Live Internet Television

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

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

From the Advice From Those Who Have Tried and Made It Department:

For many born outside Hollywood, especially those with dreams of film stardom, there are certain maxims that have become more or less accepted  as truth.

For example, one of these might be rendered, “The best path to becoming a Hollywood film star begins with being born to a film star.”

A second might be, “To become a film star, arrive in Hollywood with a room size box of  ready cash, sans lock.”

A third, “To become a film star, play bridge with a friend of a friend of a Hollywood film star (Suggestions: Omar Sharif, a long time high stakes bridge player or, until recently, the late George Burns, a long time low stakes bridge player.)

Each of the above maxims contains a germ of truth. However, each can be very misleading as well.

In this series, as an acquaintance of many in the film industry,  I hope to show that, although it is marginally easier as a statistic to succeed in Hollywood if one has a natural advantage, natural advantages sometimes make the journey toward stardom much more difficult.

Said differently, starting without a natural advantage does not necessarily reduce one’s chances of success in Hollywood significantly.

To begin,  the percentage of people who look up from their bassinet and notice a Julia Roberts ranked star rocking it is infinitesimally small. If we then go further and measure statistically those with Julia Roberts ranked stars as parents who have gone on to become major or even minor film stars, the number is  touching the invisible; however, it may not seem that way, since we all know of people who have done something wonderful with so-called advantages of birth, so long as those advantages are combined with loads of God given talent, and a willingness to work very hard.

To put things in perspective, let’s get an idea of the size of the group currently working in the entertainment industry, most of whom were born in Biloxi, Gary or Worcester of professional carpenters, plumbers, teachers, ministers and farmers, and all born without immediate access to Julia Roberts.

There are approximately 200,000 actors and actresses who are represented by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Just 1/100th of 1% of these can make a living doing nothing else but choosing among excellent film offers. Perhaps 80,000 members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists  (AFTRA) are in the same situation.  We can add to that group those who belong to the The Writers Guild of America (WGA) perhaps 20,000 souls, and the Actors Equity Association (or simply Equity) with a membership of approximately 15,000. These are followed by the American Musicians Union and dozens, if not hundreds, of other organizations representing everyone from stunt persons to grips (the happy folks who tote equipment from place to place). All in all, it is estimated that at least a half million persons are actively employed in positions that provide an occasional opportunity to rub shoulders with an internationally ranked film star. Read the rest of this entry »

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

I never anticipated that I’d have anything to add to Dr. Moore’s amazing  “True Tales” celebrity gossip series on this blog, but his last post affected me a lot and I found a resonance with this piece by Tom Gregory about the actor Thom Bierdz — who recently returned to The Young and the Restless.

Thom Bierdz has been able to overcome his tragedy and become an accomplished painter and an inspiration, so it’s a little sunnier!

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

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

Most people who knew Charles Boyer and his wife, Pat, an accomplished actress in her own right, thought of them as a steady, happy couple.

Charles was of the quiet, distinguished sort, typical of a man who until the age of nineteen had spent every day of his life  in the conservative, picturesque, out-of-the-way village of Figeac in southwestern France.  Figeac’s people are agrarian even today, focusing their lives on the production of pate and entertaining tourists who come to view the quiet countryside as well as the 13th-century Benedictine abbey at the center of  the community.

Once he left Figeac, Charles’ only vice seems to have been gambling. He once confided in Ed Sullivan that he was always behind in his financial obligations in Europe because of his, Boyer’s, inability to resist the temptations presented by casinos in the large cities. When in the United States, Charles was a frequent visitor of  Las Vegas. Fortunately, Charles’ substantial fortune finally and magnificently outdistanced his ability to lose large sums in this way.

In contrast to her husband’s silent sobriety, even when he was surrounded by a tumultuous casino, Pat was prone to hearty laughter, possessing a sort of bubbly sense of delight as life’s surprises, no matter how small, presented themselves.

From the moment in 1920 when Charles was offered a leading part in the revised popular stage play, Les Jardin des Murcie (a part he had to memorize in less than twelve hours while being fitted for wardrobe, because of the sudden incapacity of the leading actor who collapsed on stage during the final rehearsal), Boyer was on his way to the peak of international stardom in live theater, cinema and television.

During their prime in the 30s through the 50s, Charles and Pat, discussing everything as an effective theatrical and business team, seemed to turn all they touched into box office diamonds.

Those born before the golden age of television remember when the local movie theater was at the heart of even small communities. Read the rest of this entry »

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

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

Part 2 of a series of 2 posts.
As you will recall from the Garden of Allah Part One, the Garden was an estate originally owned by Alla Nazimova, the famed actress who starred opposite Rudolph Valentino in Cammille. In 1927 the Garden was opened as a hotel consisting of the main house with a bar, restaurant, and rooms for rent on the second floor which no one wanted because they were dark and depressing.

There were also 25 bungalows with paper thin walls at the back of the property, with tiny kitchens and the fury that one would expect with all 25 structures occupied by unstable, top-drawer actors, writers, directors and therapists. The names of the people in the bungalows are the names of some of the most famous people the world has ever produced, including Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Kauffman, Errol Flynn, and Dorothy Parker.

However, there was one celebrity at the Garden, one person who had the confidence of every other; the one that no one at the Garden dared upset.

There was a person of such status that even such personalities as Hemingway and Parker gave way in his presence.

That person was named Ben. Ben the Bellboy. (See rare photo of Ben, center, at the Ritz with Hemingway in later years.)

Managers may have  arrived and departed the Garden in revolving-door fashion. Owners, chefs, bartenders, maids, gardeners, the same.

However, Ben the Bellboy was a mainstay, the support without whom the Garden of Allah and all it became in terms of a colony of volcanic misfits could not have evolved.

Ben was a relatively short, stout fellow, blondish hair, outgoing personality, and a logistics genius; a perfect fit for that particular place and time.

When he left the Garden, as the curtain began to drop on the place in the 50s, it was not necessary for Ben to ever work again. He had amassed a comfortable fortune gazing at and grazing on those personalities that the rest of us only viewed as stars in a distant firmament; stars with uncommon needs and appetites; needs and appetites Ben the Bellboy was only too happy to satisfy.

This is the story of Ben, as far as we know it. There are, we are confident, oddities, not to say horrors, that both rumor and written history do not reveal.  However, what we do know is sufficient to write an odyssey not to be outdone by any mortal either before or since. Read the rest of this entry »