Successful Evenings At The Barn Season Wraps Up

The arrival of the Hollywood Bowl season spells a break in our ‘salons’ at the Barn, but it was a stimulating ‘season:’ Anthony Slide on Silent Stars, The Jazz Singer, Andre Soares on Ramon Navarro, Budd Schulberg, Bruce Torrence, Ray Zone on 3-D, Paul Zollo on Hollywood Remembered, the tribute to Mary Brian, Ray Bradbury and, leading to the finish line, Emily Leider with her new bio of Rudolph Valentino, Dark Lover. Emily set the stage for her evening by enlisting her pal, Tracy Terhune, to show his print of Society Sensation (1918), which featured Valentino before he became famous. Tracy was kind enough to also display his collection of lobby cards for the feature. Just a week after Emily’s Evening At The Barn her book was featured on the covers of both the New York and Los Angeles Times! But we ‘knew her when....’

Screenwriter Malvin (Naked City) Wald provided an evening’s entertainment, along with a troupe from First Stage, with a reading of Wald’s four short plays about film folk, followed by plenty of questions from the audience. Wald has written literally hundreds of films and television shows. He is probably best known for the lines, “There are 8 million stories in the naked city. This was one of them.”

We wound up the season with a book-signing and party, courtesy of Rod Kennedy, Jr.’s publisher, Gibbs Smith. The book, Hollywood in Vintage Postcards, features the words “In association with Hollywood Heritage” on the cover and, inside, a nicely-written foreword by our very own Bob Birchard. A number of the vintage postcards are from our Museum collection. Gibbs Smith himself, with a number of associates, attended the evening.

Here’s a list of the first few upcoming evenings. You’ll have to look for your colored reminder card for exact dates:

Baby Peggy will talk about her new book on Wednesday, September 17. During her Hollywood career she worked with, amongst others, Hollywood Heritage Board Member Delmar Watson. Baby Peggy captivated Hollywood during the 1920’s after being ‘discovered’ at 19 months. She had a whirlwind career, with 1.7 million pieces of fan mail a year at the height of her fame, and was out-of-work by age 7. She was a contemporary of Jackie Coogan, the Lesser siblings, Marjorie and Julian (‘Bud’), and the Shulbergs, Budd and his sister Sonia. Now Diana Serra Carey, she has parleyed her childhood insider’s knowledge into her second book, Jackie Coogan: The World’s Boy King: A Biography of Hollywood’s Legendary Child Star.

Bob Birchard will headline our ‘Buckaroo Bonanza’ with his bio, Tom Mix: King of the Cowboys. In the time-honored cowboy tradition his ‘sidekick’ will be Jack Lewis, actor and author of White Hat, Black Horse…tales from cowboy movies since they first began. Tie your horse at the hitchin’ post....

Director Curtis Harrington will talk about his career that stretches back to the Gate Theatre in Dublin and took root here in the Hollywood of the 1930’s. Curtis is currently on the festival circuit with his new Usher, starring himself (and a wonderful turn it is, too!) Screening to be announced.

Stay tuned....