Let Yourself Go ... To Old Hollywood

Brief review of the 1971 book Hollywood and the Great Fan Magazines

This brief book review is a contribution to the 2021 Classic Film Summer Reading Challenge, run by Raquel Stecher of the Out of the Past blog.

Aside from a brief introduction by the editor, the 1971 book Hollywood and the Great Fan Magazines is a curated collection of articles from old Hollywood fan magazines. The articles are not dated, but they are exclusively from the 1930s, with a few from 1940-41. They appear to retain similar formatting to the original source material, including accompanying photos with captions.

As someone fascinated by old Hollywood and familiar with many, if not most, of the names of that era, this was a very enjoyable read. (Admittedly, I skipped over perhaps 1/3 of the articles that were about personalities I am not particularly interested in.) The articles are clearly not randomly chosen, as at one point there were several articles about Joan Bennett and her marriages/divorces in the 1930s right after each other in the book, though several years apart in real time. Bette Davis gets a similar treatment later.

The subject matter of most of the articles was about the personal relationships of various stars, but there were a few broader Hollywood subjects occasionally discussed. Nothing focusing on any specific movies of the period was included, by my recollection.

Particularly noteworthy to me was reading an article about Joan Blondell discussing her very young son, Norman (born in 1934). The article appears to have been written in 1935, while Blondell was still married to George Barnes (divorced in 1936). I know from other reading that Blondell later married Dick Powell and young Norman took the Powell name. I looked up Norman Powell and discovered he had been a successful television executive and was still alive. Alas, less than a week later, news hit that this same Norman Powell had passed away at age 86.

While many of these magazines from which the articles in this book were taken are these days available online via the Media History Digital Library (a terrific resource!), it was still quite fun to have this specific collection assembled in a book form to leaf through.

Brief review of the script for the 1940 play Ladies in Retirement

This brief book review is a contribution to the 2021 Classic Film Summer Reading Challenge, run by Raquel Stecher of the Out of the Past blog.

Ladies in Retirement is an excellent play. The title doesn't quite indicate what to expect, but it could be considered a gothic thriller. Some have compared it to Arsenic and Old Lace, but other than involving some not-very-sane older women and being set in an old house, it is quite dissimilar. Ladies in Retirement is decidedly not a comedy.

Ladies in Retirement was written by Edward Percy and Reginald Denham and originally performed on Broadway in 1940, with Flora Robson in the starring role. The play was a substantial hit and was soon adapted for the screen by Columbia Pictures.

The play's script is virtually the same as the great 1941 film starring Ida Lupino and Louis Hayward. If you’re familiar with the movie, what differences there are can be fascinating. One notable difference is that the critical murder takes place after a curtain closing in the play, while it is depicted in real time in the film, albeit off-screen. I also think Ellen Creed, the Robson/Lupino character, is less sympathetic in the play.

One major difference between seeing a play performed and the experience of reading the script is that the stage directions interrupt the flow of the dialogue. I am not used to reading play scripts, so that took some getting used to, and I don't think I quite got there. Yet I still very much enjoyed reading the source material for one of my all-time favorite films.