Category Archives: Film

Hollywood Mythmakers: Marilyn and James Bacon

23 Thursday Sep 2010

Posted by in Film, Marilyn Monroe

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Marilyn Monroe at the Photoplay Awards, 1953

James Bacon, the entertainment reporter whose career spanned an incredible sixty years, has died in Northridge, Los Angeles of congestive heart failure, while sleeping. He was 96.

Born in Buffalo, New York in 1914, Bacon studied at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, from 1933-36, dropping out in his final year after his parents lost their home in a flood. He completed his journalism degree in 1943 at Syracuse University, and served in the Navy. Bacon’s career in Hollywood, writing a syndicated column for Associated Press, coincided with the rise of Marilyn Monroe and the final phase of Hollywood’s ‘Golden Era.’ Continue reading →

David L. Wolper 1928-2010

16 Monday Aug 2010

Posted by in Film, Marilyn Monroe, Television

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David L. Wolper was born in New York City, 1928. After studying cinema and journalism at University of South California, Wolper set up a television distribution company in 1949, selling old movie serials to the small screen, then in its infancy. In 1955, Wolper moved into production with his documentary, The Race for Space, featuring unseen Russian footage. It was finally broadcast in 1960, earning an Oscar nomination.

By 1963, Wolper had been dubbed ‘Mr Documentary’ by Time, and had produced many more programs, including the Emmy award-winning Making of the President 1960. When Marilyn Monroe died in 1962, Wolper sent a team of cameramen to her funeral. He was one of the first to propose a documentary about her life, though initially most networks were uninterested.

The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, produced in 1964, is still available on DVD today and remains one of the pioneering biographical works on the actress. Speaking in the 1990s, Wolper said that he believed the authentic quality of the documentary came from it having been made so soon after Monroe’s death, when the people close to her were still alive and their memories fresh. Continue reading →

Nan Taylor Abell

12 Monday Jul 2010

Posted by in Film, Marilyn Monroe

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misfitscastphoto.jpg

‘The Misfits’, 1960 – producer Frank Taylor at far left

Nan Taylor Abell, formerly married to Frank E. Taylor, producer of The Misfits, has died in Greenwich, Connecticut, aged 94.

Born in Minnesota, Nan was the daughter of a mine engineer. After graduating, she moved to New York and became a children’s radio host. She gave up her career on marrying Frank Taylor, who was then a publisher and editor to the playwright Arthur Miller.

In the late 1940s, the Taylors moved to Hollywood with hopes of bringing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, Tender is the Night, to the big screen. However, this project failed to get off the ground, and by 1952 they had returned east with their four sons.

After Taylor’s client, Arthur Miller, married Marilyn Monroe in 1956, he bought a farm in Roxbury, Connecticut, close to the Taylors’ home at Belle Haven, Old Greenwich. In his 1969 biography, Norma Jean: The Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe, author Fred Lawrence Guiles remarked that ‘to Marilyn, the Taylors were by far the liveliest and most convivial of Miller’s married friends. She came in time to confide in both Frank and Nan Taylor…’ Continue reading →