Eleanor Powell, The World's Greatest Tap Dancer

Eleanor Powell was an American film actress and a graceful and nimble-footed dancer who became famous during the 1930's and 1940's,for her creative, quick-fire, solo tap dancing routines and became known as the ”Queen of Tap Dancing”.

She  featured in several Broadway revues, and her first movie appearance was in George White's 'Scandals of 1935'.  When she appeared in 'Broadway Melody of 1936', Eleanor began her long association with MGM musicals, where her co-stars ranged from Nelson Eddy to Fred Astaire to Jimmy Stewart to Burns and Allen.  In 'Lady Be Good' in 1941, she wore top hat and short tails to dance "Fascinating Rhythm” for director Busby Berkeley. The number opened on a close up of her tapping feet and ended spectacularly with her being thrown head over heels time and again down a corridor of male dancers.


 In 1943 she married actor Glen Ford and retired from acting. On her divorce from Ford in 1959 she began a new, and successful nightclub career.  Her career continued into the early 1960's when she made several guest appearances on television, including The Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace.


Eleanor Powell died of cancer at the age of 69 in February, 1982, and she was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.


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Gabby Hayes - the eternal sidekick

Who can forget the grizzled bewhiskered face, that throaty voice or those wonderful 'yer durn tootin' and 'young whipper snapper' expressions of Gabby Hayes.

He became famous in the early years of Talkies during the 1930's and 1940's as sidekick to stars like Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. He became so popular that he was consistently featured in the top ten polls of favorite actors.

Movie acting was his second main career. After working as a circus performer as a young man he began performing in vaudeville with his wife, Olive Ireland after they married in 1914. They were extremely successful and became very well known, making a great deal of  money, so much so that Hayes was able to retire in the late 1920's when he was still in his mid 40's. It was only after losing his fortune in the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929 that he was forced to seek work and found it in California in the movie industry.
          

1934, Randy Rides Alone

He began his movie career as a regular fixture in the many Westerns of the 1930's, first as a bad guy, and often starring opposite the young John Wayne.Eventually he ended up playing the same character in all his films - the eternal sidekick to the western hero, whether that hero be Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Randolph Scott, or Wayne himself. He firt took the name "Windy" Halliday in many Hopalong Cassidy films but afterleaving due to a salary dispute he was prohibited from using that name again and so the name "Gabby" was chosen.

With Roy Rogers

 From 1950 to 1954 he had his own TV Western series, 'The Gabby Hayes Show', aimed largely at children, after which he retired for good and devoted the rest of his life to his wife and his investments. He appeared in almost 200 movies and TV episodes during his career.

Gabby and wife, Olivia

Away from the cameras Hayes was completely different to his screen persona. He was serious and sophisticated. He died in February, 1969 of  cardiovascular disease in Burbank, California. He was 83.

For a complete biography and filmography of Gabby Hayes visit Hollywood's Golden Age

The Night of the Hunter, A Robert Mitchum Masterclass

Made in 1955 and the only film to be directed by Charles Laughton, 'The Night of the Hunter' is a masterpiece of a movie, a haunting and frightening Biblical tale of greed, corruption, seduction and innocence.

It stars Robert Mitchum, a vastly underrated actor, as one of Hollywood's most unforgettable villains, "Reverend" Harry Powell, dressed in clerical black and white  and with the words "love" and "hate" tattooed on his knuckles.

His decepively sleepy-eyed presence dominates the whole film whether playing emotionally powerful scenes with Shelley Winters as the doomed widow or pretending to play with the children whom he later seeks to kill. Even when he is not on screen we feel his malevolence.  His performance in 'The Night of the Hunter' abounds with examples of under­statement and subtle awareness of the needs of the part. It is a massive tribute to his skill as an actor.


Read more about Robert Mitchum
Read more about The Night of the Hunter
Read more about Charles Laughton

1950's Sweater Girls in Hollywood - Hot Pics

'Sweater girls' was a term coined in the late 1940's and 1950's to describe movie star sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe, Lana Turner and Jayne Mansfield who introduced the popular fashion for wearing tight sweaters and blouses with cone shaped bras called 'bullet bras' which had pointed tips, and which showed off their breasts to great effect.

The bullet bra was also known as a torpedo or cone bra, and it created a silhouette that was a definitive part of 40s and 50s culture.

Here is a selection of hot pics of beautiful stars and starlets of the 1950's, some famous, some completely unknown. All are beautiful, all are tasteful, and all are truly memorable.

Anita Ekberg, Big, Blonde and Beautiful

Anita Ekberg was Sweden's answer to Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield combined. For a while during the 1950's she was one of the most famous film stars in the world and certainly one of the sexiest. She loved to show off her curvy, voluptuous body with enormous breasts. They got plenty of exposure.

In 1952, Anita was a cover girl for Look magazine and by January 1956, she was on the cover of Life. It helped that she was happy to take part in publicity stunts, as when her dress burst open in the foyer of the Berkeley Hotel in London, and there just happened to be a press photographer on hand to capture the event.

There's no doubting Anita's main assets. Take a look at these photos and you'll see what we mean. But apart from her uniquely large bust and beautiful hour glass body Anita had a truly beautiful face, which was loved by the camera. She was just stunning. In addition she had something else going for her, something that her competition didn''t have - I'm talking about talent, raw acting talent.

Anita Ekberg was born Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg on September 29, 1931 the eldest girl of eight children. She grew up to be a beautiful young girl and became a fashion model. She won the Miss Sweden beauty title in 1950, aged 19 which led to a trip to America and a movie contract and she became one of the most popular pin up glamor models of the 1950's. She seemed naever to be out of the public eye and she made the most of her fame with a succession of celebrity lovers including Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, Yul Brynner, Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper. Not a bad list!

After two films with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, then at their peak of fame, Anita found movie superstardom first in King Vidor's 'War and Peace' in 1956 and then Federico Fellini's 'La Dolce Vita' in 1960, in which with Marcello Mastroianni she took part in a scene romping in the Trevi fountain, which has gone down in movie legend. She had a couple of small roles in Fellini movies thereafter but, as her weight increased, so her desirability did the opposite.

Anita married twice, each time to actors. The first, from 1956 to 1959 was to Anthony Steel the British actor, and then from 1963 to 1975, she was married to the actor with the wonderful name of Rik Van Nutter. She is still alive today and living happily in Italy.

Yankee Doodle Dandy - A Cagney Masterclass

For anyone who wonders why James Cagney stands in the very top echelon of Hollywood movie stars, take a look at 'Yankee Doodle Dandy', made in 1942.

It would be terribly easy from a postmodern, politically correct, and sophisticatead perspective to regard the movie as jingoistic wartime propaganda. Indeed, this flag-waving musical extravaganza biopic, detailing the life of patriotic |Irish American song-and-dance man George M. Cohan (the first performer to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor), gushes with sentimental, simplistic musical numbers invariably characterized by Cohan's trademark stiff-kneed, effervescent, brash dancing style and championing through their lyrics the most stolid American institutions: "Grand Old Flag,", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "Over There," and the title song, to name a few. The film is a flashback - told by a modest Cohan to FDR - that ends with a self-conscious advertisement for intervention - "I wouldn't worry about this country if I were you. We've got this thing licked. Where else in the world could a plain guy like me come in and talk things over with the head man?"

But such a cynical reading would fail grossly to miss something surprising and touching and grand that runs through 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' like a clear river, and that is James Cagney's magnificent sincerity in the title role. This is evident in his way of embarrassedly smiling to punctuate his thoughts, in his soft and civilised speaking voice, in the astonishing virtuosity of his dancing which is persuasive and original in style, unrelentingly athletic while also being childish, playful, and beautifully meaningless: and in something we rarely see onscreen anymore since alienated distance has overtaken Hollywood performance, and that is Cagney's complete and loving belief in everything he does. Michael Curtiz's direction never overplays him, James Wong Howe's lush black-and-white cinematography never fails to show every nuance of his posture and expression in articulate light. And when his hoofer father (Walter Huston) is falling away into death, with Georgie at his bedside, Cagney gives in to a rush of honest feeling that carries him into tears. So mucn, in fact, do we care for this man we forget we are watching a performance. Cagney has become Cohan. Even more, he has become the optimistic spirit of the screen. A beautiful masterpiece of James Cagney's acting brilliance.

Click here for more on 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'.

Douglas Fairbanks - The First Swashbuckler

Douglas Fairbanks was the laughing daredevil of the silent screen in swashbuckling roles in adventure movies such as 'The Thief of Bagdad', 'Robin Hood', and 'The Mark of Zorro'. He invented the slyly self-parodic action hero, setting the tone for a line of successors from Errol Flynn to Bruce Willis.

Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado on May 23, 1883. He moved to New York in the early 1900s intent on pursuing an acting career and he made his Broadway debut in 1902.

Initially a comedian, he played the drug-crazed detective Coke Ennyday in 'The Mystery of the Leaping Fish' in 1916. Fairbank's athleticism - he loved doing his own stunts - trademark moustache, and cheerful air suited him to swashbuckling, with serious swordplay leavened by graceful slapstick.'The Mark of Zorro' in 1920, in which he is both macho outlaw and comedy fop, was the first of the increasingly elaborate star vehicles, such as 'The Three Musketeers' in 1921, that he wrote and produced annually for a decade.

In the talkies, Fairbanks's star shone less brightly after teaming with his second wife, Mary Pickford, for a creaky 'The Taming of the Shrew' in 1929, but his farewell role was wryly dignified as a middle-aged great lover in 'The Private of Don Juan' in 1934.

Fairbanks's legacy is not just confined to the screen. Ever financially savvy, he started his own production company, the Douglas Fairbanks Film Corporation, in 1917, which helped propel him to become one of Hollywood's top earners. Such independence proved to be a thorn in the side of the studios, who attempted to monopolize film distribution. Undeterred, his business acumen led him to found the United Artists studio in 1919 together with Charles Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and Mary Pickford. They created their own disttributorships, took artistic control over their output, and reaped a greater share of the profits. Fairbanks was also one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and co-hosted (with director William C. de Mille) the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929.
For more on Classic Hollywood, visit Hollywood's Golden Age