Frank O'Hara's poem To the Film Industry in Crisis appeared in his Meditations in an Emergency (1957) and alludes to a list of film stars from the first half of the century. These are mostly actors who have died in my lifetime, some are still famous but many are no longer so well known. As a tribute, here are photographs of the stars mentioned.
I don't always have the right photograph, one close to the scene described in the poem, so I would be happy to have suggestions for better choices and also to have corrections, if I have got any wrong.
@conorjh
First verse.
Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals
with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants,
nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition
is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you,
promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you
are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry,
it's you I love!
Start of the second verse.
In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.
And give credit where it's due: not to my starched nurse, who taught me
how to be bad and not bad rather than good (and has lately availed
herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church
which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic entertainment,
not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you,
glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope,
stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all
your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms!
To Richard Barthelmess as the "tol'able" boy barefoot and in pants,
[Richard Barthelmess in Tol'able David (1921) barefoot and in a barrel.]
Jeanette MacDonald of the flaming hair and lips and long, long neck,
[Jeanette MacDonald in The Firefly (1937).]
Sue Carroll as she sits for eternity on the damaged fender of a car and smiles,
[This is Sue Carroll, the film referred to is clearly Girls Gone Wild (1929) but I couldn't find a still.]
Ginger Rogers with her pageboy bob like a sausage on her shuffling shoulders, peach-melba-voiced Fred Astaire of the feet,
[Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Shall We Dance (1937). Rogers and Astaire made ten films together starting with Flying Down to Rio (1933). It is hard to think of Rogers as having hair in a pageboy bob, this is the most sausage-like I could find.]
Eric von Stroheim, the seducer of mountain-climbers' gasping spouses,
[Eric von Stroheim and probably Francelia Billington in Blind Husbands (1919).]
Mae West in a furry sled, her bordello radiance and bland remarks,
[Mae West and probably Victor McLaglen in Klondike Annie (1936).]
Rudolph Valentino of the moon, its crushing passions,
[An iconic photograph of Valentino, it would be good to have a still that was more of the moon.]
and moonlike, too, the gentle Norma Shearer,
[A very early photograph of Norma Shearer.]
Miriam Hopkins dropping her champagne glass off Joel McCrea's yacht, and crying into the dappled sea,
[Edward G Robinson, Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea in Barbary Coast (1935), Hopkins and McCrea made five films together, but this is the one involving a yacht; not shown here, unfortunately.]
Clark Gable rescuing Gene Tierney from Russia
[Clark Gable and Gene Tierney in Never Let Me Go (1953).]