#FridayShorts Hollywood Personalities in 1933

#SayHerName #SilentFilmEdition Mabel Condon Birdwell

Mabel "Mimi" Condon was only 18 when she began writing for Chicago's film trade magazine "Motography." In that same year she not only wrote on the inner workings of Chicago's film censorship board and the process of turning a scenario into a film but also the "Sans Grease Paint and Wig" feature where her interactions with celebrities and actors were profiled. Where many other trade profiles had focused on the tabloid nature of Hollywood, Condon would continue throughout her writing career to highlight the actors' real lives as well as their relationships with their fans. When encountering William Russell for "Sans Grease Paint and Wig", she had insisted for him to take the single chair in his dressing room and Condon sat on the edge of his desk. Within months in 1912, she was promoted to associate editor of the whole journal.

In 1913, Motography opened an office in New York City and promoted Condon as its East Coast representative. They had justified their choice, describing her as "already known personally to most of the trade, and through her departments at Motography, to most of our readers." Condon had continued at Motography for two more years until leaving in June 1915. She moved to Los Angeles in 1915 and not only continued to write for film interviews and reviews, but also began to work as a press agent, became the The Dramatic Mirror's West Coast representative, and also created a committee to represent the Motion Picture Board of Trade activities in Southern California. Condon would also start to write screenplays, her best known scenario being "The Man Who Would Not Die."

Within a year of living in Los Angeles, The Mabel Condon Exchange was created as both a publicity agency and an employment exchange. Condon would help assist actors in finding roles and arranging their contracts, publicity, and finances in addition to selling scripts and story rights. The Moving Picture World would describe "the growth [as] phenomenal. ... A number of the prominent screen stars requested her to handle their publicity. The business took on such proportions that she was compelled to engage several assistants and open an office in Hollywood." (The Moving Picture World, Volume 29)  The exchange represented both authors of the screen and stage as well as including an engagement department. From August to September 1916, The Mabel Condon Exchange handled over 800 photodramas through the play department and only 48 sold to the studios. Condon made sure to employ women, including former actresses Adelaide Woods, Nell Shipman, Anita Stewart, and Myrtle E. "M.E.M" Gisbone, Kalem Company's West Coast manager.

Condon had a son with publicist Russell Juarez Birdwell in 1924 and between then and the mid-1930, she had closed the exchange entirely to raise her children full-time. In 1936, she had taken a trip to Asia for four months where she had written a book entitled "Housewife Abroad" which ended up released at the same time as the Mabel Condon Agency opened. The only two branches were set in Beverly Hills and Singapore. Birdwell would frequently rely on her connections and even took advice from her after being hired as David O. Selznick's head of publicity and even when he opened his own advertising firm in Los Angeles. Condon would maintain the relationships with his clients while Birdwell spent most of his time on the East Coast. She officially became Russell Birdwell and Associates's public relations executive in 1944, making sure to remove her married name from the original draft of this release believing her name would still carry some weight. 

Heart disease eventually kept her from her work until dying from a heart attack in 1965. A New York Times obituary described her as "a former writer and literary agent." The Los Angeles Times identified Condon in her own obituary as "wife of publicist Russell Birdwell."

Cool Links to Check Out

Mabel Condon - Women Film Pioneers Project

Mabel "Mimi" Condon Birdwell (1887-1965) - Find a Grave Memorial

#MaleFashionDesigners #FashionSpotlight Milo Anderson

Constance Bennett gave a young fashion designer Milo Anderson a tip that had stayed with him throughout his three-decade career. "It's not what you put on a costume, it's what you take off that counts." His parents had moved to Los Angeles when Milo was 8 and had worked at Western Costume in high school. Anderson even got to do some designing including for Constance Bennett in "Common Clay." (1930) After graduating, he attended and graduated the University of California. 

Milo set his sights on MGM right away and had a portfolio all ready for Adrian, but the MGM head designer was not encouraging but was not not impressed. He did recommend Milo to 20th Century Fox where Coco Chanel wasn't finished with designing for "The Greeks Had a Word for Them" (1932). Anderson was immediately hired and then designed "The Kid from Spain" (1932) by himself. His mother had to sign the contract for him since he was too young to sign himself. Milo was best known in the 30s for his work in "The Adventures in Robin Hood" (1938) and Captain Blood (1935) and was loaned out to United Artists. He then joined Warner Brothers where he was very often not even credited for his gowns. Milo described his time in the movie studios as "we ran ourselves ragged trying to keep up with the demands of our jobs, but we had the best materials, the best craftsmen and the most glorious women to wear them. It was an unforgettable era."

He left Warner Brothers in favor of joining Robert Muir and Associates as an interior designer and often taught classes at the Sacramento Art Centre on costume design. Milo passed away of emphysema on November 10th, 1984.

Andrea King in "Shadow of a Woman" (1946)

Irene Dunne in "Life with Father" (1947)

Elissa Landi 

Make This!: Tallulah Bankhead and Lillian Hellman Season of "Feud"

Communist stage and screen writer Lillian Hellman considered herself "a most casual member" in later years. But in December 1936, her play "Days to Come" closed on Broadway just after seven performances, Communist publications criticized her failure to take sides between the factory owners and its workers instead of representing both sides as valid. She had officially joined the party two years later. Hellman's personal favorite play she had written, "The Little Foxes," opened on February 13, 1939 and this time, it was considered a hit running for 410 performances until February 3rd, 1940. The company then toured for a whole year after.

After the USSR invaded Finland on November 30, 1939, many stars from John Barrymore to Edward G. Robinson offered to assist in Finnish relief. "Foxes"'s lead, Tallulah Bankhead was no exception. She was already vocal in her criticisms against communism and wanted to put on a benefit performance of "The Little Foxes." Her fellow cast members also started to share this benefit with the press without knowing they needed permission from Hellman and director Herman Shumlin. When they found out, they immediately declined there would ever be performance and that "America had no dog in the Soviet-Finnish fight." (Ryskind, Alan. Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters -   Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler. 2015)


"Producers are God-damned communists," Bankhead raged to the Harvard Crimson in March 1940, "They get angry about Japan and Germany, but they won't let me put on a benefit show for the Finns. If there's anybody I hate it's a bigot. I know all this publicity stuff makes me look like one, but I'm really sincere about the war that those communist bullies are carrying on against a poor democratic country." "I've adopted Spanish Loyalist orphans and sent money to China, causes for which both Mr. Shumlin and Miss Hellman were strenuous proponents. They were questions of human suffering and we were glad to play benefits for them . . . . If Spanish refugees, the Chinese dispossessed and German refugees are deserving of aid, why not the Finnish women and children who are suffering privations caused by wanton invasion? Why should [they] become so insular?"

Hellman started telling everyone that she had an interview with the New Yorker claiming that it was Bankhead who refused playing a benefit for the Spanish Loyalists so no Finnish performance was actually required. Both Bankhead and Hellman knew this to be a "brazen invention," Bankhead herself having actually helped Spanish Republicans fighters and their families flee their civil war in 1937. Hellman could only continue to dig her own grave. "I don't believe in that fine, lovable little Republic that everyone gets so weepy about. I've been there and it seems like a little pro-Nazi Republic to me." Bankhead was outraged and called Hellman a moral hypocrite. Hellman and Bankhead never spoke to one another until late 1963. 

Elisabeth Moss as Tallulah Bankhead

Grace Gummer as Lillian Hellman

Ebon Moss-Bacharach as Herman Shumlin

#FridayShorts Memories of Famous Hollywood Comedians

#WomenDoingAwesomeThingsWednesday Teresa Wright's Bathing Suit Clause

Teresa Wright was a year into her two-year contract playing Mary Skinner in the stageplay "Life With Father" when Samuel Goldwyn came to the show. "Miss Wright was seated at her dressing table, and looked for all the world like a little girl experimenting with her mother's cosmetics. I had discovered in her from the first sight, you might say, an unaffected genuineness and appeal." (Teresa Wright | The Independent) But Wright "fiercely fought not to be a glamour girl. She loathed pictures in bathing suits and interviews with fan magazines, and told Goldwyn that much. He assured her he was not of "the bathing suit school of Hollywood producers" [...] and promised to promote her more ethereal talents." (Teresa Wright, Stage and Film Star, Dies at 86 - The New York Times)

The "bathing suit" clause went as follows:

"The aforementioned Teresa Wright shall not be required to pose for photographs in a bathing suit unless she is in the water. Neither may she be photographed running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind. Nor may she pose in any of the following situations: In shorts, playing with a cocker spaniel; digging in a garden; whipping up a meal; attired in firecrackers and holding skyrockets for the Fourth of July; looking insinuatingly at a turkey for Thanksgiving; wearing a bunny cap with long ears for Easter; twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf; assuming an athletic stance while pretending to hit something with a bow and arrow."

#MaleFashionDesigners #FashionSpotlight Marcel Vertes

Marcel Vertes was among of the many who escaped the Nazi invasion of Europe. For Vertes, he was able to escape the invasion of Paris by two days. He and his wife was not strangers to New York. Vertes had already came to the states as a painter in 1935 to make contacts in the art world and in 1937 he had his first one-man show in New York City.

Before the move, Vertes was familiar with film having costumed Alexander Korda's silent "Tragodie im Hause Habsburg" (1924). In the '30s, he had also costumed several films from the French "The Adventures of King Pausole (1933) to an uncredited "The Mikado" (1939) which he not only costumed but composed the set decoration. But his best known production work is in the Henri de Toulouse Lautrec's bio-pic "Moulin Rouge" (1952). In order to earn his college tuition into Academy Julian, Vertes himself would make forgeries of the famous French artist.

Vertes returned to Paris ten years later where he continued his sponsorship to the American Federation of Arts and was made an officer of the Legion of Honor in 1955. He spent the next five years designing ballets at the Paris Opera, Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey's Circus in 1956. In 1961, Vertes became a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He died in Paris later that year on October 31.

Rita Hayworth in
"Tonight and Every Night" (1945)

The Mikado (1939)

June Duprez in "Thief of Bagdad" (1940)