I was very intrigued by the above photo seen on Facebook over the weekend. ED Wynn, Eddie Cantor (in blackface), Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and either Clifton Webb or Danny Kaye. Looks like Webb to me but looks like Kaye's hair. Both were there and one missed this shot.
I found the following text, quoted from author Gegory Mank's book, BELA LUGOSI AND BORIS KARLOFF, that gives background on the above picture.
A little more digging and I found and scanned the below photo from the book DEAR BORIS. The ladies in the back being those mentioned in the above text as well. The two unidentified in DEAR BORIS are British actress Leonora Corbett (l) and Peggy Wood (later the star of TV's I REMEMBER MAMA) (2nd from right).
Now to find that surviving film clip that's mentioned!
I came across this 2013 post in 2017. About whether the top photo features Webb or Kaye, you can tell if this is a crop of a larger photo. If the larger photo reveals the man in question's left hand pinkie, look for a ring. Webb wore a ring on his left pinkie from youth to old age. You can see the ring even in his films except when he played a married man when he removed the pinkie ring for a wedding band. As you can tell I'm a big Clifton Webb fan. I think this is Kaye but I don't know. I think I see the ring in the lower picture but it may be my imagination.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the significance. In the few published photos of Webb's much loved mother, if you can see her left pinkie, I've seen a ring on her left hand also. The ring could also have the traditional symbolism for both men and women - "I am unavailable."