CDAN Podcast Episode 814 - Q & A - Part Three - Final Part
Added 2021-06-01 03:01:15 +0000 UTCYet even more questions asked and answered.
Comments
And today she wouldn't even really be considered 'fat' or frumpy although most-people 'fat' and Hollywood 'fat' probably aren't the same and "the camera adds 10 lbs." They could've just frumped her up with wardrobe (which they did anyway), what a strange clause. Audrey Meadows was trim and pretty and well groomed on The Honeymooners but had a plain wardrobe. She said somewhere that Jackie Gleason wasn't going to give her the role, because he said no one would believe a bus driver would be married to someone that pretty. So she posed for several photos of herself in frumpy clothes, hair mussed, frazzled facial expression, holding up a frying pan, things like that: half-seriously and half-facetiously it sounded like. He replied that anyone with that sense of humor was welcome on his show. Something like that. Then she got the part. Something similar happened with Shelley Winters and her role in "A Place in the Sun." She was told she wouldn't be believable in the role of the rejected factory worker. So she dyed her hair brown, put it in bobby pins in a plain hairstyle, borrowed some cheaper looking dowdy clothes, packed a brown paper bag sack lunch and sat on a bus bench where she knew the director passed by every day. She hunched over a bit, stared at the ground, and waited. Her heart thumped, she said, as she thought the director might walk right past her. Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, slowly walked back a few steps, stared at her, and then said "If you will let me film you like that, you have the part." TL/DR = it's possible to frump up without weight gain so that clause always confused me a bit. (Edit: But Hollywood plain and most-people plain are not the same things, and -- at least in recent decades -- it's very typical to cast an actually very pretty woman as the wife of a character actor, but maybe back then, the hierarchies of leading/character were stricter? Then again Angela Lansbury was a year older IIRC than Lawrence Harvey when she played his mother in "The Manchurian Candidate." So...so much for realism?)
Funhouse Mirror
2021-06-09 13:39:54 +0000 UTCI did ready Desi Arnez helped William Frawley in his later life. Also read Vivianne Vance loved designer clothing and hated the contract stipulation she weigh at least 10 pounds more than Lucy to look matronly. I don't blame her because that was such a glamorous era for designers and their collections. Nowadays designers or anyone innovative has to watch out for hackers stealing their ideas.
Barbara Clark
2021-06-06 14:21:10 +0000 UTCYou come up with the most interesting details. Well done! And with respect to William Frawley, in some of the Lucy eps you can see his hand shaking, which can be a tell-tale sign of an alcoholic
E
2021-06-04 03:39:01 +0000 UTCWilliam Frawley drank and was cranky and reportedly was just like Fred Mertz in personality. He didn't like to rehearse, IIRC, yet would show up knowing his lines and give a good performance. Once he was in a bar. He offered a guy down on his luck a drink. Said, tell the bartender what you want. He said "I'll have two. And what will you have?" Frawley rescinded his offer. I hope I got the details right. But he sounded like a guy who'd treat others fair if treated fairly and mostly just wanted people to leave him alone. Vivian Vance was the one I had heard rumors had been a call girl and was very into money; also there was a contract clause she always had to be 15 lbs. overweight to look frumpy (and not outshine Lucy.) I'm surprised to hear it about Lucy although she was a chorus girl but that doesn't necessarily mean more.
Funhouse Mirror
2021-06-03 21:22:08 +0000 UTC
