Ava Gardner's letter from the set of "Mogambo"

Ava Gardner once said that John Ford's Mogambo (1953) was as close to a pinnacle as anything she had ever done. The film, for which she received her only Oscar nomination, was not an easy shoot, though. During production in Africa, cast and crew had to deal with the Mau Mau uprising, the excruciating heat and heavy rainfall, and wild animals that formed a constant threat of danger. And besides all that, Ava also had to face the most personal crisis of her life.

A year earlier, Ava had married Frank Sinatra who had accompanied her to the shoot in Africa. The couple was having marital problems and on the set they were constantly fighting. After Sinatra went back to Hollywood to do a screentest for From Here to Eternity (1953), Ava discovered she was pregnant. With Sinatra in Hollywood, she decided to have an abortion in London, keeping her husband out of the loop and telling the press she was receiving medical treatment for a tropical infection. Ava said in her autobiography Ava: My Story (1990) that she wasn't ready to have a child, unable to offer it a stable home life. Mogambo cinematographer Robert Surtees claimed, however, that she had the abortion because she couldn't stand the thought of having Sinatra's baby. It was Surtees' wife who had gone to London with Ava and to whom Ava had said: "I hated Frankie so much. I wanted that baby to go unborn." (After Mogambo had wrapped, Ava said in her book that she got pregnant a second time and had a second abortion, this time with Sinatra being in the know.) 

On 29 October 1953, after a very tumultuous marriage, Ava and Frank formally announced their separation. While Ava filed for divorce in June 1954, the divorce wouldn't be finalised until 1957. The two would remain good friends until Ava's death in 1990, at age 67.

Above: November 1952, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra at London Airport on the first leg of their journey to Nairobi, Kenya. Below: (left to right) Donald Sinden, Grace Kelly, Clark Gable, Denis O'Dea, Ava Gardner and Eric Pohlmann on the set of Mogambo. While circumstances during production were difficult, Ava said that everyone in the cast got along famously. She and Grace Kelly even became lifelong friends.

In January 1953, from the set of Mogambo, Ava wrote the following letter to her sister Myra. Ava came from a North Carolina family, the youngest of seven children, and was very close to her siblings. In the letter, she talks about having been "sick" in London; about Africa getting "more unbearable every day"; about Sinatra leaving her again for months (he got the Maggio part in From Here to Eternity and had gone back to Hollywood); and about the presents he gave her, for their first anniversary, her birthday (on 24 December she had turned 30) and Christmas. 

Incidentally, Sinatra was broke at the time so he had to borrow money to pay for Ava's presents. For the diamond anniversary ring Ava had to advance the money herself (to Robert Surtees she had said: "You know what that son of a bitch did? I got the bill for the ring!"). Still, Sinatra did make sure everybody on the set had a wonderful Christmas. He secretly went to Nairobi to get a tree and decorations and also arranged for an African choir to sing French Christmas carols.

Transcript:

Jan. 1953

Myra dear -

I just got your very first letter today- It was sent to me in London (from Africa) while I was sick + just got back to Africa today. But anyway I got your others + incidentally I sure do enjoy them 'cause this place gets more unbearable every day + any word from home is like a breath of fresh air. Frank just left a few days ago + now I'm really lonesome- This time he is going to be gone for four months or more -

Looks like we'll never be together long enough to really find out if we can live together or not-

Honey, if I didn't tell you in my last letter- I got all your cards at Xmas + birthday time + tell Jean [Myra's daughter] I got hers too + I do hope she's a little happier- She deserves it- to sacrifice so much- I never did receive the [illegible] but maybe they will catch up with me like the letter did- Mail is not too reliable in this part of the world- thank you anyway honey-

We're hoping to get out of here in another week or ten days- I'm going back by the jet plane as far as Rome where I'll spent a couple of days having fun + eating some good food- then back to London

My address in London will be

4 Abbey Lodge

Honour Gate

Regents Park

London N.W.

I never did tell you about my anniversary present. It was a beautiful diamond ring- I can't draw very well but it looked something like this [sketch] - That's a side view - It is dome shaped + is filled with little round diamonds- And for my birthday he brought me another diamond ring like this [sketch] - A marquis diamond with three baguettes on each side + for Xmas a beautiful mink stole - We really had a wonderful Xmas- as you can imagine even tho' it was in the middle of Africa-

Sweetie, I must stop + get ready to leave on the plane - we're going to our last location and I sure am glad it's the last- it's another safari where we live in tents right out in the open with all the lions + hippos + everything-

We were in one safari for 8 weeks - that's where we spent the holidays - Take care of yourself + give my love to Beatrice + the kids

love + kisses

Ava 

Source: Leading Lights Autographs

Ava Gardner with her sisters Myra and Inez (above) and Beatrice "Bappy" (below)

Your letter brought tears to my eyes

While I'm not familiar with his work, François Truffaut was one of France's most respected filmmakers and one of the founders of the French movement La Nouvelle Vague (The New Wave). His films include such classics as The 400 Blows (1959), Jules and Jim (1962) and Day For Night (1973). Not having seen any of his films yet, I must say I only associate Truffaut with Alfred Hitchcock with whom he conducted a series of interviews in the summer of 1962. 

Truffaut was a huge fan of Hitchcock and was the first to recognise him as a complete and serious filmmaker and not just a mainstream director of entertaining suspense films. By the early 1960s, Hitchcock was at the height of his career but many critics (both American and European) still belittled his work, feeling it lacked substance. To prove the critics wrong, Truffaut came up with the idea to do in-depth interviews with Hitchcock during which they would explore and analyse his work. The interviews were recorded and eventually compiled into the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, which is still considered the definitive study on Hitchcock (the French edition was published in 1966, the English edition in 1967). As had been Truffaut's objective, critics started to change their attitude towards Hitchcock and eventually took his work more seriously.

To entice Hitchcock into doing the interviews, on 2 June 1962 Truffaut (then 30 years old) wrote a letter to Hitch (then 62), containing a detailed proposal of the project. Below is Truffaut's letter as well as Hitchcock's reply by telegram. The interviews were eventually held that summer during a period of eight days at Hitch's office at the Universal Studios. As Truffaut spoke hardly any English, Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York was hired to translate. While it had been Truffaut's intention to publish his book that same year, it wasn't published until 1966. In order to keep the book up-to-date, before its publication Truffaut held further interviews with Hitchcock to discuss Marnie (1964) and Torn Curtain (1966). Of all the recordings (which Truffaut said lasted 50 hours) less than 26 hours of tapes survived, nearly 12 hours of which can be listened to here.

Paris, 2 June 1962

Dear Mr Hitchcock,

First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard.

You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel.

Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself.

I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York.

I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du Cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual.

Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about.

I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world.

If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange.

Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by:

1. the British silent films;

2. the British sound films;

3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films;

4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’

5. the Vistavision period;

6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film;

b) the development and construction of the screenplay;

c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film;

d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it;

e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions.

There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology.

The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world.

If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while?

For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962.

If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July.

A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year.

Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain

Yours sincerely,

Francois Truffaut

 

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock. 

Source: New Wave Film.com 

__________

And here is a letter from Hitchcock to Truffaut regarding the French edition of the book. Ever the perfectionist, Hitch even detected an error.

Source: Cinephilia and Filmmaking

In 2015 filmmaker Kent Jones made a documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut based on Truffaut's 1966 book. Directors like Martin Scorcese and David Fincher discuss how their work was influenced by the book.

I have such a strong, tender, wonderful memory

During four months in 1960, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller lived in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel while the bungalow next door was occupied by their French friends, famed film couple Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Miller had met Montand and Signoret in Paris in 1956, when the two starred in the play Les Sorcières de Salem, a French adaptation of Miller's own 1953 play The Crucible. (They would later also star in the 1957 French film version.) Miller became friends with the couple, sharing the same leftist political views. Several years later, in the fall of 1959, Montand and Signoret came to New York where Montand would enjoy great successes on Broadway with his one-man show An Evening with Yves Montand. It was then that the Montands also met Marilyn and eventually befriended her too.

While the two couples were living side by side at the Beverly Hills Hotel in bungalows No. 20 and 21, Marilyn and Montand were filming Let's Make Love (1961) and Miller was one of the writers working on the film's screenplay. Production of the film was plagued with difficulties, including the usual problems with Marilyn (her lateness and inability to remember her lines) and the fact that Montand didn't speak English, having to learn his lines phonetically. It is said that the issues Montand and Marilyn were each having during filming eventually caused them to bond. When their respective spouses left for other commitments, the two grew closer and started a much-publicised affair.  

The affair between Montand and Marilyn reportedly ended after shooting of Let's Make Love had wrapped. Marilyn's marriage to Miller was already in trouble when filming began and the two would divorce in early 1961. The Montands returned to France and remained married until Signoret's death of cancer in 1985. While Simone was very hurt and embittered by the affair and the scandal that followed, she never blamed Marilyn. In her autobiography Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be (1975) Signoret wrote:  

She never knew how thoroughly I had understood the story that was no one's business but ours, the four of us. Too many people were concerned with it during troubled times when many more important things were happening.

She's gone without ever knowing that I never stopped wearing the champagne‐colored silk scarf she'd lent me one day when I was being photographed. It went well with what I was wearing; so well that she made me a present of it. It's a bit frayed now, but if I fold it carefully, that doesn't show.

Marilyn was wracked with guilt after betraying the trust of her friend. After Marilyn died, Simone famously said: "She will never know how much I didn't hate her." Photos above and below by Bruce Davidson, Beverly Hills Hotel, 1960.

Below are a few pieces of correspondence, the first one a letter from Marilyn to Yves Montand written on 24 September 1959. Three days earlier Marilyn had attended the premiere of Montand's one-man show at the Henry Miller Theater on Broadway. Her escort mentioned in the letter was Montgomery Clift. 

Source: Cursum Perficio

Transcript:

September 24, 1959

Dear Mr. Montand:

First, I want to ask you to forgive me for not coming back stage the other night, but my escort was rather upset by the crowds and insisted we leave the theatre as soon as possible. 

I especially wanted to come back stage in order to give you my husband's deep regrets that he was not able to be with me on opening night (he had a deadline to meet). For myself, I want to tell you how marvelous you were and how wonderful it is that Americans will have an opportunity to see you.

When my husband does come to your performance I shall be there again. We are both looking forward to meeting you and Mrs. Montand at that time.

Warmest good wishes to you both.

Mr. Yves Montand

Algonquin Hotel

59 West 44th Street

New York City

__________

A Christmas card and drawing from the Montands to Marilyn. I don't know who was the artist here, Yves or Simone.

Source: Julien's Auctions

Simone and Yves sent Marilyn some flowers or perhaps left them at her bungalow when Marilyn was out. At any rate, the flowers were accompanied by the following card. 

Source: Julien's Auctions 

And a few lines from Marilyn regarding Montand. The lines were part of a P.S. in a letter she had written to her psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson in 1961. Marilyn was reportedly in love with Montand, hoping against hope he would marry her. 

Source: Cursum Perficio

It's a great feeling once you make the other side

Robert Taylor holds the record of having the longest running contract with one studio, i.e. MGM, having been on their payroll from 1934 to 1958. Dubbed "The Man with the Perfect Profile" by the studio's publicity department, Taylor appeared in films of different genres in the 1930s, always playing a nice guy. Moving into the next decade, MGM decided Taylor needed an image change, so the 1940s saw him tackle more gritty parts, including a criminal on parole in Mervyn Leroy's Johnny Eager (1941) and Katharine Hepburn's villain husband in Undercurrent (1946). 

In a letter to an admirer dated 15 September 1941, Taylor, who was in the midst of filming Johnny Eager, talks about this transition from "college boy" type of roles to "more mature" roles and about being recognised by one's peers. In the end, Taylor would never receive the ultimate peer recognition, i.e. an Oscar or a nomination. The only recognition he did receive during his career was the Golden Globe Henrietta Award for World Film Favorites in 1954, a prize he shared with Alan Ladd. 

Robert Taylor: The Man with the Perfect Profile

Robert Taylor and Van Heflin in a scene from Johnny Eager. While Taylor delivered a fine performance, it was Van Heflin who stole the show with his Oscar-winning performance as Eager's loyal and sensitive friend.

Source: icollector.com

The Failed Screenwriting Career of F. Scott Fitzgerald

The popularity of novelist and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who achieved fame in the 1920s, began to wane considerably once the Great Depression hit. With the public no longer interested in reading about the extravagant lifestyles of the American elite, Fitzgerald was facing serious financial problems by the mid-1930s. Convinced that he could become a successful screenwriter, the author returned to Hollywood where he had briefly worked in 1927 and 1931.

In 1937, Fitzgerald was hired by MGM where he would earn $1000 a week (raised to $1250 after six months), his highest salary up till then. While under contract to the studio Fitzgerald was given three major script assignments: Three Comrades (1938), the only film for which he received screen credit; Infidelity, a Joan Crawford vehicle, which was abandoned after he had worked on it for several months; and The Women (1939), on which he and Donald Ogden Stewart collaborated but were eventually replaced by Jane Murfin and Anita Loos. In addition, Fitzgerald also worked (uncredited) on screenplays for A Yank at Oxford (1938), Marie Antoinette (1938), Gone With the Wind (1939) and Madame Curie (the project was shelved and not released until 1943).

F. Scott Fitzgerald (above) enjoyed great successes in the 1920s with his first two novels This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) as well as his short stories for popular magazines. While his novel The Great Gatsby (1925) was not a success at the time, it is now regarded as one of the greatest American novels ever written. The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald's unfinished novel about Hollywood, was published after the author's death. 

After eighteen months MGM decided not to renew Fitzgerald's contract. Much to the studio's annoyance, the writer often disregarded the rules of screenwriting, providing stylised dialogue and long descriptions that would be right for a novel but wrong for a script. Director Billy Wilder once said about Fitzgerald's screenwriting efforts that he was like "a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job”. Still, Fitzgerald was determined to succeed in Hollywood and not only because of the money he could make. He was passionate about films and at one point even dreamed about being both screenwriter and director. (In a September 1940 letter to his wife Zelda, Fitzgerald wrote: "They've let a certain writer here [probably Preston Sturges] direct his own pictures and he has made such a go of it that there may be a different feeling about that soon. If I had that chance, I would attain my real goal in coming here in the first place.")

In the end, Fitzgerald's Hollywood career ended in failure. After leaving MGM in 1939, the author went freelance, taking on assignments like Winter Carnival (1939), with his contributions again uncredited. A few other projects he had high hopes for were eventually shelved, most notably Cosmopolitan, a film that was to star Shirley Temple. Fitzgerald's screenwriting career just wouldn't take off and this prompted him to start drinking excessively again. On 21 December 1940, after years of severe and chronic alcohol abuse, Fitzgerald died of a heart attack, only 44 years old.

__________

As mentioned, the only film for which Fitzgerald had received screen credit was Frank Borzage's Three Comrades, produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Fitzgerald didn't even receive sole billing, being later paired with screenwriter Edward Paramore. Mankiewicz was not at all happy with the script, saying about it years later: "The actors, among them Margaret Sullavan, absolutely could not read the lines. It was very literary dialogue, novelistic dialogue that lacked all the qualities required for screen dialogue. The latter must be 'spoken'. Scott Fitzgerald really wrote very bad spoken dialogue." The producer, who had started his career as a screenwriter, made many changes to the script, and not just to the dialogue. Outraged by what was done to his work, Fitzgerald wrote to Mankiewicz on 20 January 1938, excerpts of his letter seen below. (His impassioned plea to undo the changes was ignored.)

Dear Joe: 

Well, I read the last part and I feel like a good many writers must have felt in the past. I gave you a drawing and you simply took a box of chalk and touched it up. Pat [played by Margaret Sullavan] has now become a sentimental girl from Brooklyn, and I guess all these years I've been kidding myself about being a good writer. 

[....]

To say I'm disillusioned is putting it mildly. For nineteen years, with two years out for sickness, I've written best-selling entertainment, and my dialogue is supposedly right up at the top. But I learn from the script that you've suddenly decided that it isn't good dialogue and you can take a few hours off and do much better. 

I think you now have a flop on your hands— as thoroughly naive as The Bride Wore Red [another Mankiewizc production] but utterly inexcusable because this time you had something and you have arbitrarily and carelessly torn it to pieces. [...]

You are simply tired of the best scenes because you've read them too much and, having dropped the pilot, you're having the aforesaid pleasure of a child with a box of chalk. You are or have been a good writer, but this is a job you will be ashamed of before it's over. The little fluttering of life of what's left of my lines and situations won't save the picture. 

[....]

My only hope is that you will have a moment of clear thinking. That you'll ask some intelligent and disinterested person to look at the two scripts. Some honest thinking would be much more valuable to the enterprise right now than an effort to convince people you've improved it. I am utterly miserable at seeing months of work and thought negated in one hasty week. I hope you're big enough to take this letter as it's meant — a desperate plea to restore the dialogue to its former quality — to put back the flower cart, the piano-moving, the balcony, the manicure girl— all those touches that were both natural and new. Oh, Joe, can't producers ever be wrong? I'm a good writer — honest. I thought you were going to play fair. Joan Crawford may as well play the part now, for the thing is as groggy with sentimentality as The Bride Wore Red, but the true emotion is gone. 

Source:  The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1963) by F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Andrew Turnbull. 

Note: As the letter indicates, Fitzgerald was not at all impressed with Joan Crawford. In a 1938 letter to a friend, he wrote while working on the script for Infidelity: "Writing for her is difficult. She can't change her emotions in the middle of a scene without going through a sort of Jekyll and Hyde contortion of the face, so that when one wants to indicate that she is going from joy to sorrow, one must cut away and then cut back. Also, you can never give her such a stage direction as "telling a lie", because if you did, she would practically give a representation of Benedict Arnold selling West Point to the British." (Infidelity was eventually abandoned due to the film's taboo subject of adultery.)

Joseph Mankiewicz (above) was a successful screenwriter, producer and director. His films include box-office hits like The Philadelphia Story (1940; as producer), Woman of the Year (1942; producer), All About Eve (1950; screenwriter, director) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959; director). On most of his films as producer, Mankiewicz also made uncredited contributions to the screenplay.

__________

One of Fitzgerald's freelance assignments was Cosmopolitan, based on his own short story Babylon Revisited. In March 1940, having bought the rights to the story, independent film producer Lester Cowan approached Fitzgerald and asked him if he would write the script himself. The author accepted, but after finishing the script he disagreed with Cowan about the casting of the lead, the youngster Honoria. Cowan wanted Shirley Temple in the role and it was only after Fitzgerald had met Shirley in July 1940 that he approved of Cowan's choice. Fitzgerald was optimistic about the project and wrote to his wife Zelda on 21 September 1940: "... the Shirley Temple script is looking up again and is my great hope for attaining some real status out here as a movie man and not a novelist." Despite Fitzgerald's high hopes, however, Shirley's mother objected to the film and the project was abandoned.

Below is a letter from Fitzgerald to his secretary Isabel Owens, dated 16 August 1940. A month earlier Fitzgerald had met Shirley Temple and the second paragraph of his letter refers to that meeting. 

Source: icollector.com

Paul Newman's first family

Paul Newman's marriage to Joanne Woodward was one of Hollywood's most successful and enduring marriages. The couple tied the knot in 1958 and remained married until Newman's death in 2008. Once asked about his fidelity to his wife, Newman famously answered: "Why go out for a hamburger when you have steak at home?" 

The couple's 50-year happy marriage almost makes one forget that Woodward wasn't Newman's first wife. In 1949, at the age of 24, Newman married 19-year-old Jackie Witte, a fellow aspiring actor whom he had met while doing summer stage work. A year later they had their first child Scott, followed by daughters Susan in 1953 and Stephanie in 1954. Witte gave up acting and devoted herself to raising their three children. Newman, in turn, pursued his acting career and spent increasingly less time at home, which caused them to eventually grow apart.  

Newman met Woodward in 1953 while he was still married to Witte. He made his Broadway debut in Picnic where Woodward was an understudy. It wasn't until four years later, when they starred together in Martin Ritt's The Long Hot Summer, that they fell in love and reportedly started an affair. Newman divorced Witte and married Woodward in January 1958. With Woodward he eventually had three more children — Nell (1959), Lissy (1961) and Clea (1965). 

Paul, Jackie and son Scott

Shown below is a letter from Paul Newman to Barbara Rushmore (president of his fan club), written in April 1955 when Newman was at the start of his career*. In his letter he introduces the members of his (first) family. Newman's only son Scott, who became a stuntman and an actor, would tragically die of a drug overdose in 1978, only 28 years old.  

*At the time Newman was in the midst of his second Broadway production The Desperate Hours (which ran until August 1955), playing the role that Humphrey Bogart would later play in the film. The actor had thus far appeared in only one film, The Silver Chalice (1954), which he later called "the worst motion picture produced during the 1950s". 

Source: rr auction

Transcript: 

April 21, 1955

Dear Barbara -

Family consists of wife Jackie, actress, Scott, age 4 1/2 who is a monster and All American menace, Susan, age 2, who promises to be something of a Jean Harlowe [sic] and Stephanie age 7 weeks who just sneezes. We live in a small apartment in Long Island with a sort of patio on which there is a charcoal grill on which I cook hamburgers 5 nights a week. That’s just about all I do. All the children look like my mother-in-law. We have no dogs but recently acquired two goldfish. It is Scott’s duty to change the water, so the fish usually swim around in a complete fog. 

That’s the family.

Paul

Above: Paul Newman and his son Scott, photographed in 1972. In memory of his son Newman founded the Scott Newman Center for the prevention of drug abuse. Below: 1973, Newman and Woodward with their daughters (clockwise from left) Clea, Nell, Lissy, and Stephanie (from Newman's marriage to Witte). Photo by Milton Greene.

Barbara Stanwyck dressed by Edith Head

For more than five decades famed costume designer Edith Head had dressed Hollywood's biggest stars. One of the stars whom Head most enjoyed working with was Barbara Stanwyck, who also became a good friend. "She possessed what some designers considered to be a figure "problem" – a long waist and a comparatively low rear end", said Head. "By widening the waistbands on the front in her gowns and narrowing them slightly in the back, I could still put her in straight skirts, something other designers were afraid to do, because they thought she might look too heavy in the seat. Since she wasn’t the least bit heavy, I just took advantage of her long waist to create an optical illusion."

Head's costume designs for Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941) proved career changing for Barbara. Playing two very different types —con artist Jean Harrington and British aristocrat Lady Eve Sidwich— Barbara had twenty-five costume changes, which made The Lady Eve her first "fashion picture" and also changed her image from "plain Jane" to sexy. From then on, regardless of what studio she was working for, Barbara included in all her contracts that only Head was to design her clothes. This meant that in most cases Head had to be borrowed from Paramount Pictures, her studio for 44 years. (Barbara never had a long-term contract with one studio and worked mostly freelance.)

Barbara in her dual role in The Lady Eve dressed in Edith Head's fabulous gowns: above as the posh Lady Eve and below as the con woman Jean Harrington.

In the early 1940s, Barbara signed a non-exclusive contract with Warner Bros. and Head made the costume designs for such films as The Gay Sisters (1942), Christmas in Connecticut (1945), My Reputation (1946) and The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947). Below is an agreement between Barbara and Warners regarding the costs of Head's services in connection with My Reputation. Apparently Barbara first had to pay the costs herself —after the bills had been sent to her by Paramount— and would then later be reimbursed by Warners. Incidentally, the agreement is dated 26 October 1943; while My Reputation was filmed from November 1943 to January 1944, it wasn't released until 1946.

Source: icollector.com

Feel sure you will have a quick recovery

Italian-born Rudolph Valentino was one of the most popular Hollywood stars of the 1920s, starring in successful films like The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), The Sheik (1921), Blood and Sand (1922) and The Son of the Sheik (1926). When Valentino suddenly died on 23 August 1926 at the young age of 31, it provoked hysteria among his numerous fans. A day after his death some 100,000 people gathered outside Frank Campbell Funeral Home in New York, where the actor's body lay in state. Frantic fans tried to enter the funeral home, determined to get a last glimpse of their idol and even smashing windows to get inside. A lot of people got injured being trampled underfoot or cut by broken glass. Eventually, after bringing in extra officers, the police managed to put an end to the disturbances. Valentino's death was the first celebrity death that had inspired such mass hysteria, with several fans even committing suicide.

Following a funeral mass in New York on 30 August 1926 (attended by a number of Hollywood stars including Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson), Valentino's remains were transported to Hollywood where a second funeral was held. He was eventually buried at the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, now known as the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. A memorial service honouring Valentino still takes place at the cemetery every year.

The cause of Valentino's sudden and premature death was attributed to peritonitis, an infection of the inner lining of the abdomen. Eight days before he passed away, Valentino had collapsed at a hotel in New York City and was rushed to the Polyclinic Hospital where he had immediate surgery. Initially diagnosed with appendicitis, the actor turned out to have a perforated ulcer mimicking appendicitis (a rare condition now known as Valentino's Syndrome). At first doctors were optimistic that Valentino was going to recover but then he developed peritonitis and his condition rapidly worsened. On 23 August 1926, he fell into a coma and died a few hours later. (It is said that Valentino believed that he would recover and that on the morning of his death he had chatted with his doctors about his future.)

While in the hospital, Valentino had received get-well telegrams from several of his colleagues, including the following two from United Artists founders Charles Chaplin and Mary Pickford & Douglas Fairbanks. At the time Valentino was under contract to United Artists after having been approached by Chaplin and Fairbanks to join their studio in 1925. Valentino eventually made only two films for UA, i.e. The Eagle (1925) and The Son of the Sheik (1926), the latter film released after his death. Sent on 17 August 1926, two days after Valentino had surgery, the telegrams below show that Chaplin, Pickford and Fairbanks were still hopeful of his recovery.

Source: Bonhams

Source: Bonhams

Here is some  interesting footage of the crowds outside Frank Campbell Funeral Home and Valentino's funeral in New York.

UPDATE 30 APRIL 2021

I came across this telegram sent by Charles Chaplin to George Ullman, Valentino's manager, on the day of Valentino's death.

Via: Facebook

The Birds Is Coming!

Film Bulletin, 4 March 1963 (via)

In February 1963, six weeks before The Birds was due to open in New York, Alfred Hitchcock met with the publicity executives of Universal Pictures to announce the advertising slogan for his film. While The Birds was an independent Hitchcock production, it was distributed by Universal and also financially backed by the studio. In The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds (by Tony Lee Moral, 2013) Evan Hunter, who wrote the screenplay for the film, recalled the moment when Hitch made his announcement. After the director had revealed his catchy slogan —"The Birds is coming!"— a young Universal executive, puzzled by what he had heard, asked: "Excuse me, Mr Hitchcock, sir? Don't you mean "The Birds are coming", sir?" 

No, Hitch had really meant "The Birds is coming". Technically, a grammatically correct phrase, The Birds being the title of the film, thus a singular subject taking a singular verb. However, like the Universal executive, a lot of people didn't see it that way. With billboards everywhere advertising "The Birds is coming", language lovers were appalled by what they considered a grave grammatical error and even sent letters to newspapers to express their indignation. In the end, Hitch's slogan and the commotion it caused gave the director exactly what he wanted — more publicity for his film with the interest of the general public piqued. (As Evan Hunter said: "It was pure genius, a seemingly ungrammatical catchphrase that combined humour and suspense.")

Apparently the slogan not only caught the attention of adults but also of children, including a group of school children in New York. On 5 March 1963, a Manhattan school class wrote a letter to Hitchcock (seen below), asking him to correct his error so children wouldn't learn incorrect English. 

Source: oscars.org

Transcript:

P.S.170 Manhattan

Class 3-4

New York 26 N.Y.

March 5, 1963

Mr Alfred Hitchcock

Hollywood, California

Dear Mr. Hitchcock

We saw an advertisement on the bus for your new movie. It said "The Birds is coming".

We are in the third grade and we have learned when to use is and when to use are. We learned that is is for one thing and are is for more than one thing. 

We think you made a mistake in your advertisement. We think you should change your sign to the "Birds are coming" if you mean many birds are coming, or "The Bird is coming" if you mean one bird is coming.

We hope you will change your advertisement because people or children will learn incorrect English. Please don't think English is strictly for the birds.

Sincerely,

Class 3-4