CelluloidKid
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Posts posted by CelluloidKid
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*_V.I. Warshawski, Detective in High Heels_ (1991)*
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*_Vampire in Brooklyn_ (1995)*
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*Mon, Feb 1, 2010 @ 12:00 PM Daisy Kenyon (1947) .. FMC (Fox Movie Channel | Fox) Channel!!*
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*Mon, Feb 1, 2010 @ 12:00 PM _Daisy Kenyon_ (1947) .. FMC (Fox Movie Channel | Fox) Channel!!*
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*Fri, Jan 29, 2010 @ 10:30 AM (Eastern Time!) - Check Your Local Schedule!*
*_Johnny Guitar_ (1954)*
"I'm a stranger here myself": the style of Nicolas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954) made it something of an outsider within the Western tradition. Its bright colours and melodramatic tendencies were quite a departure from the sombre tones of the classic Western. It was also unusual in its foregrounding of the female leads, Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, in a boy's own genre.
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*Fri, Jan 29, 10:30 AM (Eastern Time!) - Check Your Local Schedule!*
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*'Little Orphan Annie' radio actress*
*In 1930s, Shirley Bell Cole, of Chicago, played the redhead girl on the radio but didn't like Ovaltine*
Chicago Tribune
Trevor Jensen
Jan 26, 2010
*In the minds of boys and girls in the 1930s, Shirley Bell Cole was a plucky little redhead engaged in thrilling adventures she punctuated with exclamations like, "Leapin' lizards!"*
*In real life, Mrs. Cole was a dark-haired girl from Chicago whose job playing radio's "Little Orphan Annie" helped support a handful of families struggling through the Depression.*
She didn't even care much for Ovaltine, the show's sponsor.
But she was, in many ways, just as indomitable as the fictional heroine to whom she gave her voice. Six days a week, she boarded a bus or streetcar for the trip downtown to tape two 15-minute segments. Knowing that many people depended on her paycheck, she performed like a seasoned pro and missed only one performance during a decade of work, said her daughter, Lori Cole.
Mrs. Cole, 89, died of natural causes Tuesday, Jan. 12, in Arizona, her daughter said.
"Little Orphan Annie" aired before radio ratings were taken, but the show's immense popularity could be measured by the success of the promotional deals it advertised for Ovaltine.
When a Little Orphan Annie decoder could be had for the seals from two jars of Ovaltine, hundreds of thousands of kids sucked down their malted milk and sent in to claim one.
The show was produced by Ovaltine's advertising agency, which shielded child actors from fan mail and other indications of their popularity, said Chuck Schaden, the longtime host of old-time radio programs in Chicago.
Years later, Mrs. Cole was amazed at the attention she received at old-time radio conventions and shows, Schaden said.
"She really was a radio icon," Schaden said
Shirley Bell was born on the South Side, but she lived in a series of apartments through her childhood as her extended family found ways to make ends meet, said Susan Cox, who collaborated with Mrs. Cole on a book about her radio memories.
She had a classic stage mother and was singing in the synagogue while still a tot, Cox said. By the age of 6 she was on radio, a medium still in its infancy.
When the call went out for a girl to play Little Orphan Annie, a popular comic by Harold Gray, hundreds of girls auditioned. Mrs. Cole gave a reading with an enthusiasm that embodied the character and was immediately hired, Cox said.
For nearly 10 years, first on WGN-AM and then on the NBC network, Annie, her adoptive father Daddy Warbucks, dog Sandy and good chum Joe Corntassle entertained children gathered around the radio in the late afternoon.
Mrs. Cole, who was 10 when she took the role, continued to play Annie even as she moved through her teenage years, showing up for rehearsals and live broadcasts after classes at Lake View High School.
"My first vacation wasn't until 1940," she told the Tribune in 1979. "Eventually, I had to drop out of high school and finish with a tutor."
Her paycheck was doled out among several families. While she later said she had fun with the people she worked with, she knew she missed out on a lot of normal childhood activities.
"She looked back and said she really didn't have a childhood, and she regretted that," Schaden said.
When Little Orphan Annie was replaced by Captain America around 1940, Mrs. Cole was essentially finished with radio.
She married Irwin Cole, a businessman, and raised three daughters in north suburban Glencoe. Every now and then, she pulled out the curly red wig she wore for appearances as Annie, much to her children's amusement.
"Annie" went on to become a hit musical, and nostalgia for old-time radio sparked by shows like Schaden's gave Mrs. Cole a fresh appreciation for her early career.
"She did come to embrace those days," Schaden said.
Mrs. Cole's husband died in 1998. Her daughter declined to provide details on other surviving family members.
Services will be private.
*In this posed publicity photo for radio's Little Orphan Annie, Joe Corntassel (Allan Baruck) watches as Annie (Shirley Bell) embraces her dog Sandy.*
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/ct-met-0126-cole-obit-20100126,0,1746368.story
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*Requiem for a Dream (2000)*
Sara Goldfarb: Ah, it's not the same. They don't need me. I like the way I feel. I like thinking about the red dress and the television and you and your father. Now when I get the sun, I smile.
Marion: Anybody wanna waste some time?
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*Jean Simmons on TCM*
Alt Film Guide (blog) - Andre Soares - Jan 27, 2010
*Jean Simmons, who died on Jan. 22 at age 80, will have next Friday evening dedicated to her on Turner Classic Movies. Beginning at 5pm PT, TCM will show three Jean Simmons movies:*
*David Lean?s Great Expectations (1946), and Richard Brooks? Elmer Gantry (1960) and The Happy Ending (1969).*
Many consider the Academy Award-nominated *Great Expectations* the greatest film adaptation of a Charles Dickens? novel. Needless to say, I disagree. (I much prefer the mostly forgotten and generally dismissed Nicholas Nickleby, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti in 1947.) Yet, even this naysayer must agree that Lean?s Great Expectations has much to offer, including Guy Green?s superb black-and-white cinematography and Finlay Currie?s flawless portrayal of fugitive Abel Magwitch. John Mills, on the other hand, was much too old to play Pip, while Valerie Hobson?s Estella should have gone to Margaret Lockwood or Merle Oberon or Vivien Leigh or Jean Simmons herself ? ten years later. (Simmons plays the Young Estella in this version; in the 1991 TV remake, she was the elderly Miss Havisham.)
*Elmer Gantry*, in which a con man joins forces with a female fundamentalist Christian preacher, is long but interesting ? though not as good as it could have been, thanks in part to Brooks? bowdlerization of Sinclair Lewis? scathing attack on evangelical fanaticism and corruption. (Actually, the film only covers a section of the book.) As the con man, Burt Lancaster?s acting mostly consists of flashing a blinding grin every few seconds, but young-and-sweet Shirley Jones is surprisingly good as a sex worker who doesn?t say no to an indecent proposal (even if she repents later on), and Jean Simmons is great as the (purified) Aimee Semple McPhersonish preacher.
Both Lancaster and Jones won Oscars. Simmons should have been at least nominated, but wasn?t. Generally, the "split vote" rationale, which attempts to explain why a dark horse wins at the Oscars, is utterly absurd; in this case, however, it makes sense. Simmons most probably didn?t get nominated because her votes were indeed split. After all, that same year she received raves for her performance as Kirk Douglas? slave wife in Stanley Kubrick?s Spartacus. Today, they could have pushed her as a supporting player for Spartacus. Back in those days, that wasn?t usually done. As a result, Simmons had to compete against herself. The Academy?s preferential voting system took care of the rest.
*The Happy Ending*, about a disillusioned housewife who goes after her own life, is both weak and moralizing. Compounding matters, Simmons isn?t quite at her best. But since there was no Spartacus that year and relatively few significant roles for women in American films, she ended up getting an Academy Award nomination. She lost the Oscar to Maggie Smith for the British-made The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. John Forsythe, Shirley Jones (not as a sex worker) and Bobby Darin (as a sex worker) co-star.
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*Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank and family, dies at 100*
By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
*Miep Gies, the last survivor of those who risked death to hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, died Jan. 11 in the Netherlands. Ms. Gies had suffered a fall on Christmas, and her Web site said she died after a brief illness. She was 100.*
Anne Frank was a teenager who died in a concentration camp after her family was betrayed to the Nazis. The diary she kept while in hiding in Amsterdam is among the best known literary works of the World War II period and is widely read around the world.
Although controversy surrounds some aspects of the diary, Ms. Gies has been credited with preserving it and turning it over to Anne's father, Otto, after the war.
The Frank saga has come to symbolize both the heroism of individuals and the tragedy of the Holocaust.
In an interview published online, Ms. Gies said she thought it was "perfectly natural" to have aided the Franks and several others who were hiding with them at Prinsengracht 263.
"We did our duty as human beings," she said. "Helping people in need."
From July 1942 until the August 1944 betrayal, the Franks and the others were hidden in sealed-off rooms of Otto Frank's company. In addition to working for the company, Opekta, Ms. Gies became a close friend of the family.
Several people played a part in protecting the group. Ms. Gies bicycled all over Amsterdam to get vegetables and meat without raising suspicion. She was also credited with giving Anne books and newspapers.
Miep Gies was born into a working-class family in Vienna in 1909. As a child, her name was Hermine Santruschitz. During the first World War, food was scarce, and it was later feared that she might die.
At the age of 11, a Dutch workers' union helped bring her to the Netherlands to restore her health, and she made her home there. After completing high school, she began working as an office assistant. In her early 20s, she was hired by Otto Frank and put in charge of a complaint desk.
After the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, she recognized the danger to people to whom she was close.
"We felt deep anxiety for our Jewish friends," she wrote, and told of "special pangs of regret for the Franks, with their two young children."
She was summoned to the German consulate, where she was asked about her refusal to join a Nazi girls' group.
A German official said she would have to return to Vienna unless she married a Dutch citizen. She and Jan Gies had been close since 1930, and in 1941, they married. She became a Dutch citizen. Miep was a nickname.
Jan Gies, who was in the Dutch resistance, died in 1993. Ms. Gies is survived by a son and three grandchildren.
According to her Web site, it was less than a year after she married that Otto Frank told her of his plans to hide from the Nazis.
He asked whether she would assume the responsibility of caring for him, his family and those who would try to hide with them.
As she recounted later, her response was, "Of course."
Miep Gies, 1989
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*Waiting for Dublin (2007)*
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*Cagney, James*
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*_Sadie McKee_ (1934)*
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Lloyd Bridges was in: _Airplane!_ (1980) with co-star Julie Hagerty!
*NEW STAR: Julie Hagerty!*
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*East Valley Tribune'Mary Poppins' visits MADCAP Theaters*
East Valley Tribune - Jan 26, 2010
*Before ?Mary Poppins? comes to the ASU Gammage stage in two weeks, the magical British nanny is coming back to a Tempe movie theater.*
*MADCAP Theaters will host a screening of the 1964 Walt Disney film ?Mary Poppins? at 7 p.m. Thursday, and the first five people to buy a ticket to the screening will each get a pair of tickets to the live musical stage version coming Feb. 11 to ASU Gammage.*
*Everyone who attends will be entered in a drawing to win free tickets to the musical.*
?Mary Poppins? was the first of Walt Disney?s feature films to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Actress Julie Andrews won an Oscar for her portrayal of the nanny who was ?practically perfect in every way,? and the song ?Chim Chim Cher-ee? won an Oscar as well.
Tickets to the movie screening at MADCAP Theaters are $5 each. Online ticket sales for the event stop at 4 p.m. Thursday but will be sold at the theater box office until showtime or until the theater reaches capacity. For ticket availability, call (480) 634-5192.
The stage version comes to ASU Gammage Feb. 11-28. Tickets to those shows are $19.75-$130.
MADCAP Theaters is at 730 S. Mill Ave. in Tempe. For information, call (480) 634-5192 or visit www.madcaptheaters.com.
*Madcap Theaters*
*madcaptheaters.com*
*730 S Mill Ave*
*Tempe, AZ 85281-4250*
*(480) 634-5192*
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*With Salinger dead, will 'Catcher in the Rye' finally be filmed?*
The death of reclusive novelist J.D. Salinger at 91 would seem to remove the major obstacle to filming his masterpiece, "The Catcher in the Rye.'' Producers have unsuccessfully sought the rights to this and Salinger's other works for decades, and perhaps his heirs will be more cooperative. The only authorized Salinger screen adaptation to date is "My Foolish Heart'' (1949), a Susan Hayward-Dana Andrews movie that was derived from "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut,'' a short story about a soldier and his girl during World War II that J.D. wrote for the New Yorker. Salinger was reportedly appalled by Mark Robson's movie and refused to let any of his other works be filmed.
January 28, 2010 ι Lou Lumenick
New York Post
*Adapted from J. D. Salinger's 1948 short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut," it remains the only authorized film adaptation of Salinger's work; the filmmakers' infidelity to his story famously precluded any possibility of film versions of other Salinger works, including The Catcher in the Rye.*
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Thursday, January 28th, 2010
After receiving an email that stated "Miramax offices will be closed as of Friday, January 29" late Wednesday night, a story detailing the closure appeared on The Warp. Starting Thursday, offices owned by The Walt Disney Company in New York and Los Angeles will no longer be operating. It is reported that over eighty people will be out of work. And at this time, six films are still awaiting distribution.
The films now in limbo include Last Night, which revolves around a married couple separated for the night and resisting former lovers. The Debt, a film that follows three Mossad agents as they set out to capture a notorious Nazi War criminal. And The Tempest, a big screen adaptation of Shakespeare's play that features Helen Mirren and comedian Russell Brand teaming up for the first, and possibly last, time. The films are expected to be indefinitely shelved or get a very limited release before being dumped onto the home video market.
Miramax has been operating for thirty-one years under the notorious team of Bob and Harvey Weinstein. With the company, they have paved the way for Independent cinema. About the closure, Harvey stated, "I'm feeling very nostalgic right now. I know the movies made on my and my brother Bob's watch will live on as well as the fantastic films made under the direction of Daniel Battsek. Miramax has some brilliant people working within the organization and I know they will go on to do great things in the industry."
The Weinsteins have tried to buy the company back from Disney, but Disney has not responded to their offers as of this time.
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*'Poltergeist' Actress Zelda Rubinstein Dies*
1/28/2010
Erica Sanderson
TheCelebrityCafe.com
*Zelda Rubinstein, star of Steven Spielberg?s Poltergeist, died Tuesday after complications from a heart attack two months prior, the New York Daily News reported. Rubinstein, 76, had remained in a Los Angeles hospital since the heart attack, trying to recover.*
Rubinstein was a beloved character actress most known for her role as the psychic Tangina Barrons, who performed an exorcism to rid a house of demons in Poltergeist. She reprised her role in all of the Poltergeist sequels.
Her small frame, which was just above 4 feet, and unique child-sounding voice made Rubinstein a scene-stealer.
The actress also regularly appeared on the TV show Picket Fences as the meddlesome receptionist Ginny Weedon. And her movie appearances included Sixteen Candles and Frances.
According to the NY Daily News, Rubinstein was an AIDS and little people advocate. She contributed to TV awareness ads about AIDS and demanded better treatment of little people in the entertainment industry.
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*?Catcher in the Rye? author J.D. Salinger dies*
*Writer who shunned the world he shocked died in his isolated home at 91*
NEW YORK - J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.
Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.
Immortal anti-hero
"The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made "Catcher" a featured selection, advised that for "anyone who has ever brought up a son" the novel will be "a source of wonder and delight ? and concern."
Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I go crazy," Holden soon became American literature's most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn. The novel's sales are astonishing ? more than 60 million copies worldwide ? and its impact incalculable. Decades after publication, the book remains a defining expression of that most American of dreams ? to never grow up.
Salinger was writing for adults, but teenagers from all over identified with the novel's themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, not to mention the luck of having the last word. "Catcher" presents the world as an ever-so-unfair struggle between the goodness of young people and the corruption of elders, a message that only intensified with the oncoming generation gap.
Novels from Evan Hunter's "The Blackboard Jungle" to Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," movies from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "The Breakfast Club," and countless rock 'n' roll songs echoed Salinger's message of kids under siege. One of the great anti-heroes of the 1960s, Benjamin Braddock of "The Graduate," was but a blander version of Salinger's narrator.
The cult of "Catcher" turned tragic in 1980 when crazed Beatles fan Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon, citing Salinger's novel as an inspiration and stating that "this extraordinary book holds many answers."
By the 21st century, Holden himself seemed relatively mild, but Salinger's book remained a standard in school curriculums and was discussed on countless Web sites and a fan page on Facebook.
Other works
Salinger's other books don't equal the influence or sales of "Catcher," but they are still read, again and again, with great affection and intensity. Critics, at least briefly, rated Salinger as a more accomplished and daring short story writer than John Cheever.
The collection "Nine Stories" features the classic "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," the deadpan account of a suicidal Army veteran and the little girl he hopes, in vain, will save him. The novel "Franny and Zooey," like "Catcher," is a youthful, obsessively articulated quest for redemption, featuring a memorable argument between Zooey and his mother as he attempts to read in the bathtub.
"Catcher," narrated from a mental facility, begins with Holden recalling his expulsion from a Pennsylvania boarding school for failing four classes and for general apathy.
He returns home to Manhattan, where his wanderings take him everywhere from a Times Square hotel to a rainy carousel ride with his kid sister, Phoebe, in Central Park. He decides he wants to escape to a cabin out West, but scorns questions about his future as just so much phoniness.
"I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?" he reasons. "The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I know? I swear it's a stupid question."
"The Catcher in the Rye" became both required and restricted reading, periodically banned by a school board or challenged by parents worried by its frank language and the irresistible chip on Holden's shoulder.
"I'm aware that a number of my friends will be saddened, or shocked, or shocked-saddened, over some of the chapters of 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all of my best friends are children," Salinger wrote in 1955, in a short note for "20th Century Authors."
"It's almost unbearable to me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach," he added.
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David Farrar WAS IN: _Gone to Earth_ (1950), the film was significantly changed for the American market by David O. Selznick and retitled The Wild Heart.
*Film producer: David O. Selznick*
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Before Elia Kazan began directing films, however, he occasionally played supporting roles in them, one of those films being the 1941 _Blues in the Night_ directd by Anatole Litvak!
*Celebri-links .. Anatole Litvak!*
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Elia Kazan directed the _The Arrangement_ (1969) with Deborah Kerr!
*NEW STAR: Deborah Kerr!*
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_Quiet Days in Clichy_ (1975)
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Ed Harris (I love Ed Harris ... Very Unde3r-Rated!).. In 1983, Ed became a star, playing astronaut John Glenn in The _Right Stuff_. Twelve years later, a film with a similar theme led to Harris being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of NASA mission director Gene Kranz in _Apollo 13_ directed by Ron Howard!
*NEW DIRECTOR: Ron Howard!*
Name a Celebrity - Name a Movie
in Games and Trivia
Posted
Martha Hyer's most significant role came as the love interest of Frank Sinatra in _Some Came Running_ for director Vincente Minnelli in 1958, for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
*NEW DIRECTOR: Vincente Minnelli!*