Firearms Friday with Dorothy Sebastian

Born in 1903 in Birmingham, Alabama, Dorothy Sebastian was a Zigfield Girl who turned to screen acting. When she wasn't militantly enforcing safe driving practices around the MGM lot (we kid... maybe), she portrayed femme fatales and other "tough" female characters, both villainous and heroic, in a range of genres.

Sebastian's first film was "Half a Hero" in 1925, and she stayed busy playing supporting roles of varying sizes through the end of the Silent Era. Stardom, however, eluded her, and with the arrival of sound, her career entered a steep decline. By the mid-1930s, she was mostly taking small parts in Poverty Row B-movies, and even those became fewer and farther between as the 1940s arrived. (Highly public scandals involving tax evasion, multiple divorces, and drunk driving didn't help either.)

Sebastian's final film roles were uncredited bit-parts, with the last one in 1948's "The Miracle of Bells". She passed away in 1957 after battling cancer for several years.

Halloween is coming...

... and Dorothy Sebastian is getting the decorations ready and trying out costume ideas. How about you?

(And don't miss the 31 Nights of Halloween film and music festival, currently unfolding at our sister blog, Terror Titans!)

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans!

As we do every year on this Thanksgiving Thursday here at Shades of Gray, we're celebrating with breasts and legs... and Indians and Pilgrims and Turkey Dinners!

And what are we thankful for? We're thankful for everyone who's visited this blog over the past ten years... and we're extra thankful for those of you who keep coming back!

In celebration of Speak Like a Pirate Day

Yarr, me maties... here be pittures o' lady pirates and even some pirate booty shorts!

Maureen O'Hara

Kay English

Dorothy Sebastian

Wynn Gibson

Gwen Lee

Claudia Dell

Frances Drake (the most suitable lady pirate of all)

For more Talk Like a Pirate Day inspiration and goodies, be sure to check out this treasure chest full of novellas by Robert E. Howard, comics, roleplaying game scenarios, and some fiction vignettes from the host of Shades of Gray, Steve Miller! Click here for more!

'The Wide Open Spaces' is filled with funny

The Wide Open Spaces (1931)
Starring: Dorothy Sebastian, Ned Sparks, Antonio Moreno, and George Cooper
Director: Arthur Rossen
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A corrupt sheriff (Sparks) will go to any lengths to destroy the romance between the lovely Miss Rose (Sebastian) and the dashing John Smith (Moreno).

"The Wide Open Spaces" is a short film that lampoons just about any and every trope of westerns from the silent film and early talkies era that you can think of. It starts with a series of sight-gags and jokes revolving around gun-happy townsfolks, transitions into a series of gags based around the stereotypical wild west saloon, and ultimately settles into a spoof of melodramas with a love triangle involving the tough-as-nails-but-sexy saloon girl Rose (played by Dorothy Sebastian with perfect comedic timing), the crooked Sheriff Jack Rancid (played by Ned Sparks who does everything but twirl his mustache), and the mysterious Mexicano named John Smith (the romantic lead and mostly straight-man, played by Antonio Moreno).

While some jokes are funnier than others, there aren't any that fall flat--and that includes one involving Sebastian that I assume was somewhat shocking back in the day. One of the funniest is set up early in the picture and pays off at the very end when the evil sheriff gets his well-deserved come-uppance... while one of the most mysterious is the presence of a cross-dressing actor in black face portraying Rose's maid. This character is so strange and so out-of-place that I assume it's a reference to something contemporary audiences would have understood but is lost on me. (I have a couple ideas about what it might mean, but I can't help but feel that I'm looking at the scene with 21st century eyes and therefore imposing something on that wasn't there when it was filmed. If anyone has seen the "Wide Open Spaces" who wants to comment on cross-dressing maid in blackface, I'd love to hear your thoughts.)

All-in-all, this is another great bit of fast-moving, whacky fun from the Masquers Club... and one that I think will be as entertaining to the modern viewer as it was to audiences back in 1931.

Dorothy Sebastian is not impressed.