Happy Fourth of July 2011!

To our friends here and abroad, many wishes for a joyous day of freedom on the Fourth of July.
 

 Before we settle down with Joe E. Brown, Fred Keating, Glenda Farrell, James Cagney, and Pat O'Brien for a holiday barbecue at the O'Brien household, perhaps you'd enjoy a little game. (Say, didn't Fred Keating look a lot like Jack LaRue?)

To celebrate our classic American film roots, I offer the following thumbnail images below for your enjoyment--and occasional puzzlement, as you wonder how they came up with some of these cockamamie ideas for publicity stills and the circumstances when they were taken. (Since a few of these people on display are a wee bit obscure, I've added an asterisk next to them with info below about their background).

See if you can match the numbered image below to the names listed correctly (please click on the thumbnail to see the larger version of the images). No points for the two most obvious stars shown (hint: they were married).


I'll post the correct answers on Thursday of this week.

Have fun!:

1.) 2.) 3.)
4.)   5.) 6.)
7.) 8.) 9.)
10.) 11.) 12.)
13.) 14.) 15.)
16.) 17.) 18.)
19.) 20.)   21.)

As promised, here are the answers to the above quiz:


Betty Hutton ____4______

Elizabeth Taylor ___9_______

Mary Pickford ___2_______

Adelle August* ____11______

Cyd Charisse ____7______

Cyd Chrisse (yes, she appears twice) _______17___

Ann Miller ___6_______

Ann Miller (yes, she appears twice too) ____19______

Ann Rutherford ____8______

Madge Evans ___14_______

Mary Martin ___21_______

Ava Gardner ____5______

Dorothy Arnold** ___16_______

Clara Bow ____10______

Jinx Falkenberg*** ___18_______

Ella Raines ____13______

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. _1_________

Gloria Grahame ____12______

Joan Crawford ____20______

Virginia Dale****___15_______

Colleen Moore___3____

*Adelle August (1934-2004) was the former Miss Washington 1952, whose beauty took her to Hollywood, where she appeared in several Columbia movies in the '50s, (most of them uncredited). These included Women's Prison (1955), My Sister Eileen (1955),  and 5 Against the House (1955). Her decade in Hollywood ended when Ms. August wed Leonard G. Rogers, a wealthy tobacco man.

**Dorothy Arnold (1917-1984) was an actress for two decades in Hollywood, but her most famous performance was off-screen as Joe DiMaggio's first wife (well before Marilyn) and the mother of his son, Joseph III, which kept the lady busy for all of the '40s and most of the '50s. Ms. Arnold can be seen in You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), Lizzie (1957) and Fräulein (1958).

***Jinx Falkenberg (1919-2003), who is forgotten now, was one of the most famous women in America in her day--though she was actually raised in Chile. She began her film career in the mid-'30s in that country, but came to frothy prominence in the U.S. as a Goldwyn Girl in Strike Me Pink (1936), appeared with Joan Davis in Two Latins from Manhattan (1941). Her real prominence came from her ubiquitous presence in print ads, on radio and later television, which peaked around the time that her brother Bob Falkenburg became the 1948 Wimbledon Tennis Champion.

**** Virginia Dale (1917-1994), who appeared with Gable in Idiot's Delight (1939), co-starred with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1941), was a Miss California in 1937, never quite broke through after some featured roles at Paramount. Ms. Dale appeared in many '50s television shows (Highway Patrol, Code 3, The Adventures of Kit Carson), and eventually left the business. She did return to show business in the '80s, appearing in mini-series such as North and South and Bare Essence.