I Loved Her in the Movies: Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses

by Robert Wagner, Scott Eyman

Overview

Film and television actor and New York Times bestselling author Robert Wagner’s memoir of the great women movie stars he has known.
 
In a career that has spanned more than sixty years Robert Wagner has witnessed the twilight of the Golden Age of Hollywood and the rise of television, becoming a beloved star in both media. During that time he became acquainted, both professionally and socially, with the remarkable women who were the greatest screen personalities of their day. I Loved Her in the Movies is his intimate and revealing account of the charisma of these women on film, why they became stars, and how their specific emotional and dramatic chemistries affected the choices they made as actresses as well as the choices they made as women.
 
Among Wagner’s subjects are Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Swanson, Norma Shearer, Loretta Young, Joan Blondell, Irene Dunne, Rosalind Russell, Dorothy Lamour, Debra Paget, Jean Peters, Linda Darnell, Betty Hutton, Raquel Welch, Glenn Close, and the two actresses whom he ultimately married, Natalie Wood and Jill St. John. In addition to offering perceptive commentary on these women, Wagner also examines topics such as the strange alchemy of the camera—how it can transform the attractive into the stunning, and vice versa—and how the introduction of color brought a new erotic charge to movies, one that enabled these actresses to become aggressively sexual beings in a way that that black and white films had only hinted at.
 
Like Wagner’s two previous bestsellers, I Loved Her in the Movies is a privileged look behind the scenes at some of the most well-known women in show business as well as an insightful look at the sexual and romantic attraction that created their magic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525429111
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Robert Wagner is the star of such films as A Kiss Before Dying, The Longest Day, The Pink Panther, and most recently, the Austin Powers franchise. On television, he starred in It Takes a Thief (with Fred Astaire), Switch (with Eddie Albert and Sharon Gless), and Hart to Hart (with Stefanie Powers). He has recently appeared on Two and a Half Men and NCIS. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Pieces of My Heart and You Must Remember This, Wagner is married to actress Jill St. John.
 
Scott Eyman is the author of thirteen books about the movies, including Lion of Hollywood: The Life of Louis B. Mayer (which the Wall Street Journal called one of the five best books ever written about Hollywood), Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille, and more recently, the New York Times bestseller John Wayne: The Life and Legend.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

The Thirties 5

The Forties 61

Intermission I 131

The Fifties 141

The Sixties 179

Intermission II 189

Natalie 201

Jill 207

The Eighties (and On) 211

Epilogue 231

Acknowledgments 237

Index 239

Reading Group Guide

Barnes & Noble Review Interview with Robert Wagner

There is a special kind of ardor that exists in the professional who begins as a fan. When Robert Wagner became a contract player at Twentieth Century Fox in the '50s, he had already spent his youth enamored of the movies and, from 1937, the year his family moved from Detroit to Los Angeles, intersecting with the people in them. "I met Norma Shearer when I was seven years old," Wagner tells me during a recent conversation in New York. Wagner was a cadet in a local military school. His friend and classmate was Irving Thalberg, Jr., son of the then recently deceased MGM boss and Shearer. Irving invited his friend RJ (Wagner's longtime nickname) home and there, ensconced in her bed, was Shearer. "I didn't know who Norma Shearer was, for crissakes. There was something so . . . ethereal" — he pauses — "would that be a good word?" Shearer inscribed a glossy (which he still has) "To Cadet Wagner." But what turned his head was a few months later when Marie Antoinette, the first film Shearer made as a widow, was screened at Wagner's school. "They ran it for all the kids," he remembers, "on a sixteen-millimeter projector. And I'm looking at the screen and I'm thinking, Wait a minute. That's not her." Seven- year-old Wagner couldn't put together the woman on screen with the woman he had seen in her own home, his buddy's mom. "It was a first," he says.

That sense of dumbfounded enchantment can be found in his third collaboration with film biographer Scott Eyman, I Loved Her in the Movies: Memories of Hollywood's Legendary Actresses. Like his previous book, the charming 2014 ˆYou Must Remember This, a reminiscence of the places where golden-age Hollywood played, dined, vacationed, I Loved Her at the Movies is a tender work of remembrance — in this case of the women Wagner admired and worked with in an acting career that has now spanned sixty-six years. In many cases, these were women he came to know as close friends, like Barbara Stanwyck. Among the subjects are actresses like Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn (after whom Wagner named one of his daughters) whose fame has lasted, and others, like Greer Garson and Kay Francis, who are now well known only among lovers of classic Hollywood film. There are also quick sketches of women who were never leading ladies but who are indelible in character roles, women like Thelma Ritter and Ida Lupino. (Wagner rightfully praises Lupino's performance in a terrific movie called The Hard Way, a tough and too-little- seen showbiz tale in which Lupino played a character based on Ginger Rogers's notoriously driven mother, Lela.)

This is a book about what it feels like to come to understand as human beings larger-than-life women who, in Wagner's words, were "not not made up, not playing a part. They were real."

But the book is also an evocation and evaluation of the particular type of screen charisma embodied by each of the women he calls up out of memory. It's frank without ever being gossipy, shrewd without ever being unsympathetic — a balancing act that cannot have been easy. At times, though without ever descending into cruelty, Wagner addresses what limited the careers of his subjects - - and in some sad cases, what limited their lives.

Wagner suggests one of the reasons for his reserves of sympathy in the book's preface. "I think women in general have it tougher than men, and I think actresses in particular have it tougher than actors." When I ask him about that, he tells me, "I think women have a harder time all the way around. When you get into this profession it's mostly run by men, and whenever a woman has a point of view or maybe a demand, they can be, 'Jesus, what the hell does she want that for?' Women want to be listened to and thought of. And I think it takes a great deal of courage to do that on their part. Hepburn knew what she wanted, and she believed in it. She had great self-confidence. Lots of them did in that era." Wagner goes on to tell me it was sometimes different when men came into the lives of these women. "Was he really there for them?" he says many of these women wondered about their lovers and husbands. "Or was he there for her because of who she was?" One of the book's consistent themes is the story of the actress who got burned because of an exploitive partner. The wonderful character actress Joan Blondell saw much of her money gambled away by the producer Michael Todd. Bandleader Harry James did much the same thing to Betty Grable.

Both in Wagner's books and in the man himself, there is little false nostalgia. When we talk about how spectacle has overtaken craft and even coherence in most mainstream movies, he says, "That's not comparing today to then. It's just a fact of today. The characters and their behavior and what they meant to each other used to be the definitive thing." And though we are used to hearing stories about how the studios controlled the lives of their stars, Wagner talks about the protection and grounding that actors lost with the demise of the studio system.

"If you were with them," he says of the studios, "they took care of you. And you had a loyalty to them. I was so proud when the Twentieth Century Fox logo came on. When I was there I was there as a kid, a green kid off the streets and just lucky to be there. I was on the contract list. Everybody was willing to do anything for you to make you better."

At one point in our conversation, going over the people he has known, Wagner tells me, "I live in gratitude." If he hadn't said that to me, the books would have. Reading them you feel you're in the presence of a man who, even if he can't believe it, is vey conscious of his luck, a man who genuinely likes his life and is thankful for it. It's a feeling of the kind you might remember lingering when the lights come up after a thoroughly satisfying night at the movies.

—Charles Taylor

Editorial Reviews

08/22/2016
In his third Hollywood memoir (after Pieces of My Heart), film and TV star Wagner writes a valentine to the “female movie stars that defined my generation.” He proceeds chronologically, beginning in the 1930s with Norma Shearer, “ first movie star,” whom he met when he was eight. Other ’30s stars he discusses include Joan Crawford, with whom he had a brief fling in the ’50s, and Irene Dunne. In the 1940s, Wagner champions the troubled Betty Hutton and dances with June Haver at a party at his high school. He writes at length about Lana Turner in the 1950s, and breezes through the 1960s and 1980s, though readers will wish he hadn’t. His chapters on his wives, Natalie Wood and Jill St. John, are particularly brief and unsatisfying. There are tidbits of gossip—Fred McMurray was a tightwad; Veronica Lake was given to anti-Semitic outbursts—but most of the book contains casual recollections. His digression about the Studio Club, a residence house for actresses, is more interesting. What emerges most strongly is Wagner’s sympathy and respect for the resilient women who had to fight harder than men to survive in Hollywood. 35 b&w photos. Agent: Mort Janklow, Janklow & Nesbit. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for You Must Remember This

“An affectionate new memoir . . . like a guided tour of vintage Hollywood.”
—Newsday
 
“[A] charming tribute to offscreen lives during the period many regard as Hollywood’s finest.”
—Kirkus Reviews
 
“Wagner and [Eyman] offer a humorous, poignant, and sometimes juicy view of a vanished era.”
—Los Angeles Times

“In terms of grace and style, you couldn’t ask for a better tour director than actor Robert Wagner.”
—Douglass K. Daniel, The Associated Press

“With great affection and a twinkle in his eye, veteran actor Wagner recalls Hollywood’s glory days of the 1940s and early 1950s, when class, manners, friendship, and a code of values ruled the city of stars.”
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Sept. 7, 2016
A popular actor’s “love letter to actresses.”Wagner (You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age, 2014, etc.), now 86, returns with another installment of his life in the movies, this time focusing on the Hollywood ladies, many of whom he knew quite well thanks to a long career. If he didn’t work with them, he knew them socially or personally. His knowledge of Hollywood film history is prodigious. Don’t expect any bad-mouthing or dirt; “this is a book about character and craft, talent and genius, respect and love.” Mostly. Wagner admits to having a “brief, ships-in-the-night fling” with Joan Crawford, who had an “infectious personality and a huge drive.” Actresses, writes the author, “have it harder” than actors, and they also have shorter careers—“for every Meryl Streep there are ten Demi Moores and Meg Ryans, women who earned major salaries and major parts for precisely as long as they were the Hot Young Girl.” The actress cavalcade breezes by chronologically. Wagner starts in the 1930s and ends in the ’80s, with short chapters on two wives: Natalie Wood (“complicated”) and Jill St. John (a “good actress”). The author is succinct and pithy at giving a sense/opinion of who they were as people and what their strengths were as actresses. Gloria Swanson was “incisive,” “industrious” and “imperious.” Neither Jean Harlow nor Mae West was “particularly beautiful,” but both “made sex safe for the middle class.” Although Bette Davis was a “small woman,” she came into the “movie frame with a rush.” Marilyn Monroe was a “sweet, nervous girl” who became a “legend.” Some readers might find Wagner sexist and old-fashioned. Looks matter to him. Harlow had a “spectacular body” she liked to display; Jean Peters was “breathtaking;” Lana Turner had a “body that men would go to war over;” Brigitte Bardot was the “hottest thing on two legs.” Frothy and honest remembrances for gossipy movie fans.

Kirkus Review

Acquainted both socially and professionally with many of the stars at the end of Hollywood’s Golden Era and beyond, actor Robert Wagner offers a warm reading of his nuanced, poignant, and thoughtful reflections on what made these women legendary. Listeners learn more detail than is generally available about many vintage actresses now seen primarily in Turner Classic Movies. Sloppy production values hurt an otherwise strong narration—the listener is very much aware of places where the narration was stopped and restarted. While Wagner’s age does impact the vitality of his reading, overall, his voice rings true, comforting, and emphatic. Fans of vintage Hollywood will enjoy being regaled with stories and reminiscences of Betty Hutton, Rosalind Russell, Betty Davis, and many, many others. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2016 - AudioFile

Acquainted both socially and professionally with many of the stars at the end of Hollywood’s Golden Era and beyond, actor Robert Wagner offers a warm reading of his nuanced, poignant, and thoughtful reflections on what made these women legendary. Listeners learn more detail than is generally available about many vintage actresses now seen primarily in Turner Classic Movies. Sloppy production values hurt an otherwise strong narration—the listener is very much aware of places where the narration was stopped and restarted. While Wagner’s age does impact the vitality of his reading, overall, his voice rings true, comforting, and emphatic. Fans of vintage Hollywood will enjoy being regaled with stories and reminiscences of Betty Hutton, Rosalind Russell, Betty Davis, and many, many others. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2016 - AudioFile