The athletic RICHARD ARLEN who had been
a pilot and a swimming coach prior to his movie career, was right at home
in the water. Best known for his role in Wings, the 1927 World War
I epic which won the first Academy Award for Best Picture, Arlen remained
popular throughout the thirties, playing the durable hero in countless
"B" adventure movies with titles such as Helldorado (1935),
Mutiny on the Blackhawk (1939) and Legion of Lost Flyers
(1939).
JOAN CRAWFORD and CLARK GABLE posed in a pool in a scene
from Chained (1934), one of many films in which the two were paired.
Crawford said of their collaborations: "Everything we did made money.
Occasionally we even made a good picture." When her marriage to Douglas
Fairbanks, Jr., was clearly failing, she and Gable, who was married at
the time to Ria Langham, became "close friends," as Crawford
called it. She later recalled, "Perhaps twice a week we lunched together.
Occasionally we'd break away early, go for a quiet ride along the sea.
And all day we'd seek each other's eyes. It was glorious and hopeless." |
GEORGE E. STONE, top left, MAE CLARKE, third
from left, and friends too in the Palm Springs sun at the El Mirador Hotel
pool in 1933. Stone appeared in more than two hundred films, usually playing
gangster types. Mae Clarke will be remembered as the face on the receiving
end of James Cagney's grapefruit in the film The Public Enemy (1931).
But a grapefruit was nothing compared to the screen abuse she suffered
in a slew of gangster films. Nobody was slapped, kicked, shoved, knocked
down and dragged as many times as Clarke. |
