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Native American characters have been depicted in the movies since the dawn of Hollywood, but in 2024 an actual Native American actor has finally been nominated for an Academy Award.

Lily Gladstone (Blackfeet/Nimiipuu) has been a frontrunner all season for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and on Tuesday morning she officially became a best actress Oscar nominee. Her predecessors in the category include Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes (who is Maori) in 2004 and Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio (who is Native Mexican) in 2019, while other Indigenous nominated actors include Graham Greene (who is First Nations), nominated for best supporting actor in 1991 for Dances With Wolves, but Gladstone is the first Native American acting nominee.

With 1983 best song winner Buffy Sainte-Marie’s ancestry now in dispute, Gladstone could also now be tied for the first Native American Oscar nominee in any category. (Sainte-Marie was raised by...

Ed Fury, a 1951 Mr. Muscle Beach winner who became one of the most successful male physique models of the era before launching a swords & sandal film career that rivaled the genre’s leading man Steve Reeves, has died at his California home. He was 94.

His death on February 24 was announced this week by his wife and family friends. A cause of death has not been specified.

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Born Edmund Holovchik in New York on June 6, 1928, Fury began lifting weights as a high school wrestler before moving to Southern California in the late 1940s, where he soon found his place among the Santa Monica Muscle Beach bodybuilding set. He began...

Artist Jim Shaw’s studio is a dream factory. It’s where images and ideas combine in unnatural and often surreal ways, conjuring visual puns like the smiling visage of Esther Williams superimposed with an image of her lover, actor Jeff Chandler, wearing a gown. A matching piece shows Chandler with a hermaphroditic image of Williams in the pose of Botticelli’s Venus de Milo. Both pieces were inspired by rumors that Williams ended their affair upon learning Chandler was a transvestite.

“I just kind of ended up working with elements of Hollywood,” Shaw says of his new show, Jim Shaw: Thinking the Unthinkable, at Gagosian Beverly Hills from Jan. 12 through Feb. 25. “I’ve been interested in sort of the history, along with politics, of LSD and psychedelics. I came across that Esther Williams had taken LSD, and that led me to reading her autobiography. When she finally took LSD,...

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Mickey Kuhn, the busy child actor of the 1930s and ’40s who played Beau Wilkes, the son of Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard’s characters, in Gone With the Wind, has died. He was 90.

Kuhn died Sunday in a hospice facility in Naples, Florida, his wife, Barbara, told The Hollywood Reporter. He was in excellent health until recently, she said.

Kuhn also portrayed the ward of a famous movie cop in Dick Tracy (1945) and younger versions of Kirk Douglas and Montgomery Clift in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) and John Wayne’s Red River (1948), respectively.

And in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Kuhn reunited with Gwtw actress Vivien Leigh to appear as a sailor who gives Blanche DuBois directions. (Was he Leigh’s good luck charm? She won her two best actress Oscars with him in the cast.)

Kuhn was 6 when...

Powerhouse Indicator’s first foray into the Universal library yields six noir thrillers, all crime-related and all different: the list introduces us to scheming businessmen, venal confidence crooks, black-market racketeers, a femme fatale, a gangster deportee and baby stealers. The B&w features are enriched with some of the best actors of the postwar years, and the titles themselves are a litany of vice and sin: The Web, Larceny, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, Abandoned, Deported and Naked Alibi.

Universal Noir #1

Region B Blu-ray

The Web, Larceny, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, Abandoned, Deported, Naked Alibi

Powerhouse Indicator

1948-1954 / B&w / Street Date November 14, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £49.99

Starring: Ella Raines, Edmond O’Brien, Vincent Price, William Bendix; John Payne, Joan Caulfield, Dan Duryea, Shelly Winters, Dorothy Hart; Joan Fontaine, Burt Lancaster, Robert Newton; Dennis O’Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Raymond Burr; Marta Toren, Jeff Chandler, Marina Berti, Richard Rober; Sterling Hayden,...

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Henry Silva, the rugged New York actor who portrayed heavies and heroes of various ethnicities in a career highlighted by turns in A Hatful of Rain, The Manchurian Candidate and Johnny Cool, has died. He was 95.

Silva died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, his son Scott Silva told The Hollywood Reporter.

Silva also played the Draconian commander “Killer” Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), just one in a lineup of his bad guys seen in The Tall T (1957), The Bravados (1958), Il Boss (1973), Sharky’s Machine (1981), Above the Law (1988), Dick Tracy (1990) and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).

“Henry Silva is one of those guys you most likely will recognize even if you don’t know his name,” onetime Crimespree magazine writer Dave Wahlman wrote in 2016. “His face is something straight...

Though streaming and cable comedies such as “Ted Lasso,” “Hacks,” “Barry” and “Only Murder in the Building” are poised to receive multiple Emmy nominations, ABC’s perceptive and smartly funny mockumentary “Abbott Elementary” may just teach them a lesson. The freshman series, a valentine to educators who overcome trials and tribulations to teach, is a leading Emmy nomination contender.

Set in a predominately Black, grossly underfunded grade school in Philadelphia, the series stars Quinta Brunson as an eager second-grade teacher who is one of the few educators who have made it to a second year at the school. Brunson also created the series which was inspired by her mother who was a teacher in Philly for 40 years. Reviews were glowing for the series. The L.A. Times critic Robert Lloyd wrote: “The series feels fresh even as it mines the familiar. As much as characters represent an agglomeration of types,...

Let’s shout our approval of this foursome of vintage noirs, all of which have been scarce since Eddie Muller was old enough to rob candy stores. Three Paramounts and one Universal give us four notable directors and a gallery of attractive stars, including a swoon-worthy array of actresses: Marta Toren, Loretta Young, Susan Hayward, Gail Russell, Frances Farmer and Marina Berti. The selection includes one of the key ‘just prior to the official style’ titles, a thriller with supernatural overtones, a ‘woman in jeopardy’ story and a gangster tale reportedly inspired by Lucky Luciano.

Kino Noir Times Four

Blu-ray

Among the Living, Night Has a Thousand Eyes, The Accused, Deported

Kl Studio Classics

1941-1950 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / Street Date November 16, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / Separate Purchases / 24.95 each

Starring: Albert Dekker, Susan Hayward; Edward G. Robinson, Gail Russell; Loretta Young, Robert Cummings, Wendell Corey; Jeff Chandler, Marta Toren.

Directed by Stuart Heisler,...

John Sturges’ first color western is a tightly organized and unpretentious winner about a stern Union prison warden and a Confederate prisoner teaming up to fight an Apache enemy … wait, that sounds familiar. William Holden and Eleanor Parker strike sparks out on the ruddy mesas, while Sturges has a field day with the amazing Death Valley scenery and a highly original action scene. ‘Realistic escapism?’ It’s like a formula for future action cinema. And the ads didn’t let us forget: it all looks sensational in glowing Ansco Color.

Escape from Fort Bravo

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1953 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date May 18, 2021 / 21.99

Starring: William Holden, Eleanor Parker, John Forsyth, William Demarest, William Campbell, Polly Bergen, Richard Anderson, Carl Benton Reid, John Lupton, Howard McNear, Glenn Strange.

Cinematography: Robert Surtees

Film Editor: George Boemler

Original Music: Jeff Alexander

Written by Frank Fenton from the story Rope’s End...

Witness six noir heroes, doing what noir heroes do: one crooked gambler, one psycho, another psycho with access to a gun, a dope railroaded into a prison sentence, and an even bigger dope who doesn’t realize he’s poisoning himself. That’s only five, but the sixth is a cop, and not a particularly compromised one, the way we like ’em in noir. This third Columbia Noir Collection can boast big stars and some name directors, beautiful HD transfers and some fascinating short subjects as extras.

Columbia Noir #3

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1947-57 / B&w / 1:37 Academy, 1:85 widescreen / Street Date May 17, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £49.99

Starring: Dick Powell, Lee J Cobb, Nina Foch, William Holden, Edmond O’Brien, Dorothy Malone, Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Marie Windsor, and Vince Edwards.

Directed by Robert Rossen, Rudolph Mat&eacute, Henry Levin, Gordon Douglas, Edward Dmytryk, Irving Lerner

Powerhouse Indicator’s...

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By John M. Whalen

At the opening of “Taza, Son of Cochise,” (1954), it’s 1875 and the great Apache Chief Cochise (Jeff Chandler) is dying. At his side are his two sons, Taza (Rock Hudson) and Naiche. He asks them to continue the peace he made with the White Eyes after his death. Naturally, if the two sons were in agreement the movie would have ended right there. But in fact, they don’t agree. Taza wants to do as his father said. But Naiche hates the white man and intends to side up with Grey Eagle (Morris Ankrum) and Geronimo (Ian MacDonald) and start the war up again. If that isn’t enough complication to make a movie out of, writers George Drayson Adams and George Zuckerman add in a rivalry between the two brothers over the affections of Oona (Barbara Rush), Grey Eagle’s beautiful daughter.

All hail Blu-ray 3-D … a format still hanging on as one of the best features of home theater. Budd Boetticher’s trim action meller gives us Van Heflin (good) and Julie Adams (respectable) in a Mexican rebellion mini-epic with a backlot feel but rather good 3-D. The 3-D Film Archive’s experts have optimized the depth effect and included a colorful, very depth-y Woody Woodpecker cartoon. And Boetticher advocate Jeremy Arnold provides the audio commentary.

Wings of the Hawk

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1953 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 81 min. / available through Kino Lorber / Street Date February 9, 2021 / 29.95

Starring: Van Heflin, Julie Adams, Abbe Lane, George Dolenz, Noah Beery Jr., Rodolfo Acosta, Antonio Moreno, Pedro González González, Paul Fierro, Mario Siletti, Rico Alaníz, Rodolfo Hoyos, Jr., Rosa Turich, Lyle Talbot.

Cinematography: Clifford Stine

Film Editor: Russel Schoengarth

Original Music: Frank Skinner

Written by James E. Moser, Kay Lenard from the novel by Gerald Drayson Adams...

Trucks for victory! No deadheads on this run! Bald Tires for Adolf! Budd Boetticher’s two-fisted teamsters haul General Patton’s supplies through a France not completely cleared of German resistance, a gearshift in one hand and a buxom mam’selle in the other. The movie is not bad, especially in the casting department — it least includes some black troopers to portray a mixed outfit that was more than half black. Red Ball Roughneck roll call: Jeff Chandler, Sidney Poitier, Alex Nicol, Hugh O’Brian, Charles Drake, Bubber Johnson, Davis Roberts. At Ease.

The Red Ball Express

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1952 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date , 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Jeff Chandler, Sidney Poitier, Alex Nicol, Hugh O’Brian, Charles Drake, Jacqueline Duval, Judith Braun, Bubber Johnson, Davis Roberts, Frank Chase, Gregg Palmer, Jack Kelly, Howard Petrie .

Cinematography: Maury Gertsman

Film Editor: Edward Curtiss

Dialogue director: Irvin Berwick...

Good Old Tony Curtis! We could always depend on Tony for a sly, ingratiating smile, charm that ranged from candid-sweet to barracuda insincerity, and a desire to please that never quit. Some of his best work came while schmoozing and nice-nice clawing his way to the top, where he epitomized the glamorous movie star with universal appeal. Kino gathers three of Curtis’s better mid-career starring vehicles, directed by three top talents — Blake Edwards, Robert Mulligan and Norman Jewison.

Tony Curtis Collection

The Perfect Furlough, The Great Impostor, 40 Pounds of Trouble

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

312 minutes

Street Date August 4, 2020

available through Kino Lorber

49.95

Starring: Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis appears to have become a Golden Boy at late-’40s Universal-International by playing the role of ambitious actor to the hilt. Everybody caught him dancing a mean rumba with Yvonne de Carlo in Criss Cross; it’s fun to seem him perform a ‘look,...

Today’s noir forecast is vice, kidnapping, murder, suicide, narcotics and a sleazy stolen baby racket! Kino’s third volume of Universal-International pix contains two seldom-screened quality urban noirs. Expect genuine dark themes in these sizable-budget location noirs filmed before Universal pulled most production back onto its one-size-fits-all backlot sets. Barbara Stanwyck dominates one show, while noir stalwarts Richard Conte and Dennis O’Keefe anchor the other two dramas, with dynamic showings by Coleen Gray, Edith Barrett, Peggy Dow, Jeanette Nolan, Meg Randall and especially Gale Storm.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema III

Abandoned, The Lady Gambles, The Sleeping City

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1949-50 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 79,99,86 min. / Street Date June 9, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.99

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Gale Storm, Jeff Chandler, Meg Randall, Raymond Burr, Marjorie Rambeau, Jeanette Nolan, Mike Mazurki, Will Kuluva, David Clarke; Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Preston, Stephen McNally, Edith Barrett, John Hoyt,...

Great 3-D thrills — Hollywood was working to perfect 3-D movies just as the craze died out. An impeccable Blu-ray 3-D restoration, the glory of young Rock Hudson and some of the best Utah scenery in depth makes this a very enjoyable disc. Director Douglas Sirk was itching to do a western, and the swiftly rising star Rock Hudson wanted to work for him again, even though it meant playing another Indian role. Were these men that desperate to get out of Hollywood for a month? At least they avoided filming in nuclear test sites…

Taza, Son of Cochise

3-D Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1954 / Color / 2.00:1 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date May 26, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Gregg Palmer, Rex Reason, Morris Ankrum, Eugene Iglesias, Richard H. Cutting, Ian MacDonald, Robert Burton, Joe Sawyer, Lance Fuller, Charles Horvath, Jeff Chandler, William Leslie, Barbara Burck, most of Utah.

Cinematography:...

Great news for fans of obscure old action films. The Daredevil Drivers (1938) is available on DVD From Warner Archives

Racecar driver Bill Foster (Dick Purcell) has the talent to collect racing trophies, but his reckless stunts on the track get him banned from the racing association altogether. Hitting the road with his loyal sidekick, mechanic “Stub” Wilson (vaudeville veteran Charley Foy), Bill crashes into a bus owned by Neeley Transport. Bill is determined to sock Neeley’s president in the nose because of the damage to his race car, only to discover that the president is the attractive Jerry Neeley (Beverly Roberts) – a woman immune to Bill’s charms. Bill goes to work for Tommy Burnell (Donald Briggs), the owner of a rival bus company that is sabotaging Neeley Transport. Once Bill learns he’s working for the wrong side, he goes out of his way to help Jerry save her company.

Great news for fans of director Sam Fuller. His 1962 classic Merrill’S Marauders is available on Blu-ray From Warner Archives

Writer/Director and decorated Army Veteran Sam Fuller lends his considerable storytelling talent and gift for hard-charging understatement to the true tale of one of the most extraordinary and harrowing military campaigns in human history. Brigadier General Frank Merrill (Jeff Chandler) leads Unit Galahad, officially named the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), deep behind enemy lines and through miles of dank, dense, disease ridden jungle in a desperate bid to ensure the enemy will never have the ability to link up. Ty Hardin Will Hutchins and Claude Akins play some of the dogfaces that were part of this all-volunteer force in this Sam Fuller production that stands alongside Steel Helmet and The Big Red One as boots-on-the-ground recreations of the misery and the heroics of military life. And all the glory...

Is this Samuel Fuller’s biggest production? He tries to convey the harrowing reality of a military campaign that tested the limits of endurance and punishment that troops could absorb. In his last movie, Jeff Chandler is the famed commander who must ask his special forces to march hundreds of miles in the unforgiving jungle, and then fight a pitched battle. Although Warners interfered with the final cut, it’s still a fine picture.

Merrill’s Marauders

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1962 / Color / 2:35 anamorphic widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date July 23, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Jeff Chandler, Ty Hardin, Peter Brown, Andrew Duggan, Will Hutchins, Claude Akins, Luz Valdez, John Hoyt, Pancho Magalona.

Cinematography: William Clothier

Film Editor: Folmar Blangsted

Original Music: Howard Jackson

Written by Milton Sperling, Sam Fuller from a book by Charlton Ogburn Jr.

Produced by Milton Sperling

Directed by Samuel Fuller

Writer/producer/director Samuel Fuller must...

Jane Russell heats up an Arizona mining town but she’s just trying to help her new husband with his ethnic identity issues, Jeff Chandler. Superb color cinematography (forget the B&W photos here) and beautiful desert locations help, but the real appeal is seeing Russell and gorgeous co-star Mara Corday in all their glory.

Foxfire

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1955 / Color / 2:00 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date , 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jane Russell, Jeff Chandler, Dan Duryea, Mara Corday, Barton MacLane, Frieda Inescort, Celia Lovsky, Eddy Waller, Robert F. Simon, Charlotte Wynters, Robert Bice, Arthur Space, Beulah Archuletta, Dabbs Greer, Grace Lenard, Vici Raaf.

Cinematography: William Daniels

Film Editor: Ted. J. Kent

Original Music: Frank Skinner

Written by Ketti Frings, from the novel by Anya Seton

Produced by Aaron Rosenberg

Directed by Joseph Pevney

A medium-wattage relationship soap, Foxfire is an Eisenhower-era blueprint for consensus attitudes about race and class...

Like nearly all of director Joseph Pevney’s films, 1955’s Foxfire has been more or less forgotten, despite starring Jane Russell. It’s a pity considering the film’s significant condemnation of racism, something the narrative is inextricably intertwined with rather than as a blunt subtext, an uncommon tangent for a 1950s era romantic melodrama. Strikingly, the film was one of two 1955 dramas directed by Pevney starring Jeff Chandler, the other being the equally obscure Female on the Beach with Joan Crawford, and was only two years before Pevney’s most successful cinematic offering, Tammy and the Bachelor, the Debbie Reynolds hit which inspired a celebrated song and franchise for the star.…...

Updated: Following a couple of Julie London Westerns*, Turner Classic Movies will return to its July 2017 Star of the Month presentations. On July 27, Ronald Colman can be seen in five films from his later years: A Double Life, Random Harvest (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942), The Late George Apley (1947), and The Story of Mankind (1957). The first three titles are among the most important in Colman's long film career. George Cukor's A Double Life earned him his one and only Best Actor Oscar; Mervyn LeRoy's Random Harvest earned him his second Best Actor Oscar nomination; George Stevens' The Talk of the Town was shortlisted for seven Oscars, including Best Picture. All three feature Ronald Colman at his very best. The early 21st century motto of international trendsetters, from Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Turkey's Recep Erdogan to Russia's Vladimir Putin and the United States' Donald Trump, seems to be, The world is reality TV and reality TV...

The Loved One

Blu-ray

Warner Archives

1965 / B&W / 1:85 / / 122 min. / Street Date May 9, 2017

Starring: Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Anjanette Comer.

Cinematography: Haskell Wexler

Film Editor: Hal Ashby, Brian Smedley-Aston

Written by Terry Southern, Christopher Isherwood

Produced by Martin Ransohoff (uncredited), John Calley, Haskell Wexler

Directed by Tony Richardson

Funeral Director: Before you go, I was just wondering… would you be interested in some extras for the loved one?

Next Of Kin: What kind of extras?

Funeral Director: Well, how about a casket?

Mike Nichols and Elaine May – The $65 Dollar Funeral

That routine, a classic example of what was known in the early 60’s as “sick humor”, was nevertheless ubiquitous across mainstream variety shows like Ed Sullivan and Jack Paar. It also popularized the notion of a new boutique industry, the vanity funeral. The novelist Evelyn Waugh, decidedly less mainstream, documented the beginning of that phenomenon over a decade earlier with The Loved One,...

God comes to Broadway this month in the form of Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons, who will portray the Almighty in the new comedy An Act of God. But he’s not the first to portray the man upstairs. Here’s a history of Gods in movies, TV, and theater.Rex Ingram, The Green Pastures, 1936 Ingram starred as “De Lawd” in this adaptation of several Biblical stories, which featured an all-black cast. Charlton Heston (voice), The Ten Commandments, 1956 Heston wasn’t just Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s classic. He also provided God’s booming voice. John Huston (voice), The Bible, 1966 Along with directing and playing Noah, Huston handled voice-over duties for the Almighty. Jeff Chandler, Elizabeth I, 1972This Broadway show told the story of Elizabethan performers trying to mount a play about their queen. Among other characters, Chandler played an actor playing God. Stephen Elliott, The Creation of...

Dear Danny,

Ah, yes, the plague of "not getting it" is one that afflicts all of us festival-goers on occasion, but I admire your willingness to write on Peter Kern's peculiar film as well as Jiang Wen's totally gonzo farce (which you were nevertheless able to appreciate more than myself). As you and I both know, "getting it" isn't completely necessary and doesn't always get in the way of enjoyment and appreciation. Being a relaxed and open-minded viewer doesn't always make one an expert, but hopefully it prepares them for being responsive, a quality we should all aspire to whether we find ourselves in or outside of our wheelhouses.

In my previous letter, I teased at an incredible viewing experience I had, and indeed it may be one my all-time favourite screenings. Let me start off by describing what is my new favourite place to sit and watch a...

Maureen O'Hara movies: 2014 Honorary Oscar for Hollywood legend (photo: Maureen O'Hara at the 2014 Governors Awards) In the photo above, the movies' Maureen O'Hara, 2014 Honorary Oscar recipient for her body of work, arrives with a couple of guests at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' 2014 Governors Awards. This year's ceremony is being held this Saturday evening, November 8, in the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood. For the last couple of years, Maureen O'Hara has been a Boise, Idaho, resident. Before that, the 94-year-old movie veteran -- born Maureen FitzSimons, on August, 17, 1920, in Dublin -- had been living in Ireland. Below is a brief recap of her movies. Maureen O'Hara movies: From Charles Laughton to John Wayne Following her leading-lady role in Alfred Hitchcock's British-made Jamaica Inn, starring Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara arrived in Hollywood in 1939 to play the gypsy Esmeralda opposite Laughton in William Dieterle...

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will open the 2014 edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival with the world premiere of a brand new restoration of the beloved Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! (1955). TCM’s own Robert Osborne, who serves as official host for the festival, will introduce Oklahoma!, with the film’s star, Academy Award®-winner Shirley Jones, in attendance. Vanity Fair will also return for the fifth year as a festival partner and co-presenter of the opening night after-party. Marking its fifth year, the TCM Classic Film Festival will take place April 10-13, 2014, in Hollywood. The gathering will coincide withTCM’s 20th anniversary as a leading authority in classic film.

In addition, the festival has added several high-profile guests to this year’s lineup, including Oscar®-winning director William Friedkin, who will attend for the screening of the U.S. premiere restoration of his suspenseful cult classic Sorcerer (1977); Kim Novak, who...

Rossana Podestà dead at 79: ‘Helen of Troy’ actress later featured in sword-and-sandal spectacles, risqué sex comedies (photo: Jacques Sernas and Rossana Podestà in ‘Helen of Troy’) Rossana Podestà, the sensual star of the 1955 epic Helen of Troy and other sword-and-sandal European productions of the ’50s and ’60s — in addition to a handful of risqué sex comedies of the ’70s — died earlier today, December 10, 2013, in Rome according to several Italian news outlets. Podestà was 79. She was born Carla Dora Podestà on August 20, 1934, in, depending on the source, either Zlitan or Tripoli, in Libya, at the time an Italian colony. According to the IMDb, the renamed Rossana Podestà began her film career in 1950, when she was featured in a small role in Dezsö Ákos Hamza’s Strano appuntamento ("Strange Appointment"). However, according to online reports, she was actually discovered by director Léonide Moguy, who cast her in a small role in...

Esther Williams: ‘Pools and Smiles’ formula grows stale [See previous post: "Esther Williams: Swimwear MGM Musical Star Dies."] By the early ’50s, Louis B. Mayer had been ousted from the studio he had helped to found, having been replaced by Dore Schary. Whether or not a coincidence, with the exception of Million Dollar Mermaid, the Esther Williams movies of the ’50s — e.g., The Duchess of Idaho, Skirts Ahoy! (stolen by Vivian Blaine in a supporting role), Dangerous When Wet, Easy to Love — lacked the luster of those released in the previous decade, despite more prestigious directors (George Sidney, Charles Walters, Robert Z. Leonard) and the usual co-stars (Van Johnson, Red Skelton, Howard Keel). (Photo: Esther Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid.) Not surprisingly, although MGM’s color musicals would remain in vogue a few more years, Esther Williams and the studio parted ways following George Sidney’s tired-looking Jupiter’s Darling (1956), with Williams and Howard Keel (as Hannibal) fooling around in ancient times.

Kim Novak is clarifying why she used the word “rape” to describe how she felt about The Artist. The 79-year-old Vertigo actress, who will be honored next month at the TCM Classic Film Festival, said during a phone interview Monday that hearing the score from the Alfred Hitchcock film used in the recent Oscar-winning homage to the silent-film era reminded her of the same feelings she experienced when she was raped as a child.

“It was very painful,” said Novak. “When I said it was like a rape, that was how it felt to me. I had experienced in my youth being raped,...

Los Angeles — Kim Novak is clarifying why she used the word "rape" to describe how she felt about "The Artist."

The 79-year-old "Vertigo" actress, who will be honored next month at the TCM Classic Film Festival, said during a phone interview Monday that hearing the score from the Alfred Hitchcock film used in the recent Oscar-winning homage to the silent-film era reminded her of the same feelings she experienced when she was raped as a child.

"It was very painful," said Novak. "When I said it was like a rape, that was how it felt to me. I had experienced in my youth being raped, and so I identified with a real act that had been done to me. I didn't use that word lightly. I had been raped as a child. It was a rape I never told about, so when I experienced this one, I felt the need to express it.

Linda Darnell Linda Darnell on TCM: A Letter To Three Wives, No Way Out Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Zero Hour! (1957) When a flight crew falls ill only man who can land the plane is afraid of flying. Dir: Hall Bartlett. Cast: Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, Sterling Hayden. Bw-81 mins, Letterbox Format. 7:30 Am Sweet And Low Down (1944) Dir: Archie Mayo. Cast: Benny Goodman, Linda Darnell, Jack Oakie. Bw-76 mins. 9:00 Am Rise And Shine (1941) The college president head cheerleader and a gambling gangster try to keep a flunking football star in the game. Dir: Allan Dwan. Cast: Jack Oakie, George Murphy, Linda Darnell. Bw-88 mins. 10:45 Am Brigham Young (1940) Two young Mormons struggle to survive their people's journey to a new home in the West. Dir: Henry Hathaway. Cast: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Dean Jagger. Bw-113 mins. 12:45 Pm Two Flags West (1950) A bitter...

Celebrity Death! Rip Jane Russell (Brunette from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) -- [Mar. 1] Actress and model Jane Russell, a famous WWII pin-up girl and star of the 1953 classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes alongside Marilyn Monroe, died yesterday at age 89. Russell also was known for her starring role in Howard Hughes' 1941 The Outlaw. The the legendary actress made the sequel Gentlemen Marry Brunettes in 1955 (without Monroe). And she joined Clark Gable and Jeff Chandler for two Western movies: The Tall Men and FoxFire, respectively. Her career began to falter in the 1960s. "Why did I quit movies?" Jane Russell remarked in 1999. "Because I was getting too old! You couldn't go on acting in those years if you were an actress over 30." "She always said I'm going to die in the saddle, I'm not going to sit at home and become an old woman," Russell's daughter-in-law Etta Waterfield told the Associated Press. "And that's exactly what she did,...

Los Angeles — She was the voluptuous pin-up girl who set a million male hearts to pounding during World War II, the favorite movie star of a generation of young men long before she'd made a movie more than a handful of them had ever seen.

Such was the stunning beauty of Jane Russell, and the marketing skills of the man who discovered her, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

Russell, surrounded by family members, died Monday at her home in the central coast city of Santa Maria. Her death from respiratory failure came 70 years after Hughes had put her on the path to stardom with his controversial Western "The Outlaw." She was 89.

Although she had all but abandoned Hollywood after the 1960s for a quieter life, her daughter-in-law Etta Waterfield said Russell remained active until just a few weeks ago when her health began to fail. Until then she was active with her church,...

"Summer Under the Stars" is over, but Kim Novak is the "star of tonight" on Turner Classic Movies. Five Novak vehicles released at the height of her stardom will be presented this evening: Joshua Logan‘s Oscar-nominated Picnic (1955), starring William Holden; Delbert Mann‘s drama Middle of the Night (1958), with Fredric March; Richard Quine‘s The Notorious Landlady (1962), with Fred Astaire and Jack Lemmon; and two directed by George Sidney: the fictionalized biopic Jeanne Eagels (1957), with Jeff Chandler, and the musical Pal Joey (1957), with Frank Sinatra and Rita Hayworth. Based on William Inge‘s play, Picnic is worth watching again (and again). I don’t think it’s a great movie — Joshua Logan’s direction makes some of the action/acting too stylized — but the underlying psychology, the social commentary, James Wong Howe‘s camera work, and Rosalind Russell are all fascinating. Some consider Middle of the Night one...