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Alyce Canfield

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Alyce Canfield
A young white woman with hair in marcelled waves
Alice Castille, later Alyce Canfield, from the 1924 yearbook of Glendale High School
Born
Alyce M. Castile

February 19, 1909
Los Angeles, California
DiedDecember 28, 1963 (aged 54)
Encino, California
Occupation(s)Writer, journalist

Alyce Castile Canfield (February 19, 1909 – December 28, 1963), born Alyce M. Castile, was an American writer and journalist. She wrote short fiction and covered film stars for magazines, and co-wrote celebrity autobiographies.

Early life and education

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Alyce Castile was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of Andrew Blaine Castile and Mabel E. Castile. Her father was a landscape architect born in Nebraska,[1] and her mother was a restaurant manager, born in Mexico. The Castile family lived in Manhattan Beach in the 1910s,[2][3] and in Glendale in the 1920s. She attended Glendale High School, at the same time as John Wayne.[4] In childhood she worked as an extra in silent films.[5] She attended the University of California, Los Angeles,[6] where she was a columnist for the Daily Bruin.[7]

Career

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Canfield was "considered one of the most prolific free-lance writers in Hollywood today," according to a 1947 profile,[5] Her byline was frequently seen in celebrity magazines in the 1940s and 1950s, including Motion Picture Magazine, Screenland,[8][9][10] Liberty, Screen Stars,[11][12] Screen Guide, TV Revue,[13] Coronet,[14] and Movieland. She co-wrote autobiographical books with director Mervyn LeRoy[15] and cosmetic surgeon Robert Alan Franklyn.[16] Her final book was God in Hollywood (1961) which was an attempt "to document the religious lives of movie stars."[17]

Canfield also wrote for radio and television.[5] She promoted the career of actor Keefe Brasselle, who had been her assistant on a publicity job.[18] In her last years, she was a writer and executive producer for a television program, Underground USA.[19] Films based on works by Canfield included Models Inc. (1952) and Death Over My Shoulder (1958).

Books

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  • It Takes More Than Talent (1953, with Mervyn LeRoy)[20]
  • Beauty Surgeon (1960, with Robert Alan Franklyn)[16]
  • God in Hollywood (1961)[17]

Personal life

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Castile married columnist Homer Cisne Canfield in 1931. Her second husband was William Randall "Jerry" Jerome;[21] they married in 1948.[22] "Despondent over a lengthy illness,"[23] she died by suicide in 1963, at the age of 54, on the Ventura Freeway in Encino, California.[19] Geraldine Russell, mother of actress Jane Russell, conducted Canfield's funeral service in Hollywood.[23]

References

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  1. ^ "Andrew B. Castile". The Los Angeles Times. 1951-03-30. p. 24. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. ^ "Manhattan Beach". The Los Angeles Times. 1916-09-24. p. 35. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ "Manhattan Beach Happenings". The Redondo Reflex. 1916-04-07. p. 9. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ Glendale High School, Stylus (1924 yearbook): 36. via Ancestry.com
  5. ^ a b c Ross, Jerry (1947-03-18). "Words! Words! Words! She Makes a Tidy Fortune Out of them". St. Louis Globe-Democrat. p. 11. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ^ Whitaker, Alma (1930-04-27). "Sugar and Spice". The Los Angeles Times. p. 47. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ^ "Miss Weir Chosen in Co-Ed Fashion Show Models Group". The San Bernardino County Sun. 1930-05-07. p. 9. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Canfield, Alyce (December 1945). "This Week: Clark Gable". Screenland – via Internet Archive.
  9. ^ Canfield, Alyce (May 1947). "'Thorobred Mongrel' and 'Things You Don't Know about Cary Grant'". Screenland. 51 (7): 39–41, 83 – via Internet Archive.
  10. ^ Canfield, Alyce (June 1947). "'Mr. Exhibitor Has His Fling' and 'I'm the Luckiest Man in the World'". Screenland. 51 (8): 34–35, 40–41 – via Internet Archive.
  11. ^ Griffin, Sean (2011). What Dreams Were Made of: Movie Stars of the 1940s. Rutgers University Press. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-8135-4963-7.
  12. ^ Kaminski, Theresa (2022-04-15). Queen of the West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 160. ISBN 978-1-4930-4523-5.
  13. ^ Becker, Christine (2008). It's the Pictures That Got Small: Hollywood Film Stars on 1950s Television. Wesleyan University Press. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-8195-6894-6.
  14. ^ Canfield, Alyce (August 1950). "What Keeps Gable Clicking?". Coronet. 28 (4): 55–60 – via Internet Archive.
  15. ^ Davis, Fitzroy (1953-05-24). "Hacking One's Way to the Top in High Voltage Hollywood". Chicago Tribune. p. 212. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ^ a b Franklyn, Robert Alan.; Canfield, Alyce. (1960). Beauty surgeon. Long Beach, Calif.: Whitehorn Pub. Co.
  17. ^ a b Smith, Jeffery A. (July 2001). "Hollywood Theology: The Commodification of Religion in Twentieth-Century Films". Religion and American Culture. 11 (2): 191–231. doi:10.1525/rac.2001.11.2.191. ISSN 1052-1151. S2CID 145770030.
  18. ^ Hopper, Hedda (1951-04-22). "This Rising Young Actor Known as 'Little Sir Ego'". The Baltimore Sun. p. 72. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  19. ^ a b "Woman Writer Drops onto Freeway to Kill Self". San Bernardino Sun. December 30, 1963. Retrieved July 16, 2023 – via California Digital Newspaper Collection.
  20. ^ LeRoy, Mervyn (1953). It Takes More Than Talent, as Told to Alyce Canfield. Knopf.
  21. ^ "Farewell Event Staged for Jerry Jerome". Los Angeles Evening Citizen News. 1950-06-12. p. 6. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  22. ^ "Anniversaries". Daily News. 1950-07-19. p. 23. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. ^ a b "Alyce Jerome". The San Francisco Examiner. 1964-01-01. p. 50. Retrieved 2023-07-17 – via Newspapers.com.
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