He went by the stage name of Orry-Kelly.  Designers liked using just one name at the time. But he was born Orry George Kelly in Kiama Australia. His friends just called him Jack. He dressed the top movie stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, from Bette Davis to Marilyn Monroe. He was a hard drinker with a temperament more  suited to that of a  big movie producer.  He wrote his memoirs – which were never published in his lifetime. In fact they sat in drawers and boxes for decades – until 2016. Orry-Kelly had been room-mates with Cary Grant, both in New York when Cary was still named Archy Leach, and then in Los Angeles. They had a falling out subsequently, and It was rumored that Grant blocked publication of the memoir. At any rate, the book Women I’ve Undressed, by Orry-Kelly but ghost-written by Whitney Stine when Orry-Kelly was still alive,  has now been published in Australia and in the United Kingdom. It seems  U.S.  publishers care less about our own Hollywood heritage. The book has also been turned into a docu-drama directed by Gillian Armstrong.

Kiama Australia was a small seaport town. His mother was a housewife and his father was a tailor. The young Orry developed his future passion when his mother took him to the theater in Sydney when he was seven. He loved the experience and the next Christmas he got a miniature theater as a gift. He made his own sets and actors, which he dressed with scraps from his mother’s leftover materials. His father told him boys shouldn’t be playing with dolls and one day destroyed the whole set.

As an older youth Orry moved to Sydney to attend technical school, at first living with his aunt but eventually going out on his own. Although he got a job in a bank, he hung around the theater looking for parts, with a few minor roles on stage coming to him. But It wasn’t long before he was mixing with a rough crowd of pick-pockets and prostitutes. Realizing he was only going to get in trouble he decided to move to New York.

Once in New York, he found a hotel room and looked for parts in vaudeville. His neighbor and friend was Gracie Allen, who would soon partner with George Burns. Another friend-to-be in the area was Jack Benny. And then sharing his room was another recent arrival to New York, struggling vaudevillian Archie Leach. Although this was during the Prohibition, the heavy drinking that Orry-Kelly got used to in Sydney continued to be a regular habit. Orry-Kelly had auditions and some performances, he just never made a success on the stage. So in order to make ends meet he turned to his artistic abilities. He painted some murals and experimented at home hand block-printing his designs on shawls, and selling the best ones on the street. He found a way to print his designs on ties also, and got Cary Grant to both make them and sell them on a 50-50 commission. Soon they were able to support themselves without the theater. But then he got a job designing costumes for the Schubert Theater. He even designed Katharine Hepburn’s costumes for Death Takes a Holiday, though she only lasted a week in the role.

Orry-Kelly was broke by the time he made it to Los Angeles in 1931.  Archie Leach came separately and got a screen test and then a contract at Paramount, along with the new name of Cary Grant. They met every night for a 65 cent dinner at the drug store counter- splurging for the 85 cent version on week-ends. Cary’s agent took Orry-Kelly and his portfolio for an interview at Warner Brothers. After waiting 42 days he finally got a job offer as costume designer. He said in his book that his first movie  designs were for Loretta Young, who he loved working with. This was for Week-End Marriage in 1932, Then he designed the costumes for Bebe Daniels in Silver Dollar, a period film about the Silver Queen of Denver, Baby Doe. I include below several images from my own costume sketch collection.

Above is my costume sketch of Orry-Kelly’s design for Loretta Young in “They Call it Sin,” 1932. 

His first designs for Kay Francis, the fashion-plate of Warner Brothers, was for One Way Passage. He said she was, “Well mannered, cooperative, easy to please, and knew exactly what she wanted.” Boy was he in for  a rough ride with some of his other assignments.

 

 

Orry-Kelly said when he first got to Hollywood  he studied the work of the top two designers: Adrian and Travis Banton. But in order to be different, he decided to design “simple, unadorned evening gowns.” The good news was Warner Brothers was picking up his contract – for $750 a week – and he could establish his own style as the Warner Brothers style.

Orry-Kelly reminisced about the first time he dressed Dolores Del Rio, star of films Wonder Bar, Madame du Barry, and In Caliente. “I draped her naked body in jersey. She wanted no underpinnings to spoil the line. When I finished draping her she became a Greek goddess as she walked close to the mirror and said, ‘it is beautiful.’ Gazing into the mirror she said in a half-whisper, ‘Jesus, I am beautiful.'”

Musicals had become a specialty at Warner Brothers ever since they brought in sound movies. The early 1930s was also the era of Busby Berkeley and his big chorus-girl musical numbers. Orry-Kelly worked with Berkeley on such hits as 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933. They would often go out drinking after the day’s work, and one night ended up at “Madam” Lee Francis’ and her girls’ establishment. Lee told him later that he was the sole representative of the designers who became a patron.

 

Orry designed for Ginger Rogers in her small roles in 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933. In his book Orry Kelly states that subsequently it was Irene and then Jean Louis that dressed her. He had mis-remembered this, as Walter Plunkett dressed her at RKO, and then Bernard Newman.

 

 

Orry-Kelly became so busy at Warner Brothers that at one point he no longer painted  the faces for his costume sketches.. And in fact he quit painting the costume sketches at all in favor of just doing pencil sketches.  The otherwise beautiful costume sketch for Helen Vinson above in The Little Giant, co-starring with Edward G. Robinson, has no face. The costume sketch below for Loretta Young is done just in pencil. He designed for 23 movies in 1932 when he started, but in 1933 he did 42.

 

Bebe Daniels was already a big star by the time Orry-Kelly got to Hollywood. One of his first jobs was designing her costumes for Silver Dollar, a period film. His next designs for her was for the big musical, 42nd Street. Although Ruby Keeler stole the show, the best costumes went to Bebe Daniels, including the outfit below. It was worn in an important scene with George Brent.   The fox furs were eliminated, which was indicated at right on this sketch.

 

Orry-Kelly led an active social life with the Hollywood social set and celebrities. He  remembered one of Marion Davies’ costume parties in Malibu, this one with a Spanish theme. Some of the guests included Dolores Del Rio, Carole Lombard, Constance Bennett, Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich, Hedy Lamarr, Eleanor Boardman, and Ann Warner (Jack’s wife), among others.

Ann Dvorak was another beauty at Warner Brothers, whose flame did not last long enough. Orry-Kelly’s fashionable outfit design for Midnight Alibi is shown below.

Although he had been working with Bette Davis for many years, the two temperamental artists could occasionaly get into tifts.  While working on Now Voyager, Bette Davis was in a bad mood for a whole week and wouldn’t look at any of the three gowns Orry-Kelly had prepared for her fittings. This caused him to drink even more than usual and get in a bad mood himself. Finally Bette tried on two of them which she wore in the film. One is shown in the photo below.

 

 

Casablanca is one of the most favorite films of all time. Orry-Kelly designed the women’s wardrobe including Ingrid Bergman’s day dress shown above. The white sleeveless top and skirt with the striped short-sleeved  sailor sweater was a big fashion hit in 1942.

Orry-Kelly claims he designed the costumes for Lauren Bacall’s first movie, To Have and Have Not, which paired her with future husband Humphrey Bogart.  Milo Anderson got the design credit for the film and was likely the designer. This was the role where she said, “You know how to whistle don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.”

After a brief period in uniform during World War II, Orry-Kelly himself got in a tiff with Jane Wyman and one of the producers in one of her films. After that he left Warner Brothers and went to 20th Century-Fox on a non-exclusive contract. Jack Warner told him he would double his money. Bette Davis had wanted him to design her costumes at 20th Century-Fox for Dark Victory – he did for $2000 a week, triple his WB salary.

He also designed films at Universal including those for Shelley Winters, who he couldn’t stand working with. This was during her brief sex-kitten days.  He didn’t renew his contract at Universal. He later had to dress her again for a  Daryl Zanuck production. Although he doesn’t relate this in his book, it’s been told that at one point Shelley Winters refused to come out of her dressing room trailer for a costume fitting. Orry-Kelly got so mad he rocked the trailer back and forth until the terrified Winters ran out.

Orry-Kelly had always wanted to dress Marilyn Monroe. He thought she had always been put in gowns and dresses that were too tight, and should be dressed in bias-cut satins that just draped her figure. When the film Some Like it Hot was announced, he asked Billy Wilder for the costuming job and got it. But Orry-Kelly was surprised when he first saw Marilyn in a meeting. She had gained weight (she was pregnant during part of the filming). He knew he would be dressing her along with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in a scene together where the two men were dressed as women. He selected a matt finish fabric for her skirt and a more shiny fabric for theirs, he told her, so as to make her rear not look as big since the men’s were naturally smaller. At this she took offence and was cold to him the rest of the time.  Tony Curtis gave a different story. He said he and Jack Lemmon were getting measured by Orry-Kelly, just like Marilyn Monroe was. When Marilyn got measured, “He put the tape around her legs, looked up at Marilyn and said, ‘You know Tony Curtis has a better-looking ass than you.’ She was standing there, she unbuttoned her blouse and said, ‘He doesn’t have tits like these.'”

 

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“They threw me off the hay truck about noon.” So opens James M. Cain’s 1934 noir novel of rough sex, murder, double-cross, and the hand of fate. Things were not so sunny in California in 1934. The Depression was in in full force, and grifting was a fallback trade. James M. Cain had already participated in the butchery of World War I and a life as a journalist. He was raised among the Eastern establishment but always had a contrary streak, especially in using the common vernacular of writers Mark Twain and Hemingway. After several failed novels he found his path with a ripped-from-the-headlines story of the husband-murder case of lovers Lee Snyder and Henry Gray. And like fellow crime writer Raymond Chandler, he found the deepest shadows in the bright lights of Southern California. First of his crime novels was The Postman Always Rings Twice, a best-seller. It was followed by Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce. Classic movies were made of all three books, though in reverse order of their publication. The Postman Always Rings Twice took the longest to get to the screen. It was the darkest of the three.

This post is part of the Classic Movie Blog Association Words! Words! Words! Blogathon

 

RKO was the first studio eager to make Postman. Knowing that the sex and the story would cause problems with the censors at the Production Code Administration, production head Merian C. Cooper submitted a synopsis to the PCA in 1934. Their answer was brief: the story was “…definitely unsuitable for motion picture production.” Warner Brothers and Columbia followed suit, but abandoned the idea after getting the same message from the PCA. But then on March 9, 1934 only hours after Columbia had abandoned their plans to move forward on an option; Eddie Mannix bought the rights to make the film at MGM. This despite the PCA’s pleas to MGM to drop any plans of making a movie of the book it considered, “unwholesome and thoroughly objectionable.” MGM shelved it, although it was then made in France in 1939 as, Le Dernier Tournant (The Last Turn). Then after a string of successes at different studios of the Cain stories; Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, MGM revived plans and developed different treatments and scripts and submitted these to the PCA in the 1940s. It took the end of World War II and the rising genre of film noir for the PCA to approve a temporary script in May 1945. From there it would go on the fast track as a star vehicle. This would be no B-film noir.

 

Cain’s novel uses few descriptive passages. Cora is introduced with, “Except for the shape she really wasn’t any raving beauty, but she had a sulky look to her, and her lips stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her.” With book and film, there’s no chemistry in their narrator Frank and Cora’s  encounter at the Twin Oaks Tavern, “a sandwich joint like a million others in California…with a house part…and a filling station…and a half dozen shacks that they called an auto court.” The chemistry soon heated up. In the film this was helped by the near perfect casting of Lana Turner as Cora and John Garfield as the drifter Frank Chambers, the newly hired help. Cecil Kellaway played the witless husband and Twin Oaks owner Nick Smith (Nick Papadakis in the book). Tay Garnett directed.

 

Lana Turner makes her entrance in the movie bare legs first. She’s dressed in white shorts and a white halter top. Janine Basinger describes the scene as “…one of the iconic showstoppers in modern motion picture history.” Although in the first minutes of the scene Garfield as Frank and Turner as Cora play cat and mouse, there’s no doubt in the mind of the audience that sparks are going to fly, and soon.

 

Irene Lentz Gibbons designed the costumes for Lana Turner. Irene designed an almost all-white wardrobe for Lana, wanting to emphasize her sun-tanned California look in her crisp white Twin Oaks uniform. Irene also wanted to help create that heavenly vision of Lana first coming down the staircase. The contrast of her platinum blond hair and white outfits with John Garfield’s darker complexion makes for the perfect film noir atmosphere. As Lana was described in this film, “a black widow in white shorts.” Tay Garnett claimed credit for having Lana dressed in white, along with producer Carey Wilson, stating it helped make her look less sensuous in trying to get past the censors. But in the book Cora starts out from the beginning in a white Twin Oaks uniform. The only exception to her all white wardrobe is one black dress Irene designed.

 

 

A hot affair develops between Frank and Cora, and when the unsuspecting Nick drives to the City to get a new sign for Twin Oaks, Frank and Cora decide to skedaddle. But they are hitchhiking, walking really, and Cora gets cold feet after eating dust for several miles. But she’s had time to think, why leave with nothing? She berates Frank for his satisfaction at being a drifter, “I want to be somebody, “she says. So they go back to Twin Oaks, and after they get back, and she sees Nick driving home drunk, she knew she could be somebody, and have Frank, and Twin Oaks – and all it would take is for Nick to have a deadly accident. And maybe that could be helped along. But this is James M. Cain’s darkest novel. And this is classic film noir, where even the best made plans take ill-fated detours.

Cora: There’s one thing we could do to fix everything for us.

Frank: What? Pray for something to happen to Nick?

Cora: Something like that.

Frank: Cora!

Cora: Well you suggested it yourself once, didn’t you…

Frank: But they hang you for a thing like that.

And accidents did start happening to Nick. Until the last one killed him. Only the accidents happened to Frank and Cora too. Then there was a trial for murder. And then the circumstances had the lovers accusing each other. Courtroom shenanigans and a clever lawyer had Cora and Frank walking free. But the DA is not satisfied. And distrust has set in, and a blackmailer prowls, and another female lurks with her cats – big cats.

 

There is no happy ending in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Even this fact didn’t satisfy the censors in allowing the original story to be filmed until twelve years after it was published. Frank Chambers ended up paying twice for his crime. Although the lines were never meant for this book or this movie, Walter Neff’s statement from Double Indemnity, is apt, “I killed for money. And for a woman. I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman.” The title of The Postman Always Rings Twice the book and the film is allegorical – with the second ring of the postman (as messenger) delivering the fate to Cora and Frank they had escaped with the first ring.

 

 

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Long before there was Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, or Eva Mendez, the 1930s Hollywood silver screen blazed with the talents and hot looks of Latina movie stars Dolores Del Rio, Lupe Velez, and Conchita Montenegro. Dolores Del Rio was in the first ranks of movie stardom in the early to mid 1930s. Her radiant beauty was a magnet for the camera, and she starred in several major movies for Warner Brothers and RKO. Also pictured above is Ramon Navarro, born in Mexico and a lead actor for MGM in the 1920s. He played as Judah Ben Hur in the first Ben Hur, as well as the hero pilot in The Flying Fleet and other films.

Dolores Del Rio starred in the films The Bird of Paradise (1933), Flying Down to Rio (1933), Wonder Bar (1934), Madame du Barry (1934), and In Caliente (1935). She had started her Hollywood career in silent films such as Trail of ’98 and Ramona (both 1928).  In the photo above, Dolores Del Rio models a sequin gown designed by Orry-Kelly. Below is a photo showing the classic beauty of Dolores Del Rio. The “Del” in her name became capitalized in the U.S, although she was born in Durango, Mexico.

Del Rio’s second husband was Cedric Gibbons, MGM’s Art Director. He made the art deco and moderne style of set designs popular in the MGM films of the late 1920s and 1930s. He also designed the famous Oscar statuette for the Academy Awards. After they married in 1930, they lived in this beautiful California moderne style house which he and architect Douglas Honnold designed in the Santa Monica mountains.  Del Rio and Gibbons are pictured below in their living room. The very large windows were innovative at the time. One can imagine the fabulous parties they held there, attended by all of the great Hollywood stars of the era.

 

Another popular Mexican actress in the 1930s was Lupe Velez, shown above.  She had acted in Vaudeville, and started her Hollywood career in silent films. She starred with Douglas Fairbanks  in The Gaucho in 1927, and was in C.B. de Mille’s The Squaw Man in 1931.

In the photo above Lupe Velez models a gown designed by Walter Plunkett for the RKO film, Strictly Dynamite in 1934. The gown is of white crepe with diagonal lines of crystal beads. Lupe Velez and Dolores Del Rio were both early customers of designer Irene Lentz at her first two shops. It was through them that Irene developed a following in the Los Angeles film communitity, a following that soon became a flood. Irene later married Cedric Gibbons’ brother Eliot and thus became the sister-in-law to Dolores Del Rio.

In the photo above Lupe Velez wears an Adrian designed gown for an MGM film. The gown features open Dolman sleeves held with brilliant circle clips along the arms. Lupe Velez reached the height of her popularity in the film series, The Mexican Spitfire,filmed at RKO in the early 1940s.

Conchita Montenegro shown above was a beauty from Spain, a dancer and model who came  to Hollywood with a contract at MGM in 1930. In those days MGM made Spanish language versions of their films and Conchita starred in several of these.  She played a Spanish dancer in Strangers May Kiss, at MGM along with Norma Shearer.  She also starred opposite Leslie Howard in MGM’s Never the Twain Shall Meet in 1931.

Conchita Montenegro left MGM and went to the Fox studio to make movies there. She starred with Warner Baxter in The Cisco Kid in 1931.

The beautiful costume sketch above for Conchita was designed by Dolly Tree. It was probably designed for The Cisco Kid, although Dolly Tree designed costumes both at Fox and at MGM during this period.

The photo above shows Raquel Torres in 1929. Miss Torres had a German father and a Mexican mother. She starred in two films in 1929 including The Bridge of San Luis Rey. She continued to make movies in the early 1930s.

This early flowering of Latina actresses was short-lived. By the late 1930s the importance of the roles offered the stars became less rewarding. Lupe’s Mexican Spitfire movies were popular but stereotypes became common. Both Dolores del Rio and Lupe Velez returned to Mexico to make films, and del Rio became just as big a star in her home country. Lupe Velez died young in 1943. Conchita Montenegro too returned to her native Spain. The movie La Otra, made in Mexico and starring Dolores Del Rio and Victor Junco, was re-made in the U.S. in 1964 as Dead Ringer, starring Bette Davis.

Another generation of Latina actresses came along in the 1940s and 1950s, and then another after that. While roles in film are there, they are always too limited. We are fortunate however, to still have the chance to see the trail-blazing early stars of the silver screen.

An earlier version of this post appeared in my blog the Silver Screen Modiste in 2011

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The 1974 film That’s Entertainment, was a surprise hit for   M-G-M, placing in the top 20  movies of the year and resulting in a sequel in 1976. The movie showed clips of the studio’s library of great musicals, narrated by its former stars.: Fred Astaire; Gene Kelly; Elizabeth Taylor; and Frank Sinatra, among others, and were filmed as they walked through the old standing sets of M-G-M’s back lots 3 through 6. In 1974 these back lot standing sets looked forlorn and worn down. Fred Astaire began the documentary at the train station on lot 2, where years earlier he had sung the first song in Band Wagon. He walked in front of a train wagon that was falling apart. Bing Crosby narrates a visit to the English lake and its Waterloo bridge that he describes as looking “scruffy.” Donald O’Connor introduces the Esther Williams movies by visiting the outdoor pool that had been built just for her films. It was a sad contrast to the glossy Art Deco sets and Technicolor movies that had been filmed there.

The 1970s were not good years for M-G-M. Losses from declining revenues led to a corporate take-over by Kirk Kerkorian in 1969. He had little interest in movie-making, Kerkorian was mostly interested in using the M-G-M name for his hotel development in Las Vegas and other locations. Kerkorian installed James Aubrey as his hatchet man.  A large staff-cut was Aubrey’s first move, with several film projects cancelled. Next was the  famous (or infamous) 1970 M-G-M auction held over eighteen days of the studio’s collection of 12,000 props and rolling stock, even including its paddle steamboat, as well as some 350,000 costumes and “star wardrobe.” The year after That’s Entertainment was made, all of the lots with the standing sets were sold for residential development, thus all traces of them are gone today.

With its patriarch Louis B. Mayer long gone, apparently the only persons that thought the back lots should be preserved for posterity, as a museum  or attraction park, was Debbie Reynolds, and Robert Nudelman of the Hollywood Heritage organization. Debbie had tried to buy them for that purpose (no doubt at an affordable rate) but was unsuccessful. A virtual tour of some of the standing sets through M-G-M’s Golden Age follows.

Above is a view from the old Washington Street entrance, photo taken 1939.

In the classic era M-G-M studio had several lots. Lot number 1 where all the offices and major buildings were located was bordered by Washington Street, Culver Blvd. Overland Avenue, and Madison Blvd. While most of the lot had been taken over by sound stages and various buildings by the 1930s, part of the lot still had exterior standing sets through the 1950s. That lot is now occupied by the Sony Studios. Before M-G-M, it had been the Goldwyn Studio lot, and before that, the Thomas Ince/Mack Sennett Triangle Studio lot starting in 1915.

The photo above shows  a view of the old water tower and the long gone Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios sign.

An M-G-M trolley get set to move along Avenue C on Lot 1.

Lot 1 also had standing sets, these changed over time, some having been there since the days when it was the Thomas Ince studio and then the Goldwyn Studio. The M-G-M standing sets were on the Overland Avenue side of the lot. This area even included a concrete lined “lake” and the waterfront town as can be seen below.

The European town waterfront above could be changed with its storefronts reconfigured and re-painted as-needed for each movie. It extended its length and was known as “Waterfront Street.”

The more wild appearance of the lake or lagoon above was used for jungle-like settings, including for filming parts of Tarzan the Ape Man. Lot 1 also had standing sets replicating haciendas, medieval France, and New York City.

Moving over to Lot 2 across Overland Avenue, the lot was mostly used for standing sets, although various storage facilities were scattered throughout the lot.  The New England town of the Andy Hardy movies was there, and the “Small Town Square”  used in movies as diverse as Raintree County and The Philadelphia Story, not to mention The Twilight Zone episodes, and there was also  the “Grand Central Station.” used in various films.  The “Waterloo Bridge” seen in That’s Entertainment, was also on lot 2, used in its prime for movies like The Divorcee in 1930, The Three Musketeers in 1948, Little Women in 1949, and  Royal Wedding in 1951.

Nearby is “Quality Street,” which was used for a variety of medieval and 18th century European towns.

Quality Street was one of the old standing sets, originally built for Marion Davies’ starring vehicle Quality Street, from 1927, which William Randolph Hearst and his production company Cosmopolitan Pictures produced for her at M-G-M. It was also used for filming the 1948 production of The Three Musketeers.

Quality Street was also redecorated as an English Street for the Jeanette MacDonald film, Smiling Through in 1941, as seen above.

A continent away in architecture and theme but adjacent on the lot was a Chinese set used for The Good Earth in 1937. The castle wall and entry was used and re-used for a variety of films set in different countries and eras. It may have been originally built for the first Ben Hur in 1925.

The mansion-looking set above was used for several movies but looked different for each. In two it was an academic building, having been built, apparently, as a “girl’s school” for Forty Little Mothers in 1940, where the structure had a bell tower. It featured notably in Tea and Sympathy with Deborah Kerr and John Kerr in 1956. The structure as it looks above was used for The Cobweb, where it was a psychiatric clinic. This 1955 movie starred Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, and John Kerr.

The New York Street on Lot 2 was a larger set than a similar set on Lot 1. It had nearly ten acres of sets and could serve for a variety of urban settings.  Many movies were filmed there, starting with Wife vs Secretary in 1936, others including Words and Music, Band Wagon, Singing in the Rain, and many more were also filmed on these sets.

The photo above shows the suspended electrical power lines feeding into the various sets. The framing supports behind the façades can also be  seen.

Down Overland to Lot 3 at Overland and Jefferson. This more remote lot (or so it was in the 1930s and 40s), allowed for some expansive outdoor sets.

One of the most famous “neighborhoods” on Lot 3 was the “St Louis Street,” named for Meet Me in St. Louis starring Judy Garland and directed by Vincent Minnelli. It was built expressly for the latter film at Minnelli’s direction. Minnelli can be seen directing the scene on the boom above at the right bottom.

The outdoor set below is the New England street and set for the Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney. It became known as the “Andy Hardy Street.”

The first permanent Western Town set on Lot 3 was built for the 1939 film Stand Up and Fight, starring Robert Taylor, Wallace Beery, and Charles Bickford. The standing set is amazingly detailed, especially compared to the western sets of the films from the 1970s  in and the spaghetti westerns.

Above is the Adam & Thomas McGara Store set from Stand Up and Fight.

Above is the General Store in the center of the photo with the Drug Store to the left.

The “Bullet Stage Yard” is in the foreground above with a view to Dan Rock’s Restaurant and Saloon.

Dan Rock’s Restaurant & Saloon is seen above with its hitching posts for horses and teams.

The house above was the attorney’s home on the set – note the partial front on the neighboring house, but the carefully built picket fence and shutters.

 

Note all the paraphernalia at the Hardware Store.

A proper town needed its Sheriff, and the town of Cumberland had theirs as seen above.

Luggage is part of the set dressing at the “Bullet Stage Line.”

The teams and wagons are part of the set at the Bullet Yard

The Blacksmith’s shop looks like it’s ready to take on any work

A porch on Cumberland Street opposite the Restaurant & Saloon

The Church is our last stop as we leave the wild west for other locales.

Lot 3 also had another lake and waterfront, seen below in this Port scene from some unknown film.

More familiar is the “Cotton Blossom” from the movie Show Boat, which M-G-M publicist Lionel Ascher visits below.

The photo below shows the concrete storage sheds for storing M-G-M nitrate film cans, circa 1936.  Later, M-G-M had an electrical fire in 1967, destroying most of the studio’s cartoons, silent films, and films from the earlier Metro, Goldwyn, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures.

 

A fly-over Lot 1 shows the classic era M-G-M and the standing sets that existed, with the Thalberg Building at the bottom left.

 

From silent film, filming location historian John Bengston, this link  shows where Buster Keaton had his special dressing room on the lot: Keaton’s Kennel

His three books on the Hollywood and Los Angeles area filming locations for Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd films are fabulous.

The corporate history of MGM post-1974 is its own story, but it separated the classic film library and the studio lot from the name. Similar fates had befallen RKO and Columbia. The three-week long auction of the props and costumes is its own fascinating, if sad story, a subject for another post. The destruction of the many standing sets and the sale of the lots was a tragedy to classic movie fans.

For a thorough history of the M-G-M back lots, please read Steven Bingen’s, Stephen Sylvester’s, and Michael Troyan’s M-G-M: Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot published in 2011 by Santa Monica Press.

 

 

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