February 14: Tempo features Marilyn in a swimsuit she wore in We’re Not Married. Here she stands with her arms resting on a heart (almost as large as she is) with a cupid’s arrow running downward and...
February 14: Marilyn and Miller send Steffi Sidney (Sidney Skolsky’s daughter) a wedding present: a sterling silver cigarette box with the inscription For this wonderful day—affectionately, Marilyn an...
February 13: Marilyn attends the premiere of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Romeo and Juliet at Manhattan’s City Center. She attends a party afterward organized by Lee Strasberg. Marilyn arrives ho...
February 11: Marilyn shows up for work, but is sent home because she seems unable to proceed.
February 10: The press quotes Wilder’s vow never to do a film with Marilyn again. Marilyn and Miller attend a performance of Macbeth at the New York Metropolitan Opera. She is photographed autographin...
February 10: In a four-hour afternoon shoot, Rizzo captures Marilyn in close-up and in various positions on a lounger and at the edge of her Brentwood home pool. He later said she seemed immensely sad...
Brennan’s best small role is in Fritz Lang’s Fury (May 29, 1936), another MGM production. Brennan plays Bugs Meyers, a deputy who locks up Joe Wilson (Spencer Tracy), falsely accused of murder, and is...
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 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...
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...
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...
April 29: Fox holds the world premiere of River of No Return in Denver.
April 19: Norma Jeane attends a picnic at Balboa Park with her fellow workers. Photographs show her with long curled hair, standing and sitting in the center of a lineup with four other women, posing...
Anyone coming from a fresh viewing of Barbary Coast will notice that Walter Brennan cleans up very well. No trace of Old Atrocity is visible in one of Come and Get It’s first scenes, in which the wiry...
Although Grandpa hits on the blonde next door, he does it with such charm and perkiness that Brennan gets away with playing what is essentially a dirty old man part. It is worth watching the movie to...
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...
A pilot for Mr. Tutt, a series produced by Desilu and based on a Saturday Evening Post story about a curmudgeonly lawyer, was not made into a series, but it was broadcast on Colgate Theatre (September...
A perkier bit at the beginning of a Three Stooges comedy, Restless Knights (February 20, 1935), has Brennan playing their father, decked out in a large night cap and a fake white beard, lying on his d...
Mentions Michael going to a reception with Prince Charles and Diana: All the women were in semi-formal dress, so I was surprised to see Diana resplendent in a low-cut off the shoulder evening dress of...
Appearing. After seeing the completed film, Brennan thanked Goldwyn for persuading him to do it. It’s stories like these, he told Hedda Hopper, that make you realize it isn’t all beer and skittles in...