Joel McCrea and the Kirkhams

I don't really know any background on this shot. It appears to be a publicity shot from an MGM event. My parents were working behind the scenes on an MGM movie back in 1949, so it is possible that they were at an event on the studio lot. This is a photostatic copy of a glossy 8 x 10. The glossy is somewhere out in the shed and it would take me days to find it, but I saw that Joel McCrea is the Star of the Month on Turner Classic Movies for May and I wanted to get this up in time for that occasion. As you can see in addition to being a big star, McCrea was a big man. He also happened to come from the town my grandparents and parents settled in when the came to Southern California, South Pasadena. My Dad worked on a great number of movie and television projects but neglected to have the foresight to always a have a camera with him. If the smart phones of today had been available in their time, I would have some great pictures to share of Howard Keele, Ann Miller, Dick Van Dyke, Jimmy Durante, Diana Ross and many more. I like this shot because both of my parents are in it and they are not really posing so much as performing. My friend Ron, who was very close to my parents, shared a piece of info about the picture above. It appears to be on the set of "Stars in Your Crown", a Joel McCrea film from 1950. Ron says my Dad was a technical adviser on the film. I looked up the movie and there is a magician character featured in a traveling medicine show in this Civil War era Western. So Dad probably provided props, training or maybe an insert for the show. I was saddened to read that the actor who played the Medicine show magician actually died the week the movie was released. The movie is available as a Warner Brother's custom burned DVD, so I will be looking for it and watching it soon.