Classic Movie Moments (29 GIFs) https://t.co/KFA0TC0jvq pic.twitter.com/vJeLkGGiW8
— Old Pics Archive (@oldpicsarchive) January 22, 2017
Thanks to the Old Pics Archive.
By Nicholas Stix
In case you are wondering, “Lillian who”? “Hot” what? I had the same questions.
My interest was piqued by the gif I re-posted above.
(More pics of Lilian Bond can be found at Pinterest.)
The 5:49 video at the bottom of the page, by Old Pics Archive, has no narration or intertitles. It consists of countless stills, mostly from pictures of the 1930s and 1940s, of actress Lilian Bond who, like hundreds of pretty faces who headed out West, never made the jump from starlet to star. However, Bond was apparently quite a talent, and did pantomime, was a Ziegfeld girl, and starred, on the legitimate stage, from the 1920s-1940s. (The hyperbolic title is due to the video having been put together by Movie Legends.)
Her most famous role may have been her brief turn as Lily Langtry, in Willi Wyler’s classic Western, The Westerner (1940).
Lily Langtry was the obsession of the murderous “Judge” Roy Bean, and surely many other men, though most of them would not have been murderers.
The picture nominally starred Gary Cooper, but its real star was Walter Brennan, as the murderous “Judge,” who stole every scene he was in with “Coop.” Brennan took home his third Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, after which, I believe, Hollywood formulated an unwritten rule of “no more Oscars for Walter!”
(Brennan was nominated one more time, in 1941, for Howard Hawks’ classic biopic, Sergeant York, again opposite Coop, who took home his first Best Actor Oscar. However, Brennan didn’t have a ghost of a chance that time, and got no more nominations, in spite of his brilliant work in To Have and Have Not (Hawks, 1944) and Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955).)
Lilian Bond was born in London on January 18, 1908, and died of a heart attack (i.e., of old age) in Reseda, California, on January 25, 1991. She was married at least three times, and bore no children of her own, but had two stepchildren.
Lilian Bond was one of those players who was well-known in town, but who was one of the thousands of beauties who flocked there—many of them quite talented—yet who never caught on. She bore a resemblance to MGM's Myrna Loy, who became one of the silver screen’s biggest stars.
During the 1920s and ‘30s, the studios churned out pictures the way Detroit churned out automobiles, and so there was a great deal of work for extras and bit players. However, becoming a star, or even a featured player required not only great talent and pluck, but also luck. It helped greatly to marry a heavy hitter—a studio mogul, director, or producer—but that too was often not enough. And so, one tends to talk more about people Bond worked with, than Bond herself.
Movie Legends - Lilian Bond
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