Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Today's Blind Items - The Club - Old Hollywood

The Club actually has a name, but if I gave you the name of the club, this would be much easier to solve. Part of the fun with this is discovering the club and everything it has done and everything it owns. Many members of the club donate their entire estate to the club. This can include all their personal films and photos from sets. There are diaries and scripts. They are a treasure trove of many of the early days of Hollywood right through and including the studio years and on in to the 70's. The club has faded over time. No longer active as a social club, it is just a person or two keeping alive the memory of what was one of the building blocks for the acting profession we see today. Without this club, the business of acting would be completely different.

Now, the name of the club is all well and good, but what the club received about five or six years ago in an estate has finally been unearthed. With just a couple volunteers and not much time to work on this stuff each week, it can take months or even years to go through everything left by an actor or actress to the club. Such is the case with this estate. It was massive in size in the sense of the artifacts. Included in the artifacts were many reels of film from the early 40's. Volunteers assumed they were home movies or something similar. Until very recently, they were pushed to the side as other items were easier to mark and catalog. Sitting through all that film and figuring out the who and what and where and when was going to take forever.

The artifacts were from an agent who also produced theatre. He produced two of the biggest Broadway musicals of the time and at least one of them all of you know and have seen it, but probably not on stage. He did some great television and award winning movies. He also liked to get married. A lot. He also produced some children from those marriages who basically seemed to have been involved with a who's who of Hollywood and a book has been made about just how crazy this entire family dynamic was and who was involved and the offspring.

Anyway, our agent/producer fell in love with a married woman. That married woman was known by everyone in society at the time. One of her divorces occurred because she hooked up with that permanent A list crooner that so many other women hooked up with too. She was the muse of several permanent A list authors, including one of the most famous authors of all time. It was that relationship that produced these films. They were apparently shot on a Caribbean island. They featured the author and the socialite having sex. Yes, basically X rated films of two very important people, including arguably one of the top ten authors in the history of the US. The films also feature them as a couple with much much younger women. The films are old and it is tough to make out ages. This was decades ago with no thought to preservation. So, the club faces a quandary. They have hours of footage of one of the most famous people in the history of the country, but 95% of the film is him having sex with a socialite or with other teens and the socialite. 


64 comments:

  1. Marilyn Monroe / Aurther Miller

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  2. Sinatra as crooner

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  3. I dunno why but Elizabeth Taylor comes to mind

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  4. Not Miller. He donated his archives to the University of Texas.

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  5. Don't think Marilyn or Elizabeth Taylor would be references as socialites

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  6. Leland Hayward for the producer/agent

    Slim Keith (Hawks) for the socialite

    Sinatra is the crooner

    Hemingway for the author.

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    1. @pkelly I was double checking my sources to post exactly this.

      Hayward’s daughter Brooke is 80. It’s hardly unheard of to downsize in your 70s, no matter how wealthy or famous you are.

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    2. @pkelly and I’m thinking The Sound of Music for the one we’ve all seen, but probably not on stage.

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    3. Yes, but William Faulkner as the author.

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  7. Charles Butterworth for the original club member/movie producer?

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  8. Hours of film footage, who was operating the camera? We're not talking video or iPhone here.

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  9. If the reels r from the 40s, can it be Monroe? She met Miller in the early 50s

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  10. Hemingway had a home in Key West. Maybe Caribbean is fudged so as not to be so specific. It’s sort of like a Caribbean atmosphere??

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    1. He also lived in Cuba for awhile.

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    2. I visited his house in Cuba, which is now a museum. The guides are happy to name famous women who hung out there, swam naked in the pool and so on.

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  11. Raquet Club in Old Hollywood.. Many celebrities would go.

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  12. Socialite - Gloria Vanderbilt?

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  13. Anonymous10:31 AM

    If it’s in the forties, it’s probably the author just doing all of these women missionary so probably not that exciting

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  14. The Caribbean country/city is Havana, Cuba. Hemingway lived in Havana for a while in the Late 30s and Early 40s.

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  15. This site says Slim Keith and Hemingway traveled together but he never slept with her. I don't buy it. They fit this blind better than anybody. Only Top 10 author in US who fits is Hemingway. Gore Vidal, Phillip Roth, then everybody else is dead.

    https://historicalscandals.wordpress.com/tag/slim-keith/

    Hemingway spent a lot of time in the Caribbean. Now perhaps I understand why--so many young available teen girls there. How many famous people are linked to this sort of thing?

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  16. Wasn't there blind a few months ago about somebody really famous who died and had an extensive collection of actors pornography? I think of Playboy.
    As for the actors? Maybe Marilyn or Elizabeth Taylor. Sounds right.

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  17. Ralph Bellamy as the founder of the club and the actor with many marriages.

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  18. Slim Keith divorced her husband and moved to Havana to live with Hemingway, as they had met through various social circles. There she met Hayward (who was the producer of South Pacific and Sound of Music. They eventually got married.

    Hayward was married 5 different times.

    The Keith/Hayward marriage was ended because Keith had an affair with Sinatra.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/07/obituaries/nancy-lady-keith-is-dead-at-73-a-socialite-known-for-her-wit.html

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  19. Slim Keith. She moved to Havana to be with Hemmingway after the birth of her daughter. She met Hayward in Havana. Seems like he could have been the one filming.

    The "Club" is probably the Billy Rose Theater Division of the New York Public Library archives, which gets so many of these estate archives.

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  20. Hayward's papers are with the New York Public Library.

    http://archives.nypl.org/the/21835

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  21. Leland Hayward is the agent. Produced the musicals “South Pacific” and “Sound of Music” (the one everybody’s seen at least the film version of) on Broadway. Wiki: “In 1938, Hayward met Slim Hawks, then wife of film director Howard Hawks. Hayward's marriage to Sullavan came to an end in 1946, and he married Slim Hawks three years later. Their marriage became strained after Slim had a one-night stand with Frank Sinatra and a longer affair with Peter Viertel.” As an agent, his clients included Hemingway, who is surely the Author in the blind.

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  22. The book is probably Haywire, written by his daughter Brooke Hayward, about all of her siblings and mother who were frequently institutionalized and all of whom died of drug abuse or suicide. She was married to Dennis Hopper at one point. Her young brother was a producer on Easy Rider.

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  23. Friars Club? Maybe the director that donated the films did comedy movies and Stage shows as well?

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  24. Ronald Reagan as the most important person in history??

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    1. Except Ronald Reagan wasn't a famous writer.

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  25. I wonder which actor/actress of old Hollywood left the estate 4 or 5 years ago. My mind keeps going to Shirley Temple, but I know that is very, very wrong.

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  26. Marilyn was known to swing both ways.

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  27. Hillcrest Country Club
    Ray Stark

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  28. Recent Estate for old Hollywood actor with documented penchant for marriages?

    Mickey Rooney. Probably not related, but he popped to mind on first read.

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  29. Am I understanding this correctly:

    That an actor/actress died and left an estate. Among the actor's possessions were artifacts from a certain producer, including sex films of the author.

    Or is it that the estate is of the producer (not a third-party actor/actress)?

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  30. I am going to go with Edie Sedgwick as the socialite/muse. I have no idea why. That is just the face that immediately clicked in my mind.

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  31. Had the chance to stay at the Racquet Club a few years ago whilst in LA to see Danny Elfman. Interesting place. If those walls could talk!!!

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  32. The author is Hemingway, he spent a lot of time on Bimini in the Bahamas. He used to stay/hang out at the Compleat Angler. Terrific bar but unfortunately burned to the ground some years back.

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  33. How about the Uplifters Ranch? A very strange and little talked about club. Some famous members were Will Rogers, Walt Disney, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Busby Berkeley, Leo Carrillo, Harold Lloyd, Darryl F. Zanuck, and L. Frank Baum.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uplifters

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  34. pkelly491 got it, I think. But what club is being referenced?

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  35. Friar's Club seems like the club. They're still very active in New York City with a Townhouse on the East Side. The Beverly Hills location closed years ago.

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  36. PKelly nailed this. The cinematographer maybe a PI hired by a pissed off Hawks to tail Slim and grab custody fight leverage? #EducatedGuess

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  37. Slim Keith was fab. Lauren Bacall says she nabbed her look.

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  38. Distribute the videos. Their ages dont matter, they grandfathered in. That is why you can see Booke Shields nude at 10 via a google image search or in her early teens by watching the Susan Sarandon whore house movie.

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  39. Anonymous3:10 PM

    Sinatra is only permanent A list? Not A++?

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  40. JD Salinger to be different, socialite Oona O'Neill, before he became famous and before she married Charlie Chaplin.

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  41. Great blind. Agree w Hemingway and Keith and Hayward. Possibly Nancy Cunard?
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Cunard

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  42. Coconut Grove or Athletic club

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    1. The Playboy Club???saw Hef's name

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  43. Def Hemingway; Sinatra.

    Not sure on producer, Stark comes to my mind.

    But Hayward makes sense. Don't know enough myself.

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  44. Hemingway in the 40s was into the bottle and not much else. I doubt he could perform through hours of footage.

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  45. @unknown & @Jeff McCauley- I was thinking the Friars Club, as well

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  46. I agree with Gloria Vanderbilt for the socialite. She was very popular and was definitely with Sinatra towards the end of her marriage. And born in 1924 so that would make her in her 20's in the 1940's. A quick google search reveals Gloria and Hemingway were 7th cousins 1 time removed. Don't know if true but it does give a way of knowing each other.

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  47. Could the author be Truman Capote? He did use Slim Keith in one of his books, along with Babe Paley-the book that resulted in him being "iced" out of society.

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  48. Hemmingway as the author, could be Cuba as the carribean island. I am thinking of Ava Gardner as the woman, but she is a movie star, not a socialite.

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  49. I couldn't help myself, I googled- Slim Keith for the socialite, Truman Capote loved her- as did Hemmingway who is the author she was engaged in activity with in Cuba (or maybe Key West); affair with Frank Sinatra.

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  50. I'm with BestMan - sounds like the Playboy club.

    There was a blind on this a few months ago......

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