{"id":308,"date":"2012-11-17T18:04:10","date_gmt":"2012-11-17T23:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=308"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:30:36","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:30:36","slug":"howards-blend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=308","title":{"rendered":"Howard\u2019s Blend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Do you recognize this woman?\u00a0 She was a fashion editor for Harper\u2019s Bazaar<\/em>, a famous singer at the Metropolitan Opera, and she had her jaw broken by Barbara Stanwyck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yet you probably don\u2019t know her for any of those things.<\/p>\n

The woman in this photo is Kathleen Howard (1884-1956), who is best remembered today as probably the most memorable in a string of \u201cshrewish wives\u201d depicted in WC Fields films.\u00a0 Like Fields regular Elise Cavanna, who I wrote about last year, Howard moved seamlessly between major careers.\u00a0 She was renowned in each one, but each was different enough that many people don\u2019t realize that she was the same Kathleen Howard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Howard\u2019s performances in three of Fields\u2019 films, You\u2019re Telling Me <\/em>(1934), It\u2019s a Gift <\/em>(1934), and The Man on the Flying Trapeze <\/em>(1935) are nothing short of brilliant.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to descend into just a bitchy, clich\u00e9d performance as a Fields wife, but Howard transcends that.\u00a0 She\u2019s given the characters a back story, and you can feel the frustrations in her life that have made her into the person she is.\u00a0 That said, she is also supremely awful to Fields, in ways that have him cringing in fear.\u00a0 Howard is human but still horrible.<\/p>\n

Back in the pre-internet days, we\u2019d look at Howard\u2019s filmography and see that she seemed to burst on the scene in 1934 with a supporting performance in Death Takes a Holiday<\/em>.\u00a0 But where was she before that?\u00a0 Most stage actors dabbled in silent film and had a few credits before gaining fame in talkies.<\/p>\n

But Kathleen Howard never made a silent film.\u00a0 She was busy singing.\u00a0 As a child, she wanted to be a singer, but everyone told her that could never happen.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t stop her.\u00a0 She worked her way to the top as a contralto at the Metropolitan Opera.<\/p>\n

She even wrote a highly entertaining book about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s called Confessions of an Opera Singer<\/em>, and you can read it here<\/a>.\u00a0 Interestingly, her story parallels Edie Adams\u2019 story (which Adams also chronicled in a book).\u00a0 Both were told that they couldn\u2019t make it as singers, that almost no one really did, that women couldn\u2019t handle their own careers, etc.\u00a0 And both were determined to make it anyway, which they did.<\/p>\n

Howard was popular enough outside the opera house to be a recording star, and it\u2019s actually fairly easy to hear her singing in the late teens and early twenties.\u00a0 Here are some<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the best parts are for young singers, and Howard got a little old for it by the mid-1920s, so she switched gears.\u00a0 She became the fashion editor for the magazine Harper\u2019s Bazaar<\/em>.\u00a0 This was no third-rate magazine; it was one of the best in the business, and Howard wrote many articles while managing the other contributors.\u00a0 (This also parallels Edie Adams somewhat, since Edie became her own fashion designer in the 1960s.)\u00a0 You can see the cover of one of her Harper\u2019s<\/em> issues here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, abruptly, in 1934, she offered her talents to Hollywood.\u00a0 This may sound like a leap of faith, but as an opera performer, one is also doing a great deal of acting, so she was not without considerable experience.<\/p>\n

Again, I don\u2019t like to link to YouTube clips that violate copyright, and I didn\u2019t post this one, but in this case, I really think you need to see Howard in action.\u00a0 This is the porch scene from It\u2019s a Gift <\/em>(1934), which is one of the funniest scenes in one of the funniest films ever made.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t agree with me, then you\u2019re wrong.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even going to argue with you about it.<\/p>\n