Maria Alba, underrated, and almost unknown in her own country.

It has been said in some media that she was born in Brazil, but the fact is that we are talking about a Spanish actress born in Barcelona in 1910 (probably five years prior to this mentioned date) where her real name was Maria del Pilar Margarita Casajuana Martinez, who died in San Diego, CA, in 1999 of Alzheimer and who made movies with Fairbanks, Bela Lugosi, and so many others.

A young typewriter, trying without success to start a movie career in Barcelona, in 1926 she is selected as the most photogenic lady according to Fox and a Spanish newspaper. This leads her to Hollywood, where she signs a contract with Fox Film Corporation for one year.

She married David Todd in 1931 but six years later the marriage would dissolve. Maria left the Hollywood screen in 1935 with Great God Gold and her career in a complete way in 1946. Then in 1950 she married Richard J. Burk. They had three children. It would be so great to have more information about her, and her legacy. Did she travel sometimes back to Spain? Until then, here is the list of movies according to IMDB she played in:

1946 La morena de mi copla 

1946 El hijo de nadie 

1935 Great God Gold
Elena Nitto

1934 West of the Pecos
Dolores

1934 Flirting with Danger
Rosita

1934/I The Return of Chandu
Nadji - Princess of Egypt

1933 Kiss of Araby
Dolores Mendez

1932 Hypnotized
Princess Mitzi

1932 Mr. Robinson Crusoe
Saturday

1932 Almost Married
Mariette (uncredited)

1931 La ley del harem
Fatima

1931 Goldie
Dolores

1931 Just a Gigolo
A French Wife

1931 Su última noche
Elena Desano

1931 Camino del infierno
Angela

1931 El código penal
Mary Brady

1930 Los que danzan
Norma Brady

1930 Olimpia
Princess Olimpia

1930 La fuerza del querer
Shirley

1930 El cuerpo del delito
Señorita Delroy

1930 Charros, gauchos y manolas
Spanish artist

1929 Hell's Heroes
Carmelita

1929 Joy Street
Agnes

1928 Blindfold
Pepita

1928 Road House
Spanish Marla

1928 A Girl in Every Port
Chiquita (as Maria Casajuana)

1927 Her Blue, Black Eyes (short)

Other Maria Alba photos


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The Return of Shandu (1934) Bela Lugosi and Maria Alba

Beautiful Kim Novak

These days I am feeling that I want to watch more movies featuring Kim Novak. Essentially I will say that after years it is now that I realize this great actress potential, not because I did not find her good before, but simply because for some reason when I was a teen I saw the movie Picnic and I did not like it. I found there a Kim Novak that seemed more like Marilyn Monroe style, as if she was just a bombshell and nothing else. Due to my young age perhaps I did not understand well the plot, so I felt kind of disappointed that an actress could become just an object, after all I had read about MM. Also, I remember she was considered the new Marilyn Monroe, just as Sharon Stone was named in magazines as the new Kim Novak. It is sad that an actress with great potential is just being manipulated by the studio and then the characters she plays become less and less interesting (especially to her) until she feels cheated and decides to leave the scene. With Kim Novak I have had a discovery since three or four years and every time I see her acting I feel how great actress she is. In Hitchcock's Vertigo, for example, it is not easy to show a cold nature that hides a passionate one, and that is what I saw in one of the great Hitch movies. The blond is perfect, I have to say better than others in the same style. He chose right. Then I saw her in this great movie too, Middle of the Night, opposing  an aged Fredric March, and it was there that I said to myself  "that is not just beauty, but feeling". She portrays a young girl who falls in love with an older man and all the goods and bads that come out in this relationship. Then The Man with the Golden Arm with Sinatra but I loved her so much in The Eddy  Duchin story. She is memorable and adorable in this movie with the great handsome Tyrone Power. They both were so well in the movie, and then I remembered those magazines when I was a teen where Kim Novak stated that she was tired of Hollywood, that she had gone (if my memory is good now) into depression and that she was living far away in a farm with lots of animals, and happy life, in harmony with nature. I saw her with middle cut hair, smiling and still a shade of sadness in her eyes. I said to myself "it is so sad that actors and actresses have to accept terrible things while they are being at the same time great stars and we do not know anything about what they have to go through in order to stay in Hollywoodland." Recently, after all these years, i am discovering the great Kim Novak, and sure she has a lot of spirit and sensitiveness, not just an actress who would step on another one just to have a role. Through movies I don't see her that way, how she expresses her emotions as an actress lets see also what is behind this, which I find beautiful, for when it happens, it has to do with sensitiveness and I am certain she has a lot of it.

As time goes by and actresses (and actors too) who have been so famous because of their looks or that they left an imprint regarding fashion, style, etc, they tend to feel that the public should see the same face and they battle against time. I just feel that Kim Novak has more desires than to appear to the public "the same way she was", but one thing is for sure, she also has killed a few chains and has since years decided to live and work for what comes from art, like painting, or writing, or even making nice handcrafting. In some way she inspires me to do the same, as I now have a house to keep and to beautify. Kim Novak is not just an icon of beauty, but a great actress that left the scene because she was strong enough to do it when the time was right for her.

I miss some actors and actresses that left the scene and who did not play during their other years that come with maturity. Bette Davis appeared wrinkled playing great and less great movies but still she is a great actress that I cherish. But that is their decision, only we cannot enjoy these actors and actresses full potential, sadly.

My tribute to Kim Novak comes from nowhere and just because. Thanks for the movies and for your decisions, and for being honest to yourself. I don't even know if she wrote her biography, maybe she did, but if not, then live the present tense.

Middle of the Night, Kim Novak and Fredric March, 1959

Natalie Wood

A beautiful face that cannot fade away

Susannah York 1939–2011

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Just Because

River Phoenix (1970–1993)

 

Claudette Colbert (1903–1996)

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VIA

Myrna Loy in colours

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Bebe Daniels

Bebe Daniels, originally uploaded by TiptopSteve.

Geraldine Chaplin

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Marcella Albani

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My Reputation, a classic movie with some erotic hints

Didn't I say yet that I like George Brent? Oh did I… And can never get rid of this actor. Although he never played as the main character, his presence and well acting was brilliant in most cases. I could speak for hours about the lovely feelings he transmits me through the screen but here I will speak about a scene that startled me, because by the time it was on Spanish cinemas, Franco’s film code would not have allowed this movie to be screened. Yet it was. The plot itself is a song for a woman’s freedom, when a woman of those times in Spain should Never think like she does, or go against all odds. And then.. while some scenes where the characters kiss were banned and cut, here we see the original film as it was showed back in 1946-47 in Spanish Theaters, a scene that is more than a kiss, to me is like a hundred kisses, yet it’s not explicit. But it has even more mystery and expression and Was Not Cut. So, normally, today this could sound silly, but to the vintage lovers, we know that this “means something”, like those pre-code movies, so different from the 1940s films. And yet, here, a film made in the 40s shows an erotic scene, very subtle, very funny and that I wanted to share here.
Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent made more than two movies together. My reputation was directed by Curtis Bernhardt. The dialogs are great and as I said, it is rare that this movie was showed back in those times.

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Lily Damita

 

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Throroughly Modern Millie

Thoroughly Modern Millie From the Original Motion Picture "Thoroughly Modern Millie" (1967) directed by George Roy Hill and starring Julie Andrews, James Fox, Mary Tyler Moore, John Gavin, Carol Channing and Beatrice Lillie.

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The Rich Are Always With Us (1932)

When I first got this movie, I didn't watch it right away, thinking
that, most probably it was a light comedy drama movie, but the actors interested me, especially George Brent and Bette Davis. Knowing that, in this movie, starring Ruth Chatterton, who was married with George Brent at that time, was happened to be the movie where Bette Davis and George Brent fell in love, appealed to me. Later on Chatterton and Brent would divorce but Brent and Davis never married although they kept a relationship for quite long.

But when I saw this movie I realized what a great actress Ruth
Chatterton was. And for a time when actors and actresses would say their line the best right and straight forwarded way,

Ruth Chatterton speaks in such natural way, at times repeating one or two words in a sentence, as if there was no camera at all. Something that nowadays actors do, at times not so naturally.

  Bette Davis still not being "caught" by the clever camera, appears very glamorous, beautiful and determined, but her eyes, alas, the camera doesn't really focus the moment she is sitting on a couch and looking
to the right, slowly... what would made her later on "Bette Davis' eyes". Anyhow she is so wonderful here that Davis fans will really love her play. The romantic scenes are very well filmed, Bette and Brent have  some hilarious moments, Ruth and Brent very charming and romantic, and because everything seems so naturally sophisticated, Brent kisses and embraces in a great gentleman's style. What he was in real life.

 

This movie's plot is very simple, but it is very well portrayed and love has a great importance as a meaning, like in so many classic movies. Only that in this one, love goes beyond "you and me"…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Precognition and Death

IN THE morning of December 16, 1897, Frederick Lane, an
actor in William Terriss's company, entered the Adelphi
Theatre, London, to take part in a rehearsal.

Before arriving at the dressing rooms he encountered Miss
Olive Haygate, also a member of the company, and they ex-
changed greetings.

"There will be no performance to-night! " declared Lane
jovially, and went on to explain that a few hours earlier he had
dreamed that he saw Mr. Terriss lying on the stairs leading
to the dressing rooms. His chest was bare and his clothing torn
aside, so that Lane thought he must be in some kind of fit.
Various people belonging to the theatre were standing by, and
doing their best for him. Immediately afterwards Lane
dreamed that the theatre would not open that night.

He did not take his dream in the least bit seriously. Rather
did he regard it as a waggish story about the chief, and on
entering the dressing rooms he repeated it in this spirit to
several men members of the caste.

In the evening of the same day, as William Terriss reached
the private entrance of the theatre in Maiden Lane, and was
putting his key in the lock, a man who for some time had been
lurking about the lane, rushed forward, and, with a long thin-
bladed knife, stabbed the unfortunate actor in the region of
the heart and again in the back.

Lane, who was himself on his way to the theatre about this
time, heard the outcry resulting from the outrage, and learn-
ing what had happened, rushed for a doctor. When he got
back to the theatre he saw Terriss lying in the place where he
had seen him in the dream. In the interval the wounded man
had been carried inside the theatre, but it had been found im-
possible to take him further than the foot of the stairs leading
to the dressing room, and there in less than twenty minutes he
died. Terriss's clothing was open as Lane had seen it in the
dream, and the same people were standing round and tend-
ing him. There was no performance at the theatre that night.

At the request of the Society for Psychical Research, Miss
Haygate, H. Carter Bligh, and S. Creagh Henry, members of
the caste, wrote out signed statements confirming that Lane
had told the dream to them in detail in the morning, when
neither he nor anyone else attached any serious importance to
it. These statements, with that of Lane himself, are included
in a full report of the case published in the Society 's Proceed-
ings, vol. xiv, 1898-9. 1

Telepathy from the murderer (who, by the way, was found
to be insane) , would not account for this dream, because the
deed was committedwhere the murderer obviously intended
to commit it outside the theatre, and he could not know that
his victim, on being carried inside, would have to be left at the
foot of the stairs.

The case well illustrates that it is the coming experience of
the percipient himself that is precognised, and not the event.
Lane did not foresee the crime. He dreamed a picture ("I saw
it like a tableau") of the scene at the foot of the stairs as it
would be presented to him, individually, in the future. His
dream did not even tell him that Terriss was wounded, let
alone that he would die. So far as the demonstration of Pre-

cognition is concerned Lane's dream could as well have re-
lated to some trivial matter, but then it would never have been
recorded, and even the dreamer himself might not have re-
membered his experience for long.

The too-ready assumption in all ages that experiences un-
der the head of Precognition must be intended as "warnings"
ol what is to come has prevented a detached judgment of
them. The records of mankind teem with legends and anec-
dotes of solemn premonitions given to kings and to every
grade of their subjects. These prophecies or premonitions
generally portended death or some great calamity.

France Olive Haygate, one of the witnesses of Lane’s dream account.

Taken from:

SECOND SIGHT IN DAILY LIFE 

By W. H. W. SABINE, 1951

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Yvonne de Carlo

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Vintage Hollywood Flashback: The Golden Globes in the '50s, '60s & '70s!

 

Eddie Fisher, Liz Taylor , Mike Todd

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Angelical Face: Anna Karina

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Mary Pickford

Flickr

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Natalie

I have seen many photos featuring Nathalie Wood. This one is of my most favorites.