Actors & Personalities · DVD & Blu-ray · Silents
Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Mack Sennett, Harry Langdon, W. C. Fields, Ben Turpin – the gang’s all here. Flicker Alley, a home video company founded in 2007, is not solely dedicated[…]
The centenary of the English film and stage actor Kenneth More’s birth falls on September 20 2014. I knew him slightly, and I’m confident in saying he wouldn’t have minded[…]
Actors & Personalities · Essays · LGBT & Queer
“The privileging of star persona over actor’s craft insists that sex within a narrative cannot, in fact, be a purely storytelling tool: it is required to be both a character[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · TV & Streaming · Westerns
Today is actor Richard Boone’s birthday (June 18, 1917 – January 10, 1981). We’re celebrating it by reprinting Alan Vanneman’s pithy write-up (previously published in issue 48, May 2005) of[…]
Katrin Cartlidge, born May 15, 1961, died on September 7, 2002 at age 41. Julian Upton’s tribute to this remarkable actress first appeared in Bright Lights in November 2003. *[…]
Mary Astor was born May 3, 1906 and died September 25, 1987. In honor of this superb star, we present Imogen Sara Smith’s profile, which originally appeared in Bright Lights in[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Asian
This article originally appeared in slightly different form in the March 1997 issue of Bright Lights. While limited to the history up to that time, it remains sadly relevant. *[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
In part “deux” of Bright Lights’ tribute to Easter, we present that devout duo, Fred and Judy, offering spiritual and musical solace on this day of reflection. Remember how it[…]
Actors & Personalities · TV & Streaming
Ashton Kutcher, producer and star of MTV’s celebrity prankster series Punk’d, played a prank on Steve Wozniak in the film Jobs, where he stars in the title role. The prank[…]
“Wasn’t he just there, standing right in front of us?” Actors are known to be complicated beings. Because the successful ones loom so large in our vision, their deaths are[…]
Mickey Rooney died on April 6, 2014. We offer Jim MacEachern’s profile of him in tribute. * * * “A great man is only the reflection of a great boy[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
INTRODUCTION Jack Pickford – actor, director, and alleged womaniser, alcoholic, drug-user, bootlegger and all-around scoundrel. Born in 1896, Jack was the brother of Mary Pickford, the Queen of Hollywood during[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Reviews
“While the premise of an injured soldier recuperating in a house full of smitten women seems ripe for male-fantasy debasement, the film is deeply interested in the psyches of its[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
What’s black and white and destroys Western Civilization?
When witches lay curses down upon the cowardly townsfolk about to hang or burn them, it’s almost always “I’ll be back to haunt your ancestors in 100 years!” Is it time then for Frances Farmer to return for that long-awaited revenge on Seattle, the patriarchy, the legal system, Hollywood, and the American Medical Association? Let’s hope
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica
When people die there is usually an element of shock to the news, but when I heard Jean Hill passed away this week (8/21/13) I wasn’t shocked, since her health[…]
Actors & Personalities · Writers & Critics
Some of the films of Noël Coward, some of the films of Ernst Lubitsch, and one of the films of Oscar Wilde
“The whole point of Howard’s screen persona was surely its combination of the ramrod-straight and the slyly subversive, and its creation of a façade that was eternally gruff yet perpetually seemed to be in on some wonderful joke.”
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Producers & Studios · Silents
“With his acting experience and technical know-how, Young Deer soon advanced to one of Pathé’s leading filmmakers. His Indian identity served him well: no one in the cast or crew at that time would have taken orders from a black man.”
