James Bawden and Ron Miller were journalists with a love for old Hollywood and a knack for gaining interview3s with the stars from the golden age. Many of those interviews, conducted from the 1960s through the ‘80s, are collected in Conversations with Classic Film Stars: Interviews from Hollywood’s Golden Era (University Press of Kentucky).
During their long career, Bawden and Miller spoke to actors who remain familiar today as well as others remembered only by film buffs. “Leading Ladies” such as Rosalind Russell and Dorothy Lamour are included along with film noir “tough girl” Audrey Totter and femme fatale Jane Greer. The general public knows Fay Wray only for King Kong, but Bawden easily teased out her full story. Born on a ranch in Alberta, she arrived in Los Angeles during the silent era, playing small parts (including an ingénue in a Stan Laurel short). By 1928 she stared in Erich von Stroheim’s The Wedding March before moving to talkies with Gary Cooper. Dropped by her studio, she went to Broadway and worked alongside Archibald Leach (who soon reinvented himself as Cary Grant). She recalls being called to RKO for King Kong and being told, “You’re going to have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.” Excitedly, she thought: “Maybe it would be Cary Grant or Gable” and was “vastly cheated” when shown a sketch of the great ape.
Most of the stars in Conversations had a fascinating insight or two and many seem much in character with their screen personae. Gloria Swanson seemed to be in Norma Desmond mode, starting the discussion tartly: “Dear heart, fashionably tardy, I see. The young like to be fashionably late these days, or so I am told.”
