John Gilbert is usually remembered as the handsome Hollywood heartthrob who couldn`t make the switch from silent movies to talkies. In ”Dark Star,” his daughter, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain says that wasn`t the case. She claims her father`s career was deliberately ruined by Louis B. Mayer. She recalls the morning her father was supposed to marry Greta Garbo, and the elusive Swede stood him up. Mayer, throwing in a few crudities, suggested Gilbert forget her. Gilbert jumped on him and banged his head against the tile wall.
”`You`re finished, Gilbert,` Mayer hissed through bared teeth. I`ll destroy you if it costs me a million dollars.` ”
Not everyone would see a similarity between Tony Curtis and John Travolta. But Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of one and costar of the other (in
”Perfect”), does. ”They`re both amazingly handsome men. Both enjoy their stardom. We need the reclusive stars, but we also need those who say, `I don`t know how this happened, but I`m not going to hide behind it.` ” Of Travolta she says: ”There`s something that happens to people when they become very, very famous. It`s a look in their eyes–you can never look into them. They`re not looking at you, they`re looking at themselves.”
Director Richard Donner prides himself on never repeating himself. All his movies are quite different from one another: ”Superman,” ”The Goonies,” ”Inside Moves,” ”Ladyhawke.” ”I`m not a student of film or a film buff,” says Donner. ”I just like to tell a good story. A lot of studios today want you to spend a lot of time on research and demographics before you begin. I`d quit before I did that. I`d rather let a computer do it.”
REPLAYS
”Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
–Norman Cousins
”Death is like putting away your winter coat when spring comes.”
–Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
”I didn`t know he was dead; I thought he was British.”
–Anonymous
