Parallel Trajectories?

Glamourised.

Accessorised.

MGM Meets Paramount

The above is a 1931 photograph of Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich. Does anyone have any more details to add? The patterned wall looks distinct. Where are they?

Grand Hotel

Over at The Platinum Blog Starring Jean Harlow, Lisa Burks tells the interesting story of what happened to the Grand Hotel Register, which was signed by all the guests as they arrived at the premiere for the film at Grauman's Chinese in April 1932.

Below is a page from the register, which survives in a private collection:

Guests "signed in" at the Grand Hotel, top to bottom:

Mr & Mrs Cecil B de Mille, Marlene, Rudi, Anita Loos, John Emerson (producer & husband of Anita Loos), Mr & Mrs ??? Barclay, Pat O' Brien, Jean Harlow, Paul Bern, Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone.

MGM made a promo short about the event, "Hollywood Premiere" - available on the Grand Hotel DVD, and also on youtube. Marlene only apprears briefly - this was MGM publicity, after all.

What about her liquor bills?

After her alma mater Paramount released Mommie Dearest, Dietrich had quite a bone to pick. Like most of her private exchanges, a letter Dietrich wrote to Peter Bankers in response to the film was recently purchased on the Christie's auction block for about $1,500.

Among its most catty slams: "Fay [sic] Dunaway should be ashamed of herself, but then she probably needed the money to pay her liquor bills." 

On Christina Crawford, Dietrich says, "I am shocked that Paramount bought that filthy book and made that frightful bitch who wrote it rich." 

I don't recall Dietrich having any fond feelings for her fellow Box Office Poison, yet she declares, "I did not know Joan Crawford, but nobody deserves that kind of slaughter." 

All this makes me wonder what she would have said to Maria.

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