Happy 109th birthday, Barbara Stanwyck!

07/16/201607/16/2016 cladrite1 Comment

The wonderful Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens in Brooklyn, New York, 109 years ago today. We admire dozens of actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood, but for our money, Stanwyck was the greatest of them all. Here are 10 BS Did-You-Knows:

Stanwyck’s older brother, Bert Stevens, was also a busy actor, with more than 400 credits listed at IMDb.com.

Stanwyck was of English, Scottish, and Irish ancestry.

Her mother died in a trolley accident when Stanwyck was just four years old. Her father then abandoned Stanwyck and her four siblings to be raised by other members of the family.

In 1944, the U.S. government named Stanwyck the country’s highest-paid woman.

Stanwyck’s relationship with her first husband, Frank Fay, is said to have been the inspiration for the 1937 film A Star Is Born.

Stanwyck attended high school at Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn, but dropped out at 14.

Stanwyck played characters named Jessica Drummond in two very different movies: My Reputation (1946) and Forty Guns (1957).

Stanwyck, who was very conservative politically, was a member of The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

Stanwyck started smoking when she was nine years old.

Stanwyck has no grave. After she passed away in 1990 due to congestive heart failure and emphysema, she was cremated and her ashes were scattered from a helicopter over Lone Pine, California.

Happy birthday, Barbara Stanwyck, wherever you may be!

Cladrite Classics: Jack Benny Slept Here

06/01/201205/31/2012 cladriteLeave a comment

We were mulling over the other day some of the posts we thought particularly fun that went live in the weeks and months before Cladrite Radio had accumulated much of a readership. Would it be problematic, we wondered, to revisit some of those posts, under the heading of Cladrite Classics?

No, we decided, it would not. Hence the following revisited offering, which first saw the light of day on May 13, 2010:

Though we’re committed New Yorkers, we wouldn’t mind a bit spending a few weeks—perhaps even a few months—a year in Los Angeles. We even find ourselves daydreaming about the City of Angels quite often.

And yet, we came around slowly on L.A. Our first couple of visits were enjoyable enough, but we didn’t find the city particularly engaging. After a trio of week-long sojourns there over the past decade or so, though, we’ve been won over.

We view the city through a movie buff’s eye, primarily, and so spend our time motoring about checking out movie stars’ homes, vintage movie palaces, and locations that were used in the filming of some of our favorite classic pictures (though we’re also happy just puttering through the various old neighborhoods south of the Hollywood hills—we love the residential architecture in old L.A.).

We didn’t snap the photos shared below; we bought them at a flea market some years back. They’re snapshots taken around Hollywood and its environs back in the day. How old they are, exactly, we’re not sure—we’re inclined to think they’re from the late 1930s, but we’re open to guesses from you, gentle readers. (For larger views, just click the images.)

Fred Astaire’s home	Jack Benny’s home	Claudette Colbert’s home
Sam Goldwyn’s home	Norma Shearer’s home	Robert Taylor’s home
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ Pickfair	Grauman’s Chinese Theatre	Grauman’s Chinese Theatre

Jack Benny slept here

05/13/2010 cladriteLeave a comment

Though we’re committed New Yorkers, we woulnd’t mind a bit spending a few weeks — perhaps even a few months — a year in Los Angeles. We even find ourselves daydreaming about the City of Angels from time to time.

And yet, we came around slowly on L.A. Our first couple of visits were enjoyable enough, but we didn’t find the city particularly engaging. After three week-long sojourns there over the past six or seven years, though, we’ve been won over.

We view the city through a movie buff’s eye, primarily, and spend our time motoring about checking out movie stars’ homes, vintage movie palaces, and locations for favorite classic pictures (though we’re also happy just puttering through the various old neighborhoods south of the Hollywood hills — we love the residential architecture in old L.A.).

We didn’t snap the photos shared below; we bought them at a flea market some years back. They’re snapshots taken around Hollywood and its environs back in the day How old they are, exactly, we’re not sure — we’re inclined to think they’re from the late 1930s, but we’re open to guesses from you, gentle readers. (For larger views, just click the images.)

Fred Astaire’s home	Jack Benny’s home	Claudette Colbert’s home
Sam Goldwyn’s home	Norma Shearer’s home	Robert Taylor’s home
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks’ Pickfair	Grauman’s Chinese Theatre	Grauman’s Chinese Theatre