VIRGINIA CLARA JONES, 'THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES'

Today, The Grandma has been watching some classical cinema. She has chosen some films interpreted by Virginia Mayo, the American actress and dancer who died on a day like today in 2005.

Virginia Mayo (born Virginia Clara Jones; November 30, 1920-January 17, 2005) was an American actress and dancer.

She was in a series of comedy films with Danny Kaye and was Warner Brothers' biggest box-office money-maker in the late 1940s. She also co-starred in the 1946 Oscar-winning movie The Best Years of Our Lives and White Heat (1949).

Born Virginia Clara Jones in St. Louis, Missouri, she was the daughter of newspaper reporter Luke and his wife, Martha Henrietta (née Rautenstrauch) Jones. Her family had roots back to the earliest days of St Louis, including great-great-great grandfather Captain James Piggott, who founded East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1797.

Young Virginia's aunt operated an acting school in the St. Louis area, which Virginia began attending at age six. She also was tutored by a series of dancing instructors engaged by her aunt.

Jones toured the American vaudeville circuit for three years, serving as ringmaster and comedic foil for Pansy the Horse, as Mayo and his partner, Nonnie Morton, performed in a horse suit. They appeared together in some short films and were a huge hit at Billy Rose's Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in the Broadway theater district, where she was first spotted by Samuel Goldwyn.

In 1941, Jones, now known by the stage name Virginia Mayo, got another career break as she appeared on Broadway with Eddie Cantor in Banjo Eyes.

In the early 1940s, Virginia Mayo's talent and striking beauty came to the attention of movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, who signed her to an acting contract with his company.

Goldwyn only made a few films a year and would usually loan out the actors he had under contract to other producers. Her first notable role was in Jack London (1943), which starred her future husband Michael O'Shea for producer Samuel Bronston.

Goldwyn originally planned to feature her with Danny Kaye in the film Up in Arms, but he felt she needed more experience and gave the role to Constance Dowling.

Mayo was placed in the chorus just so she could learn, but she was never officially a member of the Goldwyn Girls. Then RKO borrowed her for a support role in a musical, Seven Days Ashore (1944).

More information: Western Clippings

Mayo's first starring role came in 1944 opposite comedian Bob Hope in The Princess and the Pirate (1944), a spoof of pirate movies made by Goldwyn. It earned over $3 million at the box office.

Goldwyn then made her Danny Kaye's leading lady for the musicals Wonder Man (1945) and The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), both very popular.

Going against previous stereotype, Mayo accepted the supporting role of unsympathetic gold-digger Marie Derry in William Wyler's drama The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) for Goldwyn. Her performance drew favorable reviews from critics, as the film also became the highest-grossing film inside the US since Gone with the Wind. At the zenith of her career, Mayo was seen as the quintessential voluptuous Hollywood beauty. It was said that she looked like a pinup painting come to life. According to widely published reports from the late 1940s, the Sultan of Morocco declared her beauty to be tangible proof of the existence of God.

Warner Bros ended up taking over her contract from Goldwyn. They starred her in another film noir, Flaxy Martin (1949) with Zachary Scott, then she did a Western with Joel McCrea and director Raoul Walsh, Colorado Territory (1949), and a comedy with Ronald Reagan, The Girl from Jones Beach (1949).

Mayo received excellent reviews in another unsympathetic role, playing James Cagney's sultry and scheming wife in the gangster classic White Heat (1949), also for Walsh. Mayo admitted she was frightened by Cagney as the psychotic gunman in White Heat because he was so realistic.

Roy Del Ruth borrowed her to play opposite George Raft in Red Light (1949) and she was Milton Berle's leading lady in Always Leave Them Laughing (1949).

Mayo was top billed in the film noir Backfire (1950) and she was in a huge hit in The Flame and the Arrow (1950) as Burt Lancaster's love interest.

She co-starred again with James Cagney and a young Doris Day in The West Point Story (1950), singing and dancing with Cagney, and was Gregory Peck's leading lady in Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951), Warners most popular film of the year. She co-starred with Kirk Douglas in a Western for Walsh, Along the Great Divide (1951).

Mayo starred opposite Dennis Morgan in David Butler's Technicolor musical, Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951) which was a moderate success. While Mayo appeared in several musicals, using her training in dance, her voice was always dubbed.

Mayo appeared in the all-star cast of Starlift (1951) and was top billed in She's Working Her Way Through College (1952) with Reagan. She was Alan Ladd's leading lady in The Iron Mistress (1952), a popular biopic of Jim Bowie, and starred in another musical, She's Back on Broadway (1953).

Mayo appeared in the comedy-drama-action film South Sea Woman (1953) with Burt Lancaster and Chuck Connors. RKO borrowed her for a Western in 3-D, Devil's Canyon (1953), and she co-starred with Rex Harrison and George Sanders in King Richard and the Crusaders (1954).

She was top billed in The Silver Chalice (1954) opposite Pier Angeli and Paul Newman in his film debut. The film was a notorious flop.

Benedict Bogeaus gave her the lead in Pearl of the South Pacific (1955). Edmund Grainger cast her in Great Day in the Morning (1956), with Robert Stack, directed by Jacques Tourneur.

Mayo went to 20th Century Fox to play Robert Ryan's leading lady in The Proud Ones (1956) then she did Congo Crossing (1956) at Universal.

Mayo was reunited with Ladd in The Big Land (1957) made back at Warners. She played Cleopatra in the 1957 fantasy film The Story of Mankind with Vincent Price, Hedy Lamarr, Cesar Romero, Agnes Moorehead, and the Marx Brothers.

Mayo did The Tall Stranger (1957) with McCrea for Allied Artists, Fort Dobbs (1958) with Clint Walker at Warners and Westbound (1959) with Randolph Scott at Warners. Her last film of the decade was 1959's Jet Over the Atlantic with Guy Madison and George Raft.

Mayo also began guest starring on television shows such as Conflict, Wagon Train, The Loretta Young Show, and Lux Playhouse.

More information: AltFG

Mayo and her husband made a pilot for a TV series McGarry and His Mouse (1960), which was not picked up. She went to Italy to make Revolt of the Mercenaries (1961).

Mayo's film career tapered off considerably. She appeared in Young Fury (1965) with Rory Calhoun, Castle of Evil (1966), and Fort Utah (1967) with John Ireland. She also guest starred on shows such as Burke's Law, Daktari and The Outsider and appeared on stage in shows like That Certain Girl (1967) and Barefoot in the Park (1968).

Mayo continued to act on stage for the rest of her career, mostly in dinner theatre and touring shows. Productions included No, No Nanette (1972), 40 Carats (1975), Good News (1977), Move Over Mrs Markham (1980) and Butterflies Are Free (1981).

Mayo continued to occasionally appear on television in shows such as Police Story, Night Gallery, The Love Boat, Remington Steele, and Murder, She Wrote, and a dozen episodes of the soap opera Santa Barbara.

Mayo was in Fugitive Lovers (1975) and was one of several stars to make a cameo appearance in the all-star box office bomb Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976). She had roles in Lanigan's Rabbi (1977), Haunted (1977), and French Quarter (1978).

Her later appearances were in Evil Spirits (1990), Midnight Witness (1993) and The Man Next Door (1997).

Mayo was one of the first to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hers is located at 1751 Vine Street. In 1996, Mayo was honored by her hometown as she received a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

In 1993, Mayo published a Christmas themed children's book entitled, Don't Forget Me, Santa Claus through Barrons Juveniles Publishers.

Mayo died of pneumonia and complications of congestive heart failure in the Los Angeles area on January 17, 2005, aged 84, at a nursing home in Thousand Oaks. Her death was reported the next day in The New York Times. She is buried next to her husband in Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Park in Westlake Village, California.

Més informació: The New York Times

And I worked with Alan Ladd, who along
with Gregory Peck was my favorite leading man.

Virginia Mayo

GOLDWYN PICTURES IS FOUNDED IN CULVER CITY, CA

Today, The Grandma is relaxing at home. She has decided to watch some classic films, and she has chosen Goldwyn Pictures ones, a corporation that was founded on a day like today in 1916.

Goldwyn Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company that operated from 1916 to 1924 when it was merged with two other production companies to form the major studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

It was founded by Samuel Goldwyn.

The studio proved moderately successful, but became most famous due to its iconic Leo the Lion trademark. Although Metro was the nominal survivor, the merged studio inherited Goldwyn's old facility in Culver City, California where it would remain until 1986. The merged studio also retained Goldwyn's Leo the Lion logo.

Lee Shubert of Shubert Theater was an investor in the company.

Goldwyn Pictures Corporation was founded on November 19, 1916, by Samuel Goldfish (an executive at Paramount -formerly the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation-, also better known as Samuel Goldwyn) partnering with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn using an amalgamation of both last names to create the name.

Goldfish had left Lasky's Feature Play Company, of which he was a co-founder, in 1916 when Feature Play merged with Famous Players. Margaret Mayo, Edgar's wife & play writer, and Arthur Hopkins, a Broadway producer, joined the trio as writer and director general.

More information: The Famous People

At the beginning, Goldwyn Pictures rented production facilities from Solax Studios when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The company's first release was Polly of the Circus, an adaptation of Mayo's 1907 play Polly of the Circus, in September 1917 starting Mae Marsh.

By April 1917, Goldwyn Pictures agreed to rent the Universal Pictures studios in Fort Lee, then having the second-largest stage, and had two film companies operating at the time with plans for more production companies. The company management planned on having 12 films done by September 1, 1917, without distributing the films to be able to show advanced footage to the theatres.

Goldfish also associated the company with Columbia University via Professor Victor Freeburg's Photoplay Writing class in 1917 to increase the company's artistic standings. The company also released other production companies films with Marie Dressler's Dressler Producing Corporation film, The Scrub Lady, in 1917.

The company was forced in October 1917 to switch out The Eternal Magalene for Fighting Odds, both starring Maxine Elliott, after the National Board of Review cleared the Magalene film while censors in Pennsylvania state and Chicago city did not approve the film. Thais starring Mary Garden was released in late 1917 which was a costly loss.

In January 1918, Goldfish signed director Raoul Walsh and prematurely announced it, as there were two years left on Walsh's contract with Fox. With Thais being the company's second costly loss, Goldwyn decreased film budgets, partly by not using theatre divas to cross over to film and reducing design driven films. Instead, he relied on comedies starring Madge Kennedy and Mabel Normand.

In August 1918, Goldwyn Pictures signed Will Rogers, at that time a Broadway Follies favourite, to star in a Rex Beach production, Laughing Bill Hyde, filmed at the Fort Lee studio for release in September. The company purchased the Triangle Studios in Culver City in 1918.

Goldwyn then headed west out of Culver City in the Winter of 1918 which opening operations there also caused an increase in film expenses. Seeing an opportunity in December, Samuel Goldfish then had his name legally changed to Samuel Goldwyn.

In 1919, Frank Joseph "Joe" Godsol became an investor in Goldwyn Pictures. Since 1912 Frank Joseph Godsol had been making deals for the Shubert organization in the U.S. and abroad.

Goldwyn began looking to follow other film companies, like Loews Theaters/Metro Pictures and First National, into vertical integration. Goldwyn and the company backers were looking at renting the Astor Theatre for film premiers. Instead, with the Capitol Theatre's financial problems in May 1920, the backer purchased a controlling interest in that theatre. Shubert and Godsol, however, did not want the theatre to rely only on Goldwyn films and operated it separately from the company.

By 1920 in addition to owning its Culver City studio, Goldwyn Pictures was renting two New York studios and nearly ceased operations in Fort Lee.

After personality clashes, Sam Goldwyn left the company in 1922. Frank Godsol became Chairman of the Board and President of Goldwyn Pictures in 1922.

In 1923 Lee Shubert of Shubert Theater contacted Marcus Loew about merging the company with Loew's Metro. Loew agreed to the merger. Louis B. Mayer heard about the pending merger and contacted Loew, and Frank Godsol, president of Goldwyn Pictures, about adding his Louis B. Mayer Productions into the post merger company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

More information: MGM

God makes stars. I just produce them.

Samuel Goldwyn