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Post by topbilled on Jun 5, 2024 15:58:17 GMT
Alice Faye was Fox’s resident songbird in the second half of the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. She had been signed by the studio before the merger between 20th Century Pictures and Fox, but Zanuck saw great value in her. He quickly built a series of musicals around her talents– often they were glittery affairs with historical settings and nostalgic overtones for days past. The formula worked, and no matter who she paired up with, Alice Faye was a huge success. According to the lady herself, her best role at the studio was as LILLIAN RUSSELL in 1940. But she soared in other productions. Notable among them were IN OLD CHICAGO and FALLEN ANGEL, a dramatic turn in a film noir directed by Otto Preminger.
Check out:
IN OLD CHICAGO (1938)
LILLIAN RUSSELL (1940)
HELLO FRISCO HELLO (1943) |
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Jun 5, 2024 19:59:49 GMT
Alice Faye was Fox’s resident songbird in the second half of the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. She had been signed by the studio before the merger between 20th Century Pictures and Fox, but Zanuck saw great value in her. He quickly built a series of musicals around her talents– often they were glittery affairs with historical settings and nostalgic overtones for days past. The formula worked, and no matter who she paired up with, Alice Faye was a huge success. According to the lady herself, her best role at the studio was as LILLIAN RUSSELL in 1940. But she soared in other productions. Notable among them were IN OLD CHICAGO and FALLEN ANGEL, a dramatic turn in a film noir directed by Otto Preminger.
Check out:
IN OLD CHICAGO (1938)
LILLIAN RUSSELL (1940)
HELLO FRISCO HELLO (1943)Where Faye and Betty Grable ever cast in the same film? I ask because it looks to me that once the war started Grable because the Fox IT gal (as well as the IT gal to US servicemen), and Faye was pushed to the side. |
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Post by topbilled on Jun 5, 2024 21:26:16 GMT
Alice Faye was Fox’s resident songbird in the second half of the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s. She had been signed by the studio before the merger between 20th Century Pictures and Fox, but Zanuck saw great value in her. He quickly built a series of musicals around her talents– often they were glittery affairs with historical settings and nostalgic overtones for days past. The formula worked, and no matter who she paired up with, Alice Faye was a huge success. According to the lady herself, her best role at the studio was as LILLIAN RUSSELL in 1940. But she soared in other productions. Notable among them were IN OLD CHICAGO and FALLEN ANGEL, a dramatic turn in a film noir directed by Otto Preminger.
Check out:
IN OLD CHICAGO (1938)
LILLIAN RUSSELL (1940)
HELLO FRISCO HELLO (1943)Where Faye and Betty Grable ever cast in the same film? I ask because it looks to me that once the war started Grable because the Fox IT gal (as well as the IT gal to US servicemen), and Faye was pushed to the side.
Faye was still churning out big hits into the 1940s. I included the link for HELLO FRISCO HELLO because one of the songs she introduced in that film won an Oscar and though it's been covered by many other artists over the years, it is most associated with her.
What caused Faye's downfall was a massive argument she had with Zanuck after she'd completed filming FALLEN ANGEL (1945) with Otto Preminger. It was meant to be a dramatic role but a song was inserted, because audiences still expected Faye to sing in all her movies, even in a film noir. But at the last minute the song was cut, and this affected Faye's side deal with music publishers, because she made just as much money from royalties to her songs as she did earning a salary as a motion picture actress.
Zanuck knew she was still a big name and he would not release her from her contract. She still owed the studio one more film. She packed up her dressing room and drove off the lot, leaving her keys with the guard at the gate, with a message to Zanuck she was never coming back and never doing the film she owed him.
The contract allowed for radio appearances, so Faye and her husband Phil Harris began a radio sitcom that was a big hit. So from the mid-40s to the early 50s, she continued to appear on radio and could promote her songs on her hit radio sitcom. Zanuck still refused to cancel the contract, which meant she could not take jobs with any other studios, since he would never approve a loan out.
She ended up remaining on contract at Fox longer than Grable and any of their contemporaries, because Zanuck held her contract over her until 1962, when she finally came back to do the remake for STATE FAIR, playing Pat Boone's mother.
Zanuck had tried to get her to come back to do STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER (1952)...the role ended up going to Ruth Hussey. There were other films she turned down between 1945 and 1962. But she was very stubborn and liked fighting with Zanuck. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jun 5, 2024 23:06:12 GMT
That's some great background, TopBilled. I had no idea that she made State Fair in 1962 under her original contract. It makes me admire her all the more to know that she stuck to her guns that long, but also that she knew a good role when it came along. State Fair is definitely skewed to the younger actors (Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Ann-Margret, Pamela Tiffin) but she's a knockout in it as the mother. (It's the most I've liked Tom Ewell too.) Oscar Hammerstein had died just prior, so Richard Rogers wrote a new song specifically for Alice, "Never Say No to a Man". It's not available as a clip, but he also wrote this new duet, "It's the Little Things in Texas".
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Post by topbilled on Jun 6, 2024 2:13:16 GMT
The Oscar-winning song from HELLO FRISCO HELLO is called 'You'll Never Know.' Alice Faye sang it again on screen, as part of a cameo appearance, in FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP.
She was called the Velvet Throat and many considered her the female equivalent of Bing Crosby.
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