American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. 20. Photo: Douglas Kirkland, 1978. Caption: Diahann Carol (sic) - Star pop singer, was born in New York in 1935. Her career has spanned a multitude of super-successful nightclub, screen and TV engagements.

 

On 4 October 2019, Diahann Carroll has died aged 84 of cancer. She was among the foremost African-American actors to break down long-seated prejudices in casting. Carroll was the first black performer to have her sitcom, Julia, which ran for 86 episodes (1968-1971), and the first to win an Emmy in the category of best actress in a leading role in a comedy series. She also won a Tony for her performance in the Broadway musical 'No Strings', written especially for her by Richard Rodgers, which highlighted an interracial romance without mentioning colour. Her films included Carmen Jones (1954), Porgy and Bess (1959), Paris Blues (1961) and Claudine (1974). And her conniving and glamorous Dominique Deveraux was a match for Joan Collins’ Alexis Colby, doubling the 'nasty in Dynasty (1984-1997).

 

Carol Diann Johnson was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1935. She was the first child of John Johnson, a subway conductor, and his wife, Mabel (nee Faulk). When their daughter was an infant the family moved to Harlem, where she grew up. Music was an important part of her life as a child, singing at age 6 with her Harlem church choir. A few years later the 10-year-old became a recipient of a Metropolitan Opera scholarship for studies at the New York High School of Music and Art. After graduating she attended New York University, majoring in sociology. At the same time, she did modelling for Ebony magazine. When she was 16, she teamed up with a girlfriend from school and auditioned for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts show using the more exotic sounding name of Diahann Carroll. This led to her performing on radio and television and in nightclubs while still in her teens. Her big break came in 1954 when Truman Capote chose her for a leading part in the Broadway musical 'House of Flowers', based on his short story and for which he wrote the book and lyrics. Carroll, who played a young sex worker in a Caribbean island bordello, had the best numbers, 'A Sleepin’ Bee' and 'I Never Has Seen Snow'. In the same year Carroll made her film debut in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954), an all-black, updated movie version of the Georges Bizet opera 'Carmen'. She played a friend of Dorothy Dandridge in the title role, performing in the quintet Whizzin’ Away Along De Track. Carroll was dubbed by Bernice Peterson because her own voice was not considered operatic enough, and she was dubbed again (this time by Loulie Jean Norman) as Clara, the young mother 'singing' the renowned lullaby Summertime in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), Preminger’s big-screen adaptation of George Gershwin’s opera.

 

Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues (1961) presented Carroll with her first co-starring role, as an American tourist in Paris who, with her friend (Joanne Woodward) meets two fellow American jazz players (Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman). She falls for one of them, but fails to persuade him to return with her to the 'racist' US. At the same time, Poitier and Carroll were having an affair in real life. Diahann returned to Broadway. She was rewarded with a Tony Award for her exceptional performance as a fashion model in the 1962 musical 'No Strings,' a bold, interracial love story that co-starred Richard Kiley. Richard Rodgers, whose first musical this was after the death of partner Oscar Hammerstein, wrote the part specifically for Diahann, which included her rendition of the song standard 'The Sweetest Sounds.' On screen, she appeared again for Preminger, in Hurry Sundown (Otto Preminger, 1967), set in rural 1940s Georgia. She played an elegant local schoolteacher who had gone north and been corrupted. Despite a terrible script, Carroll came off slightly better than her co-stars, Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, in this condescending melodrama on race relations. After a conventional heist film, The Split (Gordon Flemyng, 1968), in which Carroll was the wife of a robber (Jim Brown), came Claudine (John Berry, 1974), a romantic comedy and one of the few mainstream movies starring black actors in the 1970s that was not described as “blaxploitation”. She played a Harlem widow on welfare raising six children on her own, who is courted by a garbage collector played by James Earl Jones. Surprisingly, after being Oscar-nominated as best actress for Claudine, Carroll did not return to feature films for 16 years.

 

The reason was her rewarding work on television. In the popular sitcom Julia (1968), she touchingly portrayed an ordinary nurse and widow struggling to raise a small son. Diahann became the first full-fledged African-American female 'star' - top billed, in which the show centered around her lead character. The show gradually rose in ratings and carroll won a Golden Globe award for 'Best Newcomer' and an Emmy nomination. There followed many guest appearances in TV series and the role of Maya Angelou’s selfish mother in an adaptation of the acclaimed autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Fielder Cook, 1979). However, it was her role as the sleek Dominique Deveraux, which Carroll claimed made her “the first black bitch on television” in the glossy Dynasty (1984-1987) and its spin-off The Colbys, that brought her greatest fame. As the character owned a music company and was a successful singer, the soap also gave Carroll the chance to display her vocal talents, already apparent from her several albums and club appearances. Among her other TV series was A Different World (1989-1993), a spin-off from The Cosby Show, in which she appeared in eight episodes as the mother of a southern belle; The Lonesome Dove (1994-1995) and Grey’s Anatomy (2006-2007), for which she received a Prime Time Emmy nomination. Carroll was married and divorced four times: to the record producer Monty Kay, with whom she had a daughter, Suzanne; to a Las Vegas boutique owner, Freddie Glusman, whom she divorced on grounds of physical abuse; to a managing director of Jet magazine, Robert DeLeon, who spent large amounts of her money before dying in a car crash; and finally to the crooner Vic Damone, who neglected her for golf. She was engaged to the British broadcaster David Frost from 1971 to 1973. Much about these relationships was revealed in her memoir The Legs Are the Last to Go (2008). Diahann Carroll passed away in Los Angles of complications from cancer. She is survived by Suzanne, a journalist, and two grandchildren, August and Sydney.

 

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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

A new cartoon tribute by Stephen B. Whatley, created gradually over the past few months, celebrating one of America's classic TV sitcoms, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet ; that ran on ABC from 1952 to 1966.

 

The series starring the real Nelson family, Ozzie Nelson (1905-1975) and Harriet Hilliard Nelson (1909-1994) and their handsome sons actor & trapeze artist David Nelson (1936-2011) and actor and singer, Ricky Nelson (1940-1985).

 

Harriet Hilliard who played the mother and wife - which in real life she was - had been a singer and actress for decades before ; and the artist was charmed by her in the 1943 film The Falcon Strikes Back (1943).

 

Loving old Hollywood and the USA Whatley only first watched episodes via Youtube about a year or so ago. Since then through DVDs he has found the show sofunny and uplifting.

 

As it is the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the TV show - (it began on radio) - maybe in America they will re-run the series ; certainly more DVD releases are coming.

 

Here are 2 of the artist's favourite episodes :

The Newly Weds Get Settled (1961)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhdB-kECqJk

 

The Tangled Web (1966/ colour) - co-stars Audrey Christie who is brilliant as 'Barbara', Clara's friend.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR3ddPiOK5w

 

British artist Stephen B. Whatley is primarily an expressionist painter and you can see more of his work via his website: www.stephenbwhatley.com

Preserved Ford Paddy Wagon pays homage to the 1960s sitcom, ‘The Andy Griffith Show’, set in the fictional sleepy town of Mayberry, North Carolina.

For Greg.

 

Italian postcard, no. 358.

 

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

 

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

 

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights.

In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

 

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

 

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

Dutch postcard by Van Leer's Fotodrukindustrie N.V., Amsterdam, no. 251. Photo: Universal Film.

 

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

 

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

 

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

 

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

 

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

April O'Neal: -here at the Steel Hand Dojo, which has become known recently for its most famous member, Speedo Steel. Speedo, what seemed like a good thing, all the publicity from your new sitcom promoting the dojo, recently became very bad as Huntress was seen on video using very excessive force against Blue Beach Steel.

 

Speedo: Yes. I have always only wanted to honor Dr. Steel. He is our grandmaster. And this dojo. And CooperSky. And Dav... I mean, my secret publicist. And also probably my-

 

April O'Neal: Okay, you're very singular of focus in your commitment, that's clear.

 

Speedo: Yes.

 

April O'Neal: But now, Blue Beach Steel is sitting behind us barely able to move. Viciously pummeled by Huntress.

 

Speedo: Yes.

 

April O'Neal: What do you think about that?

 

Speedo: I didn't see the entire fight. Perhaps if Blue Beach had used the Ghastly Steel technique, he could have countered-

 

April O'Neal: No, I'm not asking why he lost the fight, I'm asking what do you think of Huntress stating that this brutal mauling was a message that your new sitcom, Malibu Steel, needs to shut down?

 

Speedo: Huntress wants to marry me.

 

April O'Neal: She... eh... She is cast to play your wife in the show. I... I don't understand.

 

Speedo: We call this Steel Love. Huntress has experienced the unbridled fury of the Steel Hand. And now she cannot flee but she is afraid. She's looking at me and saying, 'I think I love you, but what am I so afraid of? I'm afraid that I'm not sure of a love there is no cure for.'

 

April O'Neal: Okay, now you're just quoting the Partridge Family. Well, do you think the show can still proceed?

 

Speedo: Yes.

 

April O'Neal: And there you have it! Speedo Steel is not backing down and, to use a succinct quote, 'The show must go on!'

 

Sad to hear that she had passed away aged 71 from cancer. The title of her late 90's sitcom (seen above) in which she played the owner of a lingerie company inspired my femme first name. Incidentally, legendary 1950's pinup and bondage model Bettie Page decided my surname!

A statue of Captain Mainwaring from the BBC series Dad's Army is situated in the Norfolk town of Thetford where many of the classic sitcom's scenes were filmed.

The life-size bronze cast of the character, played by Arthur Lowe, is seated on a bench between the Old Anchor Hotel and The Bell Hotel in Thetford.

The Undergrounders is a sitcom (that I just made up) about a post-apocalyptic family from the 60s who live in a decked-out fashionable bomb shelter beneath their broken-down farm house. Regular characters include Farmer Joe, his daughters Edna and Calpurnia, as well as Zombie Zeke (and Zombie Zeke's arm), who occasionally drops in to visit from above ground.

(A helical PDW)

(WARNING: its gonna be a long story post, if you don't want to read it -in which case I hate you- be prepared to scroll down a bit to get to the comments.)

  

A light cheery synthetic bell chime told Salem that the tram had

reached its next destination. Here though, the tram stopped, while

heavy machinery beneath noisily checked, repaired, and reset the

computer to travel the opposite direction on the track.

End of the line for this car.

Both men stepped briskly out into the terminal, quickly locating the

proper tram to transfer over to for the next leg of the commute to

Salem's place. Anvil would have to crash there until he was set up

enough to get his own place. Mentally, Salem told himself he would

eagerly await that day. Truthfully though, the odd kid was starting to

grow on him, and the prospect of having Anvil as a partner was

increasingly looking to be a good thing. All the cold stiff handshakes,

formal protocols, impersonal meetings... working for corporations was a

bleak mechanical experience that made it hard to remember what it was

like to be a normal human. Smiles, laughter, the lame jokes and the

disgusting farts, all the things that showed up on sitcoms.

They talk about it, in the various locations where bounty hunters,

mercenaries, and acquisition agents pool around discussing their work

over a drink, talk about the "human factor" the need to communicate.

Keeps all the blood, bullets, and money from going to the head and

driving you insane. There are differing opinions as to if this is a bad

thing. The guys up top, the ones that talk to CEOs face to face, get

top of the line tech, get the world on a silver platter. Those mercs

are the crazy ones, the stone cold death-machines.

Salem wasn't too keen on the idea. What was the point of money if he

was a crazed nut who was only satisfied gunning targets down? It seemed

like a foolish end, a no win situation. To chase money just to forget

it once you have it.

No, Salem would take the lower level jobs, ones that paid enough but

let him keep himself. It was this part of his mind that started warming

to the newly instated agent Anvil.

The kid kept things human.

Salem checked his watch: time to kill. Not literally, of course, though

he mentally noted to save that for when a witty pun was needed. Good

way to start a fight.

He glanced around for the vending machine he knew was at this terminal.

Over towards the one door, a massive metal cube that looked more akin

to a vault. An automated gun store.

"Here kid, I hope you don't have any plans for that paycheck already,

because I'm going to show you your first expense."

Anvil looked up, startled from his thoughts.

"Ah, cool. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with that

anyways."

"The money?"

"Yeah."

"You're crazy. Most people go through life with a list of things they

want to buy as soon as they have the money."

"That seemed like a pretty bleak way to live."

"Heh... Yeah well," he reached the machine, and thumped his hand

against it, "This won't have everything you want, but it is a start.

Here, this first one is on me."

He swiped a card, punched a few buttons, held still for a retinal scan,

and then the machine clunked and spat out a small black case.

"Weymouth Tech C3. Cheap, but reliable. Its the pistol I prefer to use

on the field. Works good, compact, and yet cheap enough you don't have

to feel bad if things get ugly and you lose it."

He handed the case over to Matt Anvil, and gestured to the machine.

"We'll want to figure out what you are good at, and what you prefer.

You'll want to get a little of every flavor. Sure, its a lot of guns,

but you won't regret it. Even if you don't like a type of weapon, never

hurts to practice and get familiar. Sometimes you don't get a choice of

what to defend yourself with. That, and like it or not, some guns have

their place that no amount of preference can replace.

"Like me, I hate shotguns, but I have to admit the things are perfect

for home defense. So I keep a shotty at home, and bring my pistols to

work, see? So we'll get several guns. The ones you don't like you can

keep for practice and for the few occasions they are best for."

Anvil nodded, and stepped up to the vending machine's screen.

"Sounds good, lets take a look here."

 

They spent the rest of the day hunting around for guns. The vending

machines didn't have a lot of variety, and were low grade in quality.

They hit bigger manned gunships of all sorts. Picked up a nice reliable

shotgun that kept things simple, but allowed for all kinds of

aftermarket modifications for later on down the road. Anvil seemed to

take a particular liking to this, his past experience being hunting

made him familiar with shotguns and simple rifles. They picked up a DMR

from another shop, to ween his hunting rifle skills into something a

little more military grade. Salem picked one that wasn't too expensive,

later on if he took well to automatic fire they may want to replace it

with a more flexible, if shorter ranged, system. They passed up on

getting any sort of machine gun, Salem figured that if they got into a

place where they needed it, they were doing their job wrong. Anvil

agreed, opting instead to purchase a small single shot grenade launcher

that'd do in a pinch if things got messy. Sure, it was pretty low tech,

but it could compact and store discretely, and was pretty light.

They were on their way to a place Salem knew where they could get a

hold of a nice quality sniper rifle, when they came across a little

shop off a side street that caught Anvil's eye. Salem had walked past it

a hundred times and never noticed.

The place was full of military surplus, discarded and battle scarred

gear. Weapons and armor filched from firefights before the respective

corporations involved could get in to clean up the mess.

They browsed through it. A lot of good stuff for a little more than

they wanted to pay. Salem had corporate level connections that he could

access most of the gear through more legal means. A lot of the stuff

was broken, or very questionable. Brands, companies, and corporations

that Salem had never heard of, and screamed of being fake rip-offs.

Anvil was drawn towards a dark green crate towards the back.

A Shield Weapon Crate.

How the vendor got a hold of one of those, Salem couldn't imagine. It

was pretty well useless like this. Shield was a subsidiary of Green

Corp. managing their external security. This meant running the entrance

checkpoints to Greenwall, handling and exterminating and attempts at

smuggling through the wall, and protecting Green Corp execs when they

left their isolated Greenwall Zone to attend a meeting of any sorts.

They had some pretty fancy tech. Most of their weapons were stored and

transported in special crates, like this one here. Basically a complex

puzzle-box. Entirely physical mechanics, no electronics involved besides

a few side elements that had nothing to do with opening the crate. An

encrypted ID tag, a tracking chip that had been crudely dismantled by

the shop owner, and a small glowing holograph of the Shield icon.

That was it. Nothing to hack, and the crates were highly resilient to

most kinetic energy. They were designed to resist up to a point, but

anything over what they could resist would blast through like butter.

This posed an interesting problem to would be looters. To get enough

power to break it, would be more than enough to incinerate whatever was

inside. The charges, or whatever was being used, would just melt

straight through and decimate the contents as soon as it reached past

the resistance point of the crate.

The shopkeeper noticed Anvil studying the crate and yelled out, "That

piece of junk? I thought it'd bring me a fortune, but the damn thing

can't be opened. I wish I never laid eyes on it." Anvil only smiled at

this, and the shopkeeper grew angry. "You think that is funny? Think it

is that simple? The stupid thing is designed to destroy the contents if

you try to blow it open. Tell ya what, if you can open it, you can have

it!"

Anvil grew serious suddenly. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. Its worthless to me, worthless to everyone. You can have

it! Hell, I don't even care if you can open it anymore. Just take it,

let it be your curse. I need the shelf space."

"Thank you sir, but I couldn't take it without paying."

"Its worthless."

"Only because it is shut, the contents could be priceless."

"Yeah, that’s the problem ain't it? I don't care anymore."

"Then at least let me pay you a little."

"Its your money boy, I ain't gonna complain if you throw it away. But

that thing is worthless."

Anvil only smiled and payed the man.

He left with the crate, and carried with him the rest of the way home.

They bought a sniper rifle, and like the other guns they sent it home

on a PackBot Delivery Unit. But the case Anvil kept with him, insisting

on carrying it personally.

It wasn't until they got home to Salem's apartment that, once sure no

one was watching, he set the crate on the table and let his finger rest

on the top, feeling the plates of its surface.

"You can really open that?" Salem's voice communicated skepticism as he

made his way to a small fridge and pulled out a carton of milk.

"Shh." Was the only response he got.

Slowly then, as if following a pattern painstakingly memorized, Anvil's

fingers pushed and rotated the circular tiles, building speed until his

fingers were moving faster and faster in complicated patterns. Salem's

eyes couldn't keep up, and gave up watching to finish pouring a glass

of milk. When he looked back the crate was open. Anvil stood before it,

holding a helical SMG of sorts emblazoned with the Shield trademarks.

Salem barely caught the carton of milk before it hit the floor.

"How... I don't... Never mind, I'm too tired for this."

 

*NOTICE: The above text is a work in progress trial run for a planned

literary work. Though subject to change and alteration, it represents

the majority of planned content for the final product. As such, the

ideas, characters, setting, and story written above is reserved as

intellectual property of C. J. King.*

 

Feedback and comments on the story are more than welcome, wanted in

fact.

 

Credit to Xan for inspiration on the sight.

Yes, this is Frankie Muniz from the old TV sitcom "Malcolm In the Middle". Yes, he is racing in the NASCAR ARCA series, a rookie in the series also. Fun fact about his racing and race team. His crew chief is "Bryan Cranston" who also played the father of "Malcolm in the Middle".

 

I did have the brief pleasure to meet him in January in Daytona during all of the IMSA sports car racing. Super nice person and all the interviews I see with him. I just become more of a fan of his racing.

JULIA ROSE GRUENBERG

I'm working on a sitcom. Before we go on set and be hilarious, this is where we sit and read through the script

These guys just reminded me of a modern version:

 

The Likely Lads is a British sitcom created and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and produced by Dick Clement. Twenty episodes were broadcast by the BBC, in three series, between 16 December 1964 and 23 July 1966. However, only ten of these episodes have survived.

 

The original show followed the friendship of two young working class men, Terry Collier (James Bolam) and Bob Ferris (Rodney Bewes), in Newcastle upon Tyne in the mid 1960s. Bob and Terry are assumed to be in their early 20s (when their ages are revealed in the later film, this puts both characters at around 20 when the series started).

  

After growing up at school and in the Scouts together, Bob and Terry are working in the same factory, Ellison's Electrical, alongside the older, wiser duo of Cloughie and Jack. The show's gritty yet verbose humour derived largely from the tensions between Terry's cynical, everyman, working class personality and Bob's ambition to better himself and move to the middle class.

 

Bob and Terry were two average working class lads growing up in the industrial North East, whose hobbies were beer, football and girls. They were canny, which is to say street-wise, yet they stumbled into one scrape after another as they struggled to enjoy the Swinging Sixties on their meagre incomes.

 

At the end of the third and final series in 1966, a depressed and bored Bob attempted to join the Army but was rejected because of his flat feet. Terry, who decided at the last minute to enlist to keep Bob company, was accepted A1 and shipped away for three years.

 

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

Candid street shot Taunton Somerset.

Drawing size 9x12. A Steven Chateauneuf Creation. Thank you everyone for all of your views, comments, group awards, and favorites.

 

STEFANIA VISCONTI attrice, modella, actress, model, performer, trasformista, disponibile per collaborazioni artistiche di vario genere, teatro, cinema, tv, cortometraggi, shooting fotografici, esibizioni dal vivo. Disponibilità di spostamento in tutta Italia e all'Estero.

Per qualsiasi informazione ulteriore e collaborazione potete scrivere a viscontistefy@libero.it

www.stefaniavisconti.com

STEFANIA VISCONTI is an Italian transgendered actress, model, chameleon-like performer, and activist. She is available for a variety of arts and entertainment projects, including theatrical performances, long and short films, TV programs, photo shootings, live performances. She is willing to travel anywhere in Italy and abroad. For further information, write to viscontistefy@libero.it. You will find other links to some of her personal pages below

www.stefaniavisconti.com

www.facebook.com/Stefania-Visconti-132047550267/

Vintage postcard. Photo: Universal.

 

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

 

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box-office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

 

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

 

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

 

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

Another title pinched from a British sitcom…just liked the matching plumage.

 

Street candid in Liverpool 2 of 2.

Makeup by Israel V. for The Beauty Factory.

Sitcom Star.

Miami,2005.

West-German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 542. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Yvonne de Carlo in Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951).

 

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

 

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

 

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

 

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

 

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

While this image looks nothing like an 80’s sitcom, green sweat bees tend to live rather solitary lives with their social interactions only vaguely platonic in nature. It was odd to see three of them in the same flower, and it makes for a fantastic stereo image. Cross your eyes!

 

As this is a cross-view stereo image, you need to cross your eyes to get the full 3D effect, which is quite pronounced in this image. I find it works best when your screen (phone / computer / etc.) takes up less than 50% of your vision, as a larger image forces you to cross your eyes too much. Your goal is to focus on the “middle” image that appears when you cross your eyes, and to lock that into focus. If you have trouble with cross-viewing 3D imagery, no worries! Here is a version with the opposite order of images that works great in VR headsets or stereo viewers: donkom.ca/stereo/DKP_9988.jpg

 

These bees are found all over our gardens, but their favourite spot is these bright pink/magenta flowers are the hot spot. I’m not even sure what the flowers are called, but they work wonders in stereo due to their varying depth and complexity.

 

This image was made with a deWijs 3D macro lens, which sadly is not being manufactured anymore. Keep your eyes open for eBay listings if you want to experiment with this kind of macro photography with top-notch equipment – they are worth every penny! Lighting the images tends to be a bit tricky however, due to a lack of any ring flash mounting capabilities on the lens. This is lit with a ring flash, but I’m holding the ring off camera – which ends up offering a more dynamic light anyhow.

 

Because the fixed aperture of these lenses is so small (this lens is around F/45), the flash has a hard time keeping up with multiple images, so short bursts or single shots are required to guarantee that you’ll have light where it’s needed. Because the aperture is fixed at this size, it also makes focusing the camera (by moving the entire camera forward and back) less precise because of overall greater depth when seeing the image through the viewfinder, as well as added frustrations from diffraction and a dimmer than usual view (optically). This is to say that, yes, making images like this can be tricky.

 

Properly setting the image to be adequately positioned for each eye can also add a bit of frustration to the mix, but thankfully the free program Stereo Photo Maker does a great job in helping you set the “stereo window”. This is an area I’ve struggled with, but now all the puzzle pieces are starting to fall together!

 

If you haven’t been able to see my 3D images, or you would like to share them with people around you – or just entertain your children… is there any interest in custom View-Master style reels of this work? 7 images per reel, and I’m currently prototyping one. They won’t be terribly cheap in low volume (USD$45 for a viewer and three reels [21 images] of I can get any interest), but I’ll at least be making them for my daughter to enjoy as she grows up. If anyone is interested, let me know and I’ll consider making them commercially available. :)

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 759. Photo: Warner Bros.

 

American film, musical theatre, and television actress Janis Paige (1922) felt out of place in her early Hollywood films. She became a star on Broadway and then returned to Hollywood for a second film career. Beginning in the mid-fifties, she would also make numerous television appearances, as well as star in her own sitcom It's Always Jan. With a career spanning over 60 years, she is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

 

Janis Paige was born Donna Mae Tjaden in 1922 in Tacoma, Washington. She was singing in public from age 5 in local amateur shows. She moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school and was hired as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen, a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen during World War II. She chose her first name in honor of Elsie Janis, beloved entertainer of troops during World War I; and Paige was her maternal grandmother's name. United States Army Air Forces pilots flying the P-61 Black Widow chose her as their "Black Widow Girl". In appreciation, she posed as a pin-up model, dressed in an appropriate costume. A Warner Bros. agent saw her potential and signed her to a contract. One of her first film roles was co-starring in the Warner Brothers film, Hollywood Canteen (Delmer Daves, 1944), where she plays a Warner Brothers messenger girl working at the canteen. She began co-starring in low-budget musicals, often paired with Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson. She co-starred in Romance on the High Seas (Michael Curtiz, 1948), the film in which Doris Day made her film debut. Paige later co-starred in adventures and dramas, in which she felt out of place. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Paige started out playing rather bland film ingénues, but never seemed to be comfortable in those roles - she had too much snap, crackle and pop to be confined in such a formulaic way.". Following her role in Two Gals and a Guy (Alfred E. Green, 1951) with Robert Alda, she decided to leave Hollywood. Paige appeared on Broadway and was a huge hit in a 1951 comedy-mystery play, 'Remains to Be Seen', co-starring Jackie Cooper.

 

Stardom for Janis Paige came in 1954 with her role as Babe in the Broadway musical 'The Pajama Game'. After six years away, Paige returned to Hollywood in Silk Stockings (Rouben Mamoulian, 1957), which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. She played an Esther Williams-like aquatic movie star. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: " She was permitted one strong number, 'Stereophonic Sound,' with costar Fred Astaire, and copped most of the film's laughs as she slapped herself in the head to get the water out of her ears during interviews. " She also was excellent in the Doris Day comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (Charles Walters, 1960), and in Bachelor in Paradise (Jack Arnold, 1961) as the love-starved married neighbour of Bob Hope. A rare dramatic role was as Marion, a sharp-tongued man-hating prostitute, in The Caretakers (Hal Bartlett, 1963). Craig Butler at AllMovie: "The Caretakers is high camp and therefore a field day for those who prefer their acting performances so far over the top as to be in actual orbit. (...) Although the main drawing card for many will be Joan Crawford - who does not disappoint, down to and including her judo classes for her nurses - the true acting "honors" actually go tom Polly Bergen, whose performance is shamelessly out of control; the opening breakdown at the movie theatre must be seen to be believed. Janis Paige also steals a number of scenes." Janis carried on in summer stock, playing such indomitable roles as Annie Oakley in 'Annie Get Your Gun', Margo Channing in 'Applause', Mama Rose in 'Gypsy', and Adelaide in 'Guys and Dolls'. From the mid-1950s on, Janis also appeared on TV in such series as It's Always Jan (1955), Lanigan's Rabbi (1976), and Trapper John, M.D. (1979). In the 1990s, among other TV appearances, she had recurring roles on the daytime serials General Hospital (1963) and Santa Barbara (1984). In 2001, she made her last temporary appearance on TV in an episode of Family Law. In 2017 Paige wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter in which she stated that Alfred Bloomingdale had attempted to rape her when she was 22 years old. Last year, she appeared as herself in the documentary Journey to Royal: A WWII Rescue Mission ( Christopher Johnson, Mariana Coku, 2021). Paige married three times in her life.in 1947, she married Frank Martinelli. However, the couple divorced again in 1950. Her second marriage was even shorter: in January 1956, she married Arthur Stander but divorced him again in June 1957. With her third marriage, she really seemed to have found happiness. In 1962, she married Disney composer Ray Gilbert, who wrote the classic children's song 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.' After a marriage of almost 14 years, Gilbert died in 1976 after complications from open-heart surgery. Since then, Paige has never married again. She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California in 1960.

 

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.

 

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

Last of the Summer Wine was a very popular British sitcom that ran over 295 episodes during the period 1973 to 2010. It became the longest running situation comedy in the world

 

Much of the filming was done in the Northern English town of Holmfirth and thanks to the popularity of the TV series the filming locations in and around the town have become a big tourist attraction.

 

The location of "Sid's Cafe" featured in many episodes but at the time it was not really a cafe. Since then enterprising people have re-opened it as a genuine cafe which attracts a stream of visitors.

 

Belgian collectors card by De Beukelaer, Anvers/Antwerpen (Antwerp), no. A 29. Photo: Paramount.

 

Donna Reed (1921-1986) was an American film, television actress, and producer. Her career spanned more than 40 years, with performances in more than 40 films. She is well known for her role as Mary Hatch Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946). She received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lorene Burke in the war drama From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Reed is also known as Donna Stone, a middle-class American mother, and housewife in the sitcom The Donna Reed Show (1958–1966).

 

Donna Reed was born Donna Belle Mullenger on a farm near Denison, Iowa, in 1921. She was the daughter of Hazel Jane and William Richard Mullenger. The eldest of five children, she was raised as a Methodist. In 1936, while she was a sophomore at Denison (Iowa) High School, her chemistry teacher Edward Tompkins gave her the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Upon reading it she won the lead in the school play, was voted Campus Queen, and was in the top 10 of the 1938 graduating class. After graduating from Denison High School, she decided to move to California to attend Los Angeles City College on the advice of her aunt. While attending college, she performed in various stage productions, although she had no plans to become an actress. After receiving several offers to screen test for studios, Reed eventually signed with MGM. Reed made her film debut in The Get-Away (Edward Buzzell, 1941). She had a support role in Shadow of the Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke, 1941) and in Wallace Beery's The Bugle Sounds (S. Sylvan Simon, 1942). Like many starlets at MGM, she played opposite Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy film, in her case the hugely popular The Courtship of Andy Hardy (George B. Seitz, 1942). Reed starred in the drama Calling Dr. Gillespie (Harold S. Bucquet, 1942), featuring Lionel Barrymore, and Apache Trail (Richard Thorpe, 1942). Then she did a thriller with Edward Arnold, Eyes in the Night (Fred Zinnemann, 1942). Reed had a support role in The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown, 1943) with Mickey Rooney, a big film for MGM. She was one of many MGM stars to make cameos in Thousands Cheer (George Sidney, 1943). Produced at the height of the Second World War, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families. Her "girl-next-door" good looks and warm onstage personality made her a popular pin-up for many GIs during World War II. She personally answered letters from many GIs serving overseas. She was in the Oscar Wilde adaptation The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945) and played a nurse in John Ford's They Were Expendable (1945), opposite John Wayne. MGM was very enthusiastic about Reed's prospects at this time. Reed was top-billed in a romantic comedy Faithful in My Fashion (Sidney Salkow, 1946) with Tom Drake which lost money. MGM lent her to RKO Pictures for the role of Mary Bailey in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. The film has since been named as one of the 100 best American films ever made by the American Film Institute and is regularly aired on television during the Christmas season. Back at MGM, she appeared in Green Dolphin Street (Victor Saville, 1947) with Lana Turner and Van Heflin. It was a big hit. Reed was borrowed by Paramount to make two films with Alan Ladd, Beyond Glory (John Farrowm 1948), where she replaced Joan Caulfield at the last moment, and the Film Noir Chicago Deadline (Lewis Allen, 1949). In 1949 she expressed a desire for better roles.

 

In 1950, Donna Reed signed a contract with Columbia Studios.[ She appeared in two Film Noirs which teamed her with John Derek, Saturday's Hero (David Miller, 1951) and Scandal Sheet (Phil Karlson, 1952). Reed was the love interest of Randolph Scott in the Western Hangman's Knot (Roy Huggins, 1952), then was borrowed by Warner Bros for the comedy Trouble Along the Way (Michael Curtiz, 1953) with John Wayne. She was loaned out to play John Payne's love interest in Raiders of the Seven Seas (Edward Small, 1953). Reed played the role of Alma "Lorene" Burke, the girlfriend of Montgomery Clift's character, in the World War II drama From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). The role earned Reed an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 1953. The qualities of her parts did not seem to improve: she was the love interest in The Caddy (Norman Taurog, 1953) with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis at Paramount; the Western Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953) with Rock Hudson; and the Western Three Hours to Kill (Alfred L. Werker, 1954) with Dana Andrews. Reed returned to MGM to act in the romantic drama The Last Time I Saw Paris (Richard Brooks, 1954) with Elizabeth Taylor. Reed began guest-starring on television shows such as The Ford Television Theatre, Tales of Hans Anderson, General Electric Theater, and Suspicion. She continued to appear in features, usually as the love interest, in The Benny Goodman Story (1956) with Steve Allen, playing Goodman's wife; Ransom! (1956) as Glenn Ford's wife; the Western Backlash (1956), with Richard Widmark. In Kenya, she filmed Beyond Mombasa (1957), with Cornel Wilde. She was injured while making the film. In England, she shot The Whole Truth (1958), with Stewart Granger. From 1958 to 1966, Reed starred in The Donna Reed Show, a television series produced by her then-husband, Tony Owen. The show featured her as Donna Stone, the wife of pediatrician Alex Stone (Carl Betz) and mother of Jeff (Paul Petersen) and Mary Stone (Shelley Fabares). Reed was attracted to the idea of being in a comedy, something with which she did not have much experience. She also liked playing a wife. The show ran for eight seasons. Reed won a Golden Globe Award and earned four Emmy Award nominations for her work on the series. Later in her career, Reed replaced Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie Ewing Farlow in the 1984–1985 season of the television melodrama Dallas. When she was abruptly fired upon Bel Geddes' decision to return to the show, she sued the production company for breach of contract. From 1943 to 1945, Donna Reed was married to make-up artist William Tuttle. After they divorced, in 1945 she married producer Tony Owen. They raised four children together: Penny Jane, Anthony, Timothy, and Mary Anne (the two older children were adopted). After 26 years of marriage, Reed and Owen divorced in 1971. Three years later, Reed married Grover W. Asmus, a retired United States Army colonel. They remained married until her death in 1986. Donna Reed died of pancreatic cancer in Beverly Hills, California, in 1986, 13 days shy of her 65th birthday. Her remains are interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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Belgian postcard by Nieuwe Merksemsche Chocolaterie S.P.R.I., Mersem (Anvers). Photo: Universal.

 

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

 

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

 

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

 

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

 

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Foto promocional. Personaje secundario de proyecto de serie de TV "Escuela de Villanos".

 

Más info en:

www.escueladevillanos.com

How I Met Your Mother

American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. CL/Personality #12. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact, 1977.

 

John Travolta (1954) is an American actor and singer, who rose to fame during the 1970s, when he appeared on the television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975-1979), and starred in the box office successes Carrie (1976), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Grease (1978) and Urban Cowboy (1980). His acting career declined throughout the 1980s, but in 1994, Travolta made one of the most stunning comebacks in entertainment history by starring in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994). Since then he starred in such films as Get Shorty (1995), Face/Off (1997), Primary Colors (1998), and Hairspray (2007). Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for performances in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. In 2016, he received his first Primetime Emmy Award, as a producer of the anthology series American Crime Story in which he also played lawyer Robert Shapiro.

 

The youngest of six children, John Travolta was born in 1954 in Englewood, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb of New York City in Bergen County, New Jersey. His father, Salvatore "Sam" Travolta was a semiprofessional American football player turned tire salesman and partner in a tire company. His mother, Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) was an actress and singer who had appeared in The Sunshine Sisters, a radio vocal group, and acted and directed before becoming a high school drama and English teacher His siblings Joey, Ellen, Ann, Margaret, and Sam Travolta were all inspired by their mother's love of theatre and drama and became actors. He was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1975. Travolta attended Dwight Morrow High School. By the age of 12 Travolta himself had already joined an area actors' group and soon began appearing in local musicals and dinner-theater performances. He started acting appearing in a local production of 'Who'll Save the Plowboy?'. At 16 he landed his first professional job in a summer stock production of the musical 'Bye Bye Birdie'. In 1971, he dropped out of school at age 17 and moved across the Hudson River to New York City. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1972 in 'Rain' and then landed a small role in the touring company of the hit musical 'Grease'. Then followed on Broadway 'Over Here!', starring The Andrews Sisters, in which he sang the Sherman Brothers' song 'Dream Drummin''. He then moved to Los Angeles to try Hollywood. Travolta's first screen role in California was as a fall victim in the television series Emergency!, in September 1972, but his first significant film role was as Billy Nolan, a bully who was goaded into playing a prank on Sissy Spacek's character in the horror film Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), the first film adaptation of a Stephen King novel. Around the same time, he landed the role as Vinnie Barbarino in the ABC TV sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), in which his sister, Ellen, also occasionally appeared as Arnold Horshack's mother. He shot to overnight superstardom, and his face instantly adorned T-shirts and lunch boxes. Travolta had a hit single titled 'Let Her In', peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in July 1976. That year, he starred in the TV movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (Randal Kleiser, 1976). Then followed the first of his two most noted screen roles: Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: " A latter-day Rebel Without a Cause set against the backdrop of the New York City disco nightlife, it positioned Travolta as the most talked-about young star in Hollywood. In addition to earning his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, he also became an icon of the era, his white-suited visage and cocky, rhythmic strut enduring as defining images of late-'70s American culture."He followed it up with the part of Danny Zuko in the film adaptation of Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) with Olivia Newton-John. Its box-office success was even greater than Saturday Night Fever's. Both films were among the most commercially successful pictures of the decade and catapulted Travolta to international stardom. Saturday Night Fever earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, making him, at age 24, one of the youngest performers ever nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Travolta performed several of the songs on the Grease soundtrack album. After the laughable May-December romance Moment by Moment (Jane Wagner, 1978) in which he starred with Lily Tomlin, Travolta, in 1980, inspired a nationwide country music craze that followed on the heels of his hit film Urban Cowboy (James Bridges, 1980), in which he starred with Debra Winger. Another success was the thriller Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981) with Nancy Allen.

 

During the 1980s, John Travolta starred in a series of commercial and critical failures that sidelined his acting career. These included Two of a Kind (John Herzfeld, 1983), a romantic comedy reuniting him with Olivia Newton-John, and Perfect (James Bridges, 1985), co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. He also starred in Staying Alive (Sylvester Stallone, 1983), the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, for which he trained rigorously and lost 20 pounds. The film was a financial success, grossing over $65 million, though it, too, was scorned by critics. During that time, Travolta was offered, but declined, lead roles in what would become box-office hits, including American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) and An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982), both of which went to Richard Gere, as well as Splash (Ton Howard, 1984), which went to Tom Hanks. In 1989, Travolta starred with Kirstie Alley in Look Who's Talking (Amy Heckerling, 1989), which grossed $297 million, making it his most successful film since Grease. He subsequently starred in Look Who's Talking Too (Amy Heckerling, 1990) and Look Who's Talking Now (Tom Ropelewski, 1993), but it was not until he played Vincent Vega in Quentin Tarantino's hit Pulp Fiction (1994), with Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman, for which he received an Academy Award nomination, that his career was revived. Quentin Tarantino, a longtime Travolta fan, wrote the role of Vincent Vega specifically with the actor in mind. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Travolta reportedly waived his salary to play the role. A critical as well as commercial smash, Pulp Fiction introduced Travolta to a new generation of moviegoers, and suddenly he was again a major star who could command a massive salary, with a second Academy Award nomination to prove it." Travolta was inundated with offers. He followed Pulp Fiction with the Elmore Leonard adaptation Get Shorty (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995). His turn as Mafioso-turned-movie producer Chili Palmer is acclaimed by many critics as his finest performance to date. The film was another major hit. Then followed roles in White Man's Burden (Desmond Nakano, 1995), Broken Arrow (John Woo, 1996), and Face/Off (John Woo, 1997) with Nicolas Cage. He also played a charismatic, Bill Clinton-like U.S. President in Primary Colors (Mike Nichols, 1998) opposite Emma Thompson. The political satire was critically acclaimed but earned only $52 million from a $65 million budget.

 

In 2000, John Travolta starred in and co-produced the science fiction film Battlefield Earth (Roger Christian, 2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard, in which he played the villainous leading role as a leader of a group of aliens that enslaves humanity on a bleak future Earth. The film had been a dream project for Travolta since the book's release in 1982 when Hubbard had written to him to try to help make a film adaptation. The film received almost universally negative reviews and did very poorly at the box office. Travolta's performance in Battlefield Earth also earned him two Razzie Awards. Throughout the 2000s, Travolta remained busy as an actor, starring in many films, including Swordfish (Dominic Sena, 2001) with Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, the crime-comedy Be Cool (F. Gary Gray, 2005) in which he again played ultra cool Chili Palmer, and the biker road comedy Wild Hogs (Walt Becker, 2007) starring Tim Allen. In 2007, Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the remake of Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2008), his first musical since Grease. In the Disney computer-animated film Bolt (Chris Williams, Byron Howard, 2008), Travolta voiced the title character. The next year, he appeared in the re-make of The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009) opposite Denzel Washington and in Old Dogs (Walt Decker, 2009) with Robin Williams. Since 2010, Travolta has starred mostly in action films and thrillers. In 2016, he returned to television in the first season of the anthology series American Crime Story, titled The People v. O. J. Simpson, in which he played lawyer Robert Shapiro. Travolta was in a relationship with actress Diana Hyland, 18 years his senior, whom he met while filming The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). They remained together until Hyland's death from breast cancer in 1977. Travolta also had an on-again/off-again relationship with actress Marilu Henner, which ended permanently in 1985. He married actress Kelly Preston in 1991, and they bought a house in Islesboro, Maine. They had three children: Jett (1992–2009), Ella Bleu (2000), and Benjamin (2010). In 2009, Jett died at age 16 while on a Christmas vacation in the Bahamas. A Bahamian death certificate was issued, attributing the cause of death to a seizure. Jett, who had a history of seizures, reportedly suffered from Kawasaki disease since the age of two. In 2020, Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston, died at the age of 57, two years after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Travolta has been a practitioner of Scientology since 1975. Following the death of his wife Kelly Preston in July 2020, Travolta hinted on his Instagram account that he would be putting his career on hold, stating "I will be taking some time to be there for my children who have lost their mother, so forgive me in advance if you don’t hear from us for a while."

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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Mr.Robot season 2- Episode 6

Mr.Robot season 2- Episode 6: Part of me is still wondering if I hallucinated the first twenty minutes of Mr.Robot season 2- Episode 6. It is done in the style of an old sitcom, and it is particularly reminiscent of Full House.

Every aspect is perfectly replicated,...

 

redmovie.tv/mr-robot-season-2-episode-6-2016/

A statue of ‘Captain Mainwaring', a key character in Dad's Army. A British sit-com recorded between 1968 to 1977. it ran for 9 series and a total of 80 episodes. The comedy cantered on the antics of a Home Guard patrol set in the fictional town of ‘Walmington-on-Sea’. The leader of the unit was the local bank manager Captain Mainwaring, a very pompous character, with his ‘upper-class’ Sergeant Wilson who had war experience unlike his captain. The success of the series relied on a good range of comedy characters with a range of subtle and slapstick humour.

In 2004, Dad's Army was voted into fourth place in a BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom.

This tribute to both the program and Arthur Lowe who died in 1982 is in Thetford where most of the filming took place.

Italian postcard by Casa Editr. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Edit.), no. 2104. Photo: Warner Bros.

 

American film, musical theatre, and television actress Janis Paige (1922) felt out of place in her early Hollywood films. She became a star on Broadway and then returned to Hollywood for a second film career. Beginning in the mid-fifties, she would also make numerous television appearances, as well as star in her own sitcom It's Always Jan. With a career spanning over 60 years, she is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

 

Janis Paige was born Donna Mae Tjaden in 1922 in Tacoma, Washington. She was singing in public from age 5 in local amateur shows. She moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school and was hired as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen, a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen during World War II. She chose her first name in honor of Elsie Janis, beloved entertainer of troops during World War I; and Paige was her maternal grandmother's name. United States Army Air Forces pilots flying the P-61 Black Widow chose her as their "Black Widow Girl". In appreciation, she posed as a pin-up model, dressed in an appropriate costume. A Warner Bros. agent saw her potential and signed her to a contract. One of her first film roles was co-starring in the Warner Brothers film, Hollywood Canteen (Delmer Daves, 1944), where she plays a Warner Brothers messenger girl working at the canteen. She began co-starring in low-budget musicals, often paired with Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson. She co-starred in Romance on the High Seas (Michael Curtiz, 1948), the film in which Doris Day made her film debut. Paige later co-starred in adventures and dramas, in which she felt out of place. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Paige started out playing rather bland film ingénues, but never seemed to be comfortable in those roles - she had too much snap, crackle and pop to be confined in such a formulaic way.". Following her role in Two Gals and a Guy (Alfred E. Green, 1951) with Robert Alda, she decided to leave Hollywood. Paige appeared on Broadway and was a huge hit in a 1951 comedy-mystery play, 'Remains to Be Seen', co-starring Jackie Cooper.

 

Stardom for Janis Paige came in 1954 with her role as Babe in the Broadway musical 'The Pajama Game'. After six years away, Paige returned to Hollywood in Silk Stockings (Rouben Mamoulian, 1957), which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. She played an Esther Williams-like aquatic movie star. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: " She was permitted one strong number, 'Stereophonic Sound,' with costar Fred Astaire, and copped most of the film's laughs as she slapped herself in the head to get the water out of her ears during interviews. " She also was excellent in the Doris Day comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies (Charles Walters, 1960), and in Bachelor in Paradise (Jack Arnold, 1961) as the love-starved married neighbour of Bob Hope. A rare dramatic role was as Marion, a sharp-tongued man-hating prostitute, in The Caretakers (Hal Bartlett, 1963). Craig Butler at AllMovie: "The Caretakers is high camp and therefore a field day for those who prefer their acting performances so far over the top as to be in actual orbit. (...) Although the main drawing card for many will be Joan Crawford - who does not disappoint, down to and including her judo classes for her nurses - the true acting "honors" actually go tom Polly Bergen, whose performance is shamelessly out of control; the opening breakdown at the movie theatre must be seen to be believed. Janis Paige also steals a number of scenes." Janis carried on in summer stock, playing such indomitable roles as Annie Oakley in 'Annie Get Your Gun', Margo Channing in 'Applause', Mama Rose in 'Gypsy', and Adelaide in 'Guys and Dolls'. From the mid-1950s on, Janis also appeared on TV in such series as It's Always Jan (1955), Lanigan's Rabbi (1976), and Trapper John, M.D. (1979). In the 1990s, among other TV appearances, she had recurring roles on the daytime serials General Hospital (1963) and Santa Barbara (1984). In 2001, she made her last temporary appearance on TV in an episode of Family Law. In 2017 Paige wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter in which she stated that Alfred Bloomingdale had attempted to rape her when she was 22 years old. Last year, she appeared as herself in the documentary Journey to Royal: A WWII Rescue Mission ( Christopher Johnson, Mariana Coku, 2021). Paige married three times in her life.in 1947, she married Frank Martinelli. However, the couple divorced again in 1950. Her second marriage was even shorter: in January 1956, she married Arthur Stander but divorced him again in June 1957. With her third marriage, she really seemed to have found happiness. In 1962, she married Disney composer Ray Gilbert, who wrote the classic children's song 'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.' After a marriage of almost 14 years, Gilbert died in 1976 after complications from open-heart surgery. Since then, Paige has never married again. She was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6624 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California in 1960.

 

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.

 

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

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 467. Photo: Paramount.

 

Donna Reed (1921-1986) was an American film, television actress, and producer. Her career spanned more than 40 years, with performances in more than 40 films. She is well known for her role as Mary Hatch Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946). She received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Lorene Burke in the war drama From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). Reed is also known as Donna Stone, a middle-class American mother, and housewife in the sitcom The Donna Reed Show (1958–1966).

 

Donna Reed was born Donna Belle Mullenger on a farm near Denison, Iowa, in 1921. She was the daughter of Hazel Jane and William Richard Mullenger. The eldest of five children, she was raised as a Methodist. In 1936, while she was a sophomore at Denison (Iowa) High School, her chemistry teacher Edward Tompkins gave her the book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Upon reading it she won the lead in the school play, was voted Campus Queen, and was in the top 10 of the 1938 graduating class. After graduating from Denison High School, she decided to move to California to attend Los Angeles City College on the advice of her aunt. While attending college, she performed in various stage productions, although she had no plans to become an actress. After receiving several offers to screen test for studios, Reed eventually signed with MGM. Reed made her film debut in The Get-Away (Edward Buzzell, 1941). She had a support role in Shadow of the Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke, 1941) and in Wallace Beery's The Bugle Sounds (S. Sylvan Simon, 1942). Like many starlets at MGM, she played opposite Mickey Rooney in an Andy Hardy film, in her case the hugely popular The Courtship of Andy Hardy (George B. Seitz, 1942). Reed starred in the drama Calling Dr. Gillespie (Harold S. Bucquet, 1942), featuring Lionel Barrymore, and Apache Trail (Richard Thorpe, 1942). Then she did a thriller with Edward Arnold, Eyes in the Night (Fred Zinnemann, 1942). Reed had a support role in The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown, 1943) with Mickey Rooney, a big film for MGM. She was one of many MGM stars to make cameos in Thousands Cheer (George Sidney, 1943). Produced at the height of the Second World War, the film was intended as a morale booster for American troops and their families. Her "girl-next-door" good looks and warm onstage personality made her a popular pin-up for many GIs during World War II. She personally answered letters from many GIs serving overseas. She was in the Oscar Wilde adaptation The Picture of Dorian Gray (Albert Lewin, 1945) and played a nurse in John Ford's They Were Expendable (1945), opposite John Wayne. MGM was very enthusiastic about Reed's prospects at this time. Reed was top-billed in a romantic comedy Faithful in My Fashion (Sidney Salkow, 1946) with Tom Drake which lost money. MGM lent her to RKO Pictures for the role of Mary Bailey in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. The film has since been named as one of the 100 best American films ever made by the American Film Institute and is regularly aired on television during the Christmas season. Back at MGM, she appeared in Green Dolphin Street (Victor Saville, 1947) with Lana Turner and Van Heflin. It was a big hit. Reed was borrowed by Paramount to make two films with Alan Ladd, Beyond Glory (John Farrowm 1948), where she replaced Joan Caulfield at the last moment, and the Film Noir Chicago Deadline (Lewis Allen, 1949). In 1949 she expressed a desire for better roles.

 

In 1950, Donna Reed signed a contract with Columbia Studios.[ She appeared in two Film Noirs which teamed her with John Derek, Saturday's Hero (David Miller, 1951) and Scandal Sheet (Phil Karlson, 1952). Reed was the love interest of Randolph Scott in the Western Hangman's Knot (Roy Huggins, 1952), then was borrowed by Warner Bros for the comedy Trouble Along the Way (Michael Curtiz, 1953) with John Wayne. She was loaned out to play John Payne's love interest in Raiders of the Seven Seas (Edward Small, 1953). Reed played the role of Alma "Lorene" Burke, the girlfriend of Montgomery Clift's character, in the World War II drama From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). The role earned Reed an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for 1953. The qualities of her parts did not seem to improve: she was the love interest in The Caddy (Norman Taurog, 1953) with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis at Paramount; the Western Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953) with Rock Hudson; and the Western Three Hours to Kill (Alfred L. Werker, 1954) with Dana Andrews. Reed returned to MGM to act in the romantic drama The Last Time I Saw Paris (Richard Brooks, 1954) with Elizabeth Taylor. Reed began guest-starring on television shows such as The Ford Television Theatre, Tales of Hans Anderson, General Electric Theater, and Suspicion. She continued to appear in features, usually as the love interest, in The Benny Goodman Story (1956) with Steve Allen, playing Goodman's wife; Ransom! (1956) as Glenn Ford's wife; the Western Backlash (1956), with Richard Widmark. In Kenya, she filmed Beyond Mombasa (1957), with Cornel Wilde. She was injured while making the film. In England, she shot The Whole Truth (1958), with Stewart Granger. From 1958 to 1966, Reed starred in The Donna Reed Show, a television series produced by her then-husband, Tony Owen. The show featured her as Donna Stone, the wife of pediatrician Alex Stone (Carl Betz) and mother of Jeff (Paul Petersen) and Mary Stone (Shelley Fabares). Reed was attracted to the idea of being in a comedy, something with which she did not have much experience. She also liked playing a wife. The show ran for eight seasons. Reed won a Golden Globe Award and earned four Emmy Award nominations for her work on the series. Later in her career, Reed replaced Barbara Bel Geddes as Miss Ellie Ewing Farlow in the 1984–1985 season of the television melodrama Dallas. When she was abruptly fired upon Bel Geddes' decision to return to the show, she sued the production company for breach of contract. From 1943 to 1945, Donna Reed was married to make-up artist William Tuttle. After they divorced, in 1945 she married producer Tony Owen. They raised four children together: Penny Jane, Anthony, Timothy, and Mary Anne (the two older children were adopted). After 26 years of marriage, Reed and Owen divorced in 1971. Three years later, Reed married Grover W. Asmus, a retired United States Army colonel. They remained married until her death in 1986. Donna Reed died of pancreatic cancer in Beverly Hills, California, in 1986, 13 days shy of her 65th birthday. Her remains are interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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German collectors card by Bravo, ca. 1986.

 

American actor Rob Lowe (1964) was one of the members of the Brat Pack. He is known for the television series The West Wing, in which he played the role of Sam Seaborn.

 

Robert Hepler (Rob) Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1964. He was the son of Charles Lowe and Barbara Hepler and grew up in Dayton (Ohio) and Los Angeles. Lowe has one brother, the actor Chad Lowe (1968), and a younger half-brother from his father's second marriage, Justin. His career began when he was eight years old, with appearances on the local television station and summer theatre. After his parents' divorce, Lowe moved with his mother and brother to Los Angeles where, along with Emilio Estevez and others, he was educated at Santa Monica High School. In 1979, Lowe got the role of Tony Flanagan in the television sitcom A New Kind of Family (1979-1980). The series ended after only 11 episodes. However, his name stuck when the media noticed him and compared him to up-and-coming members of the Brat Pack. Along with Judd Nelson, Mare Winningham, Anthony Michael Hall, Demi Moore, Andrew McCarthy, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy, he was among the nine original members of the Brat Pack. He did a number of television films and earned his first Golden Globe nomination for the teen drama Thursday's Child (David Lowell Rich, 1983). Lowe appeared alongside Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise in The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983). The following year, he got the lead role in the film The Hotel New Hampshire (Tony Richardson, 1984), alongside Jodie Foster and Nastassja Kinski. Lowe starred with his fellow "Brat packers" in the coming-of-age film St. Elmo's Fire (Joel Schumacher, 1985). For this film, Lowe won his first award: a Razzie Award for worst male supporting actor. Partly because of his looks, Lowe became one of the Pack's most popular members. In between, Lowe starred in less noteworthy productions. In 1988, Lowe received his second Golden Globe nomination for the film Square Dance (Daniel Petrie, 1987). In 1988, however, his popularity suffered serious damage when a video emerged showing Lowe filming himself having sex with two girls, one of whom appeared to be underage. This happened in Atlanta, where Lowe was attending the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Lowe claimed he did not know she was underage, which was confirmed by the doorman of the bar where they met. She had also lied to get into the bar. For this, Lowe performed 20 hours of community service in Dayton. Around the same time, a leaked home video, in which Lowe could be seen with a model called Jennifer and a boyfriend, Justin Morris, while they were doing a threesome in a hotel room in Paris, was commercially marketed. This was one of the first celebrity sex videos to be sold commercially. Both videos caused a lot of damage to Lowe's career.

 

After these scandals, Rob Lowe sought treatment at a clinic for alcohol and sex addiction. After the scandals faded into oblivion, Lowe's career revived. This was partly because he mocked his irresponsible behaviour during an appearance as host of Saturday Night Live. In one of his appearances with the church lady, played by Dana Carvey, the latter promises to keep quiet about sex videos during the interview. In return, Lowe gets spanked by her live on TV. When Lowe is also spanked at the end of the skit, it turns out that, to the dismay of the church lady, this gets him sexually aroused. She starts exclaiming that Satan should be expelled from Lowe's buttocks, to which Lowe tells reporters, "I love getting spanked. I love the feeling of a glowing ass so much". In 1989, he sang the song 'Proud Mary' with the band Snow White at the Academy Awards, which was not a success. His role in the film Bad Influence (1990), in which he had to portray a villain, brought Lowe positively back into the limelight. In 1992, he made his Broadway debut in the play 'A Little Hotel on the Side'. The roles he was offered improved and in the same year Lowe appeared in Wayne's World. For his portrayal of the deaf-mute Nick Andros in the miniseries The Stand (Mick Garris, 1994) based on a book by Stephen King, Lowe received rave reviews. After this, Lowe temporarily disappeared behind the camera, where he produced the Western Frank & Jesse in 1994. In 1997, he wrote and directed the television film Desert's Edge. Also in 1997, he played the role of the right-wing leader of a Christian movement in the film Contact. In the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), he imitated the voice of Robert Wagner for the role of Young Number Two.

 

In 1999, Rob Lowe was back on television regularly when he got the role of acting head of communications Sam Seaborn in the NBC hit series The West Wing, about the life of President Bartlett (Martin Sheen). Basically, the series was supposed to revolve around his role, which was then the focus of the pilot episode, but the reviews for the complete cast were so raved, that a shift was made in the role assignment. In 2000 and 2001, Lowe received Golden Globe nominations in the "Best Actor" category for this, and in 2001 he also received an Emmy Award in the same category. In 2002, however, Lowe left the series because he could not agree on his role and salary. He wanted a more prominent role in the series with an accompanying salary than NBC was willing to give him. Although the other actors and especially Martin Sheen tried to keep him in the series, the episode featuring his departure was aired in February 2003, earlier than expected. During the final season of The West Wing, Lowe returned to his role of Sam Seaborn, appearing in two of the final four episodes. After this, he featured in the series Lyon's Den (2003), where he plays an idealistic attorney trying to get out of the shadow of his father, who is a senator. The series flopped and was taken off TV after 13 episodes. The same happened with the series Dr Vegas, also produced by Lowe. It stopped after 10 episodes due to a lack of success. Lowe starred in the remake of the Stephen King miniseries Salem's Lot (2004). In 2005, Lowe played the role of Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee in the theatre production of Aaron Sorkin's play 'A Few Good Men' in West End London. Lowe played a supporting role as a movie agent in the satirical black comedy Thank You for Smoking (Jason Reitman, 2006) starring Aaron Eckhart. In 2013, Lowe played a notable role as the evil plastic surgeon Dr Jack Startz in Behind the Candelabra (Steven Soderbergh, 2013), the successful film about the last decade of pianist and entertainer Liberace's life. In 2017, Lowe began a reality series with his two sons, the then 24-year-old Matthew and 22-year-old Jon Owen, The Lowe Files. With the exception of the hour-long pilot, the series featured 30-minute road trips with the Lowe boys, and occasional TV guest stars known in the field, investigating common urban myths and legends that Rob has loved since he was a young boy and has shared with his boys throughout their growth. In 2015, Lowe received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Lowe has been married to makeup artist Sheryl Berkoff since 1991. They met on a blind date in 1983.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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Vintage postcard, no. 018. Photo: Milton H. Greene.

 

On 4 October 2019, Diahann Carroll has died aged 84 of cancer. She was among the foremost African American actors to break down long-seated prejudices in casting. Carroll was the first black performer to have her own sitcom, Julia, which ran for 86 episodes (1968-1971), and the first to win an Emmy in the category of best actress in a leading role in a comedy series. She also won a Tony for her performance in the Broadway musical 'No Strings', written especially for her by Richard Rodgers, which highlighted an interracial romance without mentioning colour. Her films included Carmen Jones (1954), Porgy and Bess (1959), Paris Blues (1961) and Claudine (1974). And her conniving and glamorous Dominique Deveraux was a match for Joan Collins’ Alexis Colby, doubling the 'nasty in Dynasty (1984-1197).

 

Carol Diann Johnson was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1935. She was the first child of John Johnson, a subway conductor, and his wife, Mabel (nee Faulk). When their daughter was an infant the family moved to Harlem, where she grew up. Music was an important part of her life as a child, singing at age 6 with her Harlem church choir. A few years later the 10-year-old became a recipient of a Metropolitan Opera scholarship for studies at the New York High School of Music and Art. After graduating she attended New York University, majoring in sociology. At the same time, she did modelling for Ebony magazine. When she was 16, she teamed up with a girlfriend from school and auditioned for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts show using the more exotic sounding name of Diahann Carroll. This led to her performing on radio and television and in nightclubs while still in her teens. Her big break came in 1954 when Truman Capote chose her for a leading part in the Broadway musical 'House of Flowers', based on his short story and for which he wrote the book and lyrics. Carroll, who played a young sex worker in a Caribbean island bordello, had the best numbers, 'A Sleepin’ Bee' and 'I Never Has Seen Snow'. In the same year Carroll made her film debut in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954), an all-black, updated movie version of the Georges Bizet opera 'Carmen'. She played a friend of Dorothy Dandridge in the title role, performing in the quintet Whizzin’ Away Along De Track. Carroll was dubbed by Bernice Peterson because her own voice was not considered operatic enough, and she was dubbed again (this time by Loulie Jean Norman) as Clara, the young mother 'singing' the renowned lullaby Summertime in Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959), Preminger’s big-screen adaptation of George Gershwin’s opera.

 

Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues (1961) presented Carroll with her first co-starring role, as an American tourist in Paris who, with her friend (Joanne Woodward) meets two fellow American jazz players (Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman). She falls for one of them, but fails to persuade him to return with her to the 'racist' US. At the same time, Poitier and Carroll were having an affair in real life. Diahann returned to Broadway. She was rewarded with a Tony Award for her exceptional performance as a fashion model in the 1962 musical 'No Strings,' a bold, interracial love story that co-starred Richard Kiley. Richard Rodgers, whose first musical this was after the death of partner Oscar Hammerstein, wrote the part specifically for Diahann, which included her rendition of the song standard 'The Sweetest Sounds.' On screen, she appeared again for Preminger, in Hurry Sundown (Otto Preminger, 1967), set in rural 1940s Georgia. She played an elegant local schoolteacher who had gone north and been corrupted. Despite a terrible script, Carroll came off slightly better than her co-stars, Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, in this condescending melodrama on race relations. After a conventional heist film, The Split (Gordon Flemyng, 1968), in which Carroll was the wife of a robber (Jim Brown), came Claudine (John Berry, 1974), a romantic comedy and one of the few mainstream movies starring black actors in the 1970s that was not described as “blaxploitation”. She played a Harlem widow on welfare raising six children on her own, who is courted by a garbage collector played by James Earl Jones. Surprisingly, after being Oscar-nominated as best actress for Claudine, Carroll did not return to feature films for 16 years.

 

The reason was her rewarding work on television. In the popular sitcom Julia (1968), she touchingly portrayed an ordinary nurse and widow struggling to raise a small son. Diahann became the first full-fledged African-American female 'star' - top billed, in which the show centered around her lead character. The show gradually rose in ratings and carroll won a Golden Globe award for 'Best Newcomer' and an Emmy nomination. There followed many guest appearances in TV series and the role of Maya Angelou’s selfish mother in an adaptation of the acclaimed autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Fielder Cook, 1979). However, it was her role as the sleek Dominique Deveraux, which Carroll claimed made her “the first black bitch on television” in the glossy Dynasty (1984-1987) and its spin-off The Colbys, that brought her greatest fame. As the character owned a music company and was a successful singer, the soap also gave Carroll the chance to display her vocal talents, already apparent from her several albums and club appearances. Among her other TV series was A Different World (1989-1993), a spin-off from The Cosby Show, in which she appeared in eight episodes as the mother of a southern belle; The Lonesome Dove (1994-1995) and Grey’s Anatomy (2006-2007), for which she received a Prime Time Emmy nomination. Carroll was married and divorced four times: to the record producer Monty Kay, with whom she had a daughter, Suzanne; to a Las Vegas boutique owner, Freddie Glusman, whom she divorced on grounds of physical abuse; to a managing director of Jet magazine, Robert DeLeon, who spent large amounts of her money before dying in a car crash; and finally to the crooner Vic Damone, who neglected her for golf. She was engaged to the British broadcaster David Frost from 1971 to 1973. Much about these relationships was revealed in her memoir The Legs Are the Last to Go (2008). Diahann Carroll passed away in Los Angles of complications from cancer. She is survived by Suzanne, a journalist, and two grandchildren, August and Sydney.

 

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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

This was the portable jail cell in which she was detained with Paul Fenech (actor and director best known for his SBS sitcom named Pizza). Paul jokingly complained that I was interested only in taking pictures of the chick to post on the internet. May be he was right.

 

PCYC Time 4 Kids, Martin Place, Sydney, Australia (Friday 13 Apr 2012 @ 8:33am).

 

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. Developed by Groening, James L. Brooks, and Sam Simon, the series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Set in the fictional town of Springfield, it caricatures society, Western culture, television, and the human condition.

 

The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer Brooks. He created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after his own family members, substituting Bart for his own name; he thought Simpson was a funny name in that it sounded similar to "simpleton". The shorts became a part of The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987. After three seasons, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show and became Fox's first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990).

 

Since its debut on December 17, 1989, 762 episodes of the show have been broadcast. It is the longest-running American animated series, longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running American scripted primetime television series, both in seasons and individual episodes. A feature-length film, The Simpsons Movie, was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, to critical and commercial success, with a sequel in development as of 2018. The series has also spawned numerous comic book series, video games, books, and other related media, as well as a billion-dollar merchandising industry. The Simpsons is a joint production by Gracie Films and 20th Television.

 

On January 26, 2023, the series was renewed for its 35th and 36th seasons, taking the show through the 2024–25 television season. Both seasons contain a combined total of 51 episodes. Seven of these episodes are season 34 holdovers, while the other 44 will be produced in the production cycle of the upcoming seasons, bringing the show's overall episode total up to 801. Season 35 premiered on October 1, 2023.

 

The Simpsons received widespread acclaim throughout its early seasons in the 1990s, which are generally considered its "golden age". Since then, it has been criticized for a perceived decline in quality. Time named it the 20th century's best television series, and Erik Adams of The A.V. Club named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format". On January 14, 2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 35 Primetime Emmy Awards, 34 Annie Awards, and 2 Peabody Awards. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase of "D'oh!" has been adopted into the English language, while The Simpsons has influenced many other later adult-oriented animated sitcom television series.

 

Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

West German postcard by Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 142. Photo: Universal International.

 

Dark-haired Hollywood beauty Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) was a Canadian American actress, singer, and dancer whose career in film, television, and musical theatre spanned six decades. From the 1950s on, she also starred in British and Italian films. She achieved her greatest popularity as the ghoulish matriarch Lily in the TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966).

 

Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in 1922 in West Point Grey (now part of Vancouver), British Columbia, Canada. She was the only child of William Middleton, an Australian-born salesman, and Marie DeCarlo, a French-born aspiring actress. Her father deserted the home, leaving her mother to make a living as a waitress. When De Carlo was ten her mother enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. De Carlo and her mother made several trips to Los Angeles to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood. In 1940, she was first runner-up to Miss Venice Beach, and she also came fifth in the 1940s Miss California competition. A year later, she landed a bit part as a bathing beauty in Harvard, Here I Come (Lew Landers, 1941). She also appeared in the three-minute Soundies musical, The Lamp of Memory (1942), shown in coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Other roles were slow to follow, and De Carlo took a job in the chorus line of Earl Carroll. During World War II she performed for U.S. servicemen and received many letters from GIs. She got her big break when she was chosen over a reported 20,000 girls to play the lead role as a European seductress in the Technicolor spectacle Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont, 1945), with Rod Cameron and Walter Slezak. She played a dancer during the Austrian-Prussian war who is forced to flee her country after she is accused of being a spy and ends up in a lawless western town in Arizona. Producer Walter Wanger described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." Though not a critical success, it was a box office favourite, and the heavily-promoted De Carlo was hailed as an up-and-coming star. Universal signed her to a long-term contract. De Carlo was given a small role in the prison film Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947), starring Burt Lancaster. Two years later she was again cast opposite Lancaster in her first important role in the classic Film Noir Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949). Claudio Carvalho at IMDb: "Burt Lancaster has an outstanding performance in the role of an honest man obsessed with his former wife, who becomes a criminal trying to regain the love of his fickle ex-wife. Yvonne De Carlo is also perfect and very beautiful, in the role of a cold and manipulative woman, being a perfect 'femme-fatale'." However, Universal preferred to cast De Carlo in more conventional fare, such as Casbah (John Berry, 1948) a musical remake of the 1938 film Algiers, the adventure film River Lady (George Sherman, 1948), and Buccaneer's Girl (Frederick de Cordova, 1950). In the latter, she played a New Orleans singer who becomes involved with a Pirate Lord (Philip Friend).

 

When Yvonne De Carlo was in England making Hotel Sahara (Ken Annakin, 1951), she asked Universal for a release of her contract even though she still had three months to go. The studio agreed. De Carlo had always travelled extensively to promote her films and her appearances were widely publicised. In 1951 she became the first American star to visit Israel. De Carlo regularly played in European films from now on. She starred in the British comedy The Captain's Paradise (Anthony Kimmins, 1953), about a captain of a ferry boat between the restricted British colony in Gibraltar and Spanish Morocco (Alec Guinness) who keeps two wives in separate ports. De Carlo of course played the hot-blooded mistress, Nita in Tangiers. She persuaded director Anthony Kimmins to talk Alec Guinness into doing the mambo with her in a nightclub sequence. Guinness, not usually thought of as a physical actor, consented to a week's worth of dance lessons from De Carlo and the sequence is one of the film's highlights. In England, Yvonne De Carlo also co-starred with David Niven in the comedy Happy Ever After (Mario Zampi, 1954). Her film career reached its peak when director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston) in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). It was to be her most prominent role. She later played a lead performance in the Civil War drama Band of Angels (Raoul Walsh, 1957) with Clark Gable, starred as Mary Magdalene in the Italian biblical epic La spada e la croce/The Sword and the Cross (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1958), with Jorge Mistral and Rossana Podestà, and had a supporting role in the Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) featuring John Wayne. In 1964, De Carlo was deeply in debt, her film career was over and she was suffering from depression. Then, she was offered the role of Lily Munster, the wife of Herman Munster, in the legendary TV sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966). The Munsters are a weird but honest family. Herman, the father (Fred Gwynne) is Frankenstein's monster. Lily, his wife (Yvonne De Carlo), and the cigar-chomping Grandpa, her father (Al Lewis) are vampires. Their little son Eddie (Butch Patrick) is a werewolf. Their niece Marilyn (Pat Priest) is the only normal one. She is the ugly duck of the family. The sitcom went on the air in 1964 and lasted only two seasons, but achieved a kind of pop-culture immortality in decades of reruns and movie and television spinoffs. Wolfgang Saxon in The New York Times: "In her cape and robes and with a streak of white in her black hair, Miss De Carlo’s Lily was a glamorous ghoul and a kind of Bride of Frankenstein as a homemaker, “dusting” her gothic mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with a vacuum cleaner set on reverse. The humor mostly derived from the family members’ oblivious belief that they were no different from their neighbors." After the show's cancellation, De Carlo reprised the role as Lily Munster in the Technicolor film Munster, Go Home! (Earl Bellamy, 1966). After 1967, De Carlo became increasingly active in musicals, appearing in off-Broadway productions of Pal Joey and Catch Me If You Can. Her defining stage role was as Carlotta Campion in the original Broadway cast of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies (1971-1972). Playing a washed-up star at a reunion of old theater colleagues, she introduced the song I'm Still Here, which would become well-known. Yvonne De Carlo married stuntman Robert Drew Morgan, whom she met on the set of the Western Shotgun (Lesley Selander, 1955). They had two sons, Bruce Ross (1956) and Michael (1957-1997). After Bob Morgan's untimely accident, De Carlo was dismissed from her contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1960. Morgan became an alcoholic and they divorced in 1974. De Carlo kept appearing in films and TV series. After her role in the TV Movie The Barefoot Executive (Susan Seidelman, 1995), she retired from acting at age 72. In 2007, she died from heart failure in Los Angeles. De Carlo was 84.

 

Sources: Wolfgang Saxon (The New York Times), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

 

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

The Undergrounders is a sitcom (that I just made up) about a post-apocalyptic family from the 60s who live in a decked-out fashionable bomb shelter beneath their broken-down farm house. Regular characters include Farmer Joe, his daughters Edna and Calpurnia, as well as Zombie Zeke (and Zombie Zeke's arm), who occasionally drops in to visit from above ground.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. W. 382. Photo: MGM.

 

American actress Ann Sothern (1909-2001) had a career on stage, radio, film, and television, that spanned nearly six decades. In 1939, MGM cast her as Maisie Ravier, a brash yet lovable Brooklyn showgirl, which lead to a successful film series. In 1953, Sothern moved into television as the star of her own sitcom Private Secretary. In 1987, Sothern appeared in her final film The Whales of August, and earned her only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

 

Ann Sothern was born Harriette Arlene Lake in 1909 in Valley City, North Dakota. She was the oldest of three daughters born to Walter J. Lake and Annette Yde. Her two younger sisters were Marion and Bonnie. Annette Yde was a concert singer, while Sothern's father worked in importing and exporting. Harriette and her sisters were raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her parents separated when she was four years old (they would later divorce in 1927). At the age of five, she began taking piano lessons. She later studied at the McPhail School of Music, where her mother also taught piano. She also began accompanying her mother on her concert tours when her school schedule permitted. By age 11, she had become an accomplished pianist and was singing solos in her church choir. At age 14, she began voice lessons and also continued to study piano and music composition. As a teen at Minneapolis Central High School, she appeared in numerous stage productions and also directed several shows. While visiting her mother in California, she won a role in the Warner Bros. revue The Show of Shows. She did a screen test for MGM and signed a six-month contract. Her film career started as an extra in Broadway Nights (Joseph Boyle, 1927). She worked as an extra for the next six years. It barely paid the bills. As a singer, she performed with Artie Shaw and His Orchestra. She was also a published songwriter and recorded two albums.

 

Originally a redhead, Ann Sothern began to bleach her hair blonde for comedy roles. After working at MGM and on Broadway, Ann was signed by Columbia Pictures for Let's Fall in Love (David Burton, 1933). Harry Cohn changed her name to Ann Sothern. The next year she would work with Eddie Cantor in his hit Kid Millions (Roy Del Ruth, 1934). Sothern would be in 11 "B" pictures until she was dropped by Columbia in 1936. She then went to RKO, where the quality of her films did not improve. She appeared in a series of "B' films such as Dangerous Number (Richard Thorpe, 1937) and She's Got Everything (Joseph Santley, 1937) with Gene Raymond, but her career was going nowhere. In 1938 she left RKO and played Jean Livingstone, the tart in Trade Winds (Tay Garnett, 1938), starring Fredric March and Joan Bennett, which got her a contract at MGM. She was given the lead in Maisie (Edwin L. Marin, 1939), a "B" comedy about a brassy, energetic showgirl, not a salesgirl - a role originally intended for Jean Harlow. The character was based on the Maisie short stories by Nell Martin. Maisie (Edwin L. Marin, 1939) became a huge hit and spawned a series of ten films with the last being Undercover Maisie (Harry Beaumont, 1947). The popularity of the film series led to her own radio program, 'The Adventures of Maisie', broadcast on CBS from 1945 to 1947.

 

Ann Sothern also appeared in such well-received features as Brother Orchid (Lloyd Bacon, 1940) with Edward G. Robinson, Cry 'Havoc' (Richard Thorpe, 1943) with Margaret Sullavan and Joan Blondell, and A Letter to Three Wives (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1949) with Linda Darnell and Jeanne Crain. During the 1950s, she played in only four films, including Fritz Lang's Film Noir The Blue Gardenia (1953) with Anne Baxter. By this time, however, Sothern had turned to the relatively new medium - television, where she would attract legions of new fans. She played the meddlesome Susie in the TV series Private Secretary (1953). Sothern was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in the series four times. The series was cancelled in 1957 and Ann came back in The Ann Sothern Show (1958-1961). After The Ann Sothern Show ended, she returned to the cinema in The Best Man (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1964), opposite Henry Fonda. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe for her work in the film. In 1965, she had a recurring role on her friend Lucille Ball's The Lucy Show as the "Countess Framboise" (née Rosie Harrigan). She also would be the voice of the 1928 Porter in the camp classic My Mother the Car (1965). This TV series was about a man (Jerry Van Dyke) who bought a 1928 Porter and, lo and behold, it was "Mom". The 1970s and 1980s were relatively quiet for Ann. She appeared in some B-films like the horror film The Killing Kind (Curtis Harrington, 1973) as the mother of psycho John Savage, but finally, she would be nominated for an Academy Award for her role as the neighbour of Lillian Gish and Bette Davis in The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson, 1987). After, she lived in quiet retirement in Ketcham, Idaho near her daughter and granddaughter, until her death of heart failure at 92. Ann Sothern passed away in 2001 in Ketchum, Idaho.

 

Sources: Tony Fontana (IMDb), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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

UP 8824 leads a Hapag Lloyd eastbound stacker through Wyeth Oregon on the morning of November 30, 2024.

 

The Hapag Lloyd containers automatically trigger thoughts of Pink Floyd and Smokey Floyd (Raising Hope Sitcom)!