SUN NEVER SETS ON SUNSET BLVD

The classic movie about Hollywood , Sunset Blvd, is having its 60th anniversary. It premiered at the Radio City Music Hall on August 10, 1950, where it shattered non-holiday attendance records. For a film noir about 1950 era Hollywood reflecting on fading 1920s era movie stars, it's amazing that it has remained so relevant. That it has is thanks to the acting and directing -which were outstanding. But it's the writing that's sublime.

The story of faded glory, youthful ambition, and desparate attempts to hold on to to the Hollywood dream is forever being relived. The script by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder makes a great story, but it's the one-liners that pepper our vocabulary today. "All right Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up,"  says Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond above. Earlier in the movie, reflecting on her silent films, she said, "We didn't need dialogue, we had faces," and "I am big, it's the pictures that got small."  The movie continually reflects on itself and Hollywood history, a hall of mirrors for old movie fans. At left above is Erich von Stroheim, who plays Norma's butler, but is now "directing" her final "scene", since in the story he was once her director, and who in Hollywood once really was her director. She is dressed as Salome, whose part she once really played, descending the staircase to the theme music from The Dance of the Seven Veils.

Cecil B. De Mille at right plays himself in the movie as Norma's former director, and of course he really was Swanson's former director, although Billy Wilder at left directs both of them.

Edith Head designed the costumes for the film, including Gloria Swanson's wardrobe. Here is Miss Head's costume sketch for Swanson's opening scene as Norma Desmond. When you look closely you'll notice in the movie, as in this design sketch, that the outfit is not a skirt but  are pants worn under a hostess dress. The liner fabric was changed in the final productiion.

This is Edith Head's costume design sketch for Norma Desmond's visit to the Paramount Studio and Mr. De Mille. The final costume was modified. Gloria Swanson had always been fashion conscious. She suggested the feathered hat instead of the headpiece above as a way to emphasize her movie-role ties to an earlier Hollywood. Edith Head designed Swanson's wardrobe for the role of Norma Desmond as being someone still chic, but with a hint at her old glamour days.

This is the final version of the costume Gloria Swanson wears when she visits her old movie studio lot.

Edith Head is pictured here with Gloria Swanson at the time of shooting Sunset Blvd. Star and designer got along well, and they respected and understood each other. When Edith Head first started at Paramount in 1923, Gloria Swanson was treated there like a queen.

 

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William Holden and Gloria Swanson play out a scene at Norma's mansion. The house is full of photos of Swanson from old movies. The house too had its Hollywood connection. It was depicted as an old Sunset Boulevard mansion, "..stricken with a kind of creeping paralysis." where all the old movie stars used to swim in its swimming pool. And to add to its fading glory, Norma has bridge parties with silent film stars such as Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner (who played Jesus in De Mille's King of Kings in 1927), and Anna Q. Nilsson. In real life the mansion had belonged to J. Paul Getty and was located on Wilshire Blvd. before it was torn down,  but not before its pool was used for a scene in Rebel Without a Cause.


But William Holden too makes the movie work. As co-star Nancy Olson related at the recent TCM Film Festival, Holden made the movie during a personal dry spell, drinking heavily and himself facing the taste of desparation that breathed down Joe Gillis's neck. The film's greatness is based on the strength of its characters. And as the characters vainly hope for in the film, Holden himself really did make a comeback after Sunset Blvd.  As the film ended at a  wrap screening for Paramount's stars, it was said that Barbara Stanwyck wept as she kissed  the hem of Swanson's silver lame gown in reverence.  In 2007, Sunset Blvd was ranked the 16th greatest film of all time by the American Film Institute, and the Library of Congress placed it in the National Film Registry as one of the 25 landmark films of all time.

While the sun doesn't set on Sunset Blvd, it's appeal lies in darkness. As Norma Desmond says, "Just us, the cameras, and those lovely people out there in the dark!"

LATINAS OF THE SILVER SCREEN

Long before there was Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, or Penelope Cruz, 1930s Hollywood  blazed with the talents and hot looks of Dolores Del Rio, Lupe Velez, and Conchita Montenegro.

Dolores Del Rio was in the first ranks of movie stardom in the early to mid 1930s. Her radiant beauty was a magnet for the camera, and she starred in several major movies for Warner brothers and RKO. She starred in the films The Bird of Paradise (1933), Flying Down to Rio (1933), Wonder Bar (1934), Madame du Barry (1934), and In Caliente (1935).

Del Rio had started her Hollywood career in silent films such as Trail of '98 and Ramona (both 1928).  In the photo above, Dolores Del Rio models a sequin gown designed by Orry-Kelly.

Here is a photo showing the classic beauty of Dolores Del Rio. The Del became capitalized in the U.S, although she was born in Durango, Mexico.

Del Rio's second husband was Cedric Gibbons, MGM's Art Director. He made the art deco and moderne style of set designs popular in the MGM films of the late 1920s and 1930s. He even designed the famous Oscar statuette. After they married in 1930, they lived in this beautiful California moderne style house which he and architect Douglas Honnold designed in the Santa Monica mountains.  Del Rio and Gibbons are pictured above in their living room. One can imagine the fabulous parties they held there, attended by all of the great Hollywood stars of the era.

Another popular Mexican actress in the 1930s was Lupe Velez. She had acted in Vaudeville, and started her Hollywood career in silent films. She starred with Douglas Fairbanks  in The Gaucho in 1927, and was in C.B. de Mille's The Squaw Man in 1931. In the photo above she models a gown designed by Walter Plunkett for the RKO film, Strictly Dynamite in 1934. The gown is of white crepe with diagonal lines of crystal beads.

This photo of Lupe Velez is also from Strictly Dynamite from 1934, showing Lupe in a Walter Plunkett designed costume. Lupe Velez and Dolores Del Rio were both early customers of designer Irene Lentz at her first two shops. It was through them that Irene developed a following in the Los Angeles film communitity, a following that soon became a flood. Irene later married Cedric Gibbons' brother and thus became sisters-in-law with Dolores Del Rio.

Here Lupe Velez wears an Adrian designed gown for a film at MGM. The gown features open Dolman sleeves held with brilliant circle clips along the arms. Lupe Velez reached the height of her popularity in the film series, The Mexican Spitfire, filmed at RKO in the early 1940s.

Conchita Montenegro was a beauty from Spain, a dancer and model who came  to Hollywood with a contract at MGM in 1930. In those days MGM made Spanish language versions of their films and Conchita starred in several of these.  She played a Spanish dancer in Strangers May Kiss, at MGM along with Norma Shearer.  She also starred opposite Leslie Howard in MGM's Never the Twain Shall Meet in 1931.

Conchita Montenegro left MGM and went to the Fox studio. There she starred with Warner Baxter in The Cisco Kid in 1931.

This beautiful costume sketch for Conchita was designed by Dolly Tree. It was probably designed for The Cisco Kid, although Dolly Tree designed costumes both at Fox and at MGM at this period.

This early flowering of Latina actresses was short-lived. By the late 1930s the importance of the roles offered the stars became less rewarding. Lupe's Mexican Spitfire movies were popular but stereotypes became common. Both Dolores del Rio and Lupe Velez returned to Mexico to make films, and del Rio became just as big a star there. Lupe Velez died young in 1943. Conchita Montenegro too returned to her native Spain.

Another generation of Latina actresses came along in the 1940s and 1950s, and then another after that. Our current stars now play a wide variety of roles, as well as portraying the beautiful women they are. We are fortunate however to still have the chance to see these stars of the early silver screen.

HATS TO TURN HEADS

Hats turn heads, whether it's to see how good you look in the mirror or it's the people in the street nodding at your sense of style.
                                                                                  

                                                                                                                 

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Joan Crawford could always pull off wearing hats of all types in her movie roles. It helped that she had Adrian design her outfits. Adrian was the son of milliners, and always considered how the hat should fit into the complete look of the oufit. Here Joan wears a black belted jacket adorned with her favorite flower, a gardenia boutonniere, on her wide lapel. She wears a wide-brimmed black Panama straw hat, 1936.

                                              

Joan wears another beautiful hat cocked to the right as was the fashion in the 1930s (they were always slanted down towards your right side). By the 1940s, women wore their hats straight. Her jacket is a tweed with the wide lapels Adrian favored.

A somewhat less formal Joan as she appeared in Love on the Run in 1936. The simple hat is given a lot of style with the single pheasant's feather. While Adrian often designed his own hats, he usually used hats from Mr. John (John P. John), both at MGM and at his own fashion salon.

Fay Wray looks beautiful in her cocked felt hat in Murder in Greenwich Village in 1935. Fay was King Kong's squeeze in the 1933 film.

The beret always looks stylish on women. Its size varies, so when small it can look cute or prim, and when large or floppy it can look hip or bohemian. The photo above says it all about the  bohemian chic look, here on Marian Marsh in 1935 for the film Crime and Punishment.

Women's hats fashioned after men's hat styles have long been popular. Here Carole Lombard wears a fur fedora in 1937.

Adrian designed this suit in 1944 to be photographed with a man's style top hat. The veil softened the look and made it more mysterious.

Costume and fashion designer Irene Lentz Gibbons also designed outstanding suits combined with great hats. This hat too plays on the masculine, a bowler with veiling, circa 1949. The suit plays on the English gentleman, but with horizontal chalk stirpes and complemented with umbrella. 

                                             

The short brimmed men's fedora is now in style for young women. Here Mary Quant, who introduced mini-skirts, wears one in London in 1961.

As Mary Quant said, women look great in men's hats. But they also look great in women's hats. It's good that men, at least young men, are starting to wear hats other than caps. Your head always looks good in a stylish hat, whether it's to turn to look at yourself - or when your head gets turned by somebody else. Hats on to hats.

                                                                 

SWORDS AND SWAGS

In the films about classical Rome and Egypt, swords of bronze and iron had to be tempered. And only the plentiful use of swags of fabric showing the sexual allure of the feminine figure would do.

Who best to demonstrate the allure of the classical look than Rita Hayworth - done up here  in modern chiffon in Salome from 1953, designed by Jean Louis. This is one of his costume sketches for Rita from that film. Jean Louis designed many of her films at Columbia, including the knock-out Gilda, Cover Girl, and Tonight and Every Night. 

Many of Hollywood's most beautiful stars played in classical films. This costume design sketch by Herschel (Herschel McCoy) is for Deborah Kerr as Lygia in Quo Vadis from 1951. Her role as the Christian demanded a more basic wardrobe than was needed for the Empress Poppaea, below.

Patricia Laffan plays the Empress Poppaea, Nero's wife. She wears this stunning costume as the Romans watch the Christians being thrown into the Coliseum for the lions.

Charlton Heston wears the classic Roman short toga and cape as Judah Ben-Hur in Ben Hur, 1959. Heston's costumes were designed by J. Arlington Valles, although Elizabeth Haffenden, who designed the women's costumes, received the film's design credits (see my post on Hollywood and History). Valles (pronounced in the Spanish manner, Vayes) traditionally designed the men's costumes at MGM.

Academy Award winner Mary Wills designed this Roman captain's costume for William Watson in The Passover Plot, 1976. This was the last film Mary Wills designed in a film career that began with Belle of the Yukon in 1944.

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The classic film about the classic world is Cleopatra, made four times into movies and soon to be a fifth starring Angelina Jolie. Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh have also played the role. The biggest Cleopatra and the best known starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton from 1963. It was so big that it nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox, and in fact halted production of all planned movies at the studio. The costumes for Elizabeth Taylor were designed by Irene Sharaff, and were meant to be sexy.

Costume designer Renie (Renie Conley) designed the other women's costumes. The early1960's aesthetic for form-fitting clothes influenced the costume designs, including those for Isabel Cooley playing Charmian.

Francesca Annis played Eiras, another Lady-in-Waiting to Cleopatra. Renie's designs, as well as Sharaff's, gave the flavor of classical Egypt and Rome, but they were meant to show sex appeal. Since the early days of Cecil B. De Mille, sex and the visual appeal of classical films has been the magnet for audiences (not to mention the violence). We'll see how the new Cleopatra and Angelina Jolie fares. Maybe its time for another Ben Hur while we're at it. Or maybe there was just never enough sex (appeal) in Ben Hur to temper the violence.