Who doesn’t love Bette Davis? The unforgettable actress — ten times nominated for an Academy Award and a two time winner — was one of the great icons of the Silver Screen. Star of stage and film, she was truly one of the most important actresses of the twentieth century. Here she poses in a publicity still dating to the mid-1930s. It’s an amazing photo of a great actress at the top of her fame.
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing we feature a photo of Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known as Sting. Sting was a founding member of the legendary band The Police, and has sold over 100 million records worldwide. This press photo, dating from around 1978, shows that he at one point enjoyed angling. This attitude may have changed, if this article about how he tried to have a fishing shack torn down because it “ruined the view” from his $15 million 800 acre estate is to be believed. It’s still a nice photo of simpler times.
There are few celebrities who enjoyed fishing more than Bing Crosby. The best selling crooner of the 1930s and 1940s, he was a superstar until his passing in 1977. His favorite hobby of all was fishing, which he often did with his children at his cabin in Idaho. As a major proponent of angling, he was featured in many press photos while angling, including the one below from 1952. It's a great "illustrated photo" of Crosby at his height.
Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012) was a famous actor who is probably best known for his work as Quinton Hale (shown below in a publicity still from 1963) in the popular television show McHale’s Navy. A ten year veteran of the U.S. Navy, McHale’s navy made him a household name, but he had already won an Academy Award for Marty in 1955. A versatile actor, he attracted a new legion of fans by voicing the character Mermaid Man in the popular kid’s show Spongebob Squarepants from 1999 through 2012. Here he shows off one of his favorite pastimes on PT-73: fishing.
In this week's Hollywood Goes Fishing, we feature a publicity still from 1981 featuring actress Lauren Hutton. If you've been living under a rock the past four decades or so, Hutton was a supermodel-turned-actress best remembered (cinema-wise) for her roles in movies such as Once Bitten and American Gigolo. This photo dates from 1981 but I'm not sure what it's for.
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing we get a 1950s photo of one of the great celebrity anglers of the 20th century, Bing Crosby. Star of stage and screen and radio, Crosby was the biggest star in America in the 1930s and 1940s. He spent a lot of his free time fishing in California, where this photo was shot for one of the celebrity magazines.
I have this silly habit of always looking out for fishing tackle in mainstream media -- I have a bizarre collection of TV ads, for example, showing actors using spinning reels upside down. It's not every day, however, that you get to see a shadowbox of vintage fishing tackle in a popular mainstream movie. This was the case when I saw the following trailer at the movies this week, for the popular comedy movie 22 Jump Street, the sequel to 21 Jump Street, which in itself was a remake of an early 1990s television show.
Tremendously gifted actor (and very, very talented woodworker) Nick Offerman is best known for his character Ron Swanson on the hilarious tv show Parks & Rec. Heck, we've even featured a scene of him fishing on 1000 Words a few years back.
In this movie, he plays a police chief to the bumbling young detectives played by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. In his office, Deputy Chief Hardy has a shadow box filled with vintage tackle (see back left of image).
Here's a close up:
Looks like we have a Bingo and Rat-L-Trap on the left, a nice wood Bass Oreno and spin size Jitterbug, another wooden Bass Oreno and a Little George, and a couple of poppers. On the left is what appears to be a leather reel bag for a Pflueger Supreme. A nice collection!
Here's the movie trailer for 22 Jump Street, which opens this weekend.
This week in 1000 Words: Hollywood Goes Fishing we get a picture of Roy Rogers -- the legendary cowboy actor -- ocean fishing in his 16-foot boat at Paradise Cove. He was a committed angler and often got on the water by 4:00 a.m. for a fishing trip. Here he is hooked into a nice fish in this mid-1950s publicity photo.
This week in 1000 Words: Hollywood Goes Fishing, we have a lovely photo of actress Vera Lynn on horseback with fishing gear. Vera Lynn (b. 1917) is a national treasure in Britain, being named Dame Vera Lynn and a living treasure in her home country. Here she poses in a publicity still likely from around 1950 for MGM studios.
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing we feature a current actor. Lukas Haas is one of those working actors who quietly goes about doing fine work without seeking to attract too much attention to himself. An Emmy nominee (for playing the titular role in The Ryan White Story), he rather unassumingly has developed an outstanding resume, ranging from the criminally underrated Music Box to the award winning Inception to the terrific Lincoln.
Here he is using a Daiwa spin cast reel in an undated photograph I would guess is ca. 2000.
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing we feature another classic actress, Virginia Bruce (1910-1982). A native Minnesotan, she got her start in 1930 and her big break in 1932 with the MGM movie Downstairs, pictured below. During filming, actor John Gilbert (handing the fishing tackle over to her) and Virginia Bruce fell in love and got married. This scene also features Olga Baclanova, pictured on the left. Alas, Bruce and Gilbert divorced after two years, and she continued working throughout the 1940s and 1950s, although less frequently with time.
Cincinnati native Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. (1914-1958) was one of the finest actors of his generation. Known for his striking good looks, his matinee-idol persona masked an actor of considerable skill. At the height of his career, he transitioned to the stage and won accolades for his performance in Mister Roberts. Known for his swashbuckling roles like The Mark of Zorro, in 1942 Power enlisted in the USMC and became a pilot flying transport planes, participating in a number of campaigns including Iwo Jima.
Below he poses for a publicity still for the 1953 movie The Mississippi Gambler. Sadly, this fine actor passed away from a massive heart attack in 1958 while filming in Spain. He was just 44.
Paul Muni (1895-1967) is mostly forgotten today, which is a great shame, because the Austrian-born actor was one of the finest of his generation. His work in I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang is one of the finest performances of the the golden age of Hollywood. Known for playing biographical roles, he won an Oscar for Best Actor for playing the lead role in the The Story of Louis Pasteur (he also won a Tony Award for Inherit the Wind). He is pictured below holding a fishing rod in his final big screen performance in 1959's The Last Angry Man, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award -- his sixth and final nomination. He lost out to Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur. He then retired and spent the remainder of his years living happily with his wife in California.
I have seen over half of Muni's 23 films, and I can say without reservation that I have never seen a bad performance from the man. He was an exceptional actor.
-- Dr. Todd
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing we feature a photo ca. 1970 of Ralph Edwards (1913-2005). Edwards was involved in radio from the very beginning and became a noted announcer in the 1930s, introducing the Major Bowles show among others. In 1940 he became involved with Truth or Consequences, a game show that would air for the next 38 years and which would make him a household name. While there he founded the famed Jimmy Fund, a cancer-research charity adopted by the Boston Red Sox. Edwards would later go on to produce numerous other tv shows, including The People's Court.
He was a lifelong angler.
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing, we get a nice 1937 publicity photo of silver screen siren Marie Wilson. Best known for her turn as Irma in My Friend Irma, a comedic show that was a hit on radio, television, and in the movies. She acted steadily (mainly in the role of the ditzy blonde) from 1934 through 1952, and sporadically after this. She is one of the few people with three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame -- one for radio, tv, and film.
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing we get a really cool studio action shot of the lovely Jean Simmons, in promotion of the 1954 film She Couldn't Say No. The plot of the movie is predictably corny -- Simmons plays a wealthy woman who's life was saved by a small community who pitched in for a surgery she needed while a child, and who returns as an adult and falls for local doctor Robert Mitchum. There is a neat fishing scene in this movie, as evidenced by the photo.
Simmons was a London born actress who acted steadily from the late 1940s through the 1980s. A versatile actress, she is probably best known for her turn as Sarah Brown in the 1955 hit Guys and Dolls, for which she won a Golden Globe. During her long career she was nominated for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globes. She also won an Emmy Award for The Thorn Birds. She died in 2010 at the age of 80.
-- Dr. Todd
This week in Hollywood Goes Fishing we get a really nifty image featuring Cornel Wilde and the great Ginger Rogers. Rogers was a noted fly angler, and the shot below comes from the 1947 film It Had to be You. Wilde for his part was a Hungarian-born actor who had a number of leading roles in the 1940s and 1950s that played off his good looks.
This month in Hollywood Goes Fishing we get a really cool press photo dated 1964 of the Beatles fishing in Seattle, Washington. I don't know if the Fab Four were big anglers, but at least in this photo they seem to be enjoying their piscatorial adventure.
This month in Hollywood Goes Fishing we get a great fishing photo of Jean Harlow (seated) with an unidentified fishing pal dating to the 1930s. It's a great photo from the Golden Age of Cinema.
This month in Hollywood Goes Fishing we remember a rare combination: singing sensation and surf casting champion! Wendy Waye was an up-and-coming recording star in the early 1950s. She was the heir to a real estate fortune, and in this King Features press photo from 1952, an angler too! The caption read "Recording star Wendy Waye, a champion surfcaster from Los Angeles, tries her luck at landing some striped bass at Seabright, N.J. Wendy didn't land any fish all day."
She was in the recording business for at least four years, as Billboard Magazine on May 29, 1954 noted she was in town on a "deejay junket" plugging her latest release "Press Me."
The same magazine reported a year later that "MGM's newest canary Robbin Hood (the erstwhile Wendy Waye) sings sincerely on a pretty tune [called Mirror Mirror]. The label is putting a big push behind the disk (packaging it in a gold-colored sleeve, etc.) so it's bound to get a certain amount of jockey play."
She apparently lasted as a recording star into the late 1950s, when references to her seem to vanish.
That's probably more than you wanted to know about Wendy Waye/Robbin Hood, but she was the only female recording artist I know of who was also a champion surfcaster, so that's something worth remembering.
-- Dr. Todd
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