ALFREDO'S PAELLA: LIFE GOES TO A PARTY

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

A night out at El Morocco in 1936,

as reported by LIFE magazine.

Broadway was represented by personable Ina Claire, the only American actress who is altogether persona grata in Cafe Society. She was accompanied to El Morocco by Writer {sic} Carl Van Vechten and Edward Wassermann of the Seligman banking family.
Hollywood luminaries were Mr. and Mrs. Jack Warner whose new home in California is embellished with suede-covered walls and a velvet-covered ceiling in bedroom. A New Orleans girl, Mrs. Warner sported a tremendous cabochon emerald.
Mrs. Orson D. Munn, who won fame in a limited circle by wearing a foxtail for a hat at the Colony Restaurant, drops in at El Morocco several times a week, is known for the spirited way she dances the rhumba with her remarkably agile husband.

MY MOVIES

Babette's Feast, Sullivan's Travels, Dodsworth, All About my Mother, All About Eve, Ma Vie en Rose, A Star is Born (1954), 84 Charring Cross Road, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Brief Encounter, The Hours, Auntie Mame, Infamous, Hollywoodland, Fur, Vertigo, Rear Window, Portrait of Jennie, The Model and the Marriage Broker, Random, Harvest, The Mating Season, Radio Days, Another Woman, The Bycicle Thief, Umberto D, Blade Runner, The Devil Wears Prada, Mr. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, The Triplets of Belleville, Stevie, My Foolish Heart, The Tender Trap, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Awful Truth, Amarcord, I, Vitelloni, Variety Lights, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), Dinner at Eight, Beyond the Forest, Mr. Skeffington, The Pirate, Turtle Diary

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE STARS

MARY ASTOR - Like so many women of that era (and the era really covered a lot of ground, from the 30s through the 60s) could and did play any part with forthright assurance, style and damned good acting. From the shrewish Brigid O'Shaugnassy in THE MALTESE FALCON to the wordly and serene Edith Cortrigh in DODSWORTH to the Auntie Mame-like society manhunter in THE PALM BEACH STORY to the stark and truly terrifying Roberta Carter in RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE (Oscar nomination,) Astor, like Irene Dunne (soon to appear in these pages) could do it all and, as with Dunn, no matter what the part, a shinning intelligence came through.
VIVIEN LEIGH – A superb technician and a great beauty. The heartbreak in her eyes and her voice were there from the start and they only became more poignant as she aged. There may not be a more idiosyncratic match of star and role in anyone's career than Vivien Leigh's, who, deliberatly or not, became the spokeswoman for the fragile, shopworn angel, though still smoldering with longing and lust.

ALFREDO'S PAELLA