If they were alive today.....

...it would be the birthday of the following luminaries:

Marlon Brando was born in Omaha, Nebraska, 87 years ago today.  Everything, it seems, has already been said about his greatness as an actor.  America's greatest actor ever?  That argument could quite easily be made.  If only on the basis of his two unnervingly brilliant performances in two masterpiece films, he'd rest amongst the immortals:  A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront.  Here are some rare photos of Brando that you may not have seen before, including his costume test shots for Streetcar, and a very rare surprise at the end....




 









A very rare color photo of Brando and Vivien Leigh on the set of Streetcar.



Brando, 1952






With Marilyn Monroe on the set of Desiree.
How'd you like to have been the proverbial "fly-on-the-wall" for that coupling??

With James Dean, around 1954. I believe it's also while shooting Desiree.












Getting made-up for The Godfather.

Now here's a REAL shocker--it was to me, anyway.  In putting together today's tribute, I discovered that Marlon Brando was first offered the lead role in Rebel Without a Cause--and got it, but turned it down! (Brando never explained why).  Of course, it went to James Dean and the rest is infamy.  But Brando did do a screen test for the film--apparently, this was in 1947.  It was discovered a just a few years ago and I snagged it off of Youtube for your viewing pleasure.  Guess when he turned it down, it took another 8 years for the film to get made (in 1955)...anyway, hope you enjoy it!   I love stuff like this, things that magically appear after many decades of obscurity!

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Leslie Howard would be 118.  Some might say that his emotings are a bit overly-mannered for today's tastes (me! me!).  But I don't know...he's grown on me a bit over the years. 

I always (even as a kid) thought that he was the weak link in Gone With the Wind, with his somewhat flowery recitations and...I mean, come on...atleast try for a little Southern accent there, Leslie.  I've noticed that women always rise to his defense if I've maybe said unkind words about him, so maybe it's a "chick thing".  But I've since seen him in several other things and he did have that British charm thing going.  And also, maybe my feelings have softened since learning that he died just 3 years after Gone With the Wind, when the civilian aircraft he was on was shot down by Nazis, off the coast of France.  His death has been the subject of much conjecture and even "conspiracy theories".

Sally Rand would be 107.  Hers was a job that is, er, "gone with the wind," too...she was the world's most famous "fan dancer".  Class:  Does everyone know what a fan dancer is?  Somewhat akin to a stripper, though I'm sure she'd have said, more "artistic"--which she probably was.  She became an overnight sensation at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair, presenting her act with various props, such as giant bubbles, an enormous swan costume, and most famously, her artfully placed ostrich feather fans, which would mask her seemingly nude form.  She was actually arrest four times...in one single day....for indecent exposure!

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It's almost inconceivable, isn't it?  Doris Day, who's alive and well, was born on this day in Cincinnati, Ohio...in 1922.  Which makes her eighty-nine!  It seems like only yesterday that she was...oh, I don't know...like thirty-nine?  Well, a big happy birthday to a lady who made a lot of people a bit happier with her films, recordings and TV appearances.  She lives the sweet life in idyllic Carmel, California and is apparently doing just fine.  Someone sent me this card a few years ago...seems quite appropriate to post it right here:

And by the way....we just had our 2-month anniversary here at DidYouJustSeeWhatISaw?  In our first month, we had just over 1,000 visitors.  In our second month, we had over 7,000!!  It's really starting to take off around here.  Thank you, as always, for faithfully "tuning in".  Drop me a line, leave me a comment, whatever you like---I'd really like to hear your thoughts, comments, ideas, recommendations.....I'm all ears.  You can write me at howyoodoon@yahoo.com ...I'd love to hear from you!

Best always,
Gregory Moore

Thank GOD wiser heads prevailed! Carnegie Hall was to be torn down....

I came across this page from the September 9, 1957 issue of Life magazine.  It rather coolly lays out for readers what they have in store for them when Carnegie Hall gets torn down in two years--making way for Manhattan's FIRST red porcelain, 44-story tower from hell.

The text is a bit difficult to read, so here it is:

"The building boom that has been making over the old brownstone face of Manhattan with new facades of gleaming aluminum, green glass and copper-tinted steel will reach a new degree of flamboyance in the skyscraper to be erected on the site of Carnegie hal.  When the famous concert place is demolished in 1959, a new office building faced in panels of bright red porcelain will go up in its place.  To liven up the effect even more, Architects Pomerance and Bevines have offset the building's windows in diagonal instead of vertical rows to produce a strange-looking checkerboard pattern.  Standing on stilts in a broad plaza, the $22 million building will rise 44 floors above 57th Street.

All this was saddening news to music lovers who have come to cherish old Victorian Carnegie Hall.  Built as a business venture by Andrew Carnegie, a lover of Scotch bagpipe music, it opened in 1891 with a program partly conducted by Tchaikovsky.  It became home for the New York Philharmonic and a magnet for the great musicians of the world.  When it is demolished, music will lose one of its most acoustically perfect halls.  But there was some good news for music lovers:  As the office building goes up, Carnegie Hall's activities will move to Manhattan's new Lincoln Square cultural center and into a modern auditorium adjoining the new Metropolitan Opera house. "

Interesting how this is all presented as a fait accompli; an inevitability that was sure to happen.  Well, fortunately, a small but very vocal band of music/architecture/cultural preservationists (and just plain common-sensical people!) rose up and said, "Hold on just a damned minute here!" 
They were led--and given a media face--by the great violinist, Isaac Stern.  In 1960, their efforts to save the hall from its fate with the wrecking ball were, almost incredibly, successful.  This was just prior to the formation of the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, which was formed after the senseless destruction of New York's greatest public building, Pennsylvania Station, so the fact that they were able to convince the provervial "wiser heads" to see their point was not a given, in any sense of the word.  But the red porcelain tower never happened (can you even imagine??), the hall is celebrating its 120th birthday this year and is undergoing yet another major renovation--and the main auditorium of Carnegie Hall is now called "The Isaac Stern Auditorium". 

I think it's very important for the photo of this would-be "new Carnegie Hall" to be seen and discussed, and held-up as the ultimate example of the power of rallying to an architectural cause---and what might happen if too many people keep their mouths shut in the face of utter idiocy.  Thank you, Maestro Stern....

If they were still alive...

...today would be the birthday of these notables:





Giacomo Casanova would be 206.  He was the famed Venetian lothario whose very name has become synonymous with womanizers and "lady-killers".  I dunno...does he look that studly to you?

Eugen Sandow would be 144.  "Sandow the Magnificent" was the first world-famous bodybuilder, touring around the world, giving staged exhibitions in which he would strike poses and enact tableaux-vivants in little more than a fig leaf.  It was pretty heady stuff for the 1890's!

Jack Webb would be 91. He was enormously successful as a writer, producer and actor in the 1950's, with his show Dragnet.  What am I missing here?  Have you ever watched him?  He has absolutely no emotion whatsoever...ever!  A very curious thing, his success...
 
Thomas Jefferson would be 268.  Perhaps the greatest...everything in American history.  Let's see...what don't you know about him already?  Did you know that his wine bill during his first term in office ran to what would equate to $200,000 in today's dollars.  He and fellow former-president, John Adams, both died on July 4, 1826--the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  Good timing, boys!

Charming, debonair Jack Buchanan would be 120 today.  He was England's greatest song-and-dance man of the 1920's and 30's (and beyond). He was always, it seemed, clad in immaculate white tie and tails, with top hat.  He's best remembered today as Fred Astaire's co-star in the wonderful MGM musical, The Bandwagon (1953).

Buddy Ebsen would be 103.  Though he's known to all as "Jed Clampett" of The Beverly Hillbillies, he was actually a talented singer/dancer in the 1930's.  His greatest almost claim-to-fame came in 1939.  He was cast as "The Tin Man" in The Wizard of Oz.  But the makeup they used (made from aluminum dust) on his skin to replicate tin very nearly killed him.  He was unceremoniously dumped from the film, replaced by Jack Haley, who earned his place in cinema immortality in the role.



Marvin Gaye would be 72.  The troubled Motown singer was one of the most talented performers to emerge from that legendary roster of greats.  His ending was epic in its scale of tragedy:  The drug-addicted Gaye angrily confronted his equally hot-headed father (a minister) at the Hollywood home Marvin had bought for his parents.  In a rage, the father shot his son dead.  Very sad, indeed.  What a voice that guy had.

If they were still alive....

...today would be the birthday of the following notables:

Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff would be 138.  Among other things, his lush, sweeping style of composition is often used as theme music in "romantic" films, notably the wonderful and oft-overlooked modern classic, Somewhere in Time, with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour (1980).  His "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op. 43, Variation XVIII" is interwoven, unforgettably.  Here is the great Artur Rubinstein playing a portion of it:



"The Man of 1,000 Faces," Lon Chaney would be 128.  The son of deaf parents, Chaney became one of the great actors of the silent film era, perhaps most famously playing the "phantom of the opera" in the first film version of the famed French tale.  He was incredibly versatile, appearing almost completely different-looking/acting in every one of his films.  He died prematurely, at the age of 47, of complications from lung cancer.  Here is the famous scene where the phantom's mask is ripped away:



Great Broadway star Laurette Taylor would be either 127 or 128---sources vary.  She was "The Actor's Actor" and is often cited by "old-timers" as being the greatest actress of them all.  Her career was much impeded by her alcoholism, and she only made a few silent films, so there isn't much record of what all the fuss was about.  But I've spoken to people who saw her in perhaps her greatest stage triumph, creating the role of "Amanda Wingfield" in the 1944 premiere of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, and they say that she was incandescently magnificent.  Williams wrote of her:  "There was a radiance about her art which I can compare only to the greatest lines of poetry, and which gave me the same shock of revelation as if the air about us had been momentarily broken through by light from some clear space beyond us."  These are the only two extended film appearances that are known to exist of Laurette Taylor:  Peg O'My Heart in 1922, and a very rare film excerpt of her doing a screen test in 1938:





Crotchety, curmudgeonly ol' Wallace Beery would be 126.  He pretty much played the same role throughout his long and very busy career--and that role was (by most accounts), basically, himself.  He gave many memorable performances in some unforgettable classics, such as Dinner at Eight, Grand Hotel, and The Champ, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar in 1931 (tying with Fredric March for his performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).  Did you know that he was once married....to Gloria Swanson (1916-1919)??  How's that for an odd couple? (that's them, below...what's up with Gloria's dog-collar??).

Eddy Duchin would be 102.  The dashing, showy and very talented pianist and bandleader was immensely popular in the 1930's and 40's, with a style at the keyboard that was something of a predecessor for Liberace's (though, certainly, not quite that showy!).  He died tragically young, at the age of 40, of leukemia.  His life story, The Eddy Duchin Story, was filmed in 1957, with Tyrone Power in the title role (rather fictionalized, but still a pretty good movie).  There was a "mini-scandal" in the 1930's when one of his recordings with his orchestra, "Ol' Man Mose," supposedly contained some filthy lyrics!  His girl singer, Patricia Norman, is supposed to sing the lyric, "Oh, bucket, bucket, bucket!" but word got out that she actually said a word starting with "f" that rhymes with "bucket"...and you can hear some of the musicians laughing after she says it...you be the judge!  Here it is:




Speaking of filthy music, blues singer Lucille Bogan would be 114.  The anthology of her songs from the 20's and 30's is, perhaps, the only album of music from that era that actually contains a "parental warning" on the front of it!  Her songs (many of which she wrote herself) WERE shocking...and still are!  With titles like "Shave 'Em Dry," "Sloppy Drunk Blues" and "B.D. Woman's Blues"--the "B.D." stands for "bull dyke".  Here's the unexpurgated version of "Shave 'Em Dry"...not for family audiences..and this is from 1935!!





Mary Miles Minter would be 109.  Sweet, innocent and virginal little Mary was Mary Pickford's chief rival in the late 19-teens and early 1920's, with her sweet face and golden sausage curls.  But her career ended suddenly and scandalously, when it was revealed that she was not-so-pure after all, and was having a dalliance with a much-older gentleman, a director named William Desmond Taylor.  When Taylor was found on the floor of his Hollywood apartment--shot to death, her florid love letters to him were found in his closet, and were somehow leaked to the press, single-handedly nailing shut her once-flourishing film career.  She became something of a fabled Hollywood recluse, living in Norma Desmond style in a decaying mansion, with her notoriously nasty mother, Charlotte.  Charlotte, you see, is still considered today to be the #1 suspect in the murder--a case that remains today, still officially unsolved.  There's an excellent book about the case, written about 20 years ago but updated a few years ago, called A Cast of Killers.  Very interesting book...here's the link to get it on Amazon, if you're interested in learning more about this, one of Hollywood's great unsolved mysteries:

Tragic Taylor (above); Bad Charlotte (below)