...What's the Matter with Helen? starring Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
...The Whales of August starring Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
...The Mothers-in-Law starring Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
Showing posts with label Olivia de Havilland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olivia de Havilland. Show all posts
Sunday, May 1, 2011
What Might Have Been...
...What's the Matter with Helen? starring Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
...The Whales of August starring Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
...The Mothers-in-Law starring Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Charlotte Rues
"I'm glad -- she needs a good picture!" - Joan Crawford, on being replaced in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) by Olivia de Havilland
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Sibling Rivalry
A Certain Smile (1958, 20th Century Fox)
"I married first, won the Oscar before Olivia did, and if I die first, she'll undoubtedly be livid because I beat her to it!" - Joan Fontaine
Light in the Piazza (1962, MGM)
Thankfully for Livvy, there was more than enough Brazzi to go around.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Crazy Chapeaux
Boys' Night Out (1962, Columbia)
Madison Avenue (1962, Twentieth Century Fox)
Light in the Piazza (1962, MGM)
Tender is the Night (1962, Twentieth Century Fox)As you know, here at SSUWAT, it's permanently 1962 -- but let's be honest --
wasn't it a strange year for hats?
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
This One's for the Children
Deeply, deeply scary readings by the ever-maternal Bette, Olivia, and Joan.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Helping Hands
ESTÉE LAUDERJuly 1, 1906 - April 24, 2004
OLIVIA DE HAVILLANDJuly 1, 1916
Our birthday girls know the value of giving back, and helping the less beautiful.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
It's Dior, it's de Havilland, it's DeLovely
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND in Christian Dior, 1955Legendary screen star Olivia de Havilland began a wild love affair just as she was about to marry another man: she fell in love with the designs of Christian Dior and became a loyal client of his atelier as she prepared for her marriage to French magazine editor, Pierre Galante.
Suit from Dior's S/S 1955 collection, included in Olivia de Havilland's wedding trousseau.
Besides creating clothes for the star's personal wardrobe, Dior designed the costumes for de Havilland's film, The Ambassador's Daughter (1956), which was set in Paris; and after his death in 1957, Dior's successors, Yves Saint Laurent and Marc Bohan, designed for her pictures Libel (1959) and Light in the Piazza (1962), respectively.
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, wearing Christian Dior, and JOHN FORSYTHE in The Ambassador's Daughter (1956)
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, wearing Yves Saint Laurent for Christian Dior, in Libel (1959)
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, wearing Marc Bohan for Christian Dior, in Light in the Piazza (1962)
Miss de Havilland sold most of her personal wardrobe at auction 1993, generating nearly $50,000. Over 70 of the lots were couture creations from the House of Dior, spanning 1954-1974. Today, this 93 year old legend still resides in Paris, still charmingly holds court for enthralled journalists, and still looks positively regal in vintage Dior.
OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND, in vintage Dior, 2010
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
That Dern Bruce
He may have looked nearly-unrecognizable as our last Mystery Guest, but we should have known that many in this crowd would recognize Bruce Dern from Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). That film, as young Charlotte's unfortunate married suitor, marked Dern's first substantial film role following a slew of television credits, and cast him alongside some of SSUWAT's all-time icons:
Dern, of course, went on to become most famous for his rogue's gallery of psychopaths, junkies, and all-around wackos; his attempts at breaking out of the weirdo stereotype were generally less-than-successful, as evidenced by Won-Ton-Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976). For being the first to correctly name Mr. Dern, the elusive herm730 wins a week's services from Velma, the maid.
Thanks for playing, darlings!
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Costume Party
Around 1955-56, Hollywood's more, shall we say, mature actresses suddenly and inexplicably caught costume fever. While younger sexpots like Marilyn and Liz and Sophia and Kim were slinking about in ever-more-revealing outfits, the grandes dames began wearing bustles and corsets and petticoats. What's interesting is that such period pieces generally cost exorbitant amounts of money to produce, and historically didn't generate much excitement at the box office. What's more, attaching aging female stars as the "names" to carry such projects seemed a gamble, as well. None of these films fared well with either critics or audiences, so one has to guess at the reason why so many were produced during this period. They seemed to exist solely to give their leading ladies a chance to swan around in elaborate costumes and act noble and/or haughty - which, we admit, is really good enough for us.
Greer Garson had just ended her long association with MGM when she made Strange Lady in Town for Warner Bros. in 1955. Her career at Metro, which began so brilliantly with Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Random Harvest (1942) and Madame Curie (1943) had petered out steadily in the post-war years, spiraling from Clark Gable's "comeback" misfire, Adventure (1945) to the numbingly sentimental Her Twelve Men (1954). Garson's one-off at Warners cast her as a proto-feminist lady doctor in 1880's Sante Fe; she actually looked splendid in her period costumes, and the role suited her dignified-yet-spunky persona perfectly, but the script was far too mediocre to overcome. It marked Garson's final stab at being a romantic leading lady; she was off the screen for four more years, when she deglamorized herself to portray Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960).
The woman Garson had effectively replaced at MGM back in the early 1940's, Joan Crawford, made only one costume drama, The Gorgeous Hussy (1936); and it was such a crashing failure, she vowed to never make another. She kept her promise, too, which is a shame, because it would have been interesting to see a 1950's-era Crawford tackle, say, Lucrezia Borgia! Her nemesis, Bette Davis, not only stepped into Edwardian costume for The Virgin Queen (1955), but actually reprised her role as Queen Elizabeth I, a figure she essayed in the acclaimed 1939 film, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Despite lavish production values provided by 20th Century Fox, lightning did not strike twice - and La Davis suffered the indignity of not only having her head shaved for her troubles, but also of being effectively omitted from the U.S. poster art for her own film: advertising featured images of the younger co-stars, Richard Todd and busty British newcomer Joan Collins, with an illustration of the famous Bette Davis eyes only.
20th Century Fox welcomed another former Warner Brothers star to their lot in 1955, and Bette Davis's self-professed "best friend," Olivia de Havilland corseted herself up and even donned a spiffy eye patch to portray Ana de Mendoza, Princess of Eboli in the rather vapidly-titled That Lady. It had been a Broadway vehicle for Katharine Cornell in 1949-50, when it ran for a meager 79 performances; there were, perhaps, 79 people who saw the film version. de Havilland had been off the screen since 1952, and only made sporadic appearances following the failure of That Lady; most notably in the thrillers Lady in a Cage (1963) and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) - but now we're getting ahead of ourselves...
Considerably lower-rent was Universal's production of Lady Godiva (1955), which purported to tell the historical story of the noblewoman who rode nude on horseback through the town of Coventry. In this sense, it was perhaps a costume-less drama; but the end result wasn't fish, fowl, or good red herring: neither historically accurate nor particularly titillating, it merely fell flat. It was yet another curiously inadequate film for the fiery, gorgeous, talented Maureen O'Hara, who, after triumphing in How Green Was My Valley (1941) and Miracle on 34th Street (1947), freelanced her way through the 1950's in some truly unworthy vehicles. But Lady Godiva surely even trumped Flame of Araby (1951) and Malaga (1954) as the nadir of O'Hara's career. And although O'Hara still looked lovely (discreetly) undraped, hiding George Nader underneath period garb was surely a mistake.
Finally, aging sweater girl Lana Turner finished out her MGM contract with the ornate Diane (1956). Ironically, Turner looked more beautiful in her dramatic, body-concealing Walter Plunkett costumes than she did in her abbreviated pagan love goddess scanties in The Prodigal (1955) - but it wasn't enough to save her from the chopping block at Metro. If Diane was Dore Schary's way of giving Turner the gate, he at least didn't skimp on her going-away party: static though the film may be, it's a rich feast for the eyes.
If the spate of female-driven costume dramas failed to ignite sparks, Turner nearly single-handedly started the infinitely more successful trend for the next round of films featuring mature heroines: the plush sex-and-scandal driven melodrama. Lana was the queen of the genre, but soon Susan Hayward and Eleanor Parker and Joan Fontaine were acting out torrid, sordid scenarios while dripping in up-to-the-moment jewels, furs and gowns. But with the studio system in disarray and money going down the drain, it was only a matter of time before the grandes dames were once again in danger of being put out to pasture - until the grandest of them all, La Davis and La Crawford, proved that the old gals not only still had the power to pull in audiences, but that they could do it in a low-budget film which provided maximum impact. But that's another story for another time...
Greer Garson had just ended her long association with MGM when she made Strange Lady in Town for Warner Bros. in 1955. Her career at Metro, which began so brilliantly with Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Random Harvest (1942) and Madame Curie (1943) had petered out steadily in the post-war years, spiraling from Clark Gable's "comeback" misfire, Adventure (1945) to the numbingly sentimental Her Twelve Men (1954). Garson's one-off at Warners cast her as a proto-feminist lady doctor in 1880's Sante Fe; she actually looked splendid in her period costumes, and the role suited her dignified-yet-spunky persona perfectly, but the script was far too mediocre to overcome. It marked Garson's final stab at being a romantic leading lady; she was off the screen for four more years, when she deglamorized herself to portray Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960).
The woman Garson had effectively replaced at MGM back in the early 1940's, Joan Crawford, made only one costume drama, The Gorgeous Hussy (1936); and it was such a crashing failure, she vowed to never make another. She kept her promise, too, which is a shame, because it would have been interesting to see a 1950's-era Crawford tackle, say, Lucrezia Borgia! Her nemesis, Bette Davis, not only stepped into Edwardian costume for The Virgin Queen (1955), but actually reprised her role as Queen Elizabeth I, a figure she essayed in the acclaimed 1939 film, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Despite lavish production values provided by 20th Century Fox, lightning did not strike twice - and La Davis suffered the indignity of not only having her head shaved for her troubles, but also of being effectively omitted from the U.S. poster art for her own film: advertising featured images of the younger co-stars, Richard Todd and busty British newcomer Joan Collins, with an illustration of the famous Bette Davis eyes only.
20th Century Fox welcomed another former Warner Brothers star to their lot in 1955, and Bette Davis's self-professed "best friend," Olivia de Havilland corseted herself up and even donned a spiffy eye patch to portray Ana de Mendoza, Princess of Eboli in the rather vapidly-titled That Lady. It had been a Broadway vehicle for Katharine Cornell in 1949-50, when it ran for a meager 79 performances; there were, perhaps, 79 people who saw the film version. de Havilland had been off the screen since 1952, and only made sporadic appearances following the failure of That Lady; most notably in the thrillers Lady in a Cage (1963) and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) - but now we're getting ahead of ourselves...
Considerably lower-rent was Universal's production of Lady Godiva (1955), which purported to tell the historical story of the noblewoman who rode nude on horseback through the town of Coventry. In this sense, it was perhaps a costume-less drama; but the end result wasn't fish, fowl, or good red herring: neither historically accurate nor particularly titillating, it merely fell flat. It was yet another curiously inadequate film for the fiery, gorgeous, talented Maureen O'Hara, who, after triumphing in How Green Was My Valley (1941) and Miracle on 34th Street (1947), freelanced her way through the 1950's in some truly unworthy vehicles. But Lady Godiva surely even trumped Flame of Araby (1951) and Malaga (1954) as the nadir of O'Hara's career. And although O'Hara still looked lovely (discreetly) undraped, hiding George Nader underneath period garb was surely a mistake.
Finally, aging sweater girl Lana Turner finished out her MGM contract with the ornate Diane (1956). Ironically, Turner looked more beautiful in her dramatic, body-concealing Walter Plunkett costumes than she did in her abbreviated pagan love goddess scanties in The Prodigal (1955) - but it wasn't enough to save her from the chopping block at Metro. If Diane was Dore Schary's way of giving Turner the gate, he at least didn't skimp on her going-away party: static though the film may be, it's a rich feast for the eyes.
If the spate of female-driven costume dramas failed to ignite sparks, Turner nearly single-handedly started the infinitely more successful trend for the next round of films featuring mature heroines: the plush sex-and-scandal driven melodrama. Lana was the queen of the genre, but soon Susan Hayward and Eleanor Parker and Joan Fontaine were acting out torrid, sordid scenarios while dripping in up-to-the-moment jewels, furs and gowns. But with the studio system in disarray and money going down the drain, it was only a matter of time before the grandes dames were once again in danger of being put out to pasture - until the grandest of them all, La Davis and La Crawford, proved that the old gals not only still had the power to pull in audiences, but that they could do it in a low-budget film which provided maximum impact. But that's another story for another time...
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