Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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“Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays" with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible to be discussed 12/12 & 12/13 here. More info to follow.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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"It's beginning to 'look a lot like Christmas" around the Oasis.

To help get us all in the mood, authors and film historians Mary Mallory and Karie Bible will be joining us this weekend to talk about their new book, Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays: 1920-1970.

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Marvelously illustrated with more than 200 rare images from the silent era through the 1970s, this joyous treasure trove features film and television’s most famous actors and actresses celebrating the holidays, big and small, in lavishly produced photographs.

You'll discover how and why young starlets were willing to to dress up and pose for cheesecake-like pictures for a variety of holidays throughout the year.

You'll learn how some of the acting legends of their time were talked into posing and how this tradition got started.

Mary and Karie will share stories behind the photos and how this best-selling book came about.

So please join us this weekend, Saturday, December 12th and Sunday, December 13th! Hot cider and toddies, optional!

Mary Mallory is a film historian, photograph archivist, and researcher, focusing on Los Angeles and early film history. She writes theatre reviews for The Tolucan Times and blogs for the LA Daily Mirror. She serves on Hollywood Heritage, Inc.'s Board of Directors, and acts as a docent for the Hollywood Heritage Museum.

Karie Bible is the 'Historian in Black,' at the famed Hollywood Forever Cemetery where she gives guided tours and shares with visitors the stories of the the famous and nearly forgotten who are buried at the Cemetery. She is also has a deep knowledge of early film history.

Welcome Mary Mallory and Karie Bible!
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Mary and Karie, we are so happy you both have made time in your busy schedules to visit us!

Mary, I last saw you at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival In the Castro Theatre in May of this year, and Karie, I last saw you at the TCM Film Festival this spring. Since both of you are based in L.A., it seems that your affinity for Hollywood History has you both settled in the perfect place to explore, research, and hobknob with the glitterati of the classic film world involved in preserving and writing about Hollywood history.

Can you share with us how your ideas for Hollywood Celebrates the Holidays evolved?
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Hi, Thanks to all of you for inviting us! Our ideas about the book evolved out of our collections. Karie's birthday is Halloween day and she collects on that. I collect vintage photographs from the silent period or by the great stills photographers. We both had some holiday photographs in our collection. One night we were talking about how wonderful the photos were, ranging from drop dead gorgeous to kitschy to spiritual to hilarious to surreal. We began researching to find out how had done a book on it. To our surprise, we discovered no one had, so we decided to do it. Thinking about it, we realized we should show a little something from every major holiday, and some of the smaller more quirky ones thrown in. Our idea was to list the holidays chronologically with the photos chronologically in each section, but the publisher decided to mix it up in the layout, and it really works. They did a great job reproducing the photos.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Obviously we wanted to cover the history of these type of publicity photographs, as well as the wide range of stars who posed for them. There were some stars we wanted to include we could find no photos of, and for others there was a plethora to choose from. Through the photos, you can see how the holidays evolved, how fashion evolved, how even the style of photography employed in publicity evolved.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Hi Mary & Karie,
Could you please explain when publicity stills related to the holidays first began to appear in mass media publications? Did the studios issue them first using their own photographers or were they independently done at the behest of performers?

Thanks for visiting and for any insights you may offer.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

Post by Lzcutter »

Hello Mary and Kari!

Thanks so much for joining us this weekend!

I love the book and the wide variety of starlets and major actors that are highlighted.

Can you tell us a bit how the actors were approached to-I'm guessing it was a different approach used on up and coming actors than the pitch to well-established actors- to pose?

Thanks!
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Did either of you have an "Aha!" moment when you discovered something that you thought didn't exist or was an unusual find?
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Hello. This is Karie Bible. I rarely post in message boards, so I hope that I'm doing this correctly.

moira finnie - We found that many of these stills started in the teens. When movies were in their infancy, the stars weren't identified by name. They only had a physical identification like "The Biograph Girl" or "The Girl with the Golden Curls", etc. As the star system was developing, some actresses would hire photographers to take their picture and then circulate those pictures to newspapers and magazines all over the place. A higher public profile meant they could ask for (and get) more money. So yes, these were originally done at the behest of the performers.

That didn't last long though. Studios seized on the idea and used the publicity stills to promote established stars and upcoming ones as well. This also provided newspapers and magazines with a constant stream of material. It was mutually beneficial.

Studios quickly established their own in house portrait galleries. The photographers were constantly taking stills of the stars. They photographed dramatic publicity portraits and also stars celebrating holidays, enjoying leisure activities (swimming, golf, tennis, etc), cooking, playing by the beach, etc. The goal was to keep these stars in the public eye as much as possible. We noticed in doing this book that these stills were very elaborate in the early years. By the 1950s and 60s, they became much more simple and didn't appear to have as much effort put into them. By the 1960s they began to phase them out as the studio system started to crumble.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Sue Sue Applegate wrote:Did either of you have an "Aha!" moment when you discovered something that you thought didn't exist or was an unusual find?
Thanks again for visiting!
We were surprised by what we found and also about what we DIDN'T find. When we first started out, I knew there was a 98% chance we weren't going to find Greta Garbo or Kate Hepburn. We thought we would find Lana Turner given her sex appeal and star power, but alas we found very little on her. Much to our surprise, we DID find lots of holiday photos on early silent film actor Hobart Bosworth. We also found lots of Baby LeRoy, but those didn't make it into the book.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Lzcutter wrote:Hello Mary and Kari!

Thanks so much for joining us this weekend!

I love the book and the wide variety of starlets and major actors that are highlighted.

Can you tell us a bit how the actors were approached to-I'm guessing it was a different approach used on up and coming actors than the pitch to well-established actors- to pose?

Thanks!
During the studio system, actors and actresses often had very little choice. The studios were all powerful and posing for publicity photos was pretty much considered to be part of the job. The vast majority of the male stars didn't do these, but the women did. In fact, most movie magazines of the time featured women on the covers and were targeted toward female audiences. Greta Garbo posed for a few PR photos when she first arrived at M-G-M, but quickly refused. She is a rare exception to the rule. That said, her reclusive nature served to heighten her sense of mystery and also public interest. When they were first signed to a contract, starlets primarily posed for photographs so they could get exposure. They also took acting, singing lessons, horse back riding lessons, etc. We found a large number of photos on Susan Hayward when she was a starlet. We didn't find any after she became established though.

Joan Crawford posed for a bunch of these photos at the beginning of her career and long after she became a major star. Perhaps more than any other star, Joan recognized the importance that publicity played in her career. She made friends with press agents, reporters, photographers and ensured that her name was kept before the public on a consistent basis. Joan spent a great deal of time personally signing photos, answering fan mail and even appearing at fan club events.

I think another factor at play here is youth. The stars who had long careers didn't pose for as many PR photos as time wore on. Typically Hollywood is focused on the next big thing, and that hasn't changed much over the years.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

Post by Lzcutter »

Kari,

Thanks so much. Joan Crawford definitely knew how to keep herself in the public eye back in the day.

For both you and Mary each, what is your favorite photo and what is the photo that got away?
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Jane Greer looks fabulous while she's penning a note to Santa....

Thanks, Karie!

By the way, Will McKinley has just given your book rave reviews!
Here's the link: https://willmckinley.wordpress.com/2015 ... -holidays/
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Hi, This is Mary. Lzcutter, one of the really interesting things for me in doing the book was finding some wonderfully composed holidays stills by early stills photographers Frank Hoover and Nelson Evans, who were two of the major photographers of the teens and early 1920s. I had never seen holiday art by them, and we have two in the book. In fact, one is my favorite, one of silent film actress Madge Bellamy circa 1923. It shows her as Mary with the babe in the manger with shafts of light beaming down on her face to create an angelic glow. It's just a fabulous still, especially considering the slowness of the film and the use of mostly natural light at the time.

Photo that got away? There were a few of those that just went too high on ebay. One I remember was Charles Farrell of SEVENTH HEAVEN who was dressed as a pilgrim. There were some great photos of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, etc., of the Golden Age that got bid up very high.
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Re: Holidays in Hollywood with Mary Mallory & Karie Bible

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Mary and Karie, which decade made it easier to find photos? Which photos did you find that seemed rather odd given today's politically correct climate? And How did you obtain copyright for the more obscure images?

Hope you don't mind three in a row!
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