Majolica in the Movies: Gigi

I love my iPad!

I spend hours on it every day playing games, searching the internet and watching movies and TV shows I download from iTunes.

Yesterday I was perusing the movie catalog on iTunes and saw that one of my favorite musicals, Gigi, was available for download in HD. It had been years since I had seen the movie. My own copy on DVD was not made from the best elements so I didn't watch it very often. This, I thought, was a perfect excuse for buying another copy that I could download to my iPad and watch whenever I want. So I spent the evening downloading the movie and set it aside to watch the next day.

So, with a lazy Saturday afternoon in front of me I decided to indulge in my latest download. As that wonderful Lerner and Lowe score started it transported me back to my childhood, when I first saw the film at the Logan theatre in North Philadelphia with my Mother and brother. At the beginning of the movie Maurice Chevalier opens the story with "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" and introduces us to the title character Gigi playing ball in the park. As the song ends, Gigi rushes home to the flat she shares with her mother and grandmother. There on her grandmother's table is a large majolica vase with applied flowers. You can see the vase on the table on the left below. You can't see it in this picture but later in the scene the grandmother picks up the vase and you can see a huge magnolia flower on the opposite side.

I can't say that the piece looks familiar to me but it is very reminiscent of the kind of thing made by Menton, a French faience company that specialized in ware with applied decoration in the 1880's. This would certainly be appropriate for the story, which takes place around 1900. In the background one can also see a majolica clock sitting on the mantel from about the same period.

Majolica clock in the movie David Copperfield (1936)

Like another movie I mentioned in this blog that also featured a piece of majolica, Meet Me in St. Louis, it was directed by Vincente Minnelli, a former Broadway set director whose movies are meticulous in their decor. 

For the remainder of the movie I kept open an eagle eye for more majolica, though no more appeared. What a wonderful treat this was though, to see a piece of majolica in this lovely movie. I'll never be able to look at it again in quite the same way.

To view the Gigi trailer go here.

Majolica in the Movies: National Velvet

Who doesn't love sweet little Velvet Brown, the heroine of the 1944 film, Natonal Velvet.
Who would have suspected that the Brown family collected majolica?

The movie National Velvet takes place in the English countryside before the war. All the more peculiar that a piece of Etruscan Majolica is smack darn in the center of the Brown's plate rack. Not just any piece of Etruscan Majolica but an Etruscan Majolica Begonia leaf tray, probably their most famous form.

Now, you would be correct in saying that English manufacturers made begonia leaves too, but those English leaves are decidedly English looking, often glazed in shades of turquoise. There is no mistaking the classic Etruscan glazes shining on the technicolor screen though-- that classic combination of green, yellow and pink with the three central dots that distinguishes the Etruscan leaf from all the others is decidedly Griffen Smith's alone.

Etruscan Majolica Begonia leaf

What a joy to find that the set decorators at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had such wonderful, if geographically inappropriate, taste!

To view the National Velvet trailer go here.

Majolica in the Movies: A Catered Affair

Last week I was flipping through channels on my TV and came upon an old movie from the 1950's, A Catered Affair. I was familiar with the movie, which starred Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine, but had never actually seen it. The prospect of watching Bette and Ernie in a love scene didn't particularly interest me, but I knew it had been recently turned into a Broadway musical with Harvey Fierstein which I found a little odd. The credits said that the screenplay was written by Paddy Chayefsky and Gore Vidal, a strange combination if there ever was one, so my curiosity was piqued.

The movie is about the turmoil brought to a lower middle class family by Bette's desire to throw a big, fancy wedding for daughter Debbie Reynolds. The main subplot of the movie involves classic character actor Barry Fitzgerald who plays Bette's live-in uncle, deciding to marry an elderly widow, Mrs. Rafferty, basically to get out of Bette's house where he no longer feels welcome. Mrs. Rafferty's home is one of those peculiar Hollywood set concoctions, part Victorian home, part Miss Haversham. In the big scene where Barry Fitzgerald first hints to the widow that he may be open to a marriage proposal, Barry is sitting in the widow's home at the dining table. Clear as a bell right behind his head is a large Forester majolica cheese dome!

Dorothy Stickney and Barry Fitzgerald in A Catered Affair

Barry Fitzgerald in A Catered Affair.

It was such a pleasant surprise to see such a familiar piece in such an old movie.

Forester majolica cheese bell

Then I started to wonder whatever happened to it. In an odd coincidence one that looked exactly like it surfaced on Ebay this past week from a dealer in California who claimed it came from an old California estate. Could this be the same cheese dome that was in the movie? It's probably unlikely but wouldn't it be a hoot to know that something in your collection once appeared in a Bette Davis movie?

The things we collect have had many lives before they reached us. It would certainly be fascinating to know the stories behind some of them.

To view the trailer go here.