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Hollywood, Broadway & More! Memorial

His Career Ended with the Coming of Talkies- Tragedy of Silent Star John Gilbert

The life of John Gilbert ended tragically on January 9, 1936 at the young age of 38.  Gilbert’s final performance involved no acting at all.  It was that of a dying man clutching at his chest, writhing in pain, and falling to the floor for his last gasps of air.  What must those last moments have been like for someone who had been at the top of the world, only to become one of the casualties of the nemesis feared most by silent actors…THE MICROPHONE!

John Gilbert’s complete biography can be found on Wikipedia, an excellent source of information.  Informative as well as convenient, Wikipedia always has the most up-to-date information on a variety of subjects.  I wouldn’t be without it when researching the old Hollywood stars.

John Gilbert was a longtime friend of comedienne Marion Davies who is probably best remembered as the decades-long love interest of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst.  In Davies’ posthumous memoir, “The Times We Had,” she spoke of Gilbert’s feelings for Lillian Gish with whom he’d been paired for the 1926 MGM film, La Bohème.”

Davies said, “Jack Gilbert would stay downstairs with a bunch of violets in his hand.  He might as well have waited for the sun to come out at night, because she was dodging him.  They were making ‘La Bohème’ and he was madly in love with her. Jack Gilbert was the sort of person who took the movies seriously.  When he played in a love scene with somebody, he fell in love with her. So he’d be down there, standing with a bunch of violets, waiting for Lillian.  But she was only there for the one picture.  She only did that one picture, and she paid no attention to Jack Gilbert with his violets – none whatsoever.”

Later in her memoir, she references Greta Garbo, who co-starred with John Gilbert in several films, notably 1926’s “Flesh and the Devil,” where the two created a romantic sensation.  Davies wrote, “I felt awfully sorry for Jack Gilbert.  He was in love with Greta Garbo, and she would have no part of him at all.  That was why he was blue.  He was very much the artist type, with flashing black eyes and nervous, emotional moods.  Those writers didn’t understand it.  They were just watching and pushing him.  And imagine the emotions going on inside him.”

Those emotions must have eventually overwhelmed him, for gossip columnist Louella Parsons wrote in her 1944 memoir “The Gay Illiterate” that, “John Gilbert landed in jail on a charge of disturbing the peace after Greta Garbo got as far as the courthouse – and then refused to marry him.”

Parsons reported exactly how Gilbert’s career was ruined by sound pictures.  “John Gilbert and Greta Garbo, in such silent pictures as ‘Flesh and the Devil,’ had become the great lovers of the movies.  In one fell swoop – to be exact, a dreadful movie called ‘His Glorious Night’ – Jack was ruined.  It has been said, and is now accepted almost as legend, that the great Gilbert had a falsetto voice that ill became his manly physique and that audiences tittered when he spoke.”

Louella Parsons went on to say, “While Jack’s voice wasn’t so deep as the ocean, it was a thoroughly normal speaking voice.  But in those days there was little ‘mixing’ or regulation of sound.  If the microphone was pitched along the leading lady’s favorite key the hero sounded ‘way up there’ with her, too.”

One part of the Marion Davies memoir really showed how troubled John Gilbert really was.  Davies wrote of Gilbert’s frequent mood swings and stated, “One night at the beach we had gotten tired of sitting around the swimming pool and had gone out on the sand. There were thirty or forty of us. There was a group of writers around Jack, and I could hear an argument. I heard Jack say, ‘I’m going to commit suicide.’ And they said, ‘Dare you to.’ Well, that was not the thing to say to a man who was in that mood, but they were teasing him. They said, ‘Prove it. You’ve talked about suicide so much, prove it to us. If you’ve got the guts to do it, show us.’ And Jack said, ‘All right, I will.’”

w/Norma Shearer & Lon Chaney, Sr.

“While everyone was chattering away, he went out and walked into the waves. And he kept on walking until I thought, This is not funny. I said, ‘Somebody stop him.’ But they said, ‘Let him alone. He’ll stop himself. Just watch him. He won’t do it.’ They thought it was a big joke. Maybe their voices carried across. Whatever, he suddenly threw himself down, and then he came wading in and went down on the sand. He burst into sobs and beat the sand and cried his heart out. He couldn’t do it; he had been challenged and he couldn’t do it.”

Ultimately, John Gilbert got his wish.  On January 9, 1936 after a massive heart attack, aggravated by chronic alcoholism, he took a final curtain call.

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Hollywood, Broadway & More! Sex Symbols

“BUtterfield 8,” Liz Taylor in hospital near death! Reynolds/ Fisher scandal, Hedda weighs in…

March, 1960 “Modern Screen” article by columnist, Earl Wilson

In her 1962 memoir, “The Whole Truth and Nothing But,” Hollywood gossip columnist, Hedda Hopper, wrote of Liz Taylor’s “BUtterfield 8” Oscar in the following manner, “She won her Academy Award not for Butterfield 8 but for nearly dying. And her studio joined in by putting on a terrific public relations campaign against Debbie – with planted stories in fan magazines and loaded interviews for the newspapers – to clinch sympathy for Liz.” 

Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor

The aging columnist, who loved judging all Hollywood, was of course referring to the love triangle concerning Elizabeth Taylor, actress Debbie Reynolds and Reynolds’ onetime husband, baritone Eddie Fisher.  In 1958, Taylor began a love affair with Fisher, at the time married to actress Reynolds, during the filming of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”  Eddie Fisher later left Debbie Reynolds to wed Liz.  

Hedda Hopper, chief competition for Hearst columnist, Louella Parsons

The public became either decidedly for or against Taylor – either content to accept that all’s fair in love and war, or the opposite view of Liz as predatory homewrecker. 

Elizabeth Taylor had originally catapulted to stardom at the young age of 12 in the 1944 film, “National Velvet.”  Taylor blossomed into a lovely, sensual young woman as the world watched and was often publicized as the most beautiful woman in the world.  When her third husband, director Michael Todd, was suddenly killed in a plane crash on March 22, 1958, there was an outpouring of public sympathy for Liz. 

Then came the Reynolds-Fisher-Taylor romance scandal, turning many sharply against her.  All ill feelings were quickly forgotten though, after Liz’s near date with death from pneumonia two years later, just prior to the Academy Awards.  Nominated for best actress in the 1960 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film “BUtterfield 8,” Liz garnered the coveted award many felt was undeserved.  It certainly hadn’t hurt Taylor (or M-G-M) that she’d languished for weeks in an intensive care unit close to death just before the Oscars that year.

Still frail from her recent illness, Elizabeth Taylor was helped to the stage by Eddie Fisher, who’d co-starred with her in “BUtterfield 8.”  He’d recently divorced Debbie Reynolds to be at Liz’s side, making him Taylor’s fourth husband to date.

To decide for yourself if Elizabeth Taylor’s 1961 Oscar was really a “sympathy award,” check out her competition that year:  Shirley MacLaine for “The Apartment” – a satirical look at office politics; Melina Mercouri for “Never on Sunday,” the story of a Greek prostitute; Greer Garson for “Sunrise at Campobello,” a dramatization of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s battle with polio; and Deborah Kerr for “The Sundowners,” a film about life in the Australian outback.

The many husbands of Liz:

1. Conrad Hilton, Jr. (1950-1951)

2. Michael Wilding (1952-1957)

3. Mike Todd (1957-1958)

4. Eddie Fisher (1959-1964)

5. Richard Burton (1964-1974)

6. Richard Burton (1975-1976)

7. John Warner (1976-1982)_

8. Larry Fortensky (1991-1996)

Categories
Hollywood, Broadway & More! Sex Symbols

Jayne Mansfield Meets Mickey Hargitay at the Divine Mae West’s Las Vegas Revue

Jayne Mansfield was amply suited for promo during the 1950s

Jayne Mansfield, popular sex symbol of the 50s met future husband, Mickey Hargitay, a bodybuilder on stage one evening at Mae West’s popular Las Vegas revue featuring musclemen.  Mansfield and Hargitay enjoyed a whirlwind romance, married, then later divorced yet the couple remained close friends throughout the remainder of Mansfield’s short life, which ended on a lonely Louisiana highway the night of June 29, 1967.

Mickey Hargitay, Hungarian bodybuilder, with Jayne Mansfield

In video footage posted on YouTube, Mickey Hargitay wistfully recalled his visit to a mortuary containing the remains of his ex-wife, Jayne Mansfield, shortly after her tragic automobile accident which killed three people.  Hargitay was visibly disturbed when reliving the moment, was overcome with emotion, and struggling for the words to explain what he’d found, “I saw her the last time…it wasn’t really her anymore, you know, soul was gone, spirit was gone…it was just a machine, it wasn’t her…”

Hargitay had met Jayne Mansfield while performing at Mae West’s renowned 1950’s nightclub revue which broke Las Vegas box office records.  In Mae’s typical Westian style, a collection of musclemen would cavort about the sexagenarian star, while flexing their biceps and chest muscles.  It was all carefully orchestrated by the aging West to create the illusion that she was just as luscious and desirable as ever, as the men dutifully paid her homage by lustfully ogling her.  West would then sing a few songs, knock off a few of her double-entendre one-liners and sashay about the stage, looking as voluptuous as a sex symbol in her mid-60s could. 

Mae West’s 1950s Las Vegas act w/entourage of bodybuilders

While the bodybuilders were little more than props for West’s increasingly inflated ego, Mae’s exaggerated sense-of-self unwisely entertained the notion that Mickey Hargitay was perhaps interested in something more, namely the incomparable Mae West.  Yet Hargitay happened to be looking in another direction that evening, and the object of his attention was Miss Jayne Mansfield. 

In West’s inimitable egomaniacal and narcissistic manner, Mae quickly turned the page by arranging publicity about a few musclemen in her show that were battling for the elderly star’s affections, reportedly coming to blows in the process.

Mae West circa 1933 in her younger years

West was then left with her successful show minus Mickey Hargitay, and had only to reap the enormous financial rewards, not to mention several choice musclemen, in particular a bodybuilder named Chester Rybinski (aka Paul Novak).  Novak, smitten with Mae West, doted on the aging star for over 26 years until her death in 1980.

Sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, some 40 years younger than West, and Hungarian bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay were soon christened “couple of the hour” by the American press, quickly married, and left the aging Mae West far, far behind.  The two likely never looked back…