Walter also became a hotelier, western style. A brochure touted Walter Brennan’s Indian Lodge Motel. The Motel of Distinction. Enjoy Your Vacation In The Switzerland of America. Fishing—Hunting—Swimmi...
To Rio Bravo, Brennan brought his own brand of realism. He explained his reaction to the script to reporter Steven H. Scheuer: They tell me I’m playing a crippled old man who’s got a rifle built into...
Then we got round to Michael’s health. He’s reached a rather difficult stage, Julie said and began to talk about Michael’s digressions, his seeming inability to get to the point or stay on it. It was...
Then he landed the part of Old Atrocity. For the first time, Brennan brought home a whole script, just as he had promised his family he would do one day. He cried, and as his daughter remembered on Th...
The real acting parts go to the character actors. —DANA ANDREWS
Talk turned to current affairs. When the Bush-Gore election came up, Michael noted, We discovered that to the credit of Gore he said his favourite book was Le Rouge et Le Noir. Stendhal was one of Mic...
Talk of Blair stimulated Michael to say, Some of our people are in my opinion too critical of him. Some of them say, ‘Oh Gordon Brown is much better, you know.’ I doubt that there is all that much dis...
One of Michael’s favourite pastimes was hauling books down from his shelves and reading to me, or pointing out comments he had made on the flyleaves. The astringent Brigid Brophy never failed to amuse...
My biography of Jill, the trips to Dubrovnik, were all part of Michael’s effort to recoup his loss and turn it into a kind of celebration.
Michael and Jill were connoisseurs of personality, transcending politics. They loved Randolph Churchill, who ran two losing campaigns against Michael in Plymouth and they adored Benjamin Disraeli, Mrs...
May 13–14: Marilyn accompanies Miller to Washington, D.C., where he goes on trial for contempt of Congress. She stays with his attorney, Joseph Rauh, and Rauh’s wife. May 14: Miller’s trial begins.
March 7: With May Reis, Marilyn in mourning clothes attends the funeral of Arthur Miller’s mother, Augusta, who died of a heart attack. Marilyn offers Arthur Miller her condolences and consoles his fa...
March 11: Marilyn arrives at Greenson’s home and tells him she is going to Palm Springs. After memorizing Nunnally Johnson’s script for Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn learns it has been rewritten by...
Like Drums Across the River, Bad Day at Black Rock (January 7, 1955), is a revisionist work—this time examining the seamy side, the racism and thuggery—of postwar America. Brennan, looking much slimme...
June 8: The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) serves Miller with a subpoena to testify on June 14 in Washington, D.C. The committee agrees to delay the hearing until June 21, so that Mi...
June 6: In a Los Angeles Daily News column, Ezra Goodman identifies Marilyn as a rising new talent. June
June 27: Sidney Fields is the first columnist to write about Marilyn, commenting in the New York Mirror: Marilyn is a very lovely and relatively unknown movie actress. But give her time; you will hear...
June 24: Marilyn appears at the studio to watch her scenes with Montand. John Huston leaves New York to look at locations in Nevada for The Misfits.
June 20: Spyros Skouras, Fox’s president, meets with Marilyn and Miller to advise the playwright to cooperate with HUAC. Miller refuses, and Marilyn admires his integrity and courage.
June 1: Tuesday, 9:30 a.m., Norma Jeane Mortensen is born at the Los Angeles General Hospital, delivered by Dr. Herman M. Beerman. The birth certificate misspells her last name as Mortenson. The fathe...