Born on this date: Charles Kent in 1852; Edmund Breese in 1871; Mary Alden in 1883; Blanche Yurka in 1887; Mae Busch in 1891; Ivan Lebedeff in 1895; Blanche Sweet in 1896; Henry Wadsworth in 1897; Jeanette MacDonald in 1903; Dick Foran in 1910; Glenn Morris in 1912; Sammy Cahn in 1913; Richard Boone in 1917; and Maggie McNamara in 1929.
All links lead to each actor’s IMDb page, set to open in a new tab.
Classic Movie Daily subscribers will find a few images of Jeanette MacDonald, plus photos of Mae Busch, Blanche Sweet, and Henry Wadsworth inside today’s email.
TCM TV Alerts through tomorrow at 7 am:
These titles play on TCM’s US schedule and all quoted times are for my own local Eastern time zone.
—8:30 am – The Forbidden Planet (1956), TCM’s a bit heavy on the sci-fi today, as you’ll see a couple of items down. When I was 10 I watched this for Robby the Robot. Now I watch it for Walter Pidgeon.
—10:15 am-8:00 pm – 5-movie Jeanette MacDonald birthday tribute. Five of her eight with Nelson Eddy. Begins at 10:15 am with Naughty Marietta (1935); 12:00 pm Rose Marie (1936); 2:00 pm Sweethearts (1938); 4:00 pm Bitter Sweet (1940); and 6:00 pm New Moon (1942).
—8:00 pm-6:00 am – 6-movie “Bugging Out” feature. Yep, more sci-fi, this time the big bug classics, including favorites Them! (1954) at 11:45 pm and The Cosmic Monster (1958) early Friday morning, at 4:45 am.
—“Summer of Darkness” continues Friday morning at 6:00 am with Dick Powell in Cornered (1942) to begin 24 hours of film noir programming.
Cliff’s Notes
Research, research, research, sit down to write, and, shoot!—more research!
A few months ahead of Helen Twelvetrees’ 1932 Hollywood maternity leave, she was under consideration for several roles (including What Price Hollywood?) and announced for a few that never happened, at least not with her in them (including The Moon and Sixpence opposite State’s Attorney co-star John Barrymore). When did RKO discover she was pregnant, and what bearing did that have on the movies she was considered for and/or removed from?
I had my basic outline and a list of the titles, but to do anything more than gloss over them I needed the most accurate production dates I could locate for the final two movies she did that year, as well as the handful she was rumored for, and the few that she was announced for, and crosscheck all of those with the first published announcement I could find of her pregnancy. Ten titles altogether by quick glance at the few pages of fresh scribble next to me.
I’m actually taking a quick break from all of that now to sit down and write the first draft of today’s Daily.
I have more notes than I anticipated and a pretty good grasp on the overall chronology and what it all implies. But my head is swimming. In a few minutes I’ll attempt to make sense of it all in the form of some writing. So there went 4-1/2 hours of planned drafting time given over to a surprise research project.I just mentioned to a friend via email (during my last little sanity-inducing break) how very hard this is. But I want every bit of this as right as I can get it.
Okay, second day in a row I’ve tried this, what do you think: Are you enjoying these little notes about my writing journey, or are you scrolling by them? I hope it doesn’t come across as complaining: there’s nothing I love more than research, though I sure would like to get to the finish line on this project.
Anyway, I’m likely to keep this up, at least sporadically, as I’m finding it somewhat therapeutic. Got to give the brain a little break, you know? All right, I’ll be back on this in a little while to give it another read before I send it out. Back to Helen … (2 hours later—It went pretty well, all piecing together just as I had planned!) …
Cliff
PS: Forget about that special sales link I posted the other day. For now at least. It’s been a lean few days on eBay, so I’ve placed the entire shop on sale. The most recently listed 200 or so items are marked down 10% but everything else is discounted 25% through late Tuesday night. Click here to view items currently on sale in my eBay Store.
Issue count: Since going Daily on April 6, I’ve mailed posts to subscribers 71 out of 73 days.
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