National Geographic Nomination Group
View allAll Photos Tagged Nomination
wow thank you so much ..faints and shocked . xx I can't thank you enough for this nomination . I will cherish this forever . I looked at the other nominations and they are truly amazing . Thank you for even considering me Dreamart fashion xxx
Public vote here :
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwfggCvdRrCqzu5fXMQPe6n...
Austin Central Library is the main branch of the Austin Public Library system, which includes 20 branches, the Austin History Center, and a recycled bookstore. Often referred to as Austin's "Library of the Future," Central Library opened in late 2017. The six-story, 200,000 sq. ft. building is designed to hold over 600,000 books and offers a living rooftop garden, reading porches, an indoor reading room and a bicycle corral, large indoor and outdoor event spaces, a gift shop, an art gallery and a cafe. There is even a "Technology Petting Zoo," where visitors can toy with some of the latest gadgets. In 2018 Austin's Central Library was selected as one of TIME Magazine's 2018 list of World's Greatest Places! Culled from over 1,200 editor and expert nominations from around the world, the list highlights 100 destinations that are breaking new ground, leading industry trends and offering visitors an extraordinary experience.
TV Week Logie Nominations In Sydney, Australia; News And Lists
Tonight in Sydney, Australia it's the TV Week Logies Nominations.
Karl Stefanovic is battling to snatch back-to-back Gold Logies after nominations for the TV Week industry awards were announced today.
After surprising many media and entertainment commentators including this agency by snatching the major prize last year, the Channel 9 Today co-host got both a Silver and Gold for most popular presenter on Australian TV.
Karl will fight the ABC's Adam Hills, Offspring star Asher Keddie, The Project co-host Carrie Bickmore, ex Home & Away siren Esther Anderson and Nine comedian presenter Hamish Blake for the top honours when the TV Week Logies are awarded on April 15.
Channel 7 leads the network pack, with 32 nominations across 22 categories, followed by Ten (26 nominations), the ABC (22 nominations), Nine (21 nominations), pay TV operator Foxtel (eight nominations) and SBS (seven nominations).
While Packed To The Rafters favourite Rebecca Gibney was overlooked for a Gold Logie nod this year, she is squared off against her TV daughter Jessica Marais for Silver as most popular actress.
Also in the running for Silver was Asher Keddie, acknowledged for her double effort - playing Nina Proudman on Ten's romantic comedy, Offspring, and publishing maverick Ita Buttrose in the ABC1 docu-drama, Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo.
Making their Silver Logie nomination debut are Danielle Cormack (Kate Leigh in Nine's Underbelly Razor) and Esther Anderson (Charlie Buckton on Seven's soap Home & Away).
In the TV fight for the boys, the Silver Logie for most popular actor will be fought between Daniel MacPherson (Wild Boys, Channel 7), Eddie Perfect (Offspring, Ten), Erik Thomson (Packed To The Rafters, Channel 7), Hugh Sheridan (Packed To The Rafters, Channel 7) and Ray Meagher (Home & Away, Channel 7).
Despite turning her back on a TV career for a spot on Melbourne breakfast radio this year, Chrissie Swan secured a nomination as most popular presenter for her role on Ten's morning chat show, The Circle.
The nominations were held at Sydney's Park Hyatt, hosted by Nine's Natalie Gruzlewski and Ten's Bondi Vet, Chris Brown.
FULL LIST OF 2012 LOGIE NOMINATIONS:
TV WEEK GOLD LOGIE AWARD Most Popular TV personality
Adam Hills (Spicks And Specks, ABC1/Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight, ABC1)
Asher Keddie (Nina Proudman,Offspring, Network Ten /Ita Buttrose, Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
Carrie Bickmore (The Project, Network Ten)
Esther Anderson (Charlie Buckton, Home And Away, Channel Seven)
Hamish Blake (Hamish & Andy's Gap Year, Nine Network)
Karl Stefanovic (Today, Nine Network)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE Most Popular Actor
Daniel MacPherson (Jack Keenan, Wild Boys, Channel Seven)
Eddie Perfect (Mick Holland, Offspring, Network Ten)
Erik Thomson (Dave Rafter, Packed To The Rafters, Channel Seven)
Hugh Sheridan (Ben Rafter, Packed To The Rafters, Channel Seven)
Ray Meagher (Alf Stewart, Home And Away, Channel Seven)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE Most Popular Actress
Asher Keddie (Nina Proudman, Offspring, Network Ten /Ita Buttrose, Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
Danielle Cormack (Kate Leigh, Underbelly: Razor, Nine Network /Angela Travis, East West 101, SBS)
Esther Anderson (Charlie Buckton, Home And Away, Channel Seven)
Jessica Marais (Rachel Rafter, Packed To The Rafters, Channel Seven)
Rebecca Gibney (Julie Rafter, Packed To The Rafters, Channel Seven)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE Most Popular Presenter
Adam Hills (Spicks And Specks,ABC1/Adam Hills In Gordon St Tonight, ABC1)
Carrie Bickmore (The Project, Network Ten)
Chrissie Swan (The Circle, Network Ten)
Hamish Blake (Hamish & Andy's Gap Year, Nine Network)
Karl Stefanovic (Today, Nine Network)
MOST POPULAR NEW MALE TALENT
Dan Ewing (Heath Braxton, Home And Away, Channel Seven)
James Mason (Chris Pappas, Neighbours, Network Ten)
Peter Kuruvita (Host, My Sri Lanka With Peter Kuruvita, SBS)
Steve Peacocke (Darryl "Brax" Braxton, Home And Away, Channel Seven)
Tom Wren (Dr Doug Graham, Winners & Losers, Channel Seven)
MOST POPULAR NEW FEMALE TALENT
Anna McGahan (Nellie Cameron, Underbelly: Razor, Nine Network)
Chelsie Preston Crayford (Tilly Devine, Underbelly: Razor, Nine Network)
Demi Harman (Sasha Bezmel, Home And Away, Channel Seven)
Melissa Bergland (Jenny Gross, Winners & Losers Channel Seven)
Tiffiny Hall (Trainer, The Biggest Loser Australia, Network Ten)
MOST POPULAR DRAMA SERIES
Home And Away (Channel Seven)
Offspring (Network Ten)
Packed To The Rafters (Channel Seven)
Underbelly: Razor (Nine Network)
Winners And Losers (Channel Seven)
MOST POPULAR LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM
Australia's Got Talent (Channel Seven)
Hamish & Andy's Gap Year (Nine Network)
Spicks And Specks (ABC1)
Sunrise (Channel Seven)
The Project (Network Ten)
MOST POPULAR LIFESTYLE PROGRAM
Better Homes And Gardens (Channel Seven)
Getaway (Nine Network)
iFISH (Network Ten)
Ready Steady Cook (Network Ten)
Selling Houses Australia Extreme (LifeStyle Channel, FOXTEL
MOST POPULAR SPORTS PROGRAM
2011 AFL Grand Final (Network Ten)
Before The Game (Network Ten)
The AFL Footy Show (Nine Network)
The NRL Footy Show (Nine Network)
Wide World Of Sports (Nine Network)
MOST POPULAR REALITY PROGRAM
Beauty And The Geek Australia (Channel Seven)
MasterChef Australia (Network Ten)
My Kitchen Rules (Channel Seven)
The Block (Nine Network)
The X Factor Australia (Channel Seven)
MOST POPULAR FACTUAL PROGRAM
Bondi Rescue (Network Ten)
Bondi Vet (Network Ten)
Border Security: Australia's Front Line (Channel Seven)
RPA (Nine Network)
World's Strictest Parents (Channel Seven)
MOST OUTSTANDING NOMINEES (peer voted by industry)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE Most Outstanding Drama Series, Miniseries or Telemovie
Cloudstreet (Showcase, FOXTEL)
Offspring (Network Ten)
Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo (ABC1)
The Slap (ABC1)
Underbelly: Razor (Nine Network)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE Most Outstanding Actor
Alex Dimitriades (The Slap, ABC1)
David Wenham (Killing Time, TV1, FOXTEL)
Don Hany (East West 101, SBS)
Geoff Morrell (Cloudstreet, Showcase, FOXTEL)
Rob Carlton (Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
TV WEEK SILVER LOGIE Most Outstanding Actress
Asher Keddie (Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo, ABC1)
Diana Glenn (Killing Time, TV1, FOXTEL)
Essie Davis (The Slap, ABC1)
Kat Stewart (Offspring, Network Ten)
Melissa George (The Slap, ABC1)
GRAHAM KENNEDY AWARD FOR MOST OUTSTANDING NEW TALENT
Anna McGahan (Underbelly: Razor, Nine Network)
Chelsie Preston Crayford (Underbelly: Razor, Nine Network)
Hamish Macdonald (Senior Foreign Correspondent, Network Ten)
Hamish Michael (Crownies, ABC1)
Melissa Bergland (Winners & Losers, Channel Seven)
MOST OUTSTANDING NEWS COVERAGE
Lockyer Valley Flood (Brisbane News, Channel Seven)
Qantas Grounded (Sky News National, Sky News Australia, FOXTEL)
Skype Scandal (Ten News At Five, Network Ten)
The Queensland Flood (Nine News, Nine Network)
Unfinished Business (SBS World News Australia, SBS)
MOST OUTSTANDING PUBLIC AFFAIRS REPORT
A Bloody Business (Four Corners/Sarah Ferguson, ABC1)
After The Deluge: The Valley (Paul Lockyer, ABC1)
Rescue 500 (Sunday Night, Channel Seven)
Salma In The Square (Foreign Correspondent/Mark Corcoran, ABC1)
Tour Of Duty: Australia's Secret War (Network Ten)
MOST OUTSTANDING LIGHT ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM
Australia's Got Talent (Channel Seven)
Gruen Planet (ABC1)
Spicks And Specks (ABC1)
Talkin Bout Your Generation (Network Ten)
The Project (Network Ten)
MOST OUTSTANDING SPORTS COVERAGE
2011 Australian Open Tennis (Channel Seven)
2011 Bathurst 1000 (Channel Seven)
2011 Melbourne Cup Carnival (Channel Seven)
State Of Origin III (Nine Network)
Tour de France 2011 (SBS)
MOST OUTSTANDING CHILDRENS PROGRAM
Camp Orange: Wrong Town, (Nickelodeon, FOXTEL)
Lockie Leonard (Nine Network)
My Place (ABC3)
Saturday Disney (Channel Seven)
Scope (Network Ten)
MOST OUTSTANDING FACTUAL PROGRAM
Go Back To Where You Came From (SBS)
Leaky Boat (ABC1)
Mrs Carey's Concert (ABC1)
Outback Fight Club (SBS)
Tony Robinson Explores Australia (The History Channel, (FOXTEL)
The TV Week Logie Awards ceremony will take place at Crown Melbourne on Sunday 15th April.
Good luck to all.
Websites
TV Week Logies
www.tvweek.ninemsn.com.au/logies
TV Week
Park Hyatt, Sydney
Crown Melbourne
Eva Rinaldi Photography Flickr
www.flickr.com/evarinaldiphotography
Eva Rinaldi Photography
The Lantern Group
Music News Australia
I love to go to movies. In a theatre with a crowd. The crowd is optional, but prefered...
I probably average one a week during the course of a year.
A FEW RANDOM THOUGHTS AND WORTHLESS OPINIONS...
I hate arriving late for a movie. If the show is about to start... be prepared to see something else or buy tickets for the next showing. "I'm very anal about this". The last time I walked into a darkened theatre was the final installment of "Star Wars". This was only because I had already seen it... I like to have my popcorn and be seated before the coming attractions... "coming attractions" ARE a part of the movie experience. Commercials, on the other hand, suck.
Jodie Foster is the only movie star who's films I go to just because she's in them.
Russell Crow is my favorite actor. I am still miffed that he did not win the Oscar for "A Beautiful Mind". A film which won "Best Picture", "Best Director", "Best S. Actress", and "Best Writing". All for a movie in which every scene surrounds his character. losing to Denzel Washington(a very good performance) in "Training Day"(an ok film)... so wrong.
... that said. I do think Halle Berry was brilliant in "Monster's Ball". The last ten minutes alone were worthy of an Oscar nomination. She had very little dialogue during this part of the film. The emotions were conveyed in her facial expressions and body language. "Simply amazing"
"As Good As It Gets" is that rare movie where I leave the theatre wishing the characters would just keep going... the only film since then to bring out this response in me was "Friends With Money". A movie for which I have yet to lend to anyone who liked it.
2018 SAFAS AWARDS - Final Voting
The SL Academy of Fashion Arts and Sciences [SAFAS]©®
A Second Life professional honorary organization with open membership. Organization and staff positions are extended by our Board of Governors to distinguished contributors to the arts and sciences of SL fashion. A yearly awards program recognizes those who have advanced the fashion world of SL through their contributions.
After receiving thousands of individual nominations that span hundreds of categories, we have created this final form for you to vote for your favorites in the respective categories. The form below is provided for you to vote for who you feel has contributed to the world of SL and who should be recognized.
The final results of our winners will be announced LIVE at the 2018 SAFAS Awards in Second Life on Saturday, June 30, 2018.
Thank you for your vote and feel free to join our in-world group (free) in Second Life
[SL Academy of Fashion Arts&Science].
Please help us by voting for your favorites in each category. Voting from the TOP nominations will end on June 29, 2018 and the final results of our winners will be announced LIVE at the 2018 SAFAS Awards in Second Life on Saturday, June 30, 2018.
Who would you like to nominate for a 2018 SAFAS Awards?
Do you want to vote for me? Thank you !!!!
FINAL VOTING HERE: docs.google.com/forms/d/13k_t_VNPPz5X31dCIpJIaljqZ1f5iYJ_...
Blog LuceMia
My Flickr
www.flickr.com/photos/lucemia/
My FB
Pentax 67II, 105mm F2.4, FUJICOLOR PRO400, developed by FRAME*
Fubiz Awards 2012 Nomination!
"Haru and Mina" is nominated for photography award.
www.fubizawards.com/nominees/haru-and-mina/
Interview with Hideaki Hamada
Yes, I was going to be taking a little break from flickr but I've had a couple of pieces of lovely news over the last half a week. As you can probably guess from the above, I've been nominated for an award on the Hipstography website, for a portfolio of mine they published earlier last year. Some of you may remember that. Really chuffed to be included, especially amongst some really wonderful fellow photographers. Well, apparently once the nominations were chosen it is then a public vote. So, y'all should duck over there, take a gander at the fantastic nominations and vote for your faves! You can find the right page here .
Also, although many of you will have noticed, I was super pleased to get an honourable mention in the Mobile Photography Awards street category that was announced late last week, for this photo . Anyhoo, big thanks to all of you for your continued encouragement and company, I've learnt so much from keeping company with you all on this place. Appreciate it everyone!
NB: Although I did not win this category, the same shot of bathers at Bondi won the Hipstography monochrome photo of the year. Yay.
As we didn't have enough votes for an outright winner, I've turned the original votes into nominations. Please vote for your favourite below and I'll add those votes to the exisiting ones.
Anyone can vote. I'll tally them up in a weeks time.
Meta Girl - flic.kr/p/UoRF5F
Shimmer - flic.kr/p/YrkFcN
Velocita - flic.kr/p/21bgWTu
Armorclad - flic.kr/p/YRHTYR
Taboo - flic.kr/p/21GH4kH
Cherry Cola - flic.kr/p/XYvnyU
Blitz - flic.kr/p/Y38vaK
JuneBug - flic.kr/p/V5fGUf
Check out the League of Heroes flickr group here:
Pompeo congratulates Nechirvan Barzani on KRG presidential nomination
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani on his nomination for the KRG presidency, according to a State Department readout published Wednesday night.
During a surprise visit to Erbil on Wednesday evening, Pompeo congratulated PM Barzani on his nomination for the presidency – a post which has been frozen since Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) president Masoud Barzani resigned in 2017 following the Kurdistan independence referendum.
According to a readout from the US State Department, Pompeo also emphasized “strong US support for continued dialogue between the KRG and the central government in Baghdad.”
Following an unscheduled stop in the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Wednesday morning, Pompeo travelled on to Erbil, where he also met with Masoud Barzani and Kurdistan Region Security Council Chancellor Masrour Barzani – who has been nominated for the office of prime minister.
If approved, the two Barzani cousins will hold both the top seats of government. They will only be successful if the KDP gets its way in government formation talks with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Change Movement (Gorran) – their nearest rivals.
PM Barzani described his meeting with Pompeo as “productive”.
They “discussed the recent territorial defeat of ISIS in Syria” while underscoring “the value of our strategic relationship with Iraq and our longstanding friendship with the IKR [Iraqi Kurdistan Region], which is vital for ensuring mutual security and regional stability.”
Pompeo is touring several Middle Eastern states to drum up support for America’s anti-Iran campaign and to reassure allies in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s bombshell decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria
Hello friends, Versus got a nomination for the Avi Choice Awards in the category "FAVORITE MAGAZINE, NEWSPAPER OR PERIODICAL" . We wanna ask for if you kindly could follow this link and vote for us
avichoiceawards.com/vote-here-the-arts/
Thank you for your support!
Belgian postcard in the series 'De mooiste vrouwen van de eeuw' (the 100 most beautiful women of the century) by P-Magazine, no. 37. Photo: Sante D'Orazio / Outline.
Vivacious Kate Winslet (1975) is often seen as the best English-speaking film actress of her generation. The English actress and singer was the youngest person to acquire six Academy Award nominations, and won the Oscar for The Reader (2008).
Kate Elizabeth Winslet was born in Reading, England, in 1975. She is the second of four children of stage actors Sally Anne (née Bridges) and Roger John Winslet. Winslet began studying drama at the age of 11. The following year, Winslet appeared in a television commercial for Sugar Puffs cereal, in which she danced opposite the Honey Monster. Winslet's acting career began on television, with a co-starring role in the BBC children's science fiction serial Dark Season (Colin Cant, 1991). On the set, Winslet met Stephen Tredre, who was working as an assistant director. They would have a four-and-a-half-year relationship and remained close after their separation in 1995. He died of bone cancer during the opening week of Titanic, causing her to miss the film's Los Angeles premiere to attend his funeral in London. Her role in Dark Season was followed by appearances in the made-for-TV film Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (Diarmuid Lawrence, 1992), the sitcom Get Back (Graeme Harper, 1992), and an episode of the medical drama Casualty (Tom Cotter, 1993). She made her film debut in the New Zealand drama film Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994). Winslet auditioned for the part of Juliet Hulme, an obsessive teenager in 1950s New Zealand who assists in the murder of the mother of her best friend, Pauline Parker (played by Melanie Lynskey). Winslet won the role over 175 other girls. The film included Winslet's singing debut, and her a cappella version of Sono Andati, an aria from La Bohème, was featured on the film's soundtrack. The film opened to strong critical acclaim at the 51st Venice International Film Festival in 1994 and became one of the best-received films of the year. Winslet was awarded an Empire Award and a London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year. Subsequently, she played the second leading role of Marianne Dashwood in the Jane Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) featuring Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. The film became a financial and critical success, resulting in a worldwide box office total of $135 million and various awards for Winslet. She won both a BAFTA and a Screen Actors' Guild Award and was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. In 1996, Winslet starred in Michael Winterbottom's Jude, based on the Victorian novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. She played Sue Bridehead, a young woman with suffragette leanings who falls in love with her cousin (Christopher Eccleston). She then played Ophelia, Hamlet's drowned lover, in Kenneth Branagh's all-star-cast film version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1996). In mid-1996, Winslet began filming James Cameron's Titanic (1997), alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. She was cast as the passionate, rosy-cheeked aristocrat Rose DeWitt Bukater, who survives the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic. Against expectations, Titanic (1997) became the highest-grossing film in the world at the time and transformed Winslet into a commercial movie star. Young girls, the world over both idolized and identified with Winslet. Despite the enormous success of Titanic, Winslet next starred in two low-budget art-house films, Hideous Kinky (Gillies MacKinnon, 1998), and Holy Smoke! (Jane Campion, 1999). In 1997, on the set of Hideous Kinky, Winslet met film director Jim Threapleton, whom she married in 1998. They have a daughter, Mia Honey Threapleton (2000). Winslet and Threapleton divorced in 2001.
Since 2000, Kate Winslet's performances have continued to draw positive comments from film critics. She appeared in the period piece Quills (Philip Kaufman, 2000) with Geoffrey Rush and Joaquin Phoenix, and was inspired by the life and work of the Marquis de Sade. The actress was the first big name to back the film project, accepting the role of a chambermaid in the asylum and the courier of the Marquis' manuscripts to the underground publishers. Well received by critics, the film garnered numerous accolades for Winslet. In Enigma (Michael Apted, 2001), she played a young woman who finds herself falling for a brilliant young World War II code breaker (Dougray Scott). She was five months pregnant at the time of the shoot, forcing some tricky camera work. In the same year she appeared in Iris (Richard Eyre, 2001), portraying novelist Iris Murdoch. Winslet shared her role with Judi Dench, with both actresses portraying Murdoch at different phases of her life. Subsequently, each of them was nominated for an Academy Award the following year, earning Winslet her third nomination. Also in 2001, she voiced the character Belle in the animation film Christmas Carol: The Movie, based on the Charles Dickens classic novel. For the film, Winslet recorded the song What If, which was a Europe-wide top ten hit. Winslet began a relationship with director Sam Mendes in 2001, and she married him in 2003 on the island of Anguilla. Their son, Joe Alfie Winslet Mendes, was born in 2003 in New York City. In 2010, Winslet and Mendes announced their separation and divorced in 2011. In the drama The Life of David Gale (Alan Parker, 2003), she played an ambitious journalist who interviews a death-sentenced professor (Kevin Spacey) in his final weeks before execution. Next, Winslet appeared with Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004). In this neo-surrealistic indie-drama, she played Clementine Kruczynski, a chatty, spontaneous and somewhat neurotic woman, who decides to have all memories of her ex-boyfriend erased from her mind. The film was a critical and financial success and Winslet received rave reviews and her fourth Academy Award nomination. Finding Neverland (Marc Forster, 2004), is the story of Scottish writer J.M. Barrie (Johnny Depp) and his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Winslet), whose sons inspired him to pen the classic play Peter Pan or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. The film received favourable reviews and became Winslet's highest-grossing film since Titanic.
In 2005, Kate Winslet played a satirical version of herself in an episode of the comedy series Extras by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. While dressed as a nun, she was portrayed giving phone sex tips to the romantically challenged character of Maggie. Her performance in the episode led to her first nomination for an Emmy Award. In the musical romantic comedy Romance & Cigarettes (John Turturro, 2005), she played the slut Tula, and again Winslet was praised for her performance. In Todd Field's Little Children (2006), she played a bored housewife who has a torrid affair with a married neighbor (Patrick Wilson). Both her performance and the film received rave reviews. Again she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and at 31, became the youngest actress to ever garner five Oscar nominations. Commercial successes were Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), also starring Cameron Diaz, and the CG-animated Flushed Away (2006), in which she voiced Rita, a scavenging sewer rat who helps Roddy (Hugh Jackman) escape from the city of Ratropolis and return to his luxurious Kensington origins. In 2007, Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio to film Revolutionary Road (2008), directed by her husband at the time, Sam Mendes. Portraying a couple in a failing marriage in the 1950s, DiCaprio and Winslet watched period videos promoting life in the suburbs to prepare themselves for the film. Winslet was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance, her seventh nomination from the Golden Globes. Then she starred in the film adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's 1995 novel The Reader, (Stephen Daldry, 2008) featuring Ralph Fiennes and David Kross in supporting roles. Employing a German accent, Winslet portrayed a former Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenager (Kross) who, as an adult, witnesses her war crimes trial. While the film garnered mixed reviews in general. The following year, she earned her sixth Academy Award nomination and went on to win the Best Actress award, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress, a Screen Actors' Guild Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
In 2011, Kate Winslet headlined in the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce, based on James M. Cain's 1941 novel and directed by Todd Haynes. She portrayed a self-sacrificing mother during the Great Depression who finds herself separated from her husband and falling in love with a new man (Guy Pearce), all the while trying to earn her narcissistic daughter's (Evan Rachel Wood) love and respect. This time, Winslet won an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Roman Polanski's Carnage (2011) premiered at the 68th Venice Film Festival. The black comedy follows two sets of parents who meet up to talk after their children have been in a fight that day at school. Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz co-starred in the film. In 2012, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In Jason Reitman's big screen adaptation of Joyce Maynard's novel Labor Day (2013), she starred with Josh Brolin and Tobey Maguire. Winslet received favourable reviews for her portrayal of Adele, a mentally fragile, repressed single mom of a 13-year-old son who gives shelter to an escaped prisoner during a long summer weekend. For her performance, Winslet earned her tenth Golden Globe nomination. Next, she appeared in the science fiction film Divergent (Neil Burger, 2014), as the bad antagonist Jeanine Matthews. It became one of the biggest commercial successes of her career. This year, Winslet also appeared alongside Matthias Schoenaerts in Alan Rickman's period drama A Little Chaos (2014) about rival landscape gardeners commissioned by Louis XIV to create a fountain at Versailles. Next, she can be seen in the crime-thriller Triple Nine (John Hillcoat, 2015), the sequel in the Divergent series: Insurgent (Robert Schwentke, 2015) and The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 2015). Since 2012, Kate Winslet is married to Ned Rocknroll, a nephew of Richard Branson; The couple has a son, Bear Blaze Winslet. They live in West Sussex.
Sources: Tom Ryan (Encyclopedia of British Film), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
Hollande was born in Rouen, to a middle-class family. His mother, Nicole Frédérique Marguerite Tribert (1927–2009), was a social worker, and his father, Georges Gustave Hollande, an ear, nose, and throat doctor who "had once run on a far right ticket in local politics.The family moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a highly exclusive suburb of Paris, when Hollande was thirteen. Hollande was raised Catholic, but became an agnostic in later life,and now considers himself as an atheist[8] (In December 2011, Hollande told the French Christian magazine La Vie that he respects all religious practices but has none of his own).He attended Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle boarding school, a private Catholic school in Rouen, the Lycée Pasteur, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, then graduated with a bachelor's degree in law from Panthéon-Assas University. Then he studied at HEC Paris where he graduated in 1975, before attending the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and the École nationale d'administration. He graduated from ENA in 1980[10][11] and chose to enter the prestigious Cour des comptes. He lived in the United States in the summer of 1974 while he was a university student. Immediately after graduating, he was employed as a councillor in the Court of Audit.Early political career: Five years after volunteering as a student to work for François Mitterrand's ultimately unsuccessful campaign in the 1974 presidential election, Hollande joined the Socialist Party. He was quickly spotted by Jacques Attali, a senior adviser to Mitterrand, who arranged for Hollande to stand for election to the French National Assembly in 1981 in Corrèze against future President Jacques Chirac, who was then the Leader of the Rally for the Republic, a Neo-Gaullist party. Hollande lost to Chirac in the first round. He went on to become a special advisor to newly elected President Mitterrand, before serving as a staffer for Max Gallo, the government's spokesman. After becoming a municipal councillor for Ussel in 1983, he contested Corrèze for a second time in 1988, this time being elected to the National Assembly. Hollande lost his bid for re-election to the National Assembly in the so-called "blue wave" of the 1993 election, described as such due to the number of seats gained by the Right at the expense of the Socialist Party.First Secretary of the Socialist Party (1997–2008)François Hollande in 2004: Hollande with his former partner Ségolène Royal, at a rally for the 2007 elections. As the end of Mitterrand's term in office approached, the Socialist Party was torn by a struggle of internal factions, each seeking to influence the direction of the party. Hollande pleaded for reconciliation and for the party to unite behind Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission, but Delors renounced his ambitions to run for the French presidency in 1995, leading to Lionel Jospin's resuming his earlier position as the leader of the party. Jospin selected Hollande to become the official party spokesman, and Hollande went on to contest Corrèze once again in 1997, successfully returning to the National Assembly.
That same year, Jospin became the prime minister of France, and Hollande won the election for his successor as first secretary of the French Socialist Party, a position he would hold for eleven years. Because of the very strong position of the Socialist Party within the French government during this period, Hollande's position led some to refer to him the "vice prime minister". Hollande would go on to be elected mayor of Tulle in 2001, an office he would hold for the next seven years.The immediate resignation of Jospin from politics following his shock defeat by far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the 2002 presidential election forced Hollande to become the public face of the party for the 2002 legislative election but, although he managed to limit defeats and was re-elected in his own constituency, the Socialists lost nationally. In order to prepare for the 2003 party congress in Dijon, he obtained the support of many notable personalities of the party and was re-elected first secretary against opposition from left-wing factions.
After the triumph of the Left in the 2004 regional elections, Hollande was cited as a potential presidential candidate, but the Socialists were divided on the European Constitution, and Hollande's support for the ill-fated "Yes" position in the French referendum on the European constitution caused friction within the party. Although Hollande was re-elected as first secretary at the Le Mans Congress in 2005, his authority over the party began to decline from this point onwards. Eventually his domestic partner, Ségolène Royal, was chosen to represent the Socialist Party in the 2007 presidential election, where she would lose to Nicolas Sarkozy.
Hollande was widely blamed for the poor performances of the Socialist Party in the 2007 elections, and he announced that he would not seek another term as first secretary. Hollande publicly declared his support for Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, although it was Martine Aubry who would go on to win the race to succeed him in 2008.
Following his resignation as first secretary, Hollande was immediately elected to replace Jean-Pierre Dupont as the president of the General Council of Corrèze in April 2008, a position he holds to this day. In 2008 he supported the creation of the first European Prize for Local History (Étienne Baluze Prize), founded by the "Société des amis du musée du cloître" of Tulle, on the suggestion of the French historian Jean Boutier. François Hollande awarded the first prize on 29 February 2008 to the Italian historian Beatrice Palmero in the General Council of Corrèze.2012 presidential campaign: French presidential election, 2012. Following his re-election as president of the General Council of Corrèze in March 2011, Hollande announced that he would be a candidate in the upcoming primary election to select the Socialist and Radical Left Party presidential nominee.[13] The primary marked the first time that both parties had held an open primary to select a joint nominee at the same time. He initially trailed the front-runner, former finance minister and International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.Following Strauss-Kahn's arrest on suspicion of sexual assault in New York City in May 2011, Hollande began to lead the opinion polls. His position as front-runner was established just as Strauss-Kahn declared that he would no longer be seeking the nomination. After a series of televised debates throughout September, Hollande topped the ballot in the first round held on 9 October with 39% of the vote, not gaining the 50% required to avoid a second ballot, which he would contest against Martine Aubry, who had come second with 30% of the vote.The second ballot took place on 16 October 2011. Hollande won with 56% of the vote to Aubry's 43% and thus became the official Socialist and Radical Left Party candidate for the 2012 presidential election.[14] After the primary results, he immediately gained the pledged support of the other contenders for the party's nomination, including Aubry, Arnaud Montebourg, Manuel Valls and 2007 candidate Ségolène Royal.Hollande's presidential campaign was managed by Pierre Moscovici and Stéphane Le Foll, a member of Parliament and Member of the European Parliament respectively.[16] Hollande launched his campaign officially with a rally and major speech at Le Bourget on 22 January 2012 in front of 25,000 people.[17][18] The main themes of his speech were equality and the regulation of finance, both of which he promised to make a key part of his campaign.[On 26 January, he outlined a full list of policies in a manifesto containing 60 propositions, including the separation of retail activities from riskier investment-banking businesses; raising taxes on big corporations, banks and the wealthy; creating 60,000 teaching jobs; bringing the official retirement age back down to 60 from 62; creating subsidised jobs in areas of high unemployment for the young; promoting more industry in France by creating a public investment bank; granting marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples; and pulling French troops out of Afghanistan in 2012.On 9 February, he detailed his policies specifically relating to education in a major speech in Orléans.On 15 February, incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy announced that he would run for a second and final term, strongly criticising Hollande's proposals and claiming that he would bring about "economic disaster within two days of taking office" if he won.Hollande visited Berlin, Germany, in December 2011 for the Social Democrats Federal Party Congress, at which he met Sigmar Gabriel, Peer Steinbrück, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Martin Schulz;[23][24] he also travelled to Belgium before the United Kingdom in February 2012, where he met with Opposition Leader Ed Miliband; and finally Tunisia in May 2012.Opinion polls showed a tight race between the two men in the first round of voting, with most polls showing Hollande comfortably ahead of Sarkozy in a hypothetical second round run-off.The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April. François Hollande came in first place with 28.63% of the vote, and faced Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round run-off.[28] In the second round of voting on 6 May 2012, François Hollande was elected President of the French Republic with 51.7% of the vote.President of France (2012–present)[ François Hollande was elected President of France on 6 May 2012. He was inaugurated on 15 May, and shortly afterwards appointed Jean-Marc Ayrault to be his Prime Minister. He also appointed Benoît Puga to be the military's chief of staff, Pierre-René Lemas as his general secretary and Pierre Besnard as his Head of Cabinet. On his first official visit to a foreign country in his capacity as president of France, the airplane transporting him was hit by lightning.[31] The plane returned safely to Paris where he took another flight to Germany. The first measures he took were to lower the income of the president, the prime minister, and other members of the government by 30%, and to make them sign a "code of ethics".Budget: Hollande's economic policies are wide-ranging, including supporting the creation of a European credit rating agency, the separation of lending and investment in banks, reducing the share of electricity generated by nuclear power in France from 75 to 50% in favour of renewable energy sources, merging income tax and the General Social Contribution (CSG), creating an additional 45% for additional income of 150,000 euros, capping tax loopholes at a maximum of €10,000 per year, and questioning the relief solidarity tax on wealth (ISF, Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune) measure that should bring €29 billion in additional revenue. Hollande has also signalled his intent to implement a 75% income tax rate on revenue earned above 1,000,000 euros per year, to generate the provision of development funds for deprived suburbs, and to return to a deficit of zero percent of GDP by 2017.[33][34] The tax plan has proven controversial, with courts ruling it unconstitutional in 2012, only to then take the opposite position on a redrafted version in 2013.[35][36]
Hollande has also announced several reforms to education, pledging to recruit 60,000 new teachers, to create a study allowance and means-tested training, and to set up a mutually beneficial contract that would allow a generation of experienced employees and craftsmen to be the guardians and teachers of younger newly hired employees, thereby creating a total of 150,000 subsidized jobs. This has been complemented by the promise of aid to SMEs, with the creation of a public bank investment-oriented SME's, and a reduction of the corporate tax rate to 30% for medium corporations and 15% for small.Hollande's government has announced plans to construct 500,000 public homes per year, including 150,000 social houses, funded by a doubling of the ceiling of the A passbook, the region making available its local government land within five years. In accordance with long-standing Socialist Party policy, Hollande has announced that the retirement age will revert to 60, for those who have contributed for more than 41 years.LGBT rights: Further information: Law 2013-404; Hollande has also announced his personal support for same-sex marriage and adoption for LGBT couples, and outlined plans to pursue the issue in early 2013.[37] In July 2012, Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced that "In the first half of 2013, the right to marriage and adoption will be open to all couples, without discrimination [...]", confirming this election promise by Hollande.The bill to legalize same-sex marriage, known as Bill no. 344, was introduced to the National Assembly of France on 7 November 2012. On 12 February 2013, the National Assembly approved the bill in a 329–229 vote.The Right-wing opposed the bill. The Senate approved the full bill with a 171–165 majority on 12 April with minor amendments. On 23 April, the National Assembly approved the amended bill, in a 331–225 vote, and following approval of the law by the Constitutional Council of France, it was signed into law by President François Hollande on 18 May 2013, with the first same-sex weddings under the law taking place eleven days later.Labour reform: As President, Hollande pursued labour reform to make France more competitive internationally. Legislation was introduced in late 2012 and after much debate passed the French lower and upper house in May 2013. The bill includes measures such as making it easier for workers to change jobs and for companies to fire employees. One of the main measures of the bill allows companies to temporarily cut workers' salaries or hours during times of economic difficulty. This measure takes its inspiration from Germany, where furloughs have been credited with allowing companies to weather difficult times without resorting to massive layoffs. Another measure that aims to simplify the firing process. Layoffs in France are often challenged in courts and the cases can take years to resolve. Many companies cite the threat of lengthy court action – even more than any financial cost – as the most difficult part of doing business in France. The law shortens the time that employees have to contest a layoff and also lays out a scheme for severance pay. The government hopes this will help employees and companies reach agreement faster in contentious layoffs.Another key measure introduced are credits for training that follow employees throughout their career, regardless of where they work, and the right to take a leave of absence to work at another company. The law will also require all companies to offer and partially pay for supplemental health insurance. Lastly, the law also reforms unemployment insurance, so that someone out of work doesn't risk foregoing significant benefits when taking a job that might pay less than previous work or end up only being temporary. Under the new law, workers will be able to essentially put benefits on hold when they take temporary work, instead of seeing their benefits recalculated each time.Pension reform: As President, Hollande pursued reform to the vast and expensive pension system in France. The process proved to be very contentious, with members of Parliament, Labor Unions, and general public all opposed. Mass protests and demonstrations occurred throughout Paris. Despite the opposition, the French Parliament did pass a reform in December 2013 aimed at plugging a pension deficit expected to reach 20.7 billion euros ($28.4 billion) by 2020 if nothing were to be done. Rather than raising the mandatory retirement age, as many economists had advised, Hollande pursued increases in contributions, leaving the retirement age untouched. The reform had a rough ride in parliament, being rejected twice by the Senate, where Hollande's Socialist Party has a slim majority, before it won sufficient backing in a final vote before the lower house of parliament. French private sector workers will see the size and duration of their pension contributions increase only modestly under the reform while their retirement benefits are largely untouched.[43] Several scholars and economists argue the reform did not go far enough.[who?] Foreign affairs: See also: List of presidential trips made by François Hollande
Leaders of Belarus, Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine at the summit in Minsk, 11–12 February 2015. As President, Hollande promised an early withdrawal of French combat troops present in Afghanistan in 2012.He also pledged to conclude a new contract of Franco-German partnership, advocating the adoption of a Directive on the protection of public services. Hollande has proposed "an acceleration of the establishment of a Franco-German civic service, the creation of a Franco-German research office, the creation of a Franco-German industrial fund to finance common competitiveness clusters, and the establishment of a common military headquarters". As well as this, Hollande has expressed a wish to "combine the positions of the presidents of the European Commission and of the European Council (currently held by José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy respectively) into a single office...and that it should be directly chosen" by the members of the European Parliament.Hollande made a state visit to the United States in February 2014; a state dinner was given in his honor by U.S. President Barack Obama.On 27 February 2014, Hollande was a special guest of honor in Abuja, received by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan in celebration of Nigeria's amalgamation in 1914, a 100-year anniversary. In September 2015, Hollande warned former Eastern Bloc countries against rejecting the EU mandatory migrant quotas, saying: "Those who don't share our values, those who don't even want to respect those principles, need to start asking themselves questions about their place in the European Union".Intervention in Mali: Hollande reviews troops during the 2013 Bastille Day military parade. On 11 January 2013, Hollande authorised the execution of Operation Serval, which aimed to curtail the activities of Islamist extremists in the north of Mali.[44] The intervention was popularly supported in Mali, as Hollande promised that his government would do all it could to "rebuild Mali".During his one-day visit to Bamako, Mali's capital, on 2 February 2013, he said that it was "the most important day in [his] political life". In 2014, Hollande took some of these troops out of Mali and spread them over the rest of the Sahel under Operation Barkhane, in an effort to curb jihadists militants.Co-Prince of Andorra: The President of the French Republic is one of the two joint heads of state of the Principality of Andorra. Hollande hosted a visit from Antoni Martí, head of the government, and Vicenç Mateu Zamora, leader of the parliament.Approval ratings: An IFOP poll released in April 2014 showed that Hollande’s approval rating had dropped five points since the previous month of March to 18%, dipping below his earlier low of 20% in February during the same year.[57] In November 2014, his approval rating reached a new low of 12%, according to a YouGov poll.[58] Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January 2015, however, approval for Hollande increased dramatically, reaching 40% according to an IFOP poll two weeks after the attack,[59] though an Ipsos-Le Point survey in early February showed his rating declining back to 30%. Personal life: For over thirty years, his partner was fellow Socialist politician Ségolène Royal, with whom he has four children: Thomas (1984), Clémence (1985), Julien (1987) and Flora (1992). In June 2007, just a month after Royal's defeat in the French presidential election of 2007, the couple announced that they were separating.A few months after his split from Ségolène Royal was announced, a French website published details of a relationship between Hollande and French journalist Valérie Trierweiler. In November 2007, Trierweiler confirmed and openly discussed her relationship with Hollande in an interview with the French weekly Télé 7 Jours. She remained a reporter for the magazine Paris Match, but ceased work on political stories. Trierweiler moved into the Élysée Palace with Hollande when he became president and started to accompany him on official travel.On 25 January 2014, Hollande officially announced his separation from Valérie Trierweiler[63] after the tabloid magazine Closer revealed his affair with actress Julie Gayet.[64] In September 2014 Trierweiler published a book about her time with Hollande titled Merci pour ce moment (Thank You for This Moment). The memoir claimed the president presented himself as disliking the rich, but in reality disliked the poor. The claim brought an angry reaction and rejection from Hollande, who said he had spent his life dedicated to the under-privileged.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Hollande
Today will be the happiest day of François Hollande’s term as president of France. In the least surprising surprise result of the year, Hollande has defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom much of France had become frustrated and fed up. Public sentiment is easy enough to understand. Sarkozy rode into office on a wave of expectations which he seemed tempted to inflate at every turn. But he, like France, was ill-equipped to handle the economic crisis that now threatens to pull France into Europe’s troubled bottom tier, down with Italy, Spain, and Greece. Sarkozy’s brand of center-right nationalism had met its match. Now it’s time for Hollande’s, shall we say, socialist nationalism. Despite his reputation as a would-be “Mr. Normal,” Hollande offers an ideology far more grandiose in its self-regard than any associated with Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s egotism suited a party that believed it knew the future. Hollande’s apparent personal humility is an all-too-poetic fit with the animating spirit of his political creed — a wilfull ignorance of its own futility and obsolescence. There are many illustrations to come of why socialism is dead on arrival in twenty-first century France, and François Hollande will find no shortage of disappointments and calamities waiting for him at the peak of power. But right now, we can already identify five key reasons why Hollande is destined to fail: 1. No mandate. Whatever else can be said about socialism or François Hollande, there is no disputing the fact that his public support comprises a soberingly small slice of the French electorate. As it stands, he has not cracked 52% of the vote. What you may not know is that one in four voters rejected every candidate, with 20% casting no ballot and 5% casting a blank one. France’s radicals may tolerate him in a resigned sort of way, but the French right will simply bide their time and drum up some challenger who reminds no one of Sarkozy. The far right, on the other hand, will drive Hollande to distraction. He will be pushed toward the terrible choice either of demonizing them or trying to ignore them. Both alternatives will strengthen them, so long as Hollande actually advances his policies. Anything trans-nationalist will give the Front National fits, while anything else will be occasion for a pitched battle with Hollande over what nationalism is for. Hollande’s support is shallow and weak, fueled largely by a combination of dismayed hope and relief that at least one needn’t endure Sarkozy’s variety of failure anymore. To strengthen his support, Hollande will have to demagogue and cut left. The more he does this, the narrower his appeal will become. No matter what kind of changes in policy he achieves, they will be transitory. France, and Europe, are already waiting for the other shoe to drop. It will.
2. Nationalist nonsense. Barack Obama’s foreign policy has proven itself to be incoherent but acceptable to many Americans. François Hollande’s foreign policy will prove unacceptably incoherent. The French left has always favored greater European togetherness, but now associates the European project with Germany’s economic domination of the Continent. Hollande wants to square the circle by spearheading a European push for ‘more growth’, but he associates pro-growth economic reforms with so-called austerity. (Simply not spending substantial new sums counts as austerity.) As Gideon Rachman observes, France “is a country where the state already consumes 56 per cent of gross domestic product, which has not balanced a budget since the mid-1970s, and which has some of the highest taxes in the world.” And Hollande’s vision of growth is a product of his leftist view of nationalism:Mr. Hollande has vowed to restore social equilibrium in France, in part by pushing back against the austerity championed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi. Mr. Hollande’s plans include rolling back tax breaks that Mr. Sarkozy gave to the wealthy, and increasing state-sponsored investment, in part by creating tens of thousands of civil sector jobs. 4 Essential Tips To Becoming A Better Leader Hollande is correct to realize that Germany lacks the political authority to successfully impose its fiscal habits upon Europe. But he is a fool to believe he ought to do more of precisely what caused Germany to try in the first place. Massive government spending is actually not the problem (although if Paul Krugman is right, France and Europe would require a volume of deficit spending that Hollande hasn’t a chance in hell of securing). The problem is not the amount of money that Hollande takes in, from whatever source, but how he will spend it: on government jobs. The secret killer of Europe’s economy has been government jobs, which have grown to absorb so much of Europe’s economies because so many European governments have functioned as if the EU had done nothing to weaken nationalism. There is little more nationalist than a government job, and little more hostile to European togetherness. The more government jobs, the farther away a common labor market. Civil sector jobs strengthen nationalism just at the moment of its most startling failure, yet they are the centerpiece of Hollande’s vision of normalcy. It’s a view that puts him on a collision course with the viability of the Eurozone and the EU itself. Once the left really accepts this, Hollande will become a scapegoat for whatever doesn’t work, which eventually will be everything. Left nationalism is as useless in the face of this crisis as Sarkozy’s center-right Gaullism. Sarkozy got off easy. Hollande won’t. 3. More globalization. Globalization will not reverse itself out of deference to François Hollande. For now, France is itself a globalizer, not a victim of globalization. But by the time Hollande is done with France, that may well change. The markets do not like Hollande — and why should they? — but, try as Hollande might, France is a market, and a big one. If he impairs the vitality of French business in Europe — and he will — he’ll make firms from around the world an offer they’ll be unlikely to refuse. This time, Germany won’t be first in line, especially if Hollande gets his way. The European left’s resistance to Germany is stronger than its resistance to China. China, meanwhile, is busy developing a new approach to Europe that can capitalize on this attitude. Just as the French left will find itself more nationalist, yet more beholden to foreign powers, it will be more antagonistic to globalization, yet more dependent upon it. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3: take Europe’s economic situation, add French socialism, and stir. 4. Focused opposition. France’s political right may be fraying and fragmenting now, but by the time Hollande is up for re-election, France’s needs — and the right’s — will become clear. Long gone will be the days when only a few isolated American and British commentators advance opinions concerning the necessity of one or another kind of new Napoleon in France. The heavyweight argument on that count involves a recognition that French nationalism and European togetherness can only be reconciled through a kind of French-led continental unity for which Napoleon’s First Empire is the only available inspiration. But a more easily digestible argument, capable of reuniting the right, looks something like this:Given the inevitable collapse of a future Hollande administration – either through economic failure or political ineptitude – what will save France from this poisonous consensus of decline and disorder? To return to the Napoleonic/Gaullist model, it needs a strong man (or woman) to advance bold, wholesale reform. It doesn’t require a dictator: the rule is that every successive great leader adopts and preserves the best of the constitution that came before. But France surely needs a president who will a) reject sectional politics that pits one class or region against another, b) resist pandering to the mob, and c) do what must be done to deregulate the French economy. Once the right accepts these things, an intelligible, coherent answer to Hollande will come into focus. The key piece will involve spanning the nationalist-versus-transnationalist divide. It will come as a matter of logic — before, not after, Hollande is replaced. The big picture for the French right is a realization that France cannot be kept strong and proud unless it asserts its political leadership over the whole of Europe. If it does not, failed states and hostile interests will hem it in on all sides, and unmet longings will bring chaos to its politics and its streets. 5. The force of history. The objection will be raised that the French right will never unite to beat Hollande unless the right individual — a truly remarkable individual — steps forward. Circumstances, however, have a habit of thrusting to the forefront someone who will do. By the time Hollande’s term is up, France will, historically speaking, have tried everything but a far-right government led from Paris. And the far right is too factional to swiftly step into effective command. Europe’s shambles and France’s limbo will form a vacuum reminiscent of the one that Napoleon stepped forward to fill. The people will be ready for it. After Hollande, they will be exhausted by politics and sick of themselves. Socialism will have proven itself completely unable to reconcile nationalism and transnationalism, as we already know it to be. The task will fall to the French right. Today, Hollande’s opponents seem incompetent to fulfill this task. But whatever the institutional preparedness of the French right appears to be, France will face the kind of historic moment that makes great statesmen, not waits on them. France’s savoir won’t be Hollande, thanks to the one-two punch of his orthodoxy and his disposition. His administration will exacerbate the troubles that already dwarf him. Whether he is aware of this or not, the outcome will be the same.
www.forbes.com/sites/jamespoulos/2012/05/06/five-reasons-...
French unemployment rose to near a record high in the third quarter, the latest sign that President Francois Hollande is struggling to meet a pledge to create jobs.Unemployment climbed to 10.6 percent in the three months through September from 10.4 percent the previous quarter, national statistics office Insee said in an e-mailed statement. That’s in contrast to Germany, where the jobless rate fell to a record-low 6.3 percent in November.While jobless claims have been steadily climbing for the past four years to reach a record 3.6 million in October, Hollande has been able to point to France’s growing population as part of the reason. The unemployment rate, by contrast, has stayed below the all-time high reached in 1997.The third-quarter increase now leaves unemployment at its highest in 18 years and just shy of the the 10.7 percent record. While the economy is showing some signs of sustained growth for the first time since Hollande took power in May 2012, the labor-market numbers represent a political defeat for the Socialist president, who has said that job creation is a condition for his own re-election in 2017.Separately on Thursday, Markit Economics said its composite manufacturing and services gauge fell to 51 in November from 52.6 in October. While that’s above the key 50 level indicating expansion, it lower than the initial estimate and signals the slowest growth of private sector output since August.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-03/french-unemplo...
Belgian postcard, no. 950. Photo: Warner Bros.
American actress Eleanor Parker (1922-2013) appeared in some 80 films and television series. She was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for Caged (1950), Detective Story (1951) and Interrupted Melody (1955). Her role in Caged also won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. One of her most memorable roles was that of the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965). Her biographer Doug McClelland called her ‘Woman of a Thousand Faces’, because of her versatility.
Eleanor Jean Parker was born in 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio. She was the daughter of Lola (Isett) and Lester Day Parker. Her family moved to East Cleveland, Ohio, where she attended public schools and graduated from Shaw High School. She appeared in a number of school plays. When she was 15 she started to attend the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. After graduation, she moved to California and began appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse. There she was spotted by a Warners Bros talent scout, Irving Kumin. The studio signed her to a long-term contract in June 1941. She was cast that year in They Died with Their Boots On (Raoul Walsh, 1941), but her scenes were cut. Her actual film debut was as Nurse Ryan in the short Soldiers in White (B. Reeves Eason, 1942). She was given some decent roles in B films, Busses Roar (D. Ross Lederman, 1942) and The Mysterious Doctor (Benjamin Stoloff, 1943) opposites John Loder. She also had a small role in one of Warner Brothers' biggest productions for the 1943 season, the pro-Soviet Mission to Moscow (Michael Curtiz, 1943) as Emlen Davies, daughter of the U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R (Walter Huston). On the set, she met her first husband, Navy Lieutenant. Fred L. Losse, but the marriage turned out to be a brief wartime affair. Parker had impressed Warners enough to offer her a strong role in a prestige production, Between Two Worlds (Edward A. Blatt, 1944), playing the suicidal wife of Paul Henreid's character. She played support roles for Crime by Night (William Clemens, 1944) and The Last Ride (D. Ross Lederman, 1944). Then she got the starring role opposite Dennis Morgan in The Very Thought of You (Delmer Daves, 1944). She was considered enough of a ‘name’ to be given a cameo in Hollywood Canteen (Delmer Daves, 1944). Warners gave her the choice role of Mildred Rogers in a new version of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (Edmund Goulding, 1946), but previews were not favourable and the film sat on the shelf for two years before being released. She had her big break when she was cast opposite John Garfield in Pride of the Marines (Delmer Daves, 1945). However, two films with Errol Flynn that followed, the romantic comedy Never Say Goodbye (James V. Kern, 1946) and the drama Escape Me Never (Peter Godfrey, 1947), were box office disappointments. Parker was suspended twice by Warners for refusing parts in films – in Stallion Road (James V. Kern, 1947), where she was replaced by Alexis Smith and Love and Learn (Frederick De Cordova, 1947). She made the comedy Voice of the Turtle (Irving Rapper, 1947) with Ronald Reagan, and the mystery The Woman in White (Peter Godfrey, 1948). She refused to appear in Somewhere in the City (Vincent Sherman, 1950) so Warners suspended her again; Virginia Mayo played the role. Parker then had two years off, during which time she married and had a baby. She turned down a role in The Hasty Heart (Vincent Sherman, 1949) which she wanted to do, but it would have meant going to England and she did not want to leave her baby alone during its first year.
Eleanor Parker returned in Chain Lightning (Stuart Heisler, 1950) with Humphrey Bogart. Parker heard about a women-in-prison film Warners were making, Caged (John Cromwell, 1950), and actively lobbied for the role. She got it, won the 1950 Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. She also had a good role in the melodrama Three Secrets (Robert Wise, 1950). In February 1950, Parker left Warner Bros. after having been under contract there for eight years. Parker had understood that she would star in a film called Safe Harbor, but Warner Bros. apparently had no intention of making it. Because of this misunderstanding, her agents negotiated her release. Parker's career outside of Warners started badly with Valentino (Lewis Allen, 1951) playing a fictionalised wife of Rudolph Valentino for producer Edward Small. She tried a comedy at 20th Century Fox with Fred MacMurray, A Millionaire for Christy (George Marshall, 1951). In 1951, Parker signed a contract with Paramount for one film a year, with an option for outside films. This arrangement began brilliantly with Detective Story (William Wyler, 1951) playing Mary McLeod, the woman who doesn't understand the position of her unstable detective husband (Kirk Douglas). Parker was nominated for the Oscar in 1951 for her performance. Parker followed Detective Story with her portrayal of an actress in love with a swashbuckling nobleman (Stewart Granger) in Scaramouche (George Sidney, 1952), a role originally intended for Ava Gardner. Wikipedia: “Parker later claimed that Granger was the only person she didn't get along with during her entire career. However, they had good chemistry and the film was a massive hit. “MGM cast her into Above and Beyond (Melvin Frank, Norman Panama, 1952), a biopic of Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. (Robert Taylor), the pilot of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was a solid hit. While Parker was making a third film for MGM, Escape from Fort Bravo (John Sturges, 1953), she signed a five-year contract with the studio. She was named as star of a Sidney Sheldon script, My Most Intimate Friend and of One More Time, from a script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin directed by George Cukor, but neither film was made. Back at Paramount, Parker starred with Charlton Heston as a 1900s mail-order bride in The Naked Jungle (Byron Haskin, 1954), produced by George Pal. Parker returned to MGM where she was reunited with Robert Taylor in an Egyptian adventure film, Valley of the Kings (Robert Pirosh, 1954), and a Western, Many Rivers to Cross (Roy Rowland, 1955). MGM gave her one of her best roles as opera singer Marjorie Lawrence struck down by polio in Interrupted Melody (Curtis Bernhardt, 1955). This was a big hit and earned Parker a third Oscar nomination; she later said it was her favourite film. Also in 1955, Parker appeared in the film adaptation of the National Book Award-winner The Man with the Golden Arm (Otto Preminger, 1955), released through United Artists. She played Zosh, the supposedly wheelchair-bound wife of heroin-addicted, would-be jazz drummer Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra). It was a major commercial and critical success. In 1956, she co-starred with Clark Gable in the Western comedy The King and Four Queens (Raoul Walsh, 1956), also for United Artists. It was then back at MGM for two dramas: Lizzie (Hugo Haas, 1957), in the title role, as a woman with a split personality; and The Seventh Sin (Ronald Neame, 1957), a remake of The Painted Veil in the role originated by Greta Garbo and, once again, intended for Ava Gardner. Both films flopped at the box office and, as a result, Parker's plans to produce her own film, L'Eternelle, about French resistance fighters, did not materialise.
Eleanor Parker supported Frank Sinatra in a popular comedy, A Hole in the Head (Frank Capra, 1959). She returned to MGM for Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1960), co-starring with Robert Mitchum, then took over Lana Turner's role of Constance Rossi in Return to Peyton Place (José Ferrer, 1961), the sequel to the hit 1957 film. That was made by 20th Century Fox who also produced Madison Avenue (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1961) with Parker. In 1960, she made her TV debut, and in the following years, she worked increasingly in television, with the occasional film role such as Panic Button (George Sherman, Giuliano Carnimeo, 1964) with Maurice Chevalier and Jayne Mansfield. Parker's best-known screen role is Baroness Elsa Schraeder in the Oscar-winning musical The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965). The Baroness was famously and poignantly unsuccessful in keeping the affections of Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) after he falls in love with Maria (Julie Andrews). In 1966, Parker played an alcoholic widow in the crime drama Warning Shot (Buzz Kulik, 1967), a talent scout who discovers a Hollywood star in The Oscar (Russell Rouse, 1966), and a rich alcoholic in An American Dream (Robert Gist, 1966). However, her film career seemed to go downhill. A Playboy Magazine reviewer derided the cast of The Oscar as "has-beens and never-will-be". From the late 1960s, she focused on television. In 1963, Parker appeared in the medical TV drama about psychiatry The Eleventh Hour in the episode Why Am I Grown So Cold?, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award. She also appeared in episodes of Breaking Point (1964). And The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1968). In 1969–1970, Parker starred in the television series Bracken's World, for which she was nominated for a 1970 Golden Globe Award. Parker also appeared on stage in the role of Margo Channing in Applause, the Broadway musical version of the film All About Eve. In 1976, she played Maxine in a revival of The Night of the Iguana. Her last film role was in a Farrah Fawcett bomb, Sunburn (Richard C. Sarafian, 1979). Subsequently, she appeared very infrequently on TV, most recently in Dead on the Money (Mark Cullingham, 1991). Eleanor Parker was married four times. Her first husband was Fred Losee (1943-1944). Her second marriage to Bert E. Friedlob (1946-1953) produced three children Susan Eleanor Friedlob (1948), Sharon Anne Friedlob (1950), and Richard Parker Friedlob (1952). Her third marriage was to American portrait painter Paul Clemens, (1954-1965) and the couple had one child, actor Paul Clemens (1958). Her fourth marriage with Raymond N. Hirsch (1966-2001) ended when Hirsch died of oesophagal cancer. She was the grandmother of actor/director Chasen Parker. Eleanor Parker died in 2013 at a medical facility in Palm Springs, California of complications of pneumonia. She was 91. Parker was raised a Protestant and later converted to Judaism, telling the New York Daily News columnist Kay Gardella in August 1969, "I think we're all Jews at heart ... I wanted to convert for a long time."
Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, no. 502. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Charming, youthful and pretty American actress Jeanne Crain (1925-2003) was frequently cast in bright and breezy musicals. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in Pinky (1949), in which she played the title role. Her career spanned from 1943 to 1975.
Jeanne Elizabeth Crain was born in Barstow, California, in 1925. She was the daughter of George A. Crain, a high school English teacher and his wife, Loretta Carr. Not long after her birth, Jeanne was moved to Los Angeles, where her father got another teaching position. Her parents divorced in 1934. While in junior high school, Jeanne played the lead in a school production which set her on the path to acting. When she was in high school Jeanne was asked to take a screen test for the role of Lucy Morgan in The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1941). Unfortunately, she didn't get the part, but it did set her sights on being a film actress. After high school, Jeanne enrolled at UCLA to study drama. At the age of 18, she won the 'Miss Camera Girl of 1942' title in Long Beach, Florida. She got a bit part, posing in a bathing costume, in the Fox production The Gang's All Here (Busby Berkeley, 1943) starring Alice Faye, and a small contract. Her next film saw Jeanne elevated to a more substantial part in Home in Indiana (Henry Hathaway, 1944) the following year, which was filmed in neighbouring Kentucky. The film was an unquestionable hit. On the strength of that box-office success, Jeanne was given a raise and star billing, as Maggie Preston, in her next film, In the Meantime, Darling (Otto Preminger, 1944). Unfortunately, the critics not only roasted the film but singled out Jeanne's performance in particular. She rebounded nicely in her last film of the year, Winged Victory (George Cukor, 1944), opposite Lon McCallister. The audience loved it and the film was profitable. In 1945, Jeanne was cast in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical State Fair (Walter Lang, 1945) as Margie Frake who travels to the fair and falls in love with a reporter played by Dana Andrews. Louanne Hogan dubbed Crain's singing numbers. After that, Crain often had singing parts in films, and they were dubbed, in most cases by Hogan. Another hit was Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl, 1945), where Crain was the 'good' sister of 'bad' Gene Tierney, both in love with Cornel Wilde. Now, Crain got a bigger contract and more recognition. Later that year, she married Paul Brooks on New Year's Eve. Although her devoutly catholic mother wasn't supportive of the marriage, the union lasted until her husband's death, The marriage produced seven children. Brooks was a former RKO contract player who had briefly appeared in Those Endearing Young Charms (Lewis Allen, 1945). His real name was Paul Brinkman, and he gave up his acting career to become a highly successful businessman for an arms manufacturing company. The year 1947 was an off year for Jeanne, as she took time off to bear Brooks' first child. Although Crain, a practising Catholic, sued Brinkman for divorce in 1956, the decree never became final and they got back together again. In later years, they lived separately.
In 1949, Jeanne Crain appeared in three films, A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949) with Linda Darnell and Ann Sothern, The Fan (Otto Preminger, 1949) opposite Madeleine Carroll and George Sanders, and Pinky (Elia Kazan, 1949) with Ethel Barrymore. It was this latter film which garnered her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for her role as Pinky Johnson, a nurse who sets up a clinic in the Deep South. She lost to Olivia de Havilland for The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949). Pinky was controversial because it told the story of a light-skinned African American woman who passes for white in the Northern United States until she is forced to admit her roots. Although Lena Horne and other black actresses were considered, producer Darryl F. Zanuck chose to cast a white actress for fear of racial backlash. The following year, Crain starred in the comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (Walter Lang, 1950), as the eldest daughter of Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy. Crain paired with Cary Grant in the offbeat drama People Will Talk (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1951). Crain was reunited with Loy for Belles on Their Toes (Henry Levin, 1952), the sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen, getting top billing this time. In 1953, Jeanne left Fox after starring in the Film Noir Vicki (Harry Horner, 1953), with Jean Peters. Denny Jackson at IMDb: "She had made 23 films for the studio that started her career, but she needed a well-deserved change. Jeanne wanted to expand her range instead of playing the girl-next-door types." She went briefly to Warner Brothers for the filming of Duel in the Jungle (George Marshall, 1954). The film was lukewarm at best. That same year she signed a contract with Universal Studios with promises of better, high-profile roles. She went into production in the film Man Without a Star (King Vidor, 1955), starring Kirk Douglas, which was a hit with audiences and critics. After The Joker Is Wild (Charles Vidor, 1957) with Frank Sinatra and Mitzi Gaynor, Jeanne took time off for her family and to appear in a few television programs. She returned, briefly, to film in Guns of the Timberland (Robert D. Wenn, 1960) alongside Alan Ladd. The films were sporadic after that. In Italy, she played Nefertiti in the Peplum Nefertiti, regina del Nilo/Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile (Fernando Cerchio, 1961) with Edmund Purdom and Vincent Price. In 1967, she appeared in a low-budget suspense yarn called Hot Rods to Hell (John Brahm, 1967) with Dana Andrews. Her final film was the thriller Skyjacked (John Guillermin, 1972), in which she was a passenger on a plane piloted by Charlton Heston. In her retirement years, she and her husband spent most of their time working at two of their ranches. Jeanne died of a heart attack in Santa Barbara, California, in 2003. Her husband Paul Brooks had died two months earlier. Their son Paul Brinkman Jr. became a television executive, who is most known for his work on the television series JAG. Crain's youngest child, son Christopher Brinkman, was the original lead guitarist for the rock group Jane's Addiction (1985-1986). He died of a drug overdose in 1997.
Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard. Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989).
American actress Julia Roberts (1967) won more than 30 other acting awards including an Academy Award for her leading role in Erin Brockovich (2000) plus Oscar nominations for Steel Magnolias (1989), Pretty Woman (1990) and August: Osage County (2013). Her films have grossed more than $3.9 billion globally, making her one of the most bankable film stars of all time.
Julia Fiona Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, in 1967. Julia is the youngest of three children of Walter Grady Roberts and Betty Lou Bredemus, one-time actors and playwrights. Her parents were close friends with Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. Walter and Betty Lou Roberts ran the Actors and Writers Workshop, then the only integrated drama school in Atlanta, which the Kings' eldest daughter Yolanda King attended. The Kings paid the hospital bill for Julia's birth. When Roberts was four years old., her parents divorced. Her brother Eric stayed with his father and Julia and her sister Lisa continued to live with their mother in Atlanta. When Roberts was nine, her father died of cancer. As a child, due to her love of animals, Julia originally wanted to be a veterinarian, but later studied journalism. Her parents were in the drama club, so acting was soon in the cards. Her brother Eric was originally seen as the great acting promise of the family but ended up producing more quantity than quality in the eyes of critics. Sister Lisa is not actually a professional actress but has since appeared in twenty-four films in small supporting roles, mostly in titles by her younger sister. While at school, Roberts worked as a waitress in a pizzeria and spent some time behind the cash register in a supermarket. When Eric achieved some success in Hollywood, Julia decided to try acting. She started taking acting classes and went to live with her sister in New York where she signed with the Click Modeling Agency. She took speech lessons to get rid of her southern accent. She made her film debut with a bit role in Blood Red (Peter Masterson, 1989), starring her brother Eric Roberts, which was completed in 1986 but wouldn't be released until 1989. She appeared in several television features and series, including Miami Vice (1988). Her first break came in 1988 when she appeared in two youth-oriented films Mystic Pizza (Donald Petrie, 1988) and Satisfaction (Joan Freeman, 1988). It helped her earn the credentials she needed to land the part of Shelby, an ill-fated would-be mother in the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989). The tearjerker found her acting alongside Sally Field and Shirley MacLaine which culminated in an Oscar nomination for Roberts. Then followed the supernatural thriller Flatliners (Joel Schumacher, 1990) with her flame Kiefer Sutherland.
Julia Robert's biggest success was in the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990) with Richard Gere. Originally intended to be a dark cautionary tale about class and prostitution in Los Angeles, the film was re-conceived as a romantic comedy with a large budget. Critic Roger Ebert: "Roberts does an interesting thing; she gives her character an irrepressibly bouncy sense of humor and then lets her spend the movie trying to repress it. Actresses who can do that and look great can have whatever they want in Hollywood." Julia got an Oscar nomination and also won the People's Choice award for Favorite Actress. It was widely successful at the box office and was the third-highest-grossing film of 1990. Julia's part as a good-hearted Hollywood prostitute who falls in love with a millionaire client was her definitive breakthrough role. Her role opposite Denzel Washington in the John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief (Alan J. Pakula, 1993), reaffirmed her status as a dramatic actress. Even though Julia would spend the next few years either starring in serious films or playing fantasy roles like Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991), filmgoers would always love Julia best in romantic comedies such as Notting Hill (Richard Curtis, 1999) with Hugh Grant, and Runaway Bride (Garry Marshall, 1999) with Richard Gere. In My Best Friend's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1997), she starred opposite Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett, as a food critic who realizes she's in love with her best friend and tries to win him back after he decides to marry someone else. The cult comedy gave the genre some fresh life that had been lacking in Hollywood for some time. Roger Ebert: "One of the pleasures of Ronald Bass' screenplay is the way it subverts the usual comic formulas that would fuel a plot like this. It makes the Julia Roberts character sympathetic at first, but eventually her behavior shades into cruel meddling. Stories like this are tricky for the actors. They have to be light enough for the comedy, and then subtle in revealing the deeper tones. Roberts, Diaz and Mulroney are in good synch, and Roberts does a skilful job of negotiating the plot's twists: We have to care for her even after we stop sharing her goals. "
Julia Roberts' had her biggest success when she delivered an Oscar-winning performance playing the title role in Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000). The film, based on the true story of Erin Brockovich, a single mother who, against all odds, won a heated battle against corporate environmental offenders, earned Roberts a staggering 20-million-dollar salary. The next year, Roberts starred in the crime caper Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001), in which she acted with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and George Clooney. A success with critics and at the box office alike, Ocean's Eleven became the fifth highest-grossing film of the year with a total of $450 million worldwide. In 2004, Roberts signed on for the sequel, the aptly titled Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004). In 2006, she made her Broadway debut alongside Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper in the revival of Richard Greenberg's play 'Three Days of Rain', but the production was not a success. Roberts teamed with Tom Hanks for Charlie Wilson's War (Mike Nichols, 2007), and then again for Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks, 2011). In between, she gave a critically acclaimed performance in Eat, Pray, Love (Ryan Murphy, 2010), in which she portrayed a divorcee on a journey of self-discovery. In 2012, she played Snow White's evil stepmother in Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem Singh, 2012). Roberts starred alongside Meryl Streep and Ewan McGregor in the black comedy drama August: Osage County (John Wells, 2013) about a dysfunctional family that reunites in the familial house when their patriarch suddenly disappears. Her performance earned her her fourth Academy Award nomination. Julia Roberts was in a relationship with actor Kiefer Sutherland for a while. In 1991, their relationship ended five days before they got married. She married country singer Lyle Lovett in 1993 but divorced him in 1995. She met her second husband, cameraman Danny Moder while shooting the film the road gangster comedy The Mexican (Gore Verbinski, 2000) with Brad Pitt. Roberts and Moder married in 2002 in Taos, New Mexico. Together they had twins in 2004, a daughter, Hazel Patricia, and a son, Phinnaeus 'Finn' Walter. In 2007, Roberts gave birth to their third child, Henry Daniel. All the children were given their father's surname. Julia Roberts also became involved with UNICEF charities and has made visits to many different countries, including Haiti and India, in order to promote goodwill. On-screen, she appeared in Jodie Foster's thriller Money Monster (2016), the coming-of-age drama Wonder (Steven Chbosky, 2017), and the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise (Ol Parker, 2022) with George Clooney. She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for the television adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS-era play The Normal Heart (Larry Murphy, 2014), had her first regular television role in the first season of the psychological thriller series Homecoming (2018), and portrayed Martha Mitchell opposite Sean Penn in the political thriller series Gaslit (Matt Ross, 2022) about the Watergate Scandal.
Sources: Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), KD Haisch (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
British postcard by The National Theatre. Photo: Dominic. Alec McCowen as Alceste and Diana Rigg as Célimène in the stage play 'The Misanthrope' (1973) by Molière. English version by Tony Harrison.
Today, 10 September 2020, English actress Diana Rigg (1938) has passed away. She was well known as Emma Peel in the classic TV series The Avengers (1965-1968), and later as Lady Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones (2013-2017). In between, she had an extensive career in film and theatre. Between 1959 and 1964, she performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company and won several awards, including a Tony and an Emmy award. In the cinema, she made her mark as Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, the only Bond girl to ever get 007 to the altar, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Diana Rigg was 82.
Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg was born in Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in South Yorkshire, in 1938. Her parents were railway engineer Louis Rigg and his wife Beryl Hilda Rigg née Helliwell. Between the ages of two months and eight years, Rigg lived in Bikaner, India, where her father was employed as a railway executive. She was then sent to a private boarding school, where she suffered through the discipline and rigors until one of her teachers introduced her to the world of the theatre. From 1955 till 1957, she trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where Glenda Jackson and Siân Phillips were classmates. Rigg made her professional stage debut in the RADA production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival in 1957. In 1959, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and stayed there till 1964. Her deeply distinctive voice, auburn red hair, and towering height (5'8") assured her such dynamic roles as Viola in Twelfth Night and Cordelia in King Lear. In 1965, actress Elizabeth Shepherd was dropped from a popular BBC TV series after filming two episodes. Rigg auditioned for the role on a whim, without ever having seen the programme. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “she was selected to replace Honor Blackman on the popular tongue-in-cheek TV-adventure series The Avengers and for the next two years captivated little boys of all ages with her energetic portrayal of coolheaded, leather-clad karate expert Mrs. Emma Peel.” Fans were fond of the banter between Mrs. Peel and Patrick Macnee’s John Steed, delivered with champagne crispness. From 1965 till 1967, Rigg appeared in 51 episodes of the cult series. She became soured on the series when she discovered that she was earning less than some of the cameramen. After holding out for a pay raise, she returned for a second season, which would be her last. Then film stardom followed. She became a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt, 1969), playing Countess Teresa di Vicenzo a.k.a. Tracy Bond, 007's only wife, opposite George Lazenby. Although its cinema release was not as lucrative as its predecessor You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service was still one of the top-performing films of the year. Critical reviews upon release were mixed, but the film's reputation has improved over time. Donald Guarisco at AllMovie: “Diana Rigg also makes a vivid impression as Tracy, easily the toughest and most resourceful of all Bond heroines”. Rigg’s other films from this period include her film debut A Midsummer Night's Dream (Peter Hall, 1968), the black comedy The Assassination Bureau (Basil Dearden, 1969) with Oliver Reed, Julius Caesar (Stuart Burge, 1970) featuring John Gielgud, and the satire The Hospital (Arthur Hiller, 1971). All her films were well regarded but no box office hits.
In 1970, ‘ theatre animal’ Diana Rigg returned to the stage in the Ronald Millar play Abelard and Heloise in London. According to IMDb, she was the first major actor (along with co-star Keith Michell) to appear nude on stage in this production. She made her Broadway debut with the play in 1971, earning the first of three Tony Award nominations for Best Actress in a Play. She received her second nomination in 1975, for The Misanthrope. A member of the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic from 1972 to 1975, Rigg took leading roles in premiere productions of two Tom Stoppard plays, Dorothy Moore in Jumpers (1972) and Ruth Carson in Night and Day (1978). In the cinema, she appeared in such films as the hilarious horror-comedy Theatre of Blood (Douglas Hickox, 1973) as Vincent Price’s loyal but homicidal daughter, and the disastrous musical A Little Night Music (Harold Prince, 1977), starring Elizabeth Taylor. On television, she appeared as the title character in The Marquise (1980), a TV adaptation of the play by Noël Coward. In 1981 she appeared on TV in the title role of Hedda Gabler, and in the cinema as Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper (Jim Henson, 1981). The following year she received acclaim for her performance as glamorous actress Arlena Stuart Marshall in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982), with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. Craig Butler at AllMovie: “Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith, in particular, make scenery-chewing seem the most natural way of acting in a movie. (Riggs' performance of You're the Top - constantly interrupted by Smith - is particularly memorable.)” Also in 1982, Rigg published the hilarious book No Turn Unstoned, in which she gathered together the worst reviews ever received by the world's best actors. The book, which including a review by New York Magazine’s John Simon with uncouth remarks about her nude scene in Abelard and Heloise, became a bestseller and cult favourite. She appeared as Regan, the king's treacherous second daughter, in a TV production of King Lear (1983), featuring Laurence Olivier. She co-starred with Denholm Elliot in a television version of Dickens' 'Bleak House' (1985), and played the Evil Queen, Snow White's evil stepmother, in a film adaptation of Snow White (Michael Berz, 1987). In 1987 she took a leading role in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies. Then Rigg played obsessive mother Helena Vesey, who was prepared to do anything, even murder, to keep control of her son in the TV Mini-series Mother Love (1989). For her role, she won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress. In 1988, Rigg was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and in 1994, a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).
In the 1990s, Diana Rigg had more triumphs on stage with her role as Medea at the Almeida Theatre in Islington in 1992. The production transferred in 1993 to the Wyndham's Theatre and in 1994 to Broadway. Rigg received the Tony Award for Best Actress gfor this performance. Other triumphs were her Mother Courage at the National Theatre in 1995 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Almeida Theatre in 1996. She won an Emmy Award for her role as the sinister Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (Jim O’Brien, 1997). She also appeared in The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (David Attwood, 1996), and as the eccentric old amateur detective Mrs. Bradley in The Mrs. Bradley Mysteries (James Hawes, Martin Hutchings, 1998-2000). On stage, Rigg appeared in 2004 as Violet Venable in Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly Last Summer, and in 2007 as Huma Rojo in All About My Mother, based on the film by Pedro Almodóvar. She appeared in 2008 in The Cherry Orchard, and in 2009 in Noël Coward's Hay Fever. In 2011 she played Mrs. Higgins in Pygmalion, opposite Rupert Everett and Kara Tointon, having played Eliza Doolittle 37 years earlier at the Albery Theatre. In the cinema, she could be seen as Grandmamma in the family film Heidi (Paul Marcus, 2005) and as a French Mother Superior who presides over a Chinese orphanage in The Painted Veil (John Curran, 2006) with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton. In the 1960s, Rigg lived for eight years with actor/director Philip Saville. She was married to Menachem Gueffen, an Israeli painter, from 1973 until their divorce in 1976, and to Archibald Stirling, a theatrical producer, and former officer in the Scots Guards, in 1982, until their divorce in 1990. With Stirling, Rigg has a daughter, actress Rachael Stirling (1977). In 2013, she appeared with her daughter Rachel in the hit series Doctor Who in the episode The Crimson Horror (Saul Metzstein, 2013). The same year, Rigg secured a recurring role in the third season of the HBO series Game of Thrones (2013-2017). She portrayed Lady Olenna Tyrell, a witty and sarcastic political mastermind popularly known as the Queen of Thorns, the grandmother of regular character Margaery Tyrell. Her performance was well received and earned her an Emmy nomination in 2013. She reprised her role in seasons four, five, and six, in an expanded role from the books. In October 2015, to mark 50 years of Emma Peel, the BFI (British Film Institute) screened an episode of The Avengers followed by an onstage interview with Rigg about her time on the cult 1960s TV show. On 10 September 2020, Diana Rigg passed away in London. She was 82. Her daughter, Rachael Stirling, said that the cause of death was cancer, which Rigg had been diagnosed with in March. Till her death, she kept appearing for the cameras. In post-production are the series Black Narcissus, in which she appears as Mother Dorothea, and the horror-thriller Last Night in Soho (Edgar Wright, 2021).
Sources: Stuart Jeffries (The Guardian), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Donald Guarisco (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Pedro Borges (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard, no. C 460.
Sharon Stone (1958) is an American actress, producer, and former fashion model. With her role in Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992), she became one of the most talked about actresses of the 1990s, earning both admiration and infamy for her on- and off-screen personae. Cast as an ex-prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Casino (1995), she won an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her work, as well as the general opinion that she was capable of dramatic acting.
Sharon Vonne Stone was born in 1958 in Meadville, a small town in Pennsylvania. Her parents were Dorothy Marie (née Lawson), an accountant, and Joseph William Stone II, a tool and die manufacturer and factory worker. She was the second of four children. At the age of 15, she studied in Saegertown High School, Pennsylvania, and at that same age, entered Edinboro State University of Pennsylvania, and graduated with a degree in creative writing and fine arts. While attending Edinboro University, Stone won the title of Miss Crawford County, Pennsylvania and was a candidate for Miss Pennsylvania. One of the pageant judges told her to quit school and move to New York City to become a fashion model. In 1977, Stone left Meadville and moved in with an aunt in New Jersey. She was signed by Ford Modeling Agency in New York City. Stone, inspired by Hillary Clinton, went back to Edinboro University to complete her degree in 2016. After modelling in television commercials and print advertisements, she made her film debut as "pretty girl in train" in Woody Allen's comedy-drama Stardust Memories (1980). Her first speaking part was in Wes Craven's horror film Deadly Blessing (1981), and French director Claude Lelouch cast her in Les Uns et les Autres (1982), starring James Caan. She had a supporting role in Irreconcilable Differences (Charles Shyer, 1984), starring Ryan O'Neal, Shelley Long, and a young Drew Barrymore. In 1984, she married Michael Greenburg, the producer of MacGyver (1985), but they divorced two years later. Throughout the 1980s, Stone went on to appear in films such as King Solomon's Mines (J. Lee Thompson, 1985) with Richard Chamberlain, Cold Steel (Dorothy Ann Puzo, 1987) with Brad Davis, and Above the Law (Andrew Davis, 1988) as the wife of Steven Seagal. Stone was often cast as the stereotypical blonde bimbo. She finally got a break with her part in Paul Verhoeven's Sci-Fi action film Total Recall (1990), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. She played the role of Lori Quaid, the seemingly loving wife of Schwarzenegger's character, later revealed to be an agent sent by a corrupt and ruthless governor to monitor him. The film received favourable reviews and made $261.2 million worldwide, giving Stone's career a major boost. She also posed nude for Playboy, a daring move for a 32-year-old actress. But it worked.
Sharon Stone became a sex symbol and international star when she played Catherine Tramell, a brilliant, bisexual author and alleged serial killer in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992). Several actresses at the time turned down the role, mostly because of the nudity required. Her interrogation scene has become a classic in film history and her performance captivated everyone, from MTV viewers, who honoured her with Most Desirable Female and Best Female Performance Awards, to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She headlined the erotic thriller Sliver (Phillip Noyce, 1993), based on Ira Levin's eponymous novel about the mysterious occurrences in a privately owned New York City high-rise apartment building. The film was heavily panned by critics and earned Stone a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actress but Sliver became a commercial success, grossing US$116.3 million at the international box office. She starred alongside Sylvester Stallone in the action thriller The Specialist (Luis Llosa, 1994), portraying May Munro, a woman who entices a bomb expert she is involved with (Stallone) into destroying the criminal gang that killed her family. Despite negative reviews, the film made US$170.3 million worldwide. In the Western The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995) with Gene Hackman and Russell Crowe, she obtained the role of a gunfighter who returns to a frontier town in an effort to avenge her father's death. She received critical acclaim with her performance as the beautiful but drug-crazy wife of Robert de Niro in Martin Scorsese's crime drama Casino (1995), garnering the Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1998, she married newspaper editor Phil Bronstein but they divorced in 2004. Sharon Stone received two more Golden Globe Award nominations for her roles in The Mighty (Peter Chelsom, 1998) and The Muse (Albert Brooks, 1999).
In 2000, Sharon Stone starred opposite Ellen DeGeneres in the made-for-HBO drama If These Walls Could Talk 2 (Jane Anderson, Martha Coolidge, Anne Heche, 2000), portraying a lesbian trying to start a family. Stone appeared in two embarassing flops, Catwoman (Pitof, 2004), and the sequel Basic Instinct 2 (Michael Caton-Jones, 2006). In between, she played one of Bill Murray's ex-girlfriends in Jim Jarmusch's Golden Palm winner Broken Flowers (2005) - and walked away with the most memorable and endearing role in the picture - a role that showcases her skills as a disciplined thespian. She was also in the American drama Bobby (2006), written and directed by Emilio Estevez. In the biographical drama Lovelace (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, 2013), Stone obtained the role of the mother of porn actress Linda Lovelace, played by Amanda Seyfried. Later films include Fading Gigolo (John Turturro, 2013) with Woody Allen, the Italian dramedy Un ragazzo d’oro/A Golden Boy (Pupi Avati, 2014) and The Disaster Artist (James Franco, 2017). In 1995, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2005, she was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France. On television, Stone has had notable performances in the mini-series War and Remembrance (1987) and the made-for-HBO film If These Walls Could Talk 2 (2000). She made guest-appearances in The Practice (2004), winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series, and in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2010). She has also starred in the action drama series Agent X (2015), Steven Soderbergh's murder-mystery Mosaic (2017) and the series The New Pope (Paolo Sorrentino, 2019) with Jude Law. Sharon Stone is the mother of three adopted sons: Roan (2000), Laird (2005) and Quinn (2006).
Sources: Johannes Prayudhi (IMDb), Rebecca Flint Marx (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Dutch postcard. Photo: Universal International.
Blond, blue-eyed American actress Carol Lynley who starred in the The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and numerous other films, has died. She was 77. The actress, who had an attractively feline appeal, earned a Golden Globe nomination as a newcomer for Blue Denim (1959) about a naive teenager seeking an illegal abortion. It was a role she originated on Broadway. Last Friday, Lynley died in her sleep Tuesday in Los Angeles.
Carol Lynley was born Carol Ann Jones in New York. Her parents were Cyril Jones and Frances Peltch. She began her professional career as 'Carolyn Lee', a successful child model for the Sears & Roebuck department store in New York. Trying to branch out into acting early on, she discovered that another individual by that name (born seven years earlier) was already on the books of Actors' Equity, thus Carolyn changed her moniker by fusing the 'lyn' and the 'lee' to create 'Lynley'. In April 1957, she was profiled by Life magazine and appeared on its cover. She was 15 years old and starring in the Broadway production 'The Potting Shed'. Her first important film role came in The Light in the Forest (Herschel Daugherty, 1958) for Walt Disney Productions. It was a promising start and a New York Times reviewer praised her performance. After her role in Blue Denim (Philip Dunne, 1959) opposite Brandon De Wilde, she went on to play other ingénue roles and troubled teens before gradually shedding her wholesome image by the early 60s. She then starred in Return to Peyton Place (José Ferrer, 1961), playing an author whose book revealing her New Hampshire hometown’s darkest secrets and scandals cause her and her family trouble. This was followed by the bawdy sex farce Under the Yum Yum Tree (David Swift, 1963), with Lynley as a virginal college student in a New York apartment block pursued by a lecherous landlord/playboy (Jack Lemmon). Luckily, better opportunities to prove her acting mettle turned up with a double role in The Cardinal (Otto Preminger, 1963) opposite Tom Tryon, and as the tormented mother of a kidnapped child in the excellent psychological thriller, Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965) co-starring Laurence Olivier.
In March 1965, Carol Lynley posed nude for an issue of Playboy magazine. That same year, she played the title role in a turgid biopic of 1930s Hollywood sex symbol Jean Harlow. While the quality of her films tended to decline after the mid-1960s, there were still entertaining moments in B-pictures like The Shuttered Room (David Greene, 1967) and the lurid thriller Once You Kiss a Stranger... (Robert Sparr, 1969) as a psychotic murderess. In Irwin Allen's The Poseidon Adventure (Ronald Neame, 1972), she was one of the ill-fated passengers, pop singer Nonnie Parry. Her character performs the song 'The Morning After', although the vocals were dubbed. The song went on to win an Academy Award. After 1967, television provided most of her work, including guest spots in seminal shows like Mannix (1967), The Invaders (1967), Hawaii Five-O (1968), and as the co-star of the TV pilot for The Night Stalker (John Llewellyn Moxey, 1972) with Darren McGavin. In her penultimate role, Lynley played a grandmother in a film with a very similar title to the one which had launched her career: A Light in the Forest (John Carl Buechler, 2003). Carol Lynley retired from screen acting in 2006 and passed away on 3 September 2019 from a heart attack at the age of 77. She had been married to actor-producer Michael Selsman from 1960-1964, and they had one daughter, Jill Selsman (1962). She had an affair, off and on for 18 years, with David Frost. Carol Lynley appeared in more than 100 films and television series.
Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Time, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
**Noble County Courthouse** - National Register of Historic Places Ref # 84003361, date listed 1984-08-23
Courthouse Sq.
Perry, OK (Noble County)
The Noble County Courthouse (1915) is significant because of its architectural design and because it serves as the center of county government. An attractive example it serves as the center of county government. An attractive example of simplified Second Renaissance Revival style, the building provides an elegant focus for Perry's central business district. The courthouse serves as the depository for the county's vital legal records and it has a prominent place in local politics. (1)
References (1) NRHP Nomination Form npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/84003361.pdf
West-German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no A 1111. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
American film actor Tony Curtis (1925-2010) played a variety of roles, from light comedy, such as the musician on the run from gangsters in Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959), to serious dramatic roles, such as an escaped convict in The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. From 1949, he appeared in more than 100 films and made frequent television appearances.
Tony Curtis was born Bernard Herschel Schwartz in 1925 in Manhattan, New York City. He was the eldest of three children of Helen (Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. His mother was later in life diagnosed with schizophrenia. His brother Robert was institutionalised with the same mental illness. Curtis himself admits that while he had almost no formal education, he was a student of the "school of hard knocks" and learned from a young age that the only person who ever had his back was himself, so he learned how to take care of both himself and younger brother, Julius. Curtis grew up in poverty, as his father, Emanuel, who worked as a tailor, had the sole responsibility of providing for his entire family on his meager income. This led to constant bickering between Curtis's parents over money, and Curtis began to go to movies as a way of briefly escaping the constant worries of poverty and other family problems. The financial strain of raising two children on a meager income became so tough that in 1935, Curtis's parents decided that their children would have a better life under the care of the state and briefly had Tony and his brother admitted to an orphanage. During this lonely time, the only companion Curtis had was his brother, Julius, and the two became inseparable as they struggled to get used to this new way of life. Weeks later, Curtis's parents came back to reclaim custody of Tony and his brother, but by then Curtis had learned one of life's toughest lessons: the only person you can count on is yourself. In 1938, shortly before Tony's Bar Mitzvah, tragedy struck when Tony lost the person most important to him when his brother, Julius, was hit by a truck and killed. After that tragedy, Curtis's parents became convinced that formal education was the best way Tony could avoid the same never-knowing-where-your-next-meal-is-coming-from life that they had known. However, Tony rejected this because he felt that learning about literary classics and algebra wasn't going to advance him in life as much as some real hands-on life experience would. He was to find that real-life experience a few years later when he enlisted in the navy in 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Inspired by Cary Grant's role in Destination Tokyo (Delmer Daves, 1943) and Tyrone Power's in Crash Dive (Archie Mayo, 1943), he joined the Pacific submarine force. Tony spent over two years getting that life experience doing everything from working as a crewman on a submarine tender, the USS Proteus (AS-19), to honing his future craft as an actor performing as a sailor in a stage play at the Navy Signalman School in Illinois.
In 1945, Tony Curtis was honorably discharged from the navy, and when he realised that the GI Bill would allow him to go to acting school without paying for it, he now saw that his lifelong pipe dream of being an actor might actually be achievable. Curtis auditioned for the New York Dramatic Workshop and was accepted on the strength of his audition piece, a scene from 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in pantomime. In 1947, he studied acting under the influential German stage director Erwin Piscator. His contemporaries included Elaine Stritch, Harry Belafonte, Walter Matthau, Beatrice Arthur, and Rod Steiger. He then began to pay his dues by appearing in a slew of stage productions, including 'Twelfth Night' and 'Golden Boy'. While still at college, Curtis was discovered by Joyce Selznick, the notable talent agent, casting director, and niece of film producer David O. Selznick. After seeing his potential, Selznick arranged an interview for Curtis to see David O. Selznick at Universal Studios, where the 23-years-old Curtis was offered a seven-year contract. He changed his name from Bernard Schwartz to what he saw as an elegant, mysterious moniker, Tony Curtis, named after the novel 'Anthony Adverse' (1936) by Hervey Allen and a cousin of his named Janush Kertiz. Curtis began making a name for himself by appearing in small, offbeat roles in small-budget productions. His first notable performance was a two-minute role as a rumba dancer in Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949), in which he makes Burt Lancaster jealous by dancing with Yvonne De Carlo. This offbeat role resulted in Curtis's being typecast as a heavy for the next few years, such as playing a gang member in City Across the River (Maxwell Shane, 1949), starring Stephen McNally. Curtis continued to build up a showreel by accepting any paying job, acting in a number of bit-part roles for the next few years. It wasn't until late 1949 that he finally got the chance to demonstrate his acting flair when he was cast in an important role in an action-Western, Sierra (Alfred E. Green, 1950) starring Audie Murphy. On the strength of his performance in that film, Curtis was finally cast in a big-budget movie, Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann, 1950). While he appears in that film only very briefly, it was a chance for him to act alongside a Hollywood legend, James Stewart.
Tony Curtis was receiving numerous fan letters, so Universal awarded him the starring role in The Prince Who Was a Thief (Rudolph Maté, 1951), a Swashbuckler set in the Middle East with Piper Laurie. It was a hit at the box office and Curtis was now established. He followed it up with a role as a boxer in the Film Noir Flesh and Fury (Joseph Pevney, 1952), with Jan Sterling. His next films were the comedy No Room for the Groom (Douglas Sirk, 1952), and Son of Ali Baba (Kurt Neumann, 1952), another film set in the Arab world with Piper Laurie. Curtis then teamed up with then-wife Janet Leigh in Houdini (George Marshall, 1953), in which Curtis played the title role. He reunited with Burt Lancaster in the prestigious action drama Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956). It was one of the biggest hits of the year. As his career developed, Tony Curtis wanted to act in films that had social relevance, ones that would challenge audiences. He achieved his first serious recognition as a dramatic actor in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with co-star Burt Lancaster. The following year he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958) alongside Sidney Poitier who was also nominated in the same category. Curtis then gave what could arguably be called his best performance: three interrelated roles in the now-classic comedy Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) opposite Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. That was followed by Operation Petticoat (Blake Edwards, 1959) with Cary Grant. These frantic comedies displayed his impeccable comic timing. He often collaborated with Edwards on later films. In 1960, Curtis played a supporting role in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960). He was advised against appearing as the subordinate sidekick in Spartacus, playing second fiddle to the equally famous Kirk Douglas. However, Curtis saw no problem with this because the two had recently acted together in dual leading roles in The Vikings (Richard Fleischer, 1958). Spartacus became another major hit for him.
Tony Curtis's stardom and film career declined considerably after 1960. Curtis took on the role of the Ukrainian Cossack Andrei in the historical action romance epic Taras Bulba (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) featuring Yul Bryner and also with German actress Christine Kaufmann, who became Curtis' second wife. Curtis then focused on comedies such as Sex and the Single Girl (Richard Quine, 1964), with Natalie Wood; The Great Race (Blake Edwards, 1965), with Wood and Jack Lemmon, and Boeing Boeing (John Rich, 1965) a sex farce with Jerry Lewis. His most significant dramatic part came in 1968 when he starred in the true-life drama The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968), which some consider his last major film role. The part reinforced his reputation as a serious actor with his chilling portrayal of serial killer Albert DeSalvo. He later starred alongside Roger Moore in the TV series The Persuaders!, with Curtis playing American millionaire Danny Wilde. The series ran twenty-four episodes. In 2008, he published his autobiography 'American Prince: A Memoir' in which he accused many people he worked with of holding anti-Semitic views. He settled in Henderson, Nevada, where he eventually died in 2010. He was 85. Tony Curtis was married six times and had six children. His wives were actress Janet Leigh (1951-1962), German actress Christine Kaufmann (1963-1968), Leslie Curtis (1968-1982), Andrea Savio (1984 - 1992), Lisa Deutsch (1993-1994), and Jill Vandenberg Curtis (1998-2019 - his death). He was the father of Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis (with Janet Leigh), Allegra Curtis, and Alexandra Curtis (with Christine Kaufmann), Nicholas Curtis, and Benjamin Curtis (with Leslie Curtis). He became largely estranged from all six of his children. His son Nicholas Curtis, died of seizures due to an overdose of heroin in 1994. He disinherited all of his children from his will and left the bulk of his estate to his wife Jill Vandenberg Curtis, who was 46 years younger than he.
Source: James Briggs (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès, no. 412. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1953.
American actor Gregory Peck (1916-2003) was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s. Peck received five nominations for Academy Award for Best Actor and won once – for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He almost always played courageous, nobly heroic good guys who saw injustice and fought it. Among his best known films are Spellbound (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Roman Holiday (1953), The Guns of Navarone (1961), and Cape Fear (1962).
Eldred Gregory Peck was born in 1916 in La Jolla, California (now in San Diego). His parents were Bernice Mary (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist, and druggist in San Diego. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the cinema every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. Peck's father encouraged him to take up medicine. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play 'The Morning Star' (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (Jacques Tourneur, 1944). Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (John M. Stahl, 1944), for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Tony Fontana at IMDb: "Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles." He appeared opposite Ingrid Bergman in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (Clarence Brown, 1946), he was again nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in Westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (William A. Wellman, 1948), and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (Henry King, 1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II. In 1947, Peck, along with Dorothy McGuire, David O'Selznick, and Mel Ferrer, founded the La Jolla Playhouse, located in his hometown, and produced many of the classics there. Due to film commitments, he could not return to Broadway but whet his appetite for live theatre on occasion at the Playhouse, keeping it firmly established with a strong, reputable name over the years.
With a string of hits to his credit, Gregory Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (Raoul Walsh, 1951) with Virginia Mayo, and Moby Dick (John Huston, 1956) with Richard Basehart. He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953). While filming The Bravados (Henry King, 1958), he decided to become a cowboy in real life, so he purchased a vast working ranch near Santa Barbara, California - already stocked with 600 head of prize cattle. In the early 1960s, he gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (J. Lee Thompson, 1961) opposite David Niven and Anthony Quinn. The film was one of the biggest box-office hits of that year. Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962). He also appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (J. Lee Thompson, 1962) opposite Robert Mitchum, and Captain Newman, M.D. (David Miller, 1963) with Tony Curtis, which dealt with the way people live. The financial failure of Cape Fear (1962) ended his company, Melville Productions. After making Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Sophia Loren, Peck withdrew from acting for three years in order to concentrate on various humanitarian causes, including the American Cancer Society. In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (Gordon Davidson, 1972) and The Dove (Charles Jarrott, 1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Ambassador Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976) with Lee Remick. After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (Joseph Sargent, 1977) and the infamous Nazi war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1978) with Laurence Olivier and James Mason. In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1982) in which he played Abraham Lincoln, and The Scarlet and the Black (Jerry London, 1983) with Christopher Plummer and John Gielgud. In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (Norman Jewison, 1991), starring Danny DeVito. In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights, and civil rights. In 2003, Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute, only two weeks before his death. Atticus beat out Indiana Jones, who was placed second, and James Bond who came third. Gregory Peck died in 2003 in Los Angeles, California. He was 87. Peck was married twice. From 1942 till 1955, he was married to Greta Kukkonen. They had three children: Jonathan Peck (1944-1975), Stephen Peck (1946), and Carey Paul Peck (1949). His second wife was Veronique Passani, whom he met at the set of Roman Holliday. They married in 1955 and had two children: Tony Peck (1956) and Cecilia Peck (1958). The couple remained together till his death.
Sources: Tony Fontana (IMDb), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Citrus Promotion, no. 0423. Photo: Universal / Working Title. Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in Notting Hill (Richard Curtis, 1999).
American actress Julia Roberts (1967) won more than 30 other acting awards including an Academy Award for her leading role in Erin Brockovich (2000) plus Oscar nominations for Steel Magnolias (1989), Pretty Woman (1990) and August: Osage County (2013). Her films have grossed more than $3.9 billion globally, making her one of the most bankable film stars of all time.
Julia Fiona Roberts was born in Smyrna, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, in 1967. Julia is the youngest of three children of Walter Grady Roberts and Betty Lou Bredemus, one-time actors and playwrights. Her parents were close friends with Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. Walter and Betty Lou Roberts ran the Actors and Writers Workshop, then the only integrated drama school in Atlanta, which the Kings' eldest daughter Yolanda King attended. The Kings paid the hospital bill for Julia's birth. When Roberts was four years old., her parents divorced. Her brother Eric stayed with his father and Julia and her sister Lisa continued to live with their mother in Atlanta. When Roberts was nine, her father died of cancer. As a child, due to her love of animals, Julia originally wanted to be a veterinarian, but later studied journalism. Her parents were in the drama club, so acting was soon in the cards. Her brother Eric was originally seen as the great acting promise of the family but ended up producing more quantity than quality in the eyes of critics. Sister Lisa is not actually a professional actress but has since appeared in twenty-four films in small supporting roles, mostly in titles by her younger sister. While at school, Roberts worked as a waitress in a pizzeria and spent some time behind the cash register in a supermarket. When Eric achieved some success in Hollywood, Julia decided to try acting. She started taking acting classes and went to live with her sister in New York where she signed with the Click Modeling Agency. She took speech lessons to get rid of her southern accent. She made her film debut with a bit role in Blood Red (Peter Masterson, 1989), starring her brother Eric Roberts, which was completed in 1986 but wouldn't be released until 1989. She appeared in several television features and series, including Miami Vice (1988). Her first break came in 1988 when she appeared in two youth-oriented films Mystic Pizza (Donald Petrie, 1988) and Satisfaction (Joan Freeman, 1988). It helped her earn the credentials she needed to land the part of Shelby, an ill-fated would-be mother in the comedy-drama Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989). The tearjerker found her acting alongside Sally Field and Shirley MacLaine which culminated in an Oscar nomination for Roberts. Then followed the supernatural thriller Flatliners (Joel Schumacher, 1990) with her flame Kiefer Sutherland.
Julia Robert's biggest success was in the romantic comedy Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990) with Richard Gere. Originally intended to be a dark cautionary tale about class and prostitution in Los Angeles, the film was re-conceived as a romantic comedy with a large budget. Critic Roger Ebert: "Roberts does an interesting thing; she gives her character an irrepressibly bouncy sense of humor and then lets her spend the movie trying to repress it. Actresses who can do that and look great can have whatever they want in Hollywood." Julia got an Oscar nomination and also won the People's Choice award for Favorite Actress. It was widely successful at the box office and was the third-highest-grossing film of 1990. Julia's part as a good-hearted Hollywood prostitute who falls in love with a millionaire client was her definitive breakthrough role. Her role opposite Denzel Washington in the John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief (Alan J. Pakula, 1993), reaffirmed her status as a dramatic actress. Even though Julia would spend the next few years either starring in serious films or playing fantasy roles like Tinkerbell in Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991), filmgoers would always love Julia best in romantic comedies such as Notting Hill (Richard Curtis, 1999) with Hugh Grant, and Runaway Bride (Garry Marshall, 1999) with Richard Gere. In My Best Friend's Wedding (P.J. Hogan, 1997), she starred opposite Dermot Mulroney, Cameron Diaz and Rupert Everett, as a food critic who realizes she's in love with her best friend and tries to win him back after he decides to marry someone else. The cult comedy gave the genre some fresh life that had been lacking in Hollywood for some time. Roger Ebert: "One of the pleasures of Ronald Bass' screenplay is the way it subverts the usual comic formulas that would fuel a plot like this. It makes the Julia Roberts character sympathetic at first, but eventually her behavior shades into cruel meddling. Stories like this are tricky for the actors. They have to be light enough for the comedy, and then subtle in revealing the deeper tones. Roberts, Diaz and Mulroney are in good synch, and Roberts does a skillful job of negotiating the plot's twists: We have to care for her even after we stop sharing her goals. "
Julia Roberts' had her biggest success when she delivered an Oscar-winning performance playing the title role in Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000). The film, based on the true story of Erin Brockovich, a single mother who, against all odds, won a heated battle against corporate environmental offenders, earned Roberts a staggering 20-million-dollar salary. The next year, Roberts starred in the crime caper Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001), in which she acted with Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and George Clooney. A success with critics and at the box office alike, Ocean's Eleven became the fifth highest-grossing film of the year with a total of $450 million worldwide. In 2004, Roberts signed on for the sequel, the aptly titled Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004). In 2006, she made her Broadway debut alongside Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper in the revival of Richard Greenberg's play 'Three Days of Rain', but the production was not a success. Roberts teamed with Tom Hanks for Charlie Wilson's War (Mike Nichols, 2007), and then again for Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks, 2011). In between, she gave a critically acclaimed performance in Eat, Pray, Love (Ryan Murphy, 2010), in which she portrayed a divorcee on a journey of self-discovery. In 2012, she played Snow White's evil stepmother in Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem Singh, 2012). Roberts starred alongside Meryl Streep and Ewan McGregor in the black comedy drama August: Osage County (John Wells, 2013) about a dysfunctional family that reunites in the familial house when their patriarch suddenly disappears. Her performance earned her her fourth Academy Award nomination. Julia Roberts was in a relationship with actor Kiefer Sutherland for a while. In 1991, their relationship ended five days before they got married. She married country singer Lyle Lovett in 1993 but divorced him in 1995. She met her second husband, cameraman Danny Moder while shooting the film the road gangster comedy The Mexican (Gore Verbinski, 2000) with Brad Pitt. Roberts and Moder married in 2002 in Taos, New Mexico. Together they had twins in 2004, a daughter, Hazel Patricia, and a son, Phinnaeus 'Finn' Walter. In 2007, Roberts gave birth to their third child, Henry Daniel. All the children were given their father's surname. Julia Roberts also became involved with UNICEF charities and has made visits to many different countries, including Haiti and India, in order to promote goodwill. On-screen, she appeared in Jodie Foster's thriller Money Monster (2016), the coming-of-age drama Wonder (Steven Chbosky, 2017), and the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise (Ol Parker, 2022) with George Clooney. She received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for the television adaptation of Larry Kramer's AIDS-era play The Normal Heart (Larry Murphy, 2014), had her first regular television role in the first season of the psychological thriller series Homecoming (2018), and portrayed Martha Mitchell opposite Sean in the political thriller series Gaslit (2022) about the Watergate Scandal.
Sources: Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), KD Haisch (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Dutch postcard, no. 3517. Photo: Paramount.
American actress, dancer, and comedian Olga San Juan (1927-2009) was mainly active in films during the 1940s. San Juan was dubbed the 'Puerto Rican Pepperpot' or 'Beauty Siren' for singing and dancing roles alongside Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and many others.
Olga San Juan was born in Brooklyn, New York to Puerto Rican parents in 1927. When she was 3 years old, her family moved back to Puerto Rico, then moved back to the United States again a few years later. This time, they settled in 'Spanish Harlem'. While still a toddler, Olga was enrolled in both ballet and flamenco dancing classes and was encouraged to pursue a performing arts career by her stage mother. When she was eleven years old, she and five other school girls performed the Latin dance the Fandango for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She went on to perform at such Latin clubs as the Copacabana in New York City. She worked as a dancer with famed jazz and mambo musician, Tito Puente, who by then had earned the title of 'The King of Latin Music'. After talent scouts found her performing her popular night club act, Olga San Juan and Her Rumba Band, on radio, she signed a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1943. She appeared in a musical short film called Caribbean Romance (Lester Fuller, 1943) with Eric Blore. She possessed the same tiny frame and fervid temperament as Brazilian Carmen Miranda. Her film debut was followed by another short film called Bombalera (Noel Madison, 1945), which was nominated for an Oscar. She decided to become the first dyed-blonde Latin movie spitfire. In this, Olga was billed, appropriately enough, as 'The Cuban Cyclone'. She was front and center in her third short, The Little Witch (George Templeton, 1945), a musical romance in which she virtually played herself as a nightclub singer. Her first role in a feature film was in the musical comedy Rainbow Island (Ralph Murphy, 1944), starring Dorothy Lamour and Eddie Bracken.
Olga San Juan's breakthrough came after the war with the Technicolor musical Blue Skies (Stuart Heisler, 1946) with Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, and Joan Caulfield. San Juan performed several musical numbers (including 'Heat Wave') in the film, based on a story by Irving Berlin and showcasing his songs. Olga was paired up, engagingly, with another comedy scene-stealer, Billy De Wolfe. Next, she got a big part in the B-musical Variety Girl (George Marshall, 1947), also starring Mary Hatcher. Numerous Paramount Pictures contract players made cameos or performed songs in it, including Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. She next co-starred with Donald O'Connor in Are You With It? (Jack Hively, 1948), a musical comedy film about a young insurance man who quits his job to join a traveling carnival. Next, she had a supporting part in One Touch of Venus (William A. Seiter, 1948), starring Robert Walker, Ava Gardner, and Dick Haymes. This divine musical comedy was based on the Broadway musical of the same name, a book written by S. J. Perelman and Ogden Nash, with music composed by Kurt Weill. She often played the cute and spunky antagonist to other leading ladies. That same year, she won an Oscar nomination for The Countess of Monte Cristo (Fred de Cordova, 1948) which featured Sonja Henie in her final Hollywood ice extravaganza. The following year, San Juan could be seen in the romantic comedy The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (Preston Sturges, 1949) starring Betty Grable. The film, Sturges' first Technicolor production, was not well received at the time it was released, and was generally conceded to be a disaster – even Betty Grable bad-mouthed it – but its reputation has improved somewhat over time.
Olga San Juan, unfortunately, did not receive many leading lady opportunities in Hollywood, as she carried with her a heavy Latin accent despite growing up almost exclusively in America. In 1951, she starred on Broadway in the Lerner and Loewe musical, Paint Your Wagon. She won the Donaldson Award for her work in Paint Your Wagon. However, the show was a flop, running just eight months. Olga had left the cast before the run ended, after becoming pregnant with her second child. Years before she had met actor Edmond O'Brien at a publicity luncheon for Fox studios, and they were married in 1948. A devout Catholic, San Juan retired to raise their three children: the actors Brendan O'Brien, Maria O'Brien, and television producer Bridget O'Brien, who is married to Barry Adelman, executive producer of the Golden Globe Awards. In 1954, she returned to the screen with a bit part in the successful drama The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1954), starring Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, and Edmond O'Brien. For his performance, O'Brien won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe. She also played a small part in O'Brien's film The 3rd Voice (Hubert Cornfield, 1960). O'Brien and San Juan were married 28 years, until their divorce in 1976. San Juan's health began to fail after a stroke in the 1970s, but she lived to enjoy her family for decades to come. At age 81, Olga San Juan died in 2009, of kidney failure stemming from a long-term illness at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, in Burbank, California. She was buried at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, Los Angeles, California. She was honoured with the Screen Actors Guild Latino Legacy Award for her work. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "for most her career, Puerto Rican singer/dancer Olga San Juan was a welcome distraction by American audiences. A flavorful, scene-stealing personality who delightfully mangled the English language, she decorated a number of war-era and post-war musicals and comedy escapism with her special brand of comedy."
Sources: Tamara Warta (Love to know), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers, Amsterdam, no. 363 / 817.
American actress Natalie Wood (1938-1981) was one of Hollywood's most valuable and wanted actresses in the early 1960s. At 4, she started out as a child actress and at 16, she became a star, when she co-starred with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). For this role, she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In 1961, she played Maria in the hit musical West Side Story. She was nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, for Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Only 43, Wood drowned during a boating trip with husband Robert Wagner and Brainstorm (1983) co-star Christopher Walken.
Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, USA, in 1938. Her parents were Russian immigrants. Her father Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko was a day laborer and carpenter and her mother Maria Zudilova was a housewife. Wood's parents had to migrate due to the Russian Civil War (1917-1923). Maria had unfulfilled ambitions of becoming an actress or ballet dancer. She wanted her daughters to pursue an acting career, and live out her dream. Maria frequently took a young Wood with her to the cinema, where Maria could study the films of Hollywood child stars. The impoverished family could not afford any other acting training to Wood. The Zakharenko family eventually moved to Santa Rosa, where young Wood was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot. The family moved to Los Angeles to help seek out roles for her. RKO Radio Pictures' executives William Goetz and David Lewis chose the stage name "Natalie Wood for her. The first name was based on her childhood nickname Natalia, and the last name was in reference to director Sam Wood. Natalia's younger sister Svetlana Gurdin (1946) would eventually follow an acting career as well, under the stage name Lana Wood. Natalie made her film debut in the drama Happy Land (Irving Pichel, 1943) starring Don Ameche, set in the home front of World War II. She was only 5-years-old, and her scene as the 'Little Girl Who Drops Ice Cream Cone' lasted 15 seconds. Wood somehow attracted the interest of film director Irving Pichel who remained in contact with her family over the next few years. Wood had few job offers over the following two years, but Pichel helped her get a screen test for a more substantial role opposite Orson Welles as Wood's guardian and Claudette Colbert in the romance film Tomorrow Is Forever (Irving Pichel, 1946). Wood passed through an audition and won the role of Margaret Ludwig, a post-World War II German orphan. At the time, Wood was "unable to cry on cue" for a key scene. So her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her, giving her a reason to cry for the scene. Wood started appearing regularly in films following this role and soon received a contract with the film studio 20th Century Fox. Her first major role was that of Susan Walker in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947), starring Edmund Gwenn and Maureen O'Hara. The film was a commercial and critical hit and Wood was counted among the top child stars in Hollywood. She received many more to play in films. She typically appeared in family films, cast as the daughter or sister of such protagonists as Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis. Wood appeared in over twenty films as a child actress. The California laws of the era required that until reaching adulthood, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom, Wood received her primary education on the studio lots, receiving three hours of school lessons whenever she was working on a film. After school hours ended, Wood would hurry to the set to film her scenes.
Natalie Wood gained her first major television role in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953-1954). At the age of 16, she found more success with the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) opposite James Dean and Sal Mineo. She played the role of a teenage girl who dresses up in racy clothes to attract the attention of a father (William Hopper) who typically ignores her. The film's success helped Wood make the transition from child star to ingenue. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, but the award was instead won by Jo Van Fleet. Her next significant film was the Western The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), playing the role of abduction victim Debbie Edwards, niece of the protagonist Ethan Edwards (John Wayne). The film was a commercial and critical hit and has since been regarded as a masterpiece. Also in 1956, Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School, with her graduation serving as the end of her school years. She signed a contract with Warner Brothers, where she was kept busy with several new films. To her disappointment, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the protagonist and received roles of little depth. For a while, the studio had her paired up with teenage heartthrob Tab Hunter as a duo. The studio was hoping that the pairing would serve as a box-office draw, but this did not work out. One of Wood's only serious roles from this period is the role of the eponymous protagonist in the melodrama Marjorie Morningstar (Irving Rapper, 1958) with Gene Kelly, playing a young Jewish girl whose efforts to create her own identity and career path clash with the expectations of her family. Wikipedia: "The central conflict in the film revolves around the traditional models of social behavior and religious behavior expected by New York Jewish families in the 1950s, and Marjorie's desire to follow an unconventional path." The film was a critical success, and fit well with other films exploring the restlessness of youth in the 1950s. Wood's first major box office flop was the biographical film All the Fine Young Cannibals (Michael Anderson, 1960), examining the rags to riches story of jazz musician Chet Baker (played by Robert Wagner) without actually using his name. The film's box office earnings barely covered the production costs, and film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer recorded a loss of 1,108,000 dollars. For the first time. Wood's appeal to the audience was in doubt.
With her career in decline following this failure, Natalie Wood was seen as "washed up" by many in the film community. But director Elia Kazan gave her the chance to audition for the role of the sexually-repressed Wilma Dean Loomis in Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961) with Warren Beatty. The film was a critical success and Wood for first nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The award was instead won by rival actress Sophia Loren. Wood's next important film was West Side Story (Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise, 1961), where she played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl. Wood was once again called to represent the restlessness of youth in a film, this time in a story involving youth gangs and juvenile delinquents. The film was a great commercial success with about 44 million dollars in gross, the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was also critically acclaimed and is still regarded among the best films of Wood's career. However, Wood was disappointed that her singing voice was not used in the film. She was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964), and Deborah Kerr in The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956). Wood's next leading role was as burlesque entertainer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in the Biopic Gypsy (Mervyn LeRoy, 1962) alongside Rosalind Russell. Some film historians credit the part as an even better role for Wood than that of Maria, with witty dialogue, a greater emotional range, and complex characterisation. The film was the highest-grossing film of 1962 and well-received critically. Wood's next significant role was that of Macy's salesclerk Angie Rossini in the comedy-drama Love with the Proper Stranger (Robert Mulligan, 1963). In the film, Angie has a one-night-stand with musician Rocky Papasano (Steve McQueen), finds herself pregnant, and desperately seeks an abortion. The film underperformed at the box office but was critically well-received. The 25-year-old Wood received her second nomination for the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, but it was won by Patricia Neal. Wood continued her successful film career and made two comedies with Tony Curtis: Sex and the Single Girl (Richard Quine, 1964) and The Great Race (Blake Edwards, 1965), the latter with Jack Lemmon, and Peter Falk. For Inside Daisy Clover (Sydney Pollack, 1965) and This Property Is Condemned (Sydney Pollack, 1966), both of which co-starred Robert Redford, Wood received Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. However, her health status was not as successful. She was suffering emotionally and had sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. 175,000 dollars to cancel her contract and was able to retire for a while. She also fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. She took a three-year hiatus from acting.
Natalie Wood made her comeback in the comedy-drama Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, 1969), with the themes of sexual liberation and wife swapping. It was a box office hit. Wood decided to gamble her 750,000 dollars fee on a percentage of the gross, earning a million dollars over the course of three years. Wood was pregnant with her first child, Natasha Gregson (1970). She chose to go into semi-retirement to raise the child, appearing in only four more theatrical films before her death. These films were the mystery-comedy Peeper (Peter Hyams, 1975) starring Michael Caine, the Science-Fiction film Meteor (Ronald Neame, 1979) with Sean Connery, the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America (Gilbert Cates, 1980) with George Segal and Valerie Harper, and the posthumously-released Science-Fiction film Brainstorm (Douglas Trumbull, 1983). In the late 1970s, Wood found success in television roles. Laurence Olivier asked her to co-star with him in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Robert Moore, 1976). After that, she appeared in several television films and the mini-series From Here to Eternity (Buzz Kulik, 1979), with William Devane and Kim Basinger. For From Here to Eternity, she received a Golden Globe Award and high ratings. She had plans to make her theatrical debut in a 1982 production of 'Anastasia'. On 28 November 1981, during a holiday break from the production of Brainstorm (1983), Natalie Wood joined her husband Robert Wagner, their friend Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island. The four of them were on board Wagner's yacht Splendour. On the morning of 29 November 1981, Wood's corpse was recovered 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the boat. The autopsy revealed that she had drowned. Wikipedia: "The events surrounding her death have been the subject of conflicting witness statements, prompting the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, under the instruction of the coroner's office, to list her cause of death as 'drowning and other undetermined factors' in 2012. In 2018, Wagner was named as a person of interest in the ongoing investigation into Wood's death." Natalie Wood was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her would-be comeback film Brainstorm (Douglas Trumbull, 1983) was incomplete at the time of her death. It was ultimately finished and released, but Wood's character had to be written out of three scenes while a stand-in and changing camera angles were used for crucial shots. Natalie Wood was married three times. Her second husband was the British film producer and screenwriter Richard Gregson (1969-1972). She was twice married to actor Robert Wagner, from 1957 till 1962 and from 1972 till her death in 1981. She had two daughters, Natasha Gregson Wagner (1970) with Richard Gregson, and Courtney Wagner (1974) with Robert Wagner. The 2004 TV film The Mystery of Natalie Wood chronicles Wood's life and career. It was partly based on the biographies 'Natasha: the Biography of Natalie Wood' by Suzanne Finstad and 'Natalie & R.J.' by Warren G. Harris. Justine Waddell portrays Wood.
Sources: Dimos I (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
I discovered this lovely Victorian house earlier this week. I have since learned that it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The information below comes from the National Register of Historic Places Inventory—Nomination Form.
npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/da02787d-5a69-4348-8f9d-b...
I have omitted the detailed descriptions of the building's elevations, windows, doors and roof. I've also cut tedious details about the pool house and the landscaping. It is worth noting, however, that in 1980, the house was served by a curved driveway that extended all the way to the front steps. It is no longer there and, in fact, there is no access to house from N. Willamette Boulevard.
I gather that high expectations that the house would be restored, which go back to the 1980s, have yet to be realized. The first thing I would do is repaint the house, because otherwise it's akin to a piece of fine furniture that's been left out to weather on the front yard.
Introduction
The John Mock House is one of Portland's best-preserved examples of Queen Anne/Victorian architecture. It is excellently situated above the Willamette River and was designed and built by unknown person or persons on the site of two previous Mock houses, the oldest dating from 1853.
The interior is superbly detailed and is substantially unaltered from its original state. The Mock House has been continuously associated with persons and events vital to the evolution of Portland's architectural, political and cultural heritage and deserves recognition by the National Register.
Biographical Information About Past Owners
1. John Mock's Parents
In 1833 Henry Arnold Mock and his wife, Maria Elizabeth Meyer, emigrated to America from Germany. Settling in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, five years later on October 4, 1838, Maria gave birth to the couple's only child, John. In Mechanicsburg, Henry engaged in several occupations including that of a sailor, farmer, and shoemaker. By 1844, he had saved enough money to move his family to Platte County, Missouri, and purchase a forty-acre farm. There the family settled and worked the land for eight years.
In the spring of 1852, lured into the westward migration, Henry Mock sold his farm, packed both his family and his most valued worldly possessions into a wagon, and began their journey across the Great Plains to Oregon. By this time, John was fourteen years old and a man by pioneer standards. He proved himself particularly adept in the handling of the family's four-yoke oxen wagon, often with two additional cows hitched up. In fact, John was so skillful at driving the team that all six original animals survived the Plains crossing.
In the late summer of 1852, the Mock family arrived in The Dalles, Oregon. There they sold two of their oxen, loaded the wagon on a river scow, and drifted down the Columbia River. John, however, stayed behind, and drove the remaining oxen and cows overland, where he met his parents at the Upper Cascades. Here they disembarked from the scow and proceeded further down the river by wagon to the Lower Cascades. At the Lower Cascades, Henry and Maria again boarded the scow, John drove the oxen and cows overland, and by early fall both groups arrived in Sandy, Oregon. In Sandy, the family reloaded the wagon and made their way to Portland, arriving in October 1852.
The Mock family's first three weeks in Portland were spent camping in Sullivan's Gulch. Turning their cattle loose in order to graze, the animals ran off during an unwatched moment. In the search that followed, the Mocks stumbled upon what is now St. John's, where they met Dr. Charles Staples, Portland's first practicing and properly educated physician.
Dr. Staples convinced the family to occupy a house on his property and weather the winter storms there. Henry, Maria, and John remained guests of Dr. Staples until the spring of 1853, when, with the advice of Dr. Staples, Henry Mock took up a donation land claim of 317 acres in the vicinity of what is now the University of Portland. That claim included what are today’s North Portland neighborhoods of University Park, Mock’s Crest and Mock’s Bottom. With the aid of neighbors, the Mock's built their first log cabin, which was the family home until 1874.
2. John Mock
During his first four years in Portland, John Mock cleared, worked, and helped further develop the family farm. Yet, by 1857 and at the age of eighteen, John left home for a career in mining and running a pack train. Taking advantage of his pioneer experiences, John was apparently successful as both a miner and "mule skinner."
However, after six years he returned to his Portland home, lived with his mother and father, and began again to work the farm.
In 1867, Maria Elizabeth Mock died. At this point, John purchased the farm from his aging and apparently disheartened father. Gathering his savings, Henry Arnold returned to his native Germany where he was promptly swindled out of his small fortune. He was thus forced to return to the U.S., where he lived with his son John until 1883, when he died at the age of ninety-one.
On August 4, 1874, John Mock married Mary M. Sunderland, originally of Iowa. John immediately began the construction of a new family cabin of hewn log. Finished in the same year, the cabin was much more spacious and thus able to house an ever growing family. Included were his wife, Mary; his father, Henry; his oldest daughter, Mary Elizabeth; hisonly son, John Benjamin; his second daughter, Lillie Catherine;and his last child, Margaret Alice.
Tragically, in 1889, the Mock family cabin burned down, along with virtually all of the family's possessions. As a result, John Mock initiated the construction of the house that still stands today, known as Mock's residence. Completed in 1894, John Mock lived there until 1918, when he died.
John Mock, as one of the founders of Portland, was originally well known for his pioneering efforts in raising livestock and mining in the local area. Later, as a City Councilman, he was instrumental in developing and initiating a street-railway system that reached out to the St. John's area. Moreover, John Mock donated large tracks of land to the city for the implementation of a street system which led to the development of a fine residentia lcommunity. Finally, near the end of his life, John Mock donated the land for the building of Columbia University, presently the University of Portland.
Both Mock's Crest, near the University, and Mock's Bottom, near Swan Island, are named for John Mock, acknowledging his contribution to Portland as one of its original pioneers and most active and concerned of citizens.
3. Owners After John Mock's Death
After John Mock's death, the present home was subsequently owned and occupied by his children and in-laws at various times: Margaret Alice Mock, the youngest child who remained single her entire life, and who was noted for the creation of a generous scholarship fund for graduating senior at Roosevelt High School; Lillie Catherine (Mock) Amos, the second daughter of John Mock, and wife of the well-known physician and famous prohibitionist Dr. William F. Amos; Mary Elizabeth (Mock) Yeon, the eldest Mock child and wife of John B. Yeon.
Mr. Yeon was a well-known Oregon logger, builder, real estate developer, and is considered the "father of the Columbia River Highway." John B. Yeon is the grandfather of the noted architect, John Yeon.
In the mid-1950's, the family sold the Mock home to Harold LaDuke, for which the LaDuke Terrace addition is named.
4. The Owners in 1980
The Mock House is now owned and occupied by Mr. Lewis E. Alexander, and his wife, Fern T. Alexander. Both are Native Americans and hail from Oklahoma.
Mr. Alexander is of the Creek-Seminole people and Mrs. Alexander is of Oto-Missouria origin. Presently, Mr. Alexander is the Executive Director of the Portland Urban Indian Council, Inc., providing a variety of social services for the local Native American population.
In the recent past, Mr. Alexander has served both the Schrunk and Goldschmidt administrations in the Mayor's Office. Between 1970 and 1972, he was Manpower Coordinator for the City of Portland, in which he served as the Mayor's staff advisor on all manpower and related programs. Further, he was Chairperson of the Mayor's Manpower Area Planning Council and was instrumental in codifying and developing a program of evaluating the City's Manpower planning problems. Mr. Alexander has remained active in Indian cultural affairs throughout his life.
Former President of New Mexico Council of AmericanIndians, and presently a member of several other regional and national Indian organizations, in 1974, he was selected the administrative coordinator for the "Native American's Earth" presentation at Expo '74 in Spokane, and was an active member of Expo '74's general manager's staff,
In 1968, Mrs. Alexander was named the American Indian of the Year and travelled to Washington, D.C. to receive the honor. During the administration of President Kennedy, she was appointed "counselor" to the Department of the Interior in regards to Indian affairs~a position Mrs. Alexander still remains active in today. Like her husband, she is very active in local, regional, and national Indian affairs and participates in several related organizations. Presently, Mrs. Alexander is the
Chairperson and the Director of Communications for the North American Indian Woman's Association of Oregon.
Description of the House
The interior of the Mock's Residence consists of a 1,500 square foot basement; a 2,000 square foot first floor a 1,900 square foot second floor; and an attic with 1,000 usable square feet. The basement is used as a laundry room and recreational area, whereas the attic, though largely unfinished, has one insulated room for storage purposes.
1. The First Floor
The first floor was originally designed to and presently serves as the family living area. Likewise, the second floor was designed expressly for individual sleeping and dressing rooms, and remains so today.
The entry hall allows access from the front porch through the main doors to the main hall-foyer. The entry is 6' x 5'6" and contains an inner pair of 8' high doors, with stained glass inserts, that separate it from the hall-foyer. The floor is surfaced in ceramic tile, and the doors and wainscoting are natural-finish hardwood panels. The main hall-foyer is irregular in shape, approximately 22' x 8'6" in size. The floors are fully carpeted and the ceiling is textured with a cut crystal chandelier. The walls are painted, yet all doors and the accompanying wood decor are of natural finish.
An open curved stairway leads to the second floor. The newel post and rails are carved hardwood and given a natural finish.
Between the entry hall and stairway is an 8' x 5'6" cloakroom. It has hanging space for clothing on both sides and a sit down storage bench. This walk-in cloakroom is fully carpeted and has a half rounded stained glass window facing the front yard.
To the left of the entry hall as one enters the hall-foyer, is the sitting room. Measuring 14' x 17', one enters the sitting room through a 5' x 8' pocket door from the hall-foyer. The room has a textured ceiling, painted walls, and a bowed front window stretching the full width of the room. The sitting room is fully carpeted.
The living room, originally the parlor and music room, is to the right of the hall-foyer and is entered through a pair of 5' x 8' pocketed doors. The room is irregular in shape, yet averages 29' x 14' in size. A high cased opening topped with fancy spindle work and a cut out lyre separates the south nine feet of the room. This section of the living room is lined with built-in bookcases, except for the window areas.
The fireplace at the north end of the room is surrounded by a natural finish oak mantle and side sections with a beveled edge plate glass mirror back. It has a ceramic tile face and an iron plate fire screen with adjustable vents. The ceiling is textured, the walls are painted, and the floor is carpeted.
One gains access to the dining room via a 4' x 8' high pocket door at the north end of the living room. The ceiling was hand-painted by New York artist Charles Ammann in 1930. The chandelier has eight branches and is of Victorian design. The fixture was originally gas fueled, but has since been converted to electricity. The fireplace, at the southern end of the room, is similar in styling to the one in the living room. It has a ceramic face and hearth, an iron plate fire screen, and a natural finish oak wood mantle. However, the side shelves have more spindle work and there is a smaller mirror. The northern wall has a scenic mural of the "Villa d'Este." Painted in moss green and blue, it was done by an unknown artist at an unknown date. The woodwork in the room is largely painted in satin enamel, excepting the spindle work, the doors, and the dado inserts. The remaining walls are likewise painted and the floor is carpeted. The dining room measures 19' x 14'.
The breakfast room, presently serving as an informal bar, opens off of the dining room through a high cased opening topped by fine wood spindle work. Facing the east, the room is walled by two full sides of glass windows taking full advantage of the sun during the first half of the day. The remaining two walls and ceiling are painted to compliment the dining room, and the floor is completely surfaced with ceramic tile. The breakfast room measures 6' x 10'.
At the north end of the hall-foyer is the center hall. Measuring 3' x 10', it has a dropped ceiling topped with a fancy wood spindle work. The floor is carpeted, the walls are painted, and the center hall leads one to the main floor bathroom and to the office.
The office is 10' x 8'6" and has a dropped ceiling. This room does not reflect the architectural period of the house as do the other rooms. The office has wainscote-height paneling and built-in cabinets shelves. The floor is carpeted.
The main floor bathroom measures 7'6" x 15'. It has a built-in vanity with a large mirror and double swag lights, the ceiling is original hand painted, and has a wall-hung water closet. The bathroom has been fitted by a modern toilet and 4'6"tub with an overhead shower.
The kitchen is a modern "U"-shaped design with several built-in appliances. One can enter the kitchen from the rear hall or from the pantry via the dining room. The kitchen is 12' x 16'6", it has a 9' kitchen bar with an eating shelf and a 7'6" nook with space for a small kitchen table. The room is well lighted and fully carpeted.
The pantry is located between the dining room and kitchen and has access to both. The walls are lined with upper and lower cabinets for storage, and there is an open counter space. The pantry is carpeted and opens up on to the back porch.
The rear stair is three feet wide and leads off the rear hallway to the second floor central hallway. Given a natural wood finish, it has one landing and winders that provide for a ninety-degree turn.
2. The Second Floor
The second floor consists of a main hallway, a small rear hall, a bathroom, a master bedroom, and five additional bedrooms. All the rooms on this floor have wood panel doors with transom lights above each.
The main hallway averages 8'6" x 12' and opens off the main stairway from the first floor hall-foyer. The hallway runs north and south and thus divides the second floor into east and west sections. At the southern end of the hallway is a stained glass insert door leading onto the front balcony. The hall carpet is the same as that of the main floor: a gold acrilan over a 70-ounce foam pad with a high/low tip sheared pattern.
The rear hall, located at the north end of the second floor, ranges from four to five feet in width. Carpeted, it leads to the rear stairway which, in turn, takes one down to the first floor, providing easy access to the pantry and kitchen.
The master bedroom is irregular in shape, yet average 24' x 14' in size. It has ivory colored wallpaper, ivory colored woodwork finish, and a pink wool carpet. Both windows in the room are boxed out. The east window is an Austrian shade with over drapes and valances in green and gold antique satin. The front corner windows have draw sheers, with a draw drapes valance. The front corner window seat is covered with green crushed velvet.
The master bedroom has its own bathroom, while the remaining five bedrooms share the hallway bathroom. The master bedroom bathroom is now a modern facility with tiled floor and walls. Entering through café doors, the bathroom contains a marble-top vanity, a 3' x 4'6" shower, and a hung water closet.
Within the entry-hall of the master bedroom are the original hall lights above a large framed mirror. Further centered in the sitting area hangs a Maria Theresa cut crystal chandelier.
The remaining five bedrooms range in size from as large as 18'6" x 10'6" to as small as 12' x 8'. Located on both sides of the main hall, they now serve as guest rooms for visiting friends and relatives.
The northeast bedroom has double closets- and an off-white acrylic carpet, and washable pink wallpaper; the southwest bedroom' has two windows with a view of the city, a connecting door with the west-center bedroom, the walls are painted, and retains its original carpet; the west-center bedroom, adjoining the southwest bedroom, has painted walls, a wool blue carpet, and a set of boxed out windows with stained glass; the northwest bedroom is painted and is floored with a green nylon carpet; the final bedroom also serves as a linen storage room. With its original carpet, this bedroom has an entire wall devoted to storage containing doors and drawers. Further, the room has a walk-in closet with drawers and shelves for more storage.
The hallway bathroom is for the occupants of the five subordinate bedrooms. Measuring 8'x9' in size, it is a completely new and modern facility excepting its original six foot long bathtub.
The upper-half story serves as an attic for the Mock House. It is basically unfinished except for one room with a 1,000 square foot area. Serving as a storage room, it is insulated, contains several storage cabinets, and usually remains locked.
Of further interest: In 1971, a four-ton Rheem central air-conditioning unit was installed. It serves the entire main floor, the master bedroom, and two more bedrooms on the second floor.
The system's installation was an amazing feat, in that first it could be installed at all in a structure such as Mock's Residence, and second; that it was accomplished without compromising the home's appearance.
npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/GetAsset/da02787d-5a69-4348-8f9d-b...
Buckingham Palace is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality. It has been a focal point for the British people at times of national rejoicing and mourning.
Originally known as Buckingham House, the building at the core of today's palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703 on a site that had been in private ownership for at least 150 years. It was acquired by King George III in 1761 as a private residence for Queen Charlotte and became known as The Queen's House. During the 19th century it was enlarged by architects John Nash and Edward Blore, who constructed three wings around a central courtyard. Buckingham Palace became the London residence of the British monarch on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.
The last major structural additions were made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the East Front, which contains the well-known balcony on which the British royal family traditionally congregates to greet crowds. A German bomb destroyed the palace chapel during the Second World War; the Queen's Gallery was built on the site and opened to the public in 1962 to exhibit works of art from the Royal Collection.
The original early-19th-century interior designs, many of which survive, include widespread use of brightly coloured scagliola and blue and pink lapis, on the advice of Sir Charles Long. King Edward VII oversaw a partial redecoration in a Belle Époque cream and gold colour scheme. Many smaller reception rooms are furnished in the Chinese regency style with furniture and fittings brought from the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and from Carlton House. The palace has 775 rooms, and the garden is the largest private garden in London. The state rooms, used for official and state entertaining, are open to the public each year for most of August and September and on some days in winter and spring.
In the Middle Ages, the site of the future palace formed part of the Manor of Ebury (also called Eia). The marshy ground was watered by the river Tyburn, which still flows below the courtyard and south wing of the palace. Where the river was fordable (at Cow Ford), the village of Eye Cross grew. Ownership of the site changed hands many times; owners included Edward the Confessor and Edith of Wessex in late Saxon times, and, after the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror. William gave the site to Geoffrey de Mandeville, who bequeathed it to the monks of Westminster Abbey.
In 1531, Henry VIII acquired the Hospital of St James, which became St James's Palace, from Eton College, and in 1536 he took the Manor of Ebury from Westminster Abbey. These transfers brought the site of Buckingham Palace back into royal hands for the first time since William the Conqueror had given it away almost 500 years earlier. Various owners leased it from royal landlords, and the freehold was the subject of frenzied speculation during the 17th century. By then, the old village of Eye Cross had long since fallen into decay, and the area was mostly wasteland. Needing money, James VI and I sold off part of the Crown freehold but retained part of the site on which he established a four-acre (1.6 ha) mulberry garden for the production of silk. (This is at the north-west corner of today's palace.) Clement Walker in Anarchia Anglicana (1649) refers to "new-erected sodoms and spintries at the Mulberry Garden at S. James's"; this suggests it may have been a place of debauchery. Eventually, in the late 17th century, the freehold was inherited from the property tycoon Sir Hugh Audley by the great heiress Mary Davies.
Possibly the first house erected within the site was that of Sir William Blake, around 1624. The next owner was Lord Goring, who from 1633 extended Blake's house, which came to be known as Goring House, and developed much of today's garden, then known as Goring Great Garden. He did not, however, obtain the freehold interest in the mulberry garden. Unbeknown to Goring, in 1640 the document "failed to pass the Great Seal before Charles I fled London, which it needed to do for legal execution". It was this critical omission that would help the British royal family regain the freehold under George III. When the improvident Goring defaulted on his rents, Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington was able to purchase the lease of Goring House and he was occupying it when it burned down in 1674, following which he constructed Arlington House on the site—the location of the southern wing of today's palace—the next year. In 1698, John Sheffield acquired the lease. He later became the first Duke of Buckingham and Normanby. Buckingham House was built for Sheffield in 1703 to the design of William Winde. The style chosen was of a large, three-floored central block with two smaller flanking service wings. It was eventually sold by Buckingham's illegitimate son, Sir Charles Sheffield, in 1761 to George III for £21,000. Sheffield's leasehold on the mulberry garden site, the freehold of which was still owned by the royal family, was due to expire in 1774.
Under the new royal ownership, the building was originally intended as a private retreat for Queen Charlotte, and was accordingly known as The Queen's House. Remodelling of the structure began in 1762. In 1775, an Act of Parliament settled the property on Queen Charlotte, in exchange for her rights to nearby Somerset House, and 14 of her 15 children were born there. Some furnishings were transferred from Carlton House and others had been bought in France after the French Revolution of 1789. While St James's Palace remained the official and ceremonial royal residence, the name "Buckingham-palace" was used from at least 1791. After his accession to the throne in 1820, George IV continued the renovation intending to create a small, comfortable home. However, in 1826, while the work was in progress, the King decided to modify the house into a palace with the help of his architect John Nash. The external façade was designed, keeping in mind the French neoclassical influence preferred by George IV. The cost of the renovations grew dramatically, and by 1829 the extravagance of Nash's designs resulted in his removal as the architect. On the death of George IV in 1830, his younger brother William IV hired Edward Blore to finish the work. William never moved into the palace. After the Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire in 1834, he offered to convert Buckingham Palace into a new Houses of Parliament, but his offer was declined.
Buckingham Palace became the principal royal residence in 1837, on the accession of Queen Victoria, who was the first monarch to reside there; her predecessor William IV had died before its completion. While the state rooms were a riot of gilt and colour, the necessities of the new palace were somewhat less luxurious. It was reported the chimneys smoked so much that the fires had to be allowed to die down, and consequently the palace was often cold. Ventilation was so bad that the interior smelled, and when it was decided to install gas lamps, there was a serious worry about the build-up of gas on the lower floors. It was also said that the staff were lax and lazy and the palace was dirty. Following the Queen's marriage in 1840, her husband, Prince Albert, concerned himself with a reorganisation of the household offices and staff, and with addressing the design faults of the palace. By the end of 1840, all the problems had been rectified. However, the builders were to return within a decade.
By 1847, the couple had found the palace too small for court life and their growing family and a new wing, designed by Edward Blore, was built by Thomas Cubitt, enclosing the central quadrangle. The large East Front, facing The Mall, is today the "public face" of Buckingham Palace and contains the balcony from which the royal family acknowledge the crowds on momentous occasions and after the annual Trooping the Colour. The ballroom wing and a further suite of state rooms were also built in this period, designed by Nash's student Sir James Pennethorne. Before Prince Albert's death, the palace was frequently the scene of musical entertainments, and the most celebrated contemporary musicians entertained at Buckingham Palace. The composer Felix Mendelssohn is known to have played there on three occasions. Johann Strauss II and his orchestra played there when in England. Under Victoria, Buckingham Palace was frequently the scene of lavish costume balls, in addition to the usual royal ceremonies, investitures and presentations.
Widowed in 1861, the grief-stricken Queen withdrew from public life and left Buckingham Palace to live at Windsor Castle, Balmoral Castle and Osborne House. For many years the palace was seldom used, even neglected. In 1864, a note was found pinned to the fence of Buckingham Palace, saying: "These commanding premises to be let or sold, in consequence of the late occupant's declining business." Eventually, public opinion persuaded the Queen to return to London, though even then she preferred to live elsewhere whenever possible. Court functions were still held at Windsor Castle, presided over by the sombre Queen habitually dressed in mourning black, while Buckingham Palace remained shuttered for most of the year.
In 1901, the new king, Edward VII, began redecorating the palace. The King and his wife, Queen Alexandra, had always been at the forefront of London high society, and their friends, known as "the Marlborough House Set", were considered to be the most eminent and fashionable of the age. Buckingham Palace—the Ballroom, Grand Entrance, Marble Hall, Grand Staircase, vestibules and galleries were redecorated in the Belle Époque cream and gold colour scheme they retain today—once again became a setting for entertaining on a majestic scale but leaving some to feel Edward's heavy redecorations were at odds with Nash's original work.
The last major building work took place during the reign of George V when, in 1913, Sir Aston Webb redesigned Blore's 1850 East Front to resemble in part Giacomo Leoni's Lyme Park in Cheshire. This new refaced principal façade (of Portland stone) was designed to be the backdrop to the Victoria Memorial, a large memorial statue of Queen Victoria created by sculptor Sir Thomas Brock, erected outside the main gates on a surround constructed by architect Sir Aston Webb. George V, who had succeeded Edward VII in 1910, had a more serious personality than his father; greater emphasis was now placed on official entertainment and royal duties than on lavish parties. He arranged a series of command performances featuring jazz musicians such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (1919; the first jazz performance for a head of state), Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong (1932), which earned the palace a nomination in 2009 for a (Kind of) Blue Plaque by the Brecon Jazz Festival as one of the venues making the greatest contribution to jazz music in the United Kingdom.
During the First World War, which lasted from 1914 until 1918, the palace escaped unscathed. Its more valuable contents were evacuated to Windsor, but the royal family remained in residence. The King imposed rationing at the palace, much to the dismay of his guests and household. To the King's later regret, David Lloyd George persuaded him to go further and ostentatiously lock the wine cellars and refrain from alcohol, to set a good example to the supposedly inebriated working class. The workers continued to imbibe, and the King was left unhappy at his enforced abstinence.
George V's wife, Queen Mary, was a connoisseur of the arts and took a keen interest in the Royal Collection of furniture and art, both restoring and adding to it. Queen Mary also had many new fixtures and fittings installed, such as the pair of marble Empire-style chimneypieces by Benjamin Vulliamy, dating from 1810, which the Queen had installed in the ground floor Bow Room, the huge low room at the centre of the garden façade. Queen Mary was also responsible for the decoration of the Blue Drawing Room. This room, 69 feet (21 metres) long, previously known as the South Drawing Room, has a ceiling designed by Nash, coffered with huge gilt console brackets. In 1938, the northwest pavilion, designed by Nash as a conservatory, was converted into a swimming pool.
During the Second World War, which broke out in 1939, the palace was bombed nine times. The most serious and publicised incident destroyed the palace chapel in 1940. This event was shown in cinemas throughout the United Kingdom to show the common suffering of the rich and poor. One bomb fell in the palace quadrangle while George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mother) were in the palace, and many windows were blown in and the chapel destroyed. Wartime coverage of such incidents was severely restricted, however. The King and Queen were filmed inspecting their bombed home; it was at this time the Queen famously declared: "I'm glad we have been bombed. Now I can look the East End in the face". The royal family were seen as sharing their subjects' hardship, as The Sunday Graphic reported:
By the Editor: The King and Queen have endured the ordeal which has come to their subjects. For the second time a German bomber has tried to bring death and destruction to the home of Their Majesties ... When this war is over the common danger which King George and Queen Elizabeth have shared with their people will be a cherished memory and an inspiration through the years.
On 15 September 1940, known as Battle of Britain Day, an RAF pilot, Ray Holmes of No. 504 Squadron RAF rammed a German Dornier Do 17 bomber he believed was going to bomb the Palace. Holmes had run out of ammunition and made the quick decision to ram it. Holmes bailed out and the aircraft crashed into the forecourt of London Victoria station. The bomber's engine was later exhibited at the Imperial War Museum in London. The British pilot became a King's Messenger after the war and died at the age of 90 in 2005. On VE Day—8 May 1945—the palace was the centre of British celebrations. The King, the Queen, Princess Elizabeth (the future queen) and Princess Margaret appeared on the balcony, with the palace's blacked-out windows behind them, to cheers from a vast crowd in The Mall. The damaged Palace was carefully restored after the war by John Mowlem & Co.
Many of the palace's contents are part of the Royal Collection, held in trust by King Charles III; they can, on occasion, be viewed by the public at the Queen's Gallery, near the Royal Mews. The purpose-built gallery opened in 1962 and displays a changing selection of items from the collection. It occupies the site of the chapel that was destroyed in the Second World War. The palace was designated a Grade I listed building in 1970. Its state rooms have been open to the public during August and September and on some dates throughout the year since 1993. The money raised in entry fees was originally put towards the rebuilding of Windsor Castle after the 1992 fire devastated many of its staterooms. In the year to 31 March 2017, 580,000 people visited the palace, and 154,000 visited the gallery.
The palace used to racially segregate staff. In 1968, Charles Tryon, 2nd Baron Tryon, acting as treasurer to Queen Elizabeth II, sought to exempt Buckingham Palace from full application of the Race Relations Act 1968. He stated that the palace did not hire people of colour for clerical jobs, only as domestic servants. He arranged with Civil servants for an exemption that meant that complaints of racism against the royal household would be sent directly to the Home Secretary and kept out of the legal system.
The palace, like Windsor Castle, is owned by the reigning monarch in right of the Crown. Occupied royal palaces are not part of the Crown Estate, nor are they the monarch's personal property, unlike Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle. The Government of the United Kingdom is responsible for maintaining the palace in exchange for the profits made by the Crown Estate. In 2015, the State Dining Room was closed for a year and a half because its ceiling had become potentially dangerous. A 10-year schedule of maintenance work, including new plumbing, wiring, boilers and radiators, and the installation of solar panels on the roof, has been estimated to cost £369 million and was approved by the prime minister in November 2016. It will be funded by a temporary increase in the Sovereign Grant paid from the income of the Crown Estate and is intended to extend the building's working life by at least 50 years. In 2017, the House of Commons backed funding for the project by 464 votes to 56.
Buckingham Palace is a symbol and home of the British monarchy, an art gallery and a tourist attraction. Behind the gilded railings and gates that were completed by the Bromsgrove Guild in 1911, lies Webb's famous façade, which was described in a book published by the Royal Collection Trust as looking "like everybody's idea of a palace". It has not only been a weekday home of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip but is also the London residence of the Duke of York and the Earl and Countess of Wessex. The palace also houses their offices, as well as those of the Princess Royal and Princess Alexandra, and is the workplace of more than 800 people. Charles III lives at Clarence House while restoration work continues, although he conducts official business at Buckingham Palace, including weekly meetings with the Prime Minister. Every year, some 50,000 invited guests are entertained at garden parties, receptions, audiences and banquets. Three garden parties are held in the summer, usually in July. The forecourt of Buckingham Palace is used for the Changing of the Guard, a major ceremony and tourist attraction (daily from April to July; every other day in other months).
Interior
The front of the palace measures 355 feet (108 m) across, by 390 feet (120 m) deep, by 80 feet (24 m) high and contains over 830,000 square feet (77,000 m2) of floorspace. There are 775 rooms, including 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, 78 bathrooms, 52 principal bedrooms and 19 state rooms. It also has a post office, cinema, swimming pool, doctor's surgery, and jeweller's workshop. The royal family occupy a small suite of private rooms in the north wing.
Principal rooms
The principal rooms are contained on the first-floor piano nobile behind the west-facing garden façade at the rear of the palace. The centre of this ornate suite of state rooms is the Music Room, its large bow the dominant feature of the façade. Flanking the Music Room are the Blue and the White Drawing Rooms. At the centre of the suite, serving as a corridor to link the state rooms, is the Picture Gallery, which is top-lit and 55 yards (50 m) long. The Gallery is hung with numerous works including some by Rembrandt, van Dyck, Rubens and Vermeer; other rooms leading from the Picture Gallery are the Throne Room and the Green Drawing Room. The Green Drawing Room serves as a huge anteroom to the Throne Room, and is part of the ceremonial route to the throne from the Guard Room at the top of the Grand Staircase. The Guard Room contains white marble statues of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, in Roman costume, set in a tribune lined with tapestries. These very formal rooms are used only for ceremonial and official entertaining but are open to the public every summer.
Semi-state apartments
Directly underneath the state apartments are the less grand semi-state apartments. Opening from the Marble Hall, these rooms are used for less formal entertaining, such as luncheon parties and private audiences. At the centre of this floor is the Bow Room, through which thousands of guests pass annually to the monarch's garden parties. When paying a state visit to Britain, foreign heads of state are usually entertained by the monarch at Buckingham Palace. They are allocated an extensive suite of rooms known as the Belgian Suite, situated at the foot of the Minister's Staircase, on the ground floor of the west-facing Garden Wing. Some of the rooms are named and decorated for particular visitors, such as the 1844 Room, decorated in that year for the state visit of Nicholas I of Russia, and the 1855 Room, in honour of the visit of Napoleon III of France. The former is a sitting room that also serves as an audience room and is often used for personal investitures. Narrow corridors link the rooms of the suite; one of them is given extra height and perspective by saucer domes designed by Nash in the style of Soane. A second corridor in the suite has Gothic-influenced cross-over vaulting. The suite was named after Leopold I of Belgium, uncle of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In 1936, the suite briefly became the private apartments of the palace when Edward VIII occupied them. The original early-19th-century interior designs, many of which still survive, included widespread use of brightly coloured scagliola and blue and pink lapis, on the advice of Charles Long. Edward VII oversaw a partial redecoration in a Belle Époque cream and gold colour scheme.
East wing
Between 1847 and 1850, when Blore was building the new east wing, the Brighton Pavilion was once again plundered of its fittings. As a result, many of the rooms in the new wing have a distinctly oriental atmosphere. The red and blue Chinese Luncheon Room is made up of parts of the Brighton Banqueting and Music Rooms with a large oriental chimneypiece designed by Robert Jones and sculpted by Richard Westmacott. It was formerly in the Music Room at the Brighton Pavilion. The ornate clock, known as the Kylin Clock, was made in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, in the second half of the 18th century; it has a later movement by Benjamin Vulliamy circa 1820. The Yellow Drawing Room has wallpaper supplied in 1817 for the Brighton Saloon, and a chimneypiece which is a European vision of how the Chinese chimney piece may appear. It has nodding mandarins in niches and fearsome winged dragons, designed by Robert Jones.
At the centre of this wing is the famous balcony with the Centre Room behind its glass doors. This is a Chinese-style saloon enhanced by Queen Mary, who, working with the designer Charles Allom, created a more "binding" Chinese theme in the late 1920s, although the lacquer doors were brought from Brighton in 1873. Running the length of the piano nobile of the east wing is the Great Gallery, modestly known as the Principal Corridor, which runs the length of the eastern side of the quadrangle. It has mirrored doors and mirrored cross walls reflecting porcelain pagodas and other oriental furniture from Brighton. The Chinese Luncheon Room and Yellow Drawing Room are situated at each end of this gallery, with the Centre Room in between.
Court ceremonies
Investitures for the awarding of honours (which include the conferring of knighthoods by dubbing with a sword) usually take place in the palace's Throne Room. Investitures are conducted by the King or another senior member of the royal family: a military band plays in the musicians' gallery, as recipients receive their honours, watched by their families and friends.
State banquets take place in the Ballroom, built in 1854. At 120 feet (36.6 m) long, 60 feet (18 m) wide and 45 feet (13.5 m) high, it is the largest room in the palace; at one end of the room is a throne dais (beneath a giant, domed velvet canopy, known as a shamiana or baldachin, that was used at the Delhi Durbar in 1911). State Banquets are formal dinners held on the first evening of a state visit by a foreign head of state. On these occasions, for up to 170 guests in formal "white tie and decorations", including tiaras, the dining table is laid with the Grand Service, a collection of silver-gilt plate made in 1811 for the Prince of Wales, later George IV.
The largest and most formal reception at Buckingham Palace takes place every November when the King entertains members of the diplomatic corps. On this grand occasion, all the state rooms are in use, as the royal family proceed through them, beginning at the great north doors of the Picture Gallery. As Nash had envisaged, all the large, double-mirrored doors stand open, reflecting the numerous crystal chandeliers and sconces, creating a deliberate optical illusion of space and light.
Smaller ceremonies such as the reception of new ambassadors take place in the "1844 Room". Here too, the King holds small lunch parties, and often meetings of the Privy Council. Larger lunch parties often take place in the curved and domed Music Room or the State Dining Room. Since the bombing of the palace chapel in World War II, royal christenings have sometimes taken place in the Music Room. Queen Elizabeth II's first three children were all baptised there. On all formal occasions, the ceremonies are attended by the Yeomen of the Guard, in their historic uniforms, and other officers of the court such as the Lord Chamberlain.
Former ceremonial
Formerly, men not wearing military uniform wore knee breeches of 18th-century design. Women's evening dress included trains and tiaras or feathers in their hair (often both). The dress code governing formal court uniform and dress has progressively relaxed. After the First World War, when Queen Mary wished to follow fashion by raising her skirts a few inches from the ground, she requested a lady-in-waiting to shorten her own skirt first to gauge the King's reaction. King George V disapproved, so the Queen kept her hemline unfashionably low. Following his accession in 1936, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth allowed the hemline of daytime skirts to rise. Today, there is no official dress code. Most men invited to Buckingham Palace in the daytime choose to wear service uniform or lounge suits; a minority wear morning coats, and in the evening, depending on the formality of the occasion, black tie or white tie.
Court presentation of débutantes
Débutantes were aristocratic young ladies making their first entrée into society through a presentation to the monarch at court. These occasions, known as "coming out", took place at the palace from the reign of Edward VII. The débutantes entered—wearing full court dress, with three ostrich feathers in their hair—curtsied, performed a backwards walk and a further curtsey, while manoeuvring a dress train of prescribed length. The ceremony, known as an evening court, corresponded to the "court drawing rooms" of Victoria's reign. After World War II, the ceremony was replaced by less formal afternoon receptions, omitting the requirement of court evening dress. In 1958, Queen Elizabeth II abolished the presentation parties for débutantes, replacing them with Garden Parties, for up to 8,000 invitees in the Garden. They are the largest functions of the year.
Garden and surroundings
Further information: Buckingham Palace Garden
At the rear of the palace is the large and park-like garden, which together with its lake is the largest private garden in London. There, Queen Elizabeth II hosted her annual garden parties each summer and also held large functions to celebrate royal milestones, such as jubilees. It covers 17 ha (42 acres) and includes a helicopter landing area, a lake and a tennis court.
Adjacent to the palace is the Royal Mews, also designed by Nash, where the royal carriages, including the Gold State Coach, are housed. This rococo gilt coach, designed by William Chambers in 1760, has painted panels by G. B. Cipriani. It was first used for the State Opening of Parliament by George III in 1762 and has been used by the monarch for every coronation since William IV. It was last used for the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Also housed in the mews are the coach horses used at royal ceremonial processions as well as many of the cars used by the royal family.
The Mall, a ceremonial approach route to the palace, was designed by Aston Webb and completed in 1911 as part of a grand memorial to Queen Victoria. It extends from Admiralty Arch, across St James's Park to the Victoria Memorial, concluding at the entrance gates into the palace forecourt. This route is used by the cavalcades and motorcades of visiting heads of state, and by the royal family on state occasions—such as the annual Trooping the Colour.
Security breaches
The boy Jones was an intruder who gained entry to the palace on three occasions between 1838 and 1841. At least 12 people have managed to gain unauthorised entry into the palace or its grounds since 1914, including Michael Fagan, who broke into the palace twice in 1982 and entered Queen Elizabeth II's bedroom on the second occasion. At the time, news media reported that he had a long conversation with her while she waited for security officers to arrive, but in a 2012 interview with The Independent, Fagan said she ran out of the room, and no conversation took place. It was only in 2007 that trespassing on the palace grounds became a specific criminal offence.
I took this shot in Madison Square park, I have to admit I didnt know who he was so did some googling and found this out
This imposing bronze statue of statesman William Seward (1801–1872) in Madison Square Park was created by the artist Randolph Rogers. The sculpture was dedicated in 1876, and Seward is said to be the first New Yorker to be honored with a monument in the city.
Seward served as a state senator of New York from 1831 to 1834, and as Governor of New York from 1839 to 1843. He was elected United States Senator from New York from 1849 through 1861. In 1849 he won as a Whig and emerged as the leader of its anti-slavery wing.
With the decline in the fortunes of the Whig Party, Seward joined the Republican Party in 1855 and lost the presidential nomination to John C. Frémont in 1856. Expected to get the nomination in 1860, many of the delegates feared that his radical past would prevent him from winning the election. When Abraham Lincoln won the nomination Seward loyally supported him.
Lincoln appointed him Secretary of State in 1861 and he served until 1869. During the War, Seward established a secret police force, which arrested thousands of citizens for disloyalty. He fought for the U.S. purchase of Alaska which he finally negotiated to acquire from Russia for $7.2 million (2 cents per acre) on March 30, 1867. The purchase of this frontier land ("Seward's Icebox") was mocked as "Seward's Folly" and Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden".
French postcard by Edycard, no. 29. Photo: Tom Cruise in Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986).
American actor and producer Tom Cruise (1962) became with his charismatic smile the most successful member of Hollywood's Brat Pack, the golden boys and girls of the 1980s. Top Gun (1986) made him an action star, but with his roles in The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) he proved himself to be an all-round star and excellent actor. During the 1990s, he continued to combine action blockbusters like Mission Impossibe (1996) with highly acclaimed dramas like A Few Good Men (1992), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Magnolia (1999). He received more praise for his roles in Minority Report (2000) and Collateral (2002) and was for years one of the highest paid actors in the world. Although he continued to score major box office hits with the Mission Impossible franchise, his later work was overshadwowed by his outspoken attitude about Scientology which alienated him from many of his viewers.
Tom Cruise was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV in 1962 in Syracuse, NY. He is the only son of Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. He has three sisters: Marian, Lee Anne De Vette and Cass. In 1974, when Cruise was 12, his parents divorced. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband. Deeply religious, he enrolled in a Franciscan seminary with the ambition to join the priesthood. He dropped out after one year. At high-school, he was a wrestler until he was sidelined by a knee injury. Soon taking up acting, he found that the activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated his need for attention, while the memorisation aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia. Moving to New York in 1980, he studied drama at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, in conjunction with the Actors Studio, New School University, New York. He signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and began acting in films. His film debut was a small part in Endless Love (Franco Zeffirelli, 1981), starring Brooke Shields. It was followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps (Harold Becker, 1981), starring George C. Scott and Timothy Hutton. In 1983, Cruise was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983). The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the 'Brat Pack', a group of twenty-something actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early 1980s. Cruise's first big hit was the coming-of-age comedy Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), in which he entered film-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. From the outset, he exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences. Cruise played the male lead in the dark fantasy Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985) and the action film Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) with Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer. Top Gun (1986) established Cruise as an action star. However, he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed it up with a solid characterszation of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese, 1986), for which co-star Paul Newman earned an Academy Award. In 1988, he played the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the drama Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988). However, Cruise had not yet totally convinced critics he was more than a pretty face while he also starred in Cocktail (Roger Donaldson, 1988), which earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. His chance came when he played paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989). For his role, he won a Golden Globe Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 1990 Tom Cruise renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church Of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. He was introduced to Scientology by his ex-wife Mimi Rogers. Though Cruise's bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away (Ron Howard, 1990) with his-then wife Nicole Kidman, A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992) brought him back into the game. By 1994, the star was undercutting his own leading man image with the role of the slick, dastardly vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994), opposite Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas. Although the author was vehemently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice famously reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance, and publicly praised Cruise's portrayal. In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the reboot of Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996), but it was with his multilayered performance in Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996), that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. For Jerry Maguire, he won another Golden Globe and received his second Oscar nomination. According to IMDb, Cruise is the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in the United States: A Few Good Men (1992), the thriller The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996). 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1990). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumour, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers. Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a third Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a loathsome 'sexual prowess' guru in Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)."
In 2000, Tom Cruise scored again when he returned as international agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible II (John Woo, 2000), which proved to be one of the summer blockbusters. Like its predecessor, it was the highest-grossing film of the year, and had a mixed critical reception. He then reteamed with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of the Spanish film Abre los Ojos/Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997) titled Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film receiving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year's massively successful Sci-Fi chase film Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2001), or of the historical epic The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he'd ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the psychological thriller Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004). He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he'd built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. He teamed up with Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005). The summer blockbuster was in some ways overshadowed, however, by a cloud of negative publicity. It began, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to combat her postpartum depression, going so far as to call the psychological science a "Nazi science" in an Entertainment Weekly interview. In 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience," and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. This behaviour caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise's enthousiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he jumped up and down on the couch, professing his love for the newly-Scientologist Holmes. The actor's new public image alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring release of Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams, 2006), his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years. Despite this, the film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series, and grossed nearly $400 million at the box office. Cruise moved on to making headlines on the business front, when he and corporate partner Paula Wagner in 2006 officially "took over" the United Artists studio, which was all but completely defunct. One of the first films to be produced by the new United Artists was the tense political thriller Lions for Lambs (Robert Redford, 2007), with Redford, Cruise and Meryl Streep. The film took an earnest and unflinching look at the politics behind the Iraq war but was a commercial disappointment. This was followed by the World War II thriller Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008) with kenneth Branagh and Carice van Houten.
Tom Cruise would find a solid footing as the 2010s progressed, with blockbusters like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011) and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015). He is known for doing many of his own stunts in these films, even exceptionally dangerous ones. The Mission Impossible franchise earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Cruise reteamed with Cameron Diaz in the action-comedy Knight and Day (James Mangold, 2010). He starred as Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of British author Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012). He also starred in big budget fantasy projects like Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013) and Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014). Tom Cruised was married three times. His first wife was actress Mimi Rogers, with whom he was married from 1987 till their divorce in 1990. His second marriage with Nicole Kidman from 1990 till 2001. They adopted two children Isabella Jane Cruise (1992) and Connor Antony Cruise (1995). he lived together with Vanilla Sky (2001) co-star Penélope Cruz from 2001 - 2004. His 2006 marriage to Katie Holmes ended in a divorce in 2012. They have one daughter, Surie Cruise (2006). Recently, Cruise returned on the screen as Ethan Hunt in the sixth installment of the Mission Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018). In 2020, he will also return as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020), in which Val Kilmer will also reprise his role from the first film.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Vintage postcard, no. 32.
American dancer, choreographer, singer, and actor Fred Astaire (1899-1987) was a unique dancer with his top hat and tails, his uncanny sense of rhythm, perfectionism, and innovation. He began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers in Flying Down to Rio (1933). They danced together in 10 musicals in which he made all song and dance routines integral to the plotlines. Another innovation was that a closely tracking dolly camera filmed his dance routines in as few shots as possible. His career in film, television and theatre spanned a total of 76 years.
Fred Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in 1899 in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz Austerlitz, a brewer. 'Astaire' was a name that he and his sister Adele had adopted for their vaudeville act when they were about 5 years old. It is said that the name comes from an uncle who had L'Astaire as his surname. They conquered Broadway in 1917 with the play 'Over the Top'. In the 1920s, Adele and Fred performed regularly in Broadway theatres. Their duo ended in 1932 when she married her first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, a son of the Duke of Devon. Astaire headed to Hollywood. There is a famous story about the RKO Pictures screen test of Fred Astaire who was rejected with "Can't sing. Can't act. Gets a bit bald. Can dance a little". Many of the millions of fans of his films thought he could dance quite well after all. Cole Porter wrote a number of songs specifically for him. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in the musical Dancing Lady (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933) with Joan Crawford. The film was a breakthrough for Astaire, who appears as himself and dances with Crawford. He first worked with Ginger Rogers in his second film, Flying down to Rio (Thornton Freeland, 1933). It was a box office success. They danced together in 9 RKO pictures. Their characters, after initially disliking each other, fell in love and performed dance and song numbers together. The two sang the hits of popular composers such as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter in their films. The combination of the two dancers and the choreography of Hermes Pan made dance an important element of the Hollywood film musical. His films with Rogers include The Gay Divorcee (Mark Sandrich, 1934), Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935), and Carefree (Mark Sandrich, 1938). During these years, he was also active in recording and radio.
From the late 1930s, Ginger Rogers concentrated more and more on her solo career, and Fred Astaire danced with other partners. He danced with Rita Hayworth in You'll Never Get Rich (Sidney Lanfield, 1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (William A. Seiter, 1942), with Eleanor Powell in Broadway Melody of 1940 (Norman Taurog, 1940), and with Joan Leslie in The Sky's the Limit ( Edward H. Griffith, 1943). Astaire also worked with Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (Mark Sandrich, 1942) and Blue Skies (Stuart Heisler, 1946). After the great box-office failure of the fantasy comedy Yolanda and the Thief (Vincente Minnelli, 1945), Astaire temporarily retired from the film business. He soon returned to the big screen to take over the role of the injured Gene Kelly in Easter Parade (Charles Walters, 1948) opposite Judy Garland and Peter Lawford. Later he starred in The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953) with Cyd Charisse. One of his last musical roles was as fashion photographer Dick Avery alongside Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face (Stanley Donen, 1957). By the end of the 1950s, the popularity of musical films had waned considerably. Astaire, now in his 60s, increasingly refrained from dance roles, although he still appeared in television dance specials in the 1960s, which won several Emmy Awards. Astaire continued to act, appearing in such films as On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959), Finian's Rainbow (Francis Ford Coppola, 1968) alongside Petula Clark, and The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974) where he received his only Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category. His last film was Ghost Story (John Irvin, 1981). Fred Astaire died of pneumonia in 1987 and, like Ginger Rogers, is buried in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. He was married twice. He was first married to Phyllis Livingston Potter from 1933 till her death in 1954. They had two children, Ava Astaire-McKenzie and Fred Astaire Jr. From 1980 till his death in 1987, he was married to Robyn Smith.
Sources: Diana Hamilton (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and German), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Vintage postcard by World Postcards Inc., no X 177, 1989. Photo: Mickey Rourke in Homeboy (Michael Seresin, 1988).
American actor and former boxer Mickey Rourke (1952) received critical praise for his deep, tortured characters in the Charles Bukowski biopic Barfly (1987) and the horror mystery Angel Heart (1987). In 1991, Rourke left acting and became a professional boxer for a time. After returning to acting, he had supporting roles in the remake of Get Carter (2000), and Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). Rourke made his mainstream comeback with lead roles in Sin City (2005) and The Wrestler (2008), for which he received a Golden Globe, and an Oscar nomination. Since then, Rourke has appeared in blockbusters as Iron Man 2 (2010) and Immortals (2011).
Philip Andre 'Mickey' Rourke Jr. was born in Schenectady, New York, in 1952, He was the son of Ann (Cameron) and Philip Andre Rourke, a bodybuilder. He has a brother, Joey, and an older sister, Patricia. The nickname Mickey was given to him as a child by his parents, who thought he looked like a mouse. When he was six, his parents divorced. A year later, his mother married Eugene Addis, a Miami Beach police officer, and mother and son moved to Miami Shores, Florida. There, he went to the Miami Beach Senior High School. At that time, he was more interested in baseball and boxing than in acting. Rourke joined a self-defense course at the Boys Club of Miami. Here he learned to box and began a career as an amateur boxer. At the age of 12, he won his first match in the 51-54 kg category. He then called himself Andre Rourke. Later, he moved to a gym on 5th Street in Miami and joined the Police Athletic League. In 1969, he briefly became a sparring partner of Luis Rodriguez, who at that time was the world light heavyweight champion. In 1971, he suffered a concussion during a boxing match, so doctors ordered him to stop boxing for a year. After working for a short time as a busboy at the famed Forge Restaurant on Miami Beach, Rourke moved back to New York to seek out a career in acting. he attended acting classes at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute. Rourke says of himself that he was a shy and reserved student, but very comfortable with improvisation. His teacher Sandra Seacat convinced him to move to Los Angeles. After a few small roles on television, Rourke made his film debut in the small role of Private Reese in Steven Spielberg's war comedy 1941 (1979). A year later, he appeared in Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980), one of the biggest commercial failures in film history that meant the end of United Artists. A year later, he appeared alongside Kathleen Turner and William Hurt as a pyro expert in the thriller Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1982). This is generally regarded as his breakthrough.
In the 1980s, Mickey Rourke began to claim the lead role a little more often. He was one of Steve Guttenberg and Kevin Bacon's young pals in Barry Levinson's Diner (1982). He appeared as the sensitive and protective older brother of Matt Dillon in Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983). Rourke had his first lead role in The Pope of Greenwich Village (Stuart Rosenberg, 1984), co-starring with Eric Roberts. He reunited with Michael Cimino for the violent police film Year of the Dragon (1985), based on a scenario by Oliver Stone. Rourke gave a bravura performance as police captain Stanley White, fanatically determined to eliminate John Lone, the crime boss of New York's Chinatown. The film was hotly contested in the United States, however, with critics denouncing the negative portrayal of Chinese people and the overtly racist nature of its central character. He gained the status of sex symbol with the erotic drama 9½ Weeks (Adrian Lyne, 1986), which became one of Rourke's best-known films. He plays John, a man who starts an affair with Elizabeth (Kim Basinger). A year later, he played the lead in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987), opposite Robert De Niro. The film was once again controversial in the United States, initially rated X (under 17) because of the sex scene between Rourke and the young Lisa Bonet, fresh off The Cosby Show. The sequence was eventually censored in the cinema and Rated R. For his next film, Barfly (Barbet Schroeder, 1987), the actor received rave reviews for his role as the alcoholic writer Henry Chinaski, based on Charles Bukowski. These rebellious anti-hero characters were especially well-liked in Europe and especially France where Rourke was a popular film idol.
Mickey Rourke wrote, produced, and starred in Homeboy (Michael Sereesin, 1988), a film about a near brain-dead prizefighter. It skipped theatrical release and went straight to home video. Rourke joined Walter Hill's Johnny Handsome (1989), then appeared in Wild Orchid (Zalman King, 1989). Divorced from his first wife Debra Feuer in 1989, he met actress-model Carré Otis on the set, who became his wife in 1992. The film was mocked by critics for its overall weakness and its sex scenes considered too explicit, some of which were cut to avoid the film being classified as pornographic. Rourke played another anti-hero in Desperate Hours (Michael Cimino, 1990) but was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Actor of the Year for his performances in The Wild Orchid and Desperate Hours. He worked with David Bowie on his album 'Never Let Me Down'', but his film career had taken a turn downhill. Another setback was Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (Simon Wincer, 1991), with Don Johnson. Rourke later admitted that he only made the film for the money. He decided to take up boxing again. He felt that he was self-destructive and had no respect for the actor Rourke. His boxing career did not go smoothly. Under the supervision of his coach, Chuck Zito of the Hells Angels, he was often injured. In retrospect, he would admit that he was too old to return to boxing, but that he had done so anyway for personal reasons. In 1995, he continued to work on his film career but he had to make do with supporting roles. In 1997, Mickey Rourke appeared on screen with his face surgically altered, his features enlarged and his body thickened in Double Team (Tsui Hark', 1997) opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme. Rourke also reprised his role as an s&m fetishist in Another 9 1/2 Weeks (Anne Goursaud, 1997), a virtual remake of the original, only sans the redeeming presence of Kim Basinger. He had a small part in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). There were also quite a few roles that barely came to light. In the critically-worshipped The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1997), his role was edited out. Unemployed and broke, he had to sell his motorbike collection and his Los Angeles mansion to pay off his creditors and was temporarily committed when his friends became concerned about his suicidal tendencies. In 1999, he played an important role in the Flemish film Shades (Erik Van Looy, 1999). He also appeared as a transvestite prisoner in Steve Buscemi's Animal Factory (2000), and opposite Sylvester Stallone in Get Carter (Stephen T. Kay, 2000). The latter film, above all, enabled him to straighten out his financial situation, thanks to Stallone.
Mickey Rourke gave an impressive supporting performance in Sean Penn's police procedural-cum-harrowing study of obsession, The Pledge (2001) opposite Jack Nicholson. After Rourke played a role in the music video for the song 'Hero' by Enrique Iglesias, he appeared in Roberto Rodriguez's hit Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). As a harbinger of things to come, a powerful creative bond formed between the weathered, iconic Rourke and the tireless director on the Mexico set. In 2005 they again teamed for Rodriguez's and Frank Miller's eagerly anticipated big-screen adaptation of Miller's Sin City comics. Bruce Lawton writes at AllMovie: "Cast as lovelorn brute Marv, Rourke delivered an impressive performance as an imposing beast of a fellow bent on avenging the death of an angelic prostitute in this stylish noir comic book come to life, which gave him cult status among a new generation of fans." In 2004, Rourke delivered a memorable supporting performance in Tony Scott's Man on Fire alongside Denzel Washington. It marked the first film in a two-picture creative partnership between Scott and Rourke, the second half of which came to fruition with Domino (2005) starring Keira Knightley. In 2008, he collaborated with Darren Aronofsky on the film The Wrestler. Rourke was widely praised for his role as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a wrestler who is way past his prime. Besides the typical elements of a sports drama, the film also contains some striking similarities with Rourke's own career as a boxer and actor. Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe in 2009 for this role. Rourke would enjoy sustained success in the years to follow, appearing in films like The Expendables (Sylvester Stallone, 2010), and Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010) with Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson. The latter brought in more than $312 million in the United States. His later films include Immortals (Tarsem Singh, 2011), the thriller The Courier (Hany Abu-Assad, 2012), and the Western Dead in Tombstone (Roel Reiné, 2013).
Sources: Bruce Lawton (AllMovie), Chase Rosenberg (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, French, and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Dutch press photo by Kippa. Robin Williams and Mary Beth Hurt in The World According to Garp (George Roy Hill, 1982).
American comedian and actor Robin Williams (1951-2014) began his career in the mid-1970s as a stand-up comedian in comedy clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Williams was known for his many impersonations and the different voices he used during his performances. He became famous as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy (1978-1982). After three Oscar nominations, he won the award for his supporting role in Good Will Hunting (1997). He also received acclaim for films like Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), The Fisher King (1991), Aladdin (1992), Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and One Hour Photo (2002).
Robin McLaurin Williams was born in 1951, in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laurie McLaurin (née Janin), was a former model, and his father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams, was a Ford Motor Company executive. Williams was described as hyperactive in his youth. He developed his talent for making people laugh through stand-up comedy, among other things. Robin briefly studied political science at Claremont Men's College and theatre at College of Marin before enrolling at The Juilliard School to focus on theatre. After leaving Juilliard, he performed in nightclubs where he was discovered for the role of Mork, from Ork, in an episode of the TV series Happy Days (1974). The episode, Happy Days: My Favorite Orkan (1978), led to his famous spin-off weekly TV series, Mork & Mindy (1978-1982). He made his feature starring debut playing the title role in Popeye (1980), directed by Robert Altman. Williams' continuous comedies and wild comic talents involved a great deal of improvisation, following in the footsteps of his idol Jonathan Winters. Good Morning, Vietnam (Barry Levinson, 1987) was an important film in Williams' career, as most of the humorous radio broadcasts in it were improvised by him on the spot. This led to Williams' first nomination for an Oscar, that for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Williams proved to be an effective dramatic actor, also receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role in Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, 1989), and The Fisher King (Terry Gilliam, 1991) opposite Jeff bridges, before winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997), starring Matt Damon.
During the 1990s, Robin Williams became a beloved hero to children the world over for his roles in a string of hit family-oriented films, including Hook (Steven Spielberg, 1991) opposite Dustin Hoffman, Mrs. Doubtfire (Chris Columbus, 1993) with Sally Field, Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995), The Birdcage (Mike Nichols, 1996), and Flubber (Les Mayfield, 1997). Disney asked him to play the voice of the genie in the animated film Aladdin (Ron Clements, John Musker, 1992). The writers had conceived and developed the character with Williams in mind, even before asking him for the role. At the time, it was not very common for well-known Hollywood actors to perform a voice in films. Williams agreed on the condition that Disney would not use his name or voice afterwards for marketing campaigns or sell merchandise. At first, Disney kept that agreement but later broke its promise because of the popularity of the film and the genie character. When the makers came up with a second film, The Return of Jafar (1994), Williams refused to perform the voice of the genie again. It wasn't until a third Aladdin film, Aladdin and the King of Thieves (Tad Stones, 1996), that the dispute was settled and Williams once again stepped into the role of Genie. Williams continued entertaining children and families into the 21st century with his work in Robots (Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha, 2005), Happy Feet (George Miller, 2006), and Night at the Museum (Shawn Levy, 2006). Other more adult-oriented films for which Williams received acclaim include The World According to Garp (George Roy Hill, 1982), Moscow on the Hudson (Paul Mazursky, 1984), Awakenings (Penny Marshall, 1990) with Robert De Niro, Insomnia (Christopher Nolan, 2002), and One Hour Photo (Mark Romanek, 2002). In 2009, Williams underwent heart surgery. After 30 years, he played another role in a television series, The Crazy Ones (2014) with Sarah Michelle Gellar. In 2014, Robin Williams was found dead at his home in Tiburon, California USA, the victim of an apparent suicide. The actor had been struggling with alcohol addiction for decades and had been depressed for some time, according to his spokeswoman. Three days after his death, his widow stated that he had recently known he was suffering from Parkinson's disease. Williams was cremated a day after his death and his ashes were scattered in San Francisco Bay. After his death, the line "Oh captain, my captain" from the film Dead Poets Society became a tribute to Williams for many fans. Robin Williams was married three times, to Valerie Velardi (1978-1988, 1 child), Marsha Garces Williams (1989- 2010, 2 children) and to Susan Schneider (2011-2014, his death). His children are Zak, Zelda and Cody Williams.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
British postcard by The Alternative Picture Co., no. RCL845. Photo: David LaChapelle, 1995.
American actor Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) has often played unconventional parts, particularly in biopics and period films. His role in the blockbuster Titanic (1998) cemented DiCaprio's reputation as a teen heartthrob. He became one of the biggest movie stars thanks to his films with the directors Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, and Quentin Tarantino. He won an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for The Revenant (2015) as well as two other Golden Globes for The Aviator (2004) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).
Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio was born in Los Angeles, in 1974. He is the only child of Irmelin (née Indenbirken), a legal secretary, and George DiCaprio, an underground comix writer, publisher, and distributor of comic books. His parents separated when he was a year old. When his older stepbrother earned $50,000 for a television commercial, DiCaprio, fascinated with this, decided to become an actor. At age 14, he began his career by appearing in television commercials such as for Matchbox cars by Mattel, which he considered his first role. In 1989, he played the role of Glen in two episodes of the television show The New Lassie. Leo played recurring roles in various television series, such as the sitcom Parenthood (1990-1991) based on the successful comedy film of the same name. He made his film debut as the stepson of an evil landlord in the low-budget horror direct-to-video film Critters 3 (Kristine Peterson, 1991). He was handpicked by Robert De Niro out of 400 young actors to play the lead role in the biographical coming-of-age drama This Boy's Life (Michael Caton-Jones, 1993) with De Niro as his stepfather, and Ellen Barkin as his mother. In 1993, DiCaprio co-starred as the intellectually disabled brother of Johnny Depp's character in What's Eating Gilbert Grape (Lasse Hallström, 1993), a comic-tragic odyssey of a dysfunctional Iowa family. The film became a critical success, earning DiCaprio a National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and nominations for an Oscar and a Golden Globe. His next films were the Western film The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi, 1995) with Sharon Stone, the biopic The Basketball Diaries (Scott Kalvert, 1995) in which he played a teenage Jim Carroll as a drug-addicted high school basketball player and writer, and the erotic drama Total Eclipse (Agnieszka Holland, 1995), a fictionalised account of the homosexual relationship between Arthur Rimbaud (DiCaprio) and Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis). In 1996, DiCaprio appeared opposite Claire Danes in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, an abridged modernisation of William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy of the same name. The project grossed $147 million worldwide and earned DiCaprio a Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival. DiCaprio then achieved international fame as a star in the epic romance Titanic (James Cameron, 1997), opposite Kate Winslet. Against expectations, Titanic went on to become the highest-grossing film to that point, eventually grossing more than $2.1 billion in box-office receipts worldwide. DiCaprio tuned into a superstar, resulting in intense adoration among teenage girls and young women in general that became known as "Leo-Mania"
Leonardo DiCaprio played a self-mocking role in a small appearance in Woody Allen's caustic satire of the fame industry, Celebrity (1998). That year, he also starred in the dual roles of the villainous King Louis XIV and his secret, sympathetic twin brother Philippe in The Man in the Iron Mask (Randall Wallace, 1998). The film received mixed to negative response, but became a box office success, grossing $180 million internationally. DiCaprio was awarded a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screen Couple for both incarnations the following year. Leonardo starred in two successful features in 2002. The first was the biographical crime drama Catch Me If You Can (Steven Spielberg, 2002), based on the life of Frank Abagnale Jr., who before his 19th birthday committed check fraud to make millions in the 1960s. The film received favourable reviews and was an international success, becoming DiCaprio's highest-grossing release since Titanic with a total of $351 million worldwide. The second was the historical drama Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002) with Cameron Diaz and Daniel Day-Lewis. It marked his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese. Gangs of New York earned a total of $193 million worldwide and received mostly positive reviews. DiCaprio played Howard Hughes in The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004), which DiCaprio also co-produced. In 2005, he was named the commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to the arts. DiCaprio was a mercenary in the political thriller Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006). He received acclaim for his role opposite Jack Nicholson in the crime drama The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006). Budgeted at $90 million, the film grossed $291 million and emerged as DiCaprio and Scorsese's highest-grossing collaboration to date. He reunited with Kate Winslet in the romantic drama Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008). DiCaprio is the founder of Appian Way Productions—a production company that has produced some of his films and the documentary series Greensburg (2008–2010)—and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to promoting environmental awareness.
Leonardo DiCaprio continued to collaborate with Martin Scorsese in the psychological thriller film Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010), based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane. The film was a commercial success, grossing $294 million worldwide. DiCaprio starred in the science fiction thriller Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010), in which he enters the dreams of others to obtain information that is otherwise inaccessible. DiCaprio earned $50 million from the film, becoming his highest payday yet. He was an executive producer for George Clooney's political drama The Ides of March, an adaptation of Beau Willimon's play Farragut North (George Clooney, 2011) with Ryan Gosling. In 2012, DiCaprio starred as a plantation owner, Calvin Candie, in Quentin Tarantino's Spaghetti Western, Django Unchained (2012). DiCaprio's next role was as the millionaire Jay Gatsby in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013), an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel of the same name. That year he also starred in the biopic The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013), based on the life of stockbroker Jordan Belfort, who was arrested in the late 1990s for securities fraud and money laundering. The film earned him a Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Picture. DiCaprio was an executive producer on Virunga (Orlando von Einsiedel, 2014), a British documentary film about four people fighting to protect the world's last mountain gorillas from war and poaching. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 2015, DiCaprio produced and played fur trapper Hugh Glass in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's survival drama The Revenant. Built on a budget of $135 million, the well-received film earned $533 million worldwide. The film earned him numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, a SAG and a Critic's Choice Award for Best Actor. For the next three years, DiCaprio narrated documentaries and served as a producer for films. DiCaprio returned to acting following a break of four years in Quentin Tarantino's comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), opposite Brad Pitt. He received nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor. The film earned a total of $374 million against its $90-million budget. DiCaprio's personal life is the subject of widespread media attention. He rarely gives interviews and is reluctant to discuss his private life. Among his former girlfriends are Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen, Israeli model Bar Refaeli, and German model Toni Garrn.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Belgian postcard, no. 1051. Photo: M.G.M. Dean Stockwell in Kim (Victor Saville, 1950).
On 7 November 2021, American actor Dean Stockwell (1936) died due to natural causes at the age of 85. He was a popular child star in the late-1940s and worked with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh (1945) and with Errol Flynn in Kim (1950). Later, he starred with Orson Welles in the court drama Compulsion (1959) and with Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas (1984), was nominated for an Oscar in 1989 for his supporting role as Tony 'The Tiger' Russo in the crime comedy Married to the Mob (1988). Stockwell is probably best remembered as the lecherous Admiral Al Calavicci in the TV series Quantum Leap (1989-1993). He
Dean Robert Stockwell was born in 1926 and grew up in North Hollywood. He was the son of Broadway actors Harry Stockwell and Elizabeth (Betty) Stockwell. His older brother was the actor Guy Stockwell and his stepmother was comedienne and vaudeville dancer Nina Olivette. At the age of seven, Dean made his stage debut in a Theater Guild production of Paul Osborn's play 'The Innocent Voyage', in which his brother was also cast. On the strength of his performance, he was signed by MGM in 1945. Under contract until 1947 and again from 1949 to 1950, Stockwell became a highly sought-after child star in films like Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, The Green Years (Victor Saville, 1946) and Song of the Thin Man (Edward Buzzell, 1947), starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. His impish, dimpled looks and tousled brown hair combined with genuine acting talent kept him on the box office front line for more than a decade. Having won a Golden Globe Award as Best Juvenile Actor for Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947), he played the title role in the fantasy drama The Boy with Green Hair (1948), Joseph Losey's feature film debut. Stockwell went on to play the title role in an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's Kim (Victor Saville, 1950). He came to admire his co-star Errol Flynn as a sort of role model. Thereafter, Stockwell segued into television for several years until resurfacing as a mature actor opposite Orson Welles in Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), based on the infamous Leopold & Loeb murder case. He co-starred with Bradford Dillman as one of the two young killers. He had already played the part on Broadway in 1957, on this occasion partnering Roddy McDowall. Along with Welles and Dillman, he was named best actor at the Cannes Film Festival. He also starred in the British film Sons and Lovers (Jack Cardiff, 1960) with Trevor Howard, Wendy Hiller, and Mary Ure. The film was based on the book of the same name by D.H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers was nominated for seven Oscars, including the Oscar for best film. The film eventually managed to cash in on one nomination. His last film role of note in the early 1960s was as Edmund Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (Sidney Lumet, 1962). He developed a drinking problem on the set for which he was chastised by co-star Katharine Hepburn. Despite this, Stockwell gave a solid performance which he later described as a career highlight.
Dean Stockwell dropped out of showbiz for some time in the 1960s to join the hippie scene at which time he befriended Neil Young and Dennis Hopper. Later in the decade, he made a gleeful comeback in low-budget psychedelic counterculture films such as Psych-Out (Richard Rush, 1968) opposite Susan Strasberg and Jack Nicholson, biker films like The Loners (Sutton Roley, 1972), and horror comedies such as The Werewolf of Washington (Milton Moses Ginsberg, 1973). Keeping a considerably lower profile during the 1970s, he became a frequent TV guest star in popular crime dramas like Mannix (1967), Columbo (1971) The Streets of San Francisco (1972), and Police Story (1973). By the early 1980s, work opportunities had become scarcer and Stockwell was compelled to briefly sideline as a real estate broker. He nonetheless managed to make a comeback with a co-starring role in the Wim Wenders road movie Paris, Texas (1984), starring Harry Dean Stanton. New York Times reviewer Vincent Canby wrote of his performance: "Mr. Stockwell, the former child star, has aged very well, becoming an exceptionally interesting, mature actor." He then appeared in the crime film To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985), in the police comedy Beverly Hills Cop II (Tony Scott, 1987) with Eddie Murphy, and in the military drama Gardens of Stone (Francis Coppola, 1987). Stockwell also enjoyed high billing in David Lynch's noirish psycho-thriller Blue Velvet (1986) and received an Oscar nomination for his Mafia don Tony "The Tiger" Russo in Married to the Mob (Jonathan Demme, 1988) starring Michelle Pfeiffer. His television career also flourished, as a cigar-smoking, womanising rear admiral in the popular Science-Fiction series Quantum Leap (1989-1993). The role won him a Golden Globe Award in 1990 and a new generation of fans. When the show ended after five seasons, Stockwell remained gainfully employed for another decade, still frequently seen as political or military authority figures including Navy Secretary Edward Sheffield in the TV series JAG (2002-2004), and Defence Secretary Walter Dean in the blockbuster Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) starring Harrison Ford. He also played evil alien antagonists in popular TV series such as Colonel Grat in Star Trek: Enterprise (2001), and humanoid Cylon John Cavil in Battlestar Galactica (2006-2009). Outside of acting, Stockwell embraced environmental issues and exhibited works of art, notably collages and sculptures. In 2015, he was forced to retire from acting after suffering a stroke. Stockwell died in 2021 due to natural causes at the age of 85. He was married to actress Millie Perkins (1960-1962) and to Joy Marchenko (1981-2004) with whom he had two children, Austin (1983) and Sophia (1985). Both marriages ended in a divorce. Stockwell has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at the south side of the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard.
Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
De Hallen Amsterdam, McDonalds (Rotterdam), Tennisclub IJburg, Small church Klein Wetsinge (Winsum), Swimming pool Het Noorderparkbad (Amsterdam), Plus Ultra (Wageningen Campus), het KWR Watercycle Research Institute (Nieuwegein) and the underground parking garage Katwijk aan Zee are nominated for the best Dutch building of 2016.
West-German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden-Westf, no. 395. Photo: M.G.M. Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958).
American film actor Paul Newman (1925-2008) was a matinee idol with the most famous blue eyes of Hollywood, who often played detached yet charismatic anti-heroes and rebels. He was nominated for nine acting Academy Awards in five different decades and won the Oscar for The Color of Money (1986). He was also a prominent social activist, a major proponent of actors' creative rights, and a noted philanthropist.
Paul Leonard Newman was born in 1925, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He was the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman and Theresa Fetsko. His father was a Jewish businessman who owned a successful sporting goods store. His mother was a practicing Christian Scientist with an interest in the creative arts, and it rubbed off on her son. At age 10, he performed in a stage production of 'Saint George and the Dragon' at the Cleveland Play House. He also acted in high school plays. By 1950, the 25-year-old Newman had been kicked out of Ohio University, where he belonged to the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, for unruly behavior (denting the college president's car with a beer keg), served three years in the United States Navy during World War II as a radio operator, graduated from Ohio's Kenyon College, married his first wife, actress Jacqueline "Jackie" Witte, and had his first child, Scott. That same year, his father died. When he became successful in later years, Newman said if he had any regrets it would be that his father was not around to witness his success. He brought Jackie back to Shaker Heights and he ran his father's store for a short period. Then, knowing that wasn't the career path he wanted to take, he sold his interest in the store to his brother and moved with Jackie and Scott to New Haven, Connecticut. There he attended Yale University's School of Drama. While doing a play there, Newman was spotted by two agents, who invited him to come to New York City to pursue a career as a professional actor. After moving to New York, he acted in guest spots for various television series, and in 1953 came a big break. He got the part of understudy of the lead role in the successful Broadway play 'Picnic' by William Inge. Through this play, he met actress Joanne Woodward, who was also an understudy in the play. While they got on very well and there was a strong attraction, Newman was married and his second child, Susan, was born that year. During this time, Newman was accepted into the much admired and popular New York Actors Studio, although he did not actually audition. In 1954, a film Newman was very reluctant to do was released, the failed costume drama The Silver Chalice (Victor Saville, 1954). He considered his performance in this costume epic to be so bad that he took out a full-page ad in Variety apologising for it to anyone who might have seen it. He immediately wanted to return to the stage, and performed in 'The Desperate Hours'. In 1956, he got the chance to redeem himself in the film world by portraying boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956) with Pier Angeli. The role of Rocky was originally awarded to James Dean, who died before filming began. Critics praised Newman's performance. Dean also was signed to play Billy the Kid in The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn, 1958), but that role was also inherited by Newman after Dean's death. With a handful of films to his credit, he was cast in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), an acclaimed adaptation of a pair of William Faulkner short stories. His co-star was Joanne Woodward. During the shooting of this film, they realised they were meant to be together and by now, so did his then-wife Jackie, who gave Newman a divorce. He and Woodward wed in Las Vegas in January 1958. They went on to have three daughters together. They raised them in Westport, Connecticut. In 1959, Newman received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams. Well-received by both critics and audiences, Cat on Hot Tin Roof was MGM's most successful release of 1958 and became the third highest-grossing film of that year.
Paul Newman traveled back to Broadway to star in Tennessee Williams' 'Sweet Bird of Youth'. Upon his return to the West Coast, he bought himself out of his Warner Bros. contract before starring in the smash From the Terrace (Mark Robson, 1960) with Joanne Woodward. Exodus (Otto Preminger, 1960), another major hit, quickly followed. The 1960s would bring Paul Newman into superstar status, as he became one of the most popular actors of the decade. In 1961, he played one of his most memorable roles as pool shark "Fast" Eddie Felson in The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) with Jackie Gleason and Piper Laurie. It garnered him the first of three Best Actor Oscar nominations during the decade. The other two were for the Western Hud (Marin Ritt, 1963), and the superb chain-gang drama Cool Hand Luke (Jack Smight, 1967). He also appeared in the political thriller Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966) with Julie Andrews. The film, set in the Cold War, is about an American scientist who appears to defect behind the Iron Curtain to East Germany. Other minor hits were the mystery Harper (Jack Smight, 1966), with Lauren Bacall, and the Western Hombre (Martin Ritt, 1967), based on the novel by Elmore Leonard and co-starring Fredric March. In 1968, his debut directorial effort Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, 1968) was given good marks. He directed three actors to Oscar nominations: Joanne Woodward (Best Actress, Rachel, Rachel (1968)), Estelle Parsons (Best Supporting Actress, Rachel, Rachel (1968)), and Richard Jaeckel (Best Supporting Actor, Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)). Newman won a Golden Globe Award for his direction of Rachel, Rachel (1968). 1969 brought the popular screen duo of Newman and Robert Redford together for the first time when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) was released. It was a box office smash. Through the 1970s, Newman had hits and misses from such popular films The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) with Robert Redford, which won the 1973 Best Picture Oscar, and the star-studded disaster epic The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974), to lesser-known films as the Western The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (Robert Altman, 1972) with Jacqueline Bisset, to a cult classic, the sports comedy Slap Shot (George Roy Hill, 1977) with Michael Ontkean. In 1978, Newman's only son, Scott, died of a drug overdose. After Scott's death, Newman's personal life and film choices moved in a different direction.
Paul Newman's acting work in the 1980s and on is what is often most praised by critics today. He became more at ease with himself and it was evident in The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982) with Charlotte Rampling, for which he received his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. In 1987, he finally received his first Oscar for The Color of Money (Marin Scorsese, 1986) with Tom Cruise, almost thirty years after Woodward had won hers. Friend and director of Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Robert Wise accepted the award on Newman's behalf as the actor did not attend the ceremony. Previously, Newman had been nominated as the same character in The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961). In total, he was nominated for the Oscar nine times: Best Lead Actor for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958), The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961), Hud (Marin Ritt, 1963), Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg, 1967), Absence of Malice (Sydney Pollack, 1981), The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982), The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese, 1986), Nobody's Fool (Robert Benton, 1994)) and finally for Best Supporting Actor in Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes, 2002). In 1994 Newman also played alongside Tim Robbins as the character Sidney J. Mussburger in the Coen Brothers comedy The Hudsucker Proxy. Films were not the only thing on his mind during this period. A passionate race car driver since the early 1970s (despite being color-blind), he was a co-founder of Newman-Haas racing in 1982. He also founded 'Newman's Own', a line of food products, featuring mainly spaghetti sauces and salad dressings. The company made more than $100 million in profits over the years, all of which he donated to various charities. He also started The Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, an organization for children with serious illness. He was as well known for his philanthropic ways and highly successful business ventures as he was for his legendary actor status. Newman's marriage to Woodward lasted a half-century. Connecticut was their primary residence after leaving Hollywood and moving East in 1960. Renowned for his sense of humor, in 1998 he quipped that he was a little embarrassed to see his salad dressing grossing more than his films. During his later years, he still attended races, was much involved in his charitable organisations, and in 2006, he opened a restaurant called Dressing Room, which helps out the Westport Country Playhouse, a place in which Newman took great pride. In 2003, Newman appeared in a Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town', receiving his first Tony Award nomination for his performance. The animated Disney-Pixar comedy Cars (John Lasseter, 2006) was his final film. It was the highest-grossing film of his career. In 2007, while the public was largely unaware of the serious illness from which he was suffering, Newman made some headlines when he said he was losing his invention and confidence in his acting abilities and that acting was "pretty much a closed book for me". A smoker for many years, Paul Newman died in 2008, aged 83, from lung cancer. With his first wife Jackie, he had three children, Scott, Stephanie, and Susan. Susan Kendall Newman is well known for stage acting and her philanthropic activities. His three daughters with Joanne Woodward are actress Melissa Newman, Nell Potts, and Claire Newman. Nine years after Paul Newman's death, he reprised his role as Doc Hudson in Cars 3 (2017): unused recordings from Cars (2006) were used as new dialogue.
Sources: Tom McDonough/Robert Sieger (IMDb), Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), AllMovie, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.