Glossy Time Capsules #25
Screenland Annual
1969 (covering 1968)
Price: 50 cents
Screenland Annual was an offshoot of Screenland, a magazine that began in the 1920s and carried on until 1971. I haven't read any other Screenland issues, but this edition reads like an issue of US Magazine nowadays -- your basic gossip-driven, semi-sleazy journalistic stew.
Of course, all the divorces and affairs and celebrity antics presented within these pages occurred 52+ years ago. But it's not ancient history -- a lot of these folks are still around!
Like Clint Eastwood...
Julie Andrews...
Sophia Loren...
Sidney Poitier...
Yoko Ono...
Lisa Marie Presley...
Sally Field...
Jane Fonda...
Barbra Streisand and Elliott Gould (who, indeed, had "troubles")...
Julie Christie and Warren Beatty...
... and James Earl Jones!
This issue of Screenland also serves as a kind of sequel to the Modern Screen's Hollywood Yearbook from a decade prior. In that issue, Tony Curtis and then-wife Janet Leigh were getting ready to welcome a new baby into the world together. Sadly, they got divorced just a few years later. Tony then married Christine Kaufman, divorced her, and then married Leslie Allen, the woman below.
And who could forget the saga of Eddie Fisher's many loves? When we last saw Carrie Fisher's dad, he had left wife Debbie Reynolds for the recently-widowed Elizabeth Taylor. By 1968, he had divorced Taylor and was now married to Connie Stevens...
... but shortly after this magazine was printed, they got divorced, too. SURPRISE!
In what turned out to be an actual Hollywood surprise, Paul Newman and wife Joanne, who married in 1958, didn't succumb to the doom & gloom suggested at in these pages....
Their marriage lasted all the way until Newman's death in 2008. And Joanne is still kicking in 2021, at age 90!
Speaking of marriages, a lot of celebs tied the knot in 1968. But did they last? Let's ask Google -- at least, let's ask Google about the couples who have at least one partner I've actually heard of....
Sally Field & Steve Craig -- lasted until 1975
Mickey Dolenz & Samantha Juste -- lasted until 1975
James Drury & Phyllis Mitchell -- lasted unil 1979
Tanya Falan & Lawrence Welk. Jr. -- lasted unil 1979
Jane Russell & Roger Barrett -- they got divorced that same year, 1968! Yikes.
Jill Ireland & Charles Bronson -- lasted until 1990 (her death). At least that one lasted.
What else was happening in the world of entertainment that year?
Actress Pat Neal (Oscar winner and wife of Roald Dahl) was looking toward the future....
Mia Farrow was all over the place...
Fred Astaire had apparently gone somewhere, and had now returned...
Katharine Hepburn was maybe going to win another Oscar? (Spoiler alert: she did.)
Carol Burnett had a baby...
Doris Day came out of mourning? Maybe?
Doris day did, in fact, try "love" again. She was married to 4th husband Barry Comden from 1976 to 1982. According to Wikipedia, "[Comden] was the maître d'hôtel at one of Day's favorite restaurants. He knew of her great love of dogs and endeared himself to her by giving her a bag of meat scraps and bones on her way out of the restaurant. He later complained that she cared more for her 'animal friends' than she did for him." 😄
Nixon got into the White House...
Marlon Brando didn't like having his picture taken by paparazzi...
Can you blame him?
Mama Cass was ill... but how ill?
What of Nancy Sinatra and Jack Haley, Jr? Nothing, apparently. They never did marry each other. Nancy married Hugh Lambert in 1970, and Jack Haley Jr. married Liza Minnelli in 1974.
And it was, in fact, "too late" for Sammy and May. Sammy was already seeing future wife Altovise, and the two married in 1970.
Meanwhile, Vanessa Redgrave was causing a scandal by hooking up with Franco Nero -- sans wedding ring! Gasp!
In what may be the ultimate proof that rings/signed documents have little to no real meaning, Vanessa and Franco are still together! (They actually did get officially married in 2006.)
Then there was Jackie O...
Jackie was being skewered by the press (and her family, apparently) for marrying a man who was full of all sorts of faults, including:
*Not being American
*Being busy, and
*Being of a different religion from the other Kennedys
The horrors!
"Public sinner." Uh huh. Meanwhile, JFK? TOTAL SAINT.... Yeah.
And apparently the Kennedy fam was over the moon about Ethel....
And now for the best part of the magazine... and any magazine, really...
NEAT STUFF YOU SHOULD BUY!
"She was to the skillet born." How is that not a ringing endorsement? Now available at your local ebay.
