A reader of biography will discover how biographies get made. A scholar will appreciate discussions of methodology and strategy. I show what it is like for a professional biographer who moves from sub...
Absalom, Absalom! That novel is an object lesson for biographers because it is about the obsession with knowing what really happened in the past, as well as about the utter futility of ever coming to...
After completing work in December 1950 on Along the Great Divide, Walter Brennan made the first of several appearances on Family Theater, a radio series conceived by Father Patrick Peyton, who convinc...
After dinner, Michael vouchsafed to me that he had had an encounter with Barbara Castle at a recent Tribune event: [MF] You told me about what she had done ... in your case. [Castle had asked for a fe...
April 16: An alarmed Weinstein tells screenwriter Walter Bernstein that Marilyn wants major changes in the script. She rejects one section as sentimental schmaltz.
April 17: Schwab’s Pharmacy, Hollywood and Beverly Hills, bills Mrs. Marilyn Miller $11.42 for two prescriptions.
April 18: Ethel Dougherty finds a job for Norma Jeane as a typist at Radioplane, a munitions factory that makes drones. But at a speed of only thirty-five words a minute, she does not do well and is a...
April 22: I’m a bookworm and proud of it, Marilyn tells columnist Erskine Johnson.
April 26: Marilyn attends the Newspaper Public Convention luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria. She is photographed with Hedda Hopper and J. Edgar Hoover.
April 29: Fox holds the world premiere of River of No Return in Denver.
At lunch, Michael began to reminisce about his first election in Wales, when he was selected to occupy Nye Bevan’s seat. A brief kerfuffle had resulted when his name did not appear on the short list o...
BY 1928, WALTER BRENNAN HAD APPEARED IN DOZENS OF UNCREDited roles as a customer in a store, a lunch counterman, a lumberjack, a yacht crewman, a cashier, a gangster, a pool hall shark, a ranch forema...
Back to Jill’s diary and her comments on Michael’s sartorial difficulties: Jennie Lee used to say, ‘Don’t let the Tories dress Michael.’ He got a big kick out of that. She also mentions meeting Denis...
Barbary Coast was rather a mess when Howard Hawks took over direction of a film initially assigned by Sam Goldwyn to William Wyler. Hawks was famous—and sometimes notorious—for rewriting scripts on th...
Becoming Roy Bean was an all-consuming project. Walter worked late into the night making the old fellow come alive. Weeks of preparation went into his performance. I have literally become that man and...
Before dinner we had our usual round of Scotch, chips, and olives. [MF] I think it’s better with the olives, don’t you? [CR] Good contrast with the chips—crisps, Americans call them chips; the British...
Biography deserves its Marlow, one who flinches not and is willing to see the horror as well as the hope in the biographer’s heart.
Brennan seems to have met his match in director John Ford. Scott Eyman, a Ford biographer, reports that the usually easygoing Brennan allowed the irascible director to get on his nerves. Can’t you eve...
Brennan stayed in character, even when the cameras were not rolling on My Darling Clementine. Don’t whip me, Pappy, please! the actors pleaded. John Ireland, who appears as one of Clanton’s sons, said...
Brennan was also impressed with Lee Marvin during a scene in which Doc Velle offers his hearse to Macreedy as a getaway vehicle. Suddenly, Marvin appears and then nonchalantly walks over to the vehicl...
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