Dick(ie) Moore on Kay Fwancis
Brett
what he remembered about Kay Francis.
He said when they worked together on MY BILL, she was on the outs with
Warner Brothers and wasn't in the best frame of mind on-set. (She was
not happy, he said, about the picture being named after Moore's
character.)
He said she was friendly enough, but he wouldn't, he said, describe her
as "warm." But he suspected it had to do with her professional
circumstances at the time.
I also got to meet TCM's Robert Osborne. I'd done an email interview
with him some years ago, and he was kind enough to say he remembered it
(I suspect he didn't). He seemed a very likeable fellow.
He's much bigger than I expected him to be. He's something over six
feet and with a big build, too.
Jane Powell and Moore, whose careers the evening was celebrating, were
both delightful. Very personable -- and clever, too. And they are very
sweet together, clearly very much in love.
When asked about the ups and downs of childhood stardom, Moore came
across as much less bitter than he did in his book. It's a mixed bag,
he said, but life is a mixed bag.
Brett
James Neibaur
Thanks for sharing this, Brett, I enjoyed reading it
Brett
> Thanks for sharing this, Brett, I enjoyed reading it
You're very welcome -- here's a bit more:
Moore said he remained close to Marlene Dietrich until her death (they,
of course, made BLONDE VENUS together). He said Dietrich was something
of a packrat, keeping all sorts of odd stuff -- old Kleenex and false
eyelashes and stuff.
But not long before her death, she sent him a picture of the two of
them taken during the filming of BV that she said had been in the
bottom of a drawer since 1932.
He also told a funny story about Robert Mitchum, with whom he worked
when he was a teenager (Moore, not Mitchum) on OUT OF THE PAST. Moore
played a deaf-mute in the movie, and in the early '80s, nearly forty
years later, he saw Mitchum at some event and went over to say hello.
"Hi, Bob," Moore said.
Mitchum gave him a shocked look and said, "You can talk??"
Moore said he was one of the few actors in history who looked over his
scripts when he first received them, hoping for as few lines as
possible. As such, OotP was one of his favorite roles, he said, because
he had no lines whatsoever.
Moore's first role was at 11 months. He played Francois Villon as an
infant in the 1927 silent, The Beloved Rogue. John Barrymore played the
adult Villon, and the story goes that, while visiting the set one day
(naturally, he and Moore had no scenes together), he was brought over
to view young Dickie in his crib.
Barrymore reportedly peered in and looked up again, aghast, saying, "My
god, he looks like an owl!"
As many of you no doubt know, Moore is also known for having given a
teenaged Shirley Temple her first on-screen kiss. When the moderator of
last night's event protested to Moore, after screening a clip of the
scene in which the historic smooch took place, that "that wasn't much
of a kiss" (and it wasn't -- Moore just kissed Temple on the cheek),
Moore quipped, "That's just what Shirley said!"
Brett