PROSPECTING FOR GOLD

I have to dig around in this dank cavern under Twentieth Century Fox to find good scripts, but I always manage.

The golden age film studios didn’t take kindly to actresses who wanted input into their own careers. U.S. star Jean Peters, who you see above in 1954, had pretty firm opinions about the types of roles she wanted to play. These led to her withdrawing from her planned debut in I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, being suspended by Twentieth Century Fox for refusing to appear in Sand, and later Yellow Sky, being replaced in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, being suspended again for refusing The View from Pompey’s Head, and refusing to play sexy roles of any type after her turn as a vixen in the film noir Pickup on South Street.

Yes, Peters was particular, but her hits were notable. Pickup on South Street was spectacular, Forever Amber was a star making turn, and Three Coins in the Fountain was a major success. In 1957 she married Howard Hughes and didn’t act again until after divorcing him in the early 1970s. Correlation is not causation, or something like that, but it’s too bad she lost those years because she chose to wed a kook. She had a good career by any measure, though. She may have hated playing sexpots but we think she was at her best as the smoldering Candy from Pickup on South Street. Watch it and see if you don’t agree.

Twentieth Century Fox, I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now, Yellow Sky, Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, The View from Pompey's Head, Pickup on South Street, Forever Amber, Three Coins in the Fountain, Jean Peters

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 30

1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's

Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established.

April 29

1945—Hitler Marries Braun

During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia’s Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden.

April 29

1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title

After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon.

April 28

1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki

Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.

April 28

1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident

After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.

April 27

1945—Mussolini Is Arrested

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.