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...
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...
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 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 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...
April 21: A Ticket to Tomahawk is released. Marilyn plays Clara, one of four showgirls. She makes four appearances (with dialogue) in group scenes and musical numbers.
As much as most kids growing up I liked digging for buried treasure, and when there was no buried treasure to be found, I buried some myself for later discovery. I think of my subjects the same way: t...
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...
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...
Brennan almost never accepted the clothes that studios designed for his parts. He called himself a dirty actor, by which he meant that the grungy duds he wore on-screen were his own. Brennan had to sm...
Brennan had the best lines in the script. Dispensing justice from his saloon bar, he declares, Don’t spill none of that liquor, Son. It eats right into the bar.
Brennan made everything he did look easy, but occasionally he revealed how much labor went into his roles. In Red River, for example, he walks with a slight stoop after the film flashes forward fiftee...
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...
Brennan was as wily as many of the characters he played, which meant he finessed the constraints of the studio system, mocked studio bosses—even playing tricks on them—and took possession of his roles...
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’s contribution to The Wedding Night (March 8, 1935), starring Gary Cooper and Anna Sten—the Russian beauty Samuel Goldwyn was promoting as the next European import to rival Greta Garbo and Mar...
By way of preparing me for a visit to Paul Foot, Michael told me a story about the time Paul, then 14 and a public school boy, visited Jill and Michael at the Abbey Road home. He was shocked that Jill...
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