THE LOOK - Bewitched style

Sid - a nancy?

Well every Queen must have a Palace - and Hollywood cinema showman Sid Grauman had many.

Sid built the Million Dollar Theater (1918), Egyptian Theater (1922) and Chinese Theater (1927) and first orchestrated what would become known as a film premiere ceremony with a red carpet entrance for the showbiz elite. He staged elaborate pre-film shows and started the footprints-in-cement tradition that keeps tourists coming into the 21st century.

The Indiana-born only son of David Grauman (who died in 1921) and Rosa Goldsmith (1853–1936) had gone to the Yukon with his father to discover gold- but Sid soon found another way to acquire a fortune by setting up entertainments for the miners near the Klondike River. As a newsboy there, he sold papers for as much as a dollar a copy to news-hungry miners. Once he sold a paper for $50 to a store-keeper, who charged miners admission and read the paper to them.



He stayed in the Yukon after his father returned home and staged boxing matches which turned a handsome profit in gold pieces during those 2 years from 1898-1900.

He joined his father and mother in San Francisco and saw his first motion picture. He also saw the earning potential as a theater owner. Grauman's first theater in San Francisco (THE UNIQUE) with its carpeted stairs and stylized entry inspired Marcus Loew and Alexander Pantages for their huge theater chains. The UNIQUE featured vaudeville performers such as Al Jolson, Fatty Arbuckle and Sophie Tucker, as well as movies, including the West Coast premiere of “The Great Train Robbery.”

Grauman took over six theaters in the Bay Area. He later sold his theaters to Hungarian-Jewish immigrant Adolph Zukor (who created Paramount Pictures) and Grauman started expanding into Los Angeles (downtown) and Hollywood.

On Feb. 18, 1918, Grauman opened the 2,300-seat Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles, with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks in attendance to watch William S. Hart’s “The Silent Man” (the theater still stands on Broadway).

Chaplin reportedly used some of Grauman's Klondike tales for The Gold Rush.



Sid (known for his Mad Hatter hair and demeanor) loved practical jokes. His most notorious practical joke was played on director Ernst Lubitsch, who was frightened of flying. Grauman hired two stuntmen dressed as pilots to run down the aisle and parachute from the plane on which Lubitsch was travelling.

On another occasion, Grauman staged a Chaplin look-alike contest with official judges, with Chaplin himself as a secret contestant (Chaplin lost).

He also once persuaded Marcus Loew to address a meeting of theater owners, who turned out to be 75 wax dummies.

Sid also dressed in drag for blind dates (arranged by Chaplin) so they could clown on the unsuspecting schmucks. They pulled this prank on Samuel Goldwyn and Jackie Coogan's father.

Capitalizing on 20s King Tut-mania, Sid created 1,800-seat Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The Egyptian held Hollywood’s first movie world premiere on October 1922 (before then all films opened in New York) for Douglas Fairbanks’ “Robin Hood,” arguably the actor’s most successful film. One of the theatrical elements that Sid put in place was an actor attired as an Egyptian guard, marching back and forth across the roof parapet with a rifle in hand – calling out the start of each performance. ( I bet Sid enjoyed that casting call).

Real estate mogul C.E. Toberman helped him secure a long-term lease on a piece of property on the boulevard and Grauman developed the plans for the Chinese theatre with architect Raymond Kennedy. Norma Talmadge turned the first spade full of dirt in January 1926 and beautiful Chinese actress Anna May Wong drove the first rivet in the steel girders. Built at a cost of $2,000,000, eighteen months later the Chinese Theatre opened. Authorization had to be obtained from the U.S. government to import temple bells, pagodas, stone Heaven Dogs and other artifacts from China.

Sid (according to legend) invited investors Fairbanks & Pickford over from The Roosevelt Hotel to see the construction of his new Chinese Theater. When the stars stepped in wet cement just off the curb - showman that he was, Sid recognized an opportunity. That night Mary Pickford dated her footprint - (and would later recreate the experience in an official ceremony months later).

fun fact: These original sidewalk block footprints were removed in 1960 for the Walk of Fame and have been kept in an airline hangar by a private owner for decades.





Reporter James Bacon told the story that actor Jack Oakie drove by Grauman’s Chinese Theater on December 8, 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, and yelled at Sid: “Hey, Sid, aren’t you glad you didn’t call it ‘Grauman’s Japanese…?’



In his personal life, he was known as a gentleman - living at the Ambassador Hotel (across the hall from his Mother) and was a lifelong bachelor. He never chased the pretty skirts working at his theaters - instead he inspected the tidiness of the usherette's costume/uniforms before each shift.



The only non-film related person to put their footprints in Sid's Chinese Theater forecourt cement was his mother Rosa.

Sid Grauman never owned the Chinese theatre outright, but held a one-third interest with his partners, Howard Schenck, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Grauman sold his share to Fox West Coast Theatres in 1929 and was the Managing Director of the theatre until his death in 1950. He received an honorary Academy Award two years before he died. The last cement ceremony he presided over was with John Wayne.

He is interred (in a family crypt with mama nearby) amongst filmdom's golden era greats at Forest Lawn - Glendale.

For the Hag in All of Us

Lucille La Verne, who played a hag in MGM's A Tale of Two Cities, showed Walt Disney that she could provide the voice of the Wicked Queen AND the Old Hag - by taking out her dentures in his office. She got both parts.

"What Is This Queen Like?"

I'm having a sword and sandal day.

Out takes from The Misfits

One of my fave YouTube personalities Peter Petraitis (he does Edie Beale, Jackie O, Dietrich, Loretta Young - among others) really out did himself when he was inspired to create this vid.

I found this salute to MM's final film performance in The Misfits to be a real hoot. He certainly captures frail Marilyn dancing on the edge of oblivion. I also find these "out takes" far more entertaining than the creepy elegy of that actual self-indulgent film and its neurotics-on-parade.



see his stuff at http://www.youtube.com/user/rankpines49

Zsa Zsa: "I hate that queen !"

The Pink Angels

Who doesn't love a movie about gay bikers? Why doesn't Bravo TV air this American classic?

Lost "Boys" - finally coming to DVD

Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band will (finally) be released on DVD in May 2008!

Written for the stage before Stonewall and produced for film while the riots happened, this film was one of the first to include a nearly entirely gay ensemble. Considered by many to be a landmark in gay representation in cinema, it has left many confused as to why it took so long to be released on DVD.

Historically and politically significant despite (or because of) the pervading self-loathing and wallowing self-pity of its gay characters, The Boys in the Band is a stage-bound, hyperventilating comedy-drama about eight friends who get together for a simple birthday party. What ensues during the course of the evening are enough emotion, acid-laced barbs and self-analysis to last a lifetime.

The film starred the entire original stage cast, many of which have since died of AIDS related illnesses.

Here is the roll-call:

Peter White (alan) He is still working in features (Flubber, Armeggedon) & TV.

Larry Luckinbill (hank) married Desilu heiress Lucy Arnaz. He still acts, as recently as 2003 on Broadway in Cabaret as tragic "Herr Shultz".

Kenneth Nelson (michael) 1930-1993
He died of AIDS in London, but worked in films thru 1990.

Leonard Frey (harold) 1938-1988
He got an Oscar nom for Fiddler on the Roof role - died of AIDS in NYC - worked in tv and films thru 1987.

Cliff Gorman (emory) 1936-2002
He died of leukemia in NYC (worked thru 1999 in films & TV).

Frederick Combs (donald) 1935-1992
He died in LA of AIDS (worked in tv/theatre).

Keith Prentice (larry) 1940-1992
He died of cancer in Ohio (acted in Mary Martin's The Sound of Music on Broadway -- and in 1980's Cruising).

Robert La Tournex (cowboy)
He died of AIDS in 1986.

***

"What I am, Michael, is a 32-year-old, ugly, pock-marked, Jew fairy. And if it takes me a while to pull myself together and if I smoke a little grass before I can get up the nerve to show this face to the world, it's nobody's goddamn business but my own."
-Harold, on explaining his lateness to his own birthday party

Why I love America.

Where else can you see an angry, closeted Paul Lynde trade tired vaudeville jokes with four boys in full Glam drag? Throw in Margaret Hamilton reprising her role of the Wicked Witch and you have a true piece of American weirdness.

Edward Everett Horton

I wonder if that's where this pic was taken?

He played butlers so much he even shined his own car!


Maybe I should write Mr. Horton on his myspace page ... or ask his buddy Eric Blore? I'm so glad that old sissy character actors live on.


I want this address!


Maybe I should tell them that Mark and I visit Franklin Pangborn regularly?

oh you do, don't you? be sure to keep me tidy!

The Devil is a Sissy

I tivo'd this little gem on TCM, selected by Harvey Fierstein who gleefully told Robert Osbourne, "I am a sissy!" in that great voice of his. What a title! What a cast! And what a premise:


How could I resist? Naturally "Claude" (Freddie Bartholomew - who else?) wears his Little Lord Fauntleroy ensemble the whole time - matching short pants and jacket, with white shirt (he abandons the cap after his first day, but one wonders why his books aren't tied together with a ribbon.) Claude's parents are divorced (oh, the shame!) and despite his mother's disaffection for NY ("Well, all I see is squalor and dirt. And unpleasantly swarthy people.") she ditches Claude-y pants with his father, a clueless architect who remains unconcerned when Claude's retelling of his first day at school includes "electric chair," "up the river," and a "kick me" sign on his back, wishing, "I want them to like me, Father - more than anything ... in the world!" Day two's afterschool request is boxing lessons and a black eye, resulting in a "jolly good!" reaction from Dumb Olde Dad. Bad boys Mickey "Gig" Rooney (son of electrified father and prostitute aunt) and Jackie "Buck" Cooper set out to get Claude and the fun begins.

The IMDB synopsis is much more serious: At a cafe owned by a Frenchman, Claude ostensibly orders a special sauce in French, but actually tells the owner to call the police. When they come, the bullets start flying.



Sadly, neither Franklin Pangborn nor Edward Everett Horton are in it, so it's not "the greatest human drama" that it promises, but still worth watching.