Killer Tomatoes

by Ray Hagen

  Lucy’s friend and most frequent co-star (four movies, 20-plus TV shows) Bob Hope dedicated a NBC special to her; Bob Hope’s Love Affair with Lucy aired on September 23, 1989. He said at the time to Kay Gardella, “[S]he was cute and could throw a line. She was always there with an amusing quip, and we always did a lot of laughing.”

  Which is what Lucy will always be remembered for, making people laugh. But her movie work shows vividly that she was much more than that. The many people unfamiliar with her largely neglected film work are in for a marvelous surprise.

  1933: Broadway Thru a Keyhole (Fox), Roman Scandals (UA), Blood Money (UA). 1934: Moulin Rouge (UA), Nana (UA), Bottoms Up (Fox), Hold That Girl (Fox), Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (UA), Affairs of Cellini (UA), Kid Millions (UA), Broadway Bill (Columbia), Jealousy (Columbia), Men of the Night (Columbia), Fugitive Lady (Columbia), The Whole Town’s Talking (Columbia), Perfectly Mismated (Columbia short), Three Little Pigskins (Columbia short). 1935: I’ll Love You Always (Columbia), His Old Flame (Columbia short), Carnival (Columbia), Roberta (RKO), Old Man Rhythm (RKO), Top Hat (RKO), The Three Musketeers (RKO), I Dream Too Much (RKO), A Night at the Biltmore Bowl (RKO short). 1936: Dummy Ache (RKO short), One Live Ghost (RKO short), Swing It (RKO short), Chatterbox (RKO), Follow the Fleet (RKO), The Farmer in the Dell (RKO), Bunker Bean (RKO), That Girl from Paris (RKO), Winterset (RKO), So and Sew (RKO short). 1937: Don’t Tell the Wife (RKO), Stage Door (RKO). 1938: Joy of Living (RKO), Go Chase Yourself (RKO), Having Wonderful Time (RKO), The Affairs of Annabel (RKO), Annabel Takes a Tour (RKO), Room Service (RKO), The Next Time I Marry (RKO). 1939: Beauty for the Asking (RKO), Twelve Crowded Hours (RKO), Panama Lady (RKO), Five Came Back (RKO), That’s Right, You’re Wrong (RKO). 1940: The Marines Fly High (RKO), You Can’t Fool Your Wife (RKO), Dance, Girl, Dance (RKO), Too Many Girls (RKO). 1941: A Girl, A Guy and a Gob (RKO), Look Who’s Laughing (RKO). 1942: Valley of the Sun (RKO), The Big Street (RKO), Seven Days Leave (RKO). 1943: DuBarry Was a Lady (MGM), Best Foot Forward (MGM), Thousands Cheer (MGM). 1944: Meet the People (MGM). 1945: Without Love (MGM), Abbott and Costello in Hollywood (MGM). 1946: Ziegfeld Follies (MGM), The Dark Corner (TCF), Easy to Wed (MGM), Two Smart People (MGM), Lover Come Back (Universal). 1947: Lured (UA), Her Husband’s Affairs (Columbia). 1949: Sorrowful Jones (Paramount), Easy Living (RKO), Miss Grant Takes Richmond (Columbia). 1950: A Woman of Distinction (Columbia), Fancy Pants (Paramount), The Fuller Brush Girl (Columbia). 1951: The Magic Carpet (Columbia). 1954: The Long, Long Trailer (MGM). 1956: Forever, Darling (MGM). 1960: The Facts of Life (UA). 1963: Critic’s Choice (WB). 1967: A Guide for the Married Man (TCF). 1968: Yours, Mine and Ours (UA). 1973: Mame (WB). 1985: Stone Pillow (TVM).

  Lynn Bari: The Other Woman

  by RAY HAGEN

  Lynn Bari appeared in 128 movies. How many can you name? One or two? Good for you. More than three? Come sit by me.

  A strikingly beautiful woman, she was repeatedly referred to as a Claudette Colbert lookalike. (A British writer once called her “Claudette Colbert with biceps.”) But unlike Colbert, Lynn never had the smash hit or breakout role that shot her to the top ranks of movie superstardom. Nonetheless, after making a modest film debut as a chorus girl, she did rise to a certain degree of fame, built up a stalwart and loyal fan base, and managed to remain a working professional for 40 years.

  She was born Marjorie Schuyler Fisher in Roanoke, Virginia, on Dec. 18, 1917 (1913 and 1919 are also often given). Her parents were Marjorie Halpen and John Maynard Fisher, and she had an older brother, John Owen. When Mr. Fisher died in 1925, his widow moved with her children to her family’s home in Boston where she soon met and married a Religious Science minister, Robert H. Bitzer. Marjorie attended the Prince School in Boston and grammar school in Melrose.

  Bitzer left his Boston pulpit to head the Institute of Religious Sciences in Los Angeles, where Mrs. Bitzer enrolled her tomboy daughter in a drama school. Marjorie already had dreams of becoming an actress and made her acting debut doing Portia’s big speech from The Merchant of Venice. She graduated from Beverly Hills Grammar School.

  In 1933 she saw a newspaper ad for chorus dancers 5'6" or taller for MGM’s new Joan Crawford-Clark Gable musical, Dancing Lady. (When studios were overwhelmed by thousands of hopefuls answering such ads, the practice was permanently discontinued.) Marjorie eagerly reported to MGM, along with hundreds of other girls, not knowing a thing about dancing. Dance director Sammy Lee thought she’d be an effectively statuesque showgirl and hired her at $8.43 a day. It was the Depression and, at $50 a week plus overtime, she felt like the richest kid on the block.

  She now decided that neither Marjorie Fisher nor Marjorie Bitzer were to her liking, so she changed her name. She took “Lynn” from Lynn Fontanne and “Barrie” from British playwright Sir James M. Barrie, being a great fan of his Peter Pan. She later modified the spelling when she read about the Italian city of Bari.

  Lynn was a chorine in the lavish production number “Heigh Ho, the Gang’s All Here,” prancing, rather than dancing, in the chorus behind Crawford and Fred Astaire (in his own film debut). She’s clearly recognizable when the camera pans across the showgirls as each one talks a line of the song’s lyric. Lynn’s immortal line: “The grand old cheer.” She’d lightened her dark hair and there’s still some baby fat, but the striking smile and throaty voice are definitely in place.

  She told Richard Lamparski in 1968, “Mr. Gable used to buy me ice cream cones and pat me on the head and call me ‘J.B.’ I never found out what that meant ’til it was too late to do anything about it. Jail bait.”

  She did another chorus bit in Metro’s Meet the Baron. Sammy Lee, who was on loan to MGM, had taken a liking to Lynn and when he returned to his home lot, Fox, he took her with him and persuaded them to give her a stock contract.

  Lynn became a utility girl. In 69 Fox movies released between 1933 and 1938 she played chorus girls, showgirls, sales clerks, telephone operators, waitresses, students, nightclub patrons, party and wedding guests, tourists, even incidental extra bits and appearances with other hopefuls in their screen tests. Sometimes she’d even get a word or two to speak, but not often. Rarely, if ever, did she get billing. “So I started studying,” she said in the August, 1942 Hollywood Magazine. “I was serious about acting and treated it like a business. I went to school on the lot after Fox signed me.” It was an apprenticeship that yielded little glory, but she paid attention and learned her business. It didn’t hurt that she was a friendly, good-natured girl who became, and remained, popular and well-liked on the lot.

  Portrait of Lynn Bari, circa 1942.

  In 1937 she moved up a step into playing actual roles. She was cast in The Baroness and the Butler as Klari, a flirtatious maid who tries her wiles on William Powell. In Walking Down Broadway, a cheapie about six chorus girls and their respective fates, she was the one of the sextette who got bumped off early in the plot. She was given her first female lead, as a reporter, in Mr. Moto’s Gamble, and left the B unit to give a solid performance as the gold-digging schemer trying to steal Ian Hunter from star Barbara Stanwyck in Always Goodbye. All were released in 1938 and both moviegoers and fan magazines began to take notice of this “new girl,” Lynn Bari. From this point on, she was always given billing.

  It became clear to Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck that Lynn’s years of studying and observing had paid off. She turned out to be adept at both drama and comedy, her voice was deep down and distinctive, and of course she did look awfully good. She had become, in the studio’s eyes, useful, and use her they did.

  By this time, Claire Trevor had refused to re-sign with Fox and had left the lot. She had been the frustrated queen of Sol Wurtzel’s busy B unit (she played the lead in Walking Down Broadway) and decided to try her luck elsewhere. So now Lynn Bari took over where Trevor had left off—grinding out dozens of quickie dramas and comedies year after year, mostly starring as heroines in the B’s and playing under-the-title meanies in occasional A’s. Her image as Hollywood’s
prototypical Other Woman had begun to take hold. She later told Lamparski, “I was always leering over my fan at John Payne or Don Ameche, and poor Alice Faye would be crying over the telephone or something. Many times if we were doing benefits, and I’d be with the leading lady, the ingenue, she’d get all the applause and the kids would hiss at me. I loved it.”

  But she came to resent being tagged “Queen of the B’s.” Though the studio thought it was a great publicity gambit, she considered it a stigma and would much rather have played decent roles in good movies. “I made as many as three at a time,” she told Lamparski. “I’d go from one set to another, shooting people and stealing husbands. I never knew what the hell the plots were. We’d have as much as 20 or 30 pages a day of dialogue to do. Never had any time off. They got their money’s worth.” She played spies, actresses, waitresses, murderesses (suspected and actual), madcap working girls and that hallowed staple of B movies, spunky girl reporters. Fox’s top actors (Tyrone Power, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, John Payne) eschewed the B unit, so Lynn had to settle for such lower-case leading men as Lloyd Nolan, Donald Woods, John Sutton and Alan Curtis. She was averaging seven films a year.

  On March 15, 1939, probably on lunch break, Lynn married actors’ agent Walter Kane. They had met the previous year while she was agent-shopping.

  It was during 1939–40 that Lynn finally grew into her own distinctive “look” on screen, having now lost all traces of her youthful baby fat. Her roundish face was now strong and angular, with wide cheekbones, flashing eyes and strongly defined features. The boxy, shoulder-padded ’40s styles certainly suited her better than the fussy ’30s frocks, and her tightly curled, marcelled hairdos now gave way to a softly waved, shoulder-length brunette bob. At 5'7" in bare feet, and with one of the most perfect figures in Hollywood, she went from pretty ingenue to stone knockout. Her height may have been somewhat responsible for her typecasting, since the common wisdom around Hollywood was that the prime requisites for Other Woman roles were to be tall and wear clothes well. She was and she did.

  The titles tell the story of Lynn Bari’s screen life during these years: Speed to Burn, Meet the Girls, Pardon Our Nerve, Chasing Danger, City of Chance, Charter Pilot, We Go Fast, Secret Agent of Japan, The Perfect Snob, Earthbound—well, you get the idea.

  Amid the fluff was Blood and Sand (1941), a big-budget hit. Bullfighter Tyrone Power juggled new Fox star Linda Darnell and former Fox bit player Rita Hayworth while Lynn played the small role of his sour sister, Encarnacion, a role she disliked. She confessed to having a violent crush on Power—who didn’t?—but had to settle for a few brotherly pecks on the cheek. It was Hayworth’s part she’d really wanted.

  George Montgomery lights Lynn’s fire in Orchestra Wives (Fox, 1942).

  She caught a break in ’42 when she was given the lead in an A picture: The Magnificent Dope with Henry Fonda, a Meet John Doe knockoff. She acquitted herself well enough for Fox to guarantee that from then on she would have over-the-title star billing. The previous year she’d played the tart-tongued singer with Glenn Miller’s band in Sun Valley Serenade and now they were reunited in possibly Lynn’s most popular film, the entertaining Orchestra Wives. Both were Other Woman roles in which she made mincemeat of sweet Sonja Henie in the former and sweet Ann Rutherford in the latter. She was a dazzling sight as she belted out her songs, though in both her singing was dubbed by Pat Friday, to Lynn’s disappointment. She later told Colin Briggs, “Glenn Miller was very kind, and do you know he preferred my own voice to the trained one I mimed to, as he thought I sounded more like a band singer.”

  Her final 1942 release was another A production, China Girl. She was a sympathetic spy, Capt. Fifi, and delivered the goods with a strong, well-received performance. Her unrequited love for George Montgomery was played without frills, and her strength and humor made his choice of the wan Gene Tierney difficult to fathom. But they were the stars and Lynn was the Other Woman, so the deck remained stacked. She was billed third, but above the title as promised. Director Henry Hathaway, never noted for over-praising his actors, told Polly Platt in 1973 that he thought Lynn was “a marvelous actress.”

  It couldn’t have been easy for Lynn to watch so many new girls come to Fox and quickly rise to A-list stardom (Gene Tierney, Linda Darnell, Betty Grable, Jeanne Crain, June Haver) while Lynn gamely soldiered on in lower-tier projects, but if it did bother her she never let on publicly.

  Lynn pins John Payne in Hello, Frisco, Hello (Fox, 1943).

  In 1942 Lynn filed for divorce from Walter Kane. They had separated on August 10 and the divorce was granted November 25. Lynn testified “Mr. Kane acted like he didn’t want to be married to me. Frequently he didn’t get home ’til 3 A.M. And it wasn’t business that kept him.” As Lynn’s agent, Kane was to have continued receiving ten percent of Lynn’s $500,000 contract, but he agreed on a settlement of $7,500. She later explained, “I always wanted to be with somebody that I loved, but it was a tempestuous marriage and lasted only a few years. I was working very hard in pictures; at that time we worked six days a week. I’d get up at 4:30 in the morning, and sometimes I worked ’til seven at night and sometimes ’til midnight. With the full work load I had and the exhaustion I felt, the marriage was just too much for me to absorb.”

  That year, radio announcer–actor Bill Goodwin introduced her to Sid Luft, a test pilot at Douglas Aircraft, formerly of the Royal Canadian Air Force and, after Pearl Harbor, the Ferry Command. They were married at producer William Perlberg’s Bel-Air home on November 28, 1943, three days after her divorce from Kane was final.

  She was seen in only one film in ’43, the lavish Alice Faye musical Hello, Frisco, Hello. She looked smashing in Technicolor, but was still playing the menace, vainly trying to steal John Payne from sweet Alice. But this time her name was above the title, albeit fourth of four.

  Alice and Lynn remained close friends over the years. As Faye told Colin Briggs, “Lynn and Jane Wyman were chorus girls in King of Burlesque and she had a couple of lines in On the Avenue. With Lillian Russell and Hollywood Cavalcade she’d moved up to good supporting roles, though they cut her part in Hollywood Cavalcade. When we co-starred in Hello, Frisco, Hello we were old friends and I was so happy she got to be a star in that, probably my favorite movie.”

  Lynn returned the compliment: “Alice Faye and Vivian Blaine were the nice gals, always pleasant. Linda Darnell was not one of my favorite people and I didn’t care for Carole Landis.”

  During the war years, Lynn endeared herself to GIs everywhere by visiting many training camps for the Hollywood Victory Committee and the USO. In September 1942 she did a much-publicized three-week Stars Over America War Bond tour across the U.S. with Ronald Colman, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamarr, Joan Leslie, Irene Dunne and Ann Rutherford. In January 1943 she and young Roddy McDowall were guests at President Roosevelt’s Birthday Ball.

  Her velvety alto voice made her ideal for radio and throughout the ’40s she was a frequent guest on variety and dramatic shows, including a half-dozen Lux Radio Theatre appearances.

  Lynn overlooking Francis Lederer in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (UA, 1944).

  The July 1944 issue of Silver Screen featured cover girl Lynn Bari in military mufti, holding an oversized War Bond. It was her one and only U.S. fan magazine cover (she did better overseas). That was the year producer Benedict Bogeaus bought the rights to Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, planned as a prestige item for United Artists, and he wanted Lynn Bari to be his star. Fox was then in need of a special electric camera crane for one of their musicals, and Bogeaus had the only one in town. He said he’d give it to them if they’d loan him Lynn. It was forever after known at Fox as the Bari Boom.

  Lynn received tons of publicity hailing her overdue ascent to the big time. “A star at long last,” gushed reporters. But it turned out to be a rushed production and the reviews—for the film and for Lynn—were tepid. In her interview with Colin Briggs, Lynn said, “The director [Rowland V. Lee] was
old-fashioned and wanted acting with lots of hammy gestures, just like the silents. My singing, except for the song at the harpsichord, was dubbed. I did try out with the orchestra for the Donkey song but my nerves got the better of me, so they dubbed a soprano who sounded nothing like me.”

  She went back to Fox and picked up right where she’d left off. Tampico was a naval adventure in which Lynn was unjustly suspected of being an enemy agent but was actually the good girl who got the guy. The guy, however, was Edward G. Robinson. Her final 1944 release was Sweet and Low-Down, another big band gumdrop, this time singing with Benny Goodman’s orchestra (and Lorraine Elliot’s voice) and losing the nondescript leading man to Linda Darnell.

  In an interview with columnist Lee Mortimer, Lynn explained what can be charitably referred to as her career arc: “I made a career of leering at Linda Darnell, Betty Grable and Alice Faye. Usually I’d corner my woman backstage and say to her in a very nasty tone, ‘He’s mine, all mine, you see? I’ve got him and you’ll never take him away from me!’ Then I’d stalk away, leaving Linda or Betty or Alice to slowly begin to cry in a gorgeous, Technicolor close-up. I went to the front office and asked for a chance at a lead. They told me, ‘Our leading women play clinging vine roles. You look like you could eat a tree.’”

  Due to pregnancy, her only 1945 release was the Eddie Rickenbacker biography Captain Eddie, starring Fred MacMurray. He had sole star billing and Lynn, as nice Mrs. Eddie, was back under the title again. When MacMurray signed with Fox to do the film, he specifically asked for Lynn as his leading lady. MacMurray was six feet three so Lynn didn’t need to “scrunch down until I look like a question mark” as she did to play scenes with shorter actors. “I can wear my highest heels and my broadest shoulders and he’ll still make me look tiny.”