just breathe.

Notes: 110 / 4 weeks ago from turnofthecentury (originally from liquidnight)

turnofthecentury:

liquidnight:USA, circa 1915

From Other Pictures by Thomas Walther

liquidnight:USA, circa 1915

From Other Pictures by Thomas Walther

Notes: 37 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

Stills from Speedy (1928, dir. Ted Wilde) and an era where amusement parks were apparently far less concerned about personal injury lawsuits.

Stills from Speedy (1928, dir. Ted Wilde) and an era where amusement parks were apparently far less concerned about personal injury lawsuits.

Notes: 71 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

Tippi Hedren in publicity still for The Birds (1963, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via drmacro)

The morning before filming, an embarrassed looking assistant director came to her dressing room. “He couldn’t look at me,” [Tippi Hedren] recalls. “He looked at the floor. He looked at the walls. He looked at the ceiling. I said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ And he said, ‘The mechanical birds don’t work. We have to use real ones’.”

She believes, however, that there had never been any intention to use props. “There were cartons, huge cartons, filled with ravens — very nicely — I mean they weren’t in misery or anything — and three prop men with great big leather gauntlets up to their shoulders. And they hurled birds at me for five days. By the very end of it they had me on the floor.

“Rita Riggs [the wardrobe supervisor] had put bands around my body, about an inch thick, and they tied the birds very loosely to me with the elastic around their little ankles and finally, on the last day, one of them jumped from my shoulder and really cut me, way too close to my eye. And I just got the birds off and just sat in the middle of the set crying, because I was totally exhausted.”

Cary Grant, who visited the set during her ordeal, told her that she was the bravest girl he’d met. Hitchcock, however, would stay in his office until the cameras were ready to roll, as if embarrassed at what he was asking his star to endure. But if Hedren survived the ordeal, Melanie was less lucky. The movie ends with her being escorted, helpless, out of the house — this clever, feisty, controlling person a virtual zombie.

“Catatonic,” she agrees.

“Well, that’s what Hitchcock loves to do with his women. Take a woman who is in control of herself, very sure of herself, and beat her up and see how much she can take.”

But why? “Well, I think there’s some sort of psychological mishap going on there, don’t you?”

-excerpted from The Times interview with Hedren, where she discusses her experiences working with Hitchcock. The title - “The Birds Attacked Me but Hitch Was Scarier” - provides a clue as to how Hedren saw that relationship.

Notes: 42 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

In homage: Florence Georgie in It Happened On 23rd Street, above (1901, dir. Edwin Porter); Marilyn Monroe in Seven Year Itch, below (1955, dir. Billy Wilder)

Notes: 68 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

Janet Margolin & Keir Dullea in David and Lisa (1962, dir. Frank Perry), an early example of independent American cinema.

Margolin & Dullea portray two disturbed teenagers (she is supposedly a schizophrenic; he suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and cannot bear to be touched) in a mental health clinic who fall in love. David and Lisa’s financial success & positive reviews made it a breakthrough for independent filmmaking in the US.

Notes: 97 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

Merna Kennedy in The Red-haired Alibi (1932, Christy Cabanne) (via goldensilents)

Notes: 40 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

“My first part was as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn’t really approve of it, through.”

-James Cagney (via amana images)

Notes: 117 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

“I’ll tell you one of the reasons I’m ready to leave [the movie business]. When I first came to Hollywood five years ago, my makeup call was at eight in the morning. On this movie it has been put back to seven-thirty. Every day I see Joan Crawford, who’s been in makeup since five, and Loretta Young, who’s been there since four in the morning. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to stay in a business where I have to get up earlier and earlier and it takes longer and longer for me to get in front of a camera.”

-Grace Kelly (via TCM)

Notes: 142 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

Vivien Leigh & Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind (1939, dir. Victor Fleming)

“Cathleen, who’s that?”
“Who?”
“That man looking at us and smiling. The nasty, dark one.”
“My dear, don’t you know? That’s Rhett Butler. He’s from Charleston. He has the most terrible reputation.”
“He looks as if… as if he knows what I look like without my shimmy!”

Notes: 86 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

“Men like me because I don’t wear a brassiere. Women like me because I don’t look like a girl who would steal a husband. At least not for long.”

-Jean Harlow (via TCM)

Notes: 286 / 1 month ago from oldhollywood

oldhollywood:

Edie Sedgwick & Lou Reed in 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol Screen Tests (2008, “directed” by Andy Warhol)

Andy Warhol’s screen tests were filmed between 1964 & 1966. Visitors to Warhol’s Factory studio who were deemed to have “star” quality would be seated in front of a tripod mounted camera, asked to be as still as possible, and told not to blink while the camera was running. Besides Sedgwick & Reed, subjects included Salvador Dali, Nico, Bob Dylan, Dennis Hopper & Allen Ginsberg.

Trailer for 13 Most Beautiful… can be seen here.