Live Internet Television

“The trail may be cold, but the stories are hot!”

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

By the time she was 19, Betty Bacall was already a bit frustrated in her attempts to obtain work as an actress on the legitimate stage in New York City.

She admitted many times to her friends that patience was not a quality that she possessed to any great extent.

In her desperation, during lunch breaks from her rather unglamorous jobs modeling creations in the New York’s Garment District, Betty began selling Actor’s Cue Magazine on the sidewalks of Seventh Avenue. This gave her a reason to approach known producers of plays with the hope of making some sort of connection.

Betty had trained for one year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but could not afford to go a second year. Although she was one of their most promising students, at that time scholarships were only granted to male actors, so for lack of money she could not continue.

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in the film Dark Passage (1947), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

As a result of her modeling, she was referred to and subsequently asked to pose for Harper’s Bazaar Magazine. In order to do that, she was sent by train to Florida. Harper’s was able to run her photos over the course of several issues, one of them being the cover in March of 1943.

Betty Bacal was at this time also having trouble with her name.  People continually mispronounced Bacal, versions being  as varied as baaacle, and basal, and many others. In order to remedy that, she added another L at the end, generally giving people a clue that the emphasis was on the second syllable, as in Ba-call.

Names aside, the wife of Howard Hawks saw the cover edition of Harper’s and brought the photo to her husband’s attention. Hawks, who was one of a handful of really top directors in Hollywood then, had been wanting for a long time to “discover” an unknown and form her very much like Eliza Doolittle is formed in the play, and later in the 1964 film My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

Hawks called Charlie Feldman, his agent, who in turn got in touch with Betty Bacall with an offer of a screen test. Read the rest of this entry »

“The trail may be cold, but the stories are hot!”

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

Of all the stars of the silver screen, a score or so have been acclaimed by the public and critics alike as representative of the ideal American male, the masculine archetype.

Names so labeled include performers such as  Rudolph Valentino,  John Wayne, Errol Flynn, Robert Taylor, and Cary Grant. More recently, cases are made for Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis (called by some “the last real man in Hollywood”), John Travolta and Vin Diesel.

However, in the end, there is but one personality who, during his lifetime, was billed as the King of Hollywood (a moniker he despised). That personality was Clark Gable.

Public domain image from the film trailer for It Happened One Night, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

During the “studio era,” fortunes were spent advancing the careers of a limited number of screen stars. The concentration of wealth spent on supporting the image of  this small cadre of individuals may never be equaled. Independent film companies, and the diversification of studio investment today make it unlikely that we will ever again see one individual cornering the market in a particular film genre.

The Gable on-screen persona was at once rough yet capable of the gentle; outrageous yet possessor of great sensitivity; rude yet often demonstrably refined; sober in times of danger yet playful, even childlike at others; world-wise yet surprisingly innocent; perpetrator of high violence yet marvelously understated. This was Gable, the King.

The qualities that make up the Gable legend still hover over Hollywood, reinforced by the occasional signed restaurant photograph, film cameo, and, of course, the  Lombard/Gable Forest Lawn mausoleum.

But, who was Clark Gable? What were his values? Who was he as an individual? Where did he come from?

To begin, William Clark Gable, born in 1901, came from hard working stock. His father, William H. Gable, labored in the oil fields as a driller. Gable lost his mother, the former Adeline Hershelman, a devout Catholic, when he was ten months old. Before her death, Adeline had Gable baptized a Roman Catholic. Read the rest of this entry »

“The trail may be cold, but the stories are hot!”

Food for Thought About the Famous Nelson Family

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

The Nelson family, Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky, really were very nice people. David is still alive, but the rest, unfortunately, are no longer with us. As everyone knows, Ozzie and Harriet (the name by which the show was known) was one of the longest running sit-coms in television history. Ozzie, being burned out by the life of a big band leader, was anxious to get off the road; thus his willingness to focus his attention on a television program.

The scripts for Ozzie and Harriet were written by Ozzie with occasional input from the rest of the family. The story lines were primarily taken from real life events of his two sons as they grew. Ozzie would take a basic event in the life of either Ricky or David, place some well used gag lines around them, and “voila,” a hit episode. Ozzie had an advantage in that he was a show business pro, and was dealing with a medium, TV, that was young. As such, situations that would now be too hackneyed to be aired, were then fresh to viewers.

The real home that Ozzie, Harriet, Ricky and David occupied was the one that was shown during the sitcom as their television home. And, the sets for the series were replicas of that home’s interior. The home had also belonged to Errol Flynn, and had the famous “black swimming pool.” The pool floor and walls were painted black giving the pool a “lake at night” look.

In the early sixties, Ricky married Kristin Harmon, daughter of Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon. Harriet once observed that Ricky, who was a very quiet young man, and Kris who was also very quiet, would create an explosion if they ever got together. Unfortunately that was true. Their marriage was a difficult one, with Kristin, being a little more extravagant than Ricky could afford, was instrumental in forcing Ricky often to travel and perform when he would rather have been doing other things. Read the rest of this entry »