Thursday, June 23, 2016

For those who like old-time clips: Hollywood Without Make-Up

Tomorrow morning at 8:15 AM, TCM is running Hollywood Without Make-Up. It's the first of two documentaries made by Ken Murray. Murray had been an actor at the beginning of the talking-picture era, but not being good enough to cut it as an actor, went into doing the emcee thing, at which he became successful.

This also enabled him to have access to the Hollywood stars, so by the early 1960s he was able to get a lot of stars (or their estates) to donate clips to make this look at the more private lives of the stars, and what they did at their palatial homes. There are a lot of clips from San Simeon, where William Randolph Hearst held court with mistress Marion Davies, and a lot of other actors show up as their guests.

There's also a sequence with Walt Disney taking Murray's daughters on a tour of the Disney studio, just a few years before Walt's death.

I don't think this one is available on DVD; the clearances for all those clips would probably be a nightmare. I'm not certain when the other special, Hollywood, My Hometown will be airing, either.

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