paul Laurence Dunbar, “America’s greatest race poet,” and it adds that the film has “an all-star cast of colored artists.”

Other posters in the set of 42-cent stamps are:

_ Black and Tan, a 19-minute film released in 1929 featuring Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra.

_ Caldonia, another short at 18 minutes, which was released in 1945. It showcased singer, saxophonist and bandleader Louis Jordan.

_ Hallelujah, a 1929 movie released by MGM. It was one of the first films from a major studio to feature an all-black cast. Producer-director King Vidor was nominated for an Academy Award for his attempt to portray rural African-American life, especially religious experience.

In addition to Jean-Claude Baker and his brother, Jarry, the ceremony was scheduled to include Louis Jordan’s widow, Martha Jordan; Paul Ellington, grandson of Duke Ellington; Newark Mayor Cory A. Booker; and Gloria Hopkins Buck, chairwoman of the film festival.

Josephine Baker may be best remembered in the United States for her singing and dancing in Europe, but she also earned military honors as an undercover agent for the French resistance in World War II. Later, she was active in civil rights work and appeared with Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963.

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‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ hospital to be torn down

 Jack Nicholson (AP)

125-year-old Oregon State Hospital will be replaced with a new complex

The Associated Press

July. 15, 2008

SALEM, Ore. - So long, Cuckoo’s Nest.

Oregon State Hospital, the mental institution where the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed, is making way for a new complex. Most of the dilapidated, 125-year-old main building will be torn down and replaced starting this fall.

Although mean Nurse Ratched was pure fiction, the Oregon State Hospital has struggled with some very real troubles over the years, including overcrowding, crumbling floors and ceilings, outbreaks of scabies and stomach flu, sexual abuse of children by staff members, and patient-on-patient assaults. (to read more click on ‘Continue Reading’)

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Eleanor Boardman Divorces King Vidor

 

 

by Allan R. Ellenberger 

Seventy-five years ago today, on April 11, 1933, a judge granted actress Eleanor Boardman a divorce from her director husband, King Vidor. After a bitter battle over the disposition of their holdings and the support of their two children, Boardman received custody of them, $500 a month for their support and a substantial share of property valued at one-million dollars.  

At the proceedings, Boardman gave a history of her marriage and then launched into her suspicions and investigations about her husbands philandering with a script girl named Betty Hill: 

“For many months Mr. Vidor would come home late at night and when I would ask him where he had been, he would reply that he was working,” Boardman testified. “However, an investigation revealed that he was not working.” 

Boardman said that she employed a detective agency and one evening one of their operatives called and told her to go to a certain apartment.  

“I went there and was told that the lights had been extinguished for perhaps an hour,” Boardman continued. ”We rang the front bell then went to the back door and knocked. Later we returned to the front door and after about twenty minutes, Mr. Vidor came to the door. He was in pajamas and dressing gown. Yes, the girl was there.” 

Boardman talked to Vidor about Hill and he told her that he was “very fond of her.”  

Boardman was awarded stocks and bonds valued in excess of $200,000, and certain valuable real estate. She was also given the furnishings of their home at 1139 Tower Grove Road and permission to live there rent free until the property was sold or she remarried (she did not marry again until 1940).  

Betty Hill and Vidor continued to see each other and she co-wrote the director’s 1938 film, The Citadel and was nominated for an Academy Award. The couple eventually married in 1937. In 1952, she also commenced divorce proceedings against Vidor but the two eventually reconciled. She remained married to Vidor until her death in 1978. 

Note: The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) wrongly gives the date of Vidor’s divorce from Boardman as 1931 and his marriage to Hill as 1932.

Mike Wallace Interviews Gloria Swanson

The Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas has made available a series of Mike Wallace interviews including one with silent film star, Gloria Swanson.

The Mike Wallace Interview ran from 1957 to 1960, but the Ransom Center collection includes interviews from only 1957 and 1958. In the early 1960s, Mr. Wallace donated to the Ransom Center kinescopes of these programs and related materials, including his prepared questions, research material, and correspondence.

Thanks to Donna Hill of the Rudolph Valentino Homepage site for bringing this to our attention.

To watch the interview or read the transcripts, CLICK HERE…