Image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

 

See videos of Darla and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:

 

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...

Belgian postcard by N.V. Universum S.A., Antwerpen / Anvers. Photo: Paramount.

 

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was an American actor, screenwriter, producer and songwriter. After a rich Broadway career in the late 1910s and 1920s, he became a popular Hollywood star in pleasant and fast-paced musical film comedies in the early 1930s.

 

Eddie Cantor was born Edward Israel Iskowitz in 1892 in New York City, New York, USA. He was the son of amateur violinist Mechel Iskowitz (also Michael) and his wife Meta Kantrowitz Iskowitz (also Maite), a young Jewish couple from Russia. Both his parents died when he was still very young, and he was adopted and raised by his maternal grandmother, Esther Lazarowitz Kantrowitz. She called him Izzy and Itchik, both diminutives for Isidor. She supported herself and her grandson as a door-to-door peddler. The boy was educated in public schools. "Kantrowitz" was the name mistakenly assigned to the boy instead of his actual name, Iskowitz, by a public school registrar. It was shortened to Cantor. Eddie was the nickname given to him by his girlfriend, Ida Tobias, whom he later married. After winning $5 at a Bowery Theatre Amateur Night, the teenage Cantor knew where his destiny lay. One of his earliest paying jobs was a double position as a waiter and performer. He sang for tips at Carey Walsh's Coney Island saloon, where a young Jimmy Durante accompanied him on piano. He made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall, then became a member of the Gus Edwards Gang, later touring Vaudeville with Al Lee as the team Cantor & Lee. His grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz, died on 29 January 1917, two days before he signed a long-term contract with Broadway's top producer Florenz Ziegfeld, to appear in his "Follies". Eddie starred in the Ziegfeld rooftop post-show Midnight Frolic (1917) and in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1927. He also made Broadway stage appearances in 'Broadway Brevities of 1920', 'Make It Snappy' (1922), 'Kid Boots' (1923), 'Whoopee' (1928) and 'Banjo Eyes' (1941). For several years, Cantor starred in an act with pioneering comedian Bert Williams, both in blackface. Cantor played Williams' son. Other co-stars with Cantor during his time in the Follies included Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields. The successful Broadway series of 'Banjo eyes' in 1941 was cut short when Cantor suffered a major heart attack, the first of several that would dominate his later years.

 

Eddie Cantor also made numerous film appearances. He had previously appeared in a number of short films in the 1920s, performing his Follies songs and comedy routines, and in two silent feature films, Kid Boots (Frank Tuttle, 1926) with Clara Bow and Special Delivery (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1927). He was offered the lead role in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) after it was turned down by George Jessel, but Cantor also turned down the role so it went to Al Jolson. His best Hollywood years were spent under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, where Eddie turned out one big-budget musical comedy per year between 1930 and 1936. Eddie became a leading Hollywood star with the film version of Whoopee! (Thornton Freeland, 1930), shot in two-colour Technicolour. He continued to make films for the next two decades, including such hits as Palmy Days (A. Edward Sutherland, 1931), The Kid from Spain (Leo McCarey, 1932), Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle, 1933) with Gloria Stuart, Kid Millions (Roy Del Ruth, Willy Pogany, 1934) co-starring Ann Sothern and Ethel Merman, Strike Me Pink (Norman Taurog, 1936) and Ali Baba Goes to Town (David Butler, 1937). His last leading role was in If You Knew Susie (Gordon Douglas, 1948) with Joan Davis. In the Warner Bros. biopic The Eddie Cantor Story (Alfred E. Green, 1953) he did a cameo appearance. He was the President of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1933-1935. Cantor turned to radio with The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1931. Performing as a standup comedian, he used his vaudeville experience to outstanding effect and combined the expression of patriotism and personal values with humour; audiences responded enthusiastically. With changes of name, the show continued for 18 years on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) networks. He also served as host of The Eddie Cantor Variety Theater, a half-hour television variety show that was syndicated in 1955. Cantor also made many records. His theme song was 'One Hour With You'. His other popular-song compositions include 'Get a Little Fun Out of Life', 'It's Great to Be Alive' and 'The Old Stage Door'. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The offstage Cantor was not perfect, but most of the man's character flaws have been forgotten in the light of his inexhaustible work on behalf of dozens of charities, most prominently the March of Dimes. He also regularly put his career on the line through his union activities with Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio Artists, and flew in the face of bigotry and anti-Semitics through his work with the B'nai Brith and Jewish Relief." Eddie Cantor wrote the books 'Ziegfeld, the Great Glorifier' and 'As I Remember Them', and the autobiographies 'My Life Is In Your Hands' and 'Take My Life'. He received a Special Academy Award in 1956 for distinguished service to the film industry. Eddie Cantor died of a heart attack in 1964 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. His wife Ida had passed away two years earlier. They had five daughters, Marilyn Cantor Baker, Marjorie Cantor, Natalie Cantor, Edna Cantor McHugh and Janet Cantor Gari. Eddie Cantor is interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Culver City, California.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Britannica, Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

An image of myself as one of the characters I played in my one-man showcase -- a production written, directed, produced, and edited entirely by me and in which I portray over 100 different characters in more than 50 scenes.

 

The showcase can be viewed in its entirety at:

 

lazrojas.com/showcase/

 

or

 

www.youtube.com/user/lazfilm2

 

1966 First Day of Issue 175th Anniversary of Bill of Rights Miami Beach, FL (Art Craft)

 

"Art Craft" was a company that produced US first day covers, a type of philatelic cover, featuring hand-drawn artwork called cachets. The covers were created for philatelists (stamp collectors) and often featured specific stamps, such as those from the 1960s and 1970s.

 

U.S. (#1312) - 5¢ Bill of Rights

Issue Date: July 1, 1966

City: Miami Beach, FL

Quantity: 114,160,000

Printed By: Bureau of Engraving and Printing

Printing Method: Giori press

Perforations: 11

Color: Carmine, dark blue, light blue

Commemorates the 175th anniversary of the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the constitution) that established freedom of religion and speech, freedom of the press, the right to a jury trial and other safeguards to human rights.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1976 US Stamp First Day of Issue (#1700) 13c Adolph S Ochs publisher - New York, NY.

 

U.S. (#1700) - 1976 13¢ Adolph S. Ochs

Issue Date: September 18, 1976

City: New York, NY

Quantity: 158,332,800

Printed By: Bureau of Engraving and Printing

Printing Method: Giori press

Perforations: 11

Color: Black and gray

Birth Of Adolph Ochs

Newspaper publisher Adolph Simon Ochs was born on March 12, 1858, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ochs was born into a Jewish family that had immigrated to America from Germany in 1846. His father taught in schools in the South during the Civil War, though he supported the Union. After the Civil War, Ochs' family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where he attended school and delivered newspapers. He began working at the Knoxville Chronicle as an office boy when he was 11. His boss there, William Rule, would become a significant influence and mentor. In the coming years Ochs attended night school, worked as a grocery clerk and druggist's apprentice. He then returned to the newspaper to work as a printer's devil, performing various duties. When he was 19, Ochs borrowed $250 from his family to buy the failing Chattanooga Times. He made a profit in his first year as a publisher. The following year Ochs created The Tradesman commercial newspaper and later helped found the Southern Associated press. Then in 1896, Ochs learned that The New York Times was suffering and could be bought for a very low price. So he borrowed money to purchase it, established the New York Times Company and became the paper's majority stockholder. With the Times, Ochs set out to conduct a high standard newspaper, clean, dignified and trustworthy. Subscribers appreciated knowing the latest news without the sensationalism of other papers. Ochs also lowered the price from 3¢ an issue to 1¢. These efforts helped to save the paper that was nearly shut down. Readership increased tremendously from 9,000 when he bought it to 780,000 in the 1920s. Ochs also coined the motto, All the News That's Fit to Print, which remains on the paper today. Ochs eventually moved the paper to the Times Square and was noted for his frequent opposition to William Jennings Bryan's presidential campaign. Under Ochs' leadership the New York Times became one of the most respected and influential papers in the United States. Ochs also introduced different weekly and monthly supplements including The New York Times Book Review and Magazine, The Annalist (financial review), The Times Mid-Week Pictorial, Current History Magazine, and The New York Times Index. Ochs died while visiting Chattanooga on April 8, 1935.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Neil Simon - Marvin Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly film adaptations of his plays. He received three Tony Awards and a Golden Globe Award, as well as nominations for four Academy Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards. He was awarded a Special Tony Award in 1975, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991, the Kennedy Center Honors in 1995 and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2006. Simon grew up in New York City during the Great Depression. His parents' financial difficulties affected their marriage, giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood. He often took refuge in movie theaters, where he enjoyed watching early comedians like Charlie Chaplin. After graduating from high school and serving a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve, he began writing comedy scripts for radio programs and popular early television shows. Among the latter were Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows (where in 1950 he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart and Selma Diamond), and The Phil Silvers Show, which ran from 1955 to 1959. His first produced play was Come Blow Your Horn (1961). It took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway. It was followed by two more successes, Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965). He won a Tony Award for the latter. It made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway". From the 1960s to the 1980s, he wrote for stage and screen; some of his screenplays were based on his own works for the stage. His style ranged from farce to romantic comedy to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he garnered 17 Tony nominations and won three awards. In 1966, he had four successful productions running on Broadway at the same time and, in 1983, he became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor. LINK to his photo - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Simon#/media/File:Neil_Simon_-...

 

2. Victor Lasky - Victor Lasky (7 January 1918 – 22 February 1990) was a conservative columnist in the United States who wrote several best-selling books. He was syndicated by the North American Newspaper Alliance. On January 7, 1918, Victor Lasky was born in Liberty, New York. He graduated from Brooklyn College in 1940. Career - In 1942, Lasky joined the U.S. Army and served during World War II; during that time, he did correspondence work for the army's newspaper Stars and Stripes. After World War Two, Lasky joined the staff of the New York World-Telegram; while there, he assisted Frederick Woltman in writing a series of articles on Communist Party infiltration within the US, for which Woltman won a Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1947. Lasky first came to prominence with his 1950 book Seeds of Treason, co-authored with Ralph de Toledano, in which the authors argued against Alger Hiss and in favor of Whittaker Chambers, with regard to Chambers' accusations both he and Hiss had been spies for the Soviet Union. He was one of the first journalists to write a critical view of President John F. Kennedy. He expanded on this in his 1963 book JFK: The Man And The Myth, questioning Kennedy's wartime heroics on PT-109 and claimed he had a lackluster record as a congressman and senator. Lasky also wrote a similar negative book about Robert F. Kennedy. Lasky's most controversial book was It Didn't Start With Watergate published in 1977. The author argued that the scandal that drove Richard Nixon from office was little more than a media event. He believed that the press disliked Nixon and subjected him to unfair scrutiny no other president had ever experienced. Lasky also claimed that Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson had used wiretaps on political opponents. Lasky professed the greatest political "crime of the century" was not the Watergate scandal, but what he describes as the "theft" of the 1960 Presidential election. In 1979, Lasky wrote another controversial work called Jimmy Carter: The Man And The Myth, asserting that Carter was one of the most inept presidents of all time. Lasky's last work was Never Complain, Never Explain (1981), a biography of Henry Ford II.

 

3. Art Buchwald - Arthur Buchwald (October 20, 1925 – January 17, 2007) was an American humorist best known for his column in The Washington Post. At the height of his popularity, it was published nationwide as a syndicated column in more than 500 newspapers. His column focused on political satire and commentary. Buchwald had first started writing as a paid journalist in Paris after World War II, where he wrote a column on restaurants and nightclubs, "Paris After Dark", for the Paris Herald Tribune, which later became the International Herald Tribune. He was part of a large American expatriate community in those years. After his return to the United States in 1962, he continued to publish his columns and books for the rest of his life. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for Outstanding Commentary, and in 1991 was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, in addition to other awards. LINK to his photo - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Buchwald#/media/File:Art_Buchwa...

 

4. Arthur Herzog III (April 6, 1927 – May 26, 2010) was an American novelist, non-fiction writer, and journalist, well known for his works of science fiction and true crime books. He was the son of songwriter Arthur Herzog Jr. He was married to Leslie Mandel and they did not have any children. He wrote the 1977 novel Orca, which was adapted into the 1977 film of the same title, and his 1974 novel The Swarm was also adapted into a film in 1978. Herzog was also the author of non-fiction books: The Church Trap is a critique of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish church organization and institutions particularly in the US; 17 Days: The Katie Beers Story is about the kidnapping and child sexual abuse of Katie Beers.

British postcard in the A Real Photogravure Portrait series. Photo: United Artists. Eddie Cantor in Special Delivery (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1927).

 

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was an American actor, screenwriter, producer and songwriter. After a rich Broadway career in the late 1910s and 1920s, he became a popular Hollywood star in pleasant and fast-paced musical film comedies in the early 1930s.

 

Eddie Cantor was born Edward Israel Iskowitz in 1892 in New York City, New York, USA. He was the son of amateur violinist Mechel Iskowitz (also Michael) and his wife Meta Kantrowitz Iskowitz (also Maite), a young Jewish couple from Russia. Both his parents died when he was still very young, and he was adopted and raised by his maternal grandmother, Esther Lazarowitz Kantrowitz. She called him Izzy and Itchik, both diminutives for Isidor. She supported herself and her grandson as a door-to-door peddler. The boy was educated in public schools. "Kantrowitz" was the name mistakenly assigned to the boy instead of his actual name, Iskowitz, by a public school registrar. It was shortened to Cantor. Eddie was the nickname given to him by his girlfriend, Ida Tobias, whom he later married. After winning $5 at a Bowery Theatre Amateur Night, the teenage Cantor knew where his destiny lay. One of his earliest paying jobs was a double position as a waiter and performer. He sang for tips at Carey Walsh's Coney Island saloon, where a young Jimmy Durante accompanied him on piano. He made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall, then became a member of the Gus Edwards Gang, later touring Vaudeville with Al Lee as the team Cantor & Lee. His grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz, died on 29 January 1917, two days before he signed a long-term contract with Broadway's top producer Florenz Ziegfeld, to appear in his "Follies". Eddie starred in the Ziegfeld rooftop post-show Midnight Frolic (1917) and in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1927. He also made Broadway stage appearances in 'Broadway Brevities of 1920', 'Make It Snappy' (1922), 'Kid Boots' (1923), 'Whoopee' (1928) and 'Banjo Eyes' (1941). For several years, Cantor starred in an act with pioneering comedian Bert Williams, both in blackface. Cantor played Williams' son. Other co-stars with Cantor during his time in the Follies included Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields. The successful Broadway series of 'Banjo eyes' in 1941 was cut short when Cantor suffered a major heart attack, the first of several that would dominate his later years.

 

Eddie Cantor also made numerous film appearances. He had previously appeared in a number of short films in the 1920s, performing his Follies songs and comedy routines, and in two silent feature films, Kid Boots (Frank Tuttle, 1926) with Clara Bow and Special Delivery (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1927). He was offered the lead role in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) after it was turned down by George Jessel, but Cantor also turned down the role so it went to Al Jolson. His best Hollywood years were spent under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, where Eddie turned out one big-budget musical comedy per year between 1930 and 1936. Eddie became a leading Hollywood star with the film version of Whoopee! (Thornton Freeland, 1930), shot in two-colour Technicolour. He continued to make films for the next two decades, including such hits as Palmy Days (A. Edward Sutherland, 1931), The Kid from Spain (Leo McCarey, 1932), Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle, 1933) with Gloria Stuart, Kid Millions (Roy Del Ruth, Willy Pogany, 1934) co-starring Ann Sothern and Ethel Merman, Strike Me Pink (Norman Taurog, 1936) and Ali Baba Goes to Town (David Butler, 1937). His last leading role was in If You Knew Susie (Gordon Douglas, 1948) with Joan Davis. In the Warner Bros. biopic The Eddie Cantor Story (Alfred E. Green, 1953) he did a cameo appearance. He was the President of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1933-1935. Cantor turned to radio with The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1931. Performing as a standup comedian, he used his vaudeville experience to outstanding effect and combined the expression of patriotism and personal values with humour; audiences responded enthusiastically. With changes of name, the show continued for 18 years on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) networks. He also served as host of The Eddie Cantor Variety Theater, a half-hour television variety show that was syndicated in 1955. Cantor also made many records. His theme song was 'One Hour With You'. His other popular-song compositions include 'Get a Little Fun Out of Life', 'It's Great to Be Alive' and 'The Old Stage Door'. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The offstage Cantor was not perfect, but most of the man's character flaws have been forgotten in the light of his inexhaustible work on behalf of dozens of charities, most prominently the March of Dimes. He also regularly put his career on the line through his union activities with Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio Artists, and flew in the face of bigotry and anti-Semitics through his work with the B'nai Brith and Jewish Relief." Eddie Cantor wrote the books 'Ziegfeld, the Great Glorifier' and 'As I Remember Them', and the autobiographies 'My Life Is In Your Hands' and 'Take My Life'. He received a Special Academy Award in 1956 for distinguished service to the film industry. Eddie Cantor died of a heart attack in 1964 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. His wife Ida had passed away two years earlier. They had five daughters, Marilyn Cantor Baker, Marjorie Cantor, Natalie Cantor, Edna Cantor McHugh and Janet Cantor Gari. Eddie Cantor is interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Culver City, California.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Britannica, Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

A compilation of all the characters from my One-Man Showcase -- a production written, performed, directed, produced, and edited by me and in which I portray 105 different characters in 53 scenes.

 

The showcase can be seen on my YouTube channel:

 

www.youtube.com/user/lazfilm2

 

on my Facebook fan page:

 

www.facebook.com/LazRojas17/

 

or on its official site:

 

lazrojas.com/showcase/

Image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

 

See videos of Darla and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:

 

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 693. Photo: United Artists.

 

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was an American actor, screenwriter, producer and songwriter. After a rich Broadway career in the late 1910s and 1920s, he became a popular Hollywood star in pleasant and fast-paced musical film comedies in the early 1930s.

 

Eddie Cantor was born Edward Israel Iskowitz in 1892 in New York City, New York, USA. He was the son of amateur violinist Mechel Iskowitz (also Michael) and his wife Meta Kantrowitz Iskowitz (also Maite), a young Jewish couple from Russia. Both his parents died when he was still very young, and he was adopted and raised by his maternal grandmother, Esther Lazarowitz Kantrowitz. She called him Izzy and Itchik, both diminutives for Isidor. She supported herself and her grandson as a door-to-door peddler. The boy was educated in public schools. "Kantrowitz" was the name mistakenly assigned to the boy instead of his actual name, Iskowitz, by a public school registrar. It was shortened to Cantor. Eddie was the nickname given to him by his girlfriend, Ida Tobias, whom he later married. After winning $5 at a Bowery Theatre Amateur Night, the teenage Cantor knew where his destiny lay. One of his earliest paying jobs was a double position as a waiter and performer. He sang for tips at Carey Walsh's Coney Island saloon, where a young Jimmy Durante accompanied him on piano. He made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall, then became a member of the Gus Edwards Gang, later touring Vaudeville with Al Lee as the team Cantor & Lee. His grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz, died on 29 January 1917, two days before he signed a long-term contract with Broadway's top producer Florenz Ziegfeld, to appear in his "Follies". Eddie starred in the Ziegfeld rooftop post-show Midnight Frolic (1917) and in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1927. He also made Broadway stage appearances in 'Broadway Brevities of 1920', 'Make It Snappy' (1922), 'Kid Boots' (1923), 'Whoopee' (1928) and 'Banjo Eyes' (1941). For several years, Cantor starred in an act with pioneering comedian Bert Williams, both in blackface. Cantor played Williams' son. Other co-stars with Cantor during his time in the Follies included Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields. The successful Broadway series of 'Banjo eyes' in 1941 was cut short when Cantor suffered a major heart attack, the first of several that would dominate his later years.

 

Eddie Cantor also made numerous film appearances. He had previously appeared in a number of short films in the 1920s, performing his Follies songs and comedy routines, and in two silent feature films, Kid Boots (Frank Tuttle, 1926) with Clara Bow and Special Delivery (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1927). He was offered the lead role in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) after it was turned down by George Jessel, but Cantor also turned down the role so it went to Al Jolson. His best Hollywood years were spent under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, where Eddie turned out one big-budget musical comedy per year between 1930 and 1936. Eddie became a leading Hollywood star with the film version of Whoopee! (Thornton Freeland, 1930), shot in two-colour Technicolour. He continued to make films for the next two decades, including such hits as Palmy Days (A. Edward Sutherland, 1931), The Kid from Spain (Leo McCarey, 1932), Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle, 1933) with Gloria Stuart, Kid Millions (Roy Del Ruth, Willy Pogany, 1934) co-starring Ann Sothern and Ethel Merman, Strike Me Pink (Norman Taurog, 1936) and Ali Baba Goes to Town (David Butler, 1937). His last leading role was in If You Knew Susie (Gordon Douglas, 1948) with Joan Davis. In the Warner Bros. biopic The Eddie Cantor Story (Alfred E. Green, 1953) he did a cameo appearance. He was the President of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1933-1935. Cantor turned to radio with The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1931. Performing as a standup comedian, he used his vaudeville experience to outstanding effect and combined the expression of patriotism and personal values with humour; audiences responded enthusiastically. With changes of name, the show continued for 18 years on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) networks. He also served as host of The Eddie Cantor Variety Theater, a half-hour television variety show that was syndicated in 1955. Cantor also made many records. His theme song was 'One Hour With You'. His other popular-song compositions include 'Get a Little Fun Out of Life', 'It's Great to Be Alive' and 'The Old Stage Door'. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The offstage Cantor was not perfect, but most of the man's character flaws have been forgotten in the light of his inexhaustible work on behalf of dozens of charities, most prominently the March of Dimes. He also regularly put his career on the line through his union activities with Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio Artists, and flew in the face of bigotry and anti-Semitics through his work with the B'nai Brith and Jewish Relief." Eddie Cantor wrote the books 'Ziegfeld, the Great Glorifier' and 'As I Remember Them', and the autobiographies 'My Life Is In Your Hands' and 'Take My Life'. He received a Special Academy Award in 1956 for distinguished service to the film industry. Eddie Cantor died of a heart attack in 1964 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. His wife Ida had passed away two years earlier. They had five daughters, Marilyn Cantor Baker, Marjorie Cantor, Natalie Cantor, Edna Cantor McHugh and Janet Cantor Gari. Eddie Cantor is interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Culver City, California.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Britannica, Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

British postcard by Box Office, London, no. BO583.

 

George Clooney (1961) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer with more than thirty film awards and nominations to his name. Clooney gained wide recognition in his role as Dr. Doug Ross on the medical TV drama ER (1994-1999). In the cinema, he had his breakthrough roles in From Dusk till Dawn (1996), and the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), in which he first worked with director Steven Soderbergh. In 2001 followed their biggest commercial success with the blockbuster Ocean's Eleven, the first of what became a trilogy. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Syriana (2005). He also won an Oscar for best picture for the thriller Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012) as a producer. He also received Oscar nominations for his roles in the conspiracy thriller Michael Clayton (2007) and The Descendants (2011), and a European Film Award for Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), which he also wrote and directed.

 

George Timothy Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1961. Clooney is the son of television personality Nicholas Joseph "Nick" Clooney and Nina Bruce Warren. He has an older sister, Ada Zeidler. His father is the brother of singer-actress Rosemary Clooney, who was married to film star José Ferrer, and George is the cousin of their son, actor Miguel Ferrer. At a young age, Clooney learned how to handle the camera. His father often took his family to public appearances and at the age of five George held the text boards for his father Nick, then a television presenter in Illinois, on a quiz show. It looked like Clooney would follow in his father's footsteps, but that changed when his uncle José Ferrer, husband of his aunt Rosemary, came to Kentucky to make a film about horse racing with his sons Miguel and Rafael. In it, Clooney also got a role. The film And They're Off was never released, but Clooney had found his calling. At Augusta High School, Clooney was a gifted baseball player, but during a tryout with the Cincinnati Reds, he proved not good enough to turn pro. Clooney attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981, where he studied radio journalism. After he broke off his studies, he held a few random jobs. His father, knowing how difficult it is to succeed as an actor, tried in vain to change his mind. In the summer of 1982, the determined Clooney spent harvesting tobacco in order to earn enough money to go to Hollywood. In California, he was allowed to live with his aunt Rosemary, although the latter did not wholeheartedly support his aspirations either. For several months, he was her chauffeur on her tour with singers like Martha Raye. After this, Clooney tried to get a job as an actor, but he was constantly rejected, which greatly affected his mood. Eventually, Rosemary felt compelled to ask her cousin to leave. Clooney moved in with a friend, rookie actor Tom Matthews. He did odd jobs on the sets of commercials and took acting classes at The Beverly Hills Playhouse. Under the guidance of Milton Katselas, he mastered the craft and, as a result of a school project, found an impresario. In the following years, he played several bigger and smaller roles, mostly in moderately received series, never-released films and B-movies like Return of the Killer Tomatoes! (John De Bello, 1988). He was not dissatisfied; he was doing what he loved most: acting and developing himself. Clooney's only longer-lasting role during this period was in the sitcom Roseanne. In it, he played Booker Brooks, Roseanne's supervisor and temporary boyfriend of her sister, in the first season (1989).

 

George Clooney's breakthrough came in 1994, through his role as Dr Douglas Ross in the hospital series ER (Emergency Room, 1994-1999). His popularity in this gave his film career a major boost. This series, which depicted everyday life in a Chicago teaching hospital in a realistic and dramatic manner and ran from 1994 to 1999, became a major international television success. Clooney rose to become one of the most famous television actors and was especially popular with female viewers. He portrayed the role in 109 episodes from 1994 to 1999 and made a guest appearance in the series in 2009. The Clooneys' sense of family was also expressed in guest appearances by Rosemary Clooney and his cousin Miguel Ferrer. Now film producers in Hollywood could no longer pass him over. From 1996, the actor established himself as a film star; he appeared in a wide variety of roles. He had great success with the leading role in the Robert Rodriguez-directed film From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), which soon achieved cult status. He also starred alongside Michelle Pfeiffer in the romantic comedy One Fine Day (Michael Hoffmann, 1996). His final breakthrough came in the role of Batman in the superhero film Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997) with Chris O'Donnell. In the same year, he was voted "Sexiest Man Alive" by People Magazine. Clooney demonstrated a preference for whimsical roles such as in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) by the Coen brothers. However, he also took leading roles in commercially oriented films such as The Peacemaker (Mimi Leder, 1997) with Nicole Kidman, which featured him as an action hero. The thriller comedy Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) with Jennifer Lopez and the war films The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) and Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999) with Mark Wahlberg, all received excellent reviews and did well at the box-office.

 

George Clooney received $20,000,000 for the blockbuster Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001), a remake of the heist comedy Ocean's 11 (Lewis Milestone, 1960), which also starred Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts. Later, he also went on to work as a producer, screenwriter and director. His directorial debut was the spy drama Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney, 2002). He also directed the multi-award-winning historical drama Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005), for which he also was a co-screenwriter and one of the actors. Ocean's Eleven drew two sequels, Ocean’s Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (Steven Soderbergh, 2007), in which Clooney also starred. Important in this context was his friendship with director Steven Soderbergh, with whom he founded the company Section Eight. In 2006, it was announced that the company was wound up. Soon after, Clooney founded the production company Smoke House, with close friend Grant Heslov. Clooney appeared in several Coen Brothers films, including Burn After Reading (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, 2008) with Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt, and Hail, Caesar! (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, 2016). He earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor for the legal thriller Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007), the comedy-dramas Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, 2009) and The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011). A huge box office hit was the Science Fiction thriller Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013) in which he co-starred with Sandra Bullock and which he also co-wrote. Clooney's directed the political drama The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011), in which he also contributed to the screenplay and took on one of the leading roles. The film adaptation of Beau Willimon's play Farragut North focuses on a young idealistic press secretary (played by Ryan Gosling) who, as an employee of a presidential candidate (Clooney), is confronted with fraud and corruption in the Ohio primaries. His other productions as a director include the war film The Monuments Men (George Clooney, 2014), the crime drama Suburbicon (George Clooney, 2017), two episodes of the series Catch-22 (2019) and the Science-Fiction film The Midnight Sky (George Clooney, 2020). In 1989, George Clooney married actress Talia Balsam, from whom he divorced again in 1993. Clooney had several relationships in the past including with Lisa Snowdon (2000-2005), Sarah Larson (2007-2008), Elisabetta Canalis (2009-2011) and Stacy Keibler (2011-2013). Clooney vowed that he would never marry again. However, in 2014, Clooney married British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin; they married in law two days later. They became parents to twins, a daughter and a son, in 2017. This year George Clooney reunited with Julia Roberts in the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise (Ol Parker, 2022), for which they also served as executive producers.

 

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960's French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

 

Click the links to watch videos of Chantal:

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N06W_3s5TZU

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6aHdIrlb7E

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf5enWmBbeM

Mock advertisement with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Images of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

 

See videos of Darla and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:

 

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...

In the living room of screenwriter Adam Herz’s Hollywood Hills home, designed by interior decorator Peter Dunham and architect Richard Gemigniani, a Josiane Childers painting is displayed above a fireplace surround of Walker Zanger limestone; a fiddle-leaf ficus adds drama. The Orbit chair is by Dedon from Janus et Cie, and the walnut table is custom made; the cushions are from Hollywood at Home, the 'China' rug is by Allegra Hicks from Christopher Farr, and the curtains are made of Frappe fabric from Weave Design.

 

Photo by Grey Crawford, Elle Decor, November 2008.

An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960's British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Spanish postcard by IFG. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

American comedian, actor, screenwriter, and film director Charley Chase (1893-1940) was best known for his work in Hal Roach short film comedies. Chase usually portrayed an apparently gentle and charming man who in reality, it eventually turned out, was quite a loser after all. While Chase is less famous than 'The Big Three' (Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd), he's highly respected today by fans of silent comedy.

 

Charley Chase was born Charles Joseph Parrott in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1893. He was the elder brother of comedian/director James Parrott. Charley began performing in vaudeville, burlesque, and musical comedy as a teenager and started his career as a comedian in films with Al Christie at Universal Studios in 1912. The following year, he moved to Keystone Studios, where he began appearing in bit parts in the Mack Sennett films, including those of Charlie Chaplin. By 1915 he was playing juvenile leads in the Keystones and directing some of the films as Charles Parrott. His Keystone credentials were good enough to get him steady work as a comedy director with other companies; he directed many of Chaplin imitator Billy West's comedies, which featured a young Oliver Hardy as the villain. He worked at L-KO Kompany during its final months of existence. Then in 1920, Chase began working as a film director for Hal Roach Studios. Among his notable early work for Roach was supervising the first entries in the Our Gang series, as well as directing several films starring Lloyd Hamilton. Chase became director-general of the Hal Roach studio in late 1921, supervising the production of all the Roach series except the Harold Lloyd comedies. Following Lloyd's departure from the studio in 1923, Chase moved back in front of the camera with his own series of shorts, adopting the screen name Charley Chase.

 

Charley Chase was a master of the comedy of embarrassment, and he played either hapless young businessmen or befuddled husbands in dozens of situation comedies. He usually portrayed an apparently gentle and charming man who in reality, it eventually turned out, was quite a loser after all. His character was largely inspired by Lloyd Hamilton, another neglected comedian whom Chase had directed in several two-reelers. His screen persona of a pleasant young man with a dapper mustache and ordinary street clothes set him apart from the clownish makeups and crazy costumes used by his contemporaries. His earliest Roach shorts cast him as a hard-luck fellow named "Jimmie Jump" in one-reel (10-minute) comedies. The first Chase series was successful and expanded to two reels (20 minutes); this would become the standard length for Chase comedies, apart from a few three-reel featurettes later. The direction of the Chase series was taken over by Leo McCarey, who in collaboration with Chase formed the comic style of the series—an emphasis on characterisation and farce instead of knockabout slapstick. Some of Chase's starring shorts of the 1920s, particularly Mighty Like a Moose (Leo McCarey, 1926), Crazy Like a Fox (Leo McCarey, 1926), Fluttering Hearts (James Parrott, 1927), and Limousine Love (Fred Guiol, 1928), are often considered to be among the finest in silent comedy. Chase remained the guiding hand behind the films, assisting anonymously with the directing, writing, and editing.

 

Charley Chase moved with ease into sound films in 1929 and became one of the most popular film comedians of the period. He continued to be very prolific in the talkie era, often putting his fine singing voice on display and including his humorous, self-penned songs in his comedy shorts. The two-reeler The Pip from Pittsburg (James Parrott, 1931) co-starring Thelma Todd, is one of the most celebrated Charley Chase comedies of the sound era. During this period he made some very successful films such as Public Ghost #1 (Charley Chase, Harold Law, 1935) and The Heckler (`Del Lord, 1940). He made a cameo appearance in Laurel and Hardy's highly acclaimed feature Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter, 1933). Throughout the decade, the Charley Chase shorts continued to stand alongside Laurel and Hardy and Our Gang as the core output of the Roach studio. Chase was featured in the Laurel and Hardy feature Sons of the Desert. Laurel and Hardy made cameo appearances as hitchhikers in Chase's On the Wrong Trek. On the Wrong Trek was supposed to be the final Charley Chase short subject. By 1936 producer Hal Roach was concentrating on making ambitious feature films. Chase played a character role in the Patsy Kelly feature Kelly the Second (Gus Meins, 1936), and starred in a feature-length comedy called Neighborhood House (Charley Chase, Harold Law, 1936), lampooning the popular Bank Night phenomenon, a lottery game franchise in cinemas during the Great Depression. Chase's feature was plagued with a host of production problems and legalities, and the film was drastically edited down to two reels and finally released as one last Charley Chase short, Neighborhood House. Chase was then dismissed from the Roach studio.

 

In 1937, Charley Chase began working at Columbia Pictures, where he spent the rest of his career starring in his own series of two-reel comedies, as well as producing and directing other Columbia comedies, including those of The Three Stooges and Andy Clyde. He directed the Stooges' classic Violent Is the Word for Curly (Charley Chase, 1938). Although he is often credited with writing the film's song 'Swinging the Alphabet', the tune actually originates with 19th-century songwriter Septimus Winner. Recent research asserts that the Chase family's maid introduced the song to Chase and taught it to his daughters. Chase's own shorts at Columbia favored broader sight gags and more slapstick than his earlier, subtler work, although he does sing in two of the Columbias, The Grand Hooter (Del Lord, 1937) and The Big Squirt (Del Lord, 1937). Many of Chase's Columbia short subjects were strong enough to be remade in the 1940s with other comedians. Chase's The Heckler (Del Lord, 1940) was remade with Shemp Howard as Mr. Noisy (Edward Bernds, 1946) while The Nightshirt Bandit (Jules White, 1938) was remade with Andy Clyde as Go Chase Yourself (Jules White, 1948) and again in 1956 as Pardon My Nightshirt (Jules White, 1956). Chase reportedly suffered from depression and alcoholism for most of his professional career, and his tumultuous lifestyle began to take a serious toll on his health. His hair had turned prematurely gray, and he dyed it jet-black for his Columbia comedies. Years later Hal Roach said, "I never saw him drunk at the studio, and I never saw him sober outside of it." His younger brother, comedy writer-director James Parrott, had personal problems resulting from drug treatment and died in 1939. Chase was devastated. He had refused to give his brother money to support his drug habit, and friends knew he felt responsible for Parrott's death. He coped with the loss by throwing himself into his work and by drinking more heavily than ever, despite doctors' warnings. The stress ultimately caught up with him. Just over a year after his brother's death, Charley Chase died of a heart attack in Hollywood, California, in 1940. He was only 46. Chase was married to Bebe Eltinge from 1914, a marriage that lasted until his death and produced two daughters, Polly and June. Chase is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery near his wife Bebe Eltinge in Glendale, California. Since the 1990s, there has been a revival of interest in the films of Charley Chase, due in large part to the increased availability of his comedies. An extensive website researching his life and work, 'The World of Charley Chase', was created in 1996. Two books devoted to Chase followed: a biography, 'Smile When the Raindrops Fall' (1998;) and 'The Charley Chase Scrapbook' (2016), compiled from Chase's own collections of photos, writings, and souvenirs. Chase's silent work was celebrated on DVD in two volumes from Kino Video. At long last, his comic genius is being recognised.

 

Sources: Snorre Mathiesen (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Swiss postcard by News Productions, Baulmes, no. 55592. Photo: Michelangelo Durazzo / ANA, Paris. Caption: Federico Fellini during the shooting of the film Casanova.

 

Italian film director and screenwriter Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He was known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d'Or for La Dolce Vita (1960), and was nominated for twelve Academy Awards. He won an Oscar for La Strada (1954), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973).

 

Federico Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini in the Emilia-Romagna region. His native Rimini and characters there like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would later be remembered in several of his films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La dolce vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. Fellini's first passion was the theater, and at the age of 12, he briefly ran away from home to join the circus, later entering college solely to avoid being drafted. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real-life role of a journalist. Additionally, Fellini worked as an artist on fumetti (Italy's illustrated magazines), and occasionally even made his living as a caricaturist at Roman restaurants. He caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds 'Cico and Pallina'. Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became Fellini's real-life wife in 1943. They remained together until his death. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1939 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Fabrizi recruited Fellini to supply stories and ideas for his performances; between 1939 and 1944. The two men worked in tandem on a number of largely forgotten comedies, among them No Me Lo Dire, Quarta Pagina, and Campo de Fiori. When young director Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Roma città aperta (Roberto Rosselini, 1945), he made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisà (Roberto Rosselini, 1946). Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "On that film, he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work."

 

Federico Fellini collaborated on films by Pietro Germi (including In Nomine Della Legge and Il Cammino Della Speranza) and Alberto Lattuda (Il Delitto di Giovanni Episcopo and Il Mulino del Po), among others. In 1948, Fellini completed the screenplay for Il Miracolo, the second and longer section of Rossellini's two-part effort Amore. Here Fellini's utterly original worldview first began to truly take shape in the form of archetypal characters (a simple-minded peasant girl and her male counterpart, a kind of holy simpleton), recurring motifs (show business, parties, the sea), and an ambiguous relationship with religion and spirituality. He further explored this in his script for Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Roberto Rosselini, 1949). In 1950, Fellini made his first attempt at directing one of his own screenplays (with help of Alberto Lattuda), Luci del Varieta (Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattudada, 1950), which further developed his fusion of neorealism with the atmosphere of surrealism. Fellini then directed the romantic satire Lo Sciecco Bianc. The film marked his first work with composer Nino Rota. Fellini's initial masterpiece, I Vitteloni, followed in 1953. The first of his features to receive international distribution, it later won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the first of many similar honours. The brilliant La Strada followed in 1954, also garnering the Silver Lion as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. After helming Il Bidone (1955), Fellini and a group of screenwriters (including a young Pier Paolo Pasolini) began work on Le Notti di Cabiria (1956), which also won an Oscar. Then he mounted La Dolce Vita (1960), the first of his pictures to star actor Marcello Mastroianni. He would become Fellini's cinematic alter ego over the course of several subsequent collaborations, its portrait of sex and death in Rome's high society created a tremendous scandal at its Milan premiere, where the audience booed, insulted, and spat on the director. Regardless, La Dolce Vita won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and remains a landmark in cinematic history.

 

During the 1960s, many films by Federico Fellini were influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his ideas on the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious. The women who had both attracted and frightened him in his youth and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII inspired Fellini's dreams. In the 1960s, he started to record them in notebooks, and life and dreams became the raw material for such films as 8½ (1963) or Fellini - Satyricon (1969). With 1965's Giulietta Degli Spiriti, Fellini worked for the first time in color. After experimenting with LSD under the supervision of doctors, he began scripting Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna. Over a year of pre-production followed, hampered by difficulties with producers, actors, and even a jury trial. Finally on April 10th, 1967, Fellini suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting in a month-long nursing homestay. Ultimately, he gave up on ever bringing Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna to the screen, and his new producer, Alberto Grimaldi, was forced to buy out former producer Dino De Laurentis for close to half a billion liras. As the decade drew to a close, Fellini returned to work with a vengeance, first resurfacing with Toby Dammitt, a short feature for the collaborative film Tre Passi nel Delirio. Turning to television, he helmed Fellini: A Director's Notebook, a one-hour special for NBC, followed by the feature effort Fellini Satyricon. I Clown followed in 1970, with Roma bowing in 1972. Amarcord, a childhood reminiscence, won a fourth Academy Award in 1974. It proved to be his final international success. He later shot Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976), Prova d'Orchestra (1979), and La Citta delle Donne (1980), which were less successful. Fellini turned to publishing with Fare un Film, an anthology of notes about his life and work. E la Nave Va (1983) and Ginger e Fred (1985) followed, but by the time of L'Intervista (1987), he was facing considerable difficulty finding financing for his projects. His last completed film was La Voce Della Luna (1989). In the early 1990s, Fellini helmed a handful of television commercials, and in 1993 he won his fifth Academy Award for a lifetime of service to the film industry. In 1993, Federico Fellini died the day after his 50th wedding anniversary. He was 73 years old. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "One of the most visionary figures to emerge from the fertile motion picture community of postwar-era Italy, Federico Fellini brought a new level of autobiographical intensity to his craft; more than any other filmmaker of his era, he transformed the realities of his life into the surrealism of his art. Though originally a product of the neorealist school, the eccentricity of Fellini's characterizations and his absurdist sense of comedy set him squarely apart from contemporaries like Vittorio De Sica or Roberto Rossellini, and at the peak of his career his work adopted a distinctively poetic, flamboyant, and influential style so unique that only the term "Felliniesque" could accurately describe it. "

 

Source: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Dale O' Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Mock publicity photo with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Vintage Italian postcard. 1920s. G.B. Falci, Editore, Milano, No. 689.

 

Augusto Genina (Rome, 28 January 1892 - Rome, 18 September 1957) was an Italian film director, screenwriter and film producer. He was an active filmmaker for over forty years, both in silent and sound films.

 

Genina was born into an upper-class Roman family, to Luigi genina and Anna Tombini. After secondary school, he attended the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Rome, but never completed his studies as he soon became interested in theatre. From 1911, he was a playwright and drama critic for the magazine Il Mondo. On Aldo De Benedetti's advice, Genina switched to cinema as a scriptwriter for the Film d'Arte Italiana company, for which he edited the film adaptation of Beatrice d'Este (1912), starring Francesca Bertini. He later moved to Celio Film and then to Cines. At the latter company he began as assistant to director Giulio Antamoro. In 1913 he made his first film as director, La moglie di sua eccellenza (His Excellency's Wife), shot in Barcelona and produced by Film de Arte Español, the Spanish branch of Cines. A prolific director, he shot numerous films of different genres, many of them clearly derived from the theatre and centred on bourgeois marital dramas.

 

During the First World War, Genina was released from service due to a permanent tendon injury suffered in his teens, which allowed him to continue filming regularly. In 1914 he worked for Milano Films and in 1915 for Medusa and Monopol, in 1917 for Ambrosio and Tiber, in 1918 for Itala and in 1920 for Photodrama in Turin. Thus he directed female stars such as Maria Jacobini and Helena Makowska in Addio giovinezza! (1918), a popular film he would remake in 1927 with Carmen Boni. With Jacobini he would also do L'onestà del peccato (1918), Other stars he worked with in the 1910s were e.g Hesperia (Dopo il veglione, 1914), Pina Menichelli (Lulù, 1914), Bianca Virginia Camagni (La gelosia, 1915), Mercedes Brignone (Mezzanotte, 1915), Suzanne Armelle (La signorina Ciclone, 1916), Yvonne De Fleuriel (Il trono e la seggiola, 1918), Italia Almirante Manzini (Femmina, 1918; La maschera e il volto, 1919), Diana Karenne (Lucrezia Borgia, 1919), and Edy Darclea (Debito d'odio, 1920).

 

Worthy of mention is the film Lo scaldino (1920), starring Kally Sambuccini and Alfonso Cassini, and based on the novel of the same name by Pirandello, whose influence on Genina's work will also be seen in the later Prix de beauté/ Miss Europa. In 1921 he founded Films Genina and in 1923 wrote the screenplay for Jolly, clown da circo, his cousin Mario Camerini's directorial debut. In the early 1920s, he also did films with Vera Vergani, Ria Bruna, and Soava Gallone, as well as adventure films such as Il corsaro (1923) with Amleto Novelli. Despite the collapsing of Italian film production, Genina still managed to continue making films, even if quite limited. In 1923 he directed the Franco-Italian prestigious early colour production Cirano di Berrgerac/ Cyrano de Bergerac, starring Pierre Magnier, Linda Moglia and Angelo Ferrari.

 

During the production of La moglie bella (1924), starring Linda Moglia, Genina discovered supporting actress Carmelita Bonicatti, better known as Carmen Boni. Boni became Genina's new muse and girlfriend, and eventually, in 1924, his wife. While Boni first starred in three Italian films by Genina: Il focolare spento (1925), L'ultimo Lord (1926) and Addio giovinezza! (1927), together they went to Berlin, where Boni starred in Genina's films Die Gefangene von Shanghai (1927), Scampolo (1928, with exteriors in Italy), Liebeskarneval (1928), Quartier Latin (1929, with exteriors in Paris), as well as the Franco-German coproduction Totte et sa chance/ der Sprung ins Glück/ Die Geschichte einer kleinen Pariserin (1929). Eventually, Boni and Genina divorced, and both would remarry with others.

 

In 1929 Genina directed Louise Brooks in the highly successful Prix de beauté (released in 1930), a film shot in silent and later soundtracked version, scripted by René Clair and Georg Wilhelm Pabst. In 1931 he drected both the German and the French version of Mitternachtsliebe/ Les amours de minuit, co-directed respectively with Carl Froehlich and Marc Allégret, and starring Danièle Parola in both versions. Memorable is also Paris-Beguin (1931) with Jean Gabin and Jane Marnac, while Boni and Genina did two last films together in France: the comedies La femme en homme (1932) and Ne sois pas jalouse (1934). In 1934 Boni and Genina divorced. In 1939 he would marry the British Elisabeth 'Betty' Becker.

 

In the mid-1930s Genina changed employers, starting with a series of Italo-German coproductions with opera stars such as Beniamino Gigli and Erna Sack. After almost a decade abroad, Genina made a definitive return to Italy in the late 1930s. In 1936, he directed the war film Lo squadrone bianco (The White Squadron) in the Libyan desert, which won the Mussolini Cup for Best Italian Film at the Venice Film Festival. He became one of Fascism's leading filmmakers, making L'assedio dell'Alcazar (1939), another propaganda war film illustrating an episode from the Spanish Civil War, and Bengasi (1942), a film about the British attack on the Italians in the Libyan city during World War II. He alternated these with lighter fare such as Naples au baiser du feu/The Kiss of Fire (1937), a film that secured singer Tino Rossi a big success, and Castelli in aria (1939), a comedy with Lilian Harvey and Vittorio De Sica. Yet, in 1942 Genina stopped directing after Bengasi and it would take at least eight years before he started again directing.

 

In the post-war period Genina attempted an approach to neorealism with Cielo sulla palude/ Maria Goretti (1949), a biographical work about Maria Goretti, filmed in a wonderful Caravaggesque style by Aldo Graziati, but critics found his melodramatic realism too mannered at the time. In 1950 Genina directed L'edera, based on the novel of the same name by Grazia Deledda. In Tre storie proibite (1953) Genina filmed the story of the collapse of a staircase that swept away a large number of young girls who had rushed to find a job as typists, already the subject of Giuseppe De Santis's film Roma ore 11. In 1953 Genina also directed the film Maddalena, set in the Sannio region in the characteristic villages of Guardia Sanframondi and Cerreto Sannita; the film starred Gino Cervi and Swedish actress Märta Torén. In 1955 Genina shot his last film, Frou Frou, after which he retired due to endocarditis from which he had suffered for a long time, and died in 1957. All in all, Genina directed almost 100 films, wrote almost 50 scripts and produced 2.

 

Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDb.

A photo of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

via Instagram ift.tt/2fQISKp

Mock promotional poster from 1982 with an image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Mock advertisement with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

American Arcade card. Ex. Sup. Co., Chicago.

 

Leo Daniel Maloney (San Jose or Santa Rosa, 4 January 1888 - New York, 2 November 1929) was an American actor, stuntman, director and screenwriter. As an actor, he appeared in 183 films. He directed forty-eight films, produced thirteen and wrote the screenplay for ten films.

 

Maloney started his film career in 1911 at Selig, as bit actor opposite western hero Tom Mix. In 1912 he played at Nestor under direction of Milton J. Fahrney and at Bison under direction of Thomas Ince, before moving over in 1913 to the Kalem company. Under direction of J.P. McGowan Maloney became the male lead (hero or villain) opposite McGowan's wife Helen Holmes in countless two-reelers as well as the Helen Holmes serial The Hazards of Helen (1914-1915). In parallel to his work at Kalem, from 1914 Maloney also started to act in the Tom Mix films at Selig, directed by Mix himself. In 1916-1917 Maloney mainly co-acted in the Helen Holmes serials The Girl and the Game (1916), A Lass of the Lumberlands (1916), The Railroad Raiders (1917), and The Lost Express (1917). While his production was low in 1918, it increased again in 1919-1920, now working for Universal. From 1920 he also directed some of his films there, such as The Honor of the Range (1920) and One Law for All (1920), while at Arrow Film he acted in the crime serial The Fatal Sign (Stuart Paton, 1920). In 1922-1923 he made many short westerns as the Range Rider, with Ford Beebe as director, for their own company Malobee Productions. In 1925 he built the Leo Maloney Studio, aka Skyland Studio, in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California, a studio village of fifty buildings where thirty-five people could live all year around. In 1924-25 Maloney directed several of his westerns for producer William Steiner, with Beebe as his scriptwriter, while from 1926 he did a few westerns distributed by Pathé, such as The High Hand (1926). By the end of the silent era he was still directing himself, but also acted under direction of Richard Thorpe in serials like The Vanishing West (1928). In 1929 the West vanished for Maloney himself. After having directed, and acted in what is known as the first B-western with sound, Overland Bound (1929), Maloney died of a heart attack, brought on by acute and chronic alcoholism, while at a party in Manhattan to celebrate the completion of that picture.

 

Sources: Italian and English Wikipedia, IMDb.

   

An image of myself as one of the characters I played in my one-man showcase -- a production written, directed, produced, and edited entirely by me and in which I portray over 100 different characters in more than 50 scenes.

 

The showcase can be viewed in its entirety at:

 

lazrojas.com/showcase/

 

or

 

www.youtube.com/user/lazfilm2

 

Image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

 

See videos of Darla and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:

 

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...

An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960's British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Mock magazine cover from 1983 with an image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Mock publicity photo with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

 

Blonde French actress and singer Catherine Spaak (1945) worked in France, Spain, Germany and Hollywood, but she spent most of her career in Italy. There she started as a Lolita-like vamp in films of the early 1960s, made records and became a teenage star. She played in several classic Italian comedies and was a popular TV host. Spaak is still active on TV, writes books and has now appeared in some 100 films.

 

Catherine Spaak was born at Boulogne-Billancourt, France in 1945. Her father was the Belgian critic and screenwriter Charles Spaak, her mother the actress Claudie Clèves and her sister is actress-photographer Agnès Spaak. As a teenager, Catherine started her career with small roles in French films like the short L’hiver/The winter (Jacques Gautier, 1959) and the thriller Le Trou/Nightwatch (Jacques Becker, 1960). When she moved to Italy later that year, her father introduced her to film director Alberto Lattuada, who cast her in his film I dolci inganni/Sweet Deceptions (Alberto Lattuada, 1960) . That coming of age film made her a star in Italy. She played a young Roman girl in love, who spends the day observing other lovers' behaviors and considering whether she is ready to jump. J.C. Mohsen at IMDb: “This film's unpredictability is refreshing. Whether written or filmed, coming-of-age stories often fail to surprise or intrigue the audience. In I Dolci Inganni, most characters seem at first to be crazily entertaining walking clichés, but they later astonish the audience by revealing their depth and their inner struggles.” From age 15 to 18, Spaak was the lead actress in a dozen films, including La voglia matta/Crazy Desire (Luciano Salce, 1961) opposite Ugo Tognazzi, the classic comedy Il sorpasso/The Easy Life (Dino Risi, 1962) with Vittorio Gassman, La parmigiana/The Girl from Parma (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1963) with Nino Manfredi, and the Alberto Moravia adaptation La noia/The Empty Canvas (Damiano Damiani, 1963) with Horst Buchholz and Bette Davis. For her performance in La noia she was awarded in 1964 the David di Donatello, the Italian Oscar. Spaak often played the Lolita-type who seduced men, and the Italian scandal press wrote about herself in that way. In their articles, journalists always included that she was the niece of the Belgian prime minister, Paul-Henri Spaak.

 

Catherine Spaak’s screen success, combined with her love of singing and guitar playing, led to an offer of the Ricordi label in 1962. She recorded covers of Françoise Hardy originals and songs in Hardy’s style. Ready steady girls!, the site on Europe’s fab female singers of the 1960s in their bio: “Perdono – written by Gino Paoli (who had worked with stars such as Mina) and arranged by Ennio Morricone – was issued as her debut single and swiftly made the Italian top 20. Vocally, Catherine drew comparisons with France’s newest star, Françoise Hardy, so Ricordi opted to have their young signing record a couple of Hardy songs for the Italian market. Issued in 1963, the bilingual Tous les garçons et les filles (Quelli della mia età) – backed with J’ai jeté mon coeur (Ho scherzato con il cuore) – gave Hardy’s original a run for its money, reaching number seven in September 1963 and confirming Catherine as a new star.” In 1964, she returned to France to appear in La Ronde (Roger Vadim, 1964) and the war drama Week-end à Zuydcoote/Weekend at Dunkirk (Henri Verneuil, 1964) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Back in Italy she played in some more highlights of the commedia all'italiana such as L'armata Brancaleone/Brancaleone's Army (Mario Monicelli, 1965) featuring Vittorio Gassman, and Made in Italy (Nanni Loy, 1965). Other notable appearances include L'uomo dei cinque palloni/Break up (Marco Ferreri, 1965) starring Marcello Mastroianni, and La matriarca/The Libertine (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1968) with Jean-Louis Trintignant. In 1967 she went to Hollywood to play Rod Taylor’s love interest in Hotel (Richard Quine, 1967), based on the novel by Arthur Hailey. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Once she came to Hollywood, however, Spaak was packaged and promoted as just another foreign starlet, interchangeable with Claudia Cardinale, Camilla Sparv, Elke Sommer and the rest of the batch.” The result was not a success and soon she was back in Italy. Two years later she did a cameo in another Hollywood production, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (Mel Stuart, 1969).

 

Seeking a new direction, Catherine Spaak joined fellow singer Johnny Dorelli in the operetta La vedova allegra in 1968. The pair went on to enjoy a lasting relationship, both personally and professionally. They enjoyed success as a duo with Song sung blue (1972) and Una serata insieme a te (1973). During the early 1970s, she continued to appear in many Italian films, but they became less interesting. She starred with James Franciscus in the giallo Il gatto a nove code/The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971). In France she made the crime film Un meurtre est un meurtre/A Murder Is a Murder... Is a Murder (Étienne Périer, 1972) with Jean-Claude Brialy. In the American-Italian Western Take a Hard Ride (Antonio Margheriti, 1975), she co-starred with Jim Brown and Lee van Cleef. From then on, her film appearances became more incidental. In 1978, she had success on stage in the musical Cyrano, and would continue to play on stage. She hosted several Italian TV shows such as Forum (1985-1988) and Harem (1989-2002), and wrote articles for newspaper Il corriere della sera and Italian magazines. She also published six books in Italian, such as 26 Donne/26 women (1984), Un cuore perso/A lost heart (1996), Lui/He (2006) and L’amore blu/Blue Love (2011). Her later films include the sex comedy anthology Sunday Lovers (Bryan Forbes, Edouard Molinaro, Dino Risi, Gene Wilder, 1980) as Ugo Tognazzi’s psychoanalyst, Scandalo Segreto/Secret Scandal (Monica Vitti, 1989) and Tandem (Lucio Pellegrini, 2000) starring the comic duo Luca & Paolo. More recently she was seen in the film Alice (Oreste Crisostomi, 2009), the BBC mini-series Zen (John Alexander, Jon Jones, Christopher Menaul, 2011) starring Rufus Sewell as detective Aurelio Zen and Spaak as his Mamma, and the film I più' grandi di tutti/The greatest of all (Carlo Virzì, 2012). Catherine Spaak was married to actor and producer Fabrizio Capucci (1963-1971) and Italian singer-actor Johnny Dorelli (1972-1979). Her present husband is actor Orso Maria Guerrini. With Capucci, she has a daughter, stage actress Sabrina Capucci (1963), and with Dorelli a son, Gabriele Dorelli.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), CatherineSpaak.eu, Ready Steady Go!, Wikipedia (Italian, French, German and English) and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

German postcard by Verlag Hias Schaschko, München (Munich), no. 211. Photo: Patrick la Banca, ca. 1980.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982) was a German film director, screenwriter, film producer and actor. Fassbinder was part of the New German Cinema movement. Starting at age 21, Fassbinder made over forty films and TV dramas in fifteen years, along with directing numerous plays for the theatre. He also acted in nineteen of his own films as well as for other directors. Fassbinder died in 1982 at the age of 37 from a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was born in Bavaria in the small town of Bad Wörishofen in 1945. The aftermath of World War II deeply marked his childhood and the lives of his bourgeois family. He was the only child of Liselotte Pempeit, a translator and Helmut Fassbinder, a doctor who worked out of the couple's apartment in Sendlinger Strasse, near Munich's red light district. In 1951, his parents divorced. Helmut moved to Cologne while Liselotte raised her son as a single parent in Munich. In order to support herself and her child, Pempeit took in boarders and found employment as a German to English translator. When she was working, she often sent her son to the cinema in order to concentrate. Later in life, Fassbinder claimed that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. As he was often left alone, he became independent and uncontrollable. He clashed with his mother's younger lover Siggi, who lived with them when Fassbinder was around eight or nine years old. He had a similar difficult relationship with the much older journalist Wolff Eder, who became his stepfather in 1959. Early in his adolescence, Fassbinder identified as homosexual. As a teen, Fassbinder was sent to boarding school. His time there was marred by his repeated escape attempts and he eventually left school before any final examinations. At the age of 15, he moved to Cologne and stayed with his father for a couple of years while attending night school. To earn money, he worked small jobs and helped his father who rented shabby apartments to immigrant workers. Around this time, Fassbinder began writing short plays and stories and poems. In 1963, aged eighteen, Fassbinder returned to Munich with plans to attend night school with the idea to eventually study theatrical science. Following his mother's advice, he took acting lessons and from 1964 to 1966 attended the Fridl-Leonhard Studio for actors in Munich. There, he met Hanna Schygulla, who would become one of his most important actors. During this time, he made his first 8mm films and took on small acting roles, assistant director, and sound man. During this period, he also wrote the tragic-comic play: Drops on Hot Stones. To gain entry to the Berlin Film School, Fassbinder submitted a film version of his play Parallels. He also entered several 8 mm films including This Night (now considered lost) but he was turned down for admission, as were the later film directors Werner Schroeter and Rosa von Praunheim. He returned to Munich where he continued with his writing. He also made two short films, Der Stadtstreicher,/The City Tramp (1965) and Das Kleine Chaos/The Little Chaos (1966). Shot in black and white, they were financed by Fassbinder's lover, Christoph Roser, an aspiring actor, in exchange for leading roles. Fassbinder acted in both of these films which also featured Irm Hermann. In the latter, his mother – under the name of Lilo Pempeit – played the first of many parts in her son's films.

 

In 1967 Rainer Werner Fassbinder joined the Munich Action-Theater, where he was active as an actor, director and script writer. After two months he became the company's leader. In April 1968 Fassbinder directed the premiere production of his play Katzelmacher, the story of a foreign worker from Greece who becomes the object of intense racial, sexual, and political hatred among a group of Bavarian slackers. A few weeks later, in May 1968, the Action-Theater was disbanded after its theatre was wrecked by one of its founders, jealous of Fassbinder's growing power within the group. It promptly reformed as the Anti-Theater under Fassbinder's direction. The troupe lived and performed together. This close-knit group of young actors included among them Fassbinder, Peer Raben, Harry Baer and Kurt Raab, who along with Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann became the most important members of his cinematic stock company. Working with the Anti-Theater, Fassbinder continued writing, directing and acting. In the space of eighteen months he directed twelve plays. Of these twelve plays, four were written by Fassbinder; he rewrote five others. The style of his stage directing closely resembled that of his early films, a mixture of choreographed movement and static poses, taking its cues not from the traditions of stage theatre, but from musicals, cabaret, films and the student protest movement. Fassbinder used his theatrical work as a springboard for making films. Shot in black and white with a shoestring budget in April 1969, Fassbinder's first feature-length film, Liebe ist kälter als der Tod/Love is Colder than Death (1969), was a deconstruction of the American gangster films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Fassbinder plays the lead role of Franz, a small-time pimp who is torn between his mistress Joanna, a prostitute (Hanna Schygulla), and his friend Bruno, a gangster sent after Franz by the syndicate that he has refused to join. His second film, Katzelmacher (1969), was received more positively, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. From then on, Fassbinder centered his efforts in his career as film director, but he maintained an intermittent foothold in the theatre until his death. Fassbinder’s first ten films (1969–1971) were an extension of his work in the theatre, shot usually with a static camera and with deliberately unnaturalistic dialogue. Wikipedia: “He was strongly influenced by Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) and the French New Wave cinema, particularly the works of Jean-Luc Godard.” Fassbinder developed his rapid working methods early. Because he knew his actors and technicians so well, Fassbinder was able to complete as many as four or five films per year on extremely low budgets. This allowed him to compete successfully for the government grants needed to continue making films. Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, who started out making films, Fassbinder's stage background was evident throughout his work.

 

In 1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder took an eight-month break from filmmaking. During this time, Fassbinder turned for a model to Hollywood melodrama, particularly the films German émigré Douglas Sirk made in Hollywood for Universal-International in the 1950s: All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession and Imitation of Life. Fassbinder was attracted to these films not only because of their entertainment value, but also for their depiction of various kinds of repression and exploitation. Fassbinder scored his first domestic commercial success with Händler der vier Jahreszeiten/The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971). Loneliness is a common theme in Fassbinder's work, together with the idea that power becomes a determining factor in all human relationships. His characters yearn for love, but seem condemned to exert an often violent control over those around them. A good example is Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant/The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) which was adapted by Fassbinder from his plays. Wildwechsel/Jailbait (1973 is a bleak story of teenage angst, set in industrial northern Germany during the 1950s. Like in many other of his films, Fassbinder analyses lower middle class life with characters who, unable to articulate their feelings, bury them in inane phrases and violent acts. Fassbinder first gained international success with Angst essen Seele auf/Fear Eats the Soul (1974). which won the International Critics Prize at Cannes and was acclaimed by critics everywhere as one of 1974's best films. Fear Eats the Soul was loosely inspired by Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1955). It details the vicious response of family and community to a lonely aging white cleaning lady (Brigitte Mira) who marries a muscular, much younger black Moroccan immigrant worker. In these films, Fassbinder explored how deep-rooted prejudices about race, sex, sexual orientation, politics and class are inherent in society, while also tackling his trademark subject of the everyday fascism of family life and friendship. He learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theatre management. This versatility surfaced in his films where he served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final films, from around 1977 until his death, were more varied, with international actors sometimes used and the stock company disbanded, although the casts of some films were still filled with Fassbinder regulars. Despair (1978) is based upon the 1936 novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov, adapted by Tom Stoppard and featuring Dirk Bogarde. It was made on a budget of 6,000,000 DEM, exceeding the total cost of Fassbinder's first fifteen films. In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden/In a Year of Thirteen Moons (1978) is Fassbinder most personal and bleakest work. The film follows the tragic life of Elvira, a transsexual formerly known as Erwin. In the last few days before her suicide, she decides to visit some of the important people and places in her life. Fassbinder became increasingly more idiosyncratic in terms of plot, form and subject matter in films like his greatest success Die Ehe der Maria Braun/The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Die Dritte Generation/The Third Generation (1979) and Querelle (1982). Returning to his explorations of German history, Fassbinder finally realized his dream of adapting Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). A television series running more than 13 hours, it was the culmination of the director's inter-related themes of love, life, and power. Fassbinder took on the Nazi period with Lili Marleen (1981), an international co production, shot in English and with a large budget. The script was vaguely based on the autobiography of World War II singer Lale Andersen, The Sky Has Many Colors. He articulated his themes in the bourgeois milieu with his trilogy about women in post-fascist Germany: Die Ehe der Maria Braun/The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Lola (1981) and Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss/Veronika Voss (1982), for which he won the Golden Bear at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. Fassbinder did not live to see the premiere of his last film, Querelle (1982), based on Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest. The plot follows the title character, a handsome sailor (Brad Davis) who is a thief and hustler. Frustrated in a homoerotic relationship with his own brother, Querelle betrays those who love him and pays them even with murder.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder had sexual relationships with both men and women. He rarely kept his professional and personal life separate and was known to cast family, friends and lovers in his films. Early in his career, he had a lasting, but fractured relationship with Irm Hermann, a former secretary whom he forced to become an actress. Fassbinder usually cast her in unglamorous roles, most notably as the unfaithful wife in The Merchant of Four Seasons and the silent abused assistant in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. In 1969, while portraying the lead role in the T.V film Baal under the direction of Volker Schlöndorff, Fassbinder met Günther Kaufmann, a black Bavarian actor who had a minor role in the film. Despite the fact that Kaufmann was married and had two children, Fassbinder fell madly in love with him. The two began a turbulent affair which ultimately affected the production of Baal. Fassbinder tried to buy Kaufmann's love by casting him in major roles in his films and buying him expensive gifts. The relationship came to an end when Kaufmann became romantically involved with composer Peer Raben. After the end of their relationship, Fassbinder continued to cast Kaufmann in his films, albeit in minor roles. Kaufmann appeared in fourteen of Fassbinder's films, with the lead role in Whity (1971). Although he claimed to be opposed to matrimony as an institution, in 1970 Fassbinder married Ingrid Caven, an actress who regularly appeared in his films. Their wedding reception was recycled in the film he was making at that time, The American Soldier. Their relationship of mutual admiration survived the complete failure of their two-year marriage. In 1971, Fassbinder began a relationship with El Hedi ben Salem, a Moroccan Berber who had left his wife and five children the previous year, after meeting him at a gay bathhouse in Paris. Over the next three years, Salem appeared in several Fassbinder productions. His best known role was Ali in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974). Their three-year relationship was punctuated with jealousy, violence and heavy drug and alcohol use. Fassbinder finally ended the relationship in 1974 due to Salem's chronic alcoholism and tendency to become violent when he drank. Shortly after the breakup, Salem went to France where he was arrested and imprisoned. He hanged himself while in custody in 1977. News of Salem's suicide was kept from Fassbinder for years. He eventually found out about his former lover's death shortly before his own death in 1982 and dedicated his last film, Querelle, to Salem. Fassbinder's next lover was Armin Meier. Meier was a near illiterate former butcher who had spent his early years in an orphanage. He also appeared in several Fassbinder films in this period. After Fassbinder ended the relationship in 1978, Meier deliberately consumed four bottles of sleeping pills and alcohol in the kitchen of the apartment he and Fassbinder had previously shared. His body was found a week later. In the last four years of his life, his companion was Juliane Lorenz), the editor of his films during the last years of his life. On the night of 10 June 1982, Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. When he was found, an unfinished script for a film on Rosa Luxemburg was lying next to him. His death marked the end of New German Cinema.

 

Steve Cohn at IMDb: “Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Known for his trademark leather jacket and grungy appearance, Fassbinder cruised the bar scene by night, looking for sex and drugs, yet he maintained a flawless work ethic by day. Actors and actresses recount disturbing stories of his brutality toward them, yet his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social misfits and his hatred of institutionalized violence.”

 

Sources: Steve Cohn (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

German postcard by Verlag Hias Schaschko, München (Munich), no. 209. Photo: Fassbinder during the shooting of Händler der vier Jahreszeiten/The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971), then still called Der Obsthändler/The Grocer.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982) was a German film director, screenwriter, film producer and actor. Fassbinder was part of the New German Cinema movement. Starting at age 21, Fassbinder made over forty films and TV dramas in fifteen years, along with directing numerous plays for the theatre. He also acted in nineteen of his own films as well as for other directors. Fassbinder died in 1982 at the age of 37 from a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was born in Bavaria in the small town of Bad Wörishofen in 1945. The aftermath of World War II deeply marked his childhood and the lives of his bourgeois family. He was the only child of Liselotte Pempeit, a translator and Helmut Fassbinder, a doctor who worked out of the couple's apartment in Sendlinger Strasse, near Munich's red light district. In 1951, his parents divorced. Helmut moved to Cologne while Liselotte raised her son as a single parent in Munich. In order to support herself and her child, Pempeit took in boarders and found employment as a German to English translator. When she was working, she often sent her son to the cinema in order to concentrate. Later in life, Fassbinder claimed that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. As he was often left alone, he became independent and uncontrollable. He clashed with his mother's younger lover Siggi, who lived with them when Fassbinder was around eight or nine years old. He had a similar difficult relationship with the much older journalist Wolff Eder, who became his stepfather in 1959. Early in his adolescence, Fassbinder identified as homosexual. As a teen, Fassbinder was sent to boarding school. His time there was marred by his repeated escape attempts and he eventually left school before any final examinations. At the age of 15, he moved to Cologne and stayed with his father for a couple of years while attending night school. To earn money, he worked small jobs and helped his father who rented shabby apartments to immigrant workers. Around this time, Fassbinder began writing short plays and stories and poems. In 1963, aged eighteen, Fassbinder returned to Munich with plans to attend night school with the idea to eventually study theatrical science. Following his mother's advice, he took acting lessons and from 1964 to 1966 attended the Fridl-Leonhard Studio for actors in Munich. There, he met Hanna Schygulla, who would become one of his most important actors. During this time, he made his first 8mm films and took on small acting roles, assistant director, and sound man. During this period, he also wrote the tragic-comic play: Drops on Hot Stones. To gain entry to the Berlin Film School, Fassbinder submitted a film version of his play Parallels. He also entered several 8 mm films including This Night (now considered lost) but he was turned down for admission, as were the later film directors Werner Schroeter and Rosa von Praunheim. He returned to Munich where he continued with his writing. He also made two short films, Der Stadtstreicher,/The City Tramp (1965) and Das Kleine Chaos/The Little Chaos (1966). Shot in black and white, they were financed by Fassbinder's lover, Christoph Roser, an aspiring actor, in exchange for leading roles. Fassbinder acted in both of these films which also featured Irm Hermann. In the latter, his mother – under the name of Lilo Pempeit – played the first of many parts in her son's films.

 

In 1967 Rainer Werner Fassbinder joined the Munich Action-Theater, where he was active as an actor, director and script writer. After two months he became the company's leader. In April 1968 Fassbinder directed the premiere production of his play Katzelmacher, the story of a foreign worker from Greece who becomes the object of intense racial, sexual, and political hatred among a group of Bavarian slackers. A few weeks later, in May 1968, the Action-Theater was disbanded after its theatre was wrecked by one of its founders, jealous of Fassbinder's growing power within the group. It promptly reformed as the Anti-Theater under Fassbinder's direction. The troupe lived and performed together. This close-knit group of young actors included among them Fassbinder, Peer Raben, Harry Baer and Kurt Raab, who along with Hanna Schygulla and Irm Hermann became the most important members of his cinematic stock company. Working with the Anti-Theater, Fassbinder continued writing, directing and acting. In the space of eighteen months he directed twelve plays. Of these twelve plays, four were written by Fassbinder; he rewrote five others. The style of his stage directing closely resembled that of his early films, a mixture of choreographed movement and static poses, taking its cues not from the traditions of stage theatre, but from musicals, cabaret, films and the student protest movement. Fassbinder used his theatrical work as a springboard for making films. Shot in black and white with a shoestring budget in April 1969, Fassbinder's first feature-length film, Liebe ist kälter als der Tod/Love is Colder than Death (1969), was a deconstruction of the American gangster films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Fassbinder plays the lead role of Franz, a small-time pimp who is torn between his mistress Joanna, a prostitute (Hanna Schygulla), and his friend Bruno, a gangster sent after Franz by the syndicate that he has refused to join. His second film, Katzelmacher (1969), was received more positively, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. From then on, Fassbinder centered his efforts in his career as film director, but he maintained an intermittent foothold in the theatre until his death. Fassbinder’s first ten films (1969–1971) were an extension of his work in the theatre, shot usually with a static camera and with deliberately unnaturalistic dialogue. Wikipedia: “He was strongly influenced by Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect) and the French New Wave cinema, particularly the works of Jean-Luc Godard.” Fassbinder developed his rapid working methods early. Because he knew his actors and technicians so well, Fassbinder was able to complete as many as four or five films per year on extremely low budgets. This allowed him to compete successfully for the government grants needed to continue making films. Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, who started out making films, Fassbinder's stage background was evident throughout his work.

 

In 1971, Rainer Werner Fassbinder took an eight-month break from filmmaking. During this time, Fassbinder turned for a model to Hollywood melodrama, particularly the films German émigré Douglas Sirk made in Hollywood for Universal-International in the 1950s: All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession and Imitation of Life. Fassbinder was attracted to these films not only because of their entertainment value, but also for their depiction of various kinds of repression and exploitation. Fassbinder scored his first domestic commercial success with Händler der vier Jahreszeiten/The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971). Loneliness is a common theme in Fassbinder's work, together with the idea that power becomes a determining factor in all human relationships. His characters yearn for love, but seem condemned to exert an often violent control over those around them. A good example is Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant/The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) which was adapted by Fassbinder from his plays. Wildwechsel/Jailbait (1973 is a bleak story of teenage angst, set in industrial northern Germany during the 1950s. Like in many other of his films, Fassbinder analyses lower middle class life with characters who, unable to articulate their feelings, bury them in inane phrases and violent acts. Fassbinder first gained international success with Angst essen Seele auf/Fear Eats the Soul (1974). which won the International Critics Prize at Cannes and was acclaimed by critics everywhere as one of 1974's best films. Fear Eats the Soul was loosely inspired by Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (1955). It details the vicious response of family and community to a lonely aging white cleaning lady (Brigitte Mira) who marries a muscular, much younger black Moroccan immigrant worker. In these films, Fassbinder explored how deep-rooted prejudices about race, sex, sexual orientation, politics and class are inherent in society, while also tackling his trademark subject of the everyday fascism of family life and friendship. He learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theatre management. This versatility surfaced in his films where he served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final films, from around 1977 until his death, were more varied, with international actors sometimes used and the stock company disbanded, although the casts of some films were still filled with Fassbinder regulars. Despair (1978) is based upon the 1936 novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov, adapted by Tom Stoppard and featuring Dirk Bogarde. It was made on a budget of 6,000,000 DEM, exceeding the total cost of Fassbinder's first fifteen films. In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden/In a Year of Thirteen Moons (1978) is Fassbinder most personal and bleakest work. The film follows the tragic life of Elvira, a transsexual formerly known as Erwin. In the last few days before her suicide, she decides to visit some of the important people and places in her life. Fassbinder became increasingly more idiosyncratic in terms of plot, form and subject matter in films like his greatest success Die Ehe der Maria Braun/The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Die Dritte Generation/The Third Generation (1979) and Querelle (1982). Returning to his explorations of German history, Fassbinder finally realized his dream of adapting Alfred Döblin's 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). A television series running more than 13 hours, it was the culmination of the director's inter-related themes of love, life, and power. Fassbinder took on the Nazi period with Lili Marleen (1981), an international co production, shot in English and with a large budget. The script was vaguely based on the autobiography of World War II singer Lale Andersen, The Sky Has Many Colors. He articulated his themes in the bourgeois milieu with his trilogy about women in post-fascist Germany: Die Ehe der Maria Braun/The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Lola (1981) and Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss/Veronika Voss (1982), for which he won the Golden Bear at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. Fassbinder did not live to see the premiere of his last film, Querelle (1982), based on Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest. The plot follows the title character, a handsome sailor (Brad Davis) who is a thief and hustler. Frustrated in a homoerotic relationship with his own brother, Querelle betrays those who love him and pays them even with murder.

 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder had sexual relationships with both men and women. He rarely kept his professional and personal life separate and was known to cast family, friends and lovers in his films. Early in his career, he had a lasting, but fractured relationship with Irm Hermann, a former secretary whom he forced to become an actress. Fassbinder usually cast her in unglamorous roles, most notably as the unfaithful wife in The Merchant of Four Seasons and the silent abused assistant in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. In 1969, while portraying the lead role in the T.V film Baal under the direction of Volker Schlöndorff, Fassbinder met Günther Kaufmann, a black Bavarian actor who had a minor role in the film. Despite the fact that Kaufmann was married and had two children, Fassbinder fell madly in love with him. The two began a turbulent affair which ultimately affected the production of Baal. Fassbinder tried to buy Kaufmann's love by casting him in major roles in his films and buying him expensive gifts. The relationship came to an end when Kaufmann became romantically involved with composer Peer Raben. After the end of their relationship, Fassbinder continued to cast Kaufmann in his films, albeit in minor roles. Kaufmann appeared in fourteen of Fassbinder's films, with the lead role in Whity (1971). Although he claimed to be opposed to matrimony as an institution, in 1970 Fassbinder married Ingrid Caven, an actress who regularly appeared in his films. Their wedding reception was recycled in the film he was making at that time, The American Soldier. Their relationship of mutual admiration survived the complete failure of their two-year marriage. In 1971, Fassbinder began a relationship with El Hedi ben Salem, a Moroccan Berber who had left his wife and five children the previous year, after meeting him at a gay bathhouse in Paris. Over the next three years, Salem appeared in several Fassbinder productions. His best known role was Ali in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974). Their three-year relationship was punctuated with jealousy, violence and heavy drug and alcohol use. Fassbinder finally ended the relationship in 1974 due to Salem's chronic alcoholism and tendency to become violent when he drank. Shortly after the breakup, Salem went to France where he was arrested and imprisoned. He hanged himself while in custody in 1977. News of Salem's suicide was kept from Fassbinder for years. He eventually found out about his former lover's death shortly before his own death in 1982 and dedicated his last film, Querelle, to Salem. Fassbinder's next lover was Armin Meier. Meier was a near illiterate former butcher who had spent his early years in an orphanage. He also appeared in several Fassbinder films in this period. After Fassbinder ended the relationship in 1978, Meier deliberately consumed four bottles of sleeping pills and alcohol in the kitchen of the apartment he and Fassbinder had previously shared. His body was found a week later. In the last four years of his life, his companion was Juliane Lorenz), the editor of his films during the last years of his life. On the night of 10 June 1982, Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. When he was found, an unfinished script for a film on Rosa Luxemburg was lying next to him. His death marked the end of New German Cinema.

 

Steve Cohn at IMDb: “Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Known for his trademark leather jacket and grungy appearance, Fassbinder cruised the bar scene by night, looking for sex and drugs, yet he maintained a flawless work ethic by day. Actors and actresses recount disturbing stories of his brutality toward them, yet his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social misfits and his hatred of institutionalized violence.”

 

Sources: Steve Cohn (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Russian postcard.

 

George Clooney (1961) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer with more than thirty film awards and nominations to his name. Clooney gained wide recognition in his role as Dr. Doug Ross on the medical TV drama ER (1994-1999). In the cinema, he had his breakthrough roles in From Dusk till Dawn (1996), and the crime comedy Out of Sight (1998), in which he first worked with director Steven Soderbergh. In 2001 followed their biggest commercial success with the blockbuster Ocean's Eleven, the first of what became a trilogy. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Syriana (2005). He also won an Oscar for best picture for the thriller Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012) as a producer. He also received Oscar nominations for his roles in the conspiracy thriller Michael Clayton (2007) and The Descendants (2011), and a European Film Award for Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), which he also wrote and directed.

 

George Timothy Clooney was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1961. Clooney is the son of television personality Nicholas Joseph "Nick" Clooney and Nina Bruce Warren. He has an older sister, Ada Zeidler. His father is the brother of singer-actress Rosemary Clooney, who was married to film star José Ferrer, and George is the cousin of their son, actor Miguel Ferrer. At a young age, Clooney learned how to handle the camera. His father often took his family to public appearances and at the age of five George held the text boards for his father Nick, then a television presenter in Illinois, on a quiz show. It looked like Clooney would follow in his father's footsteps, but that changed when his uncle José Ferrer, husband of his aunt Rosemary, came to Kentucky to make a film about horse racing with his sons Miguel and Rafael. In it, Clooney also got a role. The film And They're Off was never released, but Clooney had found his calling. At Augusta High School, Clooney was a gifted baseball player, but during a tryout with the Cincinnati Reds, he proved not good enough to turn pro. Clooney attended Northern Kentucky University from 1979 to 1981, where he studied radio journalism. After he broke off his studies, he held a few random jobs. His father, knowing how difficult it is to succeed as an actor, tried in vain to change his mind. In the summer of 1982, the determined Clooney spent harvesting tobacco in order to earn enough money to go to Hollywood. In California, he was allowed to live with his aunt Rosemary, although the latter did not wholeheartedly support his aspirations either. For several months, he was her chauffeur on her tour with singers like Martha Raye. After this, Clooney tried to get a job as an actor, but he was constantly rejected, which greatly affected his mood. Eventually, Rosemary felt compelled to ask her cousin to leave. Clooney moved in with a friend, rookie actor Tom Matthews. He did odd jobs on the sets of commercials and took acting classes at The Beverly Hills Playhouse. Under the guidance of Milton Katselas, he mastered the craft and, as a result of a school project, found an impresario. In the following years, he played several bigger and smaller roles, mostly in moderately received series, never-released films and B-movies like Return of the Killer Tomatoes! (John De Bello, 1988). He was not dissatisfied; he was doing what he loved most: acting and developing himself. Clooney's only longer-lasting role during this period was in the sitcom Roseanne. In it, he played Booker Brooks, Roseanne's supervisor and temporary boyfriend of her sister, in the first season (1989).

 

George Clooney's breakthrough came in 1994, through his role as Dr Douglas Ross in the hospital series ER (Emergency Room, 1994-1999). His popularity in this gave his film career a major boost. This series, which depicted everyday life in a Chicago teaching hospital in a realistic and dramatic manner and ran from 1994 to 1999, became a major international television success. Clooney rose to become one of the most famous television actors and was especially popular with female viewers. He portrayed the role in 109 episodes from 1994 to 1999 and made a guest appearance in the series in 2009. The Clooneys' sense of family was also expressed in guest appearances by Rosemary Clooney and his cousin Miguel Ferrer. Now film producers in Hollywood could no longer pass him over. From 1996, the actor established himself as a film star; he appeared in a wide variety of roles. He had great success with the leading role in the Robert Rodriguez-directed film From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), which soon achieved cult status. He also starred alongside Michelle Pfeiffer in the romantic comedy One Fine Day (Michael Hoffmann, 1996). His final breakthrough came in the role of Batman in the superhero film Batman & Robin (Joel Schumacher, 1997) with Chris O'Donnell. In the same year, he was voted "Sexiest Man Alive" by People Magazine. Clooney demonstrated a preference for whimsical roles such as in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) by the Coen brothers. However, he also took leading roles in commercially oriented films such as The Peacemaker (Mimi Leder, 1997) with Nicole Kidman, which featured him as an action hero. The thriller comedy Out of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998) with Jennifer Lopez and the war films The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) and Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999) with Mark Wahlberg, all received excellent reviews and did well at the box-office.

 

George Clooney received $20,000,000 for the blockbuster Ocean's Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001), a remake of the heist comedy Ocean's 11 (Lewis Milestone, 1960), which also starred Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts. Later, he also went on to work as a producer, screenwriter and director. His directorial debut was the spy drama Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney, 2002). He also directed the multi-award-winning historical drama Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005), for which he also was a co-screenwriter and one of the actors. Ocean's Eleven drew two sequels, Ocean’s Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (Steven Soderbergh, 2007), in which Clooney also starred. Important in this context was his friendship with director Steven Soderbergh, with whom he founded the company Section Eight. In 2006, it was announced that the company was wound up. Soon after, Clooney founded the production company Smoke House, with close friend Grant Heslov. Clooney appeared in several Coen Brothers films, including Burn After Reading (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, 2008) with Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt, and Hail, Caesar! (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, 2016). He earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor for the legal thriller Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, 2007), the comedy-dramas Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, 2009) and The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011). A huge box office hit was the Science Fiction thriller Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013) in which he co-starred with Sandra Bullock and which he also co-wrote. Clooney's directed the political drama The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011), in which he also contributed to the screenplay and took on one of the leading roles. The film adaptation of Beau Willimon's play Farragut North focuses on a young idealistic press secretary (played by Ryan Gosling) who, as an employee of a presidential candidate (Clooney), is confronted with fraud and corruption in the Ohio primaries. His other productions as a director include the war film The Monuments Men (George Clooney, 2014), the crime drama Suburbicon (George Clooney, 2017), two episodes of the series Catch-22 (2019) and the Science-Fiction film The Midnight Sky (George Clooney, 2020). In 1989, George Clooney married actress Talia Balsam, from whom he divorced again in 1993. Clooney had several relationships in the past including with Lisa Snowdon (2000-2005), Sarah Larson (2007-2008), Elisabetta Canalis (2009-2011) and Stacy Keibler (2011-2013). Clooney vowed that he would never marry again. However, in 2014, Clooney married British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin; they married in law two days later. They became parents to twins, a daughter and a son, in 2017. This year George Clooney reunited with Julia Roberts in the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise (Ol Parker, 2022), for which they also served as executive producers.

 

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 194.

 

Blonde French actress and singer Catherine Spaak (1945) worked in France, Spain, Germany and Hollywood, but she spent most of her career in Italy. There she started as a Lolita-like vamp in films of the early 1960s, made records and became a teenage star. She played in several classic Italian comedies and was a popular TV host. Spaak is still active on TV, writes books and has now appeared in some 100 films.

 

Catherine Spaak was born at Boulogne-Billancourt, France in 1945. Her father was the Belgian critic and screenwriter Charles Spaak, her mother the actress Claudie Clèves and her sister is actress-photographer Agnès Spaak. As a teenager, Catherine started her career with small roles in French films like the short L’hiver/The winter (Jacques Gautier, 1959) and the thriller Le Trou/Nightwatch (Jacques Becker, 1960). When she moved to Italy later that year, her father introduced her to film director Alberto Lattuada, who cast her in his film I dolci inganni/Sweet Deceptions (Alberto Lattuada, 1960) . That coming of age film made her a star in Italy. She played a young Roman girl in love, who spends the day observing other lovers' behaviors and considering whether she is ready to jump. J.C. Mohsen at IMDb: “This film's unpredictability is refreshing. Whether written or filmed, coming-of-age stories often fail to surprise or intrigue the audience. In I Dolci Inganni, most characters seem at first to be crazily entertaining walking clichés, but they later astonish the audience by revealing their depth and their inner struggles.” From age 15 to 18, Spaak was the lead actress in a dozen films, including La voglia matta/Crazy Desire (Luciano Salce, 1961) opposite Ugo Tognazzi, the classic comedy Il sorpasso/The Easy Life (Dino Risi, 1962) with Vittorio Gassman, La parmigiana/The Girl from Parma (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1963) with Nino Manfredi, and the Alberto Moravia adaptation La noia/The Empty Canvas (Damiano Damiani, 1963) with Horst Buchholz and Bette Davis. For her performance in La noia she was awarded in 1964 the David di Donatello, the Italian Oscar. Spaak often played the Lolita-type who seduced men, and the Italian scandal press wrote about herself in that way. In their articles, journalists always included that she was the niece of the Belgian prime minister, Paul-Henri Spaak.

 

Catherine Spaak’s screen success, combined with her love of singing and guitar playing, led to an offer of the Ricordi label in 1962. She recorded covers of Françoise Hardy originals and songs in Hardy’s style. Ready steady girls!, the site on Europe’s fab female singers of the 1960s in their bio: “Perdono – written by Gino Paoli (who had worked with stars such as Mina) and arranged by Ennio Morricone – was issued as her debut single and swiftly made the Italian top 20. Vocally, Catherine drew comparisons with France’s newest star, Françoise Hardy, so Ricordi opted to have their young signing record a couple of Hardy songs for the Italian market. Issued in 1963, the bilingual Tous les garçons et les filles (Quelli della mia età) – backed with J’ai jeté mon coeur (Ho scherzato con il cuore) – gave Hardy’s original a run for its money, reaching number seven in September 1963 and confirming Catherine as a new star.” In 1964, she returned to France to appear in La Ronde (Roger Vadim, 1964) and the war drama Week-end à Zuydcoote/Weekend at Dunkirk (Henri Verneuil, 1964) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Back in Italy she played in some more highlights of the commedia all'italiana such as L'armata Brancaleone/Brancaleone's Army (Mario Monicelli, 1965) featuring Vittorio Gassman, and Made in Italy (Nanni Loy, 1965). Other notable appearances include L'uomo dei cinque palloni/Break up (Marco Ferreri, 1965) starring Marcello Mastroianni, and La matriarca/The Libertine (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1968) with Jean-Louis Trintignant. In 1967 she went to Hollywood to play Rod Taylor’s love interest in Hotel (Richard Quine, 1967), based on the novel by Arthur Hailey. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Once she came to Hollywood, however, Spaak was packaged and promoted as just another foreign starlet, interchangeable with Claudia Cardinale, Camilla Sparv, Elke Sommer and the rest of the batch.” The result was not a success and soon she was back in Italy. Two years later she did a cameo in another Hollywood production, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (Mel Stuart, 1969).

 

Seeking a new direction, Catherine Spaak joined fellow singer Johnny Dorelli in the operetta La vedova allegra in 1968. The pair went on to enjoy a lasting relationship, both personally and professionally. They enjoyed success as a duo with Song sung blue (1972) and Una serata insieme a te (1973). During the early 1970s, she continued to appear in many Italian films, but they became less interesting. She starred with James Franciscus in the giallo Il gatto a nove code/The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971). In France she made the crime film Un meurtre est un meurtre/A Murder Is a Murder... Is a Murder (Étienne Périer, 1972) with Jean-Claude Brialy. In the American-Italian Western Take a Hard Ride (Antonio Margheriti, 1975), she co-starred with Jim Brown and Lee van Cleef. From then on, her film appearances became more incidental. In 1978, she had success on stage in the musical Cyrano, and would continue to play on stage. She hosted several Italian TV shows such as Forum (1985-1988) and Harem (1989-2002), and wrote articles for newspaper Il corriere della sera and Italian magazines. She also published six books in Italian, such as 26 Donne/26 women (1984), Un cuore perso/A lost heart (1996), Lui/He (2006) and L’amore blu/Blue Love (2011). Her later films include the sex comedy anthology Sunday Lovers (Bryan Forbes, Edouard Molinaro, Dino Risi, Gene Wilder, 1980) as Ugo Tognazzi’s psychoanalyst, Scandalo Segreto/Secret Scandal (Monica Vitti, 1989) and Tandem (Lucio Pellegrini, 2000) starring the comic duo Luca & Paolo. More recently she was seen in the film Alice (Oreste Crisostomi, 2009), the BBC mini-series Zen (John Alexander, Jon Jones, Christopher Menaul, 2011) starring Rufus Sewell as detective Aurelio Zen and Spaak as his Mamma, and the film I più' grandi di tutti/The greatest of all (Carlo Virzì, 2012). Catherine Spaak was married to actor and producer Fabrizio Capucci (1963-1971) and Italian singer-actor Johnny Dorelli (1972-1979). Her present husband is actor Orso Maria Guerrini. With Capucci, she has a daughter, stage actress Sabrina Capucci (1963), and with Dorelli a son, Gabriele Dorelli.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), CatherineSpaak.eu, Ready Steady Go!, Wikipedia (Italian, French, German and English) and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: Catherine Spaak in Made in Italy (Nanni Loy, 1965).

 

Blonde French actress and singer Catherine Spaak (1945) worked in France, Spain, Germany and Hollywood, but she spent most of her career in Italy. There she started as a Lolita-like vamp in films of the early 1960s, made records and became a teenage star. She played in several classic Italian comedies and was a popular TV host. Spaak is still active on TV, writes books and has now appeared in some 100 films.

 

Catherine Spaak was born at Boulogne-Billancourt, France in 1945. Her father was the Belgian critic and screenwriter Charles Spaak, her mother the actress Claudie Clèves and her sister is actress-photographer Agnès Spaak. As a teenager, Catherine started her career with small roles in French films like the short L’hiver/The winter (Jacques Gautier, 1959) and the thriller Le Trou/Nightwatch (Jacques Becker, 1960). When she moved to Italy later that year, her father introduced her to film director Alberto Lattuada, who cast her in his film I dolci inganni/Sweet Deceptions (Alberto Lattuada, 1960) . That coming of age film made her a star in Italy. She played a young Roman girl in love, who spends the day observing other lovers' behaviors and considering whether she is ready to jump. J.C. Mohsen at IMDb: “This film's unpredictability is refreshing. Whether written or filmed, coming-of-age stories often fail to surprise or intrigue the audience. In I Dolci Inganni, most characters seem at first to be crazily entertaining walking clichés, but they later astonish the audience by revealing their depth and their inner struggles.” From age 15 to 18, Spaak was the lead actress in a dozen films, including La voglia matta/Crazy Desire (Luciano Salce, 1961) opposite Ugo Tognazzi, the classic comedy Il sorpasso/The Easy Life (Dino Risi, 1962) with Vittorio Gassman, La parmigiana/The Girl from Parma (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1963) with Nino Manfredi, and the Alberto Moravia adaptation La noia/The Empty Canvas (Damiano Damiani, 1963) with Horst Buchholz and Bette Davis. For her performance in La noia she was awarded in 1964 the David di Donatello, the Italian Oscar. Spaak often played the Lolita-type who seduced men, and the Italian scandal press wrote about herself in that way. In their articles, journalists always included that she was the niece of the Belgian prime minister, Paul-Henri Spaak.

 

Catherine Spaak’s screen success, combined with her love of singing and guitar playing, led to an offer of the Ricordi label in 1962. She recorded covers of Françoise Hardy originals and songs in Hardy’s style. Ready steady girls!, the site on Europe’s fab female singers of the 1960s in their bio: “Perdono – written by Gino Paoli (who had worked with stars such as Mina) and arranged by Ennio Morricone – was issued as her debut single and swiftly made the Italian top 20. Vocally, Catherine drew comparisons with France’s newest star, Françoise Hardy, so Ricordi opted to have their young signing record a couple of Hardy songs for the Italian market. Issued in 1963, the bilingual Tous les garçons et les filles (Quelli della mia età) – backed with J’ai jeté mon coeur (Ho scherzato con il cuore) – gave Hardy’s original a run for its money, reaching number seven in September 1963 and confirming Catherine as a new star.” In 1964, she returned to France to appear in La Ronde (Roger Vadim, 1964) and the war drama Week-end à Zuydcoote/Weekend at Dunkirk (Henri Verneuil, 1964) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Back in Italy she played in some more highlights of the commedia all'italiana such as L'armata Brancaleone/Brancaleone's Army (Mario Monicelli, 1965) featuring Vittorio Gassman, and Made in Italy (Nanni Loy, 1965). Other notable appearances include L'uomo dei cinque palloni/Break up (Marco Ferreri, 1965) starring Marcello Mastroianni, and La matriarca/The Libertine (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1968) with Jean-Louis Trintignant. In 1967 she went to Hollywood to play Rod Taylor’s love interest in Hotel (Richard Quine, 1967), based on the novel by Arthur Hailey. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Once she came to Hollywood, however, Spaak was packaged and promoted as just another foreign starlet, interchangeable with Claudia Cardinale, Camilla Sparv, Elke Sommer and the rest of the batch.” The result was not a success and soon she was back in Italy. Two years later she did a cameo in another Hollywood production, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (Mel Stuart, 1969).

 

Seeking a new direction, Catherine Spaak joined fellow singer Johnny Dorelli in the operetta La vedova allegra in 1968. The pair went on to enjoy a lasting relationship, both personally and professionally. They enjoyed success as a duo with Song sung blue (1972) and Una serata insieme a te (1973). During the early 1970s, she continued to appear in many Italian films, but they became less interesting. She starred with James Franciscus in the giallo Il gatto a nove code/The Cat o' Nine Tails (Dario Argento, 1971). In France she made the crime film Un meurtre est un meurtre/A Murder Is a Murder... Is a Murder (Étienne Périer, 1972) with Jean-Claude Brialy. In the American-Italian Western Take a Hard Ride (Antonio Margheriti, 1975), she co-starred with Jim Brown and Lee van Cleef. From then on, her film appearances became more incidental. In 1978, she had success on stage in the musical Cyrano, and would continue to play on stage. She hosted several Italian TV shows such as Forum (1985-1988) and Harem (1989-2002), and wrote articles for newspaper Il corriere della sera and Italian magazines. She also published six books in Italian, such as 26 Donne/26 women (1984), Un cuore perso/A lost heart (1996), Lui/He (2006) and L’amore blu/Blue Love (2011). Her later films include the sex comedy anthology Sunday Lovers (Bryan Forbes, Edouard Molinaro, Dino Risi, Gene Wilder, 1980) as Ugo Tognazzi’s psychoanalyst, Scandalo Segreto/Secret Scandal (Monica Vitti, 1989) and Tandem (Lucio Pellegrini, 2000) starring the comic duo Luca & Paolo. More recently she was seen in the film Alice (Oreste Crisostomi, 2009), the BBC mini-series Zen (John Alexander, Jon Jones, Christopher Menaul, 2011) starring Rufus Sewell as detective Aurelio Zen and Spaak as his Mamma, and the film I più' grandi di tutti/The greatest of all (Carlo Virzì, 2012). Catherine Spaak was married to actor and producer Fabrizio Capucci (1963-1971) and Italian singer-actor Johnny Dorelli (1972-1979). Her present husband is actor Orso Maria Guerrini. With Capucci, she has a daughter, stage actress Sabrina Capucci (1963), and with Dorelli a son, Gabriele Dorelli.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), CatherineSpaak.eu, Ready Steady Go!, Wikipedia (Italian, French, German and English) and IMDb.

 

And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 309. Image: French film poster for 37°2 le matin/Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986).

 

On 13 January 2022, the French director, screenwriter and producer Jean-Jacques Beineix (1946) died in Paris. His first feature film, the psychological thriller Diva (1980), about a young postman obsessed with an opera diva, received four Césars. An even bigger success was his third film, 37°2 le matin/Betty Blue (1986). The erotic drama was nominated for the best foreign-language film at the Oscars and became the eighth highest-grossing film of the year in France. Beineix, who suffered from leukaemia was 75. In his memory, EFSP will present a post on his best-known film, the sensational 37°2 le matin/Betty Blue (1986), tomorrow.

 

Jean-Jacques Beineix, born in Paris in 1946, trained as a doctor but began his career as Jean Becker's assistant director on the popular French TV series Les Saintes chéries (1964-1967). In 1970, he worked for director Claude Berri and, the following year, for Claude Zidi. In 1977, Beineix directed his first short film, Le Chien de M. Michel, which won first prize at the Trouville Festival. In 1980, Beineix directed his first feature film, Diva, starring Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez and Frédéric Andréi, which was a big commercial success and received four Césars. The film was also entered in the 12th Moscow International Film Festival. His second feature was the drama La Lune dans le caniveau/Moon in the Gutter (1983). It featured two big stars, Gérard Depardieu and Nastassia Kinski, was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1983 Cannes Festival and nominated for three Césars in 1984. However, it would win only one César in the Best Production Design category. The Moon in the Gutter was not well received by critics or audiences and failed at the box office with only 625,000 admissions in France. In 1984 Jean-Jacques Beineix created his own production company, Cargo Films, in order to retain his artistic independence. The first production was 37°2 le matin/Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986) in which Béatrice Dalle - in her debut film - and Jean-Hugues Anglade starred. The erotic psychological drama, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Philippe Djian, was the eighth highest-grossing film of the year in France. In 1987, it was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, in the same category as that year’s British Academy Film Awards and Golden Globes. It also received the Best Poster Award, one of nine Césars for which it was nominated. Beineix became executive producer of all the Cargo projects, feature films and documentaries. He directed Roselyne et les lions (1989), IP5: L'île aux pachydermes (1992), and Mortel Transfert (2001). Cargo produced documentaries on a wide variety of themes from science to art, to women’s rights and social problems. Several works have been made in partnership with national scientific organizations such as CNES and CNRS. Beineix directed e.g. a corporate film for CNRS, 2 infinities (L2i) (2008), which was shown at the 2008 New York Imagine Science film festival. In late 2006, Beineix published the first volume of his autobiography, 'Les Chantiers de la gloire' (in French only). Jean Jacques Beineix passed away at home in Paris after a long illness in 2022, at the age of 75. His work is often seen as a prime example of the so-called 'Cinéma du look'. Film critic Ginette Vincendeau has defined the films made by Beineix, Luc Besson and Léos Carax as "youth-oriented films with high production values.... The look of the Cinéma du look refers to the films' high investment in non-naturalistic, self-conscious aesthetics, notably intense colours and lighting effects. Their spectacular (studio-based) and technically brilliant mise-en-scène is usually put to the service of romantic plots." Besson en Beineix were much maligned by film critics during the 1980s, while Carax was much admired. In 2020, Beineix said that he “never got over” being booed at the premiere of La Lune dans le caniveau/Moon in the Gutter at the Cannes film festival in 1983. “The hurt is there. The fact that I am finished today started there”.

 

There are two versions of 37° 2 le matin (37.2°C (98.6°F) in the morning): the original version of around two hours and the director's cut which is over three hours long and contains considerably more scenes. Beineix's film depicts the obsessive love of a young couple Betty and Zorg. Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade)is a thirtysomething aspiring writer, who is making a quiet living as a handyman for a community of beach houses in the seaside resort at Gruissan on France's Mediterranean coast. He meets 19-year-old Betty (Béatrice Dalle), who is as beautiful as she is wild and unpredictable. The two begin a passionate affair and live in his borrowed shack on the beach. Following a row with him where she tears apart and smashes up the house, she finds the manuscript of his first novel; she reads it in one long sitting and decides he is a genius. However, after another argument with his boss, she empties the shack and burns it down. The film is divided into several "chapters" in which Zorg searches for a place in France for himself and Betty, where they repeatedly try to live and work. The two decamp to the outskirts of Paris, where her friend Lisa (Consuelo de Haviland) has a small hotel. Betty laboriously types out Zorg's novel and submits it to various publishers. They meet Lisa's new boyfriend Eddy (Gérard Darmon), and the four have many fun times, often fuelled by alcohol. They find work in Eddy's pizzeria, but a fight erupts in which Betty stabs a customer with a fork. Zorg tries to slap her back to her senses. Though Zorg hides the rejection letters, Betty finds one and, going to the publisher's house, slashes his face. Zorg induces him to drop charges by threatening him with violence, saying she is the only good thing in his life and she is all he has. But Betty's violent mood swings are a concern. Eddy's mother dies and the friends go to the funeral in Marvejols. There, Eddy asks Zorg and Betty if they will live in the dead woman's house and look after her piano shop. Zorg enjoys the quiet provincial life and makes friends with the grocer Bob (Jacques Mathou), his sex-starved wife Annie (Clémentine Célarié), and various offbeat characters. Betty's wild manners start to get out of control and Zorg sees the woman he loves slowly going insane. After an irritating comment from Zorg, she punches out a window with her bare hand and goes on a screaming flight through the town. Happiness seems on the horizon when a home test suggests Betty is pregnant. The film title 37° 2 le matin/37.2 degrees in the morning alludes to increased body temperature as a possible sign of pregnancy. When a lab test is negative, Betty sinks into depression and tells him she is hearing voices talking to her in her head. Zorg, masquerading as a woman, robs an armoured cash collection van delivery headquarters, holding the guards at gunpoint, and tying them up. He attempts to use the money to buy Betty's happiness, but she fails to respond and enacts yet another prosecutable offence by luring a small boy away from his mother and taking him to a toy store. Zorg finds her and they both flee from the authorities as they rush to rescue the boy. One day, Zorg comes home to find blood all over the place and Betty is gone. Bob tells him she has gouged out an eye and is in the hospital. Rushing there, Zorg finds her under heavy sedation and is told to come back the next day. Going home, he receives a phone call from a publisher accepting his manuscript. On his next visit to the hospital, he finds Betty restrained and catatonic. He becomes agitated and a doctor tells him she will need prolonged treatment and may never recover her sanity. Zorg reacts by blaming her illness on the medication being administered and physically attacks the doctor. He is forcefully ejected from the hospital after a violent struggle with three orderlies. Returning in disguise, he whispers his farewells and smothers Betty with a pillow. Going home, he sits down to continue his current book. The action of the film is portrayed from Zorg's point of view and often commented on off-screen. Bound together by loneliness, a bleak existence and a strong sexual attraction, Betty and Zorg create a world in which only the two of them have a place. Other characters only appear in passing. The focus is on the two main characters and their attempt to escape their own desolation with the help of the other.

 

Sources: Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Allan Nixon and Beverly Michaels in Pick Up (USA 1951) - first in a new series of works of art inspired by lovers in Hollywood films of the Golden Age of Hollywood by expressionist artist Stephen B. Whatley.

 

The charcoal drawing was inspired by an original 1951 publicity still for the low budget but powerful drama produced by Czech actor & director Hugo Haas (1901-1968), who also starred in the picture.

 

Beverly Michaels ( USA 1928-2007) was a striking blonde film actress on screen from 1949-1956; whom Hugo Haas also starred in his film The Girl On The Bridge ( USA 1951). Often grouped by film historians with other Hollywood blondes of the 1950s, suggestively reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe - including Jayne Mansfield, Cleo Moore, Barbara Nichols & Mamie Van Doren - she was an actress capable of great depth and mood; but retired in the 1950s to devote her life to over 30 years of marriage to screenwriter and director Russell Rouse (1913-1987).

 

Tall, burly and solidly built Allan Nixon (USA 1915-1995) appeared in films from 1941-1963, mainly in small roles in low budget pictures - including the surreal science fiction film, Mesa of Lost Women (USA 1953). He was married to blonde actress Marie Wilson ( USA 1916-1972) from 1942-1950; and later became a novelist.

 

Charcoal on paper

23.4 x 16.5in/59 x 42cm

www.stephenbwhatley.com

  

French postcard. Photo: Nicolas Tikhomiroff / Magnum Photos. Caption: Federico Fellini in great discussion during the filming of his segment of Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli, 1962), the Roman studios of Cinecitta in 1961.

 

Italian film director and screenwriter Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He was known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d'Or for La Dolce Vita (1960), was nominated for twelve Academy Awards. He won an Oscar for La Strada (1954), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973).

 

Federico Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini in the Emilia-Romagna region. His native Rimini and characters there like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would later be remembered in several of his films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La dolce vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. Fellini's first passion was the theater, and at the age of 12 he briefly ran away from home to join the circus, later entering college solely to avoid being drafted. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real life role of journalist. Additionally, Fellini worked as an artist on fumetti (Italy's illustrated magazines), and occasionally even made his living as a caricaturist at Roman restaurants. He caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds 'Cico and Pallina'. Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became Fellini's real life wife in 1943. They remained together until his death. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1939 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Fabrizi recruited Fellini to supply stories and ideas for his performances; between 1939 and 1944. The two men worked in tandem on a number of largely forgotten comedies, among them No Me Lo Dire, Quarta Pagina, and Campo de Fiori. When young director Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Roma città aperta (Roberto Rosselini, 1945), he made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisà (Roberto Rosselini, 1946). Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "On that film he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work."

 

Federico Fellini collaborated on films by Pietro Germi (including In Nomine Della Legge and Il Cammino Della Speranza) and Alberto Lattuda (Il Delitto di Giovanni Episcopo and Il Mulino del Po), among others. In 1948, Fellini completed the screenplay for Il Miracolo, the second and longer section of Rossellini's two-part effort Amore. Here Fellini's utterly original worldview first began to truly take shape in the form of archetypal characters (a simple-minded peasant girl and her male counterpart, a kind of holy simpleton), recurring motifs (show business, parties, the sea), and an ambiguous relationship with religion and spirituality. He further explored this in his script for Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Roberto Rosselini, 1949). In 1950, Fellini made his first attempt at directing one of his own screenplays (with help of Alberto Lattuda), Luci del Varieta (Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattudada, 1950), which further developed his fusion of neorealism with the atmosphere of surrealism. Fellini then directed the romantic satire Lo Sciecco Bianc. The film marked his first work with composer Nino Rota. Fellini's initial masterpiece, I Vitteloni, followed in 1953. The first of his features to receive international distribution, it later won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the first of many similar honours . The brilliant La Strada followed in 1954, also garnering the Silver Lion as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. After helming Il Bidone (1955), Fellini and a group of screenwriters (including a young Pier Paolo Pasolini) began work on Le Notti di Cabiria (1956), which also won an Oscar. Then he mounted La Dolce Vita (1960), the first of his pictures to star actor Marcello Mastroianni. He would become Fellini's cinematic alter ego over the course of several subsequent collaborations, its portrait of sex and death in Rome's high society created a tremendous scandal at its Milan premiere, where the audience booed, insulted, and spat on the director. Regardless, La Dolce Vita won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and remains a landmark in cinematic history.

 

During the 1960s, many films by Federico Fellini were influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his ideas on the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious.The women who had both attracted and frightened him in his youth and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII inspired Fellini's dreams. In the 1960s, he started to record them in notebooks and life and dreams became raw material for such films as 8½ (1963) or Fellini - Satyricon (1969). With 1965's Giulietta Degli Spiriti, Fellini worked for the first time in color. After experimenting with LSD under the supervision of doctors, he began scripting Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna. Over a year of pre-production followed, hampered by difficulties with producers, actors, and even a jury trial. Finally on April 10th, 1967, Fellini suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting in a month-long nursing home stay. Ultimately, he gave up on ever bringing Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna to the screen, and his new producer, Alberto Grimaldi, was forced to buy out former producer Dino De Laurentis for close to half a billion liras.As the decade drew to a close, Fellini returned to work with a vengeance, first resurfacing with Toby Dammitt, a short feature for the collaborative film Tre Passi nel Delirio. Turning to television, he helmed Fellini: A Director's Notebook, a one-hour special for NBC, followed by the feature effort Fellini Satyricon. I Clown followed in 1970, with Roma bowing in 1972. Amarcord, a childhood reminiscence, won a fourth Academy Award in 1974. It proved to be his final international success. He later shot Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976), Prova d'Orchestra (1979) and La Citta delle Donne (1980), which were less successful. Fellini turned to publishing with Fare un Film, an anthology of notes about his life and work. E la Nave Va (1983) and Ginger e Fred (1985) followed, but by the time of L'Intervista (1987), he was facing considerable difficulty finding financing for his projects. His last completed film was La Voce Della Luna (1989). In the early 1990s, Fellini helmed a handful of television commercials, and in 1993 he won his fifth Academy Award for a lifetime of service to the film industry. In 1993, Federico Fellini died the day after his 50th wedding anniversary. He was 73 years old. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "One of the most visionary figures to emerge from the fertile motion picture community of postwar-era Italy, Federico Fellini brought a new level of autobiographical intensity to his craft; more than any other filmmaker of his era, he transformed the realities of his life into the surrealism of his art. Though originally a product of the neorealist school, the eccentricity of Fellini's characterizations and his absurdist sense of comedy set him squarely apart from contemporaries like Vittorio De Sica or Roberto Rossellini, and at the peak of his career his work adopted a distinctively poetic, flamboyant, and influential style so unique that only the term "Felliniesque" could accurately describe it. "

 

Source: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Dale O"Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Swiss postcard by Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne / News Productions, Baulmes, no. 55108. Photo: Michelangelo Durazzo / AMA, Paris. Federico Fellini directing a scene of the film 8½ (1963).

 

Italian film director and screenwriter Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He was known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d'Or for La Dolce Vita (1960), was nominated for twelve Academy Awards. He won an Oscar for La Strada (1954), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973).

 

Federico Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini in the Emilia-Romagna region. His native Rimini and characters there like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would later be remembered in several of his films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La dolce vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. Fellini's first passion was the theater, and at the age of 12, he briefly ran away from home to join the circus, later entering college solely to avoid being drafted. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real-life role of a journalist. Additionally, Fellini worked as an artist on fumetti (Italy's illustrated magazines), and occasionally even made his living as a caricaturist at Roman restaurants. He caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds 'Cico and Pallina'. Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became Fellini's real-life wife in 1943. They remained together until his death. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1939 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Fabrizi recruited Fellini to supply stories and ideas for his performances; between 1939 and 1944. The two men worked in tandem on a number of largely forgotten comedies, among them No Me Lo Dire, Quarta Pagina, and Campo de Fiori. When young director Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Roma città aperta (Roberto Rosselini, 1945), he made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisà (Roberto Rosselini, 1946). Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "On that film, he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work."

 

Federico Fellini collaborated on films by Pietro Germi (including In Nomine Della Legge and Il Cammino Della Speranza) and Alberto Lattuda (Il Delitto di Giovanni Episcopo and Il Mulino del Po), among others. In 1948, Fellini completed the screenplay for Il Miracolo, the second and longer section of Rossellini's two-part effort Amore. Here Fellini's utterly original worldview first began to truly take shape in the form of archetypal characters (a simple-minded peasant girl and her male counterpart, a kind of holy simpleton), recurring motifs (show business, parties, the sea), and an ambiguous relationship with religion and spirituality. He further explored this in his script for Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Roberto Rosselini, 1949). In 1950, Fellini made his first attempt at directing one of his own screenplays (with help of Alberto Lattuda), Luci del Varieta (Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattudada, 1950), which further developed his fusion of neorealism with the atmosphere of surrealism. Fellini then directed the romantic satire Lo Sciecco Bianc. The film marked his first work with composer Nino Rota. Fellini's initial masterpiece, I Vitteloni, followed in 1953. The first of his features to receive international distribution, it later won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the first of many similar honours. The brilliant La Strada followed in 1954, also garnering the Silver Lion as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. After helming Il Bidone (1955), Fellini and a group of screenwriters (including a young Pier Paolo Pasolini) began work on Le Notti di Cabiria (1956), which also won an Oscar. Then he mounted La Dolce Vita (1960), the first of his pictures to star actor Marcello Mastroianni. He would become Fellini's cinematic alter ego over the course of several subsequent collaborations, its portrait of sex and death in Rome's high society created a tremendous scandal at its Milan premiere, where the audience booed, insulted, and spat on the director. Regardless, La Dolce Vita won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and remains a landmark in cinematic history.

 

During the 1960s, many films by Federico Fellini were influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his ideas on the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious. The women who had both attracted and frightened him in his youth and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII inspired Fellini's dreams. In the 1960s, he started to record them in notebooks, and life and dreams became the raw material for such films as 8½ (1963) or Fellini - Satyricon (1969). With 1965's Giulietta Degli Spiriti, Fellini worked for the first time in color. After experimenting with LSD under the supervision of doctors, he began scripting Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna. Over a year of pre-production followed, hampered by difficulties with producers, actors, and even a jury trial. Finally on April 10th, 1967, Fellini suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting in a month-long nursing homestay. Ultimately, he gave up on ever bringing Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna to the screen, and his new producer, Alberto Grimaldi, was forced to buy out former producer Dino De Laurentis for close to half a billion liras. As the decade drew to a close, Fellini returned to work with a vengeance, first resurfacing with Toby Dammitt, a short feature for the collaborative film Tre Passi nel Delirio. Turning to television, he helmed Fellini: A Director's Notebook, a one-hour special for NBC, followed by the feature effort Fellini Satyricon. I Clown followed in 1970, with Roma bowing in 1972. Amarcord, a childhood reminiscence, won a fourth Academy Award in 1974. It proved to be his final international success. He later shot Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976), Prova d'Orchestra (1979), and La Citta delle Donne (1980), which were less successful. Fellini turned to publishing with Fare un Film, an anthology of notes about his life and work. E la Nave Va (1983) and Ginger e Fred (1985) followed, but by the time of L'Intervista (1987), he was facing considerable difficulty finding financing for his projects. His last completed film was La Voce Della Luna (1989). In the early 1990s, Fellini helmed a handful of television commercials, and in 1993 he won his fifth Academy Award for a lifetime of service to the film industry. In 1993, Federico Fellini died the day after his 50th wedding anniversary. He was 73 years old. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "One of the most visionary figures to emerge from the fertile motion picture community of postwar-era Italy, Federico Fellini brought a new level of autobiographical intensity to his craft; more than any other filmmaker of his era, he transformed the realities of his life into the surrealism of his art. Though originally a product of the neorealist school, the eccentricity of Fellini's characterizations and his absurdist sense of comedy set him squarely apart from contemporaries like Vittorio De Sica or Roberto Rossellini, and at the peak of his career his work adopted a distinctively poetic, flamboyant, and influential style so unique that only the term "Felliniesque" could accurately describe it. "

 

Source: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Dale O' Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Images of myself as Shaundra McKenzie, a 1960s Jamaican calypso singer from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

Mock advertisement from 1982 with an image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published by Westerman of Hebden Bridge and Victoria Road Todmorden.

 

Although the card was not posted, someone has written the following on the divided back:

 

"Hermione Dobson,

Taken in Confirmation

Dress,

April 21st. 1923."

 

A Fascist March in Rome

 

So what else happened on the day of Hermione's confirmation?

 

Well, on Saturday the 21st. April 1923, Italy celebrated the Founding of Rome as a holiday for the first time as 50,000 Fascists in black shirts marched in military formation through the streets of Rome.

 

They wound their way through the streets past the Roman Forum, the Coliseum, the Baths of Caracalla and through the Triumphal Arch of Titus in order to reach a large open field.

 

According to tradition, the city of Rome had been founded in 753 BC, and the 2,676th. anniversary was made by decree to be the official labor day holiday.

 

Benito Mussolini had May Day festivities replaced with this holiday instead, suppressing International Workers' Day.

 

John Mortimer

 

The 21st. April 1923 also marked the birth in Hampstead, London, of John Mortimer.

 

Sir John Clifford Mortimer CBE QC FRSL was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author. He is best known for novels about a barrister named Horace Rumpole.

 

John Mortimer - The Early Years

 

Mortimer was born the only child of Kathleen May (née Smith) and Herbert Clifford Mortimer (1884–1961), a divorce and probate barrister who became blind in 1936 when he hit his head on the door frame of a London taxi but still pursued his career. Clifford's loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.

 

John Mortimer was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Harrow School, where he joined the Communist Party, forming a one-member cell.

 

John first intended to be an actor (his lead role in the Dragon's 1937 production of Richard II gained glowing reviews in The Draconian).

 

He then wanted to be a writer, but his father persuaded him against it, advising:

 

"My dear boy, have some consideration

for your unfortunate wife... the law gets

you out of the house."

 

At 17, Mortimer went to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he read law, though he was actually based at Christ Church because the Brasenose buildings had been requisitioned for the war effort.

 

In July 1942, at the end of his second year, he was sent down from Oxford by John Lowe, Dean of Christ Church, after romantic letters to a Bradfield College sixth-former, Quentin Edwards, later a QC, were discovered by the young man's housemaster.

 

However, Mortimer was still allowed to take his Bachelor of Arts degree in law in October 1943. His close friend Michael Hamburger believed that he had been very harshly treated.

 

John Mortimer's Early Writing Career

 

With weak eyes and doubtful lungs, Mortimer was classified as medically unfit for military service in World War II, and so he worked for the Crown Film Unit under Laurie Lee, writing scripts for propaganda documentaries. He recalled:

 

"I lived in London and went on journeys in blacked-

out trains to factories and coal-mines and military

and air force installations.

For the first and, in fact, the only time in my life I was,

thanks to Laurie Lee, earning my living entirely as a

writer. If I have knocked the documentary ideal, I

would not wish to sound ungrateful to the Crown

Film Unit.

I was given great and welcome opportunities to write

dialogue, construct scenes and try and turn ideas into

some kind of visual drama."

 

John based his first novel, Charade, on his experiences with the Crown Film Unit.

 

Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, adapting his own novel Like Men Betrayed for the BBC Light Programme.

 

His debut as an original playwright came with The Dock Brief starring Michael Hordern as a hapless barrister, first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio's Third Programme, and later televised with the same cast. It later appeared in a double bill with What Shall We Tell Caroline? at the Lyric Hammersmith in April 1958, before transferring to the Garrick Theatre.

 

The Dock Brief won the Prix Italia in 1957, and its success on radio, stage, and television led Mortimer to prefer writing for performance rather than writing novels.

 

The Dock Brief was revived by Christopher Morahan in 2007 for a touring double bill with Legal Fictions.

 

Mortimer's play A Voyage Round My Father, first broadcast on radio in 1963, is autobiographical, recounting his experiences as a young barrister and his relationship with his blind father.

 

It was televised by BBC Television in 1969 with Mark Dignam in the title role. In a lengthier version, the play became a stage success – first at Greenwich Theatre with Dignam, then in 1971 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket with Alec Guinness. In 1981 it was remade by Thames Television with Laurence Olivier as the father and Alan Bates as young Mortimer.

 

In 1965, John and his wife wrote the screenplay for the Otto Preminger film Bunny Lake is Missing, which also starred Olivier.

 

John Mortimer's Legal Career

 

Mortimer was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1948, at the age of 25. His early career covered testamentary and divorce work, but on taking silk in 1966, he began to undertake criminal law. His highest profile came from cases relating to claims of obscenity, which, according to Mortimer, were alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance.

 

John has sometimes been cited wrongly as one of the Lady Chatterley's Lover obscenity trial defence team. He did, however, successfully defend publishers John Calder and Marion Boyars in a 1968 appeal against a conviction for publishing Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn.

 

John assumed a similar role three years later, this time unsuccessfully, for Richard Handyside, the English publisher of The Little Red Schoolbook.

 

In 1971, Mortimer managed to defend the editors of the satirical paper Oz against a charge of "conspiracy to corrupt and debauch the morals of the young of the Realm", which could have carried a sentence of 12 years' hard labour.

 

In 1976, John defended Gay News editor Denis Lemon (Whitehouse v. Lemon) against charges of blasphemous libel for publishing James Kirkup's The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name; Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence, which was overturned on appeal.

 

John successfully defended Virgin Records in a 1977 obscenity hearing for using the word bollocks in the title of the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols and the manager of the Nottingham branch of Virgin record shop chain for displaying and selling the record.

 

Mortimer retired from the bar in 1984.

 

John Mortimer's Later Writing Career

 

Mortimer is best remembered for creating a barrister named Horace Rumpole, inspired by his father Clifford, whose speciality was defending those accused in London's Old Bailey.

 

Mortimer created Rumpole for a BBC Play For Today in 1975. Although not Mortimer's first choice of actor – in an interview on the DVD set, he said:

 

"I wanted Alistair Sim, but he turned

out to be dead so he couldn't take it

on."

 

Australian-born Leo McKern played Rumpole with gusto and proved popular. The idea was developed into a series, Rumpole of the Bailey, for Thames Television, in which McKern kept the lead role. Mortimer also wrote a series of Rumpole books.

 

In September–October 2003, BBC Radio 4 broadcast four new 45-minute Rumpole plays by Mortimer with Timothy West in the title role. Mortimer also dramatised many real-life cases of the barrister Edward Marshall-Hall in a radio series with former Doctor Who star Tom Baker as protagonist.

 

In 1975 and 1976, Mortimer adapted eight of Graham Greene’s short stories for episodes of Shades of Greene presented by Thames Television.

 

Mortimer was credited with writing the script for Granada Television's 1981 serialization of Brideshead Revisited, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh. However, Graham Lord's unofficial biography, John Mortimer: The Devil's Advocate, revealed in 2005 that none of Mortimer's submitted scripts had in fact been used, and the screenplay was actually written by the series' producer and director.

 

Mortimer adapted John Fowles's The Ebony Tower starring Laurence Olivier for Granada in 1984. In 1986, his adaptation of his own novel Paradise Postponed was televised.

 

He wrote the script, based on the autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli, for the 1999 film Tea with Mussolini, directed by Zeffirelli and starring Joan Plowright, Cher, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Lily Tomlin.

 

From 2004, Mortimer worked as a consultant for the politico-legal US "dramedy" television show Boston Legal.

 

Mortimer developed his career as a dramatist by rising early to write before attending court. His work in total includes over 50 books, plays and scripts. Besides 13 episodes of Rumpole dramatized for radio in 1980, several others of his works were broadcast on the BBC, including the true crime series John Mortimer Presents: The Trials Of Marshall Hall and Sensational British Trials.

 

John Mortimer's Personal Life

 

Penelope Fletcher, better known as Penelope Mortimer, met the barrister and writer John Mortimer while still married to Charles Dimont and pregnant with their last child.

 

Fletcher married Mortimer on the 27th. August 1949, the same day her divorce from Dimont became absolute. Together they went on to have a son, Jeremy Mortimer, and a daughter, Sally Silverman.

 

The unstable marriage inspired work by both writers, of which Penelope's novel, The Pumpkin Eater (1962), later made into a film of the same name, is best known.

 

The couple divorced in 1971, and John married Penelope Gollop in 1972. They had two daughters, Emily Mortimer (1971), and Rosie Mortimer (1984).

 

John and his second wife lived in the Buckinghamshire village of Turville Heath. The split with his first wife had been bitter, but they were on friendly terms by the time of her death in 1999.

 

In September 2004, the Sunday Telegraph journalist Tim Walker revealed that Mortimer had fathered another son, Ross Bentley, who was conceived during a secret affair that Mortimer had with the English actress Wendy Craig more than 40 years earlier. Ross was born in November 1961.

 

Wendy Craig and Mortimer had met when the actress had been cast playing a pregnant woman in Mortimer's first full-length West End play, The Wrong Side of the Park. Ross Bentley was raised by Craig and her husband, Jack Bentley, the show business writer and musician.

 

In Mortimer's memoirs, Clinging to the Wreckage, he wrote of "enjoying my mid-thirties and all the pleasures which come to a young writer."

 

John was awarded a CBE in 1986, and he was made a knight bachelor in the 1998 Birthday Honours.

 

Mortimer suffered a stroke in October 2008, and died on the 16th. January 2009, aged 85 in Turville Heath, Buckinghamshire.

Images of myself as Siobhan O'Hara, a 1960s British fashion model and actress from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.

French postcard in the Collection Magie Noire by Éditions Hazan, Paris, 1994, no. 6430. Photo: Bruno Barbey / Magnum Photos. Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, 1970.

 

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) is a French film director and screenwriter. He is one of the most important members of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). Godard first received global acclaim for his feature À bout de souffle/Breathless (1959), helping to establish the New Wave movement. Godard's films have inspired many directors including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Altman, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wong Kar-wai. He has been married twice, to actresses Anna Karina and Anne Wiazemsky, both of whom starred in several of his films.

 

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris in 1930. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. The family returned to Switzerland during World War II. In 1949 he started studying ethnology at the Sorbonne. During this period he got to know François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Éric Rohmer. In 1950 he started a film newspaper 'Gazette du cinéma' with Rivette and Rohmer and collaborated on their films. In January 1952 he started writing for the film magazine 'Les cahiers du cinéma', which had been founded the year before by André Bazin. In 1953 he worked as a construction worker at a dam in Switzerland. With the money he earned, he made his first film, Opération Béton/Operation Concrete, a short documentary film about the construction of the dam. In 1956 he returned to France and resumed his work at Cahiers. During that time he made several short comedies and tributes to Mack Sennett and Jean Cocteau. In 1959 he directed his first feature film, À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960), based on a screenplay by François Truffaut. This film played a key role in the birth of the Nouvelle Vague. It broke with many then prevailing conventions, with its references and influences from the American (gangster) film, the low budget, and the rough editing. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg starred and the film was a huge success with audiences and critics. Godard won the Silver Bear for this film at the Berlin Film Festival 1960. Jean Seberg was nominated for a BAFTA Award. That year Godard also married Anna Karina, who would appear in many of his films. In 1964 they formed a production company, Anouchka Films. They divorced in 1965.

 

In 1961 Jean-Luc Godard made his first colour film, the comedy Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) starring Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. It is a tribute to American musical comedy, filmed in cinemascope. Godard proved to be very productive during those years. His first flop, the war film Les Carabiniers/The Carabineers (1963), was a tribute to Jean Vigo. That year he also made one of his greatest successes, Le Mépris/Contempt (1963) with Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang. Then followed Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964) with Anna Karina and Sami Frey, Pierrot le fou/Crazy Pierrot (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, and the Science-Fiction film Alphaville/Alphaville: A Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine. The film won the Golden Bear award of the 15th Berlin International Film Festival in 1965. Other films from those years were Masculin, feminin (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud, and Week-end (1967) with Mireille Darc. Around the student uprisings of 1968, Godard became interested in Maoism. At that time he started an experimental political phase, which lasted until 1980. In the summer of 1968, together with Jean-Pierre Gorin, among others, he founded the Dziga Vertov Group, which wanted to make "political films political". Some films from that time are Le Gai Savoir (1968), Pravda and One Plus One/Sympathy for the Devil (1968), the latter of which includes a unique recording of the studio build-up by the Rolling Stones of the classic Sympathy for the Devil. In 1972 he made Tout va bien (1972), with Jane Fonda and Yves Montand in the lead roles, followed by Letter to Jane, a film about a photograph of Jane Fonda, which Gorin and Godard discuss. In 1972 he also met Anne-Marie Miéville, his later wife, with whom he made many films. This phase ended in 1980.

 

After twelve years of low budget, militant left-wing, and otherwise experimental film and video projects outside of commercial distribution, Jean-Luc Godard's first film that was more mainstream and accessible again was the drama Sauve qui peut (la vie)/Every Man for Himself (1980) with Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, and Nathalie Baye. His films after that time are more autobiographical. For example, in Sauve qui peut (la vie)/Every Man for Himself there was a character named Godard. In 1982 and 1983 he made three related films Passion (1982), Prénom Carmen (1983) and Je vous salue, Marie (1984). The latter film was dismissed as blasphemy by the Catholic Church. The film King Lear (1987), which he made with Norman Mailer, also caused controversy. It was a bizarre postmodern take on the Shakespeare play, with theatre director Peter Sellars as a descendant of Shakespeare, Burgess Meredith as the mobster Don Learo, Jean-Luc Godard as the professor, and Woody Allen as a character called Mr. Alien. Not entirely coincidentally, Mr. Alien was also nicknamed Jean-Luc Godard. From 1989 to 1998, he made the series Histoire(s) du Cinéma, about the twentieth century and the history of film. His most recent film is the avantgarde essay Le Livre d'image/The Image Book (2018).

 

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Italian postcard by Cinema-Illustrazione, Milano, Serie 1, no. 36. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

 

The popular magazine Cinema-Illustrazione was founded in 1930. It originated from the journal Illustrazione, which started in 1926. From 1930 on, it only focussed on cinema. Among the editors was the later screenwriter Cesare Zavattini. The magazine offered bios of popular Hollywood stars and lots of glamour photos. In 1938, due to the Alfieri law, a monopoly on the import of American films by the Italian state started. Therefore the magazine gave more attention to Italian actors and films from then on. The magazine stopped to appear in September 1939.

 

Lupe Velez (1908-1944), was one of the first Mexican actresses to succeed in Hollywood. Her nicknames were 'The Mexican Spitfire' and 'Hot Pepper'. She was the leading lady in such silent films as The Gaucho (1927), Lady of the Pavements (1928), and Wolf Song (1929). During the 1930s, her well-known explosive screen persona was exploited in a series of successful films like Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Vélez's popularity peaked after appearing in the Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalise on Vélez's well-documented fiery personality. She had several highly publicised romances and a stormy marriage. In 1944, Vélez died of an intentional overdose of the barbiturate drug Seconal. Her death and the circumstances surrounding it have been the subject of speculation and controversy.

 

Lupe Vélez was born María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez in 1908 in the city of San Luis Potosí in Mexico. She was the daughter of Jacobo Villalobos Reyes, a colonel in the army of the dictator Porfirio Diaz, and his wife Josefina Vélez, an opera singer according to some sources, or vaudeville singer according to others. She had three sisters: Mercedes, Reina and Josefina, and a brother, Emigdio. The family was financially comfortable and lived in a large home. At the age of 13, her parents sent her to study at Our Lady of the Lake (now Our Lady of the Lake University) in San Antonio, Texas. It was at Our Lady of the Lake that Vélez learned to speak English and began to dance. She later admitted that she liked dance class, but was otherwise a poor student. Denny Jackson at IMDb: "Life was hard for her family, and Lupe returned to Mexico to help them out financially. She worked as a salesgirl for a department store for the princely sum of $4 a week. Every week she would turn most of her salary over to her mother, but kept a little for herself so she could take dancing lessons. By now, she figured, with her mature shape and grand personality, she thought she could make a try at show business." She began her career as a performer in Mexican vaudeville in 1924. She initially performed under her paternal surname, but after her father returned home from the war, he was outraged that his daughter had decided to become a stage performer. She chose her maternal surname, "Vélez", as her stage name and her mother introduced Vélez and her sister Josefina to the popular Spanish Mexican vedette María Conesa, "La Gatita Blanca". Vélez debuted in a show led by Conesa, where she sang 'Oh Charley, My Boy' and danced the shimmy. Aurelio Campos, a young pianist, and friend of the Vélez sisters recommended Lupe to stage producers, Carlos Ortega and Manuel Castro. Ortega and Castro were preparing a season revue at the Regis Theatre and hired Vélez to join the company in March 1925. Later that year, Vélez starred in the revues 'Mexican Rataplan' and '¡No lo tapes!', both parodies of the Bataclan's shows in Paris. Her suggestive singing and provocative dancing was a hit with audiences, and she soon established herself as one of the main stars of vaudeville in Mexico. After a year and a half, Vélez left the revue after the manager refused to give her a raise. She then joined the Teatro Principal but was fired after three months due to her "feisty attitude". Vélez was quickly hired by the Teatro Lirico, where her salary rose to 100 pesos a day. In 1926, Frank A. Woodyard, an American who had seen Vélez perform, recommended her to stage director Richard Bennett, the father of actresses Joan and Constance Bennett. Bennett was looking for an actress to portray a Mexican cantina singer in his upcoming play 'The Dove'. He sent Vélez a telegram inviting her to Los Angeles to appear in the play. Vélez had been planning to go to Cuba to perform, but quickly changed her plans and traveled to Los Angeles. However, upon arrival, she discovered that she had been replaced by another actress.

 

While in Los Angeles, Lupe Vélez met the comedian Fanny Brice. Brice recommended her to Flo Ziegfeld, who hired her to perform in New York City. While Vélez was preparing to leave Los Angeles, she received a call from MGM producer Harry Rapf, who offered her a screen test. Producer and director Hal Roach saw Vélez's screen test and hired her for a small role in the comic Laurel and Hardy short Sailors, Beware! (Fred Guiol, Hal Yates, 1927). After her debut, Vélez appeared in another Hal Roach short, What Women Did for Me (James Parrott, 1927), opposite Charley Chase. Later that year, she did a screen test for the upcoming Douglas Fairbanks feature The Gaucho (F. Richard Jones, 1927). Fairbanks was impressed by Vélez and hired her to appear in the film with him. The Gaucho was a hit and critics were duly impressed with Vélez's ability to hold her own alongside Fairbanks, who was well known for his spirited acting and impressive stunts. Her second major film was Stand and Deliver (Donald Crisp, 1928), produced by Cecil B. DeMille. That same year, she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. Then she appeared in Lady of the Pavements (1929), directed by D. W. Griffith, and Where East Is East (Tod Browning, 1929), starring Lon Chaney as an animal trapper in Laos. In the Western The Wolf Song (Victor Fleming, 1929), she appeared alongside Gary Cooper. As she was regularly cast as 'exotic' or 'ethnic' women that were volatile and hot-tempered, gossip columnists took to referring to Vélez as "Mexican Hurricane", "The Mexican Wildcat", "The Mexican Madcap", "Whoopee Lupe" and "The Hot Tamale". Lupe Vélez made the transition to sound films without difficulty. Studio executives had predicted that her accent would likely hamper her ability to make the transition. That idea was dispelled after she appeared in the all-talking Rin Tin Tin vehicle, Tiger Rose (George Fitzmaurice, 1929). The film was a hit and Vélez's sound career was established. Vélez appeared in a series of Pre-Code films like Hell Harbor (Henry King, 1930), The Storm (William Wyler, 1930), and the crime drama East Is West (Monta Bell, 1930) opposite Edward G. Robinson. The next year, she appeared in her second film for Cecil B. DeMille, Squaw Man (Cecil B. DeMille, 1931), opposite Warner Baxter, in Resurrection (Edwin Carewe, 1931), and The Cuban Love Song (W.S. Van Dyke, 1931), with the popular singer Lawrence Tibbett. She had a supporting role in Kongo (William J. Cowen, 1932) with Walter Huston, a sound remake of West of Zanzibar (Tod Browning, 1928) which tries to outdo the Lon Chaney original in morbidity. She also starred in Spanish-language versions of Universal films like Resurrección (Eduardo Arozamena, David Selman, 1931), the Spanish version of Resurrection (1931), and Hombres en mi vida (Eduardo Arozamena, David Selman, 1932), the Spanish version of Men in Her Life (William Beaudine, 1931) in which Lois Moran had starred.

 

In 1932, Lupe Vélez took a break from her film career and traveled to New York City where she was signed by Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. to take over the role of "Conchita" in the musical revue 'Hot-Cha!'. The show also starred Bert Lahr, Eleanor Powell, and Buddy Rogers. Back in Hollywood, Lupe switched to comedy after playing dramatic roles for five years. Denny Jackson at IMDb: "In 1933 she played the lead role of Pepper in Hot Pepper (1933). This film showcased her comedic talents and helped her to show the world her vital personality. She was delightful." After Hot Pepper (John G. Blystone, 1933) with Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen, Lupe played beautiful but volatile, characters in a series of successful films like Strictly Dynamite (Elliott Nugent, 1934), Palooka (Benjamin Stoloff, 1934) both opposite Jimmy Durante, and Hollywood Party (Allan Dwan, a.o., 1934) with Laurel and Hardy. Although Vélez was a popular actress, RKO Pictures did not renew her contract in 1934. Over the next few years, Vélez worked for various studios as a freelance actress; she also spent two years in England where she filmed The Morals of Marcus (Miles Mander, 1935) and Gypsy Melody (Edmond T. Gréville, 1936). She returned to Los Angeles the following year where she appeared in the final part of the Wheeler & Woolsey comedy High Flyers (Edward F. Cline, 1937). In 1938, Vélez made her final appearance on Broadway in the musical You Never Know, by Cole Porter. The show received poor reviews from critics but received a large amount of publicity due to the feud between Vélez and fellow cast member Libby Holman. Holman was irritated by the attention Vélez garnered from the show with her impersonations of several actresses including Gloria Swanson, Katharine Hepburn, and Shirley Temple. The feud came to a head during a performance in New Haven, Connecticut after Vélez punched Holman in between curtain calls and gave her a black eye. The feud effectively ended the show. Upon her return to Mexico City in 1938 to star in her first Mexican film, Vélez was greeted by ten thousand fans. The film La Zandunga (Fernando de Fuentes, 1938) co-starring Arturo de Córdova, was a critical and financial success. Vélez was slated to appear in four more Mexican films, but instead, she returned to Los Angeles and went back to work for RKO Pictures. In 1939, Lupe Vélez was cast opposite Leon Errol and Donald Woods in the B-comedy, The Girl from Mexico (Leslie Goodwins, 1939). Despite being a B film, it was a hit with audiences and RKO re-teamed her with Errol and Wood for a sequel, Mexican Spitfire (Leslie Goodwins, 1940). That film was also a success and led to a series of eight Spitfire films. Wikipedia: "In the series, Vélez portrays Carmelita Lindsay, a temperamental yet friendly Mexican singer married to Dennis 'Denny' Lindsay (Woods), an elegant American gentleman. The Spitfire films rejuvenated Vélez's career. Moreover, they were films in which a Latina headlined for eight films straight –a true rarity." In addition to the Spitfire series, she was cast in such films as Six Lessons from Madame La Zonga (John Rawlins, 1941), Playmates (David Butler, 1941) opposite John Barrymore, and Redhead from Manhattan (Lew Landers, 1943). In 1943, the final film in the Spitfire series, Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event (Leslie Goodwins, 1943), was released. By that time, the novelty of the series had begun to wane. Velez co-starred with Eddie Albert in the romantic comedy, Ladies' Day (Leslie Goodwins, 1943), about an actress and a baseball player. In 1944, Vélez returned to Mexico to star in an adaptation of Émile Zola's novel Nana (Roberto Gavaldón, Celestino Gorostiza, 1944), which was well-received. It would be her final film. After filming wrapped, Vélez returned to Los Angeles and began preparing for another stage role in New York.

 

Lupe Vélez's temper and jealousy in her often tempestuous romantic relationships were well documented and became tabloid fodder, often overshadowing her career. Vélez was straightforward with the press and was regularly contacted by gossip columnists for stories about her romantic exploits. Her first long-term relationship was with actor Gary Cooper. Vélez met Cooper while filming The Wolf Song in 1929 and began a two-year affair with him. The relationship was passionate but often stormy. Reportedly Vélez chased Cooper around with a knife during an argument and cut him severely enough to require stitches. By that time, the rocky relationship had taken its toll on Cooper who had lost 45 pounds and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Paramount Pictures ordered him to take a vacation to recuperate. While he was boarding the train, Vélez showed up at the train station and fired a pistol at him. During her marriage to actor Johnny Weissmuller, stories of their frequent physical fights were regularly reported in the press. Vélez reportedly inflicted scratches, bruises, and love-bites on Weissmuller during their fights and "passionate love-making". In July 1934, after ten months of marriage, Vélez filed for divorce citing cruelty. She withdrew the petition a week later after reconciling with Weissmuller. In January 1935, she filed for divorce a second time and was granted an interlocutory decree that was dismissed when the couple reconciled a month later. In August 1938, Vélez filed for divorce for a third time, again charging Weissmuller with cruelty. Their divorce was finalised in August 1939. After the divorce became final, Vélez began dating actor Guinn "Big Boy" Williams in late 1940. They were reportedly engaged but never married. Vélez was also linked to author Erich Maria Remarque and the boxers Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey. In 1943, Vélez began an affair with her La Zandunga co-star Arturo de Córdova. De Córdova had recently moved to Hollywood after signing with Paramount Pictures. Despite the fact that de Córdova was married to Mexican actress Enna Arana with whom he had four children, Vélez granted an interview to gossip columnist Louella Parsons in September 1943 and announced that the two were engaged. Vélez ended the engagement in early 1944, reportedly after de Córdova's wife refused to give him a divorce. Vélez then met and began dating a struggling young Austrian actor named Harald Maresch (who went by the stage name Harald Ramond). In September 1944, she discovered she was pregnant with Ramond's child. She announced their engagement in late November 1944. On 10 December, four days before her death, Vélez announced she had ended the engagement and kicked Ramond out of her home. On the evening of 13 December 1944, Vélez dined with her two friends, the silent film star Estelle Taylor and Venita Oakie. In the early morning hours of 14 December, Vélez retired to her bedroom, where she consumed 75 Seconal pills and a glass of brandy. Her secretary, Beulah Kinder, found the actress's body on her bed later that morning. A suicide note addressed to Harald Ramond was found nearby. Lupe Vélez was only 36 years old. More than four-thousand people filed past her casket during her funeral. Her body was interred in Mexico City, at Panteón Civil de Dolores Cemetery. Velez' estate, valued at $125,000 and consisting mostly of her Rodeo House home, two cars, jewelry, and personal effects were left to her secretary Beulah Kinder with the remainder in trust for her mother, Mrs. Josephine Velez. Together with Dolores del Rio, Ramon Novarro, and José Mojica, she was one of the few Mexican people who had made history in the early years of Hollywood.

 

Sources: Raffaele De Berti (Dallo schermo alla carta), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3211/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Paramount.

 

American actor, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer Harold Lloyd (1893-1971) is best known for his silent comedies. He ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the three most popular and influential comedians of the silent film. Between 1914 and 1947, Lloyd made nearly 200 comedies, often as a bespectacled 'Glass' character, a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s-era United States. His films frequently contained 'thrill sequences' of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats. A classic is Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last! (1923).

 

Harold Clayton Lloyd was born in 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska, the son of James Darsie Lloyd and Sarah Elisabeth Fraser. In 1910, after his father had several business ventures fail, Lloyd's parents divorced and his father moved with his son to San Diego, California. Lloyd had acted in theatre since a child, and in San Diego he received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art and began acting in one-reel film comedies around 1912. Lloyd worked with Thomas Edison's motion picture company, and his first role was a bit part as a Yaqui Indian in The Old Monk's Tale (J. Searle Dawley, 1913). At the age of 20, Lloyd moved to Los Angeles, and took up roles in several Keystone comedies. He was also hired by Universal Studios as an extra . Lloyd began collaborating with his friend Hal Roach who had formed his own studio in 1913. They created Will E. Work and then Lonesome Luke, variations of Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp character. In 1914, Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels as a supporting actress. The two were involved romantically and were known as The Boy and The Girl. In 1919, she left him after it became apparent he was unable to make a commitment, and she pursued her dramatic aspirations. Later that year, Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis, whom he would marry in 1923. By 1918, Lloyd and Roach had begun to develop a new character beyond an imitation of his contemporaries. Harold Lloyd would move away from tragicomic personas, and portray an everyman with unwavering confidence and optimism. The persona Lloyd referred to as his 'Glass' character was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. To create his new character Lloyd donned a pair of lensless horn-rimmed eyeglasses but wore normal clothing. Previously, he had worn a fake mustache and ill-fitting clothes as the Chaplinesque Lonesome Luke. In August 1919, while posing for some promotional still photographs in the Los Angeles Witzel Photography Studio, he was seriously injured holding a prop bomb thought merely to be a smoke pot. It exploded and mangled his right hand, causing him to lose a thumb and forefinger. The blast was severe enough that the cameraman and prop director nearby were also seriously injured. Lloyd was in the act of lighting a cigarette from the fuse of the bomb when it exploded, also badly burning his face and chest and injuring his eye. Despite the proximity of the blast to his face, he retained his sight.

 

Beginning in 1921, Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach moved from shorts to feature-length comedies. These included the acclaimed Grandma's Boy, which pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, the highly popular Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1923), which cemented Lloyd's stardom, and Why Worry? (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1923). Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features Girl Shy (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1924), The Freshman (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1925) - his highest-grossing silent feature, The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde, J.A. Howe, 1927), and Speedy (Ted Wilde, 1928), his final silent film. Welcome Danger (Clyde Bruckman, 1929) was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s. Although Lloyd's individual films were not as commercially successful as Chaplin's on average, he was far more prolific (releasing 12 feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just four), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin's $10.5 million). The huge financial success of Welcome Danger had proved that audiences were eager to hear Lloyd's voice on film. Lloyd's rate of film releases, which had been one or two a year in the 1920s, slowed to about one every two years until 1938. The films released during this period were: Feet First (Clyde Bruckman, 1930), with a similar scenario to Safety Last which found him clinging to a skyscraper at the climax; Movie Crazy (Clyde Bruckman, 1932) with Constance Cummings; The Cat's-Paw (Sam Taylor, 1934), which was a dark political comedy and a big departure for Lloyd; and The Milky Way (Leo McCarey, 1936), which was Lloyd's only attempt at the fashionable genre of the screwball comedy film. However, his go-getting screen character was out of touch with Great Depression movie audiences of the 1930s. As the length of time between his film releases increased, his popularity declined, as did the fortunes of his production company. His final film of the decade, Professor Beware (Elliott Nugent, 1938), was made by the Paramount staff, with Lloyd functioning only as actor and partial financier.

 

In 1937, Harold Lloyd sold the land of his studio, Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The location is now the site of the Los Angeles California Temple. Lloyd produced two comedies for RKO, A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (Richard Wallace, 1941) with Lucille Ball, and a Kay Kyser vehicle, My Favorite Spy (Tay Garnett, 1942) which must have looked good on paper but went nowhere at the box office. He retired from the screen until an additional starring appearance in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (Preston Sturges, 1947), an ill-fated homage to Lloyd's career, financed by Howard Hughes. This film had the inspired idea of following Harold's Jazz Age, optimistic character from The Freshman into the Great Depression years. Diddlebock opened with footage from The Freshman (for which Lloyd was paid a royalty of $50,000, matching his actor's fee) and Lloyd was sufficiently youthful-looking to match the older scenes quite well. Lloyd and Sturges had different conceptions of the material and fought frequently during the shoot. The finished film was released briefly in 1947, then shelved by producer Hughes. Hughes issued a recut version of the film in 1951 through RKO under the title Mad Wednesday. Lloyd sued Howard Hughes, the California Corporation and RKO for damages to his reputation "as an outstanding motion picture star and personality", eventually accepting a $30,000 settlement. In October 1944, Lloyd emerged as the director and host of The Old Gold Comedy Theater, an NBC radio anthology series, after Preston Sturges, who had turned the job down, recommended him for it. The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert and Robert Young.and ending in June 1945 with an adaptation of Tom, Dick and Harry, featuring June Allyson. The show was not renewed for the following season.

 

Harold Lloyd remained involved in a number of other interests, including civic and charity work. He appeared as himself on several television shows during his retirement, such as Ed Sullivan's variety show Toast of the Town (1949 and 1958). He appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line? (1953), and twice on This Is Your Life: in 1954 for Mack Sennett, and again in 1955, on his own episode. In 1953, Lloyd received an Academy Honorary Award for being a "master comedian and good citizen". He studied colors and microscopy, and was very involved with photography, including 3D photography and colour film experiments. He became known for his nude photographs of models, such as Bettie Page and stripper Dixie Evans, for a number of men's magazines. He also took photos of Marilyn Monroe lounging at his pool in a bathing suit, which were published after her death. In 2004, his granddaughter Suzanne produced a book of selections from his photographs, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D! Lloyd also provided encouragement and support for a number of younger actors, such as Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, and particularly Jack Lemmon, whom Harold declared as his own choice to play him in a movie of his life and work. In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy (Harold Lloyd, 1962) and The Funny Side of Life (Harry Kerwin, 1963). The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where Lloyd was fêted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Lloyd and Mildred Davis had two children together: Gloria Lloyd (1923–2012) and Harold Clayton Lloyd Jr. (1931–1971). They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924–1986) in 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd but was known as Peggy for most of her life. Lloyd discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died from a heart attack in 1969, two years before Lloyd died at age 77 from prostate cancer, at his Greenacres home in Beverly Hills, California. He was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. In 1990, Kevin Brownlow and David Gill produced the documentary, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius. Composer Carl Davis wrote a new score for Safety Last! which he performed live during a showing of the film with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to great acclaim in 1993. The Brownlow and Gill documentary created a renewed interest in Lloyd's work in the United States, but the films were largely unavailable. Criterion Collection has since acquired the home video rights to the Lloyd library, and have released Safety Last!, The Freshman, and Speedy.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

An image of myself as one of the characters I played in my one-man showcase -- a production written, directed, produced, and edited entirely by me and in which I portray over 100 different characters in more than 50 scenes.

 

The showcase can be viewed in its entirety at:

 

lazrojas.com/showcase/

 

or

 

www.youtube.com/user/lazfilm2

Mock publicity photo with an image of myself as Tatiana Veranova, a 1960s Ukrainian ballerina, cellist, and KGB spy from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.