Recycled Costume Roundup - July

In 2018 I discovered a blog dedicated to recycled movie and television costumes from the Golden Age of Hollywood up to the present. If a person comes across a costume that was in two or more films they can submit it to this blog and (eventually) the administrator will add it. The first costume I submitted was this striped outfit worn by Jean Harlow in China Seas (1935) and by an extra in Born to Dance (1935) - both MGM. In fact, I noticed it on the extra, posted on Twitter to see if anyone recognized it, had a strong feeling I had seen it on Jean Harlow, and, after some googling, found it! It was quite thrilling! You can see the post on their website here. They have an email address for submissions - I usually just tag them on Twitter but they haven't been seeing them lately. Their handle is @RecycledCostume. 

 

Since then I have begun to notice more and more recycled costumes. I've always noticed costumes and always take screenshots of my favorite ones (the main reason I like watching the WatchTCM app on my iPad. It makes it so easy!). I've taken to scanning the extras in party/crowd scenes when watching an A movie and taking notice of the costumes on the lead actresses in B Pictures. I even take screenshots of distinctive costumes just in case I spot them in another film so I can be prepared. And sometimes I just happen to watch two movies back-to-back with a recycled costume in them (like I did in April, which I shared in my monthly "what I watched" post). If you follow me on Twitter or my blog Facebook page (where I have an album specifically dedicated to this) the recycled costumes I am sharing today will already be familiar to you. I have decided to make this a monthly feature as well. I will use my backlog if I have a month where I don't come across any. I will only be sharing costumes that I personally "discovered." This doesn't mean that someone else hasn't discovered them before me but I think this will be a fun feature!

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I have had these photos of Joan Fontaine wearing this lovely robe in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941) saved on my Pinterest board for a long time. This month I was watching The Falcon in Hollywood (1944) and thought the robe on an extra looked familiar, so I took a couple screenshots (the moment is so fast it was hard to get good ones). Then, while looking through my Pinterest board for something else, I noticed the photos of Joan Fontaine and realized it was the robe I had been thinking of! 

There's a little bit of a catch on this one though. You'll notice the fabric is shiny on one side and flat on the other with the floral design woven in opposite. Whereas the robe is flat with a shiny collar on Fontaine, it looks all shiny on the extra. I can't tell if the collar is flat (which could mean the robe was reversible) or if it is shiny as well, which would mean it's a different robe altogether. I even watched the scene in Suspicion to see if it looked different on film then it did in the photos One thing I AM certain of is that the fabric is the same. The floral design is exactly the same on both robes (I watched the short clip multiple times to confirm). Both films are from RKO. In Suspicion the gowns are credited to Edward Stevenson, while in The Falcon in Hollywood they are credited to Renie. However, I have seen costumes reused and not credited to their original designer several times (even Adrian!).

UPDATE: In this photo the lapels and robe look the same, so maybe it is the same!

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The next recycled gown I noticed was purely an accident. Again I was looking for something else in both a folder of screenshots and my Pinterest board and spotted Joan Crawford and Doris Day wearing the same lace gown! These shots are from Goodbye, My Fancy (1951) - costumes by Sheila O'Brien - and I'll See You in My Dreams (1952) - costumes by Marjorie Best and Leah Rhodes

Doris Day added a shawl

In some publicity photos of this dress there is a black ribbon on the bodice. 

I don't remember how it appears in the film. 

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This blue floral-banded ensemble was worn in two separate Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy films that I watched back-to-back, Sweethearts (1938) and I Married an Angel (1942). I actually took a screenshot of it in color because it looked familiar, so there may be a third wear out there. If I come across it I will add it to this post. 

UPDATE: I came across a third wear, but not one that I would have remembered, so there is probably a fourth wear out there. Here is is on two different guests at a wedding in The Hoodlum Saint (1946). I say two guest because there are two different hats. Either there are two identical dresses - but why would they dress two people in the same dress - or they switched hats and/or actors on the day(s) they filmed the scenes. One guest has a dark hat with light colored (probably blue) frills as the brim, where the other is a dark hat with two large light colored flowers on it.

Esther Williams looks lovely in this early film role.

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Another coincidental sighting was these chorus girl gowns in Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) and an extra in I Married an Angel (1942). I had actually taken screenshots because I thought I might add them as a Cinema Wedding Gown (they're wearing veils in the dance number) but changed my mind and deleted them. And then of course I spotted one in the other movie... Notice the bodice decoration was removed. 

The gown on the right was worn by Anita Louise in Marie Antoinette (1938) but that's a separate post. I have a 700+ image album with all the recycles from that movie on my blog Facebook page - linked on the sidebar on the right (photo of Carole Lombard). 

UPDATE: Here they are again in Maisie was a Lady (1941)!

Here it is close-up.

AND Everybody Sing (1938)!!

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The final recycle I am sharing is this unique and eye-catching striped dress worn by Lana Turner in Marriage is a Private Affair (1944) and by Audrey Totter in a publicity photo (with the grouping of flowers at the bust removed). It showed up in a Pinterest search for something else (anyone else getting odd results in their Pinterest searches the past week?). 

And while we're on this movie here's another recycle I noticed a few months ago - Lana Turner in a cameo as herself in DuBarry was a Lady (1943) and Frances Gifford (with Lana Turner) in Marriage is a Private Affair! You will notice a little bit of lace was added for modesty.

"Say, isn't that my dress?"

I found several others (I was on a roll this month) but two of them are wedding gowns (three-peats!) that I am saving for a Cinema Wedding Gowns post and the others contain several from the same movies that I would rather do a separate post on whenever I have a slow recycled costume spotting month.

Do you like this new feature? Have you ever spotted a recycled costume before?

Doris Day and James Garner: Their Films and Friendship

Doris was everybody's darling and I wish I could have done fifty more pictures with her. 

~ James Garner

Doris Day (whose birthday is April 3rd) and James Garner (whose birthday is April 7th) made only two films together in 1963, but they remained friends until Garner's death in 2014. The films, The Thrill of It All and Move Over, Darling, are not as famous as Day's film pairings with Rock Hudson, but they were extremely successful at the box-office due to the wonderful on-screen chemistry between Day and Garner. This chemistry stemmed from their off-screen friendship and respect for the other's abilities as an actor.

In their autobiographies, both Day and Garner had only nice things to say about each other, despite the fact that Garner (accidently) broke Day's ribs during the filming of Move Over, Darling.

Jim and I worked together only twice, in Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All. He's so good at what he does... I felt married. We didn't see each other much over the following years, but we've stayed friends because we talk on the phone regularly. I don't know how, because Jim hates the telephone. I usually have to call him. "Can't you pick up a phone?" I say, but he just grumbles.

We had fun. He's a marvelous actor. He's very real when he talks to you. He's so funny and so nice, I just love him. Even though he broke two of my ribs. Jim, if we don't speak for a while, I forgive you for breaking my ribs. Both of them. Don't give it another thought.

~ Doris Day, The Garner Files. 

 

Doris didn't play sexy, she didn't act sexy, she was sexy. And then she could take a sexy scene and make you laugh. Which is better in the bedroom than a lot of things. And Doris was a joy to work with. Everything she did seemed effortless. She's so sweet and so professional - she made everyone around her look good.

~ James Garner, The Garner Files. 

Garner was also known to say that Doris had the "best tush in Hollywood." In an essay included in Day autobiography, Garner goes on in depth about his love and admiration for her, as well as her "girl next door" image:

I think Doris is a very sexy lady who doesn't know how sexy she is. That's an integral part of her charm... I don't think she could have had the success she's had if she didn't have this sexy whirlpool frothing around underneath her All-American-girl exterior.

I remember the first time I saw her on screen. I was just a regular moviegoer then, hadn't turned to acting yet, and here was this new girl, Doris Day, on a train with Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson [It's a Great Feeling (1949)], singing a song, and I looked at her and said to myself, "Oh, God, ain't that beautiful, and listen to that voice!"

I've had to play love scenes with a lot of screen ladies, but of all the women I've had to be intimate with on the screen, I'd rate two as sexiest by far - Doris and Julie Andrews, both of them notorious girls next door. Playing a love scene with either of them is duck soup because they communicate something sexy which means I also let myself go somewhat and that really makes a love scene work.

One other thing about acting with Doris - she was the Fred Astaire of comedy. You know the way Astaire used to change partners but the dancing was always uniformly spectacular because Astaire just did his thing and anybody who danced with him was swept up by it. Well, same thing about Doris. Whether is was Rock Hudson or Rod Taylor or me or whoever - we all looked good... I used to come to the set with a preconceived notion of how I was going to play a particular scene, but when I saw what Doris was doing in the scene, her tempo, her feel for the scene, 99.9 percent of the time I'd toss my pre-conception away and play it with her. Making a movie with Doris was a piece of cake - a sexy ride on her coattails all the way.

♥ ♥ ♥

The two films that Day made with Garner are very similar to the films she made with Rock Hudson. The main difference is that in both of them they are already married with children at the beginning of the film (Day's character is only married to Hudson's character in their third and final film together, Send Me Know Flowers, made the year after her films with Garner).

In The Thrill of It All (1963), Day plays a normal housewife who is offered a job as the spokesperson of a soap company after she is overheard telling a story about how their soap, Happy Soap, saved her life. Her doctor husband (Garner) is less than thrilled when she signs a one-year contract that keeps her away from the home and her wifely duties. Here's a good synopsis of the film.

In Move Over, Darling (1963), a remake of the 1940 Cary Grant/Irene Dunne classic My Favorite Wife, Day plays a wife who has been lost at sea for five years and been declared legally dead. Upon arriving home, she discovers that her husband, Garner, has remarried just that morning. She heads to the hotel where he is going to be staying with his new wife (which happens to be the same hotel THEY stayed at on THIER honeymoon) to try to stop him before he makes the marriage "official." You can read more about the two films in the post I wrote for my Remakes blogathon.

I highly recommend both films. Not only are they fun to watch but Day and Garner are very convincing as a married couple and evenly matched as comedians.

If Doris Day was the national symbol for the All-American girl, then Jim was her male counterpart - somewhere between a steelworker and a Saturday afternoon football hero.

~  Raymond Strait.

~ Sources ~

Considering Doris Day. Tom Santopietro. 2007.

Doris Day: Her Own Story. Doris Day and A. E. Hotchner. 1975.

The Garner Files: A Memoir. James Garner and Jon Winokur. 2011.
James Garner: A Biography. Raymond Strait. 1985.
 

This post is part of The Doris Day Blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood in honor of Day's birthday on April 3rd. Be sure to read all of the other posts celebrating this icon of Classic Hollywood!

Please Don't Eat the Daisies

If you think this is going to be a review of the 1960 movie with Doris Day and David Niven then you are only partially right.

            

Left - Movie cast; Right - Apparently there was a TV show too (1965-1967)

Here's episode 1 on youtube.

I watched Please Don't Eat the Daisies last December and when I discovered a couple weeks ago that my library had the book it was based on, I decided to check it out.

                       

The author and her book

Please Don't Eat the Daisies by Jean Kerr is HILARIOUS!!!! It's one of those books where you find yourself laughing out loud and end up reading in one sitting because you don't want to put it down. My favorite chapter was "How to decorate in one easy breakdown," where Kerr describes the process of redecorating one's home. I also greatly enjoyed the chapter "The Kerr-Hilton," which describes the house/monstrosity they bought. The only chapters that didn't seem to fit in were the ones titled "Don Brown's body" and "Toujours tristesse" - a play and short story respectively. However, it is always interesting to read fiction written by another person because it gives you a glimpse of another side of them that you may never have known existed.

Ok, now to the movie.

In writing the script for the movie starring Doris Day and David Niven, the writers took the four rambunctious boys, the crazy old house, the fact that everyone is writing a play, and that Mr. Kerr is a critic. However, the critics part is greatly built up, showing instead of telling, what it is like to be the wife of a drama critic. It also throws in a little marital discord in the form of an actress, played by Janis Paige. Reminiscent of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, the movie paints a vivid picture of what it's like to buy a fixer-upper. Doris Day, however, is able to transform this creaky castle into what could easily be a chic New York flat. She also finds the time to play the lead in the local town play, in addition to attending plays with her husband. Only Doris Day could do all of that and still look fresh as a daisy (pun intended).

I hope you get a chance to both read the book and watch the movie. They are both delightful and shouldn't be missed!

Click here to see pictures of the movie version of the Kerr home and here to see pictures of the actual home! Each version gets more and more ridiculous. The movie house appears twice as big as the real house and the TV show house even bigger!

Jean Kerr wtote several other books. I'm having my library get The Snake Has All the Lines, How I Got to be Perfect, and Penny Candy.

A note about the TV version:

I just started watching the first episode. The children are entirely too well behaved and Mr. Nash (his name in the show) is suddenly a hypochondriac!

My Favorite Wife (1940) & Move Over, Darling (1963)

Well, here is your blogathon host saving the best for last. Just kidding! All of the entries to the They Remade What?! Blogathon that I have had a chance to read so far have been amazing!!! I am constantly blown away by all of the talented writers I come across. I can't wait to read the rest of them!

For my films I chose My Favorite Wife (1940) starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant and Move Over, Darling (1963) starring Doris Day and James Garner. Now usually when it comes to remakes one stands above the other in my opinion. In the case of these two films it's pretty close.

Pardon me, did you say they remade My Favorite Wife?

My Favorite Wife (1940) is the film that is better known because, let's face it, Cary Grant is in it, not to mention the extremely talented Irene Dunne. Now to big fans of Doris Day maybe it's the other way around, but for me the only version I knew for several years was the original. Recently I signed up for Netflix and discovered Move Over, Darling (1963). When I realized what it was a remake of, and as a fan of James Garner, I put it on my list.

 

Both films are essentially the same with My Favorite Wife having more scenes at the end (Cary Grant dressed up like Santa Claus anyone?).

 

The basic storyline is this: Ellen Arden (Dunne, Day) is lost at sea and after 7 years is officially claimed dead. This gives her husband, Nick Arder (Grant, Garner), the chance to finally remarry. The only problem is, the day he gets married, Ellen shows up - very much alive!

 

    

 

Nick is overjoyed to find out that his wife is still alive. The problem is, how does he explain it to his new bride, who is in a 'honeymoon' mood?

 

 

Ellen can't understand why Nick can't just tell her but she has problems of her own. She can't seem to tell the kids that she is their mother. She also happened to not mention that she wasn't alone all those years. She was with a man who she called 'Adam,' and who called her 'Eve.'

 

                     

 

Ellen hires someone to pretend he's Adam, someone that Nick could never be jealous about, a timid, small man. Unknown to her, however, Nick has already tracked down Adam at the pool: big, strong, handsome, athletic, real good with the ladies - you get the picture.

 

Ellen eventually knows that Nick knows who the real Adam is and ... this is where the two pictures differ. In My Favorite Wife, Dunne and Grant string each other along a little longer. Dunne takes the children up to a cabin in the mountains so that she can tell them she is their mother. Grant makes an excuse so that he has to spend the night too. Dunne makes him sleep in the attic. After he keeps bothering her, she tells him that she will make her decision at Christmas. Enter Cary Grant as Santa Claus. The children have of course already figured out that Dunne is their mother and everything ends happily ever after, with Grant divorcing his second wife, Bianca, and having Dunne declared alive again.

 

 

In Move Over, Darling, Day and Garner go to court, have both marriages dissolved, and go their separate ways, so to speak. Garner goes home with Day following shortly after so she can pack her things. She goes around the back of the house to discover Garner and their kids in the pool. He has already told them who their mother is and they too have a happy ending.

I love both films but I have to say, the supporting cast is better in Move Over, Darling. We get Thelma Ritter as Garner's mother (she's always a plus) and Don Knotts (The Andy Griffith Show) as a nervous shoe salesmen that Day pays to pretend he's 'Adam.' Adam is played by Chuck Conners (The Rifleman). Polly Bergan takes on the role of Bianca. Other television stars, aside from James Garner (Maverick) and the two mentioned above, include Alvy Moore (Mr. Kimbell - Green Acres) as a room service waiter and John Astin (Gomez Addams - The Addams Family) as an insurance man.

In My Favorite Wife we get Randolph Scott as Adam and Gail Patrick as Grant's new wife, Bianca. We also get Asta the dog from The Thin Man series!

 

Even though the films are virtually identical, they each have their own comedic scenes that aren't in the other and as both have wonderful casts they are definitely both worth watching.

Trivia:

• From IMDb: Move Over, Darling was a re-shot version of Something's Got to Give (1962), the never completed film Marilyn Monroe was working on when she died. It co-starred Dean Martin as Nick and Cyd Charisse as Bianca. It was supposed to begin filming on April 23, 1962, but the schedule was reorganized due to Monroe suffering a sinus infection. Production shot around her scenes using the rest of the cast. Soon enough, the shooting fell 10 days behind schedule. Monroe's last day on the set fell on her birthday, June 1, 1962. When Monroe called in sick again the following Monday, June 4, she was fired a few days later on June 8. Dean Martin refused to continue filming without Monroe, and the movie was left unfinished (most of the footage was unseen, until it was restored into a 37-minute short which aired on television on June 1, 2001. You can watch it here and the unedited footage here). The following year, it was recast with James Garner, Doris Day and Polly Bergen, retitled Move Over, Darling and released in December 1963. Many of the same sets were used.

• In the scene where Garner pulls Day off of Bergan, he accidently broke several of her ribs. Day didn't tell him and finished the scene. The next day Garner discovered what had happened when he put his arms around and felt the bandages.

• Leo McCarey was supposed to direct My Favorite Wife, but shortly before the filming began he was injured in an automobile accident, and had to hand over the direction to Garson Kanin. Actress Gail Patrick has stated that the severity of McCarey's injuries had an effect on the film company, and they found it very difficult to enter into the spirit of the comedy with the serious hospital bulletins they were hearing.

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My Favorite Wife airs on Turner Classic Movies November 27 at 10am and again on December 22 at 10pm.
Move Over, Darling is still on Netflix, at the time of this posting (As of April 1st, 2017, it has been taken down and then recently put back up).