Vintage Christmas Tree Old Hollywood Holiday Decoration Ideas

Decorating with Christmas trees

"There's no reason why your Christmas tree should cost a great deal of money

A special tree lighting
downtown Boston 1921 **

in order to be attractive looking. Why not this year for a change have a one-colored or two-colored Christmas tree? 

"I can think of nothing lovelier than a Christmas tree that is all silver. It will attract immediate attention and will be so fairy-like and new that the spirit of Christmas will seem to flame out of it. For your all-silver Christmas tree use plenty of crystal balls and silver ornaments. Use festoons of silver too." 

• Harold Lloyd's spectacular tree
• Celebrate wherever you are, the desert or at sea
• Theme trees
• Make some festive decorations 1925 video
• Home movies, Christmas party footage from the 1930s 
• Paint your own costume then paint yourself into a Christmas Card
• Decorate at work, your business or office for the Christmas party

Decorating doesn't have to be expensive. Repurpose, recycle things you have. More tree decorating tips:

"Make chains from bright silver paper, paste on both sides of cardboard and then make innumerable stars and crescents and a few moons too for your silver tree fastening them on with silver cord. Start saving silver papers of all sorts a few weeks before Christmas and you will have a lot of it by the time you tree should be decorated. 

"Tin-foil, too is useful. Cover oddly shaped candies, little toys and nuts with these papers and put them on your tree. You will need silver paint of course. Paint some tiny objects such as tree cones, the tips of some of the branches. For a silver tree they suggest white lights are best."



1937 "Christmas Is Coming To Dr Barnardo's Home"

Declutter First
"Get rid of all of the superfluous ornaments in your home and let this include all of the things that have been lying around during the year that have added neither beauty nor comfort to your home. After you have got rid of all extras you may start to add the special Christmas decorations.
 
"I should use a lot of wreaths for Christmas.  If your home has only adults, consider having a tiny tree, a living plant decorated with familiar Christmas things will add a great deal to your holiday happiness.

"Pepper plants in bloom are among the most charming of the Christmas decorations. Fir boughs and festoons will add a great deal to your halls and dining room.  Add a tall vase of leaves with if possible some red berries." These Christmas ideas are timeless.
-- Stephen Goosson, Art Director aka Interior Decorator First National Studios (Merged with Warner Brothers 1928)

** "Over 50,000 people thronged the common in Boston on Christmas eve on the occasion of the third annual celebration of its kind in that city. Christmas carols were rendered by a choir of five thousand singers. A great tree was the centre of attraction and this was decorated with a dazzling and bewildering variety of electric lights. A red star surmounted the tree and a varied and beautiful display of fireworks made the scene one of enchantment."
-- Mid-Week Pictorial 1921/22 (Re: Image at top of page.)

Christmas 1926 "'Somewhere on this Christmas tree Alberta Vaughn is hidden can you find her?'  John Oshanna a Persian artist paints on costumes and in so doing carries out his idea of backgrounds on the subjects here he is doing some decorating on Alberta Vaughn." Try this for a truly unique card.

The Family Xmas Tree: Rooted in the fertile soil of Hollywood, 1922: Press Agent is at the top. Other ornaments are marked: Producer, Cameraman, Director, Assistant Director, Property Man, Wardrobe Mistress, Scenario Writer and one, interestingly seems to say, Spy.

Radko Charlie Chaplin
Glass Ornament
Silent Movie Golden New

Bloom where you're planted, Make it Christmas where you are. The desert or at sea:
Christmas 1923: Word from Claire Windsor who was out on the Sahara in North Africa at work A Son of the Sahara for First National, under the direction of Edward Carewe. 

Windsor "tells of the thrill she gave sheiks when she set up a Christmas tree in the middle of the desert." The film also starred Walter McGrail, Rosemary Theby and Bert Lytel.

Christmas 1929 Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks spent Christmas aboard a steamer somewhere between here and China but at least Mary says they were en route home. 

In the very early 1930s, Richard Arlen and his wife, Jobyna Ralston spent Thanksgiving on their yacht as it skimmed down toward lower California.

Conrad Nagel is going to have the tree lighted with electric bulbs the presents a Santa Claus who comes through a porthole and all in 1930. The Nagels will be on a cruise off the coast of southern California. 

The Darryl Zanucks will have three trees filled with lovely trees one for each of their children. Christmas 1935

Harold Lloyd's 30-Foot Christmas Tree 

"Walter Dymond stands in front of the Harold Lloyd Christmas Tree. As Groundskeeper of the Harold Lloyd Estate, he was responsible for the construction of the Christmas tree from two trees (wiring the branches of one into the other) and placed the ornaments where Mr. Lloyd directed." (1972 made available by Mr. Dymond's grandson)

Each year the order for the first and largest Christmas tree comes from Harold Lloyd, one that will touch the 30-foot ceiling in the mammoth Lloyd drawing room.
-- The Milwaukee Journal, December 1935



Christmas home movie 1936, Cheers

"At Harold Lloyd's there is a special Christmas custom. The tree which little Gloria has each year is a live one in a box. After Christmas each year the decorations are removed and the tree replanted until today she has living trees as memories of each Christmas. -- 1930

Lloyd's daughter, Gloria Lloyd Roberts was an actress. She appeared in the Merle Oberon film, Temptation in 1946. She can also be seen (as herself) in American Masters Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius.





The Thin Man, Myrna Loy and William Powell  

"Among the screen players who have lighted trees ranging from 40 to 100 feet in height in their yards each season are Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Clive Brook, Ruth Chatterton, Clara Bow, June Collyer, Conrad Nagel and Gary Cooper.  

Christmas tree decorated with photos, dolls, ornaments
featuring movie stars
Tom Mix, Mary Pickford, more
What an idea :-)
Picturegoer Magazine 1915 illustration

1939 Bette Davis telegraphed a request for a tree to be cut from her 110-acre estate on Sugar Hill which she purchased as a summer home. The 10-foot New Hampshire fir tree, wrapped in burlap started its long rail journey across the country December 8, 1939 bound for Miss Davis' Los Angeles Home.  

1933 Greta Garbo will celebrate with a little bit of Sweden having had her Christmas tree from the old country shipped from there. 

Christopher Radko Bubble-Lite Bubble Light, Light Strand, Set of 7
The same Christopher Radko who brings you those beautiful glass ornaments

Theme Trees: 
Do you have a collection that you use to decorate a tree, or ornaments that represent your collection? They suggest that Anne Francis may have Hollywood's most unusual Christmas tree.


She has a collection of wishbones which she places on a Christmas tree. On the top branch of Anne's wishbone tree there is an empty space just large enough for the wishbone from a Christmas turkey. 

"I'm saving that space for Marlon Brando. I was supposed to go to his house for Christmas dinner . At the last minute something happened and I couldn't make it. Marlon solemnly promised to save the wishbone for me. Since Marlon never breaks a promise, someday I'm going to collect." Christmas 1957

Do you have some wishbones? Cover them in glue then glitter and place them on your tree. 

What's your vocation, what do you do for a living? Do you know someone who drives a taxi? Get some amazing yellow glass taxicab ornaments. I have a cool old wooden German dentist ornament. There are dinosaurs, ornaments made to look like movie stars. Funny because some of them are up for debate. Is that this person or that one?!

In The Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy they had some balloons on their Christmas tree.   

Make these Festive Decorations from 1925

Use fireproof paper they suggest

"Merry Christmas, Marilyn," said a note from Joe DiMaggio on a Christmas tree that Marilyn Monroe found in her hotel room. She also found Joe himself sitting in a chair in the corner. "It's the first time in my life anyone ever gave me a Christmas tree,' she told me days later. 'I was so happy I cried.' This is from the blonde who sings Diamonds are a girl's best friend." -- Christmas 1952

Do you trim, decorate or dress the tree??

Christmas 1942 was Tyrone Power's first liberty after weeks in boot camp. He was hoping get his furlough to be home around Christmas Eve in time for tree trimming with his mother and sister, his wife, Annabella and her little daughter joining in.

Decorate at work  

Whether it's an entire building, office, your desk, vehicle or your particular workspace. Maybe you're on the Office Party committee. 



London Hospital Office Christmas Party 1937


Willesden General Hospital (London) staff Christmas Party 1937...
Decorating for your office Christmas party?
   
In 1916 some movie theaters were decorating for the holiday
Snow scene on stage for Christmas Christmas Buffalo, New York
The Strand Moving Picture Theater Buffalo New York is using a snow scene on the stage for the Christmas holidays.  

"There are two Christmas trees ablaze with vari-colored lights. The lobby has laurel decorations. 'I am also working special film titles pertaining to Christmas,' said the manager."  

New York movie theater celebrates the season 1916

Greens and Decorations on Yonge Street, Toronto Ontario. 
"Managers of downtown picture theaters of Toronto without exception arranged for special lobby and front displays of holiday nature for Christmas week. Through a cooperative arrangement the front of every theater on lower Yonge Street was gaily festooned with evergreen and strings of electric lights. 

"More than $150 was spent by the manager of the Rialto Theater to advertise Mary Pickford's feature, Less than Dust. The decorations included panel oil paintings, Oriental lamps and festoons of holiday evergreens."
-- Moving Picture World, December 1916



Related Pages of Interest:


Charles Boyer Receives a Christmas Gift: Parents and Grown Children, Expectations and Acceptance

Gift Certificates : Gift Cards : Employee Recognition : Kindle Gift Cards Print Out and slip into a card, email to friends, family, last minute


Giants Decorations Celebrate the SF Giants and NY Giants, Your team this Holiday; Bring your team home for the holidays


Theme Decorations, Christmas Window Displays

Grinch steals holiday decorations off neighbors' lawns 

Christopher Radko is known for his beautiful quality blown glass Christmas ornaments, including those dedicated to beloved film stars. They sell out very quickly. Radko Petite Lucy Ole PINK Ornament Love New 



Christopher Radko Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1997 Limited Edition Ornament Set (Set of 8)  Honors the 60th anniversary of the Disney film.


Modern Screen October 1953, December 1957 
Spokane Daily Chronicle - December 23, 1933
The Lewiston Daily Sun - December 8, 1939  
Screenland September 1922
The Pittsburgh Press - December 13, 1930
Photoplay 1926 

Shower in your clothes 1960s

Take a bath in your best clothes
Swinging '60s

In 1963 Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn starred in the film Charade, directed by Stanley Donen. Grant was apparently ahead of his time beginning the trend of showering with your clothes on. Once it was trending, he probably gave up the habit?

  

Let him (or you) choose a gift: From a selection of Bath Kits for Men

In I Was a Male War Bride his character got into a bathtub without any water at all. You never know what he's apt to do. Cary Grant is the TCM Star of the month for December 2014.

Bath In Your Best Clothes! This couple wasn't interested in taking a shower with their clothes on. British Pathe is one source of some of the best old films on YouTube. Here from 1966, we see a demonstration of a new fabric treatment. "This stay in stay shape process gives a permanent shape to clothes."




If you asked who Bert and Ernie were you were apt to have someone respond, "Characters in It's a Wonderful Life." Nowadays, they're more apt to say "Characters on Sesame Street."




Perhaps one of his funniest shaving scenes is actually in a Hitchcock movie, North by Northwest when he has to use a tiny razor? But don't forget that he feels "like a hairy ape" before his shave in My Favorite Wife. What's your favorite Cary Grant movie? He made over seventy pictures.

Related Pages of Interest:

Shop and Wrap Gifts with old Hollywood stars 1920s, 1930s : William Powell bought a wide array of things including bath items

Men in the Bath, Have a personal film festival with the likes of Clifton Webb, John Lennon, Tony Curtis, Edward G. Robinson, Clint Eastwood and David Bowie

Have a Charade Watching Party, Being Cary Grant or Audrey Hepburn

Dinner & A Movie: Eat along with your favorite movie or What to serve at your next Movie Party

Edna Millay John Barrymore Margaret Mead Shrek Greenwich Village Narrow House

The Narrowest house in New York City

Edna St. Vincent Millay home
 75½ Bedford St
Greenwich Village
New York City, New York

75 1/2 Bedford Street, the narrowest house in New York City. Three stories and only 9 1/2 feet wide, sometimes called the Millay House after the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay who lived there in the 1920s. They say it's like living in a double decker bus.

Located in Greenwich Village, the Cherry Lane Theatre district, an area where artists, writers, musicians and actors were very creative back in the '20s. New York in the 1920s video info at end.

Millay was one of my mother's favorite poets, she collected her books. Reading about this house has always been of extra interest. Not long ago the house was on the market and the list of other former occupants I saw made it particularly fascinating. What luminaries lived there?

It's a skinny house. Former tenants or owners we now hear listed often include actors John Barrymore and Cary Grant, anthropologist Margaret Mead and cartoonist/author William Steig. 

There are many travel books, sometimes older can be better for getting fact vs legend. People have been able to take Sidewalk Tours of the area since at least the 1930s. Live in a small space? The house is a lesson in space saving ideas, storage solutions such as placing a small refrigerator under the stairs. 

Can you have pieces of furniture that perform more than one function? The stove consists of burners in a row, placed in a former fireplace. There are no closets. The house has no side walls of its own and is 33 feet long.



Regina Kellerman, an architectural historian and preservationist wrote The Architecture of the Greenwich Village Waterfront. Her research related to the streets and buildings of Greenwich Village. Kellerman was executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP). The New York Public Library has her papers and manuscripts in their archive.

The house apparently first appeared on tax records in 1873. In 1880, 75 1/2 was occupied by Martha Banta, a confectioner. In the Very late 1800s and early 1900s it was a family home and/or business for various people and families. It was a cobbler shop, a candle shop.

Edna St. Vincent Millay and Eugen Boissevain
in front of house
75-1/2 Bedford Street, New York
US Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs division

In 1923 Eugen Boissevain, the husband of Edna St. Vincent Millay, "rented the Bedford Street house for a year and ten months $200, a month a princely sum to a young woman who earlier in the year was deeply in debt and staying with friends to economize."
-- Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford  

Millay and her husband remodeled the home, adding a skylight and the Dutch gabling on the front and back. 




According to the plaque on the front of the building, Edna St. Vincent Millay lived there from 1923-1924 and wrote The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. 

This along with just about everything else pertaining to the house, is disputed

Mr. Skinner's Skinny House

Children's book
inspired by the house.
Ann McGovern, Mort Gerberg

both by scholars, those who study the history of the area and the house itself. We know that Ms. Millay worked on the book elsewhere. Did she also work on it here? Depends on who you ask. We also see that she lived there through the middle of 1925. 

The book, Savage Beauty talks more about Millay and Boissevain in the house. An earlier book of Milford's on Zelda Fitzgerald was also very popular.

Later Millay and Boissevain moved to a 700-acre farm in Austerlitz, New York, Steepletop. The Poet and Her Book, Jean Gould's 1969 biography, quotes Edna St. Vincent Millay as saying that she wanted more nature than she heard from the ''noisy chirping of urchin sparrows'' in the Village. 

Much of the history of this house, small as it is, shows families and roommates staying there to economize just as people do today.

From a short article from The New York Herald-Journal July 17, 1935: The real entrance is the rear door by the way of Cherry Lane Garden. Most of the interior is light green the bedrooms buff and the beds are regular size.

The Villager online quotes Ms. Kellerman's research as showing that the house was occupied in the 1930's by the cartoonist William Steig, his wife and sister-in-law, the anthropologist Margaret Mead. Steig created the character of the big green ogre, Shrek. You can find his books on Kindle and in paper form. A fun gift idea for yourself or someone else would be to compare the books to the movie versions of Shrek.

Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization (1928) is said to have launched Margaret Mead's career as an anthropologist.

In the summer of 1939, the St. Petersburg Times had an article about some young ladies, recently graduated from college, living in the house. They were giving sidewalk tours of the area."Sidewalk tours service" says their sign. The article says they're living in "Miss Millay's former home."




For John Barrymore, I found a couple of former residences. He lived on the top floor at 132 West 4th St. He made a garden that was so heavy with topsoil in his rooftop apartment that it made the building structurally unsound and he was asked to leave. But he supposedly left the garden behind.

Barrymore's films include the title role in the silent Don Juan in 1926. He played Captain Ahab in the early talkie, Moby Dick in 1930.

simplehuman Slim Open Can,
Brushed Stainless Steel, 50-Liter/ 13-Gallon
We like this brand because they look good & come in different sizes.
Get one that's closed to keep little ones' fingers and curious pets out.

An article about some of the authors who lived in Greenwich Village discussed Herman Melville, for 20 years a customs inspector on the village water front. "He shamed his wife to tears by continuing to write even after critics and writers had disdained his novels Moby Dick (1851) and Mardi (1849). 'Herman has taken to writing poetry,' Mrs. Melville wrote to her mother. 'You need not tell anyone, for you know how such things get around.'"

In the fall of 1947, New York University threatened to take over many of the buildings in the Washington Park area, "to build the largest law center in the world -- occupying two sides of the square and knocking out a whole row of the red brick Victorian treasures." John Barrymore is quoted as saying about living in the area, "When the locust blossoms come to the courtyard it's like living in Paris in the twelfth century."

The book, Haunted Greenwich Village: Bohemian Banshees, Spooky Sites and Gonzo Ghosts by Tom Ogden suggests that Barrymore lived at 132 Waverly place and that the residence has been haunted by Mr. Barrymore's ghost.



Somewhere along the line the story that Cary Grant had visited the house morphed to his having slept there to his having lived there. Just like with Mr. Barrymore, it all went from a legend/rumor to being reported and written as e-fact. 

In the early 1920s, Cary Grant (rather a young performer named Archie Leach from Bristol, England) was in New York City working as an acrobat and stilt walker on Coney Island.  He sold hand-painted neckties in NYC, including in Greenwich Village. He was trying to earn a living and trying to lose some of his accent since apparently some Americans couldn't understand what he was saying.

Short filler pieces about the house in the late 1950s and early 1960s were listing both Millay and John Barrymore as having been a resident of the house but I didn't see anything suggesting Cary Grant's having lived in or even having visited the house until much more recently. 

In 1964 a New York Times article noted that the interior had 3 bedrooms and five gas-burning fireplaces.

William Steig illustrated a version of the story, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. The 1948 film version of this story starred Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. 

Writer and poet Ann McGovern lived in the house in the 1980s. In honor of the house, she wrote Mr. Skinner's Skinny House. Among her many awards and honors for children's literature, McGovern won the 2010 Herman Melville Literary Award, given for major contributions to the world of maritime literature.

Looking to get your kids to read more, enjoy learning? She's also famous for writing children's books such as Stone Soup and an array or biographical, historical and animal books. These include If You Lived In Colonial Times, Runaway Slave: The Story of Harriet Tubman and Shark Lady: True Adventures of Eugenie Clark.

In the 2000s the house was cleaned up and sold again. Approximately 900 square feet total, to get from room to room you climb stairs. Contemporary news videos give added information. 



The Walter Cronkite New York in the 1920s documentary from 1961 identifies many of the people you'll see in the following video.


New York in the 1920s.

What we see in the video:
Toward the end we see Charlie Chaplin, as himself, doing his "dance of the rolls on forks"  that he did in The Gold Rush. Earlier in the video we see Eugene O'Neill his wife Agnes Boulton and their infant daughter, Oona O'Neill. Oona grows up to marry Charlie Chaplin in 1943 when she is 18. Granddaughter, Oona Chaplin was on the HBO series, Game of Thrones.

Hear Ziegfeld stars Fannie Brice sing, I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling and Helen Morgan sing My Bill.

Gertrude Lawrence, HG Wells, Rebecca West.
Tenors John McCormack and Enrico Caruso who mugs for the camera; Ignacy Paderewski, Russian actor Constantin Stanislavski, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, H.L. Mencken, Heywood Hale Broun, George Jean Nathan, club owner Texas Guinan. Noel Coward with actress Hope Williams (an early mentor of Katharine Hepburn), the play is The Vortex. The literary and dramatic/theatre situation in the city at the time is covered. Prohibition is discussed briefly.

Stanley Walker, longtime editor of The Herald Tribune

Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher is interviewed as is playwright and actor Marc Connelly.

Marc Connelly, actor and playwright who collaborated with George S. Kaufman and then received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Green Pastures in 1930.
Talks about the Algonquin Round Table including Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, George Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross (founder of The New Yorker), Robert Benchley and more. He tells us that there's some speculation about Harold Ross' head of hair. Maybe that jungle picture Chang was filmed in it.

At the first Academy Awards Chang was nominated for the Unique and Artistic Production award. The winner was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans with Janet Gaynor, George O'Brien Margaret Livingston. It was presented to William Fox for Fox Film Corporation. They also gave the award for Outstanding Picture to Wings with Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen and Gary Cooper. 

Per the Academy, the next year, they dropped the Unique and Artistic Production award, and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings was the highest honor that could be awarded.

George Gershwin is seen and heard rehearsing a musical number, Strike Up the Band, with comic team Clark and McCullough.

From the section on Greenwich Village:
Poet and novelist Elinor Morton Wylie
Theodore Dreiser Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925).
Writers Sherwood Anderson and Willa Cather
The Village Belle, Edna St. Vincent Millay. "The wit of her conversation was as sharp as the pathos of her poetry," says literary critic Edmund Wilson

Sources:

The Architecture of the Greenwich Village Waterfront, Regina M. Kellerman

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford 

The Poet and Her Book, Jean Gould

TheVillager.com, Various real estate web sites and archives

Related Information:

Visit 84 Charing Cross Road the New York locations connected with the book and 1987 film of the same name. You can visit these locations, much like you can visit other city spots made memorable in films. 

How many movies featured the Empire State Building? Some of the most famous include Love Affair with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer 1939, An Affair to Remember Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr 1957. Sleepless in Seattle with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan 1993, Love Affair with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn in her last feature film 1994.
 
Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best by Nancy Nelson

Damned in Paradise: The life of John Barrymore

Good Night, Sweet Prince: The Life and Times of John Barrymore  

Do I Look Skinny In This House?: How to Feel Great In Your Home Using Design Psychology by Kelli Ellis 

Animated and Cartoon Characters on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: Shrek has a star

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties

Margaret Mead: Her Life, Her Letters

Chaplin's Girl: The Life and Loves of Virginia Cherrill  by Miranda Seymour  

Personal Film Festival at your place- keep it clean

Home Film Festival Theme:
Male Bathing Beauties

Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland
Original 8x10" Photo
Start the Revolution Without Me 1970

Planning a living room film festival? What's your theme?  How often do you and your friends have movie parties?

Even if you're just hosting the next film fan discussion, it can be good to choose an unusual theme.  

Here are some movies that have some of the best, the funniest, the most unforgettable bathtub scenes in them. 

In this set, there is a man in the tub. You shouldn't see anything here that you wouldn't see at the beach.

I've included a list bathtub films in different genres. These are just guys so you won't find any of the three incarnations of The Women listed, for instance, with the amazing bathroom in that film. Thanks to all who contributed. 

A list of films with women in the tub would be longer. What films do you remember, regardless of the gender of the actor(s)?

This time of year there are so many awards shows celebrating recent films. We get to see celebrities on red carpets around the world in amazing gowns and tuxedos. 

Bets are placed on who will be nominated and then on who will win. If you want to promise your friends a really clean evening, this is a fun and funny idea for a group of films to gather. Serving bathtub gin? Be sure to invite Ernie, his rubber duckie and SpongeBob SquarePants.

Some Like It Hot Movie Poster 1959
(11 x 14 Inches - 28cm x 36cm) French Style C
Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis
Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Nehemiah Persoff

How about having a Gentlemen in the Bath Film and Television Festival? There are a few other movies that you could include, or at least look for to include. These films aren't necessarily for kids, as you may have guessed by the theme.

In the summertime, you can show the movies on an outdoor screen, the inflatable ones are really portable. Guests can wear robes and flip flops. 

Serve something special, maybe floating island or fondue? Something of the era of one or all of the movies. Think about where and how you'll be watching them though. What's easy to eat while you watch?

Where's Waldo? The 1944 film Laura opens with newspaper columnist and radio host Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) in a bathtub typing on his typewriter. (Talk about multitasking! Was he inspired by seeing Tallulah Bankhead's typing in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat?) Dana Andrews comes to talk to Lydecker about Laura, (Gene Tierney.)

The Billy Wilder film, Some Like it Hot with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe would be a hit at just about any gathering. It's got comedy, it's got music, it's got pathos, it's got some of the truth about those high heels.

Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Edward G. Robinson is another classic film. It is a 1948 film noir also featuring Lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor. Robinson's character, gangster Johnny Rocco, takes a chance bathing right next to an electric fan.

Martin Sheen in movie tub

Start the Revolution Without Me is a 1977 film with two sets of identical twins, played by Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland who were accidentally switched at birth.

It contains narration by Orson Welles. You may be surprised to hear Welles being funny.  The movie is set during the French revolution. 

As with any high-class festival, you would want to put together bath or shower-themed swag bags for your guests and maybe even have some giveaways or prizes for certain lucky attendees. 
  

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry made a series of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster in the 1990s. It's available on DVD or to stream instantly. This is a segment of Cow Creamer episode where a telegram arrives while Bertie is in the bath.

Hugh Laurie was Bertie Wooster, Stephen Fry played his valet, Jeeves.
Season 2, Episode one: Jeeves Saves the Cow Creamer. Hugh Laurie is well known as Dr. House from his show House M.D.

The episode includes a much sought after silver cow creamer, Aunt Dahlia, the irascible Sir Roderick Spode, Madeline Bassett and Gussie Fink-Nottle. Gussie, you may recall, collects newts.

Scenes with men in the bath in films tend to be different from similar scenes with women in movies. When men are having a bath, the scene is often played for humor or it gets pretty sexy pretty quickly. Was he just there for a bit of beefcake? Was it really a plot point? 

In My Favorite Year, Peter O'Toole wears a tear-away suit so if he's partied too much he can be put into the tub at a swanky hotel in a flash! O'Toole was nominated for an Academy Award for this role.

Check out Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski. Marlon Brando in The Missouri Breaks. He stars alongside Jack Nicholson. In Monte Walsh (1970) with Jack Palance and Lee Marvin, the guys force the cook to take a bath. He's so irritated that he had to take a bath that he puts something in their food that makes their stomachs violently ill.




In this trailer for Robin Hood Men in Tights you'll see Richard Lewis (Prince John) in a very specialized bathtub. Very clever. 

Think about the scenes in general. He could be a gruff character being forced to a bath for some reason against his will. Then the audience gets to see some attractive actor shirtless. Maybe it's ceremonial or he is somehow changed after the bath. As with everything, this changes over time, depending on the style of movie and it's different culturally. 

If you see woman in the bath, it can be easier or harder to determine what the point of the scene was. Was it there to wake up the audience? Does the scene really move the story along? Is she somehow vulnerable?

You can probably think of many more scenes with women in the bath or shower. 

Regardless, choose movies that have the actors, the storylines, whatever it is you want featured.

Coogan's Bluff, Clint Eastwood, Tisha Sterling
24X36 Poster print

Coogan's Bluff Original British Lobby Card
Clint Eastwood

Coogan's Bluff, 1968. Clint Eastwood plays deputy sheriff Walt Coogan in Arizona. The film was directed by Don Siegel and features Lee J Cobb, Susan Clark. 

It came after his films Dirty Harry and Two Mules for Sister Sara but before Escape from Alcatraz.

Coogan is sent to New York to extradite an escaped felon. 

This is only one of Eastwood's bathtub movies. 

John Lennon's in the tub in the Beatles film A Hard Day's Night, 1964. The DVD has special features.

In 1978 David Bowie starred in Just a Gigolo. Also in the film were Kim Novak and Marlene Dietrich, who came out of retirement to make an appearance toward the end. 

I read that Bowie never actually met Dietrich. There is a scene with the two of them. She sings the title song. 

I've yet to find a source of the film in the US, outside of some VHS tape copies. You can find posters and copies of the soundtrack.

The Big Bang Theory Simon Helberg with Katee Sackhoff in a large bathtub. Sackhoff is from Battlestar Gallactica. Don't forget episodes of favorite TV shows. 
 
Until September is a 1984 film about an American tourist (Karen Allen) in Paris who falls in love with a French banker, played by Lhermitte. Karen Allen Thierry Lhermitte snuggle in Until September.

Paul Newman looks a little uncomfortable
8x10 Photo

Groundhog Day is a fun film with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. Some people like to watch it every February second. 

Murray is famous for his Soap on a Rope shower routine on an early season of Saturday Night Live. As a greenskeeper in Caddyshack, there's a famous bit where he enters an empty swimming pool. 

In Groundhog Day his character attempts to off himself in the bathtub. This is a fantasy film where he's living the same day over and over and over.

 

House M.D. in a Tub of Pill Bottles
photo with Hugh Laurie Autograph
Remember from one
Fry & Laurie sketch,
"Don't be dirty."

He cannot end the cycle under any circumstances or so it seems.  

Dead characters in bathtubs would be a whole sub-genre of this idea and you can go there as much as you want. 

The movies Godfather Part 2 and Charade have characters die (or at least get discovered) in bathtubs under different circumstances. 

In horror movies such as, I believe Wes Craven's New Nightmare, you can find bathtub scenes. Freddy Krueger wants in on the action. If that floats your bathtub, The Shining and Nightmare on Elm Street have scenes.These will have to be double checked.

No one did it better than Mr. Hitchcock in Psycho with his ultimate shower scene. 

Enjoy Mel Brooks' High Anxiety for a swell double feature. It has an, uh, similar shower scene. Apparently Hitchcock said that Brooks had used the wrong number of shower curtain hooks, though. Hmmm. Otherwise Mr. Hitchcock was flattered and pleased with the homage.

In My Man Godfrey, a wet Carole Lombard as Irene Bullock dances around and sing, "Godfrey loves me! He put me in the shower!" William Powell is Godfrey, the one who not only put her in the shower but who'd requested that Ms. Lombard have that role.  

1936 was the first year that supporting categories were introduced at the Academy Awards. My Man Godfrey was the first to be nominated in all four acting categories. A great era at the movies they didn't win any Oscars.

For your swag bag, guys might like some bathroom travel items. Choose items as clever as the films you're showing.


Just let him (or you) choose from a selection of Bath Kits for Men                               
The Portable Waterproof Bluetooth Mini Music Speakers

Cary Grant - North by Northwest
Glossy Photograph

The Howards of Virginia with Cary Grant, Martha Scott, Alan Marshal, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Richard Carlson. Also there is his final film in 1966, Walk, Don't Run for an onsen or public Japanese bath with Jim Hutton. When you're Cary Grant and aged the way he did, walking around naked at  the age of 62 (when he had a new baby on the way as a matter of fact) wasn't a problem.

In The Black Rose (1950), Tyrone Power is given a bath in China after being sent to see the Empress.

The Howards of Virginia takes place during the Revolutionary War and is not one of Cary Grant's more well-known films. The scene is somewhat transformative for his character. 

Mr. Grant also gets into a bathtub for Ann Sheridan in I Was a Male War Bride. It's a film where he is squeezed into more than one tight place.

Shower scenes are much more common. If you extend the definition of the festival into broader terms, you can have many more films. 

Films with great shower scenes or generic bath scenes open up the idea to allow many more movies into the mix. 

When I've mentioned this topic to friends, male and female, they have been pretty enthusiastic and had ideas. Major Updates to this page will be dated.

You also get to appreciate set designers from different eras. And don't forget the sound engineers who have to deal with splashing water over dialogue. A possible conflict.

China Sky Anthony Quinn
1945 Original 8x10 Photo

China Sky was based on a novel by Pearl S. Buck. The film came out in 1945. Quinn starred alongside actress Ruth Warrick, well know to daytime drama fans as Phoebe Tyler on All My Children. 

Alan Hale Jr had a bath scene in a movie.


English Leather is just one version of Soap on a rope the new men's Soap on a Rope.
Bill Murray would love this for his birthday. :)

Gathering friends together to talk and watch movies is always fun. Get others' ideas for what their favorite movies are. Maybe do a film festival at their place next time. Pillow Talk shows a split screen bathtub scene with Rock Hudson and Doris Day. The film also features Thelma Ritter and Doris Day as the stars fuss over sharing a party line on their phones.

Someone tells me that in The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Janeane Garofalo and Ben Chaplin also have a splitscreen telephone call, each in a their own bubble baths. This was 1996.

Mick Jagger with Michele Breton
Performance 1970

You can view Mick Jagger's film Performance on DVD or stream it (rent or buy) instantly.


Question for the fans: 

Please leave a comment.

John Cleese 8x10 glossy Photo

Can you tell us what films the photos of Paul Newman, Martin Sheen, Alan Hale and John Cleese come from?

A Bathtub List

******* Romance
1959 Pillow Talk; Rock Hudson/Doris Day split-screen
1990 Pretty Woman Richard Gere, Julia Roberts
1990 American Beauty Kevin Spacey, Mena Suvari
1996 The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Janeane Garofalo and Ben Chaplin; split-screen
1999 The Best Man

******** Gangster/Noir
1944 Laura  Clifton Webb
1948 Key Largo, Edward G Robinson
1963 Charade George Kennedy 
1974 The Godfather Part II; Michael V. Gazzo
1983 Scarface; Al Pacino

******** Horror/Suspense 
1971 A Clockwork Orange Malcolm McDowell (Singing in the Rain) with Patrick Magee 
1980 The Shining; Jack Nicholson
1984 Nightmare on Elm Street;Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund -Freddy Krueger 
1994 Wes Craven's New Nightmare on Elm Street 

******** Fantasy
2003 Big Fish; Jessica Lange and Albert Finney
2005 Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire Daniel Radcliffe visited by a ghost

******** Comedy
1937 Personal Property, Robert Taylor
1939 Some Like it Hot, Tony Curtis
1942 Star Spangled Rhythm; Bob Hope
1964 What a Way to Go, Paul Newman
1964 A Hard Day's Night; The Beatles John Lennon
1966 Walk, Don't Run; Cary Grant, Jim Hutton
1971 Pretty Maids All in a Row; John David Carson, Angie Dickinson
1972 Avanti! Jack Lemmon
1977 Start the Revolution Without Me; Donald Sutherland
1979 The Jerk Steve Martin
1982 My Favorite Year Peter O'Toole
1993 Groundhog day Bill Murray
1993 Robin Hood: Men in Tights; Richard Lewis Prince John
1995 Billy Madison; Adam Sandler
1998 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; Benicio Del Toro w/ help from Johnny Depp
1998 Out of Sight; George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez
1998 The Big Lebowski; Jeff Bridges
1989 Turner & Hooch Tom Hanks and Beasley the Dog
2004 Napoleon Dynamite; Efren Ramirez as Pedro

******** Drama
1936 Hearts Divided; Claude Rains
1940 The Howards of Virginia; Cary Grant
1941 How Green Was My Valley; Donald Crisp
1945 China Sky Anthony Quinn
1950 The Black Rose, Tyrone Power
1958 The Gypsy and the Gentleman; Keith Michell
1960 Spartacus Tony Curtis and Laurence Olivier
1961 Gold of the Seven Saints, Clint Walker
1962 The Spiral Road Burl Ives
1963 Cleopatra, Richard Burton
1963 Drums of Africa; Torin Thatcher
1964 The Fall of the Roman Empire; Christopher Plummer
1965 The Cincinnati Kid Steve McQueen w/Tuesday Weld
1965 Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders; George Sanders
1965 Genghis Kahn; Telly Savalas and Omar Shariff
1966 Alvarez Kelly; William Holden
1967 You Only Live Twice; Sean Connery
1968 The Secret War of Harry Frigg. Paul Newman
1970 Performance Mick Jagger
1972 The Call of the Wild, Charlton Heston, Michele Mercier
1972 Diamonds Are Forever; Sean Connery
1974 Little Big Man Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway 
1978 Just a Gigolo David Bowie
1978 Moment by Moment; Lily Tomlin, John Travolta hot tub
1979 North Dallas Forty Nick Nolte, Mac Davis
1984 Until September; Thierry Lhermitte
1988 Rain Man; Tom Cruise
1989 Brenda Starr; Tony Peck
1999 Fight Club; Brad Pitt Edward Norton
2008 Slumdog Millionaire; Bathtub of money
2012 Hitchcock; Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren
Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh, Jessica Biel as Vera Miles

******** Western
1944 The Story of Dr. Wassell; Gary Cooper
1958 The Wonderful Country, Robert Mitchum
1959 The Wild and the Innocent; Audie Murphy
1966 El Dorado; Robert Mitchum
1967 Waterhole No. 3; James Coburn
1968 Will Penny; Charlton Heston
1968 Coogan's Bluff, Clint Eastwood
1969 Sam Whiskey; Burt Reynolds
1970 Monte Walsh (1970) Skimpy Eagans (Ted Gehring)
1973 High Plains Drifter; Clint Eastwood
1976 Missouri Breaks; Marlon Brando
1994 Maverick; James Garner

Links to Related Pages of Interest:

Mermaid Movies Ann Blyth, Glynis Johns Have a Mermaid Film Fest

See a photo of Desi Arnaz Jr., Robert Carradine, Anne Lockhart and Melanie Griffith enjoying a hot tub in the 1977 movie Joy Ride. Remember Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live: James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub Party?

Rotten to the Core with Kenneth Griffith,
Eric Sykes and Charlotte Rampling

Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies We chose Amazon Prime because we prefer their wide selection of movies and documentaries to other streaming video sites, and the yearly price is about the same. But you get added benefits to joining Amazon Prime.

We found more documentaries, foreign films, more British television shows and many more old color and black and white films on Amazon. 

Having several of the videos free to watch with Amazon Prime and different search options is great. 

There are always movies you want to pay to rent or own. There seems to still be some special films we want to own on DVD.


 *A  note about links: Please note that links will open in separate windows for your convenience. You can close them and go back to this blog article in its original window.

Big thanks to all who contributed to the list of films!