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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.
Mock publicity photo with an image of myself as Tatiana Veranova, a 1960s Ukrainian ballerina, cellist, and KGB spy from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
An image of myself as Tatiana Veranova, a 1960s ballerina, cellist, and KGB spy from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
See videos of Tatiana and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...
Spanish postcard in the Collectiõn de 14 postales Artistas Cinematograficasby ISMI / Huegograbado, Mumbru, Barcelona, serie A, no. 13. Photo: Universal Film. Lon Chaney in The Trap (Robert Thornby, 1922).
American stage and film actor, director, and screenwriter Lon Chaney (1883-1930) is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema. Between 1912 and 1930 he played more the 150 widely diverse roles. He is renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted characters, and his groundbreaking artistry with makeup. ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’ starred in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).
Leonidas Frank ‘Lon’ Chaney was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1883. He was the son of deaf-mute parents, Frank and Emma Chaney, and he learned from childhood to communicate through pantomime, sign language, and facial expression. The stagestruck Chaney worked in a variety of backstage positions at the opera house in his hometown of Colorado Springs. Only 17, he was eventually allowed to appear on stage. In 1901, he went on the road as an actor in a play that he co-wrote with his brother, The Little Tycoon. After limited success, the company was sold. He began travelling with popular Vaudeville and theatre acts. On tour in Oklahoma City, he met Francis Cleveland ‘Cleva’ Creighton, (Cleva) who was auditioning for a part in the show as a singer. In 1905, Chaney, then 22, married 16-year-old Cleva and in 1906, their only child, a son, Creighton Tull Chaney (later known as film actor Lon Chaney, Jr.) was born. The Chaneys continued touring, settling in California in 1910. Their marriage became strained due to working conditions, money and jealousy. In 1913, Cleva went to the Majestic Theater in downtown Los Angeles, where Lon was managing the Kolb and Dill show and attempted suicide by swallowing mercuric chloride. The suicide attempt failed but it ruined her voice. The ensuing scandal and divorce forced Chaney out of the theatre and into the booming industry of silent films. Between 1912 and 1917, Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing 100 bit or character parts. His skill with makeup gained him many parts in the highly competitive casting atmosphere. During this time, Chaney befriended the husband-wife director team of Joe De Grasse and Ida May Park, who gave him substantial roles in their pictures, and further encouraged him to play macabre characters. Chaney married one of his former colleagues in the Kolb and Dill company tour, chorus girl Hazel Hastings. Little is known of Hazel, except that her marriage to Chaney was solid. The couple gained custody of Chaney's 10-year-old son Creighton, who had resided in various homes and boarding schools since Chaney's divorce from Cleva. In 1917 Universal presented Chaney, Dorothy Phillips, and William Stowell as a team in the drama The Piper's Price (Joe De Grasse, 1917). In succeeding films, the men alternated playing lover, villain, or another man to the beautiful Phillips. They would occasionally be joined by Claire Du Brey nearly making the trio a quartet of recurring actors from film to film. So successful were the films starring this group that Universal produced fourteen films from 1917 to 1919 with Chaney, Stowell, and Phillips.
By 1917 Lon Chaney was a prominent actor in the Universal studio, but his salary did not reflect this status. When Chaney asked for a raise, studio executive William Sistrom replied, "You'll never be worth more than one hundred dollars a week." After leaving the studio, Chaney struggled for the first year as a free-lance character actor. He got his first big break when playing a substantial role in William S. Hart's Western, Riddle Gawne (William S. Hart, Lambert Hillyer, 1918). He received high praise for his performance in the role. In 1919, Chaney had another breakthrough performance in The Miracle Man (George Loane Tucker, 1919), as The Frog, a con man who pretends to be a cripple and is miraculously healed. The film displayed not only Chaney's acting ability but also his talent as a master of makeup. Critical praise and a gross of over $2 million put Chaney on the map as America's foremost character actor. He exhibited great adaptability with makeup in more conventional crime and adventure films, such as The Penalty (Wallace Worsley, 1920), in which he played an amputee gangster. As Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley, 1923) and Erik, the tortured opera ghost in The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925), Chaney created two of the most grotesquely deformed characters in film history. William K. Everson William K. Everson in American Silent Film: "Only 'The Phantom of the Opera,' with its classic unmasking scene, a masterpiece of manipulative editing, really succeeded (and still does!) in actually scaring the audience - and that because the revelation had to be a purely visual one. Moreover, Lon Chaney's make-up was so grotesque as to equal, if not surpass, anything that the audience might have anticipated or imagined." However, the portrayals sought to elicit a degree of sympathy and pathos among viewers not overwhelmingly terrified or repulsed by the monstrous disfigurements of these victims of fate. Chaney also appeared in ten films directed by Tod Browning, often portraying disguised and/or mutilated characters.
In 1924, Lon Chaney starred in Metro-Goldwyn’s He Who Gets Slapped, a circus melodrama voted one of the best films of the year. The success of this film led to a series of contracts with MGM Studios for the next five years. In these final five years of his film career, Chaney gave some of his most memorable performances. His portrayal of a tough-as-nails marine drill instructor opposite William Haines in Tell It to the Marines (George W. Hill, 1926), one of his favourite films, earned him the affection of the Marine Corps, who made him their first honorary member of the motion picture industry. Memorable is also his carnival knife-thrower Alonzo the Armless in The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) opposite Joan Crawford. In 1927, Chaney also co-starred with Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall and Polly Moran in the horror film, London After Midnight (Tod Browning, 1927) considered one of the most legendary and sought-after lost films. His final film role was a sound remake of his silent classic The Unholy Three (Jack Conway, 1930). He played Echo, a crook ventriloquist and used five different voices (the ventriloquist, the old woman, a parrot, the dummy and the girl) in the film, thus proving he could make the transition from silent films to the talkies. Chaney signed a sworn statement declaring that the five voices in the film were his own. During the filming of Thunder in the winter of 1929, Chaney developed pneumonia. In late 1929 the heavy smoker was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer. This was exacerbated when artificial snow, made out of cornflakes, lodged in his throat during filming and quickly created a serious infection. Despite aggressive treatment, his condition gradually worsened, and seven weeks after the release of the remake of The Unholy Three (1930), he died of a throat haemorrhage in Los Angeles, California. In his last days, his illness had rendered him unable to speak, forcing him to rely on the pantomimic gestures of his youth in order to communicate with his friends and loved ones. Chaney and his second wife Hazel had led a discreet private life distant from the Hollywood social scene. Chaney did minimal promotional work for his films and for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, purposefully fostering a mysterious image, and he reportedly intentionally avoided the social scene in Hollywood. At the end of the 1950s, Chaney was rediscovered. He was portrayed by James Cagney in the biopic titled Man of a Thousand Faces (Joseph Pevney, 1957). In 1958, Chaney fan Forrest J. Ackerman started and edited the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, which published many photographs and articles about Chaney. Ackerman is also present in Kevin Brownlow’s documentary Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Lon Chaney.com, Silents are Golden, Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Images of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Vintage playing card with Lon Chaney as the Joker. Lon Chaney in London After Midnight (Tod Browning, 1927).
American stage and film actor, director, and screenwriter Lon Chaney (1883-1930) is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema. Between 1912 and 1930 he played more the 150 widely diverse roles. He is renowned for his characterisations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted characters, and his groundbreaking artistry with makeup. ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces’ starred in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).
Leonidas Frank ‘Lon’ Chaney was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1883. He was the son of deaf-mute parents, Frank and Emma Chaney, and he learned from childhood to communicate through pantomime, sign language, and facial expression. The stagestruck Chaney worked in a variety of backstage positions at the opera house in his hometown of Colorado Springs. Only 17, he was eventually allowed to appear on stage. In 1901, he went on the road as an actor in a play that he co-wrote with his brother, The Little Tycoon. After limited success, the company was sold. He began travelling with popular Vaudeville and theatre acts. On tour in Oklahoma City, he met Francis Cleveland ‘Cleva’ Creighton, (Cleva) who was auditioning for a part in the show as a singer. In 1905, Chaney, then 22, married 16-year-old Cleva and in 1906, their only child, a son, Creighton Tull Chaney (later known as film actor Lon Chaney, Jr.) was born. The Chaneys continued touring, settling in California in 1910. Their marriage became strained due to working conditions, money and jealousy. In 1913, Cleva went to the Majestic Theater in downtown Los Angeles, where Lon was managing the Kolb and Dill show and attempted suicide by swallowing mercuric chloride. The suicide attempt failed but it ruined her voice. The ensuing scandal and divorce forced Chaney out of the theatre and into the booming industry of silent films. Between 1912 and 1917, Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing 100 bit or character parts. His skill with makeup gained him many parts in the highly competitive casting atmosphere. During this time, Chaney befriended the husband-wife director team of Joe De Grasse and Ida May Park, who gave him substantial roles in their pictures, and further encouraged him to play macabre characters. Chaney married one of his former colleagues in the Kolb and Dill company tour, chorus girl Hazel Hastings. Little is known of Hazel, except that her marriage to Chaney was solid. The couple gained custody of Chaney's 10-year-old son Creighton, who had resided in various homes and boarding schools since Chaney's divorce from Cleva. In 1917 Universal presented Chaney, Dorothy Phillips, and William Stowell as a team in the drama The Piper's Price (Joe De Grasse, 1917). In succeeding films, the men alternated playing lover, villain, or another man to the beautiful Phillips. They would occasionally be joined by Claire Du Brey nearly making the trio a quartet of recurring actors from film to film. So successful were the films starring this group that Universal produced fourteen films from 1917 to 1919 with Chaney, Stowell, and Phillips.
By 1917 Lon Chaney was a prominent actor in the Universal studio, but his salary did not reflect this status. When Chaney asked for a raise, studio executive William Sistrom replied, "You'll never be worth more than one hundred dollars a week." After leaving the studio, Chaney struggled for the first year as a free-lance character actor. He got his first big break when playing a substantial role in William S. Hart's Western, Riddle Gawne (William S. Hart, Lambert Hillyer, 1918). He received high praise for his performance in the role. In 1919, Chaney had another breakthrough performance in The Miracle Man (George Loane Tucker, 1919), as The Frog, a con man who pretends to be a cripple and is miraculously healed. The film displayed not only Chaney's acting ability but also his talent as a master of makeup. Critical praise and a gross of over $2 million put Chaney on the map as America's foremost character actor. He exhibited great adaptability with makeup in more conventional crime and adventure films, such as The Penalty (Wallace Worsley, 1920), in which he played an amputee gangster. As Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley, 1923) and Erik, the tortured opera ghost in The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925), Chaney created two of the most grotesquely deformed characters in film history. William K. Everson William K. Everson in American Silent Film: "Only 'The Phantom of the Opera,' with its classic unmasking scene, a masterpiece of manipulative editing, really succeeded (and still does!) in actually scaring the audience - and that because the revelation had to be a purely visual one. Moreover, Lon Chaney's make-up was so grotesque as to equal, if not surpass, anything that the audience might have anticipated or imagined." However, the portrayals sought to elicit a degree of sympathy and pathos among viewers not overwhelmingly terrified or repulsed by the monstrous disfigurements of these victims of fate. Chaney also appeared in ten films directed by Tod Browning, often portraying disguised and/or mutilated characters.
In 1924, Lon Chaney starred in Metro-Goldwyn’s He Who Gets Slapped, a circus melodrama voted one of the best films of the year. The success of this film led to a series of contracts with MGM Studios for the next five years. In these final five years of his film career, Chaney gave some of his most memorable performances. His portrayal of a tough-as-nails marine drill instructor opposite William Haines in Tell It to the Marines (George W. Hill, 1926), one of his favourite films, earned him the affection of the Marine Corps, who made him their first honorary member of the motion picture industry. Memorable is also his carnival knife-thrower Alonzo the Armless in The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) opposite Joan Crawford. In 1927, Chaney also co-starred with Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall and Polly Moran in the horror film, London After Midnight (Tod Browning, 1927) considered one of the most legendary and sought-after lost films. His final film role was a sound remake of his silent classic The Unholy Three (Jack Conway, 1930). He played Echo, a crook ventriloquist and used five different voices (the ventriloquist, the old woman, a parrot, the dummy and the girl) in the film, thus proving he could make the transition from silent films to the talkies. Chaney signed a sworn statement declaring that the five voices in the film were his own. During the filming of Thunder in the winter of 1929, Chaney developed pneumonia. In late 1929 the heavy smoker was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer. This was exacerbated when artificial snow, made out of cornflakes, lodged in his throat during filming and quickly created a serious infection. Despite aggressive treatment, his condition gradually worsened, and seven weeks after the release of the remake of The Unholy Three (1930), he died of a throat haemorrhage in Los Angeles, California. In his last days, his illness had rendered him unable to speak, forcing him to rely on the pantomimic gestures of his youth in order to communicate with his friends and loved ones. Chaney and his second wife Hazel had led a discreet private life distant from the Hollywood social scene. Chaney did minimal promotional work for his films and for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, purposefully fostering a mysterious image, and he reportedly intentionally avoided the social scene in Hollywood. At the end of the 1950s, Chaney was rediscovered. He was portrayed by James Cagney in the biopic titled Man of a Thousand Faces (Joseph Pevney, 1957). In 1958, Chaney fan Forrest J. Ackerman started and edited the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, which published many photographs and articles about Chaney. Ackerman is also present in Kevin Brownlow’s documentary Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Lon Chaney.com, Silents are Golden, Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
This is the fourth in a series of experimental music videos I made shortly after working on my one-man showcase. Inspired by Playboy magazine Video Centerfolds and intended as a parody of them, they feature some of the female characters from my showcase in slow-motion sequences set to music.
This fourth video features Sonia Marquez, a real estate agent and spitfire from my comedy screenplay "A New Life".
More Playboy parodies here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGKjHHM4t5-GSMiM...
See Sonia in her showcase scenes here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxMdhk11ofU
Of all the scenes I made for my one-man showcase, NewLife03 probably qualifies as the most unusual. Not only because of the subject matter, but also because of the challenges I faced in pulling off what happens in the scene. This video includes just a tiny portion of the raw footage I shot and gives a behind-the-scenes peek at what was involved.
You can watch the full scene here:
www.flickr.com/photos/47629856@N02/48949722131/in/photost...
More scenes from my showcase can be viewed here on Flickr or on my YouTube channel:
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:
or
An image of myself as Marielena Martinez, a 1980s Spanish soap opera actress from my noir screenplay "Triangle".
Mock magazine cover from 1962 with an image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
The living room of screenwriter Adam Herz’s Hollywood Hills home, designed by Peter Dunham. The California pottery is vintage; Dunham designed the ikat cushions and sectional sofa, which is upholstered in a Henry Calvin cotton, and the vintage suzani pillow is from Hollywood at Home. Photo by Grey Crawford, Elle Décor, November 2008.
Mock advertisement with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
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:
or
Images of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Images of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960's British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
"Nils Poppe (31 May 1908 – 28 June 2000) was a Swedish actor, comedian, director, screenwriter and theatre manager. He is internationally most famous for his part in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, but in Sweden he was much loved and participated in over 50 films on cinema and TV.
He started as a serious stage actor in 1930, but quickly realised that he was better suited for comedy, revue, operetta and musical, especially as he also was a good dancer and singer. In 1937 he moved into film and became Sweden's leading film comedian during the 1940s. Consequently, Ingmar Bergman's decision to cast him in The Seventh Seal surprised many, but with that role Poppe showed that he could also convey much warmth and compassion. He would later participate in yet another Bergman film, The Devil's Eye (1960).
After a period of inactivity in the early 1960s, he took over the running of an open-air theatre in Helsingborg in 1966 and returned to the stage. Through a deal with Swedish Television, he managed to make the theatre known throughout the country and also revitalised his own career. He retired from the stage at the age of 85, still able to dance, but a few years later he suffered from several strokes, which left him both blind, speechless and immobile. He died at the age of 92." (Wiki)
The statue of Nils Poppe is located on the grounds of the Fredriksdal open-air theatre.
A collage of images of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
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 the Exotic Dancer, a character from my sci-fi screenplay "Temporary Heroes", as she would have appeared in a music video I was going to make as a parody of Playboy Video Centerfolds.
An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960's British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
American postcard by Kline Poster Co. Inc., Phila.
Olga Petrova (1884-1977) was a British-American actress, screenwriter and playwright. During her seven years in film, Petrova appeared in more than two dozen films and wrote the script for several others.
Olga Petrova was born Muriel Harding in Tur Brook, England, in 1884. As a girl in England at the turn of the century, she felt stifled by her father’s strict rules. According to her memoir, Petrova’s father told her that while she lived in his house and ate his bread, he would set the rules. Petrova was determined to live in her own house and eat her own bread. Her success in reaching this goal, and more, is reflected in the title of her memoir, 'Butter with My Bread'. Wendy Holliday at Women Film Pioneers Project: "According to her memoir, Petrova’s desire for independence led her to run away to become a governess, but it is sometimes difficult to tell the mythmaking from reality in Petrova’s writing. She eventually met a theatre agent and became a successful actress in musicals and vaudeville in both London and New York. She likely chose the stage name Olga Petrova herself and created her own back story as a glamorous Pole or Russian."Interestingly both Wikipedia and IMDb write that Petrova made her film debut in Russia playing the role of Sofja Andreevna in Yakov Protazanov's Departure of a Grand Old Man (1912). This is doubtful and Holliday does not mention this. However, all sources agtree that she moved to the United States and became a star of vaudeville using the stage name Olga Petrova. Hollywood publicity later claimed that the studio created this persona, but press clippings and her memoir suggest that Petrova used the name on the stage. Her first American film was Alice Guy's drama The Tigress (1914). Through the 1910s, Olga became a highly popular film star appearing in more than two dozen films. Petrova starred in a number of films for Solax Studios and was Metro Pictures first diva, usually given the role of a femme fatale.Most of her films are now lost, including what she considered her best pictures, those directed by Maurice Tourneur. The Library of Congress Silent Feature Film Database indicates three of her films survive: the drama The Vampire (Alice Guy, 1915) for which Petrova wrote the screenplay, the comedy-drama Extravagance (Burton L. King, 1916) and The Waiting Soul (Burton L. King, 1917).
In 1913 Olga Petrova met local physician John Dillon Stewart in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was quickly engaged to be married. They married that year in Kansas City. Stewart relocated his practice to New York City in order to be near her primary base of operations. Petrova left the film industry in 1918. Her last starring role was as Patience Sparhawk in The Panther Woman (Ralph Ince, 1918), co-starring Rockliffe Fellows. She continued to act in Broadway productions. During the 1920s, she wrote three plays and toured the country with a theatre troupe. She also interviewed a number of prominent film stars on paid assignment for Shadowland magazine, Motion Picture Magazine, and Photoplay Journal including Marion Davies, Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Alla Nazimova, Norma Talmadge, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Rudolf Valentino. In 1942, she published her autobiography, 'Butter With My Bread'. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Olga Petrova died in 1977 in Clearwater, Florida, aged 93. Her second husband was Louis Willoughby, who passed away in 1968. She had no children. Wendy Holliday: "In a 1917 Photoplay article she said, “I am a feminist. By that I do not mean that women should try to do the work of men. They should merely learn to do their own work, live their own lives, be themselves, with all the strength that is in them” (27). The example she set with her own life, achieving both bread and butter, attests to the power of this idea".
Sources: Wendy Holliday (Women Film Pioneers Project), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Mock advertisement with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
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:
or
Images of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Mock promotional photo from 1982 with an image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Director and Screenwriter Bret Carr strips off his clothes during the Olympic Torch Rally protests in San Francisco on Wed. April 9 on Embarcadero St. near Justin Herman Plaza.
Mock magazine cover from 1961 with an image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
German autograph card by Kino.
In the Swinging Sixties, shy, awkward-looking British actress Jane Birkin (1946) made a huge international splash as one of the nude models in Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). In France she became the muse of singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote several of her albums, plus their explicitly erotic duet Je t'aime... moi non plus. Later she worked with such respected film directors as Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda and Jacques Doillon, and won several acting awards.
Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in 1946. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an English stage actress, and her father, David Birkin, was a Royal Navy lieutenant-commander, who had worked on clandestine operations as navigator with the French Resistance. Her brother is the screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin. She was educated at Upper Chine School, Isle of Wight, and then went to Kensington Academy in London. At 17, she first went on stage in Graham Greene's 1964 production Carving a Statue. A year later she was chosen to play in the musical comedy Passion Flower Hotel with music by John Barry (composer of the James Bond theme). They met and married shortly afterwards. Their daughter Kate Barry, now a photographer, was born in 1967. Jane emerged in the Swinging London scene of the 1960s. First she appeared uncredited as a girl on a motorbike in the comedy The Knack …and How to Get It (Richard Lester, 1965) starring Rita Tushingham. Then she attracted attention with a brief scene as a nude, blonde model in Blowup (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni's scandalous masterpiece that received the Palme d'or award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1968, Birkin played a fantasy-like model in the psychedelic picture Wonderwall (Joe Massot, 1968). That same year, she auditioned in France for the lead female role in Slogan (Pierre Grimblat, 1969) with pop star Serge Gainsbourg, who was still grieving after his break up with Brigitte Bardot. Jane barely spoke French, and Gainsbourg gave her a rough time. When she burst into tears, mixing private sadness about John Barry and the film part, he disapproved, but he recognised that she cried well in front of the camera. Jane got the part, and a mythical and passionate Paris love story began. Birkin performed with Gainsbourg on the film's theme song, La chanson de slogan — the first of many collaborations between the two. They became inseparable and a living legend when they recorded the duet Je t'aime... moi non plus (I love you... me neither), a song Gainsbourg originally had written for Brigitte Bardot. The song's fame is partly a result of its salacious lyrics, sung by Gainsbourg and Birkin to a background of passionate whispering and moaning from Birkin, concluding in her simulated orgasm. Censorship in several countries went wild, the Vatican condemned the immoral nature of the song, and in Great Britain the BBC refused to play the original, and did their own orchestral version. The record benefited from all the free publicity and rocketed straight to the top of the charts, selling a million copies in a matter of months.
At the Côte d'Azur, Jane Birkin played in the thriller La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969) in which she was seduced by Alain Delon. Then she went with Serge Gainsbourg to Yugoslavia to play in the adventure film Romansa konjokradice/Romance of a horse thief (Abraham Polonsky, 1971) starring Yul Brynner. In 1971 her daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg was born. Birkin took a break from acting, but returned as the lover of Brigitte Bardot (in her final film role) in Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme.../Don Juan 73 (Roger Vadim, 1973). Her first solo album, Di Doo Dah, was also released in 1973. The title song became another chart hit. In the cinema Birkin played 'cute but stupid' roles in box office hits as La moutarde me monte au nez/Lucky Pierre (Claude Zidi, 1974) and La course à l’échalotte/The Wild Goose Chase (Claude Zidi, 1975), two popular comedies starring Pierre Richard. She proved herself as a film actress in Le Mouton enragé/Love at the Top (Michel Deville, 1974) starring Romy Schneider, and the highly dramatic Sept morts sur ordonnance/Seven Deaths by Prescription (Jacques Rouffio, 1975) opposite Michel Piccoli. In 1975, she also appeared with Joe Dallesandro in Gainsbourg's daring directorial début Je t'aime... moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976). The film created a stir for its frank examination of sexual ambiguity and the controversial sex scenes. For her performance as an androgynous looking teenager she was nominated for a Best Actress César Award. In the meantime, her second album Lolita go home (1975) came out, on which she sang Philippe Labro's lyrics set to Gainsbourg's music. Three years later, her Ex-fan des sixties (1978) was released. Birkin appeared in a series of mainstream films such as L'Animal/Stuntwoman (Claude Zidi, 1977) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978) and Evil Under the Sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982), with Peter Ustinov as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In the arthouse production Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung/Egon Schiele: Excess and Punishment (Herbert Vesely, 1980), she appeared as the mistress of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, played by Mathieu Carrière.
Serge Gainsbourg had plunged into several major bouts of alcoholism and depression, resulting in all-night partying and scandals, and in 1980 Jane Birkin left him. The couple remained on good terms though. Birkin starred as Anne in La fille prodigue/The Prodigal Daughter (Jacques Doillon, 1981). Jacques Doillon proved to be her dream of a director, who imposed his own personal style of drama, and brought out the very best of her. She went to live with him, and in 1982 she had her third daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared as Alma opposite Maruschka Detmers in his La pirate/The Pirate (Jacques Doillon, 1984), for which she was nominated for a César Award. This work led to an invitation from theatre director Patrice Chéreau to star on stage in La Fausse suivante (The False Servant) by Pierre de Marivaux. Gainsbourg, suffering from the separation, wrote Baby alone in Babylone for her. The record won the Charles Cross award and became a gold record. She began to appear frequently on stage in plays and concerts in France, Japan, the U.K. and then the U.S. Film director Jacques Rivette collaborated with her in L'amour par terre/Love on the Ground (Jacques Rivette, 1983) starring Geraldine Chaplin, and La Belle Noiseuse/The Beautiful Troublemaker (Jacques Rivette, 1991) with Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart. Again Birkin was nominated for the César for best supporting actress, for both films. She created a sensation as star and screenwriter of director Agnès Varda's Kung Fu Master (1987), in which she played a 40-year-old woman carrying on a torrid affair with a 15-year-old boy, played by Mathieu Demy, Varda's son. The following year, Varda expressed her admiration for Birkin with the feature-length documentary Jane B. par Agnes V (Agnès Varda, 1988).
Jane Birkin’s work in Dust (Marion Hänsel, 1985) with Trevor Howard, and Daddy Nostalgie (Bertrand Tavernier, 1990) opposite Dirk Bogarde also earned her the praise and respect of international critics. Additionally, she appeared in Merchant Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory, 1998) and Merci Docteur Rey (Andrew Litvack, 2002) with Dianne Wiest, while the end title song of Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003) featured her singing L'Anamour, composed by Serge Gainsbourg. In 1990 Serge Gainsbourg dedicated a new album to her: Amours des feintes. It was to be his last. He died in 1991. A year later Birkin won the Female Artist of the Year award at the 1992 Victoires de la Musique. In 1993 she separated from Jacques Doillon. In the following years she devoted herself to her family and to her humanitarian work with Amnesty International on immigrant welfare and AIDS issues. Birkin visited Bosnia, Rwanda and Palestine, often working with children. In 2001, she was awarded the OBE in Great Britain. She has also been awarded the French Ordre national du Mérite in 2004. Jane Birkin continues to make films, theatre and music. She collaborated with such artists as Bryan Ferry, Manu Chao, Françoise Hardy, Rufus Wainwright, and Les Negresses Vertes on albums as Rendez-Vous (2004) and Fictions (2006). The self-penned Enfants d'Hiver arrived in 2008. In 2006, Birkin played the title role in Elektra, directed by Philippe Calvario in France. At the Cannes Film Festival 2007, she presented a film, both as a director and actor: Boxes (2007) with Michel Piccoli, Geraldine Chaplin, and her daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared in Si tu meurs, je te tue/If you die, I’ll kill you (Hiner Saleem, 2011) with Jonathan Zaccaï, and La femme et le TGV/The Railroad Lady (2016), a short film directed by Swiss filmmaker Timo von Gunten. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film. In a 2017 interview, Birkin stated that La femme et le TGV would be her final acting performance, and that she had no plans to return to acting. In March 2017, Jane Birkin released Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique, a collection of songs Serge Gainsbourg had written for her during and after their relationship, reworked with full orchestral arrangements.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), John Bush (AllMusic), RFI Musique, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Mock advertisement with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Images of myself as Edith Taylor, a 1960s British aristocrat and mod fashion model from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
British postcard in the Famous Film Stars series by Valentine's, no. 7123A. Eddie Cantor in The Kid from Spain (Leo McCarey, 1932). Caption: Eddie Cantor, whose real name is Izzy Iskowitch, was born 31st January 1893 in New York. Beginning life as a newsboy, he ultimately appeared in Vaudeville and has risen to great fame as a star. A few of his successes are Whoopee, Palmy Days, The Kid from Spain and Roman Scandals.
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.
French postcard, no. 47.
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.
French postcard.
French singer and composer Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991) was one of the most important figures in French pop music, renowned for provocative and scandalous releases as Je t'aime... moi non plus, as well as for his artistic output, which embodied many genres. He appeared in several French and Italian films and directed four films, in which his long time lover Jane Birkin starred.
Anglo-French actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg (1971) is the daughter of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg. The tall, long-necked, and elegantly gawky Gainsbourg appeared in several films by Lars von Trier and many other major directors, and received both a César Award and the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award.
Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg was born in London in 1971. She is the daughter of English actress Jane Birkin and French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Her maternal grandmother was actress Judy Campbell and her uncle is the screenwriter Andrew Birkin, who directed her in The Cement Garden. Gainsbourg grew up Paris where she attended the École Active Bilingue Jeannine Manuel. Later she studied at the Collège Alpin International Beau Soleil in Switzerland. At 13, Gainsbourg made her musical debut with her father on the song Lemon Incest in 1984. The music video featured the two cuddling on a bed surrounded by feathers. Not unexpectedly, the song raised a lot of controversy in France. Gainsbourg made her film debut the next year playing Catherine Deneuve's daughter in Paroles et musique/Love Songs (Élie Chouraqui, 1984) with Christophe Lambert. More roles soon followed. Successful was L'effronté/An Impudent Girl (Claude Miller, 1985), a free adaptation of the novel The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. James Travers at French Film Guide: “In her first substantial film role, Gainsbourg is magnificent. Her sensitive portrayal of a thirteen year old girl captures the harrowing insecurity and irrational behaviour of adolescence, without resorting to the kind of manipulative sentimentality or loudmouthed histrionics which most cinema audiences have come to expect of teenage actors.” L'effronté won the Louis Delluc Prize, and received in 1986 César nominations for Best Film, Best Director, Most Promising Actor, Best Writing, Best Costume Design and Best Sound. Gainsbourg won the César for Most Promising Actress. Charlotte was fifteen at the time. In 1986 she also released her debut album Charlotte for Ever, which was produced by her father. They also played together in his poorly received film Charlotte for Ever (Serge Gainsbourg, 1986) in which Stan (Serge Gainsbourg) depressed over his wife's death turns his affection over to his daughter Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsbourg). With her mother and her half-sister Lou Doillon, she appeared in the drama Kung Fu Master/Le Petit Amour (Agnès Varda, 1988). A box office hit was the drama La Petite Voleuse/The Little Thief (Claude Miller, 1988), as a sullen teenager experimenting with sex and various illegal pursuits. The film was based upon an unfinished script by François Truffaut, who died before being able to direct the film himself.
In 1990 Charlotte Gainsbourg co-starred with Julian Sands in the Italian film Il sole anche di notte/The Sun Also Shines at Night (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1990). It was followed by the Frenchblack comedy Merci la vie (Bertrand Blier, 1991), in which she and Anouk Grinberg played two young women on a rampage against men and just about whomever else crosses their path. Merci la vie was nominated for the César for Best Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Writing and Best Editing. She made her English speaking debut in The Cement Garden (1993), written and directed by her uncle, Andrew Birkin. The film based on the novel by Ian McEwan, was entered into the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival, where Birkin won the Silver Bear for Best Director. Gainsbourg made her stage debut in 1994 in David Mamet's Oleanna at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse. In 1996, she starred opposite William Hurt as the title character in Jane Eyre (Franco Zeffirelli, 1996), a film adaption of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel. In Love Etc. (Marion Vernoux, 1996), she co-starred with French-Israeli actor/director Yvan Attal. The two fell in love a few years earlier and in 1997 their son Ben was born. Together they also have a daughter Alice (2002) and another son Joe (2011). In 2000, Gainsbourg won the Cesar for Best Supporting Actress for the film La Bûche/Season's Beatings (Danièle Thompson, 1999). Gainsbourg was also featured on the Madonna album Music (2000) on the track What It Feels Like For A Girl. There is a lengthy spoken intro by Gainsbourg, taken from the film The Cement Garden, which inspired the title of the song. In the romantic comedy-drama Ma Femme est une actrice/My Wife is an Actress (Yvan Attal, 2001), she co-starred with her partner Yvan Attal. Attal plays a journalist who becomes obsessively jealous when his actress wife gets a part in a film with an attractive co-star (Terence Stamp). Attal also wrote the script. In a popular French TV series of Les Miserables (Josée Dayan, 2002), she played Fantine opposite Gérard Depardieu and John Malkovich. Gainsbourg made her Hollywood debut with the successful drama 21 Grams (2003) directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu. It also stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio del Toro. With Attal she appeared again in a romantic comedy, Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants/Happily Ever After (Yvan Attal, 2004), with a lengthy cameo appearance of Johnny Depp, who speaks fluent French.
In 2004, Charlotte Gainsbourg sang a duet with French pop star Étienne Daho on his single If. Ot lead to more. In 2006, more than twenty years, after the release of her debut album Charlotte for Ever, she released the album 5:55, to commercial and critical success. It reached the top spot on the French charts and achieved platinum status. That year, Gainsbourg also appeared alongside Gael García Bernal in Michel Gondry's surrealistic science fantasy comedy La Science des rêves/The Science of Sleep (2006). James Travers at French Film Guide: “it is hard not to be seduced by its naïve poetry, romanticism and exuberant sense of fun. A cinematic oddity it may be, but La Science des rêves is also probably one of the cutest and most authentic French rom-coms you will ever see.” In 2007, gainsbourg appeared as Claire in the Todd Haynes-directed Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There, also contributing a cover of the Dylan song Just Like a Woman to the film soundtrack. On 5 September 2007, Gainsbourg was rushed to a Paris hospital where she underwent surgery for a cerebral hemorrhage. She had been experiencing headaches since a minor waterskiing accident in the United States several weeks earlier. She returned in grand style to the screen in the Danish art film Antichrist (2009), written and directed by Lars von Trier, co-starring Willem Dafoe. It follows horror film conventions and tells the story of a couple who, after the death of their child, retreat to a cabin in the woods where the man experiences strange visions and the woman manifests increasingly violent sexual behavior. After premiering at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where Gainsbourg won the festival's award for Best Actress, the film immediately caused controversy, with critics generally praising the film's artistic execution but strongly divided regarding its substantive merit. Other awards won by the film include the Robert Award for best Danish film, The Nordic Council Film Prize for best Nordic film and the European Film Award for best cinematography. In late 2009, Gainsbourg released her third studio album, IRM, which was produced by Beck. One of the influential factors in the album's creative process was her time spent filming Antichrist. Gainsbourg's head injury in 2007 influenced the title of the album IRM, an abbreviation for the French translation of ‘magnetic resonance imaging’. While receiving a brain scan, she began to think about music. She co-starred with Romain Duris and Jean-Hugues Anglade in the romantic drama Persécution (Patrice Chéreau, 2009) which was nominated for a Golden Lion at the 66th Venice International Film Festival. Gainsbourg starred in the French/Australian production The Tree (Julie Bertuccelli, 2010), for which got another César nomination, and in Lars von Trier's apocalyptic drama, Melancholia (2011), with Kirsten Dunst and Alexander Skarsgård. Dimitri Ehrlich in Interview magazine: “she has managed to avoid all of the ego-trappings of movie stardom, instead working with a seriousness and purity that seem to belong to a different era. Onscreen, she can radiate emotions like a filament about to erupt, with a tenderness and honesty that give her work its gravitational pull.” Next, she will star in the upcoming Nymphomaniac (Lars von Trier, 2013), with Stellan Skarsgård, and in the German 3D drama Every Thing Will Be Fine (Wim Wenders, 2014) with James Franco. Charlotte Gainsbourg resides in the elegant 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, her father's birthplace.
Sources: James Travers (French Film Guide), Dimitri Ehrlich (Interview), Rebecca Flint Marx (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Nicole Houston Reed (born May 17, 1988) is an American actress, screenwriter, singer-songwriter, and model known for her portrayal of vampire Rosalie Hale in The Twilight Saga (2008–2012). She became known in 2003, after the release of the film Thirteen, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, for which she was credited with Hardwicke as a co-writer of the screenplay, and in which she played a lead role. The film earned Reed an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance, as well as several nominations.
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
An image of myself as Sonia Marquez, a hot-blooded Latin real estate agent and diva from my comedy screenplay "A New Life".
Images of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
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:
or
This video is a slideshow of images of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
See more slideshows of myself as Darla and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...
American postcard by Postcard Co. California, Los Angeles. Photo: Glen G. Stone, Los Angeles. Harold Lloyd and Mickey Daniels in Dr. Jack (Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1922). Captions: "Dr." Harold Lloyd and his patient, "Mickey" Daniels. (front) Showing Harold Lloyd in the role of a doctor who "dispenses happiness". Both he and his patient "look their parts". For the freckled youngster, the happiness has evidently to come after the dose.
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 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 the 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, 1923) - 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.
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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...
British postcard in the Pictures Portrait Gallery by Pictures Ltd., no. 174.
Alla Nazimova (1879–1945) was a grand, highly flamboyant star of the American silent cinema. The Russian-born film and theatre actress, screenwriter, and film producer was widely known as just Nazimova. On Broadway, she was noted for her work in the classic plays of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Turgenev. Her efforts at silent film production were less successful, but a few sound-film performances survive as a record of her art.
Alla Nazimova (Russian: Алла Назимовa) was born Marem-Ides Leventon (Russian name Adelaida Yakovlevna Leventon) in Yalta, Crimea, Russian Empire, in 1879. She was the youngest of three children of Jewish parents Yakov Abramovich Leventon, a pharmacist, and Sofia (Sara) Lvovna Horowitz, who moved to Yalta in 1870 from Kishinev. At age 17 Alla Leventon abandoned her training as a violinist and went to Moscow to work in theatre with V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. In 1892, she joined Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre using the name of Alla Nazimova for the first time. Her stage name was a combination of Alla (a diminutive of Adelaida) and the surname of Nadezhda Nazimova, the heroine of the Russian novel Children of the Streets. Nazimova's theatre career blossomed early. In 1899 she married Sergei Golovin, a fellow actor, but they soon separated. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: “She grew discontented with Stanislavsky and later performed in repertory. She met the legendary Pavel Orlenev, a close friend of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, and entered into both a personal and professional relationship with him.” By 1903 she was a major star in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. She toured Europe, including London and Berlin, with Orlenev. They immigrated to the United States in 1905. She was signed up by the American producer Henry Miller. Although she spoke not a word of English, she so impressed the Shubert brothers that they hired her on the condition she learns English in six months. In 1906 she made her Broadway debut in the title role of Hedda Gabler to critical and popular success. She also played other Ibsen characters: Nora in A Doll’s House, Hedwig in The Wild Duck, and Hilda in The Master Builder. She quickly became extremely popular and remained a major Broadway star for years. From 1912 to 1925 Nazimova maintained a ‘fake marriage’ with British actor and director Charles Bryant, who often was her co-star. In order to bolster this arrangement with Bryant, Nazimova kept her marriage to Golovin secret. Due to her notoriety in a 35-minute 1915 pacifist play entitled War Brides, Nazimova made her silent film debut in the film version, War Brides (Herbert Brenon, 1916), which was produced by independent producer Lewis J. Selznick. She made $100,000 touring in War Brides and an additional $60,000 for the film version. The film's lost status makes it now a sought-after title. In 1917, she negotiated a contract with Metro Pictures, a precursor to MGM, that included a weekly salary of $13,000. She moved from New York to Hollywood, where she made a number of highly successful films for Metro, including a part as a reformed prostitute in Revelation (George D. Baker, 1918), that earned her a considerable amount of money. Nazimova soon felt confident enough in her abilities to begin producing and writing films in which she also starred. Examples are Eye for Eye (Albert Capellani, 1918), The Brat (Herbert Blache, 1919) and Madame Peacock (Ray C. Smallwood, 1920).
Alla Nazimova starred in Camille (Ray C. Smallwood, 1921) as the courtesan Marguerite opposite Rudolph Valentino as her idealistic young lover Armand. Camille is based on the play adaptation La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias) by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The film was set in 1920s Paris, whereas the original version took place in Paris in the 1840s. It had lavish Art Deco sets and Rudolph Valentino later married the art director, Natacha Rambova. Jennifer Horne at The Women Film Pioneers Project: “Working under contract with Metro Pictures Corporation between late 1917 and April 1921, her company, Nazimova Productions, produced nine largely profitable, feature-length films and brought along the writing talent of writer-producer June Mathis. Details regarding the supervisory roles Nazimova played in the production of many of her films remain confusing since not all of Nazimova’s contributions are reflected in the official credits on films.” In her film adaptations A Doll's House (Charles Bryant, 1922), based on Henrik Ibsen, and Salomé (Charles Bryant, 1923), based on Oscar Wilde's play, Nazimova developed her own filmmaking techniques, which were considered daring at the time. Despite the film being only a little over an hour in length and having no real action to speak of, Salomé cost over $350,000 to make. All the sets were constructed indoors to be able to have complete control over the lighting. The film was shot completely in black and white, matching the illustrations done by Aubrey Beardsley in the printed edition of Wilde's play. The costumes, designed by Natacha Rambova, used material only from Maison Lewis of Paris, such as the real silver lamé loincloths worn by the guards. Both A Doll's House and Salomé were critical and commercial failures. Gary Brumburgh: “The monetary losses she suffered as producer were astronomical. The Hays Code, which led to severe censorship in pictures, also led to her downfall, as did her outmoded acting style.” By 1925 Nazimova could no longer afford to invest in more films; and financial backers withdrew their support. Left with few options, she gave up on the film industry. She became an American citizen in 1927.
In 1928, Alla Nazimova returned to the Broadway stage as Madame Ranevsky in Eva Le Gallienne’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Acclaimed were also her starring roles as Natalya Petrovna in Rouben Mamoulian's 1930 production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country, Christine in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), O-Lan in Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth (1932), and as Mrs. Alving in Ibsen's Ghosts (1935). In the early 1940s, she played character roles in a few more films. She played Robert Taylor's mother who is in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany in Escape (Mervyn Le Roy, 1940) and Tyrone Power's mother in Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941). Her final film was Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944), an epic about the American home front during World War II. Nazimova openly conducted relationships with women, and there were outlandish parties at her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, in Hollywood, California, known as ‘The Garden of Alla’. She is credited with having originated the phrase ‘sewing circle’ as a discreet code for lesbian or bisexual actresses. Nazimova helped start the careers of both of Rudolph Valentino's wives, Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova. Although she was involved in a lesbian affair with Acker, it is debated if Nazimova and Rambova had a sexual affair. Nazimova was impressed by Rambova's skills as an art director, and Rambova designed the innovative sets for Nazimova's film productions of Camille and Salomé. Of those Nazimova is confirmed to have been involved with romantically, the list includes actress Eva Le Gallienne, director Dorothy Arzner, writer Mercedes de Acosta, and Oscar Wilde's niece, Dolly Wilde. Nazimova lived with Glesca Marshall from 1929 until her death. In 1945 Nazimova died of coronary thrombosis in a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 66.
Sources: Jennifer Horne (Women Film Pioneers Project), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.