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Those glorious days of classic stars...
Somebody really should stop me! I'm in an unhealthy/too satisfying online shopping spree, mainly Amazon marketplaces and Ebay (as I'm buying a lot I have to go for the cheapest :S) Last month it was about getting Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. stuff and this months is all Larry Olivier's.
I spent 32 dollars + shipping charges to get the LIFE magazine with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh on the cover :S but I just couldn't let it go. I also bought one from 1972 with an article about Larry... This one I'm a bit worried about because of my experiences buying magazines at Ebay -I should learn the lesson but I don't- (last time it was a couple of magazines featuring Jane Eyre 2006 on the cover, and actually that was the only thing worth it! the articles inside were kind of meh!)
That also reminds me that I keep thinking that I preferred when Toby Stephens was a bit more 'obscure British actor'. Don't get me wrong, I love that he is getting the recognition he deserves and all but it has happened to me before that i get tired of hearing/reading too much about that actor (David Tennant anyone??) and I don't that to happen with my beloved Toby because I've loved him and his work since I saw Photographing Fairies and all those old works of him... *sigh*
Anyway, I think I mentioned that I was reading 'A Hell of A War' by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.. This book is in fact the second part of his autobiography but I received it before the first part (The Salad Days), so I started reading it in bad order, yes I use to do that when I'm impatient, and I really was!
The book tells his life during WWII when he served in the Navy and I really am enjoying every bit of it. The first part of the book is a brief recollection of moments that I'm sure I'll find with more detail in the first book but that DFJ decided to included in the second book in case somebody decided to read just that one (clever boy my DFJ).
The fangirl in me squees to no end when I find things like the fact that DFJ was close friend with other actors I love like Laurence Olivier or David Niven, and even Cary Grant. For example he comments how happy he was when David Niven landed a small role in The Prisoner of Zenda, or how Cary Grant and one of his wives, were the ones renting DFJ's house when he moved with his family to his wife's ranch in Virginia. How cool is that! I'd love to read all those details... it's like a window that I would have loved to have to their lives watching how they enjoyed each other companies... They were all beautiful, powerful and talented... and they were friends and spent timt together and all... I love that, I really do.
I've decided to write here the fragment because I wouldn't make it justice telling it with my own words...
Just to put people on situation: Doug was married to Joan Crawford at that time and Laurence Olivier was still married to Jill Esmond...
Billie (that's how he called Joan in private)wanted no distractions to interfere with her concentration on 'Rain'. Therefore, would I 'and everyone else' just leave her alone on Catalina Island where the picure would be made? I, too, wanted to get away from home life for a bit. I did not welcome Billie's preoccupation with work to the detriment of our personal life. As luck would have it, my chum Bob Montgomery (Billie's leading man in 'Untamed') phoned me one day to suggest that if Larry Olivier and I were free and could find one more friend, we could charter C. B deMille's sailing yacht 'Seaward' and split the cost four ways. That seemed a marvelous idea.Larry had been my good friend since he and his first wife, Jill Esmond, came to New York to do 'Private Lives' and then acquired RKO contracts in California. Now Larry's own domesticity was rolling and pitching toward the rocks and he was relieved at an opportunity to get away from it all. He had only to finish the picture he was on, charter a putt-putt plane and fly down to join us at a prearranged anchorage in Baja California, Mexico. A writer friend, Eddie Knopf, jumped at the idea and became our fourth shipmate.
Bod, Eddie and I went carefully about victualing the yacht and borrowing all we would need in the way of deep-sea fishing gear for our jaunt. And our first days were gloriously uneventful-clear, bright sun all day, brilliant stars all night, and calm seas with just enough breeze to nudge our sails along. After about a week we reached a town near Mazatlán where Larry was supposed to meet us. It was quite respectable, with several dusty streets and quite a number of ordinary houses, mostly adobe and tin, but a few of wood. We went ashore where a group of the curious, having seen our handsome sailing yacht anchor, was waiting, friendly and smiling. A great sweating man in a white suit and very old Panama hat bustled up as the others made room. Obviously he was someone of substance in the town-the mayor, as it turned out. In a mixture of Spanish, English and gesture we made immediate friends and went with him to his modest house, where we sat on his front porch and drank tequila.
The mayor was clarly impressed by our yacht and we let him think we were a group of rich playboys on a cruise. We asked him where the local airfield was and told him we were awaiting the arrival of a great friend who was joining us shortly by plane from Los Angeles. Who was he?
'Well,' said I, deciding to mae poor good-natured Larry the butt of one of my whimsicalities, 'he is a very important young Englishman on a visit. Let us', I added conspiratorially, 'play a joke on him. Could you arrange to have him arrested-just for fun? Just for a short while? He'll wonder what on earth happened.'
The mayor's big belly heaved with laughter at the idea, and he immediately ordered the execution of these plans through a nearby subordinate.
Larry's rickety single-engine plane arrived, touched down on the sand-and-rock runway, bounced and rattled. As he stepped out, he was greeted by four men, all waring different uniforms. We watched, well hidden, from a distance, and couldn't hear what was said. But we did see poor Larry being taken briskly by the arm and walked to a wood-and-plaster building next to the airport. Later, we heard that they took him to the town jail and put him behind bars. He was, he admitted both terrified and outraged. 'Where', he shouted, 'are we going? Where's Montgomery? Knopf? Fairbanks?'
'Never heard, señor!' they replied. 'But you fined five hundred pesos!'
'Why, for Christ's sake?'
'Because,' said the senior policeman, 'you are Englissman!'
Larry now panicked. He couldn't get any reasonable explanation, so in desperation he said he must contact the British consul.
'We no recognize British, señor,' they told him.
Cruelly, we let poor Larry stew for a bit and then the mayor jovially ordered his release. There is no doubt but that Larry O. was the best sport I've ever seen. The moment he found out it was a gag at his expense, his laughter was the most raucous of all. The mayor, like a beardless Mexican Santa Claus, stopped guffawing for only a moment to tell us our friend was lucky his 'soldiers' didn't hit him on the head, because, at the time, they didn't know it was a joke!
Larry was all gung-ho the moment he got aboard. He asked what our daily routine was and Bob facetiously told him that, if the ship were anchored, we all began our day by diving into the water from nearly the top of the mast. Of course, none of us dreamed of jumping off anything higher than the deck or perhaps the first rung or two of the ladder up the mast. Larry didn't hesitate. He was so keen to join in everything that, the moment he stowed his gear away and rejoined us on deck in his swimming trunks, he scampered halfway up the mast and dived into the sea. He made a bad splash that nearly knocked him out. Bod and I jumped in to help get him aboard again. Once more, he took it in the best of spirits. He always did.
As part of our morning exercises, we all donned big boxing gloves and sparred with each other for a short while. Once Larry sustained a tiny chipped tooth. For an actor, whose face is, at the least, a valuable part of his future, this could be worrisome. But not to Larry, whose sense of fun and courage helped see him through one serious and painful illness after another in his final years. No wonder that although he was about two years older than I, I always used to think of him as younger. Up to the day he died we were, in his words, 'each other's oldest surviving friends'.
The cruise was a marvelous success. We never had so much as a choppy day, never so much as a drop of rain. We returned tanned and fit, our heads clearer by far than when we set sail two weeks earlier.
That shows how Larry O. really was a very nice person, and not too full of himself as some people say (if he was, I think he had the right to be, anyway) and how he wasn't an impossible person to deal with... I really believe Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s description of Olivier's personality, and I really enjoyed reading this.
I started watching 'Laurence Olivier- A Life' a documentary filmed when he was around 75 y-o. I have only seen part one (in fact I got the documentary like almost a year ago but didn't watch it til now -which is okay since now I'm truly enjoying it!)
I was so happy to see an -as old as Larry- Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. talking about Olivier. It was funny to hear from him the other anecdote from the book that I was going to talk about here... when they were all together in a yacht celebrating Labor Day when Chamberlay declare war to Germany in 1939. Larry was already with Vivien Leigh but not officially so they invited Vivien Leigh's mom (who DFJ describes as boring and troublesome). At the news of UK enterring in the war, Larry got drunk (most of them did) and shouted up repeatedly how that was the end. The personnel at the clubhouse they were anchored at thought the one creating the commotion was Ronald Colman who has his yacht also anchored there. It was quite a long time later than Mr. Colman learned about who truly was.
Btw, Laurence Olivier looks like an endearing man but also incredibly wise.
Some pics:
He decided to have a moustache and gave as reason that Douglas Fairbanks (father, not Jr.) had one, why shouldn't he.
Lovely pic of (from left to right) Jill Esmond, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Crawford and Laurence Olivier. They look so young and (I was going to say happy but Joan Crawford doesn't look like that at all!)... although both marriages weren't going to last. I love Doug Jr.'s smile!
I love, love, love this image! Both actors are love! So adorably handsome, young and with a bright future and career in front of them... *sigh*
I spent 32 dollars + shipping charges to get the LIFE magazine with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh on the cover :S but I just couldn't let it go. I also bought one from 1972 with an article about Larry... This one I'm a bit worried about because of my experiences buying magazines at Ebay -I should learn the lesson but I don't- (last time it was a couple of magazines featuring Jane Eyre 2006 on the cover, and actually that was the only thing worth it! the articles inside were kind of meh!)
That also reminds me that I keep thinking that I preferred when Toby Stephens was a bit more 'obscure British actor'. Don't get me wrong, I love that he is getting the recognition he deserves and all but it has happened to me before that i get tired of hearing/reading too much about that actor (David Tennant anyone??) and I don't that to happen with my beloved Toby because I've loved him and his work since I saw Photographing Fairies and all those old works of him... *sigh*
Anyway, I think I mentioned that I was reading 'A Hell of A War' by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.. This book is in fact the second part of his autobiography but I received it before the first part (The Salad Days), so I started reading it in bad order, yes I use to do that when I'm impatient, and I really was!
The book tells his life during WWII when he served in the Navy and I really am enjoying every bit of it. The first part of the book is a brief recollection of moments that I'm sure I'll find with more detail in the first book but that DFJ decided to included in the second book in case somebody decided to read just that one (clever boy my DFJ).
The fangirl in me squees to no end when I find things like the fact that DFJ was close friend with other actors I love like Laurence Olivier or David Niven, and even Cary Grant. For example he comments how happy he was when David Niven landed a small role in The Prisoner of Zenda, or how Cary Grant and one of his wives, were the ones renting DFJ's house when he moved with his family to his wife's ranch in Virginia. How cool is that! I'd love to read all those details... it's like a window that I would have loved to have to their lives watching how they enjoyed each other companies... They were all beautiful, powerful and talented... and they were friends and spent timt together and all... I love that, I really do.
I've decided to write here the fragment because I wouldn't make it justice telling it with my own words...
Just to put people on situation: Doug was married to Joan Crawford at that time and Laurence Olivier was still married to Jill Esmond...
Billie (that's how he called Joan in private)wanted no distractions to interfere with her concentration on 'Rain'. Therefore, would I 'and everyone else' just leave her alone on Catalina Island where the picure would be made? I, too, wanted to get away from home life for a bit. I did not welcome Billie's preoccupation with work to the detriment of our personal life. As luck would have it, my chum Bob Montgomery (Billie's leading man in 'Untamed') phoned me one day to suggest that if Larry Olivier and I were free and could find one more friend, we could charter C. B deMille's sailing yacht 'Seaward' and split the cost four ways. That seemed a marvelous idea.Larry had been my good friend since he and his first wife, Jill Esmond, came to New York to do 'Private Lives' and then acquired RKO contracts in California. Now Larry's own domesticity was rolling and pitching toward the rocks and he was relieved at an opportunity to get away from it all. He had only to finish the picture he was on, charter a putt-putt plane and fly down to join us at a prearranged anchorage in Baja California, Mexico. A writer friend, Eddie Knopf, jumped at the idea and became our fourth shipmate.
Bod, Eddie and I went carefully about victualing the yacht and borrowing all we would need in the way of deep-sea fishing gear for our jaunt. And our first days were gloriously uneventful-clear, bright sun all day, brilliant stars all night, and calm seas with just enough breeze to nudge our sails along. After about a week we reached a town near Mazatlán where Larry was supposed to meet us. It was quite respectable, with several dusty streets and quite a number of ordinary houses, mostly adobe and tin, but a few of wood. We went ashore where a group of the curious, having seen our handsome sailing yacht anchor, was waiting, friendly and smiling. A great sweating man in a white suit and very old Panama hat bustled up as the others made room. Obviously he was someone of substance in the town-the mayor, as it turned out. In a mixture of Spanish, English and gesture we made immediate friends and went with him to his modest house, where we sat on his front porch and drank tequila.
The mayor was clarly impressed by our yacht and we let him think we were a group of rich playboys on a cruise. We asked him where the local airfield was and told him we were awaiting the arrival of a great friend who was joining us shortly by plane from Los Angeles. Who was he?
'Well,' said I, deciding to mae poor good-natured Larry the butt of one of my whimsicalities, 'he is a very important young Englishman on a visit. Let us', I added conspiratorially, 'play a joke on him. Could you arrange to have him arrested-just for fun? Just for a short while? He'll wonder what on earth happened.'
The mayor's big belly heaved with laughter at the idea, and he immediately ordered the execution of these plans through a nearby subordinate.
Larry's rickety single-engine plane arrived, touched down on the sand-and-rock runway, bounced and rattled. As he stepped out, he was greeted by four men, all waring different uniforms. We watched, well hidden, from a distance, and couldn't hear what was said. But we did see poor Larry being taken briskly by the arm and walked to a wood-and-plaster building next to the airport. Later, we heard that they took him to the town jail and put him behind bars. He was, he admitted both terrified and outraged. 'Where', he shouted, 'are we going? Where's Montgomery? Knopf? Fairbanks?'
'Never heard, señor!' they replied. 'But you fined five hundred pesos!'
'Why, for Christ's sake?'
'Because,' said the senior policeman, 'you are Englissman!'
Larry now panicked. He couldn't get any reasonable explanation, so in desperation he said he must contact the British consul.
'We no recognize British, señor,' they told him.
Cruelly, we let poor Larry stew for a bit and then the mayor jovially ordered his release. There is no doubt but that Larry O. was the best sport I've ever seen. The moment he found out it was a gag at his expense, his laughter was the most raucous of all. The mayor, like a beardless Mexican Santa Claus, stopped guffawing for only a moment to tell us our friend was lucky his 'soldiers' didn't hit him on the head, because, at the time, they didn't know it was a joke!
Larry was all gung-ho the moment he got aboard. He asked what our daily routine was and Bob facetiously told him that, if the ship were anchored, we all began our day by diving into the water from nearly the top of the mast. Of course, none of us dreamed of jumping off anything higher than the deck or perhaps the first rung or two of the ladder up the mast. Larry didn't hesitate. He was so keen to join in everything that, the moment he stowed his gear away and rejoined us on deck in his swimming trunks, he scampered halfway up the mast and dived into the sea. He made a bad splash that nearly knocked him out. Bod and I jumped in to help get him aboard again. Once more, he took it in the best of spirits. He always did.
As part of our morning exercises, we all donned big boxing gloves and sparred with each other for a short while. Once Larry sustained a tiny chipped tooth. For an actor, whose face is, at the least, a valuable part of his future, this could be worrisome. But not to Larry, whose sense of fun and courage helped see him through one serious and painful illness after another in his final years. No wonder that although he was about two years older than I, I always used to think of him as younger. Up to the day he died we were, in his words, 'each other's oldest surviving friends'.
The cruise was a marvelous success. We never had so much as a choppy day, never so much as a drop of rain. We returned tanned and fit, our heads clearer by far than when we set sail two weeks earlier.
That shows how Larry O. really was a very nice person, and not too full of himself as some people say (if he was, I think he had the right to be, anyway) and how he wasn't an impossible person to deal with... I really believe Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.'s description of Olivier's personality, and I really enjoyed reading this.
I started watching 'Laurence Olivier- A Life' a documentary filmed when he was around 75 y-o. I have only seen part one (in fact I got the documentary like almost a year ago but didn't watch it til now -which is okay since now I'm truly enjoying it!)
I was so happy to see an -as old as Larry- Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. talking about Olivier. It was funny to hear from him the other anecdote from the book that I was going to talk about here... when they were all together in a yacht celebrating Labor Day when Chamberlay declare war to Germany in 1939. Larry was already with Vivien Leigh but not officially so they invited Vivien Leigh's mom (who DFJ describes as boring and troublesome). At the news of UK enterring in the war, Larry got drunk (most of them did) and shouted up repeatedly how that was the end. The personnel at the clubhouse they were anchored at thought the one creating the commotion was Ronald Colman who has his yacht also anchored there. It was quite a long time later than Mr. Colman learned about who truly was.
Btw, Laurence Olivier looks like an endearing man but also incredibly wise.
Some pics:
He decided to have a moustache and gave as reason that Douglas Fairbanks (father, not Jr.) had one, why shouldn't he.
Lovely pic of (from left to right) Jill Esmond, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Crawford and Laurence Olivier. They look so young and (I was going to say happy but Joan Crawford doesn't look like that at all!)... although both marriages weren't going to last. I love Doug Jr.'s smile!
I love, love, love this image! Both actors are love! So adorably handsome, young and with a bright future and career in front of them... *sigh*