Lakewood Lore

Gorgeous film stars of old still put stars in their eyes

"Who is your choice for all-time most beautiful movie star?" We recently asked some elder Lakewood Kiwanians.

We were thinking of the '20s, '30s and '40s when people flocked to Lakewood's neighborhood theaters (there were 10 here at one time or another), and how so many of us attended regularly -- three times a week -- which was how often the pictures changed.

We were remembering, too, that the good guys always won and the bad guys always lost, and that, with few exceptions, leading women had to be beautiful and leading men, handsome.

"I pick Mary Pickford, America's Sweetheart," said Arthur Damon of Chase Avenue, the Kiwanis Club's oldest member. Art, now 91, idolized the actress starting back in 1915 when he worked as an usher for the Knickerbocker, once located at Euclid and East 83rd and considered on of the finest cinemas in Cleveland.

"Admission then was 10 cents for the balcony, 20 cents for the first floor, and 30 cents for a loge seat," Art recalled.

Joseph Nagy chose Sylvia Sidney although she climbed to stardom in the '30s, long after Joe, a retired banker now 82, began seeing flickers at the Rialto on West 25th near Bridge. That was 75 years ago when the show had a piano player and charged a nickel to get in, according to Joe.

Richard Shuman, 75, voted for Ingrid Bergman and Rosyln Russell, whom he watched at the Detroit Theater, which was nearest his home when he was young, and today is the only Lakewood movie house still in operation.

Most attractive and a class act in the opinion of George Watt, 79, was Irene Dunne, while Fred Kett, 68, selected Marlene Dietrich, whose pulchritude, he averred, extended to include her gams.

Ernest (Tex) Phillips, Lakewood's war veterans' leader and a septuagenarian, summoned a sigh for Janet Gaynor of the early film classic "Seventh Heaven."

Thomas Kalbers, 73, named striking Joan Crawford, and Bertram Gardner, 75, opted for Myrna Loy of the almond eyes, who once played opposite William Powell in the "Thin Man" series.

Pauline Groth, 78, one-half of the first husband-wife team in the Lakewood Kiwanis roster, pins her blue ribbon on Gene Kelly as most handsome actor. She cherishes a memory of his as the agile, happy-go-lucky star of the movie "Singing in the Rain." She fondly recollects once having written a school essay on physical fitness, using a picture of dancer Kelly against a backdrop of chorus girls, each holding an umbrella.

Robert Taylor, manifesting gasp evoking handsomeness (perfect features plus widow's peak), was cited by Virginia Plotz, whose husband, Bill, is a Kiwanis past president.

Ginny's not about to forget a film starring Taylor that she saw in Lakewood's former Lincoln Theater on Madison at Arthur. It was "Magnificent Obsession," authored by Lloyd C. Douglas, who also wrote "The Robe."

"Taylor was great, and novelist Douglas was a good friend of the Rev. Roy E. Bowers, one-time pastor of Lakewood Congregational Church, who married Bill and me 52 years ago," she noted.

Were we to expand our survey, there would be numerous other memory-churning bests. Among them, from the '20s, we would guess passionate Rudolph Valentino, dashing John Gilbert, magnetic hypnotic blonde Greta Garbo, John Barrymore (his nose became legendary), and Dolores Del Rio classic brunette from south of the border).

From the '30s, Charles Boyer (the perfect continental), stunning Jean Harlow, debonair swashbucklers Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, and he-man Clark Gable ("The King").

And from the '40s, Hedy Lamarr (transcendent beauty), perfect pinup Betty Grable, Cary Grant (masculine charm with a touch of velvet), and Ava Gardner (restless tigress).

Now, what's that idiom again? Oh, yeah- "They don't make'em like that anymore."

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post February 9, 1989. Reprinted with permission.

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