Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, The Glamor Boys

Glamour Boys: Get them while they're Hot

Fishing for glamour boys? The term glamor boy was assigned to a group of good looking, well dressed male celebrities many of them actors primarily in the 1930s through the mid-1960s. 

A mid-1938 Life Magazine cover presents the handsome Errol Flynn giving us an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile. He wears a polo shirt and silk scarf around his neck, a nice watch on his wrist and his trademark mustache. The only text on the cover: Errol Flynn, Glamor Boy. While maybe the quintessential glamor boy, the label would haunt Flynn later in troubled times.

Errol Flynn 1943

• What does it mean to be a Glamour Boy?
• Humphrey Bogart: glamour boy
• The label used against Flynn in 1943 court case

Articles ran in newspapers and magazines, how to behave as a glamor boy, traits women wanted, movie stars' instructions. Was it what women wanted? Did the behavior bring the results men wanted?

On an episode of the Burns and Allen radio show, George Burns and guest star Jack Carson talk about how men are being called glamor boys. 

George asks Jack, "Don't you think it's a little embarrassing to be called Radio's Glamor Boy?"  

"Not when it fits," Jack says with obvious pride in his voice.

They're specifically discussing Clark Gable. Both George and Jack think that Gracie wants him to replace Clark Gable in the upcoming film, The Hucksters.

Maybe you and your father are both glamor boys?
Douglas Fairbanks Jr shows off the
world's largest Panama hat as of 1930.
At this time Mr. Fairbanks was married to Joan Crawford.

What is a Glamour Boy?

Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and John Barrymore would be glamor boys, predecessors of Mr. Flynn. Your movie swashbucklers who who look fantastic in a shirtless sword fight and then gorgeous in white tie and tails in the evening. Fairbanks was also an acrobat like Cary Grant and Burt Lancaster. Douglas Fairbanks Jr and so many others are Flynn's contemporaries.

Hey, is it Glamour or Glamor? Apparently both are correct. Depends on which source you check. You'll see both spellings here, partly due to the use of direct quotes. 

The glamor boy probably likes designer clothing. He takes care of them, or he can afford to pay someone else to do it, maybe he has a valet, a gentleman's gentleman like Jeeves or Mr. French.  In the old Hollywood contracts I've seen, male actors' valets were sometimes mentioned as standard practice, their transportation, their hotel accommodation, etc. 

You may go into debt for the cause of your looks, you may be clever and do this on a budget, find your own style. What was called a bit of a reckless lifestyle and a high-profile lifestyle at that may be part of it. Enough to bankroll your exploits and a little extra cash to pass around is good. At least to some extent, it can be finally more fun to watch than regularly live this lifestyle.

How to be a glamor boy
"The American divorce rate would fall if husbands would learn how to look in the mirror. ... Learn how to glamorize yourself for your wife. ... If the husband keeps his glamor the wife will no longer think she has the freedom to be sloppy and they both will like each other better."
 -- From a 1947 Sarasota FL newspaper article

Fortune Modern Frameless Beveled Wall Mirror

Humphrey Bogart, Glamor Boy

Hollywood Magazine ran a tongue in cheek 1939 article so you or your boyfriend

With the Sophisticate appear
to be World-Weary and Bored
just like she is

can Be a Glamour Boy like Humphrey Bogart. "'Had I but known you 20 years ago' is effective for the Sweet Young Thing." 

Just like watching an old movie, much should be thought of the time that these articles were written. The Hays Office, the Production Code, sometimes called the Hays Code censoring all aspects of films was in high gear in 1939. The term really came into fashion about the same time as the code.

Photos are shown of different outfits to wear when courting girls of different types. Bogart tells how to behave and even does his hair differently. 

He says that the Hays Office doesn't think it's acceptable for the gangster or the villain to have a love interest apart from the moll. "He's lucky if he rates a moll and the way things have been going even the molls are turning out to be poor misunderstood little girls who really have hearts of gold underneath all the tinsel."

"Haunted wistfulness
combined
with a look of
hungry respect is right
for the Home Girl"

Even in the 1970s they said that Kris Kristofferson was becoming a glamor boy. Who might fit the category today? Johnny Depp?

What we call a metrosexual may be part of what was a glamor boy. Part of it was taking care in how you looked. Some was about suavity, technique in reaching your goal, getting the women, the job, ultimately the money that you want.
 
Men who had good manners (around women), who cared about their appearances, dressed well may be categorized as glamor boys.

In the mid-1940s Dick Powell was complaining about the path his career was taking. First he was typed as a glamor boy in musicals. Then he was typed as a tough guy. He couldn't get a break.

Actors who are typecast as glamor boys such as Adolphe Menjou complain that they can only get that sort of role. We hear many performers say they'd like to play a range of roles.

Probably the oddest thing I found was from 1949 showing how ubiquitous the term had become. It was a short blurb titled Natural Gas Becomes Glamor Boy Of Utility Industry.

Glamor Boy dress code per Humphrey Bogart
1939: Formal wear studiously correct,
English shoes custom made $35 per pair,
black pearl shirt studs gifts if you've done your work well.....

The Last of Robin Hood 2014 with Kevin Kline, Dakota Fanning, Susan Sarandon
(In Chaplin 1992, Kline played Douglas Fairbanks)

Flynn reads article about John Barrymore

Errol Flynn interviews himself 1940

It's 1940 and Errol Flynn is in a self analytical mood looking up at the ceiling sitting outside with his feet up meditating aloud. Flynn coincidentally played Barrymore in Too Much Too Soon written by Diana Barrymore, actress, daughter of John Barrymore.

The actor did nothing to discourage his reputation. Far from it. The antics in his personal life helped to sell movie tickets as much as anything the press agents did or any movie magazine interviews could have done. All added to the persona.

"I found the other day that I was boring the hell out of myself. And so what I thought must I be doing to others? ....So I tore into the question of being a bore and found that I am also becoming very impatient of persons or situations of persons or situations which I find intolerably dull. 

"Whereas I used to be a very polite person, bearing with bores with graciousness and glazed eyes, I now find myself looking a dullie right in the eye and saying oh hell and walking away. I don't hold this against myself however because I am not offended when others say 'oh hell' as they walk out on me. ....

"I tell myself that I am acquiring poise. I entertain the hope that one day I may be as good as the old roué in Paris who, the story goes, met up with his wife one day just as he was helping his mistress out of a cab. Now most men would have ducked. But not our old roué.

"He made them both a sweeping bow and said to his wife, 'My dear, I want you to meet Miss Floozie Floobottom,' and then the introduction effected, he added, 'and now I am sure you ladies have a lot in common to talk about.' 

"With another gallant bend from the waist, he stepped back into his cab and was off. That illustrates my point exactly. That was enjoying maliciously a situation and leaving it right in the middle. The touch you two ladies raises it to classic heights."
-- Errol Flynn interviews himself, 1940

"He is the glamor man of all glamor men"

In his 1943 court case the prosecutor called Flynn the Glamor Boy of all Glamor Boys

His glamor boy charm was used against him in his statutory rape court case in 1943. Charges that female jurors were not impartial came up and jurors had to be dismissed nearly causing a mistrial. 

There were letters to magazines saying that the judge would go easy on Flynn, who was acquitted, because he was a movie star. At the same time some wrote saying that they should be lenient because he was a good looking heroic movie star who had done charitable works. 

Woman Trouble delays trial of Glamour Boy
A female juror confessed she'd won her seat by deceit

Issues revolved around his bringing underage girls out on his yacht. Sadly whether or not these high school-age girls were virgins became an issue in newspaper articles. They talked about drinking an emerald green cocktail that made them ill.  

I haven't read enough about the case or know about the reality of the situation, but absinthe is a drink known for its bright green color. That probably comes to mind when people hear that information.

Do we treat the rich and famous as we treat others? Do we react to them

Flynn had numerous
photo spreads

differently. They were 15 and 16. Questioning included asking if they'd objected to his behavior, if they had interest in him. 

Flynn's actual bedroom door was brought into the courtroom. Was there evidence of tampering with the lock? One of the girls had testified that she'd been trapped in his bedroom for nearly an hour. There was discussion of from the weather bureau of how high the moon was to judge the moonlight over the boat on the night in question.

Magazines had editorials about the case. Flynn's studio Warner Brothers was suitably concerned about the situation.

Maybe the Beatles had it right when they said, "All I gotta do is Act Naturally." Self improvement is great. Putting on a show, especially if you're not being paid to act, isn't going to enhance your relationship and it will probably be exhausting physically, mentally and financially in the long run.

Douglas Fairbanks Black Pirate silent movie Shirt by Jakestuff

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Graphic circle design
1920s dancer flapper desk or pendant hanging lamps 
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Rudolph Valentino in Bathing Suit Post Cards by reggiesgayadventures
color postcard printing

John Barrymore 1927 silent movie exhibitor ad T-shirts

He is the grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore

Get the best in online t-shirt printing from zazzle

Links to Related Pages of Interest:

Errol Flynn Birthday Brawl 1942

Hollywood Before Glamour: Fashion in American Silent Film

George Hurrell's Hollywood: Glamour Portraits 1925-1992 

Get to know the lovely Olivia de Havilland a friend and frequent costar of Errol Flynn's. You can watch their films and read about her and them.
Legends of Hollywood: The Life of Olivia de Havilland

My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn

Rudolph Valentino's Impact National Lover, Movie Idol, Sex Symbol: Would he be such big a star today? 

Classic Film actors talk about work, clothes, their tools of the trade 

The High cost of men's clothes, Hollywood actors' clothes 1930s-1960s

Pinball Wizard Boots

Edna Millay John Barrymore Margaret Mead Shrek Greenwich Village Narrow House

The Narrowest house in New York City

Edna St. Vincent Millay home
 75½ Bedford St
Greenwich Village
New York City, New York

75 1/2 Bedford Street, the narrowest house in New York City. Three stories and only 9 1/2 feet wide, sometimes called the Millay House after the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay who lived there in the 1920s. They say it's like living in a double decker bus.

Located in Greenwich Village, the Cherry Lane Theatre district, an area where artists, writers, musicians and actors were very creative back in the '20s. New York in the 1920s video info at end.

Millay was one of my mother's favorite poets, she collected her books. Reading about this house has always been of extra interest. Not long ago the house was on the market and the list of other former occupants I saw made it particularly fascinating. What luminaries lived there?

It's a skinny house. Former tenants or owners we now hear listed often include actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant, anthropologist Margaret Mead and cartoonist/author William Steig. 

There are many travel books, sometimes older can be better for getting fact vs legend. People have been able to take Sidewalk Tours of the area since at least the 1930s. Live in a small space? The house is a lesson in space saving ideas, storage solutions such as placing a small refrigerator under the stairs. 

Can you have pieces of furniture that perform more than one function? The stove consists of burners in a row, placed in a former fireplace. There are no closets. The house has no side walls of its own and is 33 feet long.



Regina Kellerman, an architectural historian and preservationist wrote The Architecture of the Greenwich Village Waterfront. Her research related to the streets and buildings of Greenwich Village. Kellerman was executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP). The New York Public Library has her papers and manuscripts in their archive.

The house apparently first appeared on tax records in 1873. In 1880, 75 1/2 was occupied by Martha Banta, a confectioner. In the Very late 1800s and early 1900s it was a family home and/or business for various people and families. It was a cobbler shop, a candle shop.

Edna St. Vincent Millay and Eugen Boissevain
in front of house
75-1/2 Bedford Street, New York
US Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs division

In 1923 Eugen Boissevain, the husband of Edna St. Vincent Millay, "rented the Bedford Street house for a year and ten months $200, a month a princely sum to a young woman who earlier in the year was deeply in debt and staying with friends to economize."
-- Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford  

Millay and her husband remodeled the home, adding a skylight and the Dutch gabling on the front and back. 




According to the plaque on the front of the building, Edna St. Vincent Millay lived there from 1923-1924 and wrote The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. 

This along with just about everything else pertaining to the house, is disputed

Mr. Skinner's Skinny House

Children's book
inspired by the house.
Ann McGovern, Mort Gerberg

both by scholars, those who study the history of the area and the house itself. We know that Ms. Millay worked on the book elsewhere. Did she also work on it here? Depends on who you ask. We also see that she lived there through the middle of 1925. 

The book, Savage Beauty talks more about Millay and Boissevain in the house. An earlier book of Milford's on Zelda Fitzgerald was also very popular.

Later Millay and Boissevain moved to a 700-acre farm in Austerlitz, New York, Steepletop. The Poet and Her Book, Jean Gould's 1969 biography, quotes Edna St. Vincent Millay as saying that she wanted more nature than she heard from the ''noisy chirping of urchin sparrows'' in the Village. 

Much of the history of this house, small as it is, shows families and roommates staying there to economize just as people do today.

From a short article from The New York Herald-Journal July 17, 1935: The real entrance is the rear door by the way of Cherry Lane Garden. Most of the interior is light green the bedrooms buff and the beds are regular size.

The Villager online quotes Ms. Kellerman's research as showing that the house was occupied in the 1930's by the cartoonist William Steig, his wife and sister-in-law, the anthropologist Margaret Mead. Steig created the character of the big green ogre, Shrek. You can find his books on Kindle and in paper form. A fun gift idea for yourself or someone else would be to compare the books to the movie versions of Shrek.

Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization (1928) is said to have launched Margaret Mead's career as an anthropologist.

In the summer of 1939, the St. Petersburg Times had an article about some young ladies, recently graduated from college, living in the house. They were giving sidewalk tours of the area."Sidewalk tours service" says their sign. The article says they're living in "Miss Millay's former home."




For John Barrymore, I found a couple of former residences. He lived on the top floor at 132 West 4th St. He made a garden that was so heavy with topsoil in his rooftop apartment that it made the building structurally unsound and he was asked to leave. But he supposedly left the garden behind.

Barrymore's films include the title role in the silent Don Juan in 1926. He played Captain Ahab in the early talkie, Moby Dick in 1930.

simplehuman Slim Open Can,
Brushed Stainless Steel, 50-Liter/ 13-Gallon
We like this brand because they look good & come in different sizes.
Get one that's closed to keep little ones' fingers and curious pets out.

An article about some of the authors who lived in Greenwich Village discussed Herman Melville, for 20 years a customs inspector on the village water front. "He shamed his wife to tears by continuing to write even after critics and writers had disdained his novels Moby Dick (1851) and Mardi (1849). 'Herman has taken to writing poetry,' Mrs. Melville wrote to her mother. 'You need not tell anyone, for you know how such things get around.'"

In the fall of 1947, New York University threatened to take over many of the buildings in the Washington Park area, "to build the largest law center in the world -- occupying two sides of the square and knocking out a whole row of the red brick Victorian treasures." John Barrymore is quoted as saying about living in the area, "When the locust blossoms come to the courtyard it's like living in Paris in the twelfth century."

The book, Haunted Greenwich Village: Bohemian Banshees, Spooky Sites and Gonzo Ghosts by Tom Ogden suggests that Barrymore lived at 132 Waverly place and that the residence has been haunted by Mr. Barrymore's ghost.



Somewhere along the line the story that Cary Grant had visited the house morphed to his having slept there to his having lived there. Just like with Mr. Barrymore, it all went from a legend/rumor to being reported and written as e-fact. 

In the early 1920s, Cary Grant (rather a young performer named Archie Leach from Bristol, England) was in New York City working as an acrobat and stilt walker on Coney Island.  He sold hand-painted neckties in NYC, including in Greenwich Village. He was trying to earn a living and trying to lose some of his accent since apparently some Americans couldn't understand what he was saying.

Short filler pieces about the house in the late 1950s and early 1960s were listing both Millay and John Barrymore as having been a resident of the house but I didn't see anything suggesting Cary Grant's having lived in or even having visited the house until much more recently. 

In 1964 a New York Times article noted that the interior had 3 bedrooms and five gas-burning fireplaces.

William Steig illustrated a version of the story, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. The 1948 film version of this story starred Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. 

Writer and poet Ann McGovern lived in the house in the 1980s. In honor of the house, she wrote Mr. Skinner's Skinny House. Among her many awards and honors for children's literature, McGovern won the 2010 Herman Melville Literary Award, given for major contributions to the world of maritime literature.

Looking to get your kids to read more, enjoy learning? She's also famous for writing children's books such as Stone Soup and an array or biographical, historical and animal books. These include If You Lived In Colonial Times, Runaway Slave: The Story of Harriet Tubman and Shark Lady: True Adventures of Eugenie Clark.

In the 2000s the house was cleaned up and sold again. Approximately 900 square feet total, to get from room to room you climb stairs. Contemporary news videos give added information. 



The Walter Cronkite New York in the 1920s documentary from 1961 identifies many of the people you'll see in the following video.


New York in the 1920s.

What we see in the video:
Toward the end we see Charlie Chaplin, as himself, doing his "dance of the rolls on forks"  that he did in The Gold Rush. Earlier in the video we see Eugene O'Neill his wife Agnes Boulton and their infant daughter, Oona O'Neill. Oona grows up to marry Charlie Chaplin in 1943 when she is 18. Granddaughter, Oona Chaplin was on the HBO series, Game of Thrones.

Hear Ziegfeld stars Fannie Brice sing, I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling and Helen Morgan sing My Bill.

Gertrude Lawrence, HG Wells, Rebecca West.
Tenors John McCormack and Enrico Caruso who mugs for the camera; Ignacy Paderewski, Russian actor Constantin Stanislavski, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, H.L. Mencken, Heywood Hale Broun, George Jean Nathan, club owner Texas Guinan. Noel Coward with actress Hope Williams (an early mentor of Katharine Hepburn), the play is The Vortex. The literary and dramatic/theatre situation in the city at the time is covered. Prohibition is discussed briefly.

Stanley Walker, longtime editor of The Herald Tribune

Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher is interviewed as is playwright and actor Marc Connelly.

Marc Connelly, actor and playwright who collaborated with George S. Kaufman and then received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Green Pastures in 1930.
Talks about the Algonquin Round Table including Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, George Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross (founder of The New Yorker), Robert Benchley and more. He tells us that there's some speculation about Harold Ross' head of hair. Maybe that jungle picture Chang was filmed in it.

At the first Academy Awards Chang was nominated for the Unique and Artistic Production award. The winner was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans with Janet Gaynor, George O'Brien Margaret Livingston. It was presented to William Fox for Fox Film Corporation. They also gave the award for Outstanding Picture to Wings with Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen and Gary Cooper. 

Per the Academy, the next year, they dropped the Unique and Artistic Production award, and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings was the highest honor that could be awarded.

George Gershwin is seen and heard rehearsing a musical number, Strike Up the Band, with comic team Clark and McCullough.

From the section on Greenwich Village:
Poet and novelist Elinor Morton Wylie
Theodore Dreiser Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).
Writers Sherwood Anderson and Willa Cather
The Village Belle, Edna St. Vincent Millay. "The wit of her conversation was as sharp as the pathos of her poetry," says literary critic Edmund Wilson

Sources:

The Architecture of the Greenwich Village Waterfront, Regina M. Kellerman

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford 

The Poet and Her Book, Jean Gould

TheVillager.com, Various real estate web sites and archives

Related Information:

Visit 84 Charing Cross Road the New York locations connected with the book and 1987 film of the same name. You can visit these locations, much like you can visit other city spots made memorable in films. 

How many movies featured the Empire State Building? Some of the most famous include Love Affair with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer 1939, An Affair to Remember Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr 1957. Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan 1993, Love Affair with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn in her last feature film 1994.
 
Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best by Nancy Nelson

Damned in Paradise: The life of John Barrymore

Good Night, Sweet Prince: The Life and Times of John Barrymore  

Do I Look Skinny In This House?: How to Feel Great In Your Home Using Design Psychology by Kelli Ellis 

Animated and Cartoon Characters on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Shrek has a star

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

Margaret Mead: Her Life, Her Letters

Chaplin's Girl: The Life and Loves of Virginia Cherrill  by Miranda Seymour  

Ten Commandments for Choosing a Story- Irving Thalberg

Irving Thalberg's Ten Commandments for Studio Readers. He distributed them early in his tenure at MGM.

1. Your most important duty is to find great ideas.  You'll find them buried under tons of mediocre suggestions.

2. Read at least two newspapers daily. Photoplays sell best which are based on timely topics.

3. Analyze all material on the basis of the players who are working for us.

4. Remember that you are dealing with a pictorial medium.

5. Make a close notation of all books you see the public reading.



Who was Irving Thalberg?

6. See at least two full-length motion pictures each week, one from this company, one by a competitor.

7. Everything else is secondary in your work to the finding of a strong dramatic situation... an interesting clash between principal characters.

8. Prove your ability to recognize creative material by writing and submitting stories of your own.

9. Be proficient in one language besides your own. The competition for good stories is so keen that the supply written in English was long ago insufficient.

10. Above all, train yourself to recognize sincerity in a story. Talking pictures, particularly, have made the public very sensitive to false notes in plots. 

Interesting how timeless much of this is and how it can cross over to different businesses. How do you formulate a good plot? How do you hone your own romantic comedy? How about creating a viral YouTube video? Always the same questions and answers.



Groucho Marx was thankful to Irving Thalberg for restarting the Marx Brothers' careers at MGM.

Thalberg died in 1936 at the age of 37.  The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award was created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for "Creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production." It's not given out yearly. The first aware was given in 1937 at the 10th annual Academy Awards to Darryl F. Zanuck. It was given in 2010 at the 83rd annual Academy Awards to Francis Ford Coppola.

In 1967 at the 40th Academy Awards, it was presented to Alfred Hitchcock.
 



Related Books of Interest: (Available on Kindle other eReaders)

 A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart by Gary Marmorstein 

Irving Thalberg: Boy Wonder to Producer Prince by Mark A. Vieira 

Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer (of Metro Goldwyn Mayer) by Scott Eyman

Anne Bancroft 84 Charing Cross Road

Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins in 84 Charing Cross Road
As Helene Hanff and Frank Doel an international personal relationship conserved in two decades worth of correspondence

"I dreamed about it for so many years. I used to go to English movies just to

Anne Bancroft as Helene Hanff
Original Lobby Card

look at the streets. I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for.

"I said I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there.'"
-- Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft), 84 Charing Cross Road

People watch, and often re-watch movies for different reasons. What's your passion? The travel buff, the teacher, writer or book lover in your circle of friends is apt to really like this movie. Maybe you're a movie buff or an anglophile, with an interest in things British, comedy and drama, film and television, the royal family, the history.

A part of Hanff's book, Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, resonated with me when it came to many things, books, films included. For whatever reason there are some things you want to re-experience rather than jumping on the next bandwagon, adding one more and one more to your list....

“My problem is that while other people are reading fifty books I'm reading one book fifty times. I only stop when at the bottom of page 20, say, I realize I can recite pages 21 and 22 from memory. Then I put the book away for a few years.”
-- Helene Hanff, Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

People who enjoy a smart comedic romantic story and English

The Chinese edition of
the book has the
best photo of the
bookshop as it was

literature fans would enjoy this very much. Watch with younger family members and friends to show the process of acquiring items not that long ago,to show the art of correspondence.

"I can never get interested in thing that didn't happen to people who never lived."
-- Helene Hanff [written in a letter to Frank]

Those who love a biography or artfully crafted documentary will want to see 84 Charing Cross Road. 

As the spaghetti sauce commercial says, "It's in there." This post will contain some spoilers. If you haven't seen the movie/read the book, I suggest you treat yourself to it now and read this afterward.

As a fan of libraries, I really liked this line...

"I don't browse in bookshops, I browse in libraries, where you can take a book home and read it, and if you like it you go to a bookshop and buy it."
― Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road

Plaque located at 84 Charing Cross Road, UK

84 Charing Cross Road is a 1987 movie based on a true story. It went from an epistolary memoir to plays on BBC television, London's West End and Broadway and later on BBC radio. The memoir of the same name by Helene Hanff, a compilation of letters between herself and Frank Doel the manager and chief buyer of London bookstore Marks & Co., Antiquarian Booksellers from 1949 to 1968. 

Hanff also came to exchange letters with the bookshop staff and Doel's wife Nora. Marks and Co is Marks and Cohen Booksellers. Plaques are located at the sites where the bookshop used to be and also at the location of Hanff's former apartment building in New York City.

About the stars

Anne Bancroft, who went on to star in the film version, said that when she read the book she knew that this was a part for her. Her husband, actor/writer/producer Mel Brooks acquired the film rights for his wife and served as executive producer. It had to be reworked as the play was created for two people and they wanted to expand it for film.

Bancroft won a Tony Award in 1958 for her Broadway debut. It was in William Gibson's two-character play, working opposite Henry Fonda in Two for the Seesaw, directed by Arthur Penn. She won Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. 

At the 1960 Tony Awards, she would win Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her role of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker also directed by Arthur Penn. Penn won a Tony for Best Director and the play itself won for Best Play. Two years later, Ms. Bancroft received an Academy Award for her performance she brought that character onto the big screen.

She won the Best Actress Academy Award. As she was back working on Broadway in Mother Courage and Her Children, Joan Crawford accepted Bancroft's Oscar on her behalf and later presented it to her in New York. Bancroft is one of the very few to have won an Academy Award and Tony Award for the same role. 

She's among a very small group of entertainers to win an Oscar, Emmy and a Tony award.  Mel Brooks is in the exclusive EGOT club, having won the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards.

Though she wasn't able to be there to receive her award in 1962, she had the honor of presenting the Best Actor Oscar to Sidney Poitier in 1963 for his work in the film, Lilies of the Field. It was just a few years later that she and Poitier would costar in The Slender Thread.

She would win the BAFTA Award (the British Academy Film Award) for Best Actress in a Leading Role for 84 Charing Cross Road. The film was a bigger hit in the UK than it was in America.

Seesaw, a dual biography of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks

Brooks and Bancroft went on to sign prime co-stars Anthony Hopkins as Frank Doel and Judi Dench to play his wife, Nora Doel. All three of these actors have won at least one Academy Award and have been nominated multiple times. Each has won numerous awards, including the BAFTA.

Supporting players include Mercedes Ruehl as Kay. Married to the Mob and The Fisher King). Ian McNeice is Bill Humphries. We know him as Bert Large in the comedy drama series Doc Martin, He was British correspondent Fulton Greenwall, alongside Jim Carrey in 1995's Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.  

In a small but memorable role Connie Booth is "The Lady from Delaware." We know her partly from BBC's Fawlty Towers, in which she co-wrote and starred with former husband, John Cleese.

A little about the story.... 

Seeing the film has made me want to get the book. I know people who've read the book and then want to see the movie. That says good things about both the movie and the book. The book, I'm told has more than they were able to show in the film. By the way, the movie's feline count is one as I recall.

The story spans two decades and as we see their lives, within the layers of contrast, the characters find common ground, first and foremost is their love of books. They share a sense of humor, all enjoy the letters. She lives alone, works from home. In London, in their little bookshop, there are subtle traces of the British class system that we saw at Grace Brothers Department Store in Are You Being Served. 

Helene learns about Frank from the content of the letters of other people rather than him. "Please don't tell Frank I'm writing to you," a clerk who works for him says. Helene is not not so reserved. US and UK, male and female.

In London they are under strict food rationing. Frank and Nora, particularly early on eat off of china at a pristine quiet table. Everything is 'fine.' This isn't how it is in New York, where Helene shares take-out Chinese food with friends.

Anne Bancroft photo

"I liked reading about the nun who ate so dainty with her fingers she never dripped any grease on herself. I've never been able to make that claim and I use a fork."
-- Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road

Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft

Speaking of contrasts of course so-called opposites do attract and it can work if you choose the right mate. Bancroft and her husband Mel Brooks married on August 5, 1964. As an outsider, fans see them, their public personas, their work and see differences but their union was a lasting one. Sadly Ann Bancroft died from cancer in 2005. The couple would have celebrated their 50th anniversary this year.

Their son, Max Brooks, is a writer whose work includes The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z and G.I. Joe: Hearts & Minds. Like his father, he was a tv writer, having written for Saturday Night Live. Sony Pictures recently bought the movie rights to his graphic novel, The Harlem Hellfighters. Max Brooks has been married since 2003, and his son was born a few months before Anne Bancroft's death.

Helene and Frank's Relationship

Early in the movie, we see her as Hanff in a movie theater. It's the Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard movie, Brief Encounter. A lot of England scenery set amidst the plot of two married people who have "an emotional affair." A woman tempted to cheat on her husband with a man she's met in a railway station.

"Hanff made a pilgrimage to the empty, dusty shop and visited the now-widowed Nora at home. 'She told me how furious she used to be when he brought one of my letters home to read to the family,' Hanff wrote in 1973.

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'I’d say to him, what kind of husband are you, to bring another woman’s letters home!' 'If he hadn’t brought them home,' I said, 'you’d have had cause to worry.' She looked at me and nodded. 'That’s just what Frank used to say.'"
-- The Telegraph, London  June 27, 2011

The relationship may be long-distance but it's still a real friendship and it fills a need beyond just filling Helen's bookshelves. She shares the letters with her friends. He shares them with co-workers who write to Helene. too. 

Frank changes in the course of the film, as does his wife. The performances and characters are full of humor, nuanced. To those who think the story would not be of interest to Americans, just look at the success of well written and acted

programs such as Downton Abbey now in its fifth season.

Is their true goal to meet in person; is that what the viewer is waiting for? The movie reminded me that the relationships experienced over the decades are the important thing. The fact that their lives were enhanced each by the other.

We don't always have to have bells and whistles, steamed up windows, explosions, special effects and monsters. Life isn't like that. The ones who bring heaps of charm and explosions are sometimes in the end the worst of all. 

84 Charing Cross Road Movie Poster
Anne Bancroft Anthony Hopkins Judi Dench Jean De Baer

Having friends, kind souls who consistently care, who are consistently there with good humor and who listen, that is vital. Despite all the contrasts and despite the fact that Frank and Helene did not meet in person their relationship was a rich one. "a deep epistolary friendship" There is a real sadness that they didn't meet in person but a happiness that they still 'knew' each other. "Their love for words turned into a love for each other," the trailer (below) says.

What is a monster to you, anyway?

"I am going to bed. i will have nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labeled Excerpt, Selection, Passage, and Abridged."
-- Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road

If you're looking for an action packed story with characters who keep you and one another trembling, keep you on the edge of your seat, a monster under every other bed, this isn't that story. 

"It looks too new and pristine ever to have been read by anyone else, but it has been. It keeps falling open at the most delightful places as the ghost of its former owner points me to things I've never read before."
-- Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road

Relationships across the Atlantic, across time.... Who read this book before you and will read it long after you? Films are like that, when you find one you really love.

"All mankind is of one author and is one volume," John Donne wrote in one of his most beautiful meditations.

"When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated.God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another...."
-- Helene Hanff: [reading John Donne]  






In watching the film I kept thinking of how relevant it is today. Any story about correspondence would resonate in our email/video conferencing culture. Internet girlfriends and boyfriends, online dates who sometimes meet to find they aren't as expected. I don't suppose that Helene and Frank could have imagined such means of communication.

Are we able to be more ourselves corresponding with someone we've not met (and do not see on a regular basis) than with someone we see regularly, absence makes the heart grow stronger -- can lead to the Dear John letter tho and can lead to a lot of pretense. In which case are we our best selves? 

Some people suggest we're at our best with those we know the least vs those we see and love the most. Is there a part of ourselves that we hide from those closest to us and why? Part we're more open to share with a stranger? She works from home alone He works in this shop where there is the structure, class structure in the society too. Both Helene and Frank value those close to them. Contrast all around but they connect somehow.



I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading passages someone long gone has called my attention to.”
― Helene Hanff, 84 Charing Cross Road 

Meeting someone from another time. What do the characters represent to one another? Helene Hanff is a woman open to everyone. She's a part of the community of book lovers, those people through whose hands certain volumes have passed. Books will outlive us. Will digital volumes? An iPad or MP3?

"Marks & Co. was especially glamorous because it was in London ...'Between my hand-to-mouth income and my fear of travel, I never really expected to see London ...I thought it would be a lovely consolation prize to hold in my hands books that actually came from there,' reminisces Hanff."
-- The Telegraph, London June 2011

What does she represent to him? Just his need to see himself in a new woman's eyes the midlife crisis thing, a new and 'exotic' woman who is so interested in him, someone who is like and unlike him? Last gasp. That is very relevant to an online relationship especially with a middle-aged man.




"Their love for words became a love for each other. a true story based on a best seller. She's quick to refer to him as Frankie. Finally he says, 'Love, Frank.'"

They took the relationship, such that it was, and they grew from knowing one another. 

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

The movie must have been fascinating to make, two halves of a whole. The co-stars did not work together. They couldn't play off of one another. Actors often talk about how helpful it is to have the other actors' reactions when
they're reading their lines. These people were an ocean apart. 

They were also playing real people. Helene Hanff visited the set on at least one occasion and one of Frank Doel's daughters visited the set, too.

You can still find the play in production. There are readathons of the book by one or two people taking the different parts. The characters and the relationship have a timeless quality.

"Through the relentless redundancy of popular culture we are lucky to be remembered for one role, image or idea. Anne Bancroft has become Mrs. Robinson. Near the end of her life she was exasperated by the fickle nature of this popular cultural memory. In a 2003 interview, she confirmed her surprise that 'with all my work and some of it is very very good.... 

"'We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world. I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet. Indeed sex has an insistent predictability to it fueled by desires unmet by the lunchroom treadmill or shopping center. 

"Bancroft's wish to move beyond seduction and the supposed controversy of an older woman shagging a younger man is not yet matched by the journalists who wrote her obituaries. My hope is that her death is the trigger not for iPod dipping into Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits but to remember her wider filmic catalogue. 84 Charing Cross Road is a subtle and important presentation of men, women intimacy and ideas. the notion that two adults fall in love with words literature and then each other though they never touch is beyond the grasp of the tabloid grab and grope."
-- Thinking Popular Culture

84 Charing Cross Road
(More recent)

"I tell you, life is extraordinary. A few years ago I couldn’t write anything or sell anything, I’d passed the age where you know all the returns are in, I’d had my chance and done my best and failed. And how was I to know the miracle waiting to happen round the corner in late middle age?  

"84 Charing Cross Road was no best seller, you understand; it didn’t make me rich or famous. It just got me hundreds of letters and phone calls from people I never knew existed; it got me wonderful reviews; it restored a self-confidence and self-esteem I’d lost somewhere along the way, God knows how many years ago. It brought me to England. It changed my life."
-- Helene Hanff, Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

Even when she had money, Hanff had given it away. Sheila Wheeler, Doel's daughter, now a retired school-teacher living in Muswell Hill, north London, tells me the writer made sure they received a share of her royalties following Frank’s death. 

"'We saw her as an American fairy godmother when I was growing up," she says. 'I pictured her as someone tremendously rich and glamorous, looking like Lauren Bacall. It was a shock, when I finally met her, to see how wrong I had been.'"
-- The Telegraph, London June 2011 

Treat yourself to more of Anne Bancroft's movies and Helene Hanff's books, particularly The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street because Duchess contains the back stories of many scenes and more.

Helene Hanff is sometimes confused with actress Helen Hanft (1934–2013). She was in films like Moonstruck and appeared on tv shows such as Law & Order. 

Quotes throughout, unless otherwise stated, are from the film and or Helene Hanff's books.

Helene Hanff's Amazon author page

Anne Bancroft's Amazon page Anne Bancroft made over 50 films in her lifetime, very different characters and movies for different tastes.

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Between Silk and Cyanide: A Code Maker's War 1941-45, Leo Marks
Leo Marks began his code-breaking with that used by his father, in noting the prices in his second-hand books. His father Benjamin was a partner in the book shop, Marks & Co at 84 Charing Cross Road. The book contains a story about Frank Doel and a book auction that wasn't all that it seemed.

For more about Mel Brooks (and Anne Bancroft) treat yourself to I Remember Me by Carl Reiner

John Donne: Selections from Divine Poems, Sermons, Devotions and Prayers (Classics of Western Spirituality) 

This article is part of
the Diamonds and Gold Blogathon

Image of 84 Charing Cross Road (more recent) used under Creative Commons from bashereyre (Flickr)

Image of Plaque used under Creative Commons from pedestrian saint  (Flickr)