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The Gay Divorcee, the 1934 Mark Sandrich romantic musical dancing comedy ("The King and Queen of 'Carioca'"; "Introducing the new dance sensation 'The Continental'"; "The stage hit of two continents... ten times a gorgeous on the screen!"; "Right now the whole United States is whistling its gay, enchanting tunes!"; "The music marvel of the stage - 10 times as gorgeous on the screen"; "With the stars of 'Flying Down to Rio'"; "A screen version of the spicy comedy that kept New York and London in stitches for two seasons... with three members of the original cast."; nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award; about a woman staying at a resort until her divorce is final, and a man who is also staying there who is madly in love with her) starring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore, and Betty Grable. Note that this movie was based on the Cole Porter play titled "Gay Divorce", but oddly, only one of the songs from the play was used in the movie. One of the original songs in the movie was "The Continental", which won the first Best Song Academy Award! Also note that Erik Rhodes was a Broadway stage actor who had a great minor part as a heavily accented European in the stage version of this movie, and he was brought to Hollywood to recreate that role in this movie version. Over the next five years, he made a couple dozen film roles, almost always playing a similar part, which was kind of funny, since he was actually from Oklahoma, but he was an expert in "foreign" accents. He served in World War II, and then returned to the Broadway stage, and never made any more movies.
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Important Added Info:

Note that this still is part of an amazing collection of 204 scene stills we are auctioning in this set of auctions. All of them were collected by David Mallery, a noted Philadelphia film critic/college professor of the 1960s to the 1990s. He had a great love of movies, and he would go to memorabilia shows and shops in the 1960s and 1970s and he assembled a collection of great original stills from films he loved! He put them into scrapbooks using double-stick tape on the back of each still, and sometimes he would type a paragraph about that movie and put that in the scrapbook as well.

After his passing, his scrapbooks were obtained from his estate, and the stills were carefully removed from the scrapbook pages, but the double-stick tape was left on the back of the stills, although the "sticky" part on the face of the tape was removed. In almost all cases, the tape did not affect the front of the still. It can be removed by a professional or talented amateur, but it has not harmed the still in the many decades since it was first placed in the scrapbook, so I really don't see a reason to do so, but that will be the choice of the new owner of each still!

Mr. Mallery naturally had excellent taste in movies, and he was collecting at a time when you could find great original scene stills from the very best movies (but even in the 1960s and 1970s, it took some work to find them!). This is a rare opportunity to acquire truly great and rare original vintage stills, and they have a wonderful "provenance" as well!

Here is more information about David Mallery. He was a professor of cinematography at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, from the 1960s into the 1990s. He was a founding member of AFI (American Film Institute), and a member of the Motion Picture Academy. He was a film critic who wrote many reviews for many publications, and hosted a TV show where he interviewed directors, actors, and others involved in the film industry.

Over the years, he developed both working and personal relationships with many actors, actresses, and directors, including Frank Capra and his wife, Charlton Heston and others. eMoviePoster.com will be auctioning letters from these celebrities and others to Mr. Mallery in their next auction of signed items!

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