Quelle Life

Robert Mitchum and Shirley Maclaine on the set of Two for the...

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:00:05 -0400

Robert Mitchum and Shirley Maclaine on the set of Two for the Seesaw (1962)

Soon after filming began on Two for the Seesaw, it became clear that MacLaine and Mitchum were most compatible, were getting along splendidly. In public, on the set, they were a pair of cutups, entertaining each other and the crew to the point of exasperation for director Wise. “They got to ribbing and telling jokes and making us all laugh, so that the biggest problem we had was getting the two of them to settle down and get into the scene and rehearse.” In truth, there was something beyond compatibility going on. MacLaine’s girlhood crush had been reignited and was now combined with some deeper, more mature response to the enigmatic man she deemed in so many ways her exact opposite: a drifter through life, a dedicated underachiever. As they played their roles of Gittel and Jerry falling for each other, it was becoming a case of reality mimicking the movies.

Mitchum began driving her home from the studio. He would talk, tell stories, recite poetry. MacLaine listened, spellbound, reveling in the sensitivity she found lurking beneath the ‘Neanderthal” surface. Mitchum pulled out all the stops. He quoted Shakespeare, peeled pomegranates for her with one hand, told her he was a caged lion….”a poet with an ax.”

“I found him to be a complex mystery,” she would write, “multifaceted, ironically witty, shy to the point of detachment….I felt I’d be missing the adventure of a lifetime if I just did my job and walked away from what I intuitively knew was a deep and stormy fragility.” Mitchum delighted in her lithe twenty-eight-year-old dancer’s body and face he told her was “treacherously beautiful…like some enchanted goblin’s” She was bright, funny, spirited. Her days as the Sinatra Rat Pack’s mascot had made her a sturdy drinking buddy and as unshockable as a Brooklyn stevedore, but she could be earnest and sensitive and had a burgeoning, ambitious intellectual curiosity.

Mitchum, to MacLaine, was a mysterious and fascinating creature, with his hidden depths and contradictions, variously cynical, poetic, coarse, romantic. She loved his stories and his rich, recondite, and often surreal verbiage, though many a time she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. He was hard to understand in many ways. Once, in a farmhouse they rented outside Paris, he watched her taking a bath and tears began welling in his eyes; he told her he was crying because she looked so beautiful. The same man, she knew, was quite capable of outbursts of rage and violence. On one occasion he went after a driver who had cut him off on the road, ramming into him again and again for miles, grinning, eyes afire. MacLaine looked at him beside her and could only chillingly see the killer he had brought to life in The Night of the Hunter. The two of them were together when President Kennedy was shot, and they sat side by side in front of the television, day and night, watching the news unfold. It didn’t matter what you did in life, Mitchum whispered after hours of silence, staring at Kennedy’s coffin, there were always bastards out there waiting to grind you down. They dated for three years.

—Excerpts from Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don’t Care

theniftyfifties: Summer fashion on the street, 1950s.

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 09:39:59 -0500

theniftyfifties:

Summer fashion on the street, 1950s.

Must have been super easy to clean the floors...

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:34:36 -0400

Must have been super easy to clean the floors

theniftyfifties:

1956 Italian mid century interior design with a suspended Bertoia diamond lounge chair.

I love these guys! totallyastaire: Wow how large and what a...

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:01:08 -0400

I love these guys!

totallyastaire:

Wow how large and what a good quality. I’m a lucky girl to have found that ♥

A Las Vegas themed TWA ad sissydudeomen2: (via Oh, how i LOVE...

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 07:39:55 -0400

A Las Vegas themed TWA ad

sissydudeomen2:

(via Oh, how i LOVE an old TWA poster (via leifpeng))

1963 TWA Travel Europe Ad

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:12:45 -0400

Sammy Davis Jr. reading the Talmud theniftyfifties: Sammy Davis...

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 07:15:47 -0400

Sammy Davis Jr. reading the Talmud

theniftyfifties:

Sammy Davis Jr.

The “I Want to Be Bad” number from the Golf Musical...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:33:37 -0400

The “I Want to Be Bad” number from the Golf Musical (yes that was a genre) Follow Thru (1930)

Art Deco glory: Their Own Desire (1929)

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:31:40 -0400

Art Deco glory: Their Own Desire (1929)

Remember the Sunny Side of Life promo from TCM? Introduced me to...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:28:42 -0400

Remember the Sunny Side of Life promo from TCM? Introduced me to Chet Baker.

Ella Fitzgerald singing A Tisket, A Tasket in the Abbott &...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:26:18 -0400

Ella Fitzgerald singing A Tisket, A Tasket in the Abbott & Costello Film Ride ‘Em Cowboy (1942)

Singin’ in the Rain from Hollywood Revue of 1929. If you...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:23:55 -0400

Singin’ in the Rain from Hollywood Revue of 1929. If you think Singin’ in the Rain comes from the Gene Kelly film, you are deluded.

Now here is the Varsity Drag number in the original Good News...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:14:13 -0400

Now here is the Varsity Drag number in the original Good News (1930) film.

Varsity Drag number from Good News (1947), the remake of the...

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 23:13:20 -0400

Varsity Drag number from Good News (1947), the remake of the original movie from 1930. Peter Lawford, June Allyson and the crew.

The Doors

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 23:09:19 -0400

The Doors

Jim Morrison Kaleidoscope

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 23:17:21 -0400

Jim Morrison Kaleidoscope

cineastesview: Hitchcock, with his films in the can. (via...

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 09:54:46 -0400

cineastesview:

Hitchcock, with his films in the can. (via chopingdolly)

cineastesview: A wonderful film! Myrna is so young yet...

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:36:43 -0400

cineastesview:

A wonderful film! Myrna is so young yet completely commanding. And it stars Peg Entwhistle, who became noted as the woman who jumped to her death from the HOLLYWOODLAND sign. Needs to be released on DVD!

rosedarling:

Myrna Loy in Thirteen Women, 1932.

decoarchitecture: Hotel New Yorker Luggage LabelVintage via...

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:15:54 -0400

decoarchitecture:

Hotel New Yorker Luggage Label
Vintage via kylarose

Lovely vintage label done in Deco style, matching the great building.

Hey! It’s @Cocosworld Coco! #BEA11

Tue, 24 May 2011 19:28:37 -0400

Hey! It’s @Cocosworld Coco! #BEA11