Welsh Actor Ivor Novello On A Vintage Postcard

What if one day those in the depths rise up against you?

METROPOLIS (1927) dir. Fritz Lang

The fact I’ll never be able to read all the books I want to read is crushing me

Ann Dvorak in Love is a Racket, I love leg fetishism in old movies so much! It feels so quaint!

LANA TURNER does her part, 1942 She was a pin-up girl of the first order. She was a soldier’s dream during World War II, officially “The Girl We’d Like to Be Stranded on a Deserted Island With,” “The Girl We’d Like to Find in Every Port,” and “The Most Gorgeous, Spectacular, and Pulse-stirring Thing on High Heels.” The 18th Bomb Squadron of the U.S. Air Force painted her on the nose of their B-17 and named the plane “Tempest Turner.” In 1942 she raised $50,000 selling war bonds with kisses and her efforts altogether brought in an estimated $5,000,000. Back home she was a regular at the Hollywood Canteen and on the studio lot she played hostess to large groups of soldiers. She also performed broadcats for Armed Forces Radio, where soldiers could have any wish come true, no matter how random, if it could be transmitted over the airwaves. They could hear Carole Landis sigh, Judy Garland sing “Over the Rainbow,” or Lana Turner cook a porterhouse steak smothered with onions. That’s the request that was made of her and she was happy to oblige. Visiting hospitals was the most difficult because she was easily affected by injuries and sad stories. The soldiers loved her. They were convinced she was the last pretty girl they would ever see. - LANA: THE MEMORIES, THE MYTHS, THE MOVIES

Garbo got a kick out of sporting turtlenecks at a time when only jockeys and prizefighters wore them, and she was the first film star, followed by Katharine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich, to liberate women from skirts. Knowing observers slipped innuendo into their reports of Garbo and Dietrich’s preference for masculine styles. Vanity Fair pictured the Swede and the German, in 1932, under the headline “Both Members of the Same Club,” implying more than their mutual fondness for men’s suits and slouch hats.

Women who spurned skirts were not only violating taboos at the time, but breaking laws; in Paris in the twenties, a permis de travestissement was required of any female wearing a man’s suit. Mores were not much more relaxed on Hollywood Boulevard. “Garbo in Pants!” shouted a wire-photo caption.

“Innocent by standers gasped in amazement to see Mercedes de Acosta and Garbo in pants pretty much managed to go Where she pleased (and, perversely, she didn’t seem to mind the extra attention her fashion preferences brought her).

One night in 1928 Bill Frye slipped her into Chasen’s by rolling her trousers up beneath her overcoat, which she wore to the table. “We had already booked the reservation,” says Frye, “and when I saw what she was wearing I called the restaurant and told them I was bringing Miss Garbo to dinner and could she please come in slacks. They said no, she could not. I asked, ‘What if you put us to the right, just as we come in the door?’ They still said no, so we played our little trick.”

Greta Garbo striding swiftly along… dressed in men’s clothes.” A few days later, MGM sent out a story under Garbo’s name, in which she apologized for inflicting her “trousered attitude” on hostesses, escorts, and maitres d’.

Greta Garbo in The Single Standard (1929)

maybe life is just about going to the cinema

Paul Newman as Brick Pollitt CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958), dir. Richard Brooks

The Phantom of the Opera (1925), dir. Rupert Julian

James Dean rose to fame in the 1950s, most notably for his role in 𝑹𝒆𝒃𝒆𝒍 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝑨 𝑪𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆, for which he became a cultural icon as the ultimate bad boy.

Norma Shearer photographed by George Hurrell, October 1929.