The Scarlet Empress | Josef von Sternberg's expressionist art design

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The Scarlet Empress is a 1934 historical drama film made by Paramount Pictures about the life of Catherine the Great. It was directed and produced by Josef von Sternberg, with Emanuel Cohen as executive producer, from a screenplay by Eleanor McGeary, based on the diary of Catherine arranged by Manuel Komroff.


Marlene Dietrich as Catherine, with John Davis Lodge, Sam Jaffe (in his film debut), Louise Dresser, and C. Aubrey Smith. Dietrich's daughter Maria Riva plays Catherine as a child. This is the very last mainstream motion picture to be released before the Hays Code was strictly enforced. ( Hence the sexual overtones in the symbols)


The film is notable for its expressionist art design von Sternberg creates for the Russian palace. In film critic Robin Wood's words:

Rooted in both Expressionism and Surrealism, The Scarlet Empress is essentially “modernist,” far removed from even Hollywood’s notions of realism. Though von Sternberg insisted that the Imperial Palace set was historically authentic, he used it to create and sustain a hyperrealist atmosphere of nightmare with its gargoyles, its grotesque figures twisted into agonized contortions, its enormous doors that require a half-dozen women to close or open, its dark spaces and ominous shadows created by the flickerings of innumerable candles, its skeleton presiding over the royal wedding banquet table. And here, the sense of entrapment that connects most of the director’s personal work reaches its extreme of oppressiveness.

Josef von Sternberg  was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.

Examples:

Dietrich's daughter Maria Riva plays Catherine as a child.

You can see the director's sense of art expressed by the Von Sternberg House which he had designed by the architect Richard Neutra a philosopher of Modernism in architecture. It was a single bedroom (servant bedrooms excluded) mini-mansion built in 1935 in Northridge, California, in the then-rural San Fernando Valley. It was demolished in 1972 to make way for a housing development.

SOURCES:
http://darkmattr.blogspot.com/

http://filmsufi.blogspot.com/

http://decadenthandbook.wordpress.com/

http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2006summer/20s.html

http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/scarlet_empress.html

Too Many Husbands & Wives Plots for Screwball Comedy

Too Many Husbands (released in the United Kingdom as My Two Husbands) is a 1940 romantic comedy film about a woman who loses her husband (Cardew) in a boating accident and remarries, only to have her first spouse reappear. The film starred Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas. It is based on the 1919 play "Home and Beauty" by W. Somerset Maugham


My Favorite Wife (released in the U.K. as My Favourite Wife) is a film released less than two months later with a similar plot, but with the sexes reversed, with Cary Grant losing his first wife, Irene Dunne, in a boating accident and remarrying after seven years, only to find his first wife re-appear just as he's getting ready for his honeymoon night. It was produced and co-written by Leo McCarey and directed by Garson Kanin. The story is an adaptation of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "Enoch Arden"; in tribute, the main characters' last name is Arden. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards for Best Story, Best Score and Best Art Direction by Van Nest Polglase and Mark-Lee Kirk.


20th Century Fox began filming a 1962 remake of My Favorite Wife starring Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, and Cyd Charisse under the working title of Something's Got to Give, which was to be directed by George Cukor.
It was Monroe's last work; from the beginning its production was disrupted by her personal troubles. Marilyn Monroe was fired for seldom showing up for shooting early in its production cycle, appearing in only about 30 minutes of usable film. 

Unable to complete the movie, and having already sunk a considerable amount of money into the production and sets, 20th Century Fox went ahead with the project, under a new title, new director, and recast stars. At first, they tried to continue with Lee Remick in Monroe's place, but Martin balked at working with anyone else and that version was never completed. Monroe was re-hired but died before she could resume filming. Doris Day and James Garner were eventually cast in the roles originated by Irene Dunne and Cary Grant in My Favorite Wife. Chuck Connors played the Randolph Scott role, replacing Tom Tryon, who'd been cast in the Monroe version. Following Monroe's death in August 1962, the new version was released by Fox as Move Over, Darling (1963).


In a scene from Move Over, Darling, the movie that Ellen ( Doris Day ) describes to Bianca while giving her a massage is My Favorite Wife.


Nine hours of largely unseen footage from the film remained in the vaults at 20th Century Fox until 1999, when it was digitally restored by Prometheus Entertainment and assembled into a 37-minute segment for the two-hour documentary, Marilyn: The Final Days. It first aired on American Movie Classics on June 1, 2001, which would have been Monroe's 75th birthday. It is available on DVD.


The Tom Hanks film Cast Away has a plot similarity: the lead character is marooned on an island for several years; on his return he finds that his girlfriend has given him up for dead and has married someone else.

The Shop Around the Corner Inspires 2 Movie Remakes

 The Shop Around the Corner is a 1940 American romantic comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. This film was ranked #28 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions. In 1999, The Shop Around the Corner was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Set in and around a Budapest store, co-workers Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) and Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) hold an intense dislike for each other, while maintaining a secret letter-writing relationship, neither realizing who their pen-pal is.

The film spawned a 1949 musical remake, In the Good Old Summertime, which starred Judy Garland and Van Johnson in the title roles.

The plot element of two people who detest each other while having a romance by anonymous mail is used in the film You've Got Mail (1998) with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, in which one of the protagonists owns a bookstore named "The Shop Around The Corner."

Charles Laughton & Elsa Lanchester Couple in Marriage and on Film

Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester

Elsa Lanchester met the actor Charles Laughton in 1927, and they were married two years later. Laughton's success in American films resulted in the couple moving to Hollywood, where Lanchester played small film roles. They appeared together in several films, including Rembrandt (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Big Clock(1948). She wittily portrayed Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, as a dumb-as-a-fox gamine opposite Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII. They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in Witness for the Prosecution (1957)—Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won.

In 1950, the couple became American citizens.

The Private Life of Henry VIII

Rembrandt

Witness for the Prosecution

Lucille Ball Queen of the Bs

Lucille Ball attended the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City with fellow actress Bette Davis. Ball went home a few weeks later when drama coaches told her that she "had no future at all as a performer." Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1929, where she landed work as a model and later began her performing career on Broadway using the stage name Dianne Belmont. She had some success as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. After an uncredited stint as one of the Goldwyn Girls in Roman Scandals (1933) she permanently moved to Hollywood to appear in films. 




She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures. She was known in many Hollywood circles as "Queen of the B's"—a title previously held by Fay Wray—starring in a number of B-movies, such as 1939's Five Came Back. Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in those films.

She appeared as Daisie Simms in a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers (Room Service, 1938). According to IMDb she appears as an uncredited "girl" at least twenty times in early 1930 films.

She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Roberta (1935) and briefly as the flower girl in Top Hat (1935), as well as a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet (1936), another Astaire-Rogers film.

 Ginger Rogers was a distant maternal cousin of Ball's. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film Stage Door (1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn.

Goldwyn Girls

Early Goldwyn Girls

The Goldwyn Girls were a musical stock company of female dancers employed by Samuel Goldwyn. 

Famous actresses whose career included a stint in the Goldwyn Girls include Lucille Ball, Paulette Goddard, Betty Grable, Ann Sothern, Jane Wyman, Virginia Bruce,Virginia Grey, Mary Meade, and Virginia Mayo.

Paulette Goddard

Lucille Ball

Jane Wyman

IMDb lists of actresses who were at one point in their careers Goldwyn Girls: Betty Alexander,Jean Allen, Gale Amber, Gloria Anderson, Loretta Andrews, Mary Ashcraft, Consuelo Baker, Lucille Ball, Shirley Ballard, Bonnie Bannon, Joan Barclay, Betty Bassett, Amelia Batchelor, Virginia Belmont, Irene Bentley, Lynne Berkeley, Deannie Best, Dudone Blumier, Karin Booth, Barbara Brent, Mary Brewer, Lynn Browning, Virginia Bruce, Jan Bryant, Ruth Caldwell, Edna Callahan, Maxine Cantway, Mary Jane Carey, Betty Cargyle,Alma Carroll, Joyzelle Cartier, Lynne Carver, Sue Casey, Joan Chaffee, Shirley Chambers,Linda Christian, Mary Coyle, Hazel Craven, Jean Cronin, Virginia Cruzon, Helen Darling,Jann Darlyn, Madelyn Darrow, Doris Davenport, Loretta Daye, Lorraine DeRome, Marjorie Deanne, Myrna Dell, Gloria Delson, Mary Lou Dix, Claire Dodd, Nadine Dore, Betty Douglas, Dorothy Dugan, Ruth Eddings, Jinx Falkenburg, Patsy Farnum, Helen Ferguson,Muriel Finley, Phyllis Forbes, Judith Ford, Karen X. Gaylord, Inna Gest, Mary Ellen Gleason, Paulette Goddard, Renee Godfrey, Gail Goodson, Betty Grable, Anne Graham,Jeanne Gray, Virginia Grey, Mary Gwynne, Ruth Hale, Ellen Hall, Donna Hamilton, Jane Hamilton, Carol Haney, Patricia Harper, June Harris, Eloise Hart, Althea Henley, Betty-Joy Howard, Jean Howard, Kay Hughes, Eleanor Huntley, Mary Ann Hyde, Amo Ingraham,Janice Jarratt, Elaine Johnson, Jackie Jordan, Vivian Keefer, Jane Keithley, Helen Kimball, June Kirby, Dorothy Knapp, Margaret La Marr, Adele Lacy, June Lang, Georgia Lange, Mary Lange, Rosalyn Lee, Jean Lenivich, Georgia Lerch, Vonne Lester, Caryl Lincoln, Shirley Lloyd, Bernice Lorimer, Betty Lorraine, Florence Lundeen, Neva Lynn, Nancy Lyon, Joyce Mackenzie, Mae Madison, Mickey Malloy, Christine Maple, Vivian Mathison, Michael Mauree, Virginia Mayo, Mary Meade, Dorothy Merritt, Lorraine Miller, Lillian Molieri, Martha Montgomery, Ruth Moody, Mary Moore, Jean Morgan, Kay Morley, Diana Mumby, Nancy Nash, Lee Nugent, Dorothy Patrick, Patricia Patrick, Shelby Payne, Barbara Pepper,Wanda Perry, Faye Pierre, Nita Pike, Edith Roarke, Donna Mae Roberts, Charlotte Russell, Marion Sayers, Gail Sheridan, Mary Simpson,Betty Slocum, Hyca Slocum, Ann Sothern, Kismi Stefan, Margie Stewart, Betty Stockton, Marcia Sweet, Helen Talbot, Anya Taranda, Evelyn Terry, Larri Thomas, Virginia Thorpe, Betty Thurston, Ruth Valmy, Ricki Van Dusen, Vicki Vann, Tyra Vaughn, Irene Vernon, Blanca Vischer,Lynn Walker, Alice Wallace, Sandra Warner, Sonia Warner, Dorothy Coonan Wellman, Renee Whitney, Virginia Wicks, Chili Williams, Toby Wing, Diana Winslow, Hazel Witter, Helen Wood, Mary Jane Woods, Jane Wyman, Audrey Young, Gloria Youngblood.