OMG! Somebody is working on my biography!!!!OScott wrote: As I am working on a biography on Ann Harding, I am curious as to how much of Goulding's own character is reflected in Harding's role of the psychiatrist? Scott O'Brien
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OMG! Somebody is working on my biography!!!!OScott wrote: As I am working on a biography on Ann Harding, I am curious as to how much of Goulding's own character is reflected in Harding's role of the psychiatrist? Scott O'Brien
Far be it from me to disagree with our esteemed guest, but IMO the only actress who truly gave Cagney as good as he got was Ruth Donnelly in Hard to Handle. That said, Cagney was one of the few who could command attention when Joan was on screen. She stole scenes with aplomb, but never in a showy way.Matthew Kennedy wrote:I agree with you wholeheartedly about Cagney and Blondell. In fact, I'd call them one of the great screen teams of all time. No other actress ever held her own against him as well.
jondaris wrote:Far be it from me to disagree with our esteemed guest, but IMO the only actress who truly gave Cagney as good as he got was Ruth Donnelly in Hard to Handle. That said, Cagney was one of the few who could command attention when Joan was on screen. She stole scenes with aplomb, but never in a showy way.Matthew Kennedy wrote:I agree with you wholeheartedly about Cagney and Blondell. In fact, I'd call them one of the great screen teams of all time. No other actress ever held her own against him as well.
moirafinnie wrote:Hi Matthew,
Thanks so much for spending a third day with us.
Re: Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes & Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory:
In your book on Joan Blondell and your biography of Edmund Goulding you write that Joan described the director Goulding as "that nut" while making Nightmare Alley. Given the fact that the performance she gave in that movie is among my favorites, (next to her wonderfully compassionate Aunt Sissy in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), do you think she lacked the rapport with Goulding that she clearly had with Elia Kazan on the Betty Smith adaptation?
Since A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was a critical and popular success, why didn't 20th Century Fox promote Joan Blondell for a Supporting Oscar Nomination? In your biography of Joan, I got the impression that the actress believed that her work went unrecognized because the part had been eviscerated by the Hays Office. Censored or not, she was so wonderful, I wondered why there was so little apparent recognition of her acting by her contemporaries.
Could you please talk a bit about Ian Keith and his extraordinary performance in Nightmare Alley? Did you find any background information about his relationship to Goulding during filming?
One of the fascinating aspects of Edmund Goulding's life and career is the divergence between what you called his "elegant romanticism" and his notoriously dark tastes in exploring the frontiers of human behavior. Do you think that his own experiences informed the powerful and tawdry story of Nightmare Alley?
I see a great deal of spiritual yearning in Goulding's movies. Perhaps not in a conventional way, but in the themes of kinship, as seen in White Banners and Dawn Patrol the longing for a lasting relationship with another human being, as in The Constant Nymph and Dark Victory, and a restless, inchoate desire to believe in something beyond one's temporal experience. Did these reflect any of the director's private concerns?
Thank you so much for writing your books. They are among the best I've read on their subjects. I really appreciate your taking the time to answer our queries, and hope that you're not too overwhelmed by this and your duties toward your students.
Thanks a million!
If you'll private message me an address I can copy the DVD for you. I recorded it off TCM a while back. Donnelly and Cagney are fantastic in it. This is way off-topic though.Matthew Kennedy wrote:Yeah, I went out on a limb on that one. Doris Day really tears it up with Cagney in Love Me or Leave Me. I haven't seen Hard to Handle, so now you've got me suuuppper curious. I like your reversal of the usual equation, that Cagney held his own against Blondell, not vice-versa.
Matthew
Birdy wrote:Hello, and thank you for being here.
I just read Joan Blondell and found it to be a charming and endearing account of the work and life of one of my favorite actresses. I must confess, I usually do not like biographies (because of the ending) so I read from her Oscar to the end, then from the beginning to the Oscar! (I cried anyway, just at a different time). Although some incidents in her life were sordid, her life was not sordid, nor was your account of it.
I agree with Jon that I can't take my eyes off her when she's on screen. She said that if she had taken herself more seriously and fought for better roles she might have been a good dramatic actress, like Bette.
Well, you know what? I don't care much for Bette or Joan (except to enjoy hating their characters from time to time) and I don't have most of their movies recorded and back-up recorded like I do Joan's.
I particularly liked a quote from her in your book which referred to the state of mind of the country in the 30's depression. But if I edit that quote just a little, the sentiment is ageless, as is Joan's legacy of reliable smiles.
"...People needed to laugh, to be released from despair. They needed to forget fear even for even a few hours. They needed to sway, to hum..." And we still do, don't we?
Thank you for sharing what you learned about this marvelous actress. From the extensive notes, it must have been a huge undertaking. And now, for a question. Which is your favorite of all Joan's characters? Who would you like to have seen her paired with that she was not? (Male or female)
rudyfan wrote:Hello Matt
Let me first say, your book on Joan is one of the best bios I have read in years. It is SO well written and such a good read, it is a real keeper!
I don't really have any questions for you, but I do hope the sales are going well. You book seriously deserves some awards!
Donna Hill
Ann Harding wrote:Hello Mr Kennedy!
I haven't read yet your books on Goulding and Blondell, but I am planning to very soon.![]()
I saw recently a good number of Goulding pictures. Overall, I was more impressed by his Warner pictures like The Great Lie and The Old Maid than by his later XXth Century Fox pictures. These overblown melodramas have an innate coherence which makes them highly enjoyable. But Nightmare Alley disappointed me. I had the feeling that the film had been cut: its flow was discrete rather than continuous to me. Where they any Zanuck interference on this picture? Did he re-cut the film? I know he was a notoriously meddling producer, so it wouldn't surprise me.
moirafinnie wrote:Matthew,
You'll love Hard to Handle (1933). You can see Cagney trying not to crack up when he's in a scene with Ruth Donnelly, who's seen below with her on-screen daughter Mary Brian in this funny movie about salesmanship, con artists and gold diggers, (Guess which Ruth is?).
Re: Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes
First of all, you absolutely brought Joan B. to life on the page. I can just hear her making some of the cracks you quote in the book and giving a little wink along with it. By the time I came to the end and read that they played "I Only Have Eyes For You" from the movie Dames at her memorial in NYC, I really got misty-eyed. She was the last of the swell broads. Thanks so much for doing such justice to her life in this clear-eyed yet warm biography.
A few more questions, please:
Do you think that the constant upheavals of Joan's early life as the child of Vaudevillians may have doomed her ability to maintain a sustainable marriage, despite her real interests in building a nest for her family?
Was Joan Blondell ever consciously looking for creative expression, or was she always inevitably preoccupied with paying the bills? Did she realize what a gifted actress she was when she got older or was she always struggling with her poor self-esteem?
Why do you think that Joan Blondell allowed her marriage to Dick Powell, (who may not have ever been Mr. Excitement, but at least he had a fairly stable personality), to fall apart once she went East to appear in that dreadful sounding play of Mike Todd's? Was this episode part of Joan's sometimes seemingly contradictory behavior?
Did you think that the touching story about a lonely Clark Gable asking Joan to marry him was true? I inferred from your book, that it was not something that could be verified, though I can see the emotional logic of it from Gable's viewpoint.
I honestly had never read much at all about Mike Todd prior to this book, though I was pretty shocked at his bizarre, almost insane behavior. His son, Mike Todd, Jr. sounds like a remarkably whole person, despite some of the horrendous events he witnessed as a youngster. Did you rely primarily on his account in trying to discern what happened to his mother, Bertha Freshman? Do you think the first Mrs. Todd died as a result of too many kinds of anesthesia when being treated for her knife wounds accidentally self-inflicted during an argument with her husband?
Re: Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory:
Did you ever find that the exceptional Helen Walker had said anything about her experience working with Goulding in Nightmare Alley? Did Walker get the role of the duplicitous psychiatrist Lilith because she was under contract at 20th Century Fox? Did Edmund Goulding choose her?
I also treasure the Somerset Maugham book and the movie, The Razor's Edge. Even though I see their flaws, this lovingly crafted film about someone looking for something beyond the material does not come along everyday--especially not in 1946 Hollywood! Actually, from the cinematography to the music to the direction to the heartfelt acting, particularly by Tyrone Power, Herbert Marshall, Clifton Webb, and (a bit surprisingly) John Payne, as well as a gem of a cameo by Elsa Lanchester--it is irresistible stuff.
I realize that the book of The Razor's Edge was condensed for the screen, but one of the characters in Maugham's story who I thought was most interesting was Suzanne Rouvier, the artist's model whom Larry meets in Europe. She was actually more appealing to me than either Isabelle or Sophie. In researching your book on Goulding, did you have a chance to see any of the preliminary scripts for this film?
If you were able to see these early drafts, did the character of the worldly Suzanne ever appear in the film script or was she believed to have been too risqué for the production code boys? I also wonder if her character disappeared since her role would have shifted the focus of the story away from the Americans, the audience the movie was being prepared to appeal to in 1945.
After the studio system started to fall apart, it seemed that Goulding's career did too. Was he anathema throughout the industry after Zanuck failed to support Nightmare Alley? Was it too late for him to learn to adapt to the changing times? Were his many indiscretions (physical & psychological) starting to take their toll on him by then or do you think he might have been artistically exhausted?
While Edmund Goulding's unconventional life wasn't subject to the same scrutiny as the lives of actors in Hollywood, some believe that his marriage to Marion Moss was largely a public display. Goulding's emotions seem much more complex than that of one more Hollywood hypocrite. Do you think he loved her? Did Goulding's sybaritic temperament prevent him from forming as close a bond with another person (male or female) after her death?
Several people in your book, among them cinematographer Lee Garmes, (who did great work on Nightmare Alley), commented how one minute Goulding would make a remark that "suggested genius" but ten minutes later he'd completely forget his idea. While his spontaneity & creativity certainly won him many jobs and allies, I wonder if he might have truly been affected with something like serious short term memory loss from the '20s on?
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Finally, thank you so much for your generosity with your time by visiting here this week. If you ever wish to post here again at any time, that would truly be delightful. I hope that you'll let us help in promoting the next book you publish in the future. You are always welcome here, Matthew!
mongoII wrote:Hi, Matthew,
It's Joe again, and I would just like to know how the association between Marie Dressler and actress Claire DuBrey actually was?
Thanks,
Joe