Showbiz History: The Girl From Missouri, The Princess from Genovia
Friday, August 3, 2018 at 10:09AM 10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...
1904 Dolores del Rio born in Mexico. By 1925 she's a star in silent films, Hollywood's first Mexican movie star, but her time in Hollywood is short. She reinvents herself back home in Mexico becoming a huge movie star all over again and ushering in Mexican cinema's Golden Era.
1926 Gordon Scott, future Tarzan beefcake born in Portland. He stars in one of the most interesting Tarzan films, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure (1959) which also features Sean Connery!
1934 The Girl from Missouri opens in movie theaters, a vehicle for Jean Harlow who was actually from Missouri...
Her co-star was Franchot Tone, then Mr. Joan Crawford. (So many of those golden age movie stars were dating or marrying each other -- Harlow became William Powell's girlfriend at some point in 1934). Harlow was in the peak of her fame in the mid 30s starring in several hits but she would die tragically three years later when she was just 26 years old of kidney failure.
1966 Comedian Lenny Bruce dies of a morphine overdose. He was famously played by Dustin Hoffman in Bob Fosse's Lenny (1974) which was nominated for six Oscars. Recently Luke Wilson played him in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. He was also the subject of a 1998 documentary which was nominated for the Oscar.
1983 Meryl Streep gives birth to second child and her first daughter Mamie Gummer, who will become an actress and appear as Meryl's daughter onscreen twice (Heartburn and Ricki and The Flash) and play Meryl's younger self once (Evening).
1990 Whit Stilman's delightful debut Metropolitan hits movie theaters. It will become a sleeper hit at arthouses and snag a well deserved Best Original Screenplay nomination
1995 Ida Lupino dies. With the current surge of interest in female directors, we've noticed that her work is finally being talked up. We're glad. We've discussed her work several times here at TFE.
2001 The Princess Diaries opens in movie theaters, the debut of one of our best movie stars Anne Hathaway.
2007 Becoming Jane opens nationwide, after a short limited release. The Jane Austin bio remains one of Hathaway's lesser efforts.
2018 Opening in theaters today: Disney's Christopher Robin, The Spy Who Dumped Me, and The Darkest Minds. The Sundance winning LGBT drama The Miseducation of Cameron Post opens in limited release.
Reader Comments (7)
The Girl from Missouri isn't one of Jean's best efforts. She's dazzling, though fortunately the script doesn't try and convince us that singing and dancing are her strong suits unlike her next film-Reckless. But the code had just gone into full force and MGM hadn't figured out how to rework her carnality fully within it yet . It also doesn't help that she's paired with Franchot Tone who wasn't a good match for her, she always interacted better with rugged men like Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy excepting William Powell but then he seemed to be easy with any performer.
Other than the irony of the title and Harlow being from Missouri that's a lousy title for a Jean Harlow picture. For some reason the studio had a hard time coming up with a suitable moniker working their way through Eadie Was a Lady, then 100% Pure and finally Born to Be Kissed before settling on the uninspired one it was released with. The first seems the most apt but perhaps there was a conflict with the rights being tied to the song.
Dolores del Rio was a lovely woman, though those overdrawn pencil thin eyebrows she favored were terribly distracting. Even being considered a star didn't spare her from the fate of all actresses of her time with a foreign appearance, she was shoved into whatever ethnic part was available just because of her otherness. It would be interesting to see some of her work in her native land, she was much more delicate and china doll like than the earthy Katy Jurado though their eras were different I wonder if their roles were similar.
What ever happened to Valerine Perrine? she was great in Lenny...
^Valerie's been waging a tough battle with Parkinson's. A brilliant, beautiful actress - and she would've won in Supporting for LENNY.
Luke Kirby, not Luke Wilson, played Lenny B in Mrs. Maisel.
Queen Anne.... the diamond of the Bullet Club and you don't want to make the Queen nor her fellow ladies very angry.
poor valerie - winner of best actress at cannes, bafta winner, oscar nominee, yet best remembered for can't stop the music
Best remembered for Superman (1978) is more like it.