![]() ![]() That was already too old for the romantic ingenue parts that at Hollywood studios went to women in their early twenties or even late teens, because camera close-ups were not as forgiving as illusionistic stagecraft that kept viewers at a distance. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s satirical comedy Once in a Lifetime, which led to a contract at Warner Brothers-she was thirty-two. In 1931-when LeRoy saw her in a well-received Los Angeles staging of George S. What impeded MacMahon’s success in the motion picture industry? First, there was her age. Robinson, and from then on she was typecast as the shrewd, sensible, but unglamorous sidekick to the star. In it she portrayed the love-smitten, self-sacrificing secretary of a hard-driving, cigar-chomping newspaper editor played by Edward G. There were forty-three in all, beginning with Mervyn LeRoy’s Five Star Final (1931). ![]() I can still recall the exact moment when MacMahon first materialized on-screen and a warm, appreciative murmur rippled through the audience: “It’s her.”Īlthough MacMahon never became a household name or ascended to the upper ranks of Hollywood stardom, many in that movie house doubtlessly had seen a number of her films. There he discovers his talent to amuse, and the rest is showbiz history at its most predictable. MacMahon, who was then fifty-four but looked far older, played little Eddie’s Grandma Esther, a kindly ur-Yiddishe bubbe who rescues the Lower East Side bar mitzvah boy turned pickpocket from a life of crime by sending him to summer camp. Green’s schmaltzy 1953 musical biopic The Eddie Cantor Story. I first laid eyes on Aline MacMahon seventy years ago, when I was five and my parents took me to Brooklyn’s Marboro Theatre to see Alfred E. ![]() Aline MacMahon photograph by Cecil Beaton, circa 1932 1. ![]()
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