Friday, May 04, 2018

Blind Item #8 - Old Hollywood

This permanent A list mostly movie actor who was a multiple Oscar nominee/winner also had his own production company back in the day. That in of itself was kind of unusual during the studio system. The actor made a movie about the gossip industry. A movie that you should watch if you haven't. Anyway, there was a messed up relationship on screen and the actor told the actress involved in that relationship on screen that they needed to consummate their relationship to make it even more real. The actress refused so the married actor raped her and told her the look on her face after is what he wanted for the entire movie. She barely worked again after the movie and was out of acting within a couple years.

39 comments:

Unknown said...

Kirk Douglas

tall, dark, and handsome said...

Burt Lancaster and Susan Harrison
The Sweet Smell of Success

Tricia13 said...

Humphrey Bogart/Santana Productions

Unknown said...

Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner

Leanne Norman said...

Orson Wells - The magnificent Ambersons

MichiganMama59 said...

Kirk Douglas and someone. I was thinking Ace in the Hole for the movie . . .

Roger Moore said...

Kirk fits best as the correct guess, as it's the only way Enty's "unusual" statement about personal production companies (only big older stars had them in the '50s, Drew Barrymore had one by the '90s) works. Not that I think he's that careful with his wording.

Brayson87 said...

+1 Tall dark

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Smell_of_Success

pkelly491 said...

+1 on Tall, Dark. I believe this is Burt Lancaster/Sweet Smell of Success.

plot said...

Yep, Ace in the Hole.

Not a very subtle or interesting movie though. The Billy Wilder cynicism sort of blew it in that one and Kirk chews the scenery for all he's worth..it becomes embarrassing after a while.

Face in the Crowd and Elmer Gantry are better movies in this vein.

Roger Moore said...

Kirk/Burt I meant to say. Both had prod shingles, both had gossip films.

Brayson87 said...

"Hecht-Hill-Lancaster was a production company formed by the actor Burt Lancaster in association with his agent, Harold Hecht, and James Hill. In 1948 Lancaster and Hecht formed Norma Productions, which later became Hecht-Lancaster. Hill joined in the mid-1950s. The company produced some of the most notable American films of the 1950s."

Unknown said...

tall dark and handsome has got it. 100% this is Burt Lancaster. Sweet smell of success, Lancaster ran his own production company at the time and the movie was released by United Artists, which was a film studio designed to break the studio system. The actress is Susan Harrison who retired from acting in the early sixties.

VDOVault said...

This sounds much more like Kirk Douglas who is not at all shy about just how many women he's 'slept with'.

Now you have to wonder just how much of that was consensual? Maybe not nearly as much as we had been led to believe.

New Degas said...

Burt Lancaster. He's crazy but I love him. Just saw "The Swimmer" Highly recommend.

Matt said...

@talldarkandhandsome for the win. "Sweet Smell" is awesome.

Unknown said...

Def Burt Lancaster and Susan.

Vanity Fair article shows how he was towards women and others...

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2010/04/movie-marked-danger-200004

Brayson87 said...

The messed up relationship in the film, quasi-incestual like on Archer:

"Sweet Smell of Success as the sister for whom Burt Lancaster has an unhealthy affection"

D Brown said...

Not Ace In The Hole. Jan Sterling worked non-stop for two decades after that film.

Martin said...

LAAAAAANAAA!

gauloise said...

Ace in the hole is about News reporting, not gossip

Brayson87 said...

+1 Martin lol

Don Kieballs said...

"Ace in the hole is about News reporting, not gossip"

Correct, as it was pre-now. But what's the difference these days?

Do Tell said...

Orson Welles, Citizen Kane?

FrenchGirl said...

Was Lancaster not gay?

plot said...

Wilder's intent in Ace in the Hole was to show how news and entertainment reporting mingle into a constant need for attention by media to horrible results for the players in the actual story.

It was prescient, in that Wilder way, but not a very good movie.

@Teachermom

Thanks for the link! Looking like Lancaster after all.

plot said...

@FrenchGirl

Probably omnisexual, from past stories.

A-pathetic said...

It's Clark Gable and Loretta young - Judy Lewis was the result.

A-pathetic said...

Actually it's well known that he date raped Loretta Young so this is probably wrong.

Mad Hominem said...

As much as I love Sweet Smell of Success, this is looking a lot like Burt Lancaster, which is a shock to me; the only gossip I'd heard about Burt is that he used to holiday in Mexico to look for underage boys to screw.

But yeah, that actress Susan Harrison has an awfully short bio. Her last acting credit is from 1963.

MyTwoCents said...

Trivial side note: Susan Harrison is mother of Darva Conger, the “winner” of the game show “Who Wants to Marry a Mulit-Millionaire?”!

B626 said...

The Bad & the Beautiful was about Hollywood

Unknown said...

Most of these sociopath rapers are so perved out they have sex with anything. Truly deranged people

luckythewondercat said...

@Teachermom Thanks so much for the link to the article. It was fascinating.

Unknown said...

Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider in the Last Tango in Paris.

Large Marge said...

Totes Burt Lancaster in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. Movie is creepy AF. Hope he is in #RapistHell

MichelleJ817 said...

I think you got it. The movie The Bad and the Beautiful for the movie

Lynn Tarot said...

I agree with those who say Burt Lancaster & Susan Harrison SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
From wiki:
"She is most famous for her appearance in the 1957 film noir classic Sweet Smell of Success as the sister for whom Burt Lancaster has an unhealthy affection"

She barely worked after that film.

Lynn Tarot said...

Also Lancaster had his own production company.

Wiki: "During the 1950s, his production company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster was highly successful, making films such as Trapeze (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), and Separate Tables (1958)."

And Harrison: Retirement from acting[edit]
By 1963 [Harrison] had left public life and acting and devoted herself to family matters, though in the 1990s she played Elberta in a Jackson County Stage Company (Carbondale, Illinois) production of Mixed Couples. She has since appeared at various film and science fiction conventions.

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