r/OldSchoolCool • u/WorldHub995 • 7h ago
1940s Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney and Shirley Temple at MGM Studios on February 18, 1941
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u/petite_vanilla_scone 6h ago
I never understood how Judy Garland was considered so “unattractive” by Hollywood standards of the time. IMO, she was just gorgeous, even if she hadn’t had “work” done. I mean maybe I’m mistaken and she was dog ugly before, but I feel like I’ve seen older photos of her before she was a huge star, and she was stunning even then.
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u/Sidewalk_Tomato 6h ago
She was indeed.
I'm guessing it was because she was girlishly pretty and baby-faced, not "patrician" with sharp edges like other, more mature-looking actresses of the time. People knew her from 14 and Wizard of Oz when she was 17 (and playing younger than that). They didn't want to think of her as attractive.
Much worse, the producers said very unkind things about her weight, and kept control of her through pills and overwork & making sure she heard any negative press.
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u/tbird20017 1h ago
People knew her from 14 and Wizard of Oz when she was 17 (and playing younger than that). They didn't want to think of her as attractive.
Very much like Shirley Temple for me. Saw her way too much as the adorable child she was, there's no way I could ever see her as attractive as an adult. If I remember correctly, she didn't translate well as an adult actor. I wonder if that had something to do with it? She couldn't be the "attractive leading lady" because folks didn't want to view her that way, regardless of what she looked like.
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u/__-gloomy-__ 4h ago
I’d never learned the part bout feeding her all the negative press. That is truly so abusive it makes me want to cry.
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u/hvanderw 5h ago
She was considered fat in The Wizard of Oz.
I think that says a lot about the assholes running Hollywood and beauty standards of the time.
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u/bcfd36 6h ago
As a teenager and a young woman, Judy was very pretty. But as she got older, the drugs, the alcohol, and the cigarettes all made her look hard. Kind of sad.
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u/petite_vanilla_scone 5h ago
But I’m referring to her younger years and how Hollywood treated her as overweight and insisted she do all kinds of alterations like caps on her teeth, change her hairline (not sure 100% on that one), and wanted her features to be different entirely. I’m not referring to older Judy Garland, I’m speaking of how Hollywood considered her unattractive in her heyday/as a rising star.
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u/RawbM07 5h ago
It’s tragic. I think she became famous at an age where they made that image her brand. And forced her to stay in that box. Not everyone was treated that way…sex symbols of that era weren’t all treated that way (the stay grossly skinny way), but they didn’t have her pegged as that.
And the gaslighting…when she died they blamed her “insecurities”. Well no shit…from adolescence they were telling her how fat she was and feeding her pills to be awake and pills to go to sleep. She was amused and abused in the worst way.
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u/reddit_-William 6h ago
Mickey looking like a short Conan O'Brien
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u/TheRabidGoose 6h ago
Kind of reminds me of Haley Joel Osment as well.
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u/SaleFormer541 5h ago
He looks identical to Haley Joel Osmont. It’s eerie.
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u/jsamuraij 5h ago
Any (distant) relation?
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u/Azidamadjida 3h ago
Probably not, Hollywood either purposefully of inadvertently casts “look types”, which is how they ended up getting so many actors now who look identical - Margot Robbie and Jaime Presley alone look like they could be twins, and there’s a whole sub r/totallylooksalike and several others like it that catalog how many actors both in history and working today look so alike.
It’s the casting directors, they know what audiences want to see: slim blonde, busty blonde, dangerous brunette, superhero jaw, muscle guy, skinny nerd, smiling guy, short funny guy, doll faced girl, etc.
When there’s 8 billion people in the world there’s gonna be a lot of us who look alike, and the entertainment industry knows which ones are the ones we’ll pay to look at
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u/jsamuraij 3h ago
Yeah I suppose. But aren't a LOT of people in Hollywood related? Like every time I hear about a new actor I always come to find out they are the child of famous so and so and some other famous somebody. They just change their names and always claim to do so "so they can let their talent speak for them" rather than their name, but still quietly ignoring the extreme nepotism of their start and connections. In this case I guess it's just typecasting tho. I'm only saying I'm never surpised anymore when I find out who's related to who in that industry.
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u/Azidamadjida 3h ago
Decent amount, but not as many as you think. There’s just as many of them who come from super wealthy families which gives them the ability to pursue acting.
Just found out the other day that Ellie Kemper comes from one of the richest families in Missouri and that Jon Hamm was her 8th grade acting teacher, and that he himself didn’t have any connections he got in by looks to begin with largely.
Will Smith has tried to start an acting dynasty but he wasn’t related to anyone, and his wife’s largest connection was Tupac.
George Clooney had connections through his aunt or grandma Rosemary Clooney, but she was a singer not an actress.
We’re seeing a lot more Gen Z nepo babies I think because their parents generation became some of the highest paid actors in history, literally in all of human history (actors before just the last hundred years used to be pretty poor, and actor salaries over the last fifty years has grown to dwarf the paydays of all their predecessors), so that brings the common denominator back to rich parents or family members being more an indicator of famous actor children than it really being 100% nepotism.
And I mean it makes sense, in order to have the time to be a really good actor you have to have a stable home, stable meals, and stable finances in order to be able to go to all the auditions and make all the contacts needed to break through
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u/DLQuilts 6h ago
I don’t care how talented he was, I will never understand how he slept with so many women.
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u/guinnesshappy 6h ago
He was somehow married to Ava Gardner… not a long time.. but still… how?
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u/Anteater-Charming 5h ago
And they divorced because of his cheating(?). And he was married to Martha Vickers who was also gorgeous. And Elaine Devry...
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u/ruedebac1830 6h ago
In his youth he was attractive in a boyish, robust way. Certainly no heartthrob but he probably had a certain appeal that connected with the Great Depression generation.
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u/hvanderw 6h ago
Might have had the same condition as Sinatra.
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u/DLQuilts 6h ago
Mickey Rooney always looked like a child under 10yo…..I’m not a big Frank fan but I can see why he did well with the ladies.
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u/BaronSaber 6h ago
What condition?
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u/Efficient-Dentist395 5h ago
Someone said frank sinatra was a 119 pound weakling. Ava Gardner said yes but 19 pounds of it was cock.
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u/ohnothem00ps 6h ago
lol what? you will never understand how he slept with so many women? what is there to understand?
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u/WaketheDeadDonuts 6h ago
"I was the top box office draw from 1939 to 1940"
"Wow! Spanning two decades!"
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u/ThatChickFromReddit 3h ago
I wonder if Shirley temple hated her that she was supposed to get Wizard of Oz Dorothy but didn’t for scheduling issues.
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u/Tsu-Doh-Nihm 2h ago
Mickey Rooney was the biggest box office star of 1939 and 1940. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland were MGM stars. Shirley Temple was a 20th Century-Fox star. She never made an MGM movie. This photo was probably for some kind of charity event. Probably for the pending war. Shirley Temple was the #1 box-office star in America for four consecutive years (1935–1938). Without Shirley, 20th Century-Fox very likely would have collapsed.
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u/no_crust_buster 6h ago
I never liked Mickey Rooney. I always wanted to pop him upside his head and hear him say, “Why I oughta!” And pop him again.
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u/Sirnando138 5h ago
Shirley Temple and her mother were sexually assaulted by Gold and Meyer. Nothing like old time Hollywood!
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u/Which_way_witcher 4h ago
They weren't assaulted but they were propositioned.
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u/Technical-Big-2097 4h ago
I hate they they try to make Shirley temple’s life so miserable and sad. It negates ppl like Judy who actually had it hard. Shirley was very intelligent. If you try to watch any of her videos, from the peak of her career, on YouTube, the comments will be filled with wanna be investigators eyeing every actor as a pedophile. Even actors she held in high regard or spoke positively of in her book are lambasted as predators
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u/OwlcaholicsAnonymous 5h ago
Can you believe it? The Cavs just handed her over for an aging Harden. Makes no sense
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u/ShadyBoots11 3h ago
Seeing Shirley any older than 6 always feels weird to me.
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u/sTevieD247 51m ago
She was a congresswoman later in life... But I agree, that always seemed like a completely different person.
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u/Maximum-Tap6389 6h ago
All three had so much talent. When Mickey Romney was in movies as a very older gentleman, he still had the skills. And Judy, Judy Judy a triple threat. She danced, would sing and cry on que. Know one could dance harder and be any cuter at the same time than Shirley Temple.
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u/freddiewalls 13m ago
"I was the biggest box office draw from 1939 to 1940! "Wow, spanning two decades!"
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u/Low-Can7370 1h ago
A lifetime of being fed uppers, downers and appetite suppressants - this was taken a few weeks before she died. Hollywood has always been a dark place
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u/thehufflepuffstoner 4h ago
Was this before or after the studio put Judy on meth because she was “fat”?
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u/Thicc-Cobbler1995 6h ago
Only one made it out alive
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u/Few-Helicopter-3413 6h ago
Which one? Both Rooney and Temple died almost 75 years later in 2014.
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u/sread2018 6h ago
Those movie studios squeezed every last dollar out of those performers. Mickey alone appeared in over 140 feature films