Here’s why this site Greenbriar Pictures Show is one of my daily pitstops. Every day he writes some long detailed incredibly entertaining essay about a different topic – either actor, or genre, or director – and finds these incredible images to illustrate his essays. Truly – this site is a WONDER. I am perpetually amazed by it. John – great great stuff – keep it up!
Here’s a sampling, but this is just the tip of the iceberg:
His essay on Shirley Temple becoming a teenager
An amazing two-parter on Olivia de Havilland: Part One and Part Two
An essay on the human billboards of the 1920s – human billboards!! Dancing girls posing on top of massive letters, etc. A world gone by.
Another great two-parter: Lucy and Desi in the movies. Part One and Part Two.
A not-to-be-missed essay on the mysterious Mary Miles Minter.
A MARVELOUS post about Karloff’s The Mummy
Here’s one on Easter Parade
And here’s one on Carole Lombard
Seriously though … this is one of the most incredible blogs I’ve ever seen. Can’t get enough!
Jeez those are some painfully gorgeous pictures of Carole Lombard. What an incredible woman…
It’s one of those great unanswerable “what if” questions in Hollywood. What if she hadn’t died so young? What would have happened? I mean, she lived long enough to make her mark, obviously – but man, I would have loved to see what she was like as an old lady.
And I agree, Miker – Carole Lombard was painfully beautiful. :)
Hear hear!
If there’s one site in the blogosphere I envy, it’s Greenbriar Picture Shows. Absolutely amazing content. I only wish my own venture were half as good (and, yes, I’m serious).
But that picture you have up today of Joan Crawford as Lady Liberty is pretty damn classic, let’s just admit it.
:)
Okay….what the HELL did I just read????? My God. I am now completely and utterly obsessed with this Blog. The “Easter Parade” post was unREAL. What an insight.
I think I need the defribulator.
Who IS this?????
I am off to read every single entry. I may die in there.
Alex – hahaha I know – phenomenal, right????
Are you kidding me with this Sheila O’Malley???
When am I supposed to work or sleep?
I can’t think of the word to describe this blog….delicious is the first thing that came to mind.
I can’t wait to devour it!
From what I’ve read, Carol Lombard continues to
fascinate people. They still trek to the crash site and amazingly enough, a great deal of the wreckage remains to this day.
See: http://www.birdandhike.com/Hike/Other_Areas/Lombard/Lombard.htm
I’m no expert but I get the sense that Gable never got over this loss.
Regards, Hank
Tom Sutpen,
Just a quick note, I think you have a great
blog yourself.
Hank
I fell hopelessly in love with Carole the first time I saw My Man Godfrey. If they ever come up with a working time travel machine, I’ll have no choice but to go back and try to convince her that I’d be better for her than that Gable dude…
I was fascinated by the story of Mary Miles Minter. I wish I still had it but my mother graduated from high school in 1920. In her year book they had asked the kids a bunch of questions such as favorite sports star, etc. One of the questions was favorite movie star. The names that I recall were Theda Bara, Nazimova, Alida Valli, Pola Negri, Mary Miles Minter, Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Ramon Novarro, Zazu Pitts, Pearl White, Mary Pickford, etc. I would love to see what Greenbriar would come up with to match those names with the stuff he can find in his archives.
Unfortunately my dear sister-in-law cleaned house for my dad once and threw all that stuff away. It was fascinating to me to see the difference from the life then and the life now. They had photos of the basketball games with final scores of 22-18 and the team made up of people who were 5’8″ tall with the center being 6′ tall. The photos with all the clothing styles of the day and the ads from the stores with the ice cream parlors were a real step back in time. I remember my mother telling me one time that the biggest date she and my dad had in their small town was when Rudy Vallee appeared at the local lake with his band and his megaphone. People lined up the day tickets went on sale to see that one.
I really wish I had been able to record all her memories of those days. Times were so different then. She graduated from college at Denison University in 1924 and did most of her studying on the interurban train ride to the college. She was living at home and commuting for college and then working as a clerk in a store in the afternoon. She told me about a boy friend who got his first car, a Ford Model T and thought you had to keep the front wheel on the line in the road so he drove with his head out of the car watching to try to keep his tires in the right place. There was a nother boy friend who would bring a bag of chocolates to her and she would be on the front porch with him. In the meantime the man who became my dad would be in the kitchen playing rummy with her mother. When the boy friend left, she and my dad would sit on the front porch and eat the chocolates.
Damn You, Sheila!!!
Why, oh, why did you have to share that blog with me? Why did you feel the need to post a link to a blog that is so delicious that I felt it necessary to devour it in it’s entirety…