The Worth of Geraldine Farrar

The history of Silent Film has always interested me. In my readings, I found it ironic that one of the early Silent Film stars was Geraldine Farrar who was a gifted and famous American opera singer of the early twentieth century. In the off-opera season, from 1915 to 1920, Miss Farrar starred in silent film where her vocal talents were unused but she did have "star quality" and she was a very good Operatic Actress and that was all she needed to achieve stardom in the film of that time.

She also had a core fan club of young women who adored her and called themselves "Gerry Flappers". I am sure that they all saw her films at least once if not twenty times.

Miss Farrar was born in Massachusetts and her musical ability was recognized by her mother at an early age (5 years old) and nurtured. Miss Farrar was an only child so her mother's attention upon her was absolute. 

At the age of fourteen, Miss Farrar was giving recitals and those recitals brought her to the notice of The Bonds of Boston who bankrolled Miss Farrar's further education to sing opera. Miss Farrar sought her advanced education in Europe and it was in the turn of the century Germany that she gained notice and earned her reputation as a soprano, much like Maria Callas of the later part of the twentieth century, who sang the emotions of the opera part. She had technique but it was the "acting" of the emotions of the part that was the most important part of the performance for her and her audience.

Miss Farrar made her American Metropolitan debut in 1906 and was the soprano who introduced the iconic and eponymous role of Madama Butterfly to American audiences. She was selected and coached by Puccini himself for the part. Although in her biography, she claims that she was his second choice.

The Autobiography of Geraldine Farrar was written by Miss Farrar in 1938. She has very fond memories of her career and life in Germany before World War I that carries over rather offensively to the 1930s. She finds no offense in Hitler's Germany.

She also divides the book into parts. One part is written by Miss Farrar with flourishes and innuendos and intransitive verbs and lush similes and flushed metaphors that makes the reader sometimes resort to diagramming the sentence to determine what is really being said.

For Example, she describes a tenor named Chaliapin:

"I am sure he was a kind if sometimes forgetful husband, and an affectionate father, in spite of having a brilliant reputation as conquistador in the domain of Amor. This was not difficult, given his tremendous artistic endowment, and the the undeniable attractions of a singularly elemental male."  

In real speak, the man was a Horn Dog and had a Big Dong. And she knows, because she had him. And he and his Dong were Good.

In the other part of the "autobiography", Miss Farrar's mother writes with exactly the same style as Miss Farrar and despite the fact that she, the mother, is dead. I suppose we are to assume that this is some "auto"matic hand writing channeled from the dead mother's spirit. Miss Farrar's mom discreetly covers the heights of Miss Farrar's career and love life that it would be unseemly for Miss Farrar to boast directly about herself.

Miss Farrar had an affair with Crown Prince Wilhem in her Berlin Glory Days, but Miss Farrar's mom writes about what a lovely wife and kiddies that he had, and that she and Geraldine got to see them all the time and practically live with them because they were so close to Mrs. Wilhem. I guess that they had the bedroom on the other side of Prince Wilhem's boudoir. And all those adorable kiddies were Mrs. Wilhem's kiddies, all her own, not one of them was Miss Farrar's.

Miss Farrar's love affairs with Toscanini and Enrico Caruso among others are covered in much the same manner.

Miss Farrar's movie career ended in 1920 when she tore up her contract with Samuel Goldwyn when he told her that her movies didn't make money anymore. Miss Farrar was a New England business woman and she made movies because that was where the money was. Miss Farrar's singing career ended in the late 1920s when she wore out her voice by constant travel in her own private rail car all over the US, because that was where the money was. She did record extensively in the early twentieth century because that was where the money was and you can find some of these recordings on CDs today.

Miss Farrar was a Lady who knew her Worth and got her Worth in every way possible.

Some Odd People

The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne

This book is a murder mystery that goes to trial where the truth to be discovered about the trial and whether the accused child murderer did what he is accused of is discernible about half way through the book and the trial.

The real mystery is why the child's attorney, or solicitor (this is a British mystery), is estranged from his adoptive mother and biological mother.

This is good trash reading.


That Furious Lesbian: The Story of Mercedes de Acosta by Robert A. Shanke

Mercedes de Acosta knew every one who was Any One in the early twentieth century. She was a lesbian groupie who slept with all the great lesbians of that age, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Eva le Gallienne, Laurette Taylor, Alice B. Toklas, etc.

Miss de Acosta also wrote plays for the theater of the time and screenplays for Hollywood movies.

This is a good biography. It moves fast and explains the period and its people well to anyone who has not read much about it.

And Cecil Beaton was the one who called her a furious lesbian. Really Mr. Beaton, you are one to talk.

History Lessons

The Noir Forties: The American People from Victory to Cold War by Richard Lingeman

This book is an informal history of the United States from 1940 to 1950. After discussing a section of history, the one on the economics of the period is truly boring and it shouldn't be because this is when a steel workers strike could stop the US economy cold, the author attempts to connect it to a movie of the time that echoes the concerns and fears of that history section. When was the last time that anyone has ever been frightened by a strike lately? How Labor has Fallen.

The movie that the author discusses along with the strikes of the period is The Long Night directed by Anatole Litvak that stars Henry Fonda as a World War II veteran with a bad case of PTSD who kills some guy and then barricades himself in his apartment and has flashbacks all movie long. I haven't seen the movie yet so I don't know just how that relates to Strikes other than barricading oneself in one's room is sort of like walking a picket line in a strike. You can only hope someone is paying attention and if you kill someone, you do draw some notice from authorities and the media.

The history, other than the economic side, is mostly interesting and well presented by the author. The connection with some of the movies (the ones that I have seen) is slight to incidental. The author is really not all that interested in the movie correlation side of the book. I assume that his agent or publisher made him include the movies in the book to make it easier to sell. The author's own experiences in the time period, he was a drafted soldier in Army Intelligence in Japan, were much more interesting and well presented. I assume that correlating his own experiences with the history period was what he really wanted to do and probably was what he originally did in the book before he had to tart it up with Hollywood blondes.

What I took away from this book was that America was having a moment of Mass Fear and Hysteria and Paranoia in the later part of the forties. The loss of FDR must have been truly frightening despite the winning of the war. The similarities with present day America are also disconcerting. Once again we have elected officials like Senator McCarthy, only today we have many of them not just one, who manufacture Fear crises like the National Debt and Bengazhi!!! and the Second Amendment to advance their careers over the Real Life and the Truth and The Way that It Really Is.

Hmmmm, perhaps this is why Fantasy and Science Fiction and Magic movies are so popular these days. The crazies want us all to share their delusions.


The Entertainer: Movies Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century by Margaret Talbot

This is another history book about the times and the movies of those times. It is also a memoir of Lyle Talbot, an actor who began as a Magician's Assistant at the beginning of the 20th Century, starred in Roaming Theatrical companies and their plays, and then went to Hollywood at the beginning of the Talkies Movies and made his career as a B-movie lead and later as the best friend of Ozzie Nelson in TV.

The book is written by one of his daughters, Margaret, and she includes family history and reminisces to give an even more intimate picture of her father and his career and his family. Miss Talbot does a good job with remembering her father's and her past. Like Mr. Proust, it is the little things that she remembers that become the crux of the interpretation of her and her father's life. She also writes well.

As for Mr. Talbot, I have seen one of his Pre-Code movies, Three on a Match, (Bette Davis is in this one, but this is before Warner Brothers figured out just how interesting an actress that she was and was still making her play unremarkable Good Girls. When you think about it, it is amusing, Miss Davis found her Bad Girl after the Era of Bad Girls in the Pre-Code movies. It is also a tribute to Miss Davis' ability to handle subtlety and subtext in her acting and that is amusing because I don't often think of subtlety when I think of Miss Davis' acting.).

Any way, I liked Mr. Talbot and his character in the movie that I was watching mainly for Ann Dvorak, a Pre-Code Female Star. Mr. Talbot played a stinker with some moral scruples, you felt sorry for the poor sod. I have seen some episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet which was The Cosby Show of the fifties and sixties. I hated his character on that one. Mr. Talbot played the obnoxious neighbor and best friend of Ozzie. His character was one of those "Hail Fellow and Well-Met" men with idiotic jokes and Loud Camaraderie, and that shows just how undervalued his acting skills were when you compare the two characters.

Mr. Talbot was also in some of Ed Wood's cult classic Bad Films.

Why Examine Life?

Full Service by Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedberg

Mr. Bowers was a happy-go-lucky Marine freshly discharged after World War II which he spent in the Pacific when he got a job at a Gas Station in Hollywood. Back then, Gas Stations were full service where attendants pumped the gas, checked the oil, checked the fluids, and washed the windshield of nasty bug bodies. The Gas Station attendants met and served all kinds of people who had cars.

Mr. Bowers went from one service (of cars) to another (of people). He pumped the patrons, male or female, and somehow kept from catching any of those nasty STD bugs. Mr. Bowers got the side eye of "you got some time and the inclination?" look from a middle aged man who looked familiar and for a twenty buck tip, Mr. Bowers looked under the hood of Walter Pidgeon. Mr. Bowers used his day job as a gas station attendant to make extra money tricking and pimping for the people (mostly Hollywood types) who came by the Gas Station. Mr. Bowers had a lot of good looking Marine buddies who needed the extra money too.

Mr. Pidgeon preferred to perform fellatio on his partner and be the Top. Mr. Bowers should have just published a spread sheet on the sexual mores and preferences of the Old Hollywood Stars. That and a brief tally of Mr. Bowers' life (he is eighty nine now) is what this book consists of.

Mr. Bowers assures the reader that he was a happy hooker who liked to make people happy when he hooked and pimped. That was all there was to it. Mr. Bowers later moved on from the Gas Station because it did limit his outside activities, to catering and bar-tending where he could get closer and more intimate (in their houses) with his customers.

That maybe what Mr. Bowers lulls himself to sleep with every night, but his life story tells the tale of Mr. Bowers' sexual molestation by his best friend's father at the age of seven. Later when his parents divorced, Mr. Bowers never mentions his father again, and earned extra money for his mother and his sister and brother by selling newspapers and shoeshines and himself through elementary, middle, and high school in Chicago. Mr. Bowers did not just fall into pimping and hooking in Hollywood, he had been doing it  since the age of seven. Hollywood just gave him celebrities to trick.

Mr. Bowers assures the reader that he is a happy man and content in his lifestyle, and he doesn't appear to be a man of much introspection. If he were, he would have considered the implications of his childhood or the lack thereof much more closely on his later life. But Mr. Bower assures the reader that his lifestyle was just in his genes or jeans.

A Proper Job

by Brian Aherne

I like to follow Self-Styled Siren's blog. She gives me some good ideas for books that I should read and movies to see. She recently recommended A Proper Job by Brian Aherne, because he was a good friend of one of her favorite stars, George Sanders, and wrote a biography about Mr. Sanders, that delightful cad. She reviewed A Proper Job and I read the review; it made me want to read the book.

Mr. Aherne was a good looking, tall, English actor who might have done better in the movies if he had applied himself in that job. But he preferred the theater and although he loved California and living there, he owned and ran a farm there for many years of his life, he was never a "star".

He was in the theater with Saint Joan with Tyrone Power and Maurice Evans, when Mr. Power came by the dressing room one night asking for advice. He had been offered a movie contract with 20th Century Fox and wanted Mr. Aherne's opinion on what to do about it.

Mr. Aherne told him the following: " You have talent and a wonderful appearance, but you are very young and I think you have plenty of time, so why not take a few years to gain your experience and to make your name in the theater....Blah, blah, blah".

Mr. Evans was wiser: "Rubbish! Don't listen to him, Ty! Take your chances when they come. Get out to Hollywood fast."

Mr. Power listened to Mr. Evans and made 20th Century Fox with his star power.

Mr. Aherne made another questionable job choice that Jack Warner of Warner Brothers never forgave him for. I can't find the quote in the book (no bibliography---huh?), but it was essentially: "Damn that Aherne. He cost me time, money, and emotional grief when he turned down Captain Blood and I had to cast Errol Flynn in it!"

Mr. Aherne was to make his biggest hit in movies with Captain Fury which was a knockoff of Captain Blood.

Mr. Aherne wrote the book himself, and he can write.

It's a good Hollywood read, even thought only a third of the book is about Hollywood. The rest is about flying and the theater.

Motherhood: You Know That is What You Are Thinking

Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, A Personal Biography

By Charlotte Chandler

Before we get to the question of Motherhood which will always be asked about Joan Crawford (what would she think? To always be associated with one of the holy trinities of womanhood. She did want to be a mother, of a certain kind.). I want to think about what a “Personal Biography” means. Are there “Impersonal Biographies”? And if so, what are they? Biographies not about “Persons” but about institutions? Societies? Groups of Hastily Assembled persons?

In this case, I think that the “Personal” part of the biography concerns the form of the book. It is written as a narrative, complete with the “I” of the first person narrative. The speaker appears to be talking personally and confidentially to the reader, but Miss Chandler transcribed the narratives from tapes or notes of conversations that she had with the narrator. Or perhaps, Miss Chandler did her research and then just made it up or wrote the script for her characters. Miss Chandler does not explain her methodology in the book.

Miss Crawford speaks, Mr. Fairbanks, Jr. speaks (he was the first husband of Miss Crawford’s), and Miss Myrna Loy speaks (she was a good friend of Miss Crawford’s) among others. Miss Chandler only occasionally speaks, as herself or the general narrator.

Miss Chandler met and began to interview Miss Crawford and her friends before the publication of that great paean to Motherhood, Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford, Miss Crawford’s oldest adopted daughter. According to Miss Chandler, Miss Crawford knew about the book and her characterization in it. Miss Chandler implies that Miss Crawford was attempting in her interviews with Miss Chandler to respond and rebut the book. The Mommie Dearest book came out after Miss Crawford's death.

Unfortunately, Miss Crawford’s idea of a rebuttal was to characterize her oldest daughter and her son, Christopher, as unfeeling, uncaring, and basically evil children. Christopher, in particular, comes off as a headstrong, stubborn little boy who was much more interested in his “uncles”, Miss Crawford’s boyfriends, than in Miss Crawford’s decidedly feminine household and company. This appeared only to be a problem or unusual in Miss Crawford’s eyes. Any little boy is going to be interested in male company; he wants to learn how to be a man. He wants a man around to teach him. Miss Crawford had her blind spots and her son, Christopher, was one of them. Christopher may have been difficult for Miss Crawford, but he was not Damien of The Omen, the Devil’s spawn.

Later in the book, Miss Crawford (or Miss Chandler) tells an incident about a fifth birthday party for Christina, where Christina had to carefully open each of her birthday gifts, fold the paper prettily, and take the gift around to each of her guests for display and then thank the giver. Christina received a lot of gifts at this party and had a lot of guests. Miss Crawford was severely disappointed in Christina’s inability to appreciate her gifts and do the right thing (in Miss Crawford’s eyes) to acknowledge them. That Miss Crawford would even expect this sort of behavior from a five year old shows another of her blind spots. The fact that Christina lost interest in her party and her gifts was told as a tale of Christina’s ingratitude, not as an example of the short attention span and lack of patience characteristic of a five year old.

It’s really quite sad. Miss Crawford wanted so desperately to be a mother, many miscarriages are hinted at and some are indicated in the book. Miss Crawford felt that her own mother favored her brother and never showed much affection for Miss Crawford. Miss Crawford wanted to remedy that with her own children. Hence the elaborate birthday parties and pubic displays of a privileged childhood for them, but Miss Crawford’s own affections appeared to be stinted at times, and in private, she had a definite lack of empathy or understanding of her children or any children.

The two older children did manage to break her in as a mother. Miss Crawford had a much better and more affectionate relationship with her younger adopted twin daughters. But even there, there are odd glimpses of an over-demanding and controlling mother and an erratic affection. And for what it is worth (and that might not be much), an internet gossip site that I occasionally visit, has a user who grew up with one of Miss Crawford’s twin daughter’s children, and who claims that Miss Crawford’s daughter was a neglectful mother who allowed her children to run wild in the neighborhood. Again, no one wants to repeat the mistakes of one’s mother, but one can always find one’s own and opposite mistakes to make.

But the children are not the focus of the book. Miss Crawford’s career and rivalry with Miss Bette Davis are the main focus. Miss Crawford knew how to manage her career even if her personal relationships were much more troublesome and problematic.

Miss Crawford’s first husband, Mr. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., was alive to be interviewed and he discussed his marriage with Miss Crawford---Great Sex! He also discussed the long rumored cinematic pornography that Miss Crawford supposedly made very early in her career. He seemed sure that she made the porno film (but whether it was soft or hard or petrified, was uncertain), but he claimed never to have seen a copy. He wished that he did. Even in his nineties, he assures the reader that he and we would appreciate it.

Miss Crawford’s ex-husbands and friends speak well of her. Miss Loy proved a faithful friend who managed to get Christina Crawford fired from a production of Barefoot in the Park that they appeared in together. In Miss Loy’s opinion, Christina appeared to be unappreciative of her mother and her mother’s friend. Oh those sharp toothed serpent’s ungrateful children!

Miss Crawford should be admired for her career. She started in silent porno (if you believe, Mr. Fairbanks, Jr.), then moved on to legitimate silent cinema, and from there managed to move into talkies and dancies and singies and make an even bigger and better career. What other silent cinema star can say that her career kept improving with time and technology? Miss Crawford was at her career height in her forties and fifties. That is when most actresses falter.

And Miss Crawford was directed by one of the major seventies American film boys, Steven Spielberg, when he was beginning in television. All those career girls that Miss Crawford played were very close to home. And when home was a movie set, Miss Crawford was a very good frau.