March Meet the Maker 2018

Whoops, my blog has been in a state of hibernation for a couple of months. I was on holiday all of June, and then July was spent catching up with everything I should have been doing in June... so let's get this thing started up again!

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This year I took part in March Meet the Maker over on Instagram. It was started by Joanne Hawker and is a month's worth of prompts that let your followers learn more about you. I thought it would be good to put everything here as well, as it's so easy for things to get lost in an Instagram feed!

So we'll start off with March 1, 'You' and all the rest will be under the cut.

I thought I’d try and do #marchmeetthemaker this year, so first up: Hi! 💜 I’m Alison Mutton. I’m a children’s illustrator who also has a degree in graphic design. I love drawing pictures for kids, whether it’s a picture book (I’m seen here at the launch for Sioban Timmer’s ‘Feral Fergus’ which I illustrated) or educational publishing. I have often worked with self publishers and I love helping people to realise their book dream and giving them a final product they can be proud of. I also do portraiture (both pets and people) and needle felting. And I play the piano (but I draw much better!) 💜 . . . #marchmeetthemakerday1 #childrensillustrators #childrensillustrator #kidlitartist #illustrator #artist #artistsoninstagram #illustratorsoninstagram

A post shared by Alison Mutton (@alene.art) on Mar 1, 2018 at 11:44am PST

100 Days of Old Movies: The Finale!

I've put all of my 100 Days of Old Movies illustrations together in one image. Look at them all!

I've numbered them all for easy reference:

1&2: Romeo & Juliet (Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard)

3&4: Kiss Me Kate (Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel)

5&6: The Taming of the Shrew (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton)

7&8: The Divorce of Lady X (Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier)

9&10: Key Largo (Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart)

11&12: Romance on the High Seas (Doris Day and Jack Carson)

13&14: Spellbound (Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck)

15&16: It Happened One Night (Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert)

17&18: The Court Jester (Danny Kaye and Glynis Johns)

19&20: Britannia Mews (Maureen O'Hara and Dana Andrews)

21: The Little Princess (Shirley Temple)

22, 23&24: Two Girls and a Sailor (June Allyson, Gloria deHaven and Van Johnson)

25&26: The Scarlet Pimpernel (Merle Oberon and Leslie Howard)

27&28: The Gay Divorcee (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers)

29&30: Footlight Parade (James Cagney and Joan Blondell)

31: Smart Woman (Mary Astor)

32, 33&34: Anchors Aweigh (Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson and Frank Sinatra)

35&36: My Man Godfrey (William Powell and Carole Lombard)

37&38: Easter Parade (Fred Astaire and Judy Garland)

39&40: The Glass Slipper (Leslie Caron and Michael Wilding)

41: Miranda (Glynis Johns)

42&43: Love Affair (Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer)

44, 45&46: Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and William Holden)

47&48: Broadway Melody of 1936 (Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor)

49&50: The Thin Man (William Powell and Myrna Loy (and Asta/Skippy))

51&52: 42nd Street (Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell)

53&54: 7 Brides for Seven Brothers (Jane Powell and Howard Keel)

55&56: The Awful Truth (Irene Dunne and Cary Grant (and Asta/Skippy)

57&58: Pride and Prejudice (Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier)

59&60: You Were Never Lovelier (Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth)

61&62: The Slipper and the Rose (Richard Chaimberlain and Gemma Craven)

63, 64&65: Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor)

66&67: Gilda (Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford)

68&69: Gigi (Leslie Caron and Louis Jourdan)

70, 71&72: The Philadelphia Story (Kathrine Hepburn, Cary Grany and James Stewart)

73&74: Neptune's Daughter (Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban)

75&76: Ball of Fire (Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper)

77&78: La Belle et la Bete (Josette Day and Jean Marais)

79&80: The Bamboo Blonde (Frances Langford and Michael Wade)

81&82: Beauty for the Asking (Lucille Ball and Freida Insecort) 

83, 84, 85&86: White Christmas (Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Vera Ellen and Rosemary Clooney)

87&88: Hatari! (John Wayne and Elsa Martinelli)

89, 90&91: It Started with Eve (Deanna Durbin, Robert Cummings and Charles Laughton)

92, 83&94: How to Marry a Millionaire (Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable)

95&96: Maytime (Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy)

98&99: Gaslight (Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer)

99&100: Two Sisters From Boston (Kathryn Grayson, Jimmy Durante, June Allyson and Peter Lawford)

I made sure I didn't feature any screen couple more than once, but a number of people feature several times. Kathryn Grayson appears the most, at three times, followed by Leslie Howard, Howard Keel, Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Glynis Johns, Danny Kaye, June Allyson, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, William Powell, Leslie Caron, Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth and Ingrid Bergman, all with two appearances. All in all I depicted 81 different actors and actresses, 102 in total. 

A big criterion that I used when picking which movies to feature was the costumes (as well as trying to have a good spread of actors and actresses). Many excellent movies from the 30s and 40s involve men in suits. That includes the entire noir genre, for example, but I didn't want all the guys I drew to be wearing suits so I gave preference to films set in historical times, or musicals with wacky costumes. I think I only drew about 15 standard everyday suits. I also wanted a nice mix of well-known movies, and lesser-known ones, such as B-movies

47 films were depicted, 21 of them were musicals, 17 were drama and 9 were comedy. I had movies from 25 different years of the 20th century, and my most popular year was 1948, with four movies. 15 of the movies were from the 1930s , 17 were from the 1940s, 10 were from the 1950s, two were from the 1960s and one was from the 1970s. The earliest movie was Smart Woman in 1931 and the latest was The Slipper and the Rose in 1976.

100 Days of Old Movies: Final Instalment! (92 – 100)

I've made it! Here is the last instalment of my 100 Days of Old Movies! Still can't quite believe that I've made it to the end, and that I did so while only being late with two posts! (and that I got all my actual work done on time as well)

92, 93 & 94: How To Marry a Millionaire (1953)

If you don't marry him, you haven't caught him - he's caught you!

How To Marry a Millionaire is a comedy film starring Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable, often mentioned because it has the reigning bombshell of the 40s (Grable) and the reigning bombshell of the 50s (Monroe) in the same picture. 

Schatze (Bacall) has a plan: she's already been married to a man with no money, who walked out on her. This time she's going to marry a millionaire. But you can't meet a millionaire just anywhere, you need to be in the right place - so she teams up with Pola (Monroe) and Loco (Grable), two dumb blondes, and they rent a fancy apartment and go to all the night spots. Only one of them needs to catch a millionaire for them to pay off the rent and everything, although obviously it will be better if they all catch one. Things don't, of course, go precisely to plan....

Here is the trailer. It seems to be happier about the Cinemascope than the film, but it is the trailer... =P

More below the cut: 

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 9 (81 - 90)

This is the second-to-last instalment of my 100 Days of Old Movies series. I'm almost done!

81 & 82: Beauty for the Asking (1939)

Why should a woman stop using her brains just because she's caught her man?

Beauty for the Asking is an early Lucille Ball vehicle - it's not an outright comedy, and she isn't even the comic character. I've not seen a great many Lucille Ball films, they just don't seem to make their way down here, but I thought I'd feature her in this little film. 

Lucille is Jean, a beautician who has been working on creating a new beauty cream in her spare time. Her fiancé Denny (Patric Knowles) is a salesman for beauty companies and he will sell it for her when she's perfected the recipe. However, on the day she figures out the perfect formula, Denny drops by to tell her that the engagement is off - he's marrying Flora (Frieda Inescort), a plain woman with a fortune in the millions. Jean is shattered. Then she loses her job after stuffing cold cream in a woman's face after she chatters away about the upcoming society marriage. Her best friend and roommate Gwen (Inez Courtney) gives her a pep talk - she hasn't given up on her face cream, has she? Jean decides to give her cream a go - but without Denny to sell it, she needs advertising, so she follows advertising executive Jeffrey (Donald Woods) around until he gives in and helps her. They don't have capital, so to raise finances they send a sample of the product to ten rich women, hoping one will agree to finance a salon. Unfortunately for Jean, the woman who takes up the offer is Flora, who wants something for Denny to do. Now Denny is part of the business, and Jean has to see him every day, and (for some reason we do not understand, he's a total slimeball) she still loves him. Meanwhile Jeffrey is pining for Jean. Everyone is super happy. The salon is a huge success and the money starts rolling in. Jean sends Denny away on a business trip (out of temptation, he's indicated he'd be perfectly happy to have her as a bit on the side) and Flora comes to her for advice - she's losing interest her husband's interest: what can she do? Jean tells her the hard truth - for a woman owning a whole beauty empire, she looks awful, bad figure, bad makeup, bad hair, bad clothes. In the six weeks until Denny returns, Jean puts Flora through bootcamp, so that by the time he's back, she's a beautiful woman. Denny cottons on to what Jean has been doing, and tells her it's no use, he was a fool, he's coming back to her. Jean goes to tell this to Flora, who takes it hard, but when Denny discovers that Jean has said that they're giving Flora's money back, he changes his tune, and goes back to Flora - who has changed all the locks and ejected all his clothes from the house. Jean goes on a holiday to forget Denny, Denny marries one of Flora's wealthy friends, and when Jean returns she gets together with Jeffrey. The film ends with possibly my favourite movie-telegram:

Denny's new wife: 

Please forget that he was ever your husband STOP Please forget he ever meant anything to you, if even for a moment STOP Please forget - 

The reply:

Forgotten - Flora

Me too - Jean

I am sending you all my Mrs Dennis Williams calling cards. I hate waste - Flora

We are sending them airmail. We hope they do not arrive too late to be of use - Jean.

There is no trailer for this on youtube, sorry!

More below the cut:

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 8 (70 – 80)

Here's instalment 8 of my 100 Days of Old Movies. The finish line is drawing ever nearer!

70, 71 & 72: The Philadelphia Story (1940)

You're not doing it to soften the blow, nor to save my face?

The Philadelphia Story is a definite classic, and was remade in the 50s as the Cole Porter musical High Society with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. In the original, however, we have Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart. 

Society girl Hepburn is getting married, and some reporters have come down to cover the wedding (James Stewart and a female photographer). Keeping the reports to what the family wants to convey proves tricky, however, what with Hepburn's ex husband (Cary Grant) wandering in and out, and her womanising father turning up unexpectedly. By the end of the film, Hepburn has three men to choose from - her fiance, her ex husband, or the reporter. Two of them worship her, but does she really want to be worshipped?

Here is the trailer.

More under the cut:

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 7 (61 - 69)

61 & 62: The Slipper and the Rose (1976)

Dancing in his arms forever my heart will never be free, dreaming of the night he danced with me.

1976 is getting a bit modern (in my opinion) to be an 'old movie' but The Slipper and the Rose is a pretty film, so I put it in the lineup on the basis that it has fancy costumes. 

It's a straightforward retelling of Cinderella, with music by the Sherman Brothers (who did Mary Poppins among many other Disney films, although this film is not Disney) and in my opinion it would be an excellent movie if it were not suffering from what I call '1960s movie bloat' - starting in the 60s, films that would previously have run to a trim 90-110 minutes were suddenly pushing two and a half hours or more. The songs go on too long, the dances go on too long, there are unnecessary scenes.... and I make use of the fast forward function on my dvd player. The Slipper and the Rose goes for 146 minutes (as a comparison, The Glass Slipper (numbers 39 & 40 in my 100 Days) goes for 93 minutes, and still manages to squeeze in three arty 1930s ballet dream sequences, and the latest Disney Cinderella goes for 105 minutes.). 

This isn't to say that I don't like The Slipper and the Rose, I just think it would have been better if they'd trimmed it a little - but many people adore it just the way it is, and that's just fine. It's got beautiful costumes and sets, some truly lovely music, and Annette Crosbie makes an excellent long-suffering fairy godmother. Cindrella is played by Gemma Craven and the prince is Richard Chamblerlain. 

Here's the waltz scene. 

More under the cut (Singin' in the Rain, Gilda & Gigi)

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 6

Here is the 6th Instalment of my 100 Days of Old Movies. I'm powering towards the finishing line!

51 & 52: 42nd Street (1933)

Come and meet those dancing feet. On the avenue I'm taking you to, 42nd Street.

I have a very soft spot for 42nd Street. It was (along with Singin' in the Rain) the first musical I ever bought, as a poor-quality unremastered VHS. I was 12, and had never really seen anything in black and white before, but obviously I have never looked back! 

Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) is putting on a show. The doctors warn that it will kill him, but he's broke. He's a great director, and everyone is very excited at the prospect of work. His star is Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels), a big-time performer who has to play up to Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) who is financing the show because she is starring in it. Behind his back, she still goes around with her boyfriend and ex-vaudeville partner Pat Denning (George Brent). Wondering where Ruby and Dick come in? Ruby is Peggy Sawyer, a first-time performer who gets a job in the chorus, helped by Billy Lawler (Dick Powell) the juvenile in the show. He thinks she's pretty cute. One day she passes out after a gruelling rehearsal, and is looked after by Pat Denning, who's hanging around the stage door. When Dorothy is stuck with Abner, he takes Peggy out to dinner instead, and she witnesses him being beaten up by gangsters hired by Marsh to keep him away from Dorothy (the finances are at stake). When the show goes to Philadelphia for tryouts Pat is already there for a job, and Dorothy (after embarrassing herself getting drunk at a party) rings him up to come to the hotel, and Peggy sees the gangsters follow him, and rushes in to warn him. Still drunk, Dorothy takes a swing at her, falls over and breaks her ankle. Oh no! Right before opening night, and there's no understudy! Abner picks Anytime Annie (Ginger Rogers) to take her place, but she knows she hasn't got it in her. Peggy is the girl. She's coached all day, goes on stage to the immortal line 'you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!' and steals the show. 

There are lots of fabulous Busby Berkely routines in here, and Una Merkel and Ginger Rogers for wisecracks. What's not to love?

Here's the trailer.

More below the cut:

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 5

Here's the fifth instalment of my sketches for #100DaysOfOldMovies for the 100 Day Project. I'm officially halfway through!

41: Miranda (1948)

There's a dreadful shortage of men underwater. 

Miranda isn't one of my favourite movies, but I picked it because I wanted to do one mermaid before Mermay finished on social media. On the whole, I like the sequel (Mad About Men, 1954) better, but it features far too much of Margaret Rutherford, who is not an actress I can stand for any extended period of time. She has a much more minor role in the original. 

Glynis Johns plays Miranda, a man-hungry mermaid who kidnaps Paul (Griffith Jones) while he's out fishing, and blackmails him into taking her on land and into his house as one of his 'patients'. She has no morals, and attaches herself to any man available, including the chauffeur and Paul's wife's friends fiancee. A trail of broken engagements is left in her wake before all the men realise that they were being taken for simultaneous rides and come to their senses. Paul's wife (Googie Withers) is suspicious of her, and when she discovers the truth Miranda wheels her wheelchair out to the river and disappears. At the end of the movie we see her somewhere warm with a merbaby on her lap - a suggestive ending that could only have been in a British film at the time. 

Here is the movie on Youtube. 

The other movies are below the cut >>

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 4 (31 - 40)

And now for the 4th instalment of my 100 Days of Old Movies:

31: Smart Woman (1931)

A wife should stick to her husband. If she doesn't, some other woman will!

I drew Mary Astor alone for this movie, mainly because the husband in this film is a total dead loss and I didn't think he deserved to be included. I'm harsh, aren't I?

Mary Astor returns home from visiting her sick mother in Europe, longing to see her husband, to whom she is devoted. She's met a very nice English lord (John Halliday) on the boat, but she's told him that she loves her husband (Robert Ames). However, when she gets home, she's met by her sister-in-law and her husband (Edward Everett Horton) who tell her that hubby dear is off with a new woman she's met. Mary is devastated. But she's also smart (unless you count her unaccountable penchant for that husband of hers...). She acts like she's not upset, invites the gold-digging mistress and her mother down for the weekend, and brings out the big guns - that rich English lord she met on the boat, whom she says she's leaving her husband for - that, of course, is why she's not upset.  She knows her husband didn't read the last three letters she sent, so she tells him that she'd written to say she wanted a divorce. Halliday refuses to pretend to be in love with her, it cuts too close to the bone, but he does help her, drawing away the mistress and helping the Ames to realise that he really loves Mary after all.

I really enjoyed this film, it's full of smart wise-cracks and excellent dialogue for such an early talkie. And while watching it we can lament the fact that tea-gown are no longer wardrobe necessities.

Here is a clip. TCM would choose clips that don't feature wise-cracks, wouldn't they?

More below the cut:

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 3

Here is the next lot of my 100 Days of Old Movies sketches for the 100 Day Project:

21: The Little Princess (1939)

My Daddy has to go away, but he'll return most any day. Any moment I may see my Daddy coming back to me.

For a melodramatic kid's movie you really can't go past a 30s Hollywood adaption of a Victorian children's book, starring Shirley Temple. This was her first technicolour film, and she stars as Sara Crewe, a child raised in India and sent to an expensive girl's boarding school in London while her father is away at war. When he is reported as dead and bankrupt, Sarah is forced to work as a servant in the school to pay off her tuition. 

This movie is in the public domain, so you can watch it on Youtube here.

22, 23 & 24: Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)

– I've always let you have anything of mine you want, but you can't have him!

– I've got him. 

Two Girls and a Sailor is a propaganda movie from WW2 - thin plot, lots and lots of cameos. Van Johnson is a sailor (and also a millionaire) who sees the Deyo Sisters performing and falls in love with Jean (Gloria deHaven), sending her anonymous orchids every night. The sisters host parties for servicemen in their apartment every night after their act, and one day they see him and invite him along, not knowing who he is, and he meets Patsy (June Allyson) who mentions that they wish they had a place big enough to let all the servicemen in. So he gives them a warehouse (still anonymously) and decorates it, and it becomes a big draw, with famous names entertaining there every night (Gracie Allen, Jose Iturbi, Lena Horne, Harry James and his Orchestra, Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra....) Meanwhile the sisters try to find out who their benefactor is, while poor Van Johnson realises he initially fell for the wrong sister. Awkward. There is also a dream sequence with a fashion parade that ends in a catfight, because why not?

So it doesn't have much actual plot, but I've always been fond of it. I don't actually require much plot in my movies...

Here's the trailer.

25 & 26: The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)

 

They seek him here

They seek him there

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere

Is he in Heaven

Or is he in Hell?

That damned elusive Pimpernel.

Merle Oberon and Leslie Howard make their second appearances in my lineup, this time in The Scarlet Pimpernel, my favourite Pimpernel adaption. (I've read most of the books, they are excellent brainless it's-too-hot-to-move summertime reading.)

Leslie Howard is Sir Percy Blakeney, aka The Scarlet Pimpernel - a fop in daily life, to mask the fact that he is actually a decisive and audacious hero rescuing aristocrats from the guillotine over in Paris. And Merle Oberon is his fairly brainless wife Marguerite, who has no knowledge of her husband's adventures, and, to save the life of her brother, accidentally sells him out. Drama!

This too is in Public Domain, and you can watch it at the Internet Archive (or search for it on Youtube, whichever you like) 

27 & 28: The Gay Divorcee (1934)

 

– I've just had the most embarrassing experience. A man tore my dress off!

– Oooh, anyone we know?

Top Hat is generally regarded as the quintessential Fred and Ginger movie, but I think I prefer the earlier The Gay Divorcee myself (Not that I don't like Top Hat). It was their first movie together as stars (following their appearance in Flying Down to Rio) and is full of mistaken identity. 

Fred Astaire is a dancer who meets Ginger Rogers and is instantly smitten. She's not so keen, especially after he rips her dress. Later, in transpires that she needs a divorce, and has hired Fred's friend Edward Everett Horton to get it for her. He's arranged for a co-respondent to meet her at a hotel, and gives her a pass code so she can recognise him. Naturally, Fred gives the code by accident, and it escalates from there....

Have a trailer.

29 & 30: Footlight Parade

I played a pair of deuces like four aces, and they paid!

I love a snappy Pre-Code Warner Brothers musical, and this is one of my favourites. We get Busby Berkeley sequences, James Cagney tap dancing and Joan Blondell. All good things. Cagney stages musical reviews, and his job is in jeopardy when talking pictures arrive, so his wife walks out on him. He realises that the musical prologues theatres were toying with putting between acts of films could be cheaper if they were staged once and then travelled to lots of different theatres - this is big business and it takes off. He's got business partners, a sassy secretary (Blondell) and a contract stating he has to put on three new prologues a week, a gold-digging fiancee and a wife who 'forgot' to get her divorce. Cagney and Blondell were a great team and made many movies together, and as this is a Pre-Code movie, she gets some great lines. 

Here's the trailer. And here's the third of the big Berkeley finale numbers, Shanghai Lil. I love this piece of music, and had to track down the sheet music. I think I eventually ran it to earth in Ohio or somewhere. And it's mine now!

Stay tuned for the next instalment when I reach #40!

100 Days of Old Movies: Instalment 2

Here's the next bunch of my 100 Days of Old Movies sketches for the 100 Day Project. You can find instalment one (Days 1 - 10) here.

11 & 12: Romance on the High Seas (1948)

It's Magic

This is my favourite Doris Day movie - and her first, before they'd settled on the ultra sweet and innocent persona - as Oscar Levant (who was also in Romance on the High Seas) said 'I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.' Of course, this is a movie musical we're talking about here, so it's not racy, but it has an extra tartness that many of her other Warner musicals lacked, I think.

The plot is simple: wealthy husband and wife each think the other is playing around. When the husband cancels their 3rd wedding anniversary cruise just after hiring a pretty new secretary, wife says she'll go by herself - and hires nightclub singer Day to take her place on the cruise of a lifetime so she can stay home and catch her husband cheating. Husband, however, thinks her going on the cruise alone is a bit sus, so he hires a private detective (Jack Carson) to keep an eye on her. Complications ensue, in a succession of elaborate costumes that range from nice to completely hideous. Eric Blore also makes an appearance, cementing this movie as a fabulous throwback to 30s musicals.

Here is the trailer.

13 & 14: Spellbound (1945)

My dear girl, you can not keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there.

Spellbound is an Alfred Hitchcock movie, made under Brian Selznic, and certainly one of my favourite Hitchocks. It was made in the mid-40s when psychoanalysis was all the rage (The Dark Mirror from 1946 is another film around this theme. There were quite a few.) Ingrid Bergman is the psychiatrist who falls in love with Gregory Peck (and who can blame her?) and attempts to work out what has made him borderline insane and prove that he isn't a murderer. Plot-wise it's fairly straight, but there are a lot of interesting first-person filming effects, ominous music throughout and a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali (Apparently originally there were two, but one was cut. A pity. I understand that Dali designed a set with grand pianos hanging upside down over dancers in a ballroom, but to cut costs they used miniature pianos and tried to fix the resultant weird perspective by hiring little people as the dancers. And then they cut the whole scene, perhaps unsurprisingly)

Here is the trailer.

15 & 16: It Happened One Night (1934)

The walls of Jericho are toppling.

Can you really go wrong with Frank Capra? When heiress Claudette Colbert is secretly married to a man she has met only once her father imprisons her on the family yacht. She jumps ship and sets off to travel back to her husband via bus, but she's never had to cope on her own and is soon in trouble. Recently-fired reporter Clark Gable takes her under his wing in return for a story. The hitch-hiking scene that I drew here is probably the most famous (It was temping to draw her in her wedding dress, but there wasn't enough room for the veil in this square format I'm using for this series...)

Trailer? It's yours.  And while we're at it, here's a favourite scene.

This is currently my least favourite sketch, the perspective didn't work too well when I tried to force it to fit with everything else....

17 & 18: The Court Jester (1955)

Get it? 

Got it. 

Good.

This is an excellent movie if you're feeling down. It's a joyful spoof on medieval romances and Robin Hood. Nothing is accurate, and we don't care. Carnival member Danny Kaye joined the Black Fox and his men hoping  to help fight to restore the true King to the throne, but he's stuck entertaining the troops. Through a series of happenings, he's smuggled into the castle disguised as the new Court Jester and is soon in it up to his neck. Lots of opportunities for Danny Kaye double-talk and lots of pretty dresses for Glynis Johns and Angela Lansbury.

Here's the trailer! And here's a fun scene.

19 & 20: The Forbidden Street / Britannia Mews (1949)

I'm always reminding people of someone else. I suppose I have no personality of my own. 

This is an odd little film, but nevertheless one that I enjoyed. I'm not quite sure what genre it is - it starts off solidly as a melodrama, swings past romance and ends with comedy.

Maureen O'Hara is fascinated by the squalid Mews she can see from her bedroom window. When she grows up she becomes infatuated with her drawing master (Dana Andrews), who lives in the Mews, and marries him. This is a mistake. He's a drunk who doesn't want to work - either at his artwork or giving lessons - and spends his time crafting puppets, which she dismisses as a waste of time. One day he falls down the stairs and dies. Maureen thinks she can go home to her family now, but an old women who lives opposite blackmails her, saying she will tell everyone she pushed him downstairs. So she's stuck in the mews, gradually losing hope, until a stranger pops up - looking exactly like her dead husband.

I couldn't find a trailer for this. But searching for Britannia Mews on youtube currently brings up the English dub.

100 Days of Old Movies Installment 1

I decided that I would take part in the 100 Day Project this year. Because I'm insane, clearly. My chosen subject is 100 Days of Old Movies - every day I am drawing a quick picture of an actor or actress in an old film. They're quick, so I'm not bothering too much about likenesses, but I want to see if I can build up my speed a bit while doing them. 

I'm posting them daily on my Twitter and Instagram pages but I have decided to post them here in installments of 10 each, with a bit more about the movies and why I chose them. I'm now 10% off the way through, so it's time for the first installment!

Please follow along! I'm drawing my old movies from a wide net of well-known and little-known films, you might discover a gem you've never heard of!

1 & 2 : Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!

The start of the project coincided with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, so I started off with three Shakespearean themes. 

Romeo and Juliet was directed by George Cukor, and is a traditional-style Shakespearean movie, starring Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet. You can watch the trailer here. It's a beautiful film, but suffered a bit from the Shakespearean connotations (even though almost half the play was cut) and the age of the two stars, who couldn't really pass for teenagers. Personally I'm not one for tragedies, but I thought I'd start with a bang and one of the the Bard's most famous works. I haven't seen it in some time, but I think these costumes are from the ball scene where Romeo and Juliet first meet.

3 & 4 : Kiss Me, Kate (1953)

This is the way to kill a wife with kindness.

Kiss Me, Kate (Starring Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel (and Ann Miller)) has even less of Shakespeare's words, as it's not a straight Shakespearean production. It is, however, one of my favourite musicals, with music (slightly bowdlerised to suit the movie censors of the time) by Cole Porter. It's a backstage musical where warring divorcees star opposite each other in a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. Here is the trailer. 

Kathryn Grayson's red dress from the beginning of the play is more well-known (she wears it to sing 'I Hate Men' but I chose to use the beautiful blue wedding gown, and likewise gave Howard Keel his wedding costume. Interestingly, the randomness of what he's wearing is never mentioned - you have to know the play to work out that the costume designer wasn't actually drunk while designing it. Petrichio turns up to the wedding looking like a tramp, part of his plan to tame Katherine. She is not impressed - but that whole scene is cut in the musical, there's no room for it with the double story-line.

Why, Petruchio is coming in a new hat and an old

jerkin, a pair of old breeches thrice turned, a pair

of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled,

another laced [...]

(Act II Scene II)

Another interesting thing to watch for in this film is all the actions that were designed for the early 3D - Kiss Me, Kate was filmed in both 3D and 2D, and once you're looking for it, you find lots of occasions when the actors threw items directly at the camera to take advantage of the new technology.

5 & 6 : The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

I am ashamed that women are so simple, to offer war when we should kneel for peace.

In my personal opinion 1967 is almost too recent to be counted as 'old movie' but I thought it would be interesting to look at two treatments of The Taming of the Shrew. This Elizabeth Taylor / Richard Burton film was directed by Frank Zefirrelli and is fabulously over-the-top, bawdy and with very extravagant costumes. I chose the costumes from the finale as a contrast to the previous wedding scene. I'm afraid Richard Burton is hiding behind Elizabeth Taylor because it's a film that is very fond of close-ups, and I couldn't find a single shot where I could see what he wore on the bottom. It could have been shorts for all I know. Here is the trailer for this film.

This is the end of my Shakespeare films, I think.

7 & 8 : The Divorce of Lady X (1938)

We have ample opportunities in this court for learning what women mean, or what they mean they mean if in these days they mean anything at all!

This is a fabulous little comedy (not, I think, very well-known) starring Merle Oberon and Lawrence Olivier. You can actually watch the whole movie on Youtube, I think the copyright has well and truly lapsed. Stranded in a London hotel after a fancy dress ball (due to the heavy London fog) Merle finds herself a hapless bachelor and steals his hotel room, his bed, his pyjamas and his book. He gets to sleep on the floor in the sitting room of his suite. By morning, naturally, he's smitten, but he thinks she's married (she isn't), and what's worse, he's a lawyer and becomes convinced that he is the co-respondent in a divorce case he's handling for a man who's divorce-happy wife spent the night with a man in his hotel after a fancy dress ball. 

9 & 10 : Key Largo (1938)

When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.

Here's a bit of a change of pace - a classic film noir, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's Key Largo. I cheated a bit here, I had already drawn Bacall but had never finished Bogart. This was a good excuse. Key Largo isn't my favourite Bogie & Bacall film, but really, they're all good, and this one is quite minimalist and elegant. It's in black and white, but I managed to track down a colour production photo, so Bacall's outfit is accurate. Here's the trailer.

And that's it so far! In another ten days I will post again with the next installment!

(all these sketches were done in Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2)