Fashion Spotlight: Walter Plunkett

With a career that spanned four decades, Walter Plunkett has been celebrated as the fashion designer that can be relied upon to create costumes for the best of MGM and RKO. Having studied law at the University of California, it was a move to New York that inspired him to become both an actor and designer of sets and costumes. Once referred back to California, Plunkett found his first costume design job in 1927's "Hard Boiled Haggerty." Having free reign over RKO, he had won an Academy Award shared with Orry-Kelly and Irene Sharaff for "Gone With the Wind." 

Gone With the Wind (1939)

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

7 of the Most Coolest Hollywood Friendships

Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart

"Stand-In" (1937)

Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor

Clark Gable and Hattie McDaniel

"Gone With the Wind" (1939)

Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard

Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor

John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara

Bette Davis and Claude Rains

"Now Voyager" (1942)

Friday Short: 1941 Warner Brothers Blooper Reel

#WomanEmpowermentWednesday Myrna Loy

• Served as Film Advisor for UNESCO for five years from 1949-1954
• Was Co-Chair of the Advisory Council of the National Committee against Discrimination in Housing
• Was on Adolf Hitler's blacklist
• Founding member of the American Place Theater
• Organized an opposition to the House Unamerican Activities Committee in Hollywood
• Joined the Hollywood Chapter of Bundles for Bluejackets and worked at a Naval Auxiliary Canteen
• Worked for the Red Cross during World War 2
• Asked MGM Studio executives, "Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?"
• Assisted in the creation of the Committee for the First Amendment
• Worked for the American Association for the United Nations

#ManCrushMonday 5 Times When Laurence Olivier Commanded the Screen

Rebecca (1940)

Wuthering Heights (1939)

Richard III (1955)

A Love Letter to... Jack Cardiff

Dear Mr. Cardiff,

This world and all of its inhabitants are your models and I am more than OK with this.

Thank you.

Black Narcissus (1947)

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)

The African Queen (1951)

War and Peace (1956)

Portrayals of Mental Illness in Film: Marilyn Monroe in "Don't Bother to Knock" (1952)

The Joneses are able to go to a function at the McKinley Hotel without worrying about their daughter Bunny. An elevator operator, Eddie (Elisha Cook Jr) recommended his niece (Marilyn Monroe) to watch her for the night, but there is something off about this babysitter and the neighbor (Richard Widmark) across the courtyard notices.

The pretty but clearly frightened Nell is in no state to babysit so soon after her three year stay in a psychiatric ward, trying on Ruth Jones's negligee and perfume, wooing Jed Towers over into the hotel suite. Confiding to the pilot, she admits that her boyfriend was killed flying over Hawaii and Towers notices there are razor scars on her wrists. During this seduction, the daughter comes out and Nell resorts to binding and gagging the her without Towers's knowledge. Eventually she begins to believe that Jed is, in fact, Phillip her dead boyfriend and attempts suicide once more.

Following Monroe's first dramatic stint as a fish cannery worker in Fitz Lang's "Clash By Night" (1952), "Don't Bother to Knock" was her first starring role, but the studio still had her on a tight leash. When asked how Monroe got along with her costar Richard Widmark, she replied "They never let me go near him!" (Morgan, Marilyn Monroe: Priate and Confidential, 2012) However, it was all Monroe's film, receiving negative reviews from the New York Times and Variety but stunned some more open minded moviegoers. "I expected to see the chum I'd come to know, but recognized the fragile psychotic portrayed there, that Marilyn was an actress," praised fan Nanciele Finnegan. (Morgan, Marilyn Monroe: Priate and Confidential, 2012)

The New York Times's Bosley Crowther describes her performance as "a childishly blank expression and a provokingly feeble, hollow voice." With drama coach Natasha Lytess glued to her hip behind the scenes, Monroe was able to "evoke her real-life fears of following in her mother's descent into mental illness." (Vogel. Marilyn Monroe: Her Films, Her Life. 2014) Gladys Baker was was institutionalized as a paranoid schizophrenic off and on throughout her life, which left Monroe in the foster system. Baker's parents, Otis and Della Monroe, both suffered from manic depression with schizophrenia in the family tree as well.

Cartoon Friday: Hollywood Steps Out (1941)

#WomanEmpowermentWednesday 7 Times When Marlene Dietrich Owned the Screen

Morocco (1930)

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

The Devil is a Woman (1935)

#ManCrushMonday Anton Walbrook

With an intense dark blue gaze, Anton Walbrook's eyes could do anything from radiating compassion as the Hutterite Peter in "49th Parallel" (1941) to loving friendship for General Clive Wynne-Candy ("The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," 1943) to possessive rage in the "The Red Shoes" (1948). That's all.

The Red Shoes (1948)

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

Remake This, Not This! Brigadoon (1954)

Remake This...

Bosley Crowley of The New York Times found "it equally hard to say why the film made from that [stage] triumph is so curiously flat and out-of-joint, rambling all over creation and seldom generating warmth or charm." "Among the more noteworthy points are the score [...] and the stage-type settings that represent the plot's Highland locale. The latter are striking, even though they are the major contribution to the feeling that this is a filmed stage show, rather than a motion picture musical," Variety criticized a little more kindly, although finding Gene Kelly's singing and choreography as "less noteworthy." Regardless, Brigadoon (1954) was only moderately successful at the box office winning cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg his fourth Academy Award at the age of 69.

Tommy Albright: Ryan Gosling
Jeff Douglas: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Fiona Campbell: Emma Stone
Charlie Dalrymple: John Barrowman
Harry Beaton: James McAvoy
Jean Campbell: Rose Leslie
Mr. Lundie: Sylvester McCoy

Not This!

The Thin Man (????)