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I got to chat briefly with former child star Dick "Dickie" Moore last night and asked him what he remembered about Kay Francis, who is one of my favorites from the 1930s.
He said when he and Francis worked together on My Bill, she was on the outs with Warner Brothers and wasn't in the best frame of mind on-set. (She was not happy, for one thing, about the picture being named after Moore's character.)
He said she was friendly enough, but he wouldn't, he said, describe her as "warm," but he suspected it had to do with her professional circumstances at the time.
He said Matthew "Stymie" Beard was his favorite among his fellow "Our Gang" actors, the only one he socialized with off the set. They even had sleepovers.
I also got to meet Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies. I'd done an email interview with him some years ago, and he was kind enough to say he remembered it (I suspect he didn't). He seemed a very likeable fellow.
He's much bigger than I expected him to be. He's something over six feet and with a big build, too.
Jane Powell and Moore, whose careers the event was celebrating, were both delightful. Very personable -- and clever, too. And they are very sweet together, clearly very much in love.
When asked about the ups and downs of childhood stardom, Moore came across as much less bitter than he did in his book. It's a mixed bag, he said, but life is a mixed bag.
Moore said he remained close to Marlene Dietrich until her death (they, of course, made Blonde Venus together). He said Dietrich was something of a packrat, keeping all sorts of odd stuff -- old Kleenex and false eyelashes and stuff.
But not long before her death, she sent him a picture of the two of them taken during the filming of Blonde Venus that she said had been in the bottom of a drawer since 1932.
He also told a funny story about Robert Mitchum, with whom he worked when he was a teenager (Moore, not Mitchum) on the film noir classic Out of the Past. Moore played a deaf-mute in the movie, and in the early '80s, nearly forty years later, he saw Mitchum at some event and went over to say hello.
"Hi, Bob," Moore said.
Mitchum gave him a shocked look and said, "You can talk??"
Moore said he was one of the few actors in history who looked over his scripts when he first received them, hoping for as few lines as possible. As such, Out of the Past was one of his favorite roles, he said, because he had no lines whatsoever.
Moore's first role was at 11 months. He played Francois Villon as an infant in a 1927 silent movie, The Beloved Rogue. John Barrymore played the adult Villon, and the story goes that, while visiting the set one day (naturally, he and Moore had no scenes together), he was brought over to view young Dickie in his crib.
Barrymore reportedly peered in and looked up again, aghast, saying, "My god, he looks like an owl!"
(Moore did have large, expressive eyes as a child.)
Moore also has retained some renown for having given a teenaged Shirley Temple her first on-screen kiss. When the moderator of last night's event protested to Moore, after screening a clip of the scene in which the historic smooch took place, that "that wasn't much of a kiss" (and it wasn't -- Moore just kissed Temple on the cheek), Moore quipped, "That's just what Shirley said!"
I'm going to be on a WKCR program tonight called Grey Matters. The show airs at 9 p.m. on 89.9FM or wkcr.org -- just click on "listen live."
Fair warning: Though I recorded a couple of pieces, they're using my anti-summer diatribe, See You in September, that aired some years ago on NPR some years back. So if you've heard that already, there's nothing new here.
But if you haven't heard it....
And in any case, the show's well worth listening to, my own modest contribution aside.
It'll also be archived for streaming at some point.
Remember when Republicans liked to tout states' rights and claimed to be against using federal laws and even constitutional amendments to further Taliban-esque activities? It wasn't so terribly long ago.
"I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions [regarding gay rights and gay marriage], and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area. ... People should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's really no one else's business, in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard." --Dick Cheney, October 2000
Boy, have things changed.
An amendment to the Constitution is necessary because activist courts have left our nation with no other choice. The constitutional amendment that the Senate will consider next week would fully protect marriage from being redefined, while leaving state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage." -- George Bush, June 2006
They're all for states' right when it suits them, but not when it doesn't. Just as they have no problem whatsoever with activist judges, as long as those judges are making decisions they agree with.
The above quotes demonstrate quite clearly the difference between the two arms of the current Republican Party. There's the American Taliban arm that cares only about cultural issues and making American citizens toe their behavioral line, and then there's the Corporatist arm that cares only about the rights of the corporation over the individual and widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots in this country. Very few Republicans are sincerely in both camps.
Dubya would have us believe he is, though I doubt his sincerity -- remember that moment in Farenheit 9/11 when Dubya was speaking to a well-heeled group of wealthy supporters at a fundraiser? He spoke the following words: "What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite; I call you my base."
Those were the truest words Dubya has ever spoken in public. He gives lip service to social issues, but he's really all about keeping the power in the hands of the American "aristocracy."
The Corporatists like to get the American Taliban riled them up over social issues -- hence the current shameful focus on an amendment banning gay marriage that they know can't pass -- so that they can continue to count on their votes to help them retain power and continue their crusade against the American middle and lower classes. But have you noticed how little of the American Taliban's agenda the Corporatists really endeavor to enact? Very little. They're playing them like a dime-store banjo, and the American Taliban has yet to catch on.