“The reason I sought out Betty Garrett’s book in the first place was because of something devastating that I read – and didn’t want to be true – in Farley[…]
Category: Actors & Personalities
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
Making Montgomery Clift: An Intimate Exploration of a Hollywood Enigma
As Robert Clift states in the film: “The people in my life who loved Monty lost him twice: in his death, and then again when they couldn’t find him in[…]
Looking for Quiet: The Other Side of Robert Mitchum
Considering Mitchum’s background, it’s forgivable to conflate his cinematic existentialist tough guys with his mythic, often dubious, real-life history. Some things are certain, though: Mitchum lost his father early, crushed[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists
Extinguishing Features: The Last Years of Richard Pryor
Editor’s Note: Richard Pryor died on this date, December 10, 2005, nine days shy of his sixty-fifth birthday. We salute this comic genius and cultural game-changer by reposting Julian Upton’s[…]
A Mannequin’s Face: Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford was born on this day in 1905. Our buddy Howard Mandelbaum wrote this incisive tribute to her in the 1970s. We reprint it here for your reading pleasure.[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy
No One Gets In Alive! Kicking Down Doors with the Marx Brothers
The Brothers don’t enter into sanctimonious class systems, organizational institutions, or drawing rooms to assimilate and enjoy the fruits of its privileges either; they gain access, enact a savage modus[…]
Actors & Personalities · Franchises & Series · Interviews
A Man for All Seasons: An Interview with Dean Cain
I feel like I get to go and play at it now. I mean, I take it very seriously and I do the work. But it feels more like play[…]
Actors & Personalities · Festivals & Awards · Historical & Epic
Keeping It Royal: Oscar Loves British Monarchs Much More Than American Presidents
The moral of this particular dose of Oscar reality: You don’t have to be a royal to grab the Academy’s attention, but it sure helps if you’re pretending to be[…]
Margaret Sullavan and the Art of Dying
Note: One of our favorite actresses, Margaret Sullavan, was born on May 16, 1909, which means she’d be 111 if she’d lived. Not that she’d necessarily have wanted to, as[…]
Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame
“I’m a girl who loves to be manhandled! After all, what are a few contusions or abrasions if you get the man you love?”
Actors & Personalities · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Silents
Boxcars, Beery, and a Dutch Bob: William Wellman’s Beggars of Life (1928) on Blu-ray
What we see in Brooks and Beery on the screen is a mixup of the actors’ hardwired personalities and those contrived for their roles, but this is the sort of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Film Technology & History · Silents
Florence Lawrence and the Truth Behind “We Nail a Lie” (Famous Ads, 1910)
Ever since the ad appeared, there have been unanswered questions: who or what was behind the rumors of Florence Lawrence’s death? Did these rumors start because the fans of her[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
Jerry Lewis: b. Joseph Levitch, Newark, New Jersey, 1926-2017, res. Hollywood
“The major point of convergence between Cassavetes and the Dogme movement is an oppositional realist form that blurs the boundaries between being and performing.”
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words Gets Up Close and Personal
Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words makes clear that her life was messy and episodic, but she earned great love from her directors, co-stars, and family. Don’t wait for Mommie[…]
Actors & Personalities · Noir · War
Strangers in Purgatory: On the “Jewish Experience,” Film Noir, and Émigré Actors Fritz Kortner and Ernst Deutsch
An examination of two of these émigrés – Fritz Kortner and Ernst Deutsch, major Central European actors, very well known in their home countries before leaving them in duress, both[…]
Happy Birthday, Doris Day! (b. April 3, 1922) All Her Films, Ranked and Annotated
When I wrote my piece in praise of Doris Day for Bright Lights back in December 2015, I had seen about half of her thirty-nine movies. Now that I’ve seen[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · LGBT & Queer
Get Real: How Much Reality Do We Want in Acting?
Isn’t it the job of an actor to play what he or she is not? * * * It was Jeffrey Tambor who got me thinking about authenticity in acting.[…]
Actors & Personalities · Essays
The Elephant in the Graveyard: The Testament of John Derek
Everywhere she was, there was Eden. – Mark Twain * * * So this is what it’s like on the other side. Not exactly how I pictured it. Nothing like[…]
Happy Birthday to Cinema’s Great Bad Boy: Peter O’Toole (8/2/32-12/14-13)
“Arriving in Los Angeles for the film’s premiere there, he quickly blotted his copybook by hurling a drink at the producer Sam Spiegel, the most powerful man in Hollywood at the time. Spiegel had ‘massacred’ Lawrence, O’Toole remarked, by cutting twenty minutes of it in order ‘to sell more fucking ice cream to the punters.'”
