View allAll Photos Tagged actor
German postcard by Edition Panorama Berlin, no. 715. Photo: Filmmuseum Berlin / Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek. Gustav Fröhlich in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927).
Smart German actor Gustav Fröhlich (1902-1987) played Freder Fredersen in the classic Metropolis (1927) and became a popular star in light comedies. After the war, he tried to escape from the standard roles of a charming gentleman with the part of a doomed painter in Die Sünderin/The Sinner (1951), but the effort went down in a scandal.
Gustav Friedrich Fröhlich was born an illegitimate child in Hannover, Germany in 1902. His father, Gustav König, was a well-known engineer, and his mother Hedwig Therese Sophie Fröhlich, the daughter of a worker. Gustav was raised by foster parents. His foster family moved around western Germany a lot while he was growing up, living in cities like Wiesbaden and Wurzburg. He studied at the Homuth Realgymnasium Friedenau in Berlin. During World War I the young Gustav volunteered for duty in occupied Brussels as supervisor of the press. In 1919 he started his career as a trainee at a newspaper, but he spent his spare time as an emcee at local variety shows. He also wrote two issues of a dime novel, Heinz Brandt, der Fremdenlegionär/Heinz Brandt, the Foreign Legionnaire. After some entrances at a vaudeville theater under the stage name Gustav Geef, he took acting lessons in Heilbronn. In the next few years, he appeared on different minor German stages. In Berlin, he played from 1923 till 1925 at the Volksbühne am Bülowplatz under the direction of Erwin Piscator. Later he appeared as The Prince of Homburg at the Deutsche Theater under the direction of Max Reinhardt. His film debut was a small role in a Dutch-German film produced in Germany, De bruut/Ein neues Leben/The Brute (Theo Frenkel, 1922) with Erna Morena and Adolphe Engers. He then played a secondary role as composer Franz Liszt in Paganini (Heinz Goldberg, 1923) featuring Conrad Veidt. In the following years, he played in such films as Friesenblut (1925) opposite Jenny Jugo. Then Fröhlich landed his breakthrough role as Freder Fredersen in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) by chance. He was only scheduled to play one of the workmen but four weeks after the beginning he was discovered on the set by Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang's wife. Lang immediately cast him in the lead because of his striking good looks. A new star was born.
After Metropolis, Gustav Fröhlich was typecast as the fresh-faced, naive 'boy next door' in such silent films as Die elf Teufel/The Eleven Devils (Zoltan Korda, Carl Boese, 1927) with Evelyn Holt, Heimkehr/Homecoming (Joe May, 1928) opposite Lars Hanson, and Asphalt (Joe May, 1929), in which he played an honest policeman who is seduced by a crook (Betty Amann). In 1930, Fröhlich was called to Hollywood by Warner Brothers to do German versions of American sound films, such as Die heilige Flamme/The Holy Flames (William Dieterle (as Wilhelm Dieterle), Berthold Viertel, 1931) and Kismet (William Dieterle, 1931), both with Dita Parlo. Back in Germany, he soon was subscribed for Max Ophüls’ musical comedy Die verliebte Firma/The Company's in Love (1931) next to Lien Deyers, and for Robert Siodmak's crime drama Voruntersuchung/Inquest (1931) with Albert Bassermann. He often worked with director Géza von Bolváry. Between 1931 and 1933 they made six films together. These include Ich will nicht wissen, wer du bist/I Do Not Want to Know Who You Are (Géza von Bolváry, 1932) with Liane Haid, and Was Frauen träumen/What Women Dream (Géza von Bolváry, 1933), which was co-written by Billy Wilder. Fröhlich often played smart gentlemen in lighthearted musicals and romances. Because of his carefree attendance, Fröhlich was seldom allowed to play other characters. One of his greatest successes was his part of the helpful and likable policeman in Oberwachtmeister Schwenke (Carl Froelich, 1935). He also directed films like Rakoczy-Marsch/Rakoczy march (Gustav Fröhlich, Steve Sekely, 1933), Abenteuer eines jungen Herrn in Polen/Love and Alarm (1934), and after the war Wege im Zwielicht/Paths in Twilight (1948), Der Bagnosträfling/The Prisoner (1949) with Paul Dahlke, and the crime drama Die Lüge/The Lie (1950) with Otto Gebühr.
Between 1931 and 1935 Gustav Fröhlich was married to Hungarian Opera star and actress Gitta Alpár. When she was pregnant form their daughter Julika, he left her. According to Alpár, because she was Jewish and he did not want to hurt his career in Nazi Germany. After the war, Fröhlich tried reconciliation with Gitta Alpár but she never forgave him. Reportedly this gave him a tough time at old-age. From 1936 till 1938 he lived together with actress Lída Baarová, his costar in Barcarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1935) and Leutnant Bobby, der Teufelskerl/A Devil of a Fellow (Georg Jacoby, 1935). After losing Lída to Joseph Goebbels, Froelich had a quarrel with him. There is an urban legend that the quarrel culminated in a slap in the face of the powerful and feared Propaganda-Minister. Allegedly, Froehlich was banned from playing his trade for two years (1941-1943). Lída Baarová later denied this in her memoirs. In 1937, he rented his house in Berchtesgaden to Adolph Hitler's architect, Albert Speer. In 1941 Fröhlich remarried Maria Hajek. Since 1941 he had to serve for the Wehrmacht, interrupted by film engagements like Der Grosse König/The Great King (Veit Harlan, 1942) starring Otto Gebühr as Prussian king Friedrich the Second.
Gustav Fröhlich was seldom involved in Nazi Propaganda films, a fact that helped him to establish a new film career after World War II. He tried to escape from the standard roles of the charming gentleman by playing a doomed painter in Die Sünderin/The Sinner (Willi Forst, 1951). The effort went down in the chaos of a scandal because of the film's open treatment of several taboos such as suicide and euthanasia, plus a brief nude performance by Hildegard Knef. He went on to play leads in light entertainment films including Haus des Lebens/House of Life (Karl Hartl, 1952) with Cornell Borchers, and Die kleine Stadt will schlafen gehen/The Little Town Will Go to Sleep (Hans H. König, 1954) with Jester Naefe. He remained a busy actor after the war but his roles changed from leading men to supporting parts as he got older. From the 1960s on, he had only a few TV film entrances including a part in the comedy Laubenkolonie/Allotment area (Heribert Wenk, Bertold Sakmann, 1968) with Paul Dahlke. He was more active in the theatre, a.o. for the Renaissance-Theater in Berlin and the Schauspielhaus in Zürich. In 1973 he was honoured with the Filmband in Gold, the German Film Award for Lifetime Achievements. Ten years later, he published his autobiography Waren das Zeiten - Mein Film-Heldenleben/Those Were Times - My Life as a Film Hero (1983). His last public appearance was in 1986 when Giorgio Moroder presented his revised version of Metropolis. From 1956 on, Gustav Fröhlich lived in Lugano, Switzerland. There he died in 1987 of a complication after surgery, at age 85. His wife Maria Hajek had passed away earlier that same year.
Sources: Lara Goeke (The Gustav Fröhlich Fan Page), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Modric, Editoria d'arte, Ancona, no. MX 104. Photo: Pierluigi Praturlon. Marcello Mastroianni during the filming of La dolce vita / The Sweet Life (Federico Fellini, 1960).
Film actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) was Italy's favourite leading man since the 1950s and one of the finest actors of European cinema. In his long and prolific career, Mastroianni almost singlehandedly defined the contemporary type of Latin lover, then proceeded to redefine it a dozen times and finally parodied it and played it against type.
Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni was born in Fontana Liri, a small village in the Apennines, in 1924. He was the son of Ida (née Irolle) and Ottone Mastroianni, who ran a carpentry shop. Marcello grew up in Turin and Rome. He appeared as an uncredited extra in Marionette (Carmine Gallone, 1939) and later appeared as an extra in Una storia d'amore/Love Story (Mario Camerini, 1942) and I bambini ci guardano/The Children Are Watching Us (Vittorio De Sica, 1944). He worked in his father's carpentry shop, but during World War II, he was put to work by the Germans drawing maps. During 1943–1944, he was imprisoned in a forced-labour camp, but he escaped and hid in Venice. In 1944, Mastroianni started working as a cashier for the film company Eagle Lion (Rank) in Rome. He began taking acting lessons and acted with the University of Rome dramatic group. In the university's production of Angelica (1948), he appeared with Giulietta Masina. His first real film credit was in I Miserabili/Les misérables (Riccardo Freda, 1948) with Gino Cervi. That year, Mastroianni joined Luchino Visconti's repertory company, which was bringing to Italy a new kind of theatre and novel ideas of staging. The young actor played Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, Happy in Death of a Salesman, Stanley Kowalski in Visconti's second staging of Streetcar, and roles in Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya. He also acted in radio plays, and he had his first substantial film role in the comedy Una domenica d'agosto/Sunday in August (Luciano Emmer, 1949). In 1955 Mastroianni co-starred with Vittorio De Sica and Sophia Loren - an actress with whom he would frequently be paired in the years to come - in the screwball comedy Peccato che Sia una Canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1955) and later worked with De Sica again on the comedy Padri e Figli/Like Father, Like Son (Mario Monicelli, 1957). His roles gradually increased in importance, but for the most part, both the casts and crews of his projects were undistinguished, and he remained an unknown outside of Italy. Mastroianni permanently sealed his stardom in Italy, playing a timid clerk whose love is not reciprocated by Maria Schell in Le notti bianche/White Nights (Luchino Visconti, 1957). He soon became a major international star, appearing in films like I soliti ignoti/Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli, 1958) with Vittorio Gassman. In this classic crime caper, he displayed a light touch for comedy, playing the exasperated member of an inept group of burglars. In 1960, he played his most famous role as a disillusioned and world-weary tabloid columnist who spends his days and nights exploring Rome's high society in Federico Fellini's La dolce vita/The Sweet Life (1960) with Anita Ekberg. La dolce vita changed the look and direction of Italian cinema. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Throughout his adventures, Marcello's dreams, fantasies, and nightmares are mirrored by the hedonism around him. With a shrug, he concludes that, while his lifestyle is shallow and ultimately pointless, there's nothing he can do to change it, and so he might as well enjoy it. Fellini's hallucinatory, circus-like depictions of modern life first earned the adjective 'Felliniesque' in this celebrated movie, which also traded on the idea of Rome as a hotbed of sex and decadence. A huge worldwide success, La Dolce Vita won several awards, including a New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Foreign Film and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival."
During the 1960s, Marcello Mastroianni played in many great films and regularly worked with top Italian and French filmmakers. He appeared as the title character in Il bell'Antonio/Bell' Antonio (Mauro Bolognini, 1960) and starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterpiece La notte/The Night (1961), where again his distanced, expressionless demeanour fit perfectly into the film's air of alienation and remote emotionality. He appeared in interesting films like L'assassino/The Assassin (1961, Elio Petri), La Vie Privée/A Very Private Affair (1962, Louis Malle) with Brigitte Bardot, and Cronaca familiare/Family Diary (Valerio Zurlini, 1962) with Jacques Perrin. Mastroianni followed La dolce vita with another signature role for Fellini, that of Fellini’s alter ego, a film director who, amidst self-doubt and troubled love affairs, finds himself in a creative block while making a film in Otto e Mezzo/8½ (Federico Fellini, 1962). The film won two Academy Awards. Mastroianni won the British BAFTA award twice for his roles in the black comedy Divorzio all'Italiana/Divorce, Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1963) and the deliciously funny three-part sex farce Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), costarring with Sophia Loren. He and Loren starred together again in the equally amusing sex comedy Matrimonio all'italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964). According to Elaine Mancini on Film Reference, “Mastroianni's masculinity blends perfectly with Loren's exuberant earthy personality” in both these films. While he was to become known for playing Latin lover roles (which he spoofed in Casanova 70 (Mario Monicelli, 1965), his characters often were far more complexly drawn. They were not one-dimensional pretty boys; rather, beneath their handsome exteriors, they were lazy, world-weary, and doubt-ridden. Other films were La decima vittima/The Tenth Victim (Elio Petri, 1965) with Ursula Andress and the Albert Camus adaptation Lo Straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) with Anna Karina. Mastroianni won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for Dramma della gelosia - tutti i particolari in cronaca/Drama of Jealousy (Ettore Scola, 1970). In 1987, he would win the award again for Oci ciornie/Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1987). Mastroianni, Dean Stockwell and Jack Lemmon are the only actors to have won the award twice. During the 1970s, Mastroianni continued to work in interesting films by prolific directors like Leo the Last (John Boorman, 1970), Permette? Rocco Papaleo/My Name Is Rocco Papaleo (Ettore Scola, 1971) with Lauren Hutton, Che?/What? (Roman Polanski, 1972) with Sydne Rome and La donna della domenica/The Sunday Woman (Luigi Comencini, 1975) with Jacqueline Bisset. He often worked with controversial director Marco Ferreri at Liza (Marco Ferreri, 1972) with Catherine Deneuve, La Grande Bouffe/Blow Out (Marco Ferreri, 1973), Touche pas à la femme blanche/ Don't Touch the White Woman! (Marco Ferreri, 1974), and Ciao maschio/Bye Bye Monkey (Marco Ferreri, 1978) with Gérard Depardieu. Other interesting films are Così come sei/Stay as You Are (Alberto Lattuada, 1978) with Nastassja Kinski, L'ingorgo - Una storia impossibile/Traffic Jam (Luigi Comencini, 1979) with Annie Girardot, and La terrazza/The Terrace (Ettore Scola, 1980) with Vittorio Gassman. He played against his Latin lover image in Scola’s Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977), in which Mastroianni's homosexual and Sophia Loren's oppressed housewife come together on the day in 1938 when Adolph Hitler was cheered on the streets of Rome during his visit to Benito Mussolini. His seemingly detached air was perfectly suited to satire as well, as he demonstrated in films as diverse as the historical drama Allonsanfàn (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1974), and La città delle donne/City of Women (Federico Fellini, 1980).
In the latter stages of his career, Marcello Mastroianni continued to take serious dramatic roles. For instance, he played the senior citizen who simply looks back on his past. In Stanno tutti bene/Everybody's Fine (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1990), he is an elderly man who is absorbed in his memories and who travels through Italy to call on his five adult children. In Oci ciornie/Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1987), he gives a tour-de-force performance as a once young and idealistic aspiring architect who married a banker's daughter, fell into a lifestyle of afternoon snoozes and philandering, and proved incapable of holding onto what was important to him. His on-screen presence has also been directly linked to his earlier screen characterisations. In Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (Robert Altman, 1994), he was reunited with Sophia Loren, and at one point in the scenario, she recreated her famous steamy striptease sequence from Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Loren was as beguiling as she had been 30 years earlier, but Mastroianni was no longer the attentive young lover, so Sophia's seductive moves only put him to sleep. Mastroianni's appearance in two of Fellini's final features is especially sentimental. Ginger e Fred/Ginger and Fred (Federico Fellini, 1996) is sweetly nostalgic for its union of Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina, two of the maestro's then-aging but still vibrant stars of the past. In Intervista (Federico Fellini, 1987), he appears as himself with Anita Ekberg, with whom he had starred decades before in La dolce vita. Mastroianni's entrance is especially magical; the sequence in which he and Ekberg (who, he remarks, he has not seen since making La dolce vita) observe their younger selves in some famous clips from that film is wonderfully nostalgic. In 1988, Mastroianni was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the European Film Awards. He kept appearing in critically acclaimed films like To meteoro vima tou pelargou/The Suspended Step of the Stork (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1991), in which he was quietly poignant as an obscure man who may have once been an important Greek politician who had disappeared years earlier. Other films were Al di là delle nuvole/Beyond the Clouds (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1995) and Trois vies et une seule mort/Three Lives and Only One Death (Raúl Ruiz, 1996) with Anna Galiena. His final film was Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo/Voyage to the Beginning of the World (Manoel de Oliveira, 1997). Marcello Mastroianni was married to Italian actress Flora Carabella (1926-1999) from 1948 until his death. They had one child together, Barbara. Mastroianni also had a daughter, actress Chiara Mastroianni, with French film star Catherine Deneuve, his longtime lover during the 1970s. Both Flora and Catherine were at his bedside in Paris when he died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 72, as was his partner at the time, author and filmmaker Anna Maria Tatò. According to Christopher Wiegand and Paul Duncan in their book Federico Fellini, when Mastroianni died in 1996, the Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain), which is so famously associated with him due to his role in Fellini's La dolce vita, was symbolically turned off and draped in black as a tribute. His brother Ruggero Mastroianni (1929-1996) was a highly regarded film editor who edited several of Marcello's films directed by Federico Fellini, and appeared alongside Marcello in Scipione detto anche l'Africano/Scipio the African (Luigi Magni, 1971), a comedic take on the once popular Peplum, the sword and sandal film genre. Marcello Mastroianni had held starring roles in about 120 films throughout his long career.
Sources: Elaine Mancini (Film Reference; updated by Rob Edelman), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Actor:
Anastasia Potapov ( Cruel Summer, The Evil Within )
There are reasons why only a professional should attempt an exorcism. It sometimes is not safe and they come after you, thru those you know.
Note: These photos are tools we use to explore different characters and emotions. No one was harmed...much.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. C.P.V.S. c-sa 53066.
American film actor Paul Newman (1925-2008) was a matinee idol with the most famous blue eyes of Hollywood, who often played detached yet charismatic anti-heroes and rebels. He was nominated for nine acting Academy Awards in five different decades and won the Oscar for The Color of Money (1986). He was also a prominent social activist, a major proponent of actors' creative rights, and a noted philanthropist.
Paul Leonard Newman was born in 1925, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He was the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman and Theresa Fetsko. His father was a Jewish businessman who owned a successful sporting goods store. His mother was a practicing Christian Scientist with an interest in the creative arts, and it rubbed off on her son. At age 10, he performed in a stage production of 'Saint George and the Dragon' at the Cleveland Play House. He also acted in high school plays. By 1950, the 25-year-old Newman had been kicked out of Ohio University, where he belonged to the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, for unruly behavior (denting the college president's car with a beer keg), served three years in the United States Navy during World War II as a radio operator, graduated from Ohio's Kenyon College, married his first wife, actress Jacqueline "Jackie" Witte, and had his first child, Scott. That same year, his father died. When he became successful in later years, Newman said if he had any regrets it would be that his father was not around to witness his success. He brought Jackie back to Shaker Heights and he ran his father's store for a short period. Then, knowing that wasn't the career path he wanted to take, he sold his interest in the store to his brother and moved with Jackie and Scott to New Haven, Connecticut. There he attended Yale University's School of Drama. While doing a play there, Newman was spotted by two agents, who invited him to come to New York City to pursue a career as a professional actor. After moving to New York, he acted in guest spots for various television series, and in 1953 came a big break. He got the part of understudy of the lead role in the successful Broadway play 'Picnic' by William Inge. Through this play, he met actress Joanne Woodward, who was also an understudy in the play. While they got on very well and there was a strong attraction, Newman was married and his second child, Susan, was born that year. During this time, Newman was accepted into the much admired and popular New York Actors Studio, although he did not actually audition. In 1954, a film Newman was very reluctant to do was released, the failed costume drama The Silver Chalice (Victor Saville, 1954). He considered his performance in this costume epic to be so bad that he took out a full-page ad in Variety apologising for it to anyone who might have seen it. He immediately wanted to return to the stage, and performed in 'The Desperate Hours'. In 1956, he got the chance to redeem himself in the film world by portraying boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956) with Pier Angeli. The role of Rocky was originally awarded to James Dean, who died before filming began. Critics praised Newman's performance. Dean also was signed to play Billy the Kid in The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn, 1958), but that role was also inherited by Newman after Dean's death. With a handful of films to his credit, he was cast in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), an acclaimed adaptation of a pair of William Faulkner short stories. His co-star was Joanne Woodward. During the shooting of this film, they realised they were meant to be together and by now, so did his then-wife Jackie, who gave Newman a divorce. He and Woodward wed in Las Vegas in January 1958. They went on to have three daughters together. They raised them in Westport, Connecticut. In 1959, Newman received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams. Well-received by both critics and audiences, Cat on Hot Tin Roof was MGM's most successful release of 1958 and became the third highest-grossing film of that year.
Paul Newman traveled back to Broadway to star in Tennessee Williams' 'Sweet Bird of Youth'. Upon his return to the West Coast, he bought himself out of his Warner Bros. contract before starring in the smash From the Terrace (Mark Robson, 1960) with Joanne Woodward. Exodus (Otto Preminger, 1960), another major hit, quickly followed. The 1960s would bring Paul Newman into superstar status, as he became one of the most popular actors of the decade. In 1961, he played one of his most memorable roles as pool shark "Fast" Eddie Felson in The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) with Jackie Gleason and Piper Laurie. It garnered him the first of three Best Actor Oscar nominations during the decade. The other two were for the Western Hud (Marin Ritt, 1963), and the superb chain-gang drama Cool Hand Luke (Jack Smight, 1967). He also appeared in the political thriller Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966) with Julie Andrews. The film, set in the Cold War, is about an American scientist who appears to defect behind the Iron Curtain to East Germany. Other minor hits were the mystery Harper (Jack Smight, 1966), with Lauren Bacall, and the Western Hombre (Martin Ritt, 1967), based on the novel by Elmore Leonard and co-starring Fredric March. In 1968, his debut directorial effort Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, 1968) was given good marks. He directed three actors to Oscar nominations: Joanne Woodward (Best Actress, Rachel, Rachel (1968)), Estelle Parsons (Best Supporting Actress, Rachel, Rachel (1968)), and Richard Jaeckel (Best Supporting Actor, Sometimes a Great Notion (1971)). Newman won a Golden Globe Award for his direction of Rachel, Rachel (1968). 1969 brought the popular screen duo of Newman and Robert Redford together for the first time when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969) was released. It was a box office smash. Through the 1970s, Newman had hits and misses from such popular films The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973) with Robert Redford, which won the 1973 Best Picture Oscar, and the star-studded disaster epic The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974), to lesser-known films as the Western The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (Robert Altman, 1972) with Jacqueline Bisset, to a cult classic, the sports comedy Slap Shot (George Roy Hill, 1977) with Michael Ontkean. In 1978, Newman's only son, Scott, died of a drug overdose. After Scott's death, Newman's personal life and film choices moved in a different direction.
Paul Newman's acting work in the 1980s and on is what is often most praised by critics today. He became more at ease with himself and it was evident in The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982) with Charlotte Rampling, for which he received his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination. In 1987, he finally received his first Oscar for The Color of Money (Marin Scorsese, 1986) with Tom Cruise, almost thirty years after Woodward had won hers. Friend and director of Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Robert Wise accepted the award on Newman's behalf as the actor did not attend the ceremony. Previously, Newman had been nominated as the same character in The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961). In total, he was nominated for the Oscar nine times: Best Lead Actor for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Richard Brooks, 1958), The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961), Hud (Marin Ritt, 1963), Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg, 1967), Absence of Malice (Sydney Pollack, 1981), The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982), The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese, 1986), Nobody's Fool (Robert Benton, 1994)) and finally for Best Supporting Actor in Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes, 2002). In 1994 Newman also played alongside Tim Robbins as the character Sidney J. Mussburger in the Coen Brothers comedy The Hudsucker Proxy. Films were not the only thing on his mind during this period. A passionate race car driver since the early 1970s (despite being color-blind), he was a co-founder of Newman-Haas racing in 1982. He also founded 'Newman's Own', a line of food products, featuring mainly spaghetti sauces and salad dressings. The company made more than $100 million in profits over the years, all of which he donated to various charities. He also started The Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, an organization for children with serious illness. He was as well known for his philanthropic ways and highly successful business ventures as he was for his legendary actor status. Newman's marriage to Woodward lasted a half-century. Connecticut was their primary residence after leaving Hollywood and moving East in 1960. Renowned for his sense of humor, in 1998 he quipped that he was a little embarrassed to see his salad dressing grossing more than his films. During his later years, he still attended races, was much involved in his charitable organisations, and in 2006, he opened a restaurant called Dressing Room, which helps out the Westport Country Playhouse, a place in which Newman took great pride. In 2003, Newman appeared in a Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town', receiving his first Tony Award nomination for his performance. The animated Disney-Pixar comedy Cars (John Lasseter, 2006) was his final film. It was the highest-grossing film of his career. In 2007, while the public was largely unaware of the serious illness from which he was suffering, Newman made some headlines when he said he was losing his invention and confidence in his acting abilities and that acting was "pretty much a closed book for me". A smoker for many years, Paul Newman died in 2008, aged 83, from lung cancer. With his first wife Jackie, he had three children, Scott, Stephanie, and Susan. Susan Kendall Newman is well known for stage acting and her philanthropic activities. His three daughters with Joanne Woodward are actress Melissa Newman, Nell Potts, and Claire Newman. Nine years after Paul Newman's death, he reprised his role as Doc Hudson in Cars 3 (2017): unused recordings from Cars (2006) were used as new dialogue.
Sources: Tom McDonough/Robert Sieger (IMDb), Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), AllMovie, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard by Studio Erving, Paris, no. 696. Photo: Lucasfilm Ltd. Harrison Ford in Star Wars - Episode IV - A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977).
American film actor Harrison Ford (1942) specialises in roles of cynical, world-weary heroes in popular film series. He played Han Solo in the Star Wars franchise, archaeologist Indiana Jones in a series of four adventure films, Rick Deckard in the Science Fiction films Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and secret agent Jack Ryan in the spy thrillers Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). These film roles have made him one of the most successful stars in Hollywood. In all, his films have grossed about $5.4 billion in the United States and $9.3 billion worldwide.
Harrison Ford was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1942. His parents were former radio actress Dorothy (née Nidelman) and advertising executive and former actor John William "Christopher" Ford. Harrison graduated in 1960 from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. His voice was the first student voice broadcast on his high school's new radio station, WMTH, and he was its first sportscaster during his senior year. He attended Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where he was a philosophy major and did some acting. After dropping out of college, he first wanted to work as a DJ in radio and left for California to work at a large national radio station. He was unable to find work and, in order to make a living, he accepted a job as a carpenter. Another part-time job was auditioning, where he had to read out lines that the opposing actor would say to an actor auditioning for a particular role. Harrison did this so well that he was advised to take up acting. He was also briefly a roadie for the rock group The Doors. From 1964, Ford regularly played bit roles in films. He was finally credited as "Harrison J. Ford" in the Western A Time for Killing (Phil Karlson, 1967), starring Glenn Ford, George Hamilton, and Inger Stevens. The "J" did not stand for anything since he has no middle name but was added to avoid confusion with a silent film actor named Harrison Ford, who appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1932 and died in 1957. French filmmaker Jacques Demy chose Ford for the lead role of his first American film, Model Shop (1969), but the head of Columbia Pictures thought Ford had "no future" in the film business and told Demy to hire a more experienced actor. The part eventually went to Gary Lockwood. He had an uncredited, non-speaking role in Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point (1970) as an arrested student protester. His first major role was in the coming-of-age comedy American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973). Ford became friends with the directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, and he made a number of films with them. In 1974, he acted in The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) starring Gene Hackman, and played an army officer named "G. Lucas" in Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979, co-produced by George Lucas. Ford made his breakthrough as Han Solo in Lucas's epic space opera Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977). Star Wars became one of the most successful and groundbreaking films of all time and brought Ford, and his co-stars Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, widespread recognition. He reprised the role in four sequels over the course of the next 42 years: Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983), Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015), and Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019).
Harrison Ford also worked with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on the successful Indiana Jones adventure series playing the heroic, globe-trotting archaeologist Indiana Jones. The series started with the action-adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981). Like Star Wars, the film was massively successful and became the highest-grossing film of the year. Ford went on to reprise the role throughout the rest of the decade in the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Steven Spielberg, 1984), and the sequel Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989), which co-starred Sean Connery as Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr. and River Phoenix as young Indiana. In between the successful film series, Ford also played very daring roles in more artistic films. He played the role of a lonely depressed detective in the Sci-Fi film Blade Runner, (Ridley Scott, 1981) opposite Rutger Hauer. While not initially a success, Blade Runner went on to become a cult classic and one of Ford's most highly regarded films. Ford received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for the crime drama Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) with Kelly McGillis, and also starred for Weir as a house-father in the survival drama The Mosquito Coast (Peter Weir, 1986) with River Phoenix as his son. In 1988, he played a desperate man searching for his kidnapped wife in Roman Polanski's Frantic. For his role as a wrongly accused prisoner Dr. Richard Kimble in the action thriller The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993), also starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ford received some of the best reviews of his career. He became the second of five actors to portray Jack Ryan in two films of the film series based on the literary character created by Tom Clancy: the spy thrillers Patriot Games (Phillip Noyce, 1992) and Clear and Present Danger (Phillip Noyce, 1994). He then played the American president in the blockbuster Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) opposite Gary Oldman. Later his success waned somewhat and his films Random Hearts (Sydney Pollack, 1999) and Six Days Seven Nights (Ivan Reitman, 1998) both disappointed at the box office. However, he did play a few special roles, such as an assassin in the supernatural horror-thriller What Lies Beneath (Robert Zemeckis, 2000) opposite Michele Pfeiffer, and a Russian submarine captain in K-19: The Widowmaker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2002) with Liam Neeson. In 2008, he reprised his role as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008) with Cate Blanchett. The film received generally positive reviews and was the second highest-grossing film worldwide in 2008. Later Ford accepted more supporting roles, such as in the sports film 42 (Brian Helgeland, 2013) about baseball player Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the first black athlete to play in Major League Baseball. Ford reprised the role of Han Solo in the long-awaited Star Wars sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), which became massively successful like its predecessors. He also reprised his role as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), co-starring Ryan Gosling. Harrison Ford has been married three times and has four biological children and one adopted child. From 1964 to 1979, Ford was married to Mary Marquardt, a marriage that produced two children. From 1983 to 2003, he was married to Melissa Mathison, from which marriage two more children were born. In 2010, he married actress Calista Flockhart, famous for her role in the TV series Ally McBeal. He owns a ranch in Jackson Hole (Wyoming). Besides being an actor, Ford is also an experienced pilot. Ford survived three plane crashes of planes he piloted himself. The most recent accident occurred in 2015 when he suffered an engine failure with a Ryan PT-22 Recruit and made an emergency landing on a golf course. Among other injuries, Ford sustained a broken pelvis and ankle from this latest accident. In 2003, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
An actor at Kentucky's Perryville Battlefield State Historical Park
"You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub."
[Letter to Alexander Stephens by Abraham Lincoln, Dec 22, 1860]
"Now we are told in advance the Government shall be broken up unless we surrender to those we [Republicans] have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they [Southern secessionist states] are either attempting to play upon us or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us and of the [U.S.] Government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will not pass till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union."
[President-elect Lincoln in January, 1861 about the vast majority of states being taken hostage by a minority of southern states.]
My photography teacher taught me that a lot of pictures become more interesting when a person/actor is present.
That was missing here :-)
HSS!
Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56501. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne.Brigitte Bardot and Yves Robert in Les Grandes Manoeuvres/Summer Manoeuvres (René Clair, 1955), produced by Filmsonor and Rizzoli Films.
Beautiful French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she established herself as an animal rights activist and made vegetarianism sexy.
Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modeling career and found herself in May 1949 on the cover of the French magazine Elle. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand/Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953 she attended the Cannes Film Festival where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956 she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She made her first US production in 1953 in Un acte d'amour/Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.
Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smashing success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. Woman's immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the shooting of Et Dieu créa la femme/And God Created Woman (1956), directed by her husband Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at that time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.
Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped her international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten' and fascination of her in America consisted of magazine photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad, or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theaters like lemmings.BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne/La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957) which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur/Love is my profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "this Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defense attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre is able to shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous and deadly side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960 postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.
Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957 and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career. Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée/Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at Films de France: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the highpoint of her career when she agreed to make this film with high profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names, was based on an actual incident and is a resonant image of a celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterward Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.
Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men including Sami Frey, her co-star in La Vérité/The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris/Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963). She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres/Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires/Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses/Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury, and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.
Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973 just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976 she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990's she became also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France, and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal is a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularizing bikini swimwear, in early films such as Manina/Woman without a Veil (1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photoshoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."
Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (Films de France), Films de France, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Fragment of the spectacle «Mom in the East»
Date: March 22, 2020
Arthur Mafenbayer - Russian actor of theater and cinema.
Actor Theater Che
__________________
«In our time, there are heroes in any literary work, including modern ones. And they can't find it, probably because they don't look for it well?.. It's the same with the theater. In our, let's say, past productions, the hero was a Russian revolutionary.»
© Arthur Moffenbeier (actor of theater and cinema)
Actor
Learn more about Bryan here
www.imdb.com/name/nm6882080/?ref_=nmmd_md_nm
Rivertown
Kenner, Louisiana
German postcard by H.S.K.-Verlag, Kölm (Cologne), no. 505. Photo: Paramount. Ray Milland in Copper Canyon (John Farrow, 1950).
British actor and director Ray Milland (1905-1986) had a screen career that ran from 1929 to 1985. He appeared in many Hollywood movies as the archetypal, unflappable British gentleman. Milland is best remembered for his gut-wrenching, Academy Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend (1945), for the murder-plotting husband in Dial M for Murder (1954), and as Oliver Barrett III in Love Story (1970).
Ray Milland was born Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones on a mountain called Cymla, above the town of Neath in Wales in 1905. Milland was the son of Alfred Jones and Elizabeth Annie (née Truscott). As a child, he took the name of his stepfather, Mullane, and was known in his early career as Jack Mullane. He later took his stage name Raymond Milland from the flat area of land called the mill lands in Neath, which he remembered fondly from his youth. In 1925, Milland enlisted as a guardsman with the Royal Household Cavalry in London. As part of his training, he became skilled in fencing, boxing, horsemanship and marksmanship. An expert shot, he became a member of his company's rifle team, winning many prestigious competitions, including the Bisley Match in England. When his duty service was completed in 1928, Milland stumbled into acting when a British filmmaker spotted him at a party and offered the 22-year-old a bit part in the romance The Plaything (Castleton Knight, 1929). More small and big roles in the British cinema and on stage followed. Among his British films were the silent ‘backstage’ drama Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929) starring Anna May Wong, the adventure The Flying Scotsman (Castleton Knight, 1929) and the drama The Informer (Arthur Robison, 1929). Raymond Milland was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout while performing on the stage in London, and travelled to America under a short-term contract with MGM. MGM shortened his first name to Ray and continued casting the acting novice in minor supporting roles. MGM agreed to loan him out for more substantial parts in Will Rogers' Ambassador Bill (Sam Taylor, 1931) at Fox in which he tries to overthrow the boy-king of a fictional European country, and Warner Bros.' Blonde Crazy (Roy Del Ruth, 1931) in which he competes with con-artist James Cagney for Joan Blondell's affections.
When his contract with MGM expired, Ray Milland bounced around taking whatever roles he could get, including a supporting part in Fox's Charlie Chan in London (Eugene J. Forde, 1934). He returned to England for roles in This Is the Life (Albert de Courville, 1933) with Gordon Harker and the comedy Orders is Orders (Walter Forde, 1934), a satire on Hollywood movie-making. Finally, based on the strength of two films he made with Carole Lombard - Bolero (Wesley Ruggles, 1934) and We’re Not Dressing (Norman Taurog, 1934) - as well as the endorsement of his leading lady, Paramount Pictures signed Milland to a long-term contract. He would remain with the studio for some twenty years. Charming and debonair, he can be seen as suave, self-assured romantic leading man in a number of excellent drawing-room comedies, mysteries and adventures, including The Big Broadcast of 1937 (Mitchell Leisen, 1936), The Jungle Princess (William Thiele, 1936) featuring Dorothy Lamour, Beau Geste (William Wellman, 1939) with Gary Cooper, and I Wanted Wings (Mitchell Leisen, 1941) with Veronica Lake. At Film Reference, Frank Thompson writes: “The quintessential Milland performances of the ‘leading man’ variety are contained in Leisen's delightful Easy Living and Kitty. The darker, more sinister side of his personality first came to the fore in Farrow's Alias Nick Beal, a film in which Milland plays the Devil himself.” Easy Living (Mitchell Leisen, 1937) was a depression-era screwball comedy and social satire written by Preston Sturges and starring Jean Arthur. Reel Classics calls it “an often-overlooked delight”. Kitty (1945, Mitchell Leisen) was a variation on Pygmalion, in which a London aristocrat (Milland) takes it upon himself to make a lady of a guttersnipe (Paulette Goddard). Milland had a terrible accident during the filming of Hotel Imperial (Henry Hathaway, 1939) with Isa Miranda, when, taking his horse over a jump, the saddle-girth broke and he landed head-first on a pile of bricks. His most serious injuries were a concussion that left him unconscious for 24 hours, a 3-inch gash in his skull that took 9 stitches to close, and numerous fractures and lacerations on his left hand. When the Second World War began, Milland tried to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces, but was rejected because of his impaired left hand. He worked as a civilian flight instructor for the Army, and toured with a United Service Organisation (USO) South Pacific troupe in 1944.
Ray Milland had made over 60 feature films by the time he won an Oscar for his portrayal of an alcoholic trying to kick the booze in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945). It would be pinnacle of Ray Milland's career and an acknowledgement of his serious dramatic abilities. The surprise shown by the critical establishment at Milland's proficiency in the role suggests that nothing much had ever been expected of him. Milland was the first Welsh actor to ever win an Oscar. He was also the first actor not to have spoken a single word during his acceptance speech, preferring to simply bow his appreciation before casually walking to the stage exit. For this performance, he was also given an award at the first Cannes Film Festival. Five years later, he gave a strong performance in Close to My Heart (William Keighley, 1951), starring with Gene Tierney as a couple trying to adopt a child. As Milland grew older and his value as a romantic lead began to wane, the more sinister aspects of this self-assuredness became more evident. In 1954, he starred as the suave and mannerly accomplice opposite Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). Other films that exploited the murderous glint in Milland's eloquent eyes include The Thief (Russel Rouse, 1951) a Film Noir without any dialogue, and The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (Richard Fleischer, 1955) with Joan Collins. He made many television appearances. He starred as a professor in the CBS sitcom Meet Mr. McNutley (1953-1955). The program was renamed in its second season as The Ray Milland Show. From 1959–1960, he starred in the CBS detective series Markham. In the late 1960s, he hosted rebroadcasts of certain episodes of the syndicated western anthology series, Death Valley Days under the title Trails West.
In 1955, Ray Milland started directing films, such as the western A Man Alone (Ray Milland, 1955) with Raymond Burr, and the well-paced espionager Lisbon (1956, Ray Milland) with Maureen O’Hara for Republic Pictures that he also produced and starred in. He did it with surprising proficiency, but the films failed to make him successful. He achieved more success with directing for television. According to Kit and Morgan Benson at Find A Grave, he “was considered a solid and capable director and producer.” Milland returned as a film character actor in such fascinating low-budget horror films as The Premature Burial (Roger Corman, 1962) and The Man with the X-ray Eyes (Roger Corman, 1963), the latter providing Milland with the wittiest, most energetic role of his later career. He appeared in the TV classic Daughter of the Mind (Walter Grauman, 1969) in which he was reunited with Gene Tierney, and he played Ryan O'Neal's father in the hit tearjerker Love Story (Arthur Hiller, 1970). He can also be seen in such dreadful horror films as The Thing with Two Heads (Lee Frost, 1972), the British Crazy House/The House in Nightmare Park (Peter Sykes, 1973), and Terror in the Wax Museum (Georg Fenady). One of the best of that bad lot is Frogs (George McCowan, 1972), a surprisingly enjoyable entry from the ‘nature-run-amok’ horror subgenre. Milland wrote an autobiography, Wide Eyed in Babylon, published in 1974. Toward the end of his life, he guest starred in TV series as Battlestar Galactica (Glen A. Larson, 1978-1979) and the Harold Robbins’ adaptation The Dream Merchants (Vincent Sherman, 1980). His last film was the Spanish fantasy-adventure The Sea Serpent (Gregory Greens, 1986) with Timothy Bottoms, after which his declining health forced him to retire. A book-loving homebody, Milland kept away from the Hollywood glitter and was rarely mentioned in the gossip columns. At 81, he died of lung cancer in Torrance, California in 1986. He was survived by his wife, Muriel ‘Mal’ Weber, to whom he had been married since 1932. They had a son, Daniel, and an adopted daughter, Victoria. Frank Thompson at Film Reference: “Hollywood never quite knew what it had in Ray Milland, but he continuously showed himself to be an adventurous artist, always interested in exposing his established image to radical and surprising lights.”
Sources: Frank Thompson (Film Reference), Lynn Dougherty (Classic Movie Favorites), Kit and Morgan Benson (Find A Grave), Reel Classics, AllMovie, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
he's an actor and a playwrite. he thinks about baseball round the clock. he's an ardent Hawks fan. my brother in my room.
contax planar45mm
My Facebook Page | My Twitter Page | My Google+ | My New Site | My 500px
***My best shots transformed into wonderful wallpapers for all your devices: download them now for free!***