Joyce Compton News & Notes

  After a time spent toiling in Hollywood’s margins, Joyce Compton finally arrived as a full-fledged actress in 1929. That year, she received one of her earliest substantial roles in Salute —a film also important in the career of its director, the legendary John Ford.   In Salute , Joyce is her usual delightful self as a saucy young temptress named Marian Wilson. As with Ford’s other movies, however, the predominant focus lay with the male characters and the strong camaraderie between them. This melodrama splashed with comedy follows the relationship of two brothers: confident, athletic John Randall (George O’Brien, a bit smarmy and reminding this viewer of Pre Code star Ricardo Cortez) and his more cerebral younger brother, Paul Randall (forgettable William Janney). Through a strange set of circumstances, they are raised by separate grandparents, and thus when they come of age they end up attending rival colleges. O’Brien stands out an Army cadet at West Point, while Janney b...

 I wanted to share some pages from a fun vintage book which was recently re-discovered in our library— Who Is That? The Late Late Viewer’s Guide to the Old Old Movie Players was Warren B. Meyers’ great attempt to catalogue most of the vivid supporting players seen in vintage movies of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. At the time of its publication (1967), old movies were primarily the domain of the off-hours on local television stations. That was it—unless one lived near a creatively programmed repertory house in a big city, or if you enjoyed watching 8MM films at home, were willing to spend the money to acquire them, and didn’t mind the sketchy quality.  It was kind of nice, then, that Meyers put so much effort into this book compiling endless head shots of forgotten actors, and organizing them by the “types” they were best known for. Joyce appears in the chapter entitled My, Isn’t She Cheap , which assembles just about every brassy blonde, cynical good time girl, or slightly used...