Alabama Yesterdays: films

Showing posts with label films. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

The Many Faces of Cathy O'Donnell

I've done a blog post on Siluria native Cathy O'Donnell [born Ann M. Steely] in my series on film actresses from Alabama whose careers began before 1960. You can read that post for details on her life and work in both film and television. She had roles in a number of major films including The Best Years of Our Lives, Detective Story, The Man from Laramie and Ben Hur. Many film noir fans [and we are legion] have long admired her performance alongside Farley Granger in the classic They Live by Night.

Among her television roles was one appearance on Perry Mason, in "The Case of the Fickle Fortune." I happened to watch it recently and took some screen shots as the episode progressed. O'Donnell plays county employee Norma Brooks in love with a con man who has used her once, and returns to do it again.

As usual, this Perry Mason case is deliciously complicated. I'll let a commentator on the IMDB page for the episode set the stage:

"County tax man Ralph Duncan inventories a house after the owner died intestate. While there a woman stops by to question him about some items saying she had been the owner's maid. He finds a cache of old greenbacks, "shin plasters," worth $153,000. When he arrives home to show his wife Helen and cousin, Charlie Nickles, the surprising find, the money is gone. Unknown to Duncan, Nickles has the money and fences it to Lloyd Farrell, an import/export merchant. Farrell turns to another county employee, Norma Brooks, to find elderly, infirm Josiah Ames, who is near death. Farrell plants $148,000 of the money in Ames' effects, which are bequeathed to his accountant, Albert Keller. Upon seeing the story in the newspaper, Duncan consults Perry Mason, who speaks with Keller. After a woman calls Duncan he visits Farrell who he finds dead. Duncan is leaving the house as the police arrive so Duncan is arrested."

Got that?

Farrell cons poor Norma into planting the big bucks at Ames' house and convincing the old man to write the will naming his accountant as beneficiary.

More comments are below. If you are so inclined, you can read a lot of minutiae about this episode here.

This particular episode was original to the series and not based on one of the many Perry Mason novels by Earle Stanley Gardner.

When Farrell contacts Norma again after so long, she is cool at first.

However, her defenses soon crumble, and once again she is putty in Farrell's hands, thus setting her up to help with his money laundering scheme.

Mason [Raymond Burr] shows up at Norma's office as he begins to investigate the situation for Duncan.

Mason's questioning gets around to Farrell, and Norma confesses her past relationship to him.

Naturally, Norma can't understand how Farrell could be involved in anything illegal.

Norma, Mason and private detective Paul Drake [William Hopper] make a visit to Farrell's residence. Surprise, surprise, they find his dead body!

As the trial begins, Norma waits in the audience for her turn in the witness chair.

First, she has to face questioning by District Attorney Hamilton Burger [played by William Talman]

Now it's Perry Mason's turn. Norma does not wither under questioning by either Mason or Burger.

Later, during another witness's testimony, Norma loses her cool. She leaps up from her seat at one point and confesses before God and everyone in the courtroom that she didn't kill Farrell. That turns out to be true, but I wonder what price she had to pay for her role in Farrell's scheme.

The role featured another good performance by the Alabama native O'Donnell. A blog post on some of her film work can be found here.

Several veteran actors also appeared in this episode. Vaughn Taylor, who played Mason's client Ralph Duncan, had a long career from the 1930's into the 1970's. He was a familiar face on television in the 1950's and 1960's. Also familiar was the actress who played Helen Duncan, Virginia Christine. She appeared in roles from the 1940s until 1979, often on television. She is probably best remembered as Mrs. Olson in a long running series of commercials for Folger's Coffee.

The Boston Globe profiled O'Donnell early in her career in a December 17, 1946 issue

Source: Newspapers.com

The Birmingham News profiled O'Donnell in a Sunday feature for the February 27, 1955, issue

Source: Newspapers.com

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Film Actresses from Alabama before 1960 (6): Lottice Howell

Lottice Howell is a bit different from the other actresses I've covered so far in this series. Her film career was much less substantial, and she returned to Alabama to live for the last several decades of her life. Let's investigate.

Howell was born in Kentucky on October 14, 1897 [some sources say November 14]; various sources list the place as Bowling Green. Her parents were John Eli and Clara Howell. By the time the 1910 U.S. Census was taken, she and her family were living in Moundville. Howell's father reported his occupation as operator of a lumber mill. Lottice had an older brother Ottis and two younger brothers, Harry and Ely. She is listed in that census as "Lottis Howel." The family lived on Market Street in Moundville.

After graduating from high school in Moundville around 1913, she entered Huntingdon College. That school, founded in Tuskegee in 1856, had just relocated to its current Montgomery campus in 1910. Howell graduated with a degree in music and remained at the school as an instructor until she had saved enough money to move to New York City in 1918 to study under voice instructor Sergei Klibanski.

We can assume a couple of things from this narrative of Howell's life so far. Her family must have been fairly well off if they could afford to send the one daughter out of four children to a private college. And Lottice's soprano voice must have been good enough for her to have the confidence to move to New York to study.

When her money ran out, Howell returned to Alabama and taught school long enough to save funds for a return. By 1920 she had joined the cast of Irving Berlin's "Music Box Revue", and soon appeared in shows alongside Fannie Brice and the Marx Brothers. She played a role in a production of Verdi's opera "Rigoletto", and then the lead in Mozart's "Impressario". She appeared with Charlie Chaplin in an RKO vaudeville show. In 1926 she was in the play "Deep River" at the Plymouth Theater on Broadway, and after that in the musical comedy "My Maryland" produced by Sigmund Romberg. In 1927 she acted and sang in the musical comedy "Bye, Bye Bonnie".

After such success in New York, Hollywood began to notice. She accepted an offer from MGM and moved to the west coast in October 1929. An early film role is apparently an uncredited one as "Vocalist" in Estrellados with Buster Keaton. Perhaps she was able to mingle with some of the other stars of the day in the film, including Jackie Coogan, Robert Montgomery, Fred Niblo, Anita Page and Lionel Barrymore. The film was released in July 1930.

A few months previously Howell made the film with her biggest role, In Gay Madrid. Heartthrob Ramon Navarro was the male lead, but as the poster below indicates, Howell got equal billing with the other female star, Dorothy Jordan. Howell plays Goyita, the former love of Navarro's character. Released in May 1930, the musical comedy is set in Spain and based on a novel by Alejandro Perez Lugin.

That film is Howell's only major appearance in a full-length Hollywood production. She did appear in some shorts, such as 1930's The Flower Garden and the 1933 Nertsery Rhymes noted below. Another Buster Keaton film, the 1930 Free and Easy, featured Lottice in a musical number, "It Must Be You," with Robert Montgomery and Anita Page. You can hear her sing in a video on YouTube.

MGM apparently considered her an up and coming star for some period; her dressing room on the studio lot was between those of Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. Perhaps they did not know what to do with a woman who had both a wonderful soprano voice and smoldering beauty.

Although MGM refused to loan her to other studios, they did allow her to continue her singing career when not required to be on set. She had a regular program on NBC Radio and toured widely, including an appearance at the London Palladium. The 1940 U.S. Census lists her as living in a house with two other women at 28 East 56th Street in New York City.

When World War II, started, Howell toured the South and gave half the proceeds to the Red Cross. Her father had died in the mid-1930's and by 1942 her mother was too elderly to run the family cattle farm in Hale County. Howell moved home, kept the farm and continued her musical activities locally until her death on October 24, 1982. She died in Tuscaloosa's Druid City Hospital and as noted below is buried in Moundville. She has been inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame.