Victor Fleming, Stan Laurel & Mabel Normand

Who was born on this date:

Director Victor Fleming was born on February 23, 1889 in Pasadena, California. He began his career in Hollywood as a stuntman but soon found that his true calling was behind the camera as a director. Fleming’s motion picture directorial career spanned nearly thirty years from 1919 to 1948, and included forty-eight films. He won the 1940 best director Oscar for Gone with the Wind and is also famous for directing The Wizard of Oz (1939). Other notable film credits include: The Way of All Flesh (1927), The Virginian (1929), Renegades (1930), Treasure Island (1934), Captains Courageous (1937), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), and Joan of Arc (1948). On January 6, 1949, while vacationing with his family near Cottonwood, Arizona, the award winning director died of a heart attack. His funeral was held at the Alban’s Episcopal Church in West Los Angeles. In attendance were numerous celebrities including Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn, and Van Johnson. Fleming is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California.

Who died on this date:

On February 23, 1965, actor Stan Laurel died. He was born on June 16, 1890 in Lancashire, England. He is best known as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film The Music Box (1932). In 1910, with the stage name of "Stan Jefferson", he joined Fred Karno's troupe of actors, which also included a young Charlie Chaplin. For some time, he acted as Chaplin's understudy. The Karno troupe toured America, and brought both Chaplin and Jefferson to the United States for the first time. From 1916 to 1918, he teamed up with Alice Cooke and Baldwin Cooke, who became lifelong friends. Amongst other performers, Jefferson worked briefly alongside Oliver Hardy in a silent film short The Lucky Dog. Around the same time he adopted the stage surname of Laurel.

Laurel went on to join the Hal Roach studio, and began directing films, including a 1926 production called Yes, Yes, Nanette. He intended to work primarily as a writer and director, but fate stepped in. In 1927, Oliver Hardy, another member of the Hal Roach Studios Comedy All Star players, was injured in a kitchen mishap and Laurel was asked to return to acting. Laurel and Hardy began sharing the screen in Slipping Wives, Duck Soup and With Love and Hisses. The two became friends and their comic chemistry soon became obvious. Roach Studios' supervising director Leo McCarey noticed the audience reaction to them and began teaming them, leading to the creation of the Laurel and Hardy series later that year. 

Together, the two men began producing a huge body of short films, including The Battle of the Century, Should Married Men Go Home?, Two Tars, Be Big!, Big Business, and many others. Laurel and Hardy successfully made the transition to talking films with the short, Unaccustomed As We Are in 1929. They also appeared in their first feature in one of the revue sequences of The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and the following year they appeared as the comic relief in a lavish all-color (in Technicolor) musical feature, The Rogue Song. In 1931, their own first starring feature, Pardon Us was released, although they continued to make both features and shorts until 1935, including their 1932 film, The Music Box which won an Academy Award for Best Short Subject. 

During the 1930’s, Laurel was involved in a dispute with Hal Roach, which resulted in the termination of his contract. Since Roach maintained separate contracts for Laurel and Hardy that expired at different times, Hardy remained at the studio and was "teamed" with Harry Langdon for the 1939 film Zenobia. There was also talk about a series of films co-starring Hardy with Patsy Kelly called "The Hardy Family." But Laurel sued Roach over the contract dispute. Eventually, the case was dropped and Laurel returned to Roach. After returning to Roach studios, the first film Laurel and Hardy made was A Chump at Oxford. Subsequently, they made Saps at Sea, which was their last film for Roach.

On August 7, 1957, Oliver Hardy died. Laurel did not attend his funeral, stating "Babe would understand.” People who knew Laurel said he was absolutely devastated by Hardy's death and never fully recovered for the rest of his life. In 1961, Stan Laurel was given a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for his pioneering work in comedy. He had achieved his lifelong dream as a comedian and had been involved in nearly 190 films. He lived his final years in a small apartment in the Oceana Hotel in Santa Monica, California. Laurel was a heavy smoker until suddenly giving up when he was about seventy years of age. He died on February 23, 1965, aged 74, several days after suffering a heart attack and is buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery.

On February 23, 1930, actress Mabel Normand died. She was born on November 9, 1892 in New Brighton, Staten Island, New York. She was a silent film actress and popular star of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios. Throughout the 1920s her name was linked with scandal including the 1922 murder of director William Desmond Taylor, after which, her film career declined, possibly due to the scandal and a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923. Director William Desmond Taylor shared her interest in books and the two formed a close relationship. Taylor was deeply in love with Normand, who had originally approached him for help in curing her cocaine dependency. Based upon Normand's subsequent statements to investigators, her repeated relapses were devastating for Taylor. According sources Taylor met with Federal prosecutors shortly before his death and offered to assist them in filing charges against Normand's cocaine suppliers. It is believed that Normand's suppliers learned of this meeting and hired a contract killer to murder the director. According to these same sources, Normand suspected the reasons for her lover's murder, but did not know the identity of the triggerman.

On the night of Taylor’s murder, February 1, 1922, Normand left Taylor's bungalow at 7:45 p.m. in a happy mood, carrying a book he had given her as a loan. They blew kisses to each other as her limousine drove away. Normand was the last person known to have seen Taylor alive. The LAPD subjected Normand to a grueling interrogation, but ruled her out as a suspect. However, Normand's career had already slowed and her reputation was tarnished by revelations of her addiction, which was seen as a moral failing. In 1926 she married actor Lew Cody, however, her film career never recovered and health issues developed. After an extended stay in a sanitarium she died from tuberculosis on February 23, 1930 and was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Loretta Young, Tom Mix & Victor Fleming

Who was born on this date:

Loretta Young, the elegant award winning actress, whose on-screen image as the wholesome girl next door brought tremendous success in Hollywood was born Gretchen Michaela Young on January 6, 1913 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her parents were separated when Loretta was three years old when the family moved to Southern California. Needing money Loretta’s mother allowed the youngster to act in order to raise some cash for the family. Loretta’s first motion picture was 1919’s, The Only Way, in this film she played the small part of a crying child on an operating table. Loretta was very ambitious and strove for excellence on screen even in the early years of her film career. She was candid about wanting fame and stardom, not wanting to be just an actress. 

In a film and television career that spanned seven decades (1919 to 1994), she appeared in one hundred motion pictures. She played opposite all of the major romantic leading men of the era, including Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Spencer Tracy, and James Cagney. She made an easy transition from silent film to talkies, and with her ever youthful appearance and wholesome image, delighted film going audiences year after year. Young’s major film credits include; The Sheik (1921), The Magnificent Flirt (1928), The Head Man (1928), Kismet (1930), Life Begins (1932), They Call it Sin (1932), The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933), Born to be Bad (1934), Shanghai (1935), The Call of the Wild (1935), Ramona (1936), Kentucky (1938), Ladies Courageous (1944), The Bishop’s Wife (1947), and It Happens Every Thursday (1953). In 1948, in a shocking upset, Young won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of the witty Swedish maid, turned Congresswoman, Katrin Holstrom in The Farmer’s Daughter (1947). Young was nominated for a second best actress Academy Award in 1950 for Come to the Stable (1949), but lost to Olivia de Havilland.  

While Young was very protective of her wholesome on-screen image, she was hard pressed to keep that image off screen. The many contradictions in her public and private life were exemplified by an early marriage (at age 17) that ended in divorce, and carried on numerous love affairs with many of her male co-stars, most notably Clark Gable with whom she co-starred with in 1935’s The Call of the Wild. This affair allegedly produced an illegitimate daughter (Judy Lewis) who was subsequently reported as being adopted. It has been noted that Judy was the right age to have been born during Young’s mysterious sojourn to Europe following filming of The Crusades in 1935 and that Judy’s uncanny resemblance to Gable is remarkable. To her dying day, Young remained coy and denied these allegations but left a tantalizing quote in the book Hollywood Royalty (1992), “Clark Gable certainly was everything that he appeared to be.” 

In the early 1950’s as her film career began to wane, Young took a gamble and ventured into television. Her move to the small screen was roundly criticized but she determined to try anyway. On September 20, 1953, A Letter to Loretta (AKA, The Loretta Young Show) aired on NBC and had a successful eight year run. The remainder of her life was filled with philanthropic ventures. She wrote a book in 1961 entitled, The Things I Had to Learn, and made occasional forays into television. On August 12, 2000, Young died from ovarian cancer at the Los Angeles home of her sister Georgiana Montalban (wife of actor Ricardo Montalban). Her funeral service was held at the St. Louis Catholic Church in Cathedral City, California. Loretta Young is buried at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery, Culver City, her grave is unmarked and is interred within the same plot as her mother, Gladys Belzer.

Actor Tom Mix was born on January 6, 1880 in Mix Run. Pennsylvania. He was a star of many early western movies, making 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features. He was Hollywood’s first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed. On the afternoon of October 12, 1940, Mix was killed a one car accident near Florence, Arizona. Mix is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Glendale.

Who died on this date:

On January 6, 1949, director Victor Fleming died. The acclaimed film director was born on February 23, 1889 in Pasadena, California. He began his career in Hollywood as a stuntman but soon found that his true calling was behind the camera as a director. Fleming’s motion picture directorial career spanned nearly thirty years from 1919 to 1948, and included forty-eight films. He won the 1940 best director Oscar for Gone with the Wind and is also famous for directing The Wizard of Oz (1939). Other notable film credits include: The Way of All Flesh (1927), The Virginian (1929), Renegades (1930), Treasure Island (1934), Captains Courageous (1937), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), and Joan of Arc (1948). On January 6, 1949, while vacationing with his family near Cottonwood, Arizona, the award winning director died of a heart attack. His funeral was held at the Alban’s Episcopal Church in West Los Angeles. In attendance were numerous celebrities including Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn, and Van Johnson. Fleming is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California.