Timmy Weekend Update
#1 Think water when you are thinking of Noah's Ark.
#2 Timmy is NOT
George Noisom
Robert Moore
#3 Shimmy is NOT
Marie Dressler
Friday, September 14, 2007
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Re: Margaret Rutherford and the "never-married A=lister" -- Rutherford co-starred with several actors who were bisexual or gay, such as Michael Redgrave, Laurence Olivier, and Danny Kaye. However, all those guys were married, so they don't fit the "never married" clue.
How about Noel Coward as the never-married A-lister? To my knowledge, Rutherford never acted with him, but she did star in the film adapation of his play, Blither Spirit. Coward wrote the screenplay for that film and was the narrator as well. I don't know if Rutherford did any theater work, but if she did the two could have met there.
Coward fits, because he never married and was tres gay. In fact, the only (slight) problem I have with him fitting the clue is that, while he never came out publicly, he wasn't exactly closeted, either. He was out to all his friends and his public persona was flamboyant (anyone ever hear his rendition of his song, "Mad About the Boy"?).
Anyway, FWIW.
Cherrie, I think more than ten people would have heard the real voice of Alice Brady, and that's the problem I have with the 'there were two of them' theory, versus Timmy just created a female version of himself. I know I'm being closed minded about that, but I just can't get my head around it.
I have as many problems with Margaret Rutherford, but I do think that it's possible Timmy was from England in the first place, tried to make it in Hollywood and had to return to England to reinvent himself as an actress, then work his way back up the ladder to an Oscar win. His political cousin could have been one of the ten who were in on it.
What I'm saying is I have real problems with both of them and fear that we're going to find out it's neither one because we've been misinterpreting a clue and EL isn't straightening us out. I'm still hanging onto Kay Kendall crying, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"
By the way, I wasn't being anti-American in my last post, I don't think many British actors can do American accents convincingly either. :P
Just a thought maybe the Noah's Arc clue was a clue to the A-list Actor and not to Shimmy.
Rain
Flood
40 days and 40 nights
Cherrie, I think more non-Americans do a better job with an American accent than the other way around. Look at faux English Madonna....lol.
Here's a new angle for you. I know other people have mentioned Carole Lombard, so I will now state a case for her, although it may be a bit of a stretch!
According to her bio on IMDb, "Carole Lombard [Timmy/Shimmy]was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana [northeast], on October 6, 1908 [most likely gave a real person's info. that perhaps had died...maybe a sister?]. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the neighborhood boys by a film director, Carole [Timmy] was signed to a one-picture contract in 1921 when she [he] was 12, and the director may have mistaken Timmy for a girl, because of his pale features]. Although she [he] tried for other acting jobs, she [he] would not be seen onscreen again for four years [but perhaps on stage or in uncredited singing/acting roles]. She[he]returned to a normal life, going to school and participating in athletics, excelling in track and field. By age 15 she [he] had had enough of school, though, and quit [this is probably made up, as he would most likely have been acting on stage as Timmy]. She [he] joined a theater troupe and played in several stage shows [this may be where he assumed the role of the lead actress], which were for the MOST part nothing to write home about.
In 1925 she [the new Shimmy] passed a screen test and was signed to a contract with Fox Films. Her first role as a Fox player was Hearts and Spurs (1925), in which she had the lead. Right after that film she appeared in a western called Durand of the Bad Lands (1925). She rounded out 1925 in the comedy Marriage in Transit (1925) (she also appeared in a number of two-reel shorts). In 1926 Carole was seriously injured in an automobile accident that resulted in the left side of her face being scarred (THE SCAR!). Once she had recovered, Fox canceled her contract. She did find work in a number of shorts during 1928 (13 of them, many for slapstick comedy ["he could capture an audience"], but did go back for a one-time shot with Fox called Me, Gangster (1928). By now the film industry was moving from the silent era to "talkies". While some stars' careers ended because of heavy accents, poor diction or a voice unsuitable to sound, Carole's light, breezy, sexy voice enabled her to transition smoothly during this period. Her first sound film was High Voltage (1929) at Pathe (her new studio) in 1929. In 1931 she was teamed with William Powell [gay/bi] in Man of the World (1931). She and Powell hit it off and soon married, but the marriage didn't work out and they divorced in 1933. No Man of Her Own (1932) put Carole opposite Clark Gable [gay/bi?] for the first and only time (they married seven years later in 1939)[so, between 1933-1939 she was single and would have had time to have an affair with Cesar Romero (Love Before Breakfast-1936, but right before her award winning role). By now she was with Paramount Pictures and was one of its top stars. However, it was Twentieth Century (1934) that showed her true comedic talents [again, "What Timmy had going for him was a personality that wouldn't quit and a way of capturing an audience whether one person, five hundred or through film that was unlike anything most people had seen previously"...especially from a woman!]and proved to the world what a fine actress she really was. In 1936 Carole received her only Oscar nomination for Best Actress for My Man Godfrey (1936). She was superb ["Timmy was incredible in this role" EL also states "whether his acting was as a result of his new found love (Cesar Romero) or as a result of just the right part at the right time, Hollywood took notice and so did the critics."] as ditzy heiress Irene Bullock. Carole was now putting out about one film a year of her own choosing, because she wanted whatever role she picked to be a good one. She was adept at picking just the right part, which wasn't surprising as she was smart enough to see through the good-ol'-boy syndrome of the studio moguls. She commanded and received what was one of the top salaries in the business - at one time it was reported she was making $35,000 a week. She made but one film in 1941, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941). Her last film was in 1942, when she played Maria Tura opposite Jack Benny [another gay man] in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Tragically, she didn't live to see its release. The film was completed in 1941 just at the time the US entered World War II, and was subsequently held back for release until 1942. Meanwhile, Carole went home to Indiana for a war bond rally. On January 16, 1942, Carole, her mother, and 20 other people were flying back to California when the plane went down outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. All aboard perished. The highly acclaimed actress was dead at the age of 33 and few have been able to match her talents since. [Perhaps Timmy wanted to volunteer for service during WWII, as many other actors had. He would have had to give up his female persona in order to do that].
Okay, I know it doesn't line up perfectly with the story EL posted, but its pretty darn close. She worked for approx. five years after the Oscar nomination, she had a scar, she has very pale skin, a "willowy figure", and "silky blonde hair", "Lombard's photo was used to advertise khaki slacks", the A list actor would be Cesar Romero (never married), she was considered a 'comic' actress, hence, the personality that just wouldn't quit, despite two marriages, there were no children, her remains were unrecovered because of the plane explosion, which also killed her mother, and the Noah's Ark reference may relate to two movies with Cesar Romero, two movies with Fred MacMurray (who, by the way, died of pneumonia), and two husbands. The multiple wins might be for the film. She did 'win' the nomination for best actress.
The film "WON" nominations in these categories:
* Best Actor in a Leading Role - William Powell
* Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Mischa Auer
* Best Actress in a Leading Role - Carole Lombard
* Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Alice Brady
* Best Director - Gregory LaCava
* Best Writing, Screenplay - Eric Hatch, Morrie Ryskind
It was the first movie to be nominated in all four acting categories.
I have no idea who Timmy is.
Down points are:
*No verifiable other awards found or won
*If Timmy was married to both William Powell and Clark Gable, why would he ever have to worry about making a living?
*If Timmy was making $35,000.00 a week, why would he have to work?
*The time span prior to her win seems a bit longer than what EL says.
*If Timmy was roommates with JJ's wife, around say 1925, then JJ would be ancient! If it was after the accident, and after her first divorce it might work.
One last point. My theories and timelines may be off, but these last quotes from classichollywoodbios.com also appear to elude to the possibility of a "second" Lombard: "Carole was left with a deep, red scar. While recuperating, she studied motion picture photography. Eventually, she had plastic surgery which made the scar less noticeable. Carole still had to utilize her knowledge of photography. Cameraman Harry Stradling later said: "She knows as much about the tricks of the trade as I do! In close up work, I wanted to cover her scar by focusing the lights on her face so that it would seem to blend with her cheek. She was the one to tell me that diffusing glass in my lens would do the same job better, and she was right!" "Lombard is like no other Lombard you've ever seen. When you see her, you'll forget the rather stilted Lombard of old. You'll see a star blaze out of this scene, high spots Carole never dreamed of hitting."
Carole Lombarde was a client of William Haines' interior decorating business.
"Carole Lombard had the rare quality of being as elegant drenched in water or with a pie in her face".
Carole was in a movie called "Man of the World. There was a scene in the movie called "Fresh Water". Carole Lombard was in a short film titled "The Swim Star". In it, she played the role of the swim star!
If we're looking at Margaret Rutherford, another possibility for the never-married A-lister is Sir John Gielgud. According to IMDB, Gielgud directed her in a 1938 film for British TV called Spring Meeting.
Gielgud was gay, never married, and never came out until near the end of his long life (he died in 2000, at the age of 96).
Hey guys, I've been lurking around here, but reading the comments today are making me wonder about Janet Gaynor again...
Seeing the theory there was a stand in for AB for her rejuvenated career (which I don't understand why they would use a man instead of a female who looked like her, but to each their own)
With Janet Gaynor, she has a 20 year gap in her career after her nomination for "A Star is Born"
With an open mind, what about "casting" an older lady to make appearances under Janet Gaynor's name. People were probably wondering what happened to this acclaimed actress, and the AA's likes to have stars from yesterday present the awards to stars of tomorrow. That clef is very identifying, and what if that is the scar/facial mark ENT was referring to? Since she hasn't been officially NOTTED, can we keep her name in the pool?
#1 Think water when you are thinking of Noah's Ark.
Okay, the animals would have fallen off if not for the PIER!
Where's Pariss? ;-)
Carole Lombard is defnitely interesting.. She and McNamara would be my choices, if only they won the Oscars though.
Twisted, that's true I guess, lol.
First time poster here...Date of death 1980-1985. I think the 50-ish year time frame was to include Timmy's trek out west to Hollywood. After a five year contract, two years backtracking east as Shimmy, then back to Hollywood - I think we have to be closer to the 1940's. Shimmy made a few movies, won some awards, then disappeared. Her entire career couldn't have been much longer that a typical five year contract. So her IMDB listings should reflect the same. I looked up every Acadamy Award winning actress from the 1930's-1970's. not one of them fit into that. The only thing I can think is we are not talking Oscar. It had to have been another "big award". Which wasn't the Golden Globes either. Oy.
I've been lurking on this site for months and this damn blind is the first thing that brought me out. I'm gonna need therapy after this...I was SOOOO on the AB train the whole time and the flood clue really sold me. But...remember in the original blind (as ok.1234 pointed out somewhere) when ENT said "there he was" accepting the award? An unknown guy accepted Alice Brady's award and supposedly neither the award nor the man were seen again...but damn, then there a picture of AB with the award. My brain cannot figure this out now but wouldn't that make it impossible for it to be AB? Or do I need to call a rehab center right now? LOL...the whole web probably will do because every gossip site I've been on is talking about it! Way to go ENT...and to the regular posters...YOU ROCK!
Australians can do both British and US accents really REALLY well. Why is that?
Otherwise, I don't think either Brits or Yanks do each others very well. And almost no one but a native can do a Southern US or Boston accent (though so many try...painfully.)
Anyone ever hear Jerry Hall's accent? It's adorable - Texas twang with Brit juice on top.
k
Renika,
The Academy's gave AB an honarary plaque in lieu of the statue. Someone posted a picture (look at the top of comments) of her receiving it.
#4 Timmy was a very good singer. He was not A list. William Haines was a mentor to him. Katharine Hepburn adored Timmy.
This in my mind has been the most direct clue we have had.
Not like the Noah thing which could maybe, possibly be about something to do with something possibly to do with water !!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
That's not a clue that's just hitting us when we're down.
I came across a site that stated Alice Brady first used the stage name Rose Marie when she started her stage career...
http://theoscarsite.com/whoswho/brady_a.htm
I posted guesses for the never-married A-listers who would fit the Margaret Rutherford theory. I doubt it's her, though. A lot of the clues seem to suggest that Timmy/Shimmy was mainly a Hollywood actor, but Rutherford of course was British.
Also, in rereading the clue about the A-list actor, it's clear that they met when Timmy was "cast as the lead" opposite the actor. So Rutherford and Coward won't work, because although Coward was, in addition to his other talents, an actor, they never starred in a film together. Gielgud won't work either, because he directed the film Rutherford was in, but did not act opposite her in any film (according to IMDB, anyway).
Here are some A-list Hollywood actors who never married and who were gay or bisexual: Montgomery Clift, Farley Granger, Clifton Webb, James Dean. Those were all A-list, at least at some point in their Hollywood acting careers.
If we're a little more expansive about our definition of A-list a bit, we can add Richard Chamberlain, Tab Hunter, George Chakiris, Roddy McDowall, Ramon Novarro, Cesar Romero, Monty Woolley, and Sal Mineo.
There were many other Hollywood actors who were gay or bisexual, of course. But a number of them, like Rock Hudson and Van Johnson, for instance, entered into arranged marriages at the behest of their respective studios.
Dirk Bogarde is another possibility for the A-lister, though unlike the rest of the folks I'm naming here he was British, and starred in barely any Hollywood films (none come to mind, anyway -- I only know him for his British films).
All in all, I'd say Alice Brady is a better fit. Cesar Romero would be the A-lister. He's not exactly an A-list name to me, but Ent has emphasized more than once that the actor was "A list at the time," so I guess Romero might fit.
As others have pointed out, though, the fact that Brady had such a long career (extending into the silent era) would be hard to explain in this context. So who the hell knows?
Mind you, I don't for a minute believe this tall tale. It's wildly implausible that a story this explosive would be kept a secret for all these years, especially in a town as gossip-hungry as Hollywood. Among other things, the studio's costumers had to have known!
Still, it's been lots of fun following this and trying to piece together the clues.
melster said...
,,,William Haines was a mentor to him...
Thank you for reminding me of this. Does anyone else find it odd that imdb lists (okay not neccessarily accurately) three separate Wm Haines active in the 30s and then not another one until the 90s?
Gillian,
I found it weird that on Wikipedia, when you search for William Haines' lover Jimmy Shields, it redirects back to William Haines' Wiki page! :-/
I was trying to dig up more info on Jimmy Shield's.
I went back to older comments, I saw a few people ruled out Jimmie due to his size and build...back to the drawing board!
Gillian said....
"Does anyone else find it odd that imdb lists (okay not neccessarily accurately) three separate Wm Haines active in the 30s and then not another one until the 90s?"
I don't, Gillian. Each person who shares the same name is listed separately on imdb. There was not only an actor with that name, but someone in casting, someone who worked on the soundrack and someone who worked in the art department. All different people.
I have been reading a well-researched bio of William Haines by Mann (who also wrote a great bio of Kate Hepburn). I have no idea who Timmy/Shimmy was, and at this point I think that's a dead end since no one fits the clues that Ent has provided without a lot of fact-twisting.
But one thing is very clear: Haines and LB Mayer hated each other. Mayer fired and blacklisted Haines in 1933, ending his previously A-list career, and Haines resented that for the rest of his life. Haines was extremely popular in Hollywood and remained there, building up an interior design business and continuing to socialize with all of Hollywood. He remained very well-connected until he died in 1973.
If Haines was involved in this, as Ent says, it must have been motivated by revenge against Mayer. Haines was good friends with Hedda Hopper, who starred in the original Holiday (remember that hint)? Obviously, neither of them were Timmy/Shimmy, but I think they were up to something. I also think Hepburn was involved.
The pictures in the Haines bio don't show anyone who would be plausible as Timmy, including Haines' lover, Jimmy Shields. Shields had a square face and a very prominent cleft chin. Also he was socially prominent all his life (because of being Haines' partner), and would have been recognized immediately.
BTW, beware of the wiki bio for Haines; it lists as facts some rumors that the book shows to be inaccurate.
first time poster - I have no clue and I'm not about to try and guess.
But just curious about searching theatre reviews because of this clue:
" there was even a review in the paper which talked about this understudy who was even better than the regular actress ."
Seems like the easiest thing to search for. I did a cursory search in the la times archives but I'm not emotionally invested enough to pay for access to the articles.
Good luck everyone.
twistedsister: yes but three people with same name at same time period?
I took it to mean that the Wm Haines also did some uncredited work behind the scenes. Okay maybe not the soundtrack one, but art directing,that's in his sphere... Okay, just now followed the links (duh) and Wm Haines IV is same as "I"
harpo068: can you look in the index and see if there are any poss for Timmy or Shimmy?
Here is the link to the index in William Haines 'Wisecracker'.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0140275681/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-9254211-0727352#reader-link
Thanks melster!
Nils Asther, Mary Astor, Roger Davis, Marie Dressler, Katherine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Cesar Romero...
... all the usual suspects are there, I see.
No wise words here, but a question: is there anywhere (or CAN a place be made somewhere) that people are keeping a list of all the fantastic books that have been recommended in response to these BIs? Some I've written down but some I've forgotten to jot down and I'm kicking myself now. In particular, several items back someone posted an amazon link to a book entry from a bio on Katherine Hepburn where a female friend opens the door to the writer. Anyone have the link or remember what I'm talking about? And I'd love to see a list somewhere of the books people have dug up for research and/or plain old interest in early Hollywood.
I can't wait for Wednesday. I've been popping headache pills like crazy.
Since Alice Brady seems to be the odds on favorite choice (even with certain facts that may not fit) and the subject of 90% of the comments I am hoping that EL is not sadistic enough to allow us to continue on this path without having NOT-ted her.
Gillian, I've been keeping my eyes out for Shimmys/Timmys as I read, but as yet have spotted no good possibilities.
I read Mann's Hepburn book too long ago to remember clearly, but it had more details about people who KH associated with. I don't have that book anymore, but if anyone has it, I think it's worth checking. (Lori, that may be the book you're thinking of.)
I don't think Haines could have done any moonlighting, since his filming schedule was jam-packed by the studio until the year before his fall from grace (because his movies were so profitable).
It could be a coincidence, but I can't help but notice that two people associated with Haines, Hedda Hopper and Kate Hepburn, both starred in movies called Holiday.
According to Hepburn's bio, she was living in a relatively public lesbian relationship in the 1930s; she was able to get away with an open same-sex lifestyle for a few years longer than Haines. Like him, for years she refused to promote herself in a traditional gender role.
However, Hepburn's unconventionality eventually became the target of a lot of public anger and her career died. To make a comeback, she commissioned a play (Philadelphia Story) in which she played a strong, independent woman who had to eat crow and assume a more conventional female role. She plotted to make the play a hit on the stage and then sell it to the studios, and that's exactly what happened. This shows her capacity for manipulating her public persona...and maybe someone else's?
I vaguely remember from Hepburn's bio the incident about her home being destroyed by a hurricane. I think that was the summer that her career had died and she was plotting her comeback. I think it's a bit far-fetched to think that's what Ent had in mind, but who knows?
Well duh me, too, Gillian! They're all three the same William Haines during that time frame. Why would they list them like that? Sheesh!
Lori, the books I've noted that I want to read are Katharine Hepburn: the Woman Behind the Legend (see this link - is this the one you're talking about?) http://highandlowny.tripod.com/id1.html
Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn by William J. Mann
Howard Hughes: Hells Angel
The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart
Hope that helps.
One thing I forgot to include in the posting about William Haines:
Before Haines was discovered and brought to Hollywood, he lived in Greenwich Village and shared an apartment with some other gay men who became his close friends.
After he became a star, he brought his former roomies to Hollywood. One of them became Cary Grant and another became Orry-Kelly (you old Hollywood buffs will recognize that name).
A third roomie was a female impersonator whose show became the hit of Hollywood for a few years until transvestite shows were outlawed there. I can't find the page where his name is given, but it doesn't matter, since there's no sign that he could be Timmy (nothing fits). However, this just shows that Haines had professional contacts who could give Timmy tips for passing as a woman.
PS: I can strongly recommend Mann's books on Hepburn and Haines. Also "The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall" (by Golden & Kendall), and "Clark Gable" (by Warren Harris).
Someone please help me with this, "the probes into his background were causing a great deal of stress".
This stress is what caused Timmy to break out in hives. Now if he had stepped in as AB, he wouldn't have to worry about her background because it was easily verifiable. Which is why I think it can't be AB, but has to be someone relatively unknown that he completely made up. But I want it to be AB so I can get some rest :)
here's one article from the LA Times about an understudy going on for a known lead actress..
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=
4m94y6h&s=1
Here's a quote from Mann's Haines bio for all you Shimmy-is-Carole Lombard fans (p. 243):
(Haines) recalled a conversation with (Lombard) in which she nonchalantly disrobed and changed her clothes. "I was startled when she stripped completely," he said. "She never wore a bra, you know. That was no secret, but oftentimes she didn't wear panties either, and this was one of those times.... I remember her saying the cutest thing: "I wouldn't do this, Billy, if I thought it could arouse you.'"
Haines knew Lombard well; her house was one of his first big interior design projects.
This is my first time commenting on this BI. After reading every post and doing quite a bit of research I discovered that in 1946 Peggy Ann Garner won the Academy Award for The Outstanding Child Actress of 1945 for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in which she plays the role of Francie Nolan.
In 1942 and 1944 she appeared in two films with with Roddy McDowell, an A-list actor at the time and life long bachelor, The Pied Piper and The Keys of the Kingdom. In the Pied Piper she stars along with RM.
The BI describes Timmy as very slightly built, having very pale features and a skin condition. PAG is fair and slightly built, but, there is no evidence of a skin condition.
I found this on TV.com. "First, she (Virginia Garner - mother) took Peggy Ann to New York City, where she was given dancing and acting lessons and became a client of the John Robert Powers Modeling Agency. As a result, little Peggy was given some modeling jobs and roles in summer stock at the age five. When she was six, Virginia and Peggy Ann conquered Hollywood. At first, she was given small parts in films. Soon, Hollywood executives started noticing her and gave her larger roles. As the young Jane Eyre, she was simply awesome! When she was only twelve years old, she played Francie in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", which became her most-remembered role and the one that earned her a special Oscar." This article also says PAG and RM were lifelong friends.
According to her bio she is from Ohio which some would consider the Northeast and left at a very young age to pursue fame. Her bio is pretty thin.
http://www.tv.com/peggy-ann-garner/person/62154/biography.html
If we can't believe the bios, I would argue PAG is a few years older than he/she appears which works in her favor. Also, her DOB is 10/16/1984 and her last film role was in 1949, The Lovable Cheat.
Problems with this theory?
1. She has a number TV credits after her film career ends.
2. She had three failed marriages .
3. One daughter who died in 1995.
4. PAG's DOB, if we are to believe her bio.
Just thought I'd add this to the mix.
and here's another interesting understudy article..but can find no info in imdb for this Anne Sawyer, who was supposedly under a film contract for a year...
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=
6ap5jqh&s=1
Kim ... ENT later clarified that he meant it happened within a 50 year time span, and he said that since Timmy died between '80 and '85, we can go back 50 years from then (as far back as 1930, potentially).
Here's all the Timmy-related posts ENT has made, so that you can read the updates and further hints:
(read from bottom to top for chronological order)
Kim:
EL corrected the 50 years in a subsequent post..not within the last 50 years..rather within a 50 year time frame working backwards from Timmy's death.
Oops, sorry: here it is:
http://www.crazydaysandnights.net/search/label/Timmy
Kim, yes, I'm afraid your dates are off. In his second posting Ent clarified the timeframe to mean that all the events happened within 50 years, not 50 years back from today. He also said that the ending of the 50-year timespan was the mid-1980s.
Harpo, thanks for the book recommendations.
What post are you folks correcting - or did Kim delete her post?
I think that Timmy went on as an understudy and then went back to begin his career as a woman under a different name than he used for the understudy role.
Kim
ENT posted an update and stated that things happened within a 50 year period from the death of the actor between 1980-1985 - that means starting date would be 1930
I just watched Claire Trevor on Key Largo. She had unusually large looking elbows. (LOL) I know she doesn't fit because she worked too long after her win, but I couldn't find "In Old Chicago" in the video stores here...so here I am...wasting time on a dead end. ;)
Couldn't really see an obvious scar, but it looks like there might be *something* above her left eyebrow (?). Also possibly something on the right side of her neck.
Key Largo is pretty easy to find, though, if I could find it my town ... so that's another mark against it.
Sorry Kim, didn't mean to pile on. I tried to cancel my reply when I saw that others had clarified the timeframe for you, but it posted anyway.
Does anyone know how to cancel a post after you preview it?
You didn't have to delete your post Kim. A fresh pair of eyes and ears is always welcome. We are so deep in this we might be missing the obvious.
Twisted, it looks as if Kim did delete her post.
Kim: Hope you weren't discouraged, that wasn't even close to the silliest question that's been posted. Try joining us again!
I was fully for Alice Brady until I realized it was Josephine Hull. When that failed, I went back to Alice Brady. But now I'm for Margaret Rutherford.
Can the Alice Brady supporters please explain how Timmy can go to Hollywood while musicals are STILL popular? With the Brady timeline, he is going to Hollywood (c. 1930-1935) while musicals are still in their infancy.
Can people who know ENT's style better than I explain why if he's talking about the Oscar, he doesn't just say "Oscar." By calling it something else (and ruling out the Golden Globe and the BAFTA), he makes it seem like it could be the Emmy, but we've found the Emmy to be a nonproductive area. Enough people have done enough research to determine that there aren't that many other acting awards watched on television...then or now.
As much as I want it to be Margaret Rutherford, I can't figure out a period when they could get away with doing a switch from the real Margaret to the Timmy Margaret in her films. I have this image of poor ill Margaret in total seclusion while Timmy does her movie roles. Although the real Margaret can come out in public and receive her Dame honor as herself before going back to the sickroom and sending Timmy back to the film studio. And I have to admit that it's not a very valid theory since so many people had worked with Margaret on the stage and in the film studio that they would have recognized the big change.
The whole thing about being a talented actor is to do accents. Meryl Streep plays a Rabbi in "Angels in America" ! Some of the best southern accents were done by the Brits: Vivian Leigh twice, Liz Taylor a few times. Even Carol Burnett's skits about The Queen had a wonderful British accent. If Timmy is as talented as the BI says, he could certainly do a gender switch and its accompanying accent.
Is there a London equivalent for the Internet Broadway Database? I want to check more of Margaret's London stage performances.
cardght said...
... I discovered that in 1946 Peggy Ann Garner won the Academy Award for The Outstanding Child Actress of 1945...
Over on the CDAN message board last night I was posting on her and Deanna Durbin (no interviews since 1949 and living in France!). The Juvenile Academy Award looked very promising but yeah, too many post-Award appearences, including the Dating Game in 1970.
"What Timmy had going for him was a personality that wouldn't quit and a way of capturing an audience whether one person, five hundred or through film that was unlike anything most people had seen previously."
Add to this that Timmy was "a very good singer"
- WHY didn't he make it in the movies as Timmy. There had to be something more to his appearance than just being pale, slight, not much body hair and gay. Not all Hollywood actors were Cary Grants. Maybe he had a strong foreign accent when speaking.
meister, my interpretation of the BI is that Timmy wasn't conventionally masculine and that was a big part of why he didn't succeed as a man.
Concerning the Margaret Rutherford theory:
COULD THIS BE TIMMY???
http://www.celebrityproductions.info/pictures/tony%20benn.jpg
The very idea of this is hilarious (if you're British). Maybe in a parallel solar system, he really was... :-D
I know that he wouldn't be very masculine but with so much going for him I still don't understand it. Fred Astaire was hardly butch.
Here's another one for our booklist:
Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall By Richard Barrios
I haven't read it yet, but someone posted a few pages from it a while back, and it looks interesting:
http://books.google.com/books?id=zzPiI_Vtg7IC&pg=RA3-PA100&lpg=RA3-PA100&dq=tyrell+davis+screened+out&source=web&ots=vk8JS4MqYh&sig=02TuCs079cS8jI3gy_F6hdcsjvA#PRA3-PA100,M1
another short understudy article
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=
4osk2mr&s=1
Here's a name from Haines' bio--this is the wiki stub for an obscure actor who was active on the Hollywood gay scene and knew Haines.
Roger Davis (film actor)
Roger Davis (20 January 1884 - 3 March 1980) was an American actor
Davis was born in Maryland, and played small parts in a number of Hollywood films of the 1940s and 1950s. He played roles such as butlers and waiters, and appeared in two of the Tracy-Hepburn vehicles, Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952).
Roger seems a bit old to be Timmy, and I haven't found any photos. Since he was in some Tracy-Hepburn films, there should be some photos around, if anyone wants to look for them. (I'm still reading the book.)
The book also has a quote from Hepburn saying that although she socialized a lot with Haines, she really didn't know him except to say Hello. (p. 254)
Ent has said that Haines "mentored" Timmy and Hepburn "adored" him. So maybe they weren't in cahoots, but they both knew Timmy.
I'll post any other suspects that I run across.
Is it my eyes or did Margaret's face get short and round?
Earlier Picture:
http://www.nndb.com/people/052/000063860/rutherford-sm.jpg
Later Picture:
http://www.exlibris.ch/images_prod/7321/7321921518447f.jpg
Maybe it's just age :-S
What was wrong with Robert Montgomery? Was he notted?
He took over the roles designed for Haines - that could lead to a mentoring situation.
Here's another Timmy suspect from the Haines bio, per imdb:
John Darrow
Date of Birth: 17 July 1907, Leonia, New Jersey, USA
Date of Death: 24 February 1980, Malibu, California, USA.
Birth Name: Harry Simpson
Height: 5' 11" [probably too tall?]
Mini Biography
Joining a stock theater troupe directly after graduating high school, John Darrow made his film debut in 1927. He achieved a level of popularity in the '30s as a leading man, although mostly in lower-rank B pictures. In the mid-'30s he switched careers, however, and eventually became one of Hollywood's most successful talent agents.
Mann writes about Darrow that his "career by the mid-1930s had gone nowhere, with just small parts to his credit." Sound familiar?
But Darrow is probably a long shot, since he didn't return to the stage in later life. Didn't Ent say that's what Timmy did?
According to the book, Montgomery and Haines were not friends at all. Their politics and personalities were night and day apart. Haines also resented Montgomery because he was one of the younger actors that the studio found to try to fill Haines' roles.
Also, I don't recall any reference to Montgomery being gay, and Mann's book is FULL of gay inside gossip.
budford said...
"What was wrong with Robert Montgomery? Was he notted?
He took over the roles designed for Haines - that could lead to a mentoring situation."
Probably the fact that
A) He had a long career (from 1929-1960) solidly in films and television as Robert Montgomery
B) He has a famous actress daughter
oh and in addition to Elizabeth, Montgomery had 2 other children.
Twisted Sister and Harpo068: Thanks for the book recommendations. Indeed, it is the William Mann book and I already had that on my list, however, for some reason I couldn't get the excerpt to show on Amazon so I didn't think that was it - which meant, of course, an hour's worth of hunting down previous comments to find the post...which I did, and that was it. So thanks again!
At any rate, it was highly amusing going back through the initial guessing and chaos. And somehow in all of my reading (I thought I'd read everything) I find I had missed the bit about Jamie Lee Curtis's surgery!
Good stuff, this BI. I'm actually not sure I want the reveal after all.
Just kidding. Of course I do. It's making me nuts.
Nah, couldn't be Robert Montgomery. He appeared in film into the 50s and on TV and in the theater after that. The only time he wasn't active in his acting and directing career was for a few years during WWII, when he was in the navy.
The idea that for all those years he could have had a full-time career as himself, while moonlighting as an actress (and winning an award as that actress, no less) is improbable in the extreme.
Also, so far as I know he was straight. He was married (to two different women) from 1928 until his death in 1981, and he was the father of Elizabeth Montgomery of Bewitched fame.
Another thing -- upon rereading the first Timmy entry, I came to the conclusion that people are misinterpreting the part about musicals. The sentence about musicals reads, "Timmy worked often [in film], but nothing more than a few lines here or there and spent a great deal of time in the "chorus" sections of musicals which were still fairly popular."
I think what Ent is saying here is not that "musicals" were still fairly popular, but that the "chorus" sections of musicals were still fairly popular. And think of it -- the popular musicals of the 30s tended to have very large choruses, most notably those Busby Berkeley extravaganzas with countless dancing girls (and boys) -- such as Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street, etc.
The kind of musicals that were popular later on, such as the MGM musicals like Singin' in the Rain, were not nearly so chorus-centric.
That's what I think Ent means, and if so, the beginning of Timmy/Shimmy's movie career could have been the 20s and 30s, not (as some have speculated), the 50s or 60s, which was when musicals as a genre began to wane (though they could correctly be described as "still popular.").
Finally, here's the reason I think "Timmy" was Alice Brady: it's that section of Brady's IMDB bio stating "When she won a Best Supporting Actress award for In Old Chicago (1937) in 1937, she did not attend the ceremony. Instead, a man walked up and accepted the award on her behalf. After the show, neither he nor the Oscar were ever seen again."
I think some fantasist knew about that and then cleverly spun a legend around it: what if the person who collected the award was actually Brady? And what if Brady were really a man? Then they worked backwards to concoct the wildly implausible, though highly entertaining, myth of "Timmy."
Hi Cheno,
Re: RM
If you got a huge break from a studio that got rid of the openly gay guy, you'd probably get married. Interestingly, his daughter (not gay) was a big gay activist and her show deliberately cast gay actors into characters that would be perceived as gay. Rebellion and gratitude for the guy who helped you?
About R. Montgomery from Mann's book (Wisecracker), p. 166 (brackets added, parentheses in original):
A reporter noted that Billy [Haines] "high-hatted" (ignored) Montgomery on the lot, an indication that he was troubled by the younger star's rapid rise to the top. Certainly Montgomery did not go out of his way to make friends with Billy, either: he hated "fairies," as he'd tell anyone within earshot. Montgomery was a good example of the new kind of actor emerging after the coming of sound, a "manly" man despite his boyish looks. The studio widely publicized the birth of Montgomery's daughter in October 1930, promoting him as father and family man. (Elizabeth Montgomery would go on to become a star herself, and was much more liberal and gay-friendly than her father.)
Way out there, but what about the Gales? Joan, Jane, June, and Jean? 2 of each? Storms?
One other comment -- when Ent referred, in the original post, to "the very big award, the one with all the television viewers," it doesn't necessarily mean that that people were watching it on television at the time Timmy won the award. It could mean an award that people now associate with TV, but not necessarily back in Timmy's day.
Also, I'm not sure when the Oscars were first televised, but television did exist in the 30s. However, it didn't start to become really popular until the late 40s/early 50s.
Rm
Yep, kill him off the list.
Is Timmy Jimmie Shields? He was a set decorator, stand in and lover of William Haines....
Catherine, if you do a ctrl-F for Shields in this thread, you'll see that he has already been dismissed for various reasons, here and in previous threads.
In addition to the reasons already mentioned, the book reveals that he was never an actor and had no ambition to succeed; he never had a career and (their friends said) he just enjoyed being "spoiled" by Haines.
Good to know, Harpo. I didn't go thru all of the comments. So now, I am back on pins and needles! This BI has taken over my life!
This has been driving me OUT OF MY MIND for the past couple of weeks. I have have spent so many pointless hours trying to find out who Timmy/Shimmy is and I'm back to square one. Just when I think I've figured it out (Judy Holliday, Maggie McNamara, Marie Dressler, etc.) I get shot down by ENT's 'Nots', or find that something in the stars background doesn't mesh with ENT's tale. If it's Alice Brady/Walter Merrill or whomever, I commend all of you on this team. I'm obsessed and exhausted! Wednesday can't come soon enough. I really believe that most of us could write a novel on Old Hollywood after this experience. I'll tell you one thing, William Haines is my hero, and I probably never would have read about the William Haines/Jimmy Shields love story had ENT not posted this blind item, so I guess some good has come out of this.
Glad to be of help. The comments are rather overwhelming (not to mention repetitive)--I have given up trying to catch up with some of the older threads. *sigh* There's a limit to how much even a Timmy addict can do.
Melinda I agree with you!
The things I've learned about old Hollywood in this ordeal can be compiled into a one book and I guarantee it will be a bestseller with every household in America owning 2 copies!
LOL
BTW, to comment on some of the posts (but not to diss in any way), Janet Gaynor is too beautiful to be a man, even an effeminate one. And that is her own hair.
Now that we're all experts on old Hollywood, we're gonna be a tough audience for Ent's reveal. *grin* He better have a pretty good story, or we'll be all over him.
Hey Twisted Sister! while i love all your guys research and post somehow i get the feeling EL is messing w us and make us run around in circles! i think it was figured out along time ago. I am getting frustrated!
I still have a hard time with KK's bio and story even though she was notted. very peculiar...
Now I have lived here in Hollyweird for almost 5 years and have personally seen and heard some really whack sh!t! This is a very strange place....
And once again, DO not rely on IMDB. It is not correct and would be hard to say it is of those in the past except for actual awards and movies that we can verify with our own eyes. Some people's work never even show up. And wiki? hmmm. ???
Some poster awhile back was stating how it would be hard to falsify their school history, groups they belong to, date of birth, etc. back then. I really believe back then it would have been very easy to do. And very easy to change one's identity.
Also, someone said EL could be "fabricating" this story bc why would he take the chance if Timmy or Shimmy were still alive and/or sell out his friend JJ? Maybe they all have passed including JJ? or seriously ill??
Ps. Janet Wynman just passed away like a week ago according to Wireimage.com. That is factual.
Pps. Sorry, I am just throwing my 2 cents in without having read all the posts.
OTS,oh and I am convinced and i dont care what anyone says but Marie Dressler was a damn man! according to her youtube and google pics. Ha!
I just want the damn reveal already!
FYI, Fun fact from Mann's bio of Haines: Janet Gaynor was a lesbian. So definitely not a gay man.
The fate of a star of Gilbert's magnitude was hilariously spoofed in Singin' in the Rain. Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont, the reigning Queen of the silent screen has a grating, nasal, crude Brooklyn delivery that belies her screen image. It's a natural for foxy screen moguls to conceive of dubbing the voice of their star to one that more naturally fits with the image already built on the screen. This leads to one of the screen's most wonderful scenes as Hagen performs the new song from her hit film in front of a live audience with Debbie Reynolds behind the theater curtain dutifully dubbing her melodic dulcet tones for the chalk voiced Hagen. When Kelly, O'Connor, and Mitchell surreptitiously raise the curtains behind Hagen, the hilarious deception is unraveled. Not only does Hagen get dubbed by Reynolds, O'Connor too gets in the act in providing the audience with an alternate sound for Hagen. Pure inspiration!
Trivia
Best remembered as Lina Lamont, the silent-film star in Singin' in the Rain (1952), who could not manage the transition to talkies. That is, not without Debbie Reynolds's help.
In Singin' in the Rain (1952), Debbie Reynolds character lip-synced to Jean's spoken voice for film-within-the-film, The Dancing Cavalier. Ironically, for the speaking part, it was Debbie Reynolds lip-syncing to Jean Hagen. For the singing, it was Reynolds lip-syncing to Betty Noyes in the dubbing scene, in which Noyes had earlier dubbed Hagen.
A prolonged illness necessitated her early retirement in the mid-60s with her entering a convalescent home for the rest of her life. A desire to act one more time happened in 1977 when she appeared briefly as a landlady in the TV-movie Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn (1977) (TV). She died shortly after of throat cancer.
Jean seemed a shoo-in to win the best supporting actress Academy Award for her hilarious performance as Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain (1952), but was beaten out for the award by Gloria Grahame for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952).
Though nominated twice for an Emmy Award as Danny Thomas' first TV wife on his popular comedy series, "Make Room for Daddy" (1953), Jean became disenchanted with the rather colorless wife-and-mother role and left the series after four seasons. Marjorie Lord replaced her as Danny's perky second wife.
Jean Hagen was nominated for an Oscar the first year the awards were televised.
no budford, Elizabeth Montgomery was most likely gay-friendly because her daughter Rebecca Asher is gay.
oops I mean Jane Wyman. Page 4 www.wireimage.com
I thought I had seen her name here a few times....
sounded like a neat lady..
fter majoring in drama and music at Northwestern University, Jean Hagen went to New York, where she worked as an usherette by day and a radio actress by night. In 1949, Hagen was one of several "new face" Broadway performers (including Judy Holliday, Tom Ewell and David Wayne) selected to appear in the supporting cast of the Tracy/Hepburn comedy Adam's Rib; she played the slatternly "other woman" who comes between Judy Holliday and Tom Ewell. This led to a long-term MGM contract and a telling dramatic role as Sterling Hayden's doomed girlfriend in John Huston's Asphalt Jungle (1950). In 1952, Hagen was cast in her best-ever screen role: screechy-voiced silent film star Lina Lamont ("Waddya think I am, dumb or sumpin'?") in the imperishable Singin' in the Rain. From 1953 through 1956, Hagen played Margaret Williams, wife of nightclub entertainer Danny Thomas, in Make Room for Daddy. Her character was summarily "killed off" when she left the series in its third season; according to Thomas, Hagen felt that sitcom work was beneath her. Unfortunately, with such notable exceptions as The Shaggy Dog (1959) and Sunrise at Campobello (1960), Hagen's career went into an eclipse after Make Room for Daddy, and by 1964 she had retired from acting. As historian Bill Warren observed, Hagen "was so versatile that, paradoxically, she became hard to cast." In the mid-1970s, after undergoing radical surgery and cobalt treatment for throat cancer, Hagen valiantly attempted a comeback in character roles. Jean Hagen died at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital at the age of 54. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Jean Hagen also had 2 children..a son and daughter..
I don't think we should get tied up in Shimmy not being too feminine.
Click the link and scroll down to Mr Laverne Cummings.
http://www.queermusicheritage.us/fem-jewl3.html
That's interesting that Elizabeth Montgomery's daughter Rebecca Asher is gay...I just remember her being very public about her support for former co-star Dick Sargent (the second Darrin) who came out and subsequently died of AIDS. Also, Agnes Morehead (Endora) was known to be a "Hollywood Lesbian." And of course, Paul Lynde, who played Uncle Arthur.
Hey jamie everett, thanks for the shout out! It's impossible to read all the posts, so glad you threw your two cents in.
I don't think EL purposely messes with us, I just think that HE thinks he's clearer than he is. I'm trying to second guess him here. Did he not discount the Oscars because that was the big award? Did he not eliminate AB and MR because it really is one of them? And what the heck does he mean when he tells us to think of water when we think of Noah's Ark?
If nothing else, this blind has gotten a lot of us interested in renting old movies and reading books about these people and that's not a bad thing!
I agree with Jamie that, in fact, back in the day, it would be very easy to falsify your history, and get away with it.
Here's a case in point. I'm a huge fan of old movies, and this week I rented an old Hollywood film that's a classic, but one I'd never seen before. It's a 1941 film called How Green Was My Valley, and it starred Roddy McDowall and Maureen O'Hara, and was directed by John Ford.
It was quite wonderful, and after viewing it I did a little internet research on it. The story is about an poor family of Welsh coal-miners, and it's based on an acclaimed, best-selling novel that had come out a few years before the film was made. So I did a little research on the novel, and I discovered something fascinating.
The author of the novel was a man named Richard LLewellyn, who had always said the novel was autobiographical and was based on his childhood memories of growing up in a family of coal miners in Wales. The novel came out in 1939, and Llewellyn died in 1983.
In 1999, 16 years after the author died, something amazing came to light. Filmmakers making a documentary about the novel discovered that Llewellyn had grown up in London, not Wales! His parents were of Welsh extraction and as a child he had spent some time in Wales with his grandfather, but his stories about growing up in a small Welsh coal mining village, working in the coal mines, etc., etc., were false.
Llewellyn was a world-famous author, and his background could easily have been checked. The Welsh town where he said he grew up was a real town, so anyone researching him could have gone there and talked to people and looked at the records, but apparently no one ever did. So he got away with his deception and no one ever discovered it until he was long dead.
So, while I find aspects of the whole Timmy drama to be highly improbable, the idea that someone could reinvent himself and fabricate a past out of whole cloth is not far-fetched. Llewellyn did it, and for 60 years no one was the wiser. And I'm sure lots of other people who did the same.
Also, I get the feeling that neither Timmy nor Shimmy were ever super-famous, so I doubt anyone would have gone to the trouble of doing research into his/her background, to find the truth. That would probably only happen if someone wrote a full-fledged biography of him/her, and maybe not even then.
Hedda Hopper had a son, William/Billy aka DeWolfe Hopper who was born in 1915 and achieved a B level of success as an actor (known for his role on the tv show Perry Mason). Billy Hopper was married to actress Jane Gilbert, sister of actress Margaret Lindsay.
Margaret Lindsay was the "companion" of actress Mary McCarty. According to IMDB, Margaret was known to go out on "dates" with "safe stars such as Cesar Romero, Richard Deacon and even Liberace."
Does all this mean anything as far as Timmy/Shimmy is concerned? Not likely...but the thread about Hedda Hopper being friendly with William Haines made me decide to research her son and see if there was anything there. There wasn't, but I thought it was a noteworthy example of the incestuous, circular nature of old Hollywood. And it brought it around to Cesar Romero! Long live KK.
It is probably only a coincidence, but I just read that in middle age Bill Haines developed a skin condition, vitiligo, that caused discoloration and blotches on his hands and scalp. (This was long after his Hollywood career was over.)
Haines was a tall, big, dark-haired man with a booming deep voice, from Virginia rather than the Northeast, and an A-list star, not a bit player. So not Timmy.
Still, it's interesting tidbit, non?
Kay, that was the point I was trying to make the other day. The world was much smaller then. No internet, many people didn't have telephones, mail was slow and nobody wanted to be invasive enough to check on what someone told them about their background. The studio's went out of their way to really protect their stars because they viewed them as their investment. People could write anything on job applications up until about fifteen years ago and few employers checked.
Now I ask you, can you imagine what Oprah would do with Richard Llewellyn once she found out he lied in his book?
Harpo, it's eerie how much all of these suspects have in common!
I had no idea Rebecca Asher was gay...
Harpo thats an interesting find because I recall in a previous post someone speculated the skin condition as being vitiligo.
Has anyone else found any other actors/actresses with a skin condition. I only ran across some current actors but the only past person I found was W.C. fields who battled with rosacea.
The skin condition has had me stumped as well. The BI made it sound like the hives left some sort disfigurement, which I’ve never heard of happening with hives before. I am still leaning towards the “big award” not being an AA. If it is an AA than the only actress with a five or so year career is Janet Gaynor and only then if you believe Timmy took her out of retirement to appear on The Love Boat. If the big award is one of the critics awards then my guess is Jane Bryan. She won an acting award in 1940. She had a five year career. She is without a date of death and does not give interviews. The only problem with her is, EL said three different sites had guessed correctly and I didn’t see her name mentioned on any of them.
OK I can't take much more of this - after a good nights sleep (that involved dreams about Timmy/Shimmy on a boat) I'm now thinking AB doesn't fit. Wednesday can not come soon enough.
I went back through ENT's clues and this one made me think it couldn't be an exisisting actress who he replaced...
"#4 Remember that Timmy was under a great deal of pressure even back then about his biography as a woman. People wanted to know where she was from, etc. Timmy provided information and it wasn't as easy to check on stories and timelines for reporters then, and so whatever an actress said about their past was generally just accepted and is reflected on the "official" biography for Timmy as an actress. The story Timmy gave is the one still in use.
This means that Shimmy has her own life that was created by Timmy. It made me wonder again about Anne Revere who said she was a direct descendant from Paul - if you were going to make up a history why not go historic?!
Also on an interesting note about the Hives thing - this is from Merle Oberon's bio on wiki. I still think she's an outside chance - what better way to hide your identity than pretend to be a different race?
'She was selected to star in Korda's film I, Claudius (1937) as Messalina, but a serious car accident resulted in filming being abandoned. Merle Oberon was scarred for life, but skilled lighting technicians were able to hide her injuries from cinema audiences.
According to Princess Merle, the biography written by Charles Higham with Roy Moseley, Merle suffered even further damage to her complexion in 1940 from a combination of cosmetic poisoning and an allergic reaction to sulfa drugs. Alexander Korda sent her to a skin specialist in New York City, where she underwent several dermabrasion procedures. The results, however, were only partially successful; without makeup, one could see noticeable pitting and indentation of her skin.
Her mother died in 1937, and in 1949 Oberon commissioned paintings of her mother from an old photograph, instructing the artist to lighten her mother's complexion. The paintings would hang in all her homes until her death in 1979. Also, Oberon supposedly had a minor obsession with facial injuries after her own accident, and had an affair with Richard Hillary who had been burned after his Supermarine Spitfire was shot down in 1940.
RE Musicals in the 1930s
"The late 1920s saw the birth of a new performing art, musical film. Although popular, the earliest Hollywood musicals were clumsy, and it would be several years before filmmakers recognized this new genre's unique artistic needs and possibilities."
"By 1928, chaos reigned in Hollywood. Most major studios had been caught unprepared by the overwhelming demand for talking films. The public knew what it wanted, and voted with its dollars. Critically acclaimed silent films were playing to near-empty theatres, while even the tackiest part-talkies were drawing crowds. Small town theatre owners watched locals drive off to the nearest city with a sound theatre. Silent film, the most popular form of entertainment the world had ever known, was suddenly yesterday's news, and no one in the industry was sure what lay ahead. MGM silent star William Haines later recalled –
"It was like the night of the Titanic all over again, with women grabbing the wrong children and Louis B. (Mayer) singing 'Nearer My God To Thee.'"
- as quoted in Bob Thomas, Thalberg: Life and Legend (New York: Doubleday, 1969), p. 146.
As theaters scrambled to install sound equipment, the studios raced to build soundproof facilities and come up with sound projects. Desperate executives purchased the rights to hundreds of existing plays and songs, and every major studio hired Broadway composers to write new screen musicals."
"The stock market collapse of 1929 had a tremendous impact on every aspect of American culture. While the film industry suffered its share of losses, it survived the 1930's by meeting a very real need."
"Meeting this need proved to be a tricky proposition. The commercial success of Love Parade and Broadway Melody spawned a glut of clunky musical spectacles, each bigger and tackier than the last. Every major studio attempted at least one musical revue, most to disastrous effect. The best of the bunch, MGM's Hollywood Revue of 1929 mixed weak production numbers with Joan Crawford performing a Charleston and silent stars Norma Shearer and John Gilbert offering an amateurish balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet."
"With the exception of Columbia (which was too tight fisted to invest in many musicals) every major Hollywood studio of the 1930s had its own particular style of musical, and its own bevy of musical stars. It was almost as if each studio's executives felt their formula was a sort of talisman against the embarrassing failures that had plagued the start of the sound era. This did not leave much room for artistic innovation, but it resulted in several decades of enjoyable (if predictable) cinematic entertainment."
-musicals101.com
Musicals were going strong in the 1930s.
Musicals were going strong in the 1930s.
Would that lend itself to Timmy's being in musicals when they were still popular? I think he was in musicals in the 40's or 50's. Maybe there were two Timmy's. Maybe this is all driving me insane.
One other thing, first ENT said that there were 100 film and theatre credits. Later, he said 100 movies when he was trying to clarify that 100 was the total for both Timmy and Shimmy together.
So are the theatrical productions a significant percentage of the credits? Or were there really 100 movies?
Because 100 movies is a lot if Shimmy didn't work more than a few years.
Leslie, EL said that together they had more than 100. That can mean 101, 150 or 250.
I told my son that I wasn't going to post again because I think way outside the box on things and I got smacked down pretty quickly last time, but how about Bob Denver for Timmy (he broke his neck, which kept him out of the army) and first significant role in a movie was 'A Private's Affair' with Sal Mineo. 'Gilligan's Island' won the Pop Culture Award from TVland.
How was Norma Shearer discredited? She "retired" from acting in 1942
Eileen, I agree with you and don't think that Timmy's “big award” was an Oscar. It's too obvious. The problem is, what else could it be? The ONLY other film awards given in those days were the National Board of Review Awards (which didn't have an actress category until 1938) and the NY Film Critics Circle Awards, whose winners were ALL A-list actresses.
The Hollywood studio system ended in 1949, so the award(s) had to have occured before then. And yet the Oscars were not televised until 1953, which makes no sense. I am stumped.
I don't think Alice Brady is it, sorry. For one, she was married and had a son. Two, she was far too old, and would have been nearly 100 if she lived until 1980s.
And Margaret Rutherford is totally wrong - the blind clearly states Timmy is from a small American town.
Simply put, there's not a single person who fits all of these clues.
FWIW, my mom (who is a HUGE old movie buff) thinks this story is fake. Why on earth would Timmy have taken such a juicy story to his grave? He could have made millions with book deals and interviews - "Look what I got away with! I fooled all of Hollywood!" This is precisely the sort of story people TALK about, not keep secret.
I await Wednesday with bated breath.
liter8, Bob Denver died in 2005 and Timmy died sometime between 1980 and 1985. EL hasn't varied from that clue.
August, she retired twelve years after her win, and EL said that Shimmy retired shortly after her win, and if you see someone who works several years after the win, it's not Shimmy.
Christine, the comment EL made about the big award show, the one with the big television audience, is referring to today. Shimmy could have won prior to the Oscars being televised.
from wikipedia:
Jeanne Eagels (June 26, 1894 – October 3, 1929) was an actress on Broadway and in several motion pictures. A former Ziegfeld Follies Girl who went on to greater fame on Broadway and in the emerging medium of "talkies" (films with sound), she was posthumously nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her 1929 role in The Letter after dying suddenly that year at the age of 36.
As a child she was frail, mischievous, and a tomboy.
It was in Kansas City that she began her acting career, appearing in a variety of small venues at a very young age. Her ambitions were such that she left Kansas City around the age of 15 and toured the Midwest with the Dubinsky Brothers' traveling theater show.
At first she was a dancer, but in time she went on to play the leading lady in several popular comedies and dramas put on by the Dubinskys. She married Morris Dubinsky who played the villan roles and bore him a son who she entrusted to friends. He never knew who his mother was.
Around 1911, she came to New York City to advance her acting career. Because of the stiff competition for parts, once again she had to work her way up from the chorus.
Her greatest success, and her favorite role, was Sadie Thompson in Rain, which she played for two years on Broadway in the early 1920s.
David Belasco said of her, "Beautiful, ah hes, with that wonderful golden hair, blue angelic eyes, sweet mouth, and cunning nose. Her eyes were hard and bitter but shined with ambition. Thousands of girls have come to me, but never such a girl as Jeanne Eagles, with the air of a Duse, the voice of an earl's daughter, and the mien of a tired, starved little alley cat."
After a season on Broadway (Manhattan) she took a break to make a movie. She appeared opposite John Gilbert in the MGM film, Man, Woman and Sin (1927), which was directed by Monta Bell. Critics said she looked great and was very attractive playing the role of Vera Worth, a capricious vampire. She is the mistress of the owner of a newspaper on which she is employed as society editor.
In 1928, after failing to appear for a performance in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Eagels was banned by Actors Equity from appearing on stage for 18 months. The ban did not stop Eagels from working in film, and she made two "talkies" for Paramount Pictures, including The Letter and Jealousy (both released in 1929). Her performance in The Letter garnered high praise from critics.
Twisted Sister, thank you very much. She is one of those actresses I think that we are looking for, someone who doesn't look like a man in drag, but is oddly beautiful. What is the problem with Janet Gaynoragain? There are so many comments to go through, but very few actresses who won a AA within a short career span.
P.S. Even though Timmy was born in a small American town, Shimmy can easily have a made-up birthplace outside of the US, which could make sense so it would be harder to follow up on her background information.
I am so irritated.
I went back through the clues, my research and I did even more research and it still looks good for AB. OK, I know I have liked AB from the start BUT I want a smoking gun.
I am irritated because I am now trying to find our JJ (for the obvious reasons) and I am coming up empty handed. I am looking for proof- like when you write a paper and you need at least 3 sources that all corroborate the story…
JJ has to be a limited number of people. I know he has been guessed before but I have not felt comfortable with any of the guesses.
So does anyone know any new way to follow the JJ trail?
I thought we through out Janet Gaynor because she appeared in a film in 1957.
It was never mentioned Shimmy returned to film.
I stand by my opinion that revealing Timmy's identity does not necessarily make it true, unless ENT backs it up with photos proving its truth. How are we to know that an old Hollywood legend is true?
Maybe that's why ENT said that the there is a lengthy explanation behind Timmy's story. It's not as simple as the "Tootsie" movie plot.
I stand by my opinion that revealing Timmy's identity does not necessarily make it true, unless ENT backs it up with photos proving its truth. How are we to know that an old Hollywood legend is true?
Maybe that's why ENT said that the there is a lengthy explanation behind Timmy's story. It's not as simple as the "Tootsie" movie plot.
I was responding to the poster who said they couldn't reconcile the AB timeframe due to the comment in the original BI of "musicals, which were still fairly popular."
Popular in the 30s.
I posted before about Janet Gaynor's return to film. Before that reappearance, 20 somewhat years had passed without anything on record for her. I would notice if Renee Zellweger stopped making movies, and wonder where she was. Maybe there were a lot of suspicions so Timmy found an actress that resembles what JG would look like 20 years aged to get people off of looking into her background. If we're saying two AB's, why not a second JG, except this one makes a little more sense.
gossip monger, I wonder how JJ could still be alive. Someone with intimate knowledge of 1930s studio players would have to be much older than 90, unless (1) he started doing gofer work when he was 12, or (2) his wife was much older than him.
A.C. Lyles was the best guess so far, but he mostly produced TV, not film, and not until the late 1950s.
I think we can safely exclude Janet Gaynor because she had a son, and was too well-known.
And even if Timmy's public bio/birthplace was fabricated, Margaret Rutherford is STILL out. She was clearly English, and all of her education and early roles were in the U.K. And um, she was KNIGHTED by the queen. They do background checks!
Gene Kelly has a scar on his upper lip, left side and he is Singing in the Rain.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
August you said:
“20 somewhat years had passed without anything on record for her.”
You could be right but EL's clue said:
“Timmy considered trying to resume a film career as a man but the skin condition made that impossible because it would have been one hell of a coincidence that two people who looked remarkably alike had the same condition. What he could do though was return to the theatre, and he did so, as a man and worked as a man until his death from AIDS related complications.”
I have no interest in Margaret Rutherford as Shimmy, too many coincidences to make her work. Alice Brady isn't working for me either, but my two best guesses of Janet Gaynor and Norma Shearer don't make sense either. I'm going to go on a limb and say that there weren't ANY women actresses back then, cause they are all starting to look like men in drag to me! lol
I want to make the assumption that Shimmy's birthplace is out of the United States so it would be harder to do background checks. What actresses were born internationally, and won a GG and AA? Maybe that could start a new list that could coincide with one of the first guesses that were on three sites.
gossip monger:
I still think that it fits. I'm not saying that he went back as JG, but rather found some actress that had a resemblence to JG just aged 20 years. Maybe some actress who never really broke out in Hollywood and liked the fame and recognition, plus some work in TV and 1 movie. If JG was a great actress, she never really did impressive work when she reemerged. Was Janet Gaynor an early guess? Could she have been the actress that was easily discredited?
I know she had children, but adoptions are possible
one more comment...EL said that someone was very close on the WHY, maybe about the "stepping in for a known actress" aspect of the AB story. Just with JG it was used as a cover up for the Shimmy, rather than elevating an already known name. A lot of it fits, doesn't it?
I may be wrong, but at least it will give us someone other than AB to waste some hours on, right? lol
Christine:
You are so much faster than me on the keyboard- I am jealous!
I completely agree with you on Janet Gaynor (except I think we have to throw out the child thing) and about JJ being very young if he had this knowledge.
I think JJ was still low level at the time that the AB thing was happening. I think JJ only came to power later.
I can completely understand how maybe later on, one of his wives had “knowledge” of this because gossip was as prolific then as it is now.
But I also believe, I hope – his wife was one of the 10 or maybe he was because he was harmless (like a gofer, etc. and he walked in at the wrong moment as Timmy was in the middle of dressing as Shimmy) and his wife later on backed it up- and not malicious gossip.
I just want this to be not part of “malicious gossip” and want a great checkable story that illustrates a real life scenario about someone who overcame – sorry I know I am getting on my soapbox.
August:
LOL, LOL, LOL, LOL, LOL, etc.
"I'm going to go on a limb and say that there weren't ANY women actresses back then, cause they are all starting to look like men in drag to me!"
I feel the same way!
Thank you for the laugh- it literally brought tears to my eyes- THANK YOU.
August:
I think we all have the AB story down. OK, and full disclosure… I am on the AB train first.
BUT, I want to look at other alternatives again and see if others make sense.
I totally agree with looking at JG again- as I cannot wait until Wednesday doing no new research and what would it hurt? Maybe we get another suspect again for Shimmy!
August said...
why not a second JG
Don't you think Mary Martin would've noticed the difference in that taxicab in 1982?
It's gonna be pretty hard to find concrete evidence of ANYBODY because we have nothing to compare out supposed Shimmy to. Without a Timmy, we have no clue as to what can be faked, what was faked, etc. There are so many scenarions that can be tailor made to ANY situation to make the reasoning plausible. (I'm currently doing that with my JG theory)
gossip monger:
Glad that gave you a laugh. While looking throuth wikipedia's best actress winners, I kept giving them instant makeovers to emphaize their manly features. "if they have shorter hair, give him a moustache and a cigar, and thats a dude!!!" Then I come to Marie Dressler and Anne Revere, whom I think need a lot more stuff to actually pass as a WOMAN! Man they were beastly!!!
But I think they all look so draggish is because they all wore SO much makeup back then, its all caked on and on they all look like they are auditioning headliners at the Manhole.
August:
Exactly, children were thrown out because they could be adopted and back then the birthright of the child or children could be hidden so it became a dead end for us (no way to prove or disprove the actual birth mother- no way to prove Shimmy or actual birth mother).
gillian:
"Don't you think Mary Martin would've noticed the difference in that taxicab in 1982?"
Forgive me, but I don't have idea what you're talking about. I looked up Mary Martin on IMDB, and thats another dude to me....Martin Mary more like it! LOL
Gilligan and Sal Mineo? Aargh, pass the brain bleach.
I don't think he's Timmy because unless I'm mistaken, Bob Denver is still alive. I seem to remember he got busted for getting a big Fedex package of marijuana not too long ago. (How Gilligan!)
Here's an odd tidbit I came across earlier today - according to a book called Killer Tomatoes, Gloria Grahame (yeah, her again) kept getting plastic surgery in the 40's and 50's in an effort to make herself more beautiful.
According to John Houseman, the producer of her film, The Cobweb:
"...she showed up for the first day's shooting with stitches in the lip, which threw people into a minor panic. The airbrushing of scars on the slides of her lip is visible in the publicity shots taken at the time."
I haven't been able to track down a big still from that movie, but I did find one from a movie she made a few months later with William Russell called The Man Who Never Was, and you can definitely see at least one scar on her chin.
Another reason it can't be Janet Gaynor is that she won in 1929, but worked steadily in film until 1938 (not to mention a few film and TV credits in the 50s, and a Love Boat guest shot in the 80s).
Ent says the actress in question gave up acting "very soon" after her win. Even if we exclude Gaynor's credits from the 50s and 80s, the nine years between her win and her retirement (until the 50s) from film is not "very soon."
Read the rest of Janet Gaynor's bio on imdb. She and Mary Martin were in a traffic accident in SF in 1982 and neither one ever recovered from it.
"Don't you think Mary Martin would've noticed the difference in that taxicab in 1982?"
I second what August said- no one would have called out ANYONE back then.
Think of all the actors/ actresses who were homosexual who always were able to live their lives as such and not be in the tabloids (unlike today, sad- I know in this day and age- when people are like OJ and get away with murder/ robbery and these actors and actresses were just trying to live their lives doing nothing wrong but just being who they were).
I don't think anyone would have "exposed" anyone back then.
Sorry Dimes, Bob Denver died a couple of years ago. He lived in my home state. It was all over the news.
Does anybody know if Maggie McNamara (nom. for 3 coins in a fountain) won any awards? A relative reported her dead by suicide and her grave is unmarked - she's small, delicate, and didn't work a lot...
He did get caught with marijuana though--he and his wife were fans I believe
Thanks, mandjo - I hadn't realized he passed away.
I thought we found that Maggie McNamara did not win any awards.
gossip monger
Maggie didn't win any awards
"Katharine Hepburn adored Timmy."
Is that Timmy the man? Could EL have meant Timmy played a love interest in a Hepburn movie and her character adored Timmy's character?
August, I thought that is what I said(?)
Mandals- KH said that often- it could have meant many things as should said that about a lot of people.
Gilligan?
Somewhere Ent is laughing over a martini.
"When he first arrived in LA... most performers were tied to a studio for many years. They would often work on several films simultaneously and often share accommodations..."
This did not sink in until now: work[ed] on several films simultaneously? Unless we're talking about Bollywood, this must refer to silent movies.
... "most performers were tied to the studio"... That doesn't sound like a reference to bit players or extras. So under what circumstances/which time period were actors working on several films simultaneously?
The only thing that keeps Maggie Mac out of the running is not winning any major awards.
She was nominated, however.
She fits the other criteria for Shimmy...no real background, virtually stops acting after appearing in only three films (there were several tv appearances a few years later), she co-starred with Clifton Webb (closeted a-lister, who also appeared in the 1953 film Titanic), she had a scar over her left eye.
I think her info on Find-a-Grave is suspect; searching the 1930 census for the family that appears listed there for her doesn't turn up a match. Maggie's bio on IMDB said she was born 1928, Marguerite McNamara.
The only other questionable part involves Clifton Webb. I've been reading about him, and the likelihood of him maintaing a long-term homosexual relationship is remote. His closest relationship was with his mother; this is from the book "Behind the Screen" by William Mann: "For all his undisguised gayness, however, Clifton seemed to have no great love other than Mabelle. 'I don't remember him ever having a lover,' said Charles Williamson who knew him through George Cukor. He did, however, enjoy the company of young men, who often gathered poolside at his pink stucco house on Rexford Drive in Beverly Hills. 'I remember Clifton would disappear with them into the poolhouse, telling his mother they were off to check the garden,' said Robert Wheaton. 'Mabelle would keep quiet for about a half hour and then she'd call out---"Clifton, where are you?" And he'd say, "Coming, Mother." ' "
I just thought that was interesting b/c as a closeted a-lister, on paper Clifton Webb fit the bill for the never-married long-term affair for Timmy. But, it seems Clifton really isn't an ideal candidate for that role afterall.
I still think Maggie is a longshot; but there's really not much info available on her at all. I don't know of any bios that even discuss her. I tried to watch Three Coins in the Fountain again, but our library's copy is out, and the local Blockbuster doesn't seem to have any classic films these days. In The Moon is Blue, she has a very unusual voice pattern...supposedly Maggie was born in New York, but the accent sounds more like she tried to lose the local flavor and has a pseudo-upper class thing going on that sort of goes in and out. It's a very carefully modulated voice.
Also in The Moon is Blue, they never show her feet. I think it's interesting b/c in one scene, she takes off her shoes, and William Holden comments on how cute her feet are, but the camera cuts away from them and you can't actually see them. Then, a little later on, she walks across the room to put her shoes back on, and again, the camera cuts away from actually showing her feet. In that film, Maggie appears tiny---acting next to William Holden and David Niven who were both quite tall---so what were they hiding about her feet???
I can't explain how Maggie fits regarding the "big award." But in so many other ways, she does fit.
Gillian--
'round 1927--1948.
The studio basically "owned" all its "talent pool" They owned the sound-stages, the equipment, the directors, and the actors.
Basically, actors with contracts of similar length (who were of age, of course) were put up in apartments or houses that the studio rented (maybe owned?) for the purpose.
So, let's say we have 3 actresses, each with, oh, let's say, for argument's sake, 4 year contracts.
They put the gals up in the same apt. together, which makes it easier to keep tabs on them, easier to gather them up for publicity events, and so on.
During the "Golden Age" (1927--1948) an actor under contract would make two, three, sometimes 4 films per year. Actors had pretty much no say as to the kinds of scripts they got or roles they played. All was determined by the studio.
Actors kinda HAD TO work that hard, because, unlike today, they didn't get points on the gross or image/likeness rights. So, basically, actors had cash-in-hand (the studio paid them, and paid them pretty well if they were successful) but they had nothing in the "hopper" so to speak (no percentage points of ticket sales, or, further down the line, DVD sales or syndication sales).
The actors were basically cattle. Contractually "owned" for the length of the contract
"The only thing that keeps Maggie Mac out of the running is not winning any major awards."
Gogolola- I think that is a very BIG miss with the hint.
Helena- I guess it's a semantics thing. To me, 3-4 pictures a year is "sequentially". "Simultaneously" is doing a scene from film A today, then work on film B for a couple days and then back to film A to finish up.
Actually I don't know if they filmed silents that way but they might have... or maybe I've got Bollywood on the brain.
"Gogolola- I think that is a very BIG miss with the hint."
Gossip Monger, I totally agree, the award-winning aspect is a big part of the blind...but look how we've twisted ourselves into pretzels trying to make someone who won an Oscar fit the other clues, and the best guess we have is Alice Brady.
In all other ways except for winning the Academy Award, or another major one, Maggie is a viable candidate. She was nominated, and I keep re-reading the original wording from ENT to see if there's room for a mere nominee in there, and he clearly refers to a winner, I agree:
"There he was, the woman who was really a gay man was being honored for being the Best Supporting Actress/Best Actress of the year. Its up to you to figure out which of the two he won."
If ENT has stopped at just saying "being honored" then there's room in there for it to be only a nominee, but he had to go and add the last part.
But I put the info about Maggie out there b/c I still think it's more likely to be someone like her than a Janet Gaynor who had such a long, distinguished career in the biz.
So, after all this, we still haven't figured out Shimmy?
http://www.classicmoviemusicals.com/actorsb.htm#bradya
Alice Brady (1892 - 1939)
Born in New York, N.Y. Actress in films from 1914 until her untimely death in 1939. Known for her skill at playing zany, eccentric ladies (often wives of wealthy men); though she played drama and comedy equally well. She won a Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal of Mrs. O'Leary in the film In Old Chicago, 1938.
Selected Feature Films:
Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
In Old Chicago (AA, 1938)
One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937)
Three Smart Girls (1936)
Go West Young Man (1936)
My Man Godfrey (AAN, 1936)
Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935)
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Broadway to Hollywood (1933)
When Ladies Meet (1933)
Little Italy (1921)
Betsy Ross (1917)
La Bohème (1916)
As Ye Sew (1914)
I eliminate Norma Shearer from my list because:
1930 - AA..best actress - 'The Gay Divorcee'
1938 - Venice Film Festival..best actress - 'Marie Antoinette'
As Shimmy only worked for approx 4 years after the big award (AA in this case) it didn't make sense that Norma won again 8 years later.
I eliminate everyone from my list because:
no-one fits properly
LOL LOL LOL
My list of movies with ‘Rain’ or ‘Flood’ in the title 1930 – 1965
1930 – Rain or Shine
1932 – Rain
1932 – The Painted Woman (AKA ‘After the Rain’ USA)
1934 – Romance in the Rain
1936 – Porky the Rain-Maker
1937 – September in the Rain
1945 – It Looks Like Rain
1952 – Singing in the Rain
1953 – Miss Sadie Thompson (AKA ‘Rain’ USA)
1956 – Miracle in the Rain
1957 – A Hatful of Rain
1963 – Soldier in the Rain
1963 – Face in the Rain
1965 – Baby the Rain Must Fall
1930 – The Way of All Men (AKA ‘The Sin Flood UK)
1931 – The Flood
1934 – Flood Tide
1946 – The Johnstown Flood
1948 – Flood Waters
1958 – Flood Tide
1963 – The Flood
Just something I keep going back to.
What if Timmy was black but with a fairer complexion or mixed race. That would also fit as to why he didn't fit in when growing up if he lived in a black neighbourhood. It would explain why he didn't get far as actor Timmy at that time.
Have looked at many Bio's for light skinned black actresses who "passed for white".
Sorry if this doesn't sound pc but using phrases from the time.
Melster,
I recall someone was guesing Hattie McDaniel and Ben Vereen LOL...Everyone is looking at EVERY POSSIBLE actor/actress!
My guess is that Timmy didnt fit in because of his size and very feminine features. If he was able to easily be an understudy and work as a female, something tells me he wasn't masculine at all!
I can't get on the two Alice Bradys train. That is such too important of a revelation to leave out of the original blind item.
The original BI makes it sound as if Timmy spent 2 years on the road crafting a whole new female persona...not 2 years trying to perfect his imitation of an existing actress. Why would he have to concoct a resume and background for Alice Brady, if she already existed?
From the original BI:
"After another year working at the studio without getting much further than bit parts, Timmy decided to do something which would put him in the spotlight. When his studio contract ended he basically reversed his original trek to LA and began performing in small town theatres again, but this time as a woman.
Timmy traveled and did the theatre route for almost two years while building up a resume and a background for his new persona. When he finally felt as if he had it down, Timmy returned to Hollywood. This time as a woman.
From his very first screen test as a woman, Timmy was destined to become a star."
Maybe this is all just one big Urban Legend and we've all been duped. Not just duped, we've been PUNKED!
Maybe 50 years from now, ENT will be in the Old Lawyers Home still posting blind items and he will do one about the "famous Academy Award winning actress who had to go to the emergency room to have a gerbil removed from her...."
And our grandchildren will be searching SuperNet databases and guessing obscure actresses like Halle Berry and Charlize Theron and....
That someone notified us about "The Secret of Mabel Eastlake" (OH!!! WATER! WATER EVERYWHERE!) whose blurb apparently says "based on an old Hollywood rumor" should be all we need to know that this Timmy Shimmy story is bogus.
But I've sure had fun reading everyone's ideas and I am going to dig out my Kenneth Anger "Hollywood Babylon" books and reread them because the history of early Hollywood is, as we have all learned from this, very fascinating and decadent.
WAIT!!!!
Youre forgetting the ORIGINAL Poseidon Adventure and Gillians Island-Old TV is a possiblity-
I say Shelly Winters-- old shimmy AND old timmy
OR
Tina Louise- young shimmy, the Professor- young timmy.
Comeon just kidding!!!!- lets just wait until wed, my luck its probably IS Don Novis for Timmy!
hola from barcelona guapas!
my guess is...jesus now i dont know!!!
EL be a dear and email me when you got it all out in the open..ill be on a Yacht for most of next week..and not bringing a laptop! the horror!!!
love yas..
Oh, sure, Jax...just show up and gloat that you're someplace fun and we're stuck here in this big miasma known as Timmyland. I hope you have a wonderful time and get sand in your shorts! ;-)
Seriously, have a BLAST!
If you look on Musicals 101, they list all the MGM musicals by decade. From 29-39 they made 61, in the 40's 65, and in the 50's 52. So I say Timmy could come from anyone of those decades.
http://members.aol.com/mgmfanatic/index.html
If only 10 people know the full story, has anyone come up with a theory as to how he would have been fitted/measured for costumes without being outed as a man?
Morning folks,
1. I discounted Norma Shearer because she married one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.
2. I wouldn't discount Bob Denver easily if not for DOD. He always was a worker and workers do what it takes to make a buck.
3. Trying to find the elusive roomate of Haines, I found this site which is entertaining when you need an Alice break. http://phantomdragon.com/THELEGEND/epilogue.htm
I am going to look into the one with the trunk.
4. I wouldnt discount Bob Evans being JJ or knowing everything JJ knows. Norma Shearer discovered him and made him a movie star. I bet she told him everything she knew and she knew probably everything. He's a guy that keeps secrets, and we'd be the perfect market maker for a story like this real or imagined. Bob are you lurking? Cough something up for us here.
5. I think this secret could be kept because I bet there probably were a lot of Shimmies during the musicals, maybe just not one with awards. Christina Aguilera would make a good lead in a story like this and think of the ensemble you could build.
Hi Eileen
1. Made own costumes (there were some) or more likely
2. Costume designer was in on it like the one that lived with Haines or even a studio designer. It was their job to keep secrets or they would be fired.
I see that some people are thinking that the "think water" clue from Noah's Ark might mean the movie itself dealt with water.
While that is highly plausible, when I first heard the water comment, i thought that the actor/actress in question CROSSED water. Meaning travelled like Noah did over an ocean (or river or lake...)
Hmmm. Lake... Veronica Lake... Ok, no thats wrong.
(although I know he ruled out BAFTAs, etc...)
Did any one else thing this line of thinking? Is it something to explore?
One river that would have to had been crossed "from Topeka to Broadway" would be the Mississippi River. The most famous story that dealt with the Miss. River is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
in 1939, There was a Huck Finn movie that starred... Mickey Rooney, who has been a constant name rallied around this BI for the JJ person.
If this is worth going somewhere, please discuss
PS. Three were 2 other Huck Finn movies. One in the 20s and one in the 30s.
I know it is a loooooong shot. But at this point, isnt most of the stuff that is getting posted long shots?
You throw enough darts at a dart board one will eventually hit a bullseye.
Thanks for listening
Delco Dave:
I like your line of thinking...its defitnely worth pursuing, but the clues in teh blind that haven't been discussed to death were the the role was the subject of the blind...was the subject of the blind "the life and times of timmy" is that phrase important in the winning performance? Also the movie Shimmy was in was made to seem it got awards on its own, as it was an award winning movie. What movies won an AA for anything other than a performance?
budford - interesting page. Kind of scary in the same way that the pics of the silent screen actresses were scary.
Hi August.
No, I believe my line of thinking doesnt have anything to do with "the role in question". I do know that.
I just think that Noah's Ark was mentioned for a reason and that it wasnt mentioned for something "obvious" becuase so far, nothing has really been obvious except for the "nots".
I thought maybe if I tried going in another direction, it would lead to a clue. Maybe Timmy was in the background, uncredited in an obscure movie but NOT the movie in question that got him that role. I know we are going with an award winner and thats the role that the BI is all about.
I'm thinking that there are over 100 different movies that Timmy/Shimmy combined performed in and maybe Ent was throwing us a bone and mentioning one of the other 99 to get us to put the pieces of the puzzles together.
Kinda like Kevin Bacon.
Timmy was in this movie, which let to this movie, where he met this person critical to his life, where he then got his award winning role. (.....with Kevin Bacon)
ha ha
This is a puzzle and I just dont feel that "Noah's Ark means that Timmy/Shimmy starred in a movie about Noah's Ark" is going to be that straightforward.
I think that there is a movie out there... and obscure one at best... that ties a bunch of people together that have been mentioned throughout (and it isnt an award winning movie.)
But thats just my own thinking.
Can anyone find a photo of Dan Tobin? He died in 1983 & worked w/Hepburn on Broadway and in two movies.
Hi Delco,
Im willing to go with your idea. Jackie Coogan did play "One role" with the TS, HF. I think there was a book or movie - Life and Times of Mark Twain. I would bet that he was a competitor of Mickey Rooney. His parents worked him to death ala Lohan and I bet they would make him play a woman for the money. He does have an uncredited part that has what looks to be a female gendered name: Inopportune. He looks like he could pass for a female.
Calla, if you go to google images you'll find some. I can't post the link here because it gets goofed up and it won't direct you properly, but it will be the second photo, and then when you click on it you'll go to a site, click on the second one down and you can make it larger from there. That's only one - you'll find more that way, too.
Another thought I had was that Timmy could be a child actor who worked with Hepburn, since "adored" could imply the fondness one has for a child.
I came across Tommy Bupp, a child actor who worked w/Hepburn on Mary of Scotland & died in 1983, but discounted him after reading a bio that one of his children posted about him.
Maybe there are others, though?
Twisted...thank you! I feel pretty dumb for not having found that one myself. I clicked on it but thought it was a dead end.
After looking at this photo, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that he could dress up as a girl. ;)
Now see, why couldn't I do that, Calla? That was the pic I wanted to link to, but every time I tested it I was brought back to the first page with all the thumbnails.
At this point, every guy looks girly to me and every woman could be a man. Wednesday cannot come too soon!
twisted - I know, I know! Anyway, Dan Tobin doesn't really work because he was born in a large city (Cincinnati) and worked in TV a lot in his later years (which I don't think fits).
BTW, I created that image link by right-clicking the image and choosing "View Image" and then copying the resulting link.
water?
Lifeboat
Outward Bound (Produced on Broadway by Brady Enterprises)
Ship of Fools (that's us after we read the big reveal)
ENT says Shimmy was already identified on 3 other sites. He told us now to focus on the WHY.
My "WHY" right now is WHY IS HE DOING THIS TO US?
The real why is probably that the real actress is dying and people don't want her to die yet, so they conspire to get Timmy to stand in for her. (The Alice Brady scenario)
OR...as others have pointed out...Haines wanted some sweet revenge and then he did a turnabout blackmail and said he would reveal all and embarrass the studio unless all the bigshots poured big bucks into his interior design company. (This would be Timmy as a new actress in town, not standing in for Alice Brady or Margaret Rutherford.)
If you want to find films related to flooding/water disasters, this is a good resource:
Greatest Disaster Film Scenes
(You'll need to click on the "Part 2," "Part 3," etc. links in order to see more.)
I had to laugh at the last part of this:
After MGM made the earth shake in "San Francisco", Fox needed a disaster of equal value to compete so they burned down Chicago! It cost nearly $2 million but the returns were enormous. Tyrone played Dion O'Leary, ne'er-do-well son of the local laundress (with a nervous cow!). The original casting idea of Gable and Harlow was shelved when King decided Gable was too old for the part and Harlow had taken seriously ill. Don Ameche was tagged to play Jack O'Leary and Alice Faye was given the role of Belle Fawcett. A near-tragedy happened on the set when Faye's feathery costume caught fire from nearby candles.She ran off the set and tumbled down a flight of stairs. Alice wasn't burned but the fall caused her long range back pain. The intentional fire cost thousands of dollars to set and three days to put out.****It was considered so dangerous women weren't allowed on the set and stuntmen dressed as women were used instead.**** The picture won two Academy Awards...one for Alice Brady as Mrs. O'Leary (Best Supporting Actress) and Robert Webb ( for Assistant Director..the last time the award was given)...and 3 nominations (Best Picture, Original Story, and Score).
so men were used dressed as women, what would be the difference if alice brady was really a man? not to mention a fire that took 3 days to put out "with water i assume"
http://www.arabella-and-co.com/6/tpmovies.htm
Hi Budford. Even established actors had very little control over any aspect of their careers so I’m not sure a new comber would be permitted to make her own costumes. So then, as you stated the costumer did know which would mean the studio did as well. I don’t know, it’s one of many points that hopefully will be explained in the reveal. Also, I know there are a few of us who are not certain that the “big award” was an AA which, in my mind, means that Maggie McNamara hasn’t been ruled out... yet. And again, only if I take a leap and assume Timmy later took her out of retirement for a few television appearances.
Those female clothes are part of the drag act of Billy House, a man of huge girth and microscopic acting talent. For implausible reasons, he masquerades as an aristocratic Englishwoman to call on Aunt Hortense. Their scenes together are excruciating:
**** actress Alice Brady (as Hortense) borrows Billie Burke's twee mannerisms, and she actually comes off here as an even phonier female impersonator than House does****
That made me laugh too.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0029234/usercomments
I have another comment/question. I value all of you chiming in and helping either saying "yes" or "no".
I am reading the last line of the BI
"Timmy as an actor and actress was in over 100 films and theatre productions from Topeka to Broadway"
Topeka to Broadway is what is sticking with me now.
It sounds to me that is is a list of credits, as in their IMDB credits.
So, if you substitute 2 movies for Topeka to Broadway, it might read like this (and please note I am making these 2 titles up, nothing more...)
"Timmy as an actor and actress was in over 100 films and theatre productions from the Wizard of Oz to Bullets of Broadway"
The Wiz being a reference to Kansas and B-over-B a reference to Broadway"
Again... I am making these up.
But the word "FROM" has really made me think that this is an IMDB listing of the films. Maybe it starts with one of Shimmy's films and end with one of Timmys films.
From "here" to "there"...
On another note: I was surprised to see there is actually a movie called Noah's Ark in 1928 where the actors/actresses played dual roles, hence the "2 by 2 in pairs" thing.
Thanks everyone. Happy Sunday!!!
Hi Eileen,
I was thinking of Orry Kelly who lived with Haines. That would be a tight group. They would have gotten the newcomer the in. I am also interested in this Barbette who shows up as a coach in SLIH, has movie roles in both genders gets sent away from Hollywood by William Morris but yet bios leave a lot of the Hollywood time out. Was this the fourth roommate? Also her film role as a man is a film about water and a mermaid.
I too am not sure its an AA, but Maggies bio as a model checks out - she has two covers as a female model on Life. That's tough to fake.
I also noticed (while looking EA that the Emmys changed their award from best female to best actress the year after EA won the award in a recurring role
Monday, Aug. 31, 1925
Oh! Mamma served to bring Alice Brady back to the stage after years of doing nothing except Zander the Great for a brief season.
Miss Brady is too fine an emotional actress to spread her comic talent over a whole evening as she does in Oh! Mama! She has to try to be funny.
The complaint is, of course, relative. Alice Brady is so incomparably better as a comedienne than dozens of other actresses that her presence on the stage is a tonic. But she is so much better doing other things that the self comparison will not be downed.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,720914,00.html?promoid=googlep
"after years" and he imdb doesn't have much between 1923 and 1933, perhaps this 1925 marks timmy's 1st appearance?
Think this might have been posted before but Timmy Hawkins was in 'Singing in the Rain' uncredited as 'boy'. Lots of uncredited work.
Ok Budford, you've sold me on both accounts. Jane Bryan and Maggie McNamara were the only two actresses I could come up with that had a short career span coupled with ambiguous/can't be verified post-Hollywood life.
Melster,
We've been assuming that Timmy was Caucasian, because most of Hollywood was at that time. I'm still operating under the assumption that Timmy was white because EL would definitely have mentioned otherwise.
Once again, I think the answer is:
NO ONE.
There is NO person that fits the clues.
And yet I cannot stop myself. I need help.
Christine...I'm with you 100%!
Agreed - I just keep getting drawn back in.
What's the most stupid thing everyone has looked at ?
Me - Leo the Lion in the MGM film credits ... I know - cuckoo
budford said...
Hi Delco,
Im willing to go with your idea. Jackie Coogan did play "One role" with the TS, HF. I think there was a book or movie - Life and Times of Mark Twain. I would bet that he was a competitor of Mickey Rooney. His parents worked him to death ala Lohan and I bet they would make him play a woman for the money. He does have an uncredited part that has what looks to be a female gendered name: Inopportune. He looks like he could pass for a female.
OH NO!! He played Uncled Fester on TV-- Not Uncle Fester!!! It can't be! It just can't be!! :-( THAT would be disappointing!!
Okay, wild card: I ruled out Inger Stevens because she won a Golden Globe, but, according to a few fans sites and also to find-a-grave, she won a few other awards for her role in The Farmer's Daughter. So, she apparently won regularly for one role. But what did she win that was as big as a Golden Globe and not preserved for posterity?
She's got a fantastical biography and resume (which starts in a burlesque theatre in Manhattan, Kansas) and includes being the last person to jump out of an exploding plane. She dies under mysterious circumstances, is autopsied by "Whore-onor to the Stars" Thomas Noguchi, is claimed by a secret husband, and is then cremated. Her estate, which had been augmented by smart real estate investment, is completely gone by 1985 (according to her secret husband, musician Ike Jones). No kids, two marriages - the secret one and a quickie to her agent (maybe to get a social security card issued?). She went to NY and studied at The Actor's Studio before heading to Hollywood.
She starred with a few closeted a-listers, including Roddy McDowell, and allegedly had an affair with Burt Reynolds.
She's got a boatload of credits in a short period of time, thanks largely to filmed theatrical appearances on the tv playhouses. Plenty to contribute toward the number 100. And her screen test was included in "Hollywood Screen Tests Take 2," so it must have had something to commend it.
I can't find the other awards. I don't know what they are. Her career does not seem to have been in descent. And her skin looks flawless.
Any Noah's Ark connection would be barnyard, not water (far as I can tell).
And I have the same/opposite problem with her timeline that I have with Alice Brady - Inger seems to come along too late and works for roughly 15 years before her "suicide." Unless, when Ent says the whole thing takes place within 50 years, he's talking about a lifespan, rather than a combined career span.
Dragon,
And in my quest to find Timmy, I ran into Uncle Fester as part of my research. I never knew he was a childhood star and his parents robbed him of his wages.
This bi has helped me to uncover alot of info about past stars and their history.
I've been doing some research on Jane Bryan, and she is definitely out.
JB did 18 films in 5 years and was a protogee of Bette Davis. They stayed good friends after her retirement and Bette even got married at Jane's ranch. Despite the fact that she doesn't grant interviews, Jane's post-Hollywood life is well-documented. Her husband Justin Dart was the multi-millionaire founder of Walgreens. They were ardent Republicans who were active in politics; they convinced Ronald Reagan to run for governor of CA, and their daughter married Nixon aid John Ehrlichman. They were big fundraisers. Jane served on the Federal Arts Commission in Washington and board of the L.A. Natural History Museum.
She is also definitely still alive.
I think we should ELIMINATE any actress that looked like a man (a rapidly-growing list)
and focus only on FEMININE women.
most of the front-runners are far from "delicate, soft" as Enty described early on.
one thing is for sure, if you think "everyone in Hollywood is gay" today, boy, there is definitely a long history to support that addage.
I thought I'd poke around a little on the JJ angle. I ran a query in IMDb for living male producers between the ages of 85-90.
Most of them we can probably exclude for various reasons (only TV credits, only non-U.S. credits, primarily credited as director, never married, etc.). I also excluded AC Lyles and Mickey Rooney, since they've already been discussed pretty exhaustively here.
That being said, I found a few who make for interesting possibilities:
1) Jackie Cooper, age 84. Born John Cooper Jr. ("JJ"?). His first wife June Horne was in a half dozen films, mostly uncredited, from '38-'44 and '53. (Second wife Hildy Parks was also an actress before turning writer-producer, but most of her acting work was TV.) On the downside, Cooper's acting and directing credits far outstrip his producing credits, although he continues to be active in the industry.
2) Walter Mirisch, age 85. He's been producing films since 1949 (when he was 27 or 28). His biography is scant, so nothing about his career before then or his personal life (i.e. whether or to whom he is/was married). However, his first production credit was in '47, and they continue up to '98. Since then he's appeared as himself in various docs and DVD bonus material. He served terms as president of both AMPAS and the Producers Guild, so "everyone" would know him.
3) Blake Edwards, age 85. His film credits begin in 1942, when he was 20, but both his stepfather and his stepfather's father were directors and he could well have done "gofer" work for them as a kid. His first wife Patricia Walker was an actress who has 7 film credits from '46-'53, half of them uncredited, several for MGM (hence could have been one of Shimmy's "studio" roommates). He's still an active writer and producer with several projects in various stages of development.
4) Stanley Rubin, age 91. His film credits begin in '40 (as a writer) and continue up to '90 (but not anything since). He married actress Kathleen Hughes (they are still married) in 1954. According to Wikipedia, she was discovered in a Little Theater production in 1948 and signed to a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox; she made fourteen films for the studio, the first in '49. So she's also a candidate for one of Shimmy's roomies.
Don't know if any of this helps...
Hi Lesley,
I think Inger Stevens was in Playboy. Not a total killer but . .
Blake Edwards is married to Julie Andrews, who won the AA for Mary Poppins. Just sayin'.
Hello everyone -
I have been away this weekend at a retreat and am just now catching up on the posts.
I have been lurking for a while and this is my first post however I wanted to say I agree kellysirkus. I recall Ent saying he had watched the movie and could not tell Timmy/Shimmy was a man.
I think it could be Alice Brady but she does look quite a bit like a man in "In Ole Chicago". Perhaps there should be someone fairer - but I have no clue who.
You guys have impressed me so much with your research! Great job!!
Hi, Budford! I'm not up on my Playboy history, but I think actual boobs are a deal-killer for me.
I've got nothing but random observations that seem to rule out everybody. Really.
Alice Brady's story, if there are two of her, spans considerably more than 50 years. Timmy would have to hit Hollywood and start working as Timmy, at the earliest, in 1930, work out a contract, hit the road for two years and make it out East in time to take over for the real Alice and then come back, move in with roommates (which there's no indication that divorced and aging Alice Brady did), and give the star-making performances.
Margaret Rutherford - I just think she really was English. Maybe she really was a man, but I think she really was English.
Other close contenders with Academy Awards get ruled out with Timmy-prohibitive facts, such as saggy side-boob shots, dead broad in the apartment after 1985, obvious biological kids.
And that's what we've got for the Oscars. The Oscars may be a mistaken assumption based on EL's deliberate use of words as intentional misdirection. That's one of the things that makes me think EL's a real lawyer, btw.
Other awards that are neither BAFTA's nor Golden Globes take us to similar dead ends, so I'm officially stumped. Inger Stevens does have a post-apocalyptic pair off movie with Harry Belafonte, but I don't think there's water in it, and if she's posed nude, she's not Shimmy. Unless JJ is Hugh Hefner.
I think I just made myself ill.
Okay, so while we're on the subject, I just want to say for the NOT Shimmy but a MAN ANYWAY awards? I nominate Marie Dressler, Kim Novak, Anjelica Huston, Nancy Kulp, Kelly McGillis, and Lori Petty, all of whom, I think, are great.
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