Randolph Scott

Randolph Scott (1898-1987) was a handsome American leading man who developed into one of Hollywood's greatest and most popular Western stars. From 1950 to 1953, he was among Hollywood's Top 10 box-office draws. He has appeared in more than 100 films, and of those, more than 60 are Westerns. With that number, he surpasses 'the' Western hero par excellence John Wayne.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 799. Photo: Paramount.


Dutch postcard. Photo: Europa - Columbia.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 980. Photo: Columbia.

Gaining much-needed acting experience

George Randolph Scott was born in 1898 as the second of six children of George and Lucy Crane Scott during a visit to Virginia. He was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina in a wealthy family. Because of his family's financial status, 'Randy' was able to attend private schools such as Woodberry Forest School. From an early age, Scott developed and displayed his athleticism, excelling in football, baseball, horse racing, and swimming.

After service with the U.S. Army in France in World War I, he attended the Georgia Institute of Technology but, after being injured playing football, he transferred to the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated with a degree in textile engineering and manufacturing.

Around 1927, he discovered acting and went to California, where he met Howard Hughes, who arranged a small part in a George O'Brien film called Sharp Shooters (John G. Blystone, 1928). Hughes also obtained an audition for him for Cecil B. DeMille's Dynamite (1929), a role that went instead to Joel McCrea. He was hired to coach Gary Cooper in a Virginia dialect for The Virginian (Victor Fleming, 1929) and played a bit part in the film.

On the advice of Cecil B. DeMille, Scott gained much-needed acting experience by performing in stage plays with the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1931 Scott played his first leading role opposite Sally Blane in Women Men Marry (Charles Hutchison, 1931), a film, now apparently lost, made by a Poverty Row studio called Headline Pictures. In 1932 Scott appeared in a play at the Vine Street Theatre in Hollywood, 'Under a Virginia Moon'. Paramount scouts saw him and offered him a contract. Paramount cast him as the lead in Heritage of the Desert (Henry Hathaway, 1932), his first significant starring role and also the one that established him as a Western hero. Henry Hathaway made his directorial debut with Heritage of the Desert. The film was popular and Scott would go on to make ten 'B' Westerns loosely based on the novels of Zane Grey.

Scott met Cary Grant, another Paramount contract player, on the set of Hot Saturday (William A. Seiter, 1932) and the pair soon moved in together. Till 1944, they lived in a beach house known jocularly as Bachelor Hall. The close friendship between Scott and Grant and the steady stream of women into and out of Bachelor Hall fed rumour mills for years. Many believed that Grant and Scott were lovers, and the women were arranged by the film studios for public effect. This cohabitation ended in 1942 when Cary Grant married the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, then the richest woman in the world. Scott remained close friends with Grant until the day he died. When he heard of his old friend's death, he reportedly put his head in his hands and wept. He himself would die a little over 2 months afterwards.


American postcard. Randolph Scott in The Last of the Mohicans (George B. Seitz, 1936).


British postcard by Publicity Photographs LTD, London, no. 434. Photo: Paramount.


British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, London, no. C 256. Photo: Paramount.

Altering into a stoic, craggy, and uncompromising figure

Paramount loaned Randolph Scott to RKO Radio Pictures to support Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Irene Dunne in Roberta (William A. Seiter, 1935), a hugely popular adaptation of the Broadway musical. He was loaned to independent producer Edward Small, to play Hawkeye in the adventure classic, The Last of the Mohicans (George B. Seitz, 1936), adapted from the 1826 novel by James Fenimore Cooper. A big hit, the film gave Scott his first unqualified 'A' picture success as a lead. He was a love interest for Mae West in Go West, Young Man (Henry Hathaway, 1936) and was reunited with Irene Dunne in a musical, High, Wide and Handsome (Rouben Mamoulian, 1937).

Randolph Scott married and divorced wealthy heiress Marion DuPont in the late 1930s. In the 1940s he appeared in several war films, notably To the Shores of Tripoli (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1942), Bombardier (Richard Wallace, 1943), the Canadian warship drama Corvette K-225 (Richard Rosson, 1943), Gung Ho! (Ray Enright, 1943) and China Sky (Ray Enright, 1945). Scott was a pleasant figure in comedies, dramas, and the occasional adventure, but it was not until he began focusing on Westerns in the late 1940s that he reached his greatest stardom. In 1946, after playing roles that had him wandering in and out of the saddle for many years, Scott appeared in Abilene Town (Edwin L. Marin, 1946), which cast him in what would become one of his classic images, the fearless lawman cleaning up a lawless town. The film cemented Scott's position as a cowboy hero; from this point on, all but two of his starring films would be Westerns.

He became one of the top box office stars of the 1950s and, in the Westerns of Budd Boetticher especially, a critically important figure in the Western as an art form. The seven films he shot under Boetticher's direction are classic Westerns: Seven Men from Now (1956), The Tall T (1956), Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Westbound (1958), Ride Lonesome (1959) and Comanche Station (1960). His screen persona altered into that of a stoic, craggy, uncompromising figure, a tough, hard-bitten man seemingly unconnected to the light comedy lead he had been in the 1930s. In these films, the natural entourage is the rugged landscapes of the Californian Sierras.

Following a critically acclaimed, less-heroic-than-usual role in one of the classics of the genre, Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962) opposite Joel McCrea, Scott retired from films at the age of 64. A multimillionaire as a result of smart investments, Scott spent his remaining years playing golf and avoiding film industry affairs, stating that he didn't like publicity.

In 1987, he died in Beverly Hills of a heart and lung disease at the age of 89. He was survived by his second wife, Patricia Stillman, and their two adopted children, Christopher and Sandra. He was interred at Elmwood Cemetery, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, just four blocks from his boyhood home at 312 W. 10th Street.


French postcard by Editions P.I., presented by Les Carbones Korès, Paris, no. 480. Photo: Warner Bros, 1953.Randolph Scott in Colt .45 (Edwin L. Marin, 1950).


German postcard by Netter's Star Verlag, Berlin, no. 1475. Photo: Warner Bros. Randolph Scott in Tall Man Riding (Lesley Selander, 1955).


West-German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 123. Photo: Columbia.


Belgian collectors card by Merbotex, Bruxelles, for cinéma Kursaal in Bertrix, no. 60. Photo: Warner Bros.

Sources: Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Alice Field

French actress Alice Field(1903-1969) started out in the silent film era. Her career got on steam in the 1930s when she starred in several French language versions of German film classics.


French postcard by EC, no. 67. Photo: Film Pathé-Nathan.


French postcard. Photo: Studio Arnal, Paris.


French collectors card by Massilia. Photo: Darlo.

Atlantis

Alice Field was born Alice Fille in Alger, France, now Algeria,in 1903.

She made her film debut opposite Saint-Granier in the silent production Villa Destin (Marcel L’Herbier, 1921), based on a play by Oscar Wilde. That same year she played the second wife of a well-to-do Algerian (Marcel Vibert) in Visages voilés... âmes closes/The Sheik's Wife (Henry Roussel, 1921).

She then focused on stage work but returned to the cinema when sound film was introduced. She played the wife of Constant Rémy in Atlantis (Ewald André Dupont, Jean Kemm, 1930), produced by British International Pictures at Elstree Studios and based on the 1929 West End play 'The Berg' by Ernest Raymond a heavily fictionalised version of the RMS Titanic story. It was filmed simultaneously with the English-language version, Atlantic (1929), the German-language version, Atlantik (1929) and the silent version, Atlantic (1929). Such Multiple-language versions were common in the early years of sound before dubbing became a more established practice.

Her film career got on steam. In the following years, Field appeared in several films. The mystery film La maison de La Flèche/The house of La Flèche (Henri Fescourt, 1930) with Annabella, was made at Twickenham Studios in London as part of a co-production that saw an English-language version directed by Leslie S. Hiscott. Next, she appeared in Le refuge/The Refuge (Léon Mathot, 1931) and Vous serez ma femme/You Will Be My Wife (Carl Boese, Serge de Poligny, 1932) with Roger Tréville. The latter was the alternative language version of the Ufa comedy Der Frechdachs/The Cheeky Devil (Carl Boese, Heinz Hille, 1932) with Willy Fritsch and Camilla Horn.

Throughout the 1930s, Field played leading and supporting roles in a dozen French films. Most of them were run-of-the-mill, but quite watchable are Cette vieille canaille/The Old Rogue (Anatole Litvak, 1933) featuring Harry Baur, and the crime drama Police mondaine/Worldly Police (Michel Bernheim, Christian Chamborant, 1937), in which she starred opposite Charles Vanel and Pierre Larquey.


Belgian postcard by S.A. Cacao et Chocolat Kivou, Vilvorde. Photo: Jacques Haïk.


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 827. Photo: Jacques Haïk.


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 974. Photo: Pathé Natan.

Playtime

Alice Field starred in the spectacle Le tigre du Bengale/The Tiger of Eschnapur (Richard Eichberg, 1938) and the sequel Le tombeau hindou/The Indian Tomb (Richard Eichberg, 1938). These were the French language versions of the German two-parter Das indische Grabmal (Richard Eichberg, 1938) and Der Tiger von Eschnapur (Richard Eichberg, 1938).

These films were remakes of Joe May's 1919 silent films of the same name. Both versions were based on a novel by Thea Von Harbou, at one time the wife of director Fritz Lang. In turn, both Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das Indische Grabmal were remade in 1959 by Fritz Lang.

During the 1940s, Field continued to star in French films. Among her films were the drama Campement 13/Camp 13 (Jacques Constant, 1940), and the comedy La loi du printemps/The law of spring (Jacques Daniel-Norman, 1942) with Pierre Renoir.

After the war, she kept busy although her parts became smaller. Among her films of the 1950s and 1960s are the comedy drama Au p'tit zouave/The little Zouave (Gilles Grangier, 1950) starring François Périer, the Euro-spy film Pleins feux sur Stanislas/Killer Spy (Jean-Charles Dudrumet, 1965) starring Jean Marais, and the romance Un garçon, une fille. Le dix-septième ciel/A boy, a girl. The seventeenth sky (Serge Korber, 1966) with Jean Louis Trintignant and Marie Dubois.

She continued to play roles on stage and also on television, like in the series Au théâtre ce soir/On stage tonight (1966-1970). One of her final film appearances was a small part as a customer at Royal Garden in the classic comedy Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) with Jacques Tati as Monsieur Hulot. Playtime is considered Tati's masterpiece and his most daring work.

Alice Field died in 1969 in Paris. She was 66.


French postcard.


French collectors card by Ets Ungemach, Strasbourg, for Bonbons Loriot, Serie G: Cinema, sujet no. 2 (50 sujets).


French collectors card. Photo: Intran Studio.


French postcard by P.C., Paris, no. 27.


French postcard by P.C., Paris, no. 27.

Sources: AllMovie, Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

La Collectionneuse: Jean Arthur

Rarely an actress had taken so much time to achieve recognition than Jean Arthur. She made her film debut in 1923 and had to wait for about thirteen years to become a full-fledged star and one of the most famous comedy queens of her time. She was part of a 1930s new breed of heroines: independent, strong-willed, breezy, quick-witted, no-nonsense and sassy. By becoming one of the quintessential epitomes of the working girl in her films, she paved the way for more accurate depictions of women in Hollywood. Her distinctive voice, at once squeaky, cracked, nasal and husky, which at times could change unpredictably in tones, became one of her principal assets and formed a winning combination with her perfect comic timing and endearing on-screen persona. Jean Arthur’s unique contributions to social and screwball comedies have been deservedly acknowledged by film historians.

When she was at the top, Jean Arthur stunned columnists by recoiling from interviews, by showing an aversion to publicity and by avoiding parties and nightclubs. She was even compared to Greta Garbo for her alleged elusiveness. In 1942, she received a Sour Apple Award for being the least cooperative actress in Hollywood. About the capital of cinema, she was adamant: "I hated the place - not the work, but the lack of privacy, those terrible, prying fan magazine writers and all the surrounding exploitation". In private, she was known to be shy and insecure and to be plagued with stage and screen fright. She also sought perfection in her work, always fearing not attaining the high standards of acting she had set for herself. In real life, she always took great care to retain her privacy, her individuality and her non-conformism and she could appear as anti-social to many people. She once said: "I’m not an adult, that’s my explanation of myself. Except when I’m working on a set, I have all the inhibitions and shyness of the bashful, backward child". She also declared: "As a character in a play, I feel as if I can be what people expect. As Jean Arthur, I never feel as if I know what people expect". For sure, she was a complex and conflicted person ... but what a good actress she became!


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4320/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Paramount.


Spanish postcard by M.C., Barcelona, no. 90.


Spanish postcard by M.C., Barcelona, no. 233.


French postcard by Europe, no. 641. Photo: Paramount.


French postcard by Europe, no. 734. Photo: Paramount.

A long struggle to achieve recognition

Jean Arthur was born Gladys Georgianna Greene on the 17th of October 1900 in Plattsburgh, New York, U.S.A. Her father was a photographer. During the First World War, she took a job as a stenographer but later turned to photographic modelling. This led her to be noticed by Fox and she made her film debut in a supporting role in John Ford’s Cameo Kirby (1923). She took her stage name from Saint Joan of Arc / Jeanne d’Arc, who was one of her favourite heroines, and King Arthur. She was then given a leading part in The Temple of Venus (1923) but was found too inexperienced and was quickly replaced by Mary Philbin.

For a few years, she was mostly seen in comedy shorts and low-budget Westerns. In 1928, she got her break in the Paramount film Warming Up, which earned her good reviews. As a result, she was given a three-year contract. Unfortunately, during her stay at Paramount, she appeared mostly in inconsequential ingenue roles. Nevertheless, from time to time, she had the opportunity to impress the critics, for example in The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu (1929) or as Clara Bow’s conniving little sister in The Saturday Night Kid (1929). 

 At the time, she had an affair with David O’Selznick, who was then a rising young Paramount executive. He tried his best to promote her but it seemed that the company had somewhat lost interest in her and was not really convinced anymore that she would ever make it to the top. In 1931, her contract was not renewed and Jean Arthur decided to go on stage. Interestingly enough, her plays brought her on the whole more recognition than she ever had during her movie days.

After her personal success on Broadway in 'The Curtain Rises' (1933), an offer came from Columbia to play a reporter opposite Jack Holt in Whirlpool (1934). During filming, Columbia executives felt she had the makings of a star and decided to sign her to a five-year contract in February 1934. They put her in The Defense Rests (1934) and The Most Precious Thing in Life (1934) with mixed results but she soon shone as a hard-boiled working girl in John Ford’s The Whole Town’s Talking (1935). 

Definitely gone was the nondescript ingenue of a few years before: a new image of Jean Arthur had emerged. Her career moved forward with such films as Party Wire (1935) or If You Could Only Cook (1935). After Carole Lombard had backed out, she was chosen by Frank Capra to play Babe Bennett, a cynical newspaperwoman who finally falls in love with the man she had been cheated on, in Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), opposite Gary Cooper. It finally made her a full-fledged star.

She then notably was William Powell’s co-star in The Ex-Mrs Bradford (1936) and, as Calamity Jane, reunited with Gary Cooper in Cecil B. De Mille’s The Plainsman (1937). She also showed her skills in films such as History Is Made at Night (1937) and Easy Living (1937).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 2941/1, 1939-1940. Photo: Paramount.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1474/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Paramount.


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2721.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1198/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Paramount.


Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2883.

At the top of her profession

In March 1938, she signed a new contract with Columbia, succeeding in adding a clause which relieved her from any duty to participate in interviews or public appearances. In December 1938, she screen-tested for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind but most people agreed that she was not suited for the part.

She was again successfully directed by Frank Capra in You Can’t Take It with You (1938) and Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Furthermore, she tremendously liked being directed by George Stevens in The Talk of the Town (1942) and The More the Merrier (1943), which got her her only Oscar nomination. She also joined the list of 'Hawksian Women' in Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings (1939).

Her other films include The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) and The Lady Takes a Chance (1943), which were produced by her then-husband Frank Ross for RKO. After The Impatient Years (1944), her contract with Columbia was over, much to her relief. Their relationship had been a stormy one and she had been suspended on several occasions.

In 1947, she signed a three-picture deal with Paramount. She only made two: Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (1948) and George Stevens’ Western Shane (1953). She gave good performances in both but the ever-insecure actress thought Wilder had favoured Marlene Dietrich in the first and was not too fond of the latter as she "couldn’t use any comedy bits in it at all and just had to act old and worn out".

After she repeatedly turned down the scripts offered to her, Paramount bought out the rest of her contract and she never made another Hollywood movie. In the mid-1960s, she decided to give television a try and starred in 1965 in an episode of the popular series Gunsmoke. She was delighted by the results and was then featured in 1966 in a weekly 30-minute situation comedy program called The Jean Arthur Show, in which she played a lawyer. Unfortunately, it was a flop and was cancelled after twelve episodes. In August 1973, to the amazement of everyone, in view of her bashfulness, she agreed to appear, alongside Frank Capra, in the only talk show of her career, The Merv Griffin Show.

Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2690.


British postcard by Picturegoer, no. 438b. Photo: Columbia.


French postcard by Editions et publications cinématographiques (EPC), no. 164.


British postcard. Photo: Columbia. Jean Arthur in The Whole Town’s Talking (John Ford, 1935). Passport to Fame was the British premiere title.


British postcard, no. 180 A. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

Jean Arthur’s later stage career: a big hit and several downs

In 1945, Jean Arthur was signed for the role of Billie Dawn in 'Born Yesterday,' a play Garson Kanin had written with her in mind. She opened with it in New Haven on the 20th of December 1945 and quit in Boston several days later on the 1st of January, pleading health reasons. She was quickly replaced by newcomer Judy Holliday, who triumphed with it on Broadway from February 1946 to December 1949 and got an Oscar in 1951 for the film version.

Ultimately, Jean Arthur was a hit on Broadway by playing in James Barrie’s 'Peter Pan', a role she had longed to play for a long time, from April 1950 to January 1951. In 1954, she toured with G.B. Shaw’s 'Saint Joan', beginning on the 17th of September. But she didn’t get along with director Harold Clurman and, if several critics were enthusiastic, some others were not overly convinced by her portrayal of Joan. Her self-confidence began to dwindle and she gave her last performance on the 6th of November, declaring that she was too exhausted to go on.

She took a revenge of sorts when she gave a very successful concert reading of the same play at the University of Berkeley from the 6th to the 15th of February 1964. In 1967, she accepted to play a spinster involved with hippies in 'The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake'. The first preview on the 30th of October was a disaster. There wasn’t to be any opening night as, at the very beginning of November, she quit, amidst rumours of a nervous breakdown.

At the beginning of 1973, she accepted an offer from John Springer to appear on stage at the Manhattan Town Hall in his Legendary Ladies of the Movies series. For one evening, she would have been slated to answer questions from the audience, after a showing of film clips. But she quickly began to get cold feet, finally cancelled her participation and was replaced by Joan Crawford.

On the 17th of October 1975, she opened in Cleveland opposite Melvyn Douglas in 'First Monday' in October and played it for the last time on the 29th, allegedly suffering from a viral affection. It was the fourth time that she had pulled out of a legitimate stage production. There had been much speculation about this pattern. It’s commonly assumed that her illness symptoms were real, not feigned, but many thought that those troubles were mostly of psychosomatic origin.


Spanish postcard by Infonal, no. 122.


Vintage postcard.


Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo.


French postcard by EPC, no. 40. Photo: Columbia.


American postcard by W.J. Gray, L.A.

Jean Arthur as a teacher

After the 'The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake' debacle, she taught drama at Vassar College from 1968 to 1972. Her methods didn’t win unanimity and, in the end, her relationship with the school director and several other teachers had become strained.

She had another ill-fated try at acting teaching at the North California School of the Arts in Winston-Salem and it was not a successful and happy experience for her. It only lasted one 1972-1973 semester.

In 1977, she sold her Driftwood Cottage, a place she had bought in Carmel in 1946, and moved to a new house called Bay Cottage in the same city. Still fiercely protecting her privacy, she embraced a certain measure of seclusion, spending much time gardening, tending her beloved cats (she had been an animal lover all her life) and reading books. True to herself, she continuously turned down interview requests.

In 1982, she was one of the very few stars not present when the American Film Institute honoured Frank Capra with a Life Achievement Award. In 1985, she declined to offer anecdotes in the documentary George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey. She had a close circle of selected friends such as actor Roddy McDowall and Ellen Mastroianni, a neighbour she had met at the end of the 1950s, who took care of her until the end.

In 1989, she broke her hip and suffered a stroke, which left her an invalid. In June 1991, she had to move to a nursing home, where she passed away from heart failure on the 19th. According to her wishes, her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered at sea.


British postcard by Valentine’s, no.202.


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 41. Photo: Columbia CEIAD.


Spanish postcard by Kores Carboplan.


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 725. Jean Arthur and Jack Luden played together in Sins of the Fathers (Ludwig Berger, 1928).


Spanish postcard by Loty, no. 1164. Jean Arthur and James Hall in The Canary Murder Case (Malcolm St. Clair, 1929).

Text and postcards: Marlene Pilaete.