Tag: The Rockford Files

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #167

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s sixth movie was Maytime, a silent romantic drama produced during August and September 1923 and released on December 11, 1923. The movie starred Ethel Shannon, Harrison Ford and William Norris, with Clara fourth on the bill playing Alice Tremaine. 

After a stunning screen test, producer B.P. Schulberg gave Clara the part of Alice in Maytime. Within a week, the film’s crew were urging Schulberg to ditch Ethel Shannon and give Clara the lead role. He didn’t. Nevertheless, Clara had made her point and established her breakthrough.

📸 Clara Bow and Ethel Shannon in Maytime.

Highest Grossing Movie of 1926, For Heaven’s Sake.

A silent comedy, For Heaven’s Sake starred Harold Lloyd and was directed by Sam Taylor. The movie was a great success for Lloyd and earned $2,600,000 at the box office, which made it the twelfth highest grossing film of the silent era.

In the 1920s, Lloyd alternated between making what he called “gag pictures” and “character pictures”. He regarded For Heaven’s Sake as a “gag picture”. Despite the film’s success, Lloyd wasn’t happy with it. Indeed, he was so disappointed with the final cut that he considered abandoning the project.

A large number of scenes were filmed and later cut from the final movie. Some of those scenes, especially an underworld sequence, resurfaced (no pun intended) and were incorporated into Lloyd’s 1928 film Speedy.

My latest article for the Seaside News appears on page 34 of the magazine.

Roundabout, Series 1, Episode 22 of The Rockford Files was the last broadcast episode in the first series. This episode contained some great one-liners. Obnoxious Hirer: “I should warn you, I have a blackbelt in judo.” Rockford (picking up a golf club): “And I have a blackbelt in seven-iron.” 

Bank Manager: “She’s strange.” Rockford: “You don’t call people with $300,000 in their account ‘strange’.” Bank Manager: “What do you call them?” Rockford: “Eccentric.”

The climactic chase scene at the Hoover Dam was originally scripted as a car chase. However, someone suggested that Rockford and the villain should run through the Hoover Dam instead, creating one of the iconic moments in the first series.

Time for a break. I look forward to catching up with series two of the Rockford Files in the new year.

Coming soon, our new magazine, The Golden Age of Hollywood, available from all leading Internet outlets. Here’s a preview of the cover.

Clara Bow Quotes. After the director cut her role in Beyond the Rainbow, Clara enrolled in a business training school. However, Fate intervened again. “A month or so after my first motion-picture ‘flop’ I was called one day to the telephone. The man speaking at the other end of the wire introduced himself as Mr Elmer Clifton, and asked if I could see him that afternoon. My heart took a leap. Elmer Clifton was a motion-picture director and, hardly daring to believe my good fortune, I readily agreed to see him. I was so excited, I could hardly talk.”

Clifton offered Clara a two-week trial period and a salary of $35 a week. The two-week trial period stretched to thirteen weeks as, impressed by Clara’s natural talent, Clifton developed her role as Dot Morgan in Down to the Sea in Ships (pictured). This time, Clara was truly setting sail.

Intertitle #7

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #166

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s fifth movie was Grit, a silent drama produced in the summer of 1923 in New York, and released on January 7, 1924. Adapted from a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Grit featured Clara as a sexy street urchin, Orchid McGonigle.

Clara impressed director Frank Tuttle, especially with her ability to produce emotion at will. He said, “This dynamic and erratic whirlwind was a joy to her director.”

Grit was a tale of cowardice and revenge set on New York’s Lower East Side. Fitzgerald said of the film, “The whole picture is sordid, showing disgusting scenes of immorality and crime.” The censors demanded cuts, and they were duly made. Despite those cuts, Grit was still banned by the British Board of Film Censors.

Clara saw Orchid as the embodiment of herself. “A little roughneck and a tomboy like I was.” The critics panned the film. However, Variety added, “It is Clara Bow that lingers in the eye after the picture has gone.”

Joint Highest Grossing Movie of 1925, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

Ben-Hur was a silent epic drama that starred Ramon Novarro as the title character. Production costs rose to $3,900,000 ($60,260,000 today) compared to MGM’s average for the season of $158,000 ($2,440,000 today), which made Ben-Hur the most expensive film of the silent era. The movie earned $10.7 million at the box office.

Ben-Hur became notorious for its egregious animal abuse: a reported one hundred horses were tripped and killed merely to produce the set piece footage of the major chariot race. A ‘running W’ device was used on the set to trip the galloping horses. Ten years later such devices were frowned upon in Hollywood.

The extras at the chariot race read like a who’s who of Hollywood at the time. They included: John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian Gish, Samuel Goldwyn, Harold Lloyd, Carole Lombard, Myrna Loy and Mary Pickford.

Just by Accident, Series 1, Episode 21 of The Rockford Files, is a curious episode. It was actually the last episode filmed for the first season (22 episodes), and the last episode produced by Roy Huggins.

Written by a new team, Charles Sailor and Eric Kalder, my impression is this was a generic private eye story adapted for Rockford. The Becker role was filled by a lookalike, David Spielberg as Lieutenant Tom Garvey. This episode gave the impression that the hirer, Louise Hartman, was a long-standing friend of Rockford’s, but the nature of their friendship was never explained.

As someone who loves genealogy, I loved the premise of this episode, which was based on birth certificates. A great answering machine message too. Kooky voice: “This is Thelma Sue Brinkley. It’s about the research I called you about – the family tree. Did you talk to your daddy? We may be kin!”

In this month’s issue of our #1 ranked magazine…

Interview with Publishers Weekly #1 author Dani Pettrey. Plus, Author Features, Health, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Short Stories, Young Writers, National Veteran and Military Family Month, and so much more!

Clara Bow Quotes. Having achieved her movie breakthrough with Beyond the Rainbow, Clara was keen for her friends to see her on the silver screen. “I assembled all the children for blocks and borrowed enough money to purchase tickets for those unable to pay for their own admission.” 

However, Clara did not appear in this version of the picture; the director had decided to cut her role. “I bolted from the theatre, ran all the way home, locked myself in my room and sobbed as though my heart would break. This was the end. How could I ever face my friends again?”

Intertitle #6

Coming soon, our new magazine, The Golden Age of Hollywood, available from all leading Internet outlets. Here’s a preview of the cover.

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #165

Dear Reader,

Coming soon, our new magazine, The Golden Age of Hollywood, available from all leading Internet outlets. Here’s a preview of the cover.

Clara Bow’s fourth movie was The Daring Years aka The Folly of Youth. The movie was produced in New York during the first half of 1923 and released on September 15, 1923.

The Daring Years was adapted from a photoplay by Richard Ellison. Clara was listed fourth on the bill, as ‘John’s Sweetheart, Mary’. Unfortunately, this movie is regarded as lost.

A silent melodrama, The Daring Years features a love triangle and a man wrongly accused of murder. The man, John Browning, is strapped into an electric chair when a lightning bolt (!) and Clara Bow save the day. 

The premise for The Daring Years, an accidental shooting, is sound, but maybe the movie could have done without the lightning bolt.

After the completion of The Daring Years, Clara embarked for Hollywood where she released a few lighting bolts of her own.

🖼 Advertisement for The Daring Years.

Joint Highest Grossing Movie of 1925: The Big Parade.

The Big Parade was a silent war drama directed by King Vidor. It starred John Gilbert and Renée Adorée. Written by World War One veteran Laurence Stallings, the movie has been praised for its realistic depiction of warfare. Furthermore, it heavily influenced a great many subsequent war films, especially All Quiet on the Western Front.

Regarded as one of the great World War One movies, The Big Parade told the story of an idle rich boy who joined the US Army’s Rainbow Division. Sent to France to fight in the war, he befriends two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl, played by Renée Adorée.

Through public records, I’m tracing the ancestry of actress Eva Marie Saint. I’ve discovered that she’s directly descended from Sir Thomas Pope, 1507 – 1559, founder of Trinity Church Oxford, Councillor to Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. Further royal connections are highly likely.

At this stage, I need to pause and double-check because it’s probably that one of these branches will connect with noble pedigrees.

The Four Pound Brick, Series 1, Episode 20 of The Rockford Files was written by the all-female team of Leigh Brackett and Juanita Bartlett from a story by Leigh Brackett. 

Leigh Brackett wrote science fiction and fantasy, and novels in the style of Raymond Chandler. Indeed, there are noirish elements to The Four Pound Brick that suggest Chandler’s influence. Leigh Brackett also wrote the screenplay for Chandler’s classic The Big Sleep.

Rocky, Becker and Angel are well to the fore in this episode, and the closing scene with Becker in Rockford’s trailer highlights how these characters have become members of the Rockford ‘family’.

Clara Bow Quotes: “What a thrill! I was now a fully-fledged motion-picture actress, and only fourteen years old (census returns suggest that Clara was sixteen when she broke into the movies). I was the idol of the neighbourhood. Those children who had heretofore passed me by now were my staunch friends. For hours I had to relate my experiences in the motion-picture studio. This certainly was the ultimate in happiness. But little did I know how fickle Fate can be…”

Intertitle #5

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 32 occasions.

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #164

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s third movie was Enemies of Women, produced in December 1922 through to January 1923. The movie was premiered in New York on March 31, 1923 and went on general release from September 2, 1923.

Enemies of Women was produced by William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures. A silent romantic drama, the movie starred Lionel Barrymore and Alma Rubens. Clara featured as an uncredited dancing girl.

This movie was made during a significant period in Clara’s life. Her mother, Sarah, had just been released from an asylum, although she was far from physically and mentally well. At home, Sarah lapsed into a catatonic state. On New Year’s Eve, she was readmitted to the asylum. She died there on January 5, 1923.

Later, Clara recalled that period of her life. “In the picture, I danced on a table. All the time I hadda be laughin’, rompin’, displayin’ joy of life. I’d cry my eyes out when I left my mama in the mornin’, then go dance on a table.”

The guilt of pursuing her dream while her mother lay dying remained with Clara for the rest of her life. That guilt added to her complex personality, and influenced the choices she later made. 

Sarah Bow was not a supportive mother – her poor mental health and negative attitude to the movies ensured that she did not guide her daughter along stardom’s treacherous path. Clara needed that guidance, but all too often she had to find her own way in the world. 

Clara was right to feel sad when Sarah died, but I think her guilt was misplaced.

🖼 Lobby card for Enemies of Women.

In 1925 Clarence Birdseye, pictured, invented a process for frozen food. Later, he invented the double belt freezer. His initial product line featured 26 items, including 18 cuts of frozen meat, spinach, peas, a variety of fruits and berries, blue point oysters, and fish fillets.

Highest grossing movie of 1924: The Sea Hawk.

The Sea Hawk was a silent adventure movie about an English noble sold into slavery. Upon his escape, he becomes a pirate. Directed by Frank Lloyd, the movie premiered on June 2, 1924 in New York.

Frank Lloyd sensed that moviegoers would not accept miniature models so, at a cost of $200,000, he created full-sized ships. The ocean scenes were filmed off the coast of Catalina Island, California. Lloyd established a mini-village to shoot these scenes, which included 150 tents, 1,000 extras, 21 technicians, 14 actors, and 64 sailors.

The film was so well made that Warner Bros used some of its battle scenes in a 1940 Errol Flynn movie of the same name. Furthermore, the studio used the life-sized replica ships in later nautical films.

Through public records, I’m tracing the ancestry of Eva Marie Saint. I’ve taken the Saint branch back to Eva’s 3 x great grandfather, Hercules Saint. I’ve discovered a lot of records relating to Hercules, but for now here are the basic facts:

Born: May 7, 1747, Perquimans County, North Carolina, USA. Father, Daniel Saint. Mother, Margaret Barrow

Married: Sarah Barrow, June 7, 1775, Perquimans Co., NC.

Died: The records contradict each other, so more research required 

Occupation: Carpenter

Religion: Quaker

Hercules’ wife and mother had the same surname, Barrow. I have yet to determine if they were related.

🖼 The Quaker record confirming Hercules’ birth.

Charlie Harris at Large, Series 1, Episode 19 of The Rockford Files had a great premise – a person who couldn’t offer an alibi in a murder case because they would incriminate themselves in an affair. Diana Muldaur played that person. As the ‘special guest star’, I felt that she was underused in this episode. I would have liked to have seen her interact more with James Garner.

This was a multi-viewpoint episode, so James Garner didn’t appear in every scene. Indeed, the opening reminded me of an episode of Columbo, with detectives and medical staff examining the victim.

The running joke in this episode was someone on the phone or knocking on Rockford’s door getting him out of bed. Some nice scenic shots during the car chases and an excellent performance from Tony Musante as Charlie Harris made this an engaging episode.

Clara Bow Quotes: “I shall never forget my first day on the set. I was just one of the mob. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to me. Being told to make up, I watched others apply deft touches of grease-paint and tried to duplicate their procedure. It was a pitiful job, I realise now, but how wonderful I thought I looked at the time. Finally, the director, Christy Cabanne, gave me a “bit”. It was a crying scene. “Can you act, kid?” he said. I was so frightened I immediately burst into tears. This seemed to please him, and before I knew it I was in front of the cameras. Even to this day I can remember his faint praise of my effort when the scene was completed.”

Intertitle #4

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 32 occasions.

A special offer from my publisher and the Fussy Librarian. https://authors.thefussylibrarian.com/?ref=goylake

Don’t forget to use the code goylake20 to claim your discount 

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #163

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s second movie was Down to the Sea in Ships, a silent romantic drama about a whaling family living in a Quaker community. The movie, made during the summer of 1922 when Clara was seventeen, was premiered on September 25, 1922 and went on general release from March 4, 1923.

Clara plays Dot Morgan who, as a baby, is found floating near the shore on a raft made of branches. Dot is a mischievous, rebellious child who wants to be a whaler when she grows up, an ambition frowned upon by her community. So, we have Clara as a tomboy rebel: perfect casting.

Clara Bow as Dot Morgan

Dressed as a boy, Dot stows-away on a ship. She is attacked by a crew member, and rescued by her friend, Jimmie, a cabin boy. The ship returns to port and the main romantic thread of the story, which does not involve Clara, unfolds.

The movie contains authentic whaling scenes and strives for realism. The critics hated it, but audiences enjoyed it. Indeed, the movie played continuously for 22 weeks in New York City.

Billed 10th, Clara received praise for her role in the movie, her natural style contrasting with the mannered approach of the other actors. 
Billed 10th, Clara received praise for her role in the movie, her natural style contrasting with the mannered approach of the other actors. 

The critics said: “Miss Bow will undoubtedly gain fame as a screen comedienne.” “She scored a tremendous hit in Down to the Sea in Ships … [and] has reached the front rank of motion picture principal players.” “With her beauty, her brains, her personality and her genuine acting ability it should not be many moons before she enjoys stardom in the fullest sense of the word. You must see ‘Down to the Sea in Ships’.”

***

The Adventures of Kathlyn, released on December 29, 1913 was a thirteen episode adventure serial, which starred Kathlyn Williams (pictured) as the heroine. 

The second serial ever made, The Adventures of Kathlyn is widely regarded as the first of the cliffhanger serials that became popular over the next decade. The serial idea was ‘borrowed’ from newspapers and magazines, and adapted for film.

Chapter one of The Adventures of Kathlyn featured a situation ending, but future episodes concluded with a sensational action sequence or stunt, held over to the following week to heighten suspense.

These serials were often tied-in with newspaper serials, boosting the newspapers’ circulation figures. For example, the Tribune announced a 10% increase in circulation as a result of The Adventures of Kathlyn’s success.

November 1922. The Flapper. “Official Organ of the National Flappers’ Flock.” “Not for old fogies”. Learn how to edjimicate a Sweet Daddy. The Definition of a Kiss. Enter the Beauty Contest and win a golden dolphin. And so much more… 

Life Magazine cover “The Flapper” by Frank Xavier Leyendecker, 2 February 1922.

Highest grossing movie of 1923: The Covered Wagon.

A silent western, The Covered Wagon charted the adventures of a group of pioneers as they travelled through the Old West, from Kansas to Oregon. Along the way they experienced desert heat, snow, hunger and an Indian attack (Native Americans who appeared in this movie included the Northern Arapaho Nation from Wyoming and Chief Thunderbird, in an uncredited role).

Lois Wilson, pictured, played the heroine, Molly Wingate. In a career spanning 1915 – 1952 she appeared in 150 movies, including the converted role of Daisy Buchanan in the 1926 silent film version of The Great Gatsby.

Through public records I’ve traced actress Eva Marie Saint’s ancestors back to the early 1800s. The family were Quakers for many generations. And, to my surprise, in 1810, their household contained a slave.

Slavery was abolished in America in 1865. But what of the Saint family and slavery in the period 1810 – 1865? The censuses of 1840, 1850 and 1860 provide an answer: William Saint, a farmer, was head of the household. His family, and labourers, worked on his farm. However, he did not own any slaves.

It would appear that the Saint family cut their ties with the slave trade long before the state did. I think Eva Marie Saint would be pleased to know that.

Also worthy of note, William Saint was born on 3 March 1781 and died on 24 January 1871.  He enjoyed a long life. At the time of writing this, Eva Marie Saint is 98. The Saint genes appear to be very strong ones.

Say Goodbye to Jennifer, Series 1, Episode 18 of The Rockford Files was directed by Jackie Cooper, who featured as Captain Highland in the previous episode, Claire.

The titles in Say Goodbye to Jennifer didn’t appear until 4’ 30” into the episode, a common trait for The Rockford Files, depending upon the number of close-ups in the opening scenes.

This episode made good use of dental records in identifying a victim, in an unusual way. The story was written by John Thomas James, one of his best in the first series.

A classic telephone message too: “This is Mrs Landis. Three times this month I came to clean and it always looks like people’ve been fighting in there; furniture broken, things tipped over; I’m sorry, but I quit.”

Clara Bow Quotes: In January 1921 Clara entered the ‘Fame and Fortune Contest’ organised by Motion Picture Magazine…

“Imagine my surprise when a letter arrived one day stating that I had been declared the winner. According to the rules of the contest, the winner was to be given an evening dress and also a role in a motion picture. I was in seventh heaven. My prayers had been answered. My whole future and happiness had been secured. What luck!”

The picture Clara submitted for the Motion Picture contest. She hated the picture, but couldn’t afford a replacement.

Intertitle #3 😗

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 32 occasions.

A special offer from my publisher and the Fussy Librarian. https://authors.thefussylibrarian.com/?ref=goylake

Don’t forget to use the code goylake20 to claim your discount 🙂