Tag Archives: Virginia Van Upp

by Rochelle Sara Miller | February 28, 2016 · 8:06 pm

Geek Moment: Film Footage of Virginia Van Upp at Rita Hayworth’s Wedding

So, I’m having a geek moment:

Below is the only piece of film footage I have found featuring Hollywood actress-screenwriter-producer, Virginia Van Upp. While Van Upp appeared in several early films as a child actress, many of these titles are now lost, or only exist as fragments. Although Van Upp was happy to swap acting for writing and producing, it seems she still retained some aspirations to act. She reportedly completed a screen test for one of the movies that she wrote entitled, Honeymoon in Bali (1939). Van Upp also planned to appear as an extra in The Loves of Carmen (1948). In 1983, Van Upp herself was portrayed by actress Jane Hallaren in the television movie Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess.

Note on footage:

In 1949, Van Upp attended Rita Hayworths’s wedding to Prince Aly Khan in Cannes. I noticed Van Upp in the below Pathé newsreel at around: 32 seconds. During the wedding ceremony Van Upp is standing by the wall on the far right, wearing a large, bonkers black hat and black-and-white patterned dress. Van Upp also appears again standing outside the wedding venue. You really get a sense of how petite she was – something reporters would often emphasize.

Hayworth and Van Upp were close friends. Van Upp wrote the screenplay to Cover Girl (1944) and produced and wrote Gilda (1946); both are two of Hayworth’s most memorable movies. For various labor reasons Van Upp did not receive writing credit for Gilda; this greatly angered Columbia Pictures studio boss Harry Cohn, who thought Van Upp more than deserved full credit.

Thanks to Pathé for making the footage accessible to the public!

Columbia Pictures, Rita Hayworth, and Virginia Van Upp

In my continued search for materials relating to Hollywood screenwriter-producer Virginia Van Upp, I was last week fortunate enough to visit the American Heritage Center (AHC) in Laramie, Wyoming, where I made some exciting discoveries.

The AHC holds an extensive collection of materials concerning the day-to-day operation of Columbia Pictures (1929 -1974). Van Upp worked at Columbia between the years 1941 – 1947. Her most successful movie at the studio was Gilda (1946), which she both wrote and produced. She briefly returned to work for the studio in 1951, assisting Rita Hayworth with the production of Affair in Trinidad.

The Columbia Pictures Collection at the AHC primarily consists of daily teletypes transmitted between the New York and Los Angeles offices. In these communications studio producers discuss particular films, publicity stunts, music rights, but above all else: Rita Hayworth! Discussions about Hayworth concern her films, contracts, clothes, travel arrangements, future productions, relationships….etc.

In addition to the teletypes, the collection also contains a few “Story Conference” transcriptions in which writers and producers discuss problems with various scripts and films. Among these records I found a few pages pertaining to the making of Gilda.

A big THANK YOU to the archivists at the AHC, all of whom are amazing.

My next port of call will be the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles.

: American Heritage Center (AHC), Wyoming

: Inside AHC

Archival Research on Virginia Van Upp

Despite asserting a historically rare degree of control for a woman working within Hollywood’s studio system of the 1930s and 40s, producer-screenwriter Virginia Van Upp (1902 -1970) has received little scholarly attention from film historians.

My research project entitled “The Rise of Virginia Van Upp” examines the filmmaker’s varied and impressive forty-five year career in Hollywood. Beginning as a child actor during the silent era, Van Upp went on to perform a wide range of jobs in the industry from screenwriting for Paramount, to executive producing such classics as Gilda and The Impatient Years at Columbia, and lastly working in ‘the wilderness’ attempting to launch several independent projects. Not unlike Van Upp, the ambitious female characters in her movies often use the media to curate images of themselves that boost their success. I suggest that through talent and media savvy, Van Upp established a unique auteurist authority for translating her vision from page to screen.

In addition to the close analysis of Van Upp’s movies, my research takes me on a tour of the studio archives, interviews with family members, and working through the hundreds of national, trade, and fan paper entries that address Van Upp’s career.

Tag Archives: Virginia Van Upp

Geek Moment: Film Footage of Virginia Van Upp at Rita Hayworth’s Wedding

Columbia Pictures, Rita Hayworth, and Virginia Van Upp

Archival Research on Virginia Van Upp

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