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Meet Breda. It was a nice sunny evening and the omens were good for a nice sunset. I decided to go to nearby Cabinteely Park. I met Breda as I was walking in the entrance. Breda and her husband Sam were going for a walk with their dog. She was deliberating which way to go for a walk this time. She asked if I was going to take some nice photos. I replied that I hoped to get some nice sunset shots. I then commented that I also love to take people photos and asked Breda if I could take hers. Breda said yes. I then explained to Breda about the Human Family Strangers project. Breda was happy to participate.
Breda is Irish and from nearby Stillorgan. Breda is married to Sam and a homemaker with two adult children aged 23 and 24. Breda said she loves Zumba dancing, Gardening and of course walking the dog.
For the photo it was evening time with a very bright sun low in the almost clear sky. I used a position nearby with good light but where direct sunlight was blocked by a tree further away. I took a few shots of Brenda.
I gave Breda my contact card to contact a card and she contacted me for a copy of the photo
Thank you Breda for participating in my Human Family Strangers Project.
Breda is my Stranger number 53 submission to the Human Family Strangers Group. Breda is my third stranger taken in Cabinteely Park
Visit the Human Family Strangers Group here to see more portraits and stories: www.flickr.com/groups/thehumanfamily.
West German collector card by Bravo, 1984.
Tom Selleck (1945) is an American actor and film producer, best known for his starring role in the TV series, Magnum, P.I. (1980) and for the box office hit Three Men and a Baby (1987).
Thomas William Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1945. His parents were Martha (Jagger), a homemaker, and Robert Dean Selleck, a real estate investor and executive. He has an elder brother, Robert, a younger sister, Martha, and a younger brother, Daniel. He grew up in San Fernando and attended the University of Southern California, where he obtained a degree in English. A drama coach suggested Selleck try acting, and in his senior year, he dropped out of the university. Selleck then studied acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse under Milton Katselas. Tom's first television appearance was as a college senior on The Dating Game (1967), but, incredibly, he lost. Soon after, he appeared in television commercials for products such as Pepsi-Cola. He worked as a male model and had small parts in films like the satire Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), The Seven Minutes (Russ Meyer, 1971) and the conspiracy thriller Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978). He played a leading role in the B-Horror film Daughters of Satan (Hollingsworth Morse, 1972). Selleck starred in six failed television pilots before he landed his breakthrough role as Hawaii-based private investigator Thomas Magnum on the television series, Magnum, P.I. (1980). With his prominent moustache, Hawaiian-style aloha shirt and Detroit Tigers baseball cap, he became one of the most popular TV stars of the 1980s. For his role, he received five Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning in 1985. Selleck was originally cast as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981), but could not take the role because he was committed to Magnum, P.I. His films included the adventure drama High Road to China (Brian G. Hutton, 1983), the action film Lassiter (Roger Young, 1984) and the romantic comedy Three Men and a Baby (Leonard Nimoy, 1987) with Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson. The latter was the highest-grossing movie in 1987 and Selleck's most successful film. He again played bachelor architect Peter Mitchell in the sequel 3 Men and a Little Lady (Emile Ardolino, 1990), which was also successful.
Tom Selleck appeared extensively on television in roles such as Lance White, the likeable and naive partner on The Rockford Files (1978-1979), as Monica Geller's (Courteney Cox) older love interest, Dr. Richard Burke, in Friends (1994), and as casino owner A.J. Cooper on Las Vegas (2003). In addition to his series work, Selleck appeared in over fifty films and TV movies, including Quigley Down Under (Simon Wincer, 1990) and the sports comedy Mr. Baseball (Fred Schepisi, 1992). In 1993, he won a Razzie award for Worst Supporting Actor for his performance as King Ferdinand of Spain in Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (John Glen, 1992) starring Marlon Brando. Selleck was the third person in Razzie history to accept one of the statuettes voluntarily. He shaved off his trademark moustache for the comedy In & Out (Frank Oz, 1997) starring Kevin Kline. Once rarely seen without it, he has since kept it off for most of his stage and screen work. Between 2005 and 2015, Selleck played troubled small-town police chief Jesse Stone in nine television films, based on the Robert B. Parker novels. From 2010 on, he appeared as Commissioner Frank Reagan in the drama series Blue Bloods (2010-2024) with Donnie Wahlberg. Tom Selleck married model Jacqueline Ray in 1971. They divorced in 1982. In 1987, he married British dancer Jillie Mack, with whom he has a daughter, Hannah, an international show jumper. Kevin Selleck (1966) is the son of his first wife, Jacqueline Ray, from her first marriage. Tom Selleck adopted Kevin during the marriage and has continued to treat him as a beloved son after he and Jacqueline Ray divorced.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
The most beautiful women in TV and Movie History now become Barbie Collector Dolls created by acclaimed re-paint Artist Donna Brinkley.
Jennifer O'Neill was the face of beauty in the 70's and 80's with her glamorous Cover-Girl ads. O'Neill (born February 20, 1948) is an American actress, model, author and speaker, known for her role in the 1971 film Summer of '42 and as the face of Cover-Girl cosmetics starting in the 1970s til the mid 1990's. Jennifer was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the grand-daughter of a Brazilian bank president, and the daughter of a famous Spanish-Irish medical and dental supply import/export businessman, Oscar D' O'Neill and his English wife, Irene ("Rene") Freda, a homemaker. O'Neill and her older brother Michael were raised in New Rochelle, New York, and Wilton, Connecticut.
When she was 14, the family moved to New York City. On Easter Sunday, 1962, O'Neill attempted suicide because the move would separate her from her dog Mandy and horse Monty -- "her whole world". That same year, she was discovered by the Ford modeling agency and put under contract. By age 15, she was gracing the cover of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and other magazines, earning $80,000 a year in 1962 working as a fashion model in New York City and also working in Paris, France, and dating older men.
An accomplished rider, O'Neill won upwards of 200 ribbons at horse show competitions in her teens. She saved up her modeling fees and bought a horse, Alezon, who balked before a wall at a horse show, breaking O'Neill's neck and back in three places, and giving her a long period of recovery. She attended New York City's Professional Children's School and the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan. Later, she moved on to films and worked in a number of television movies and series.
[edit] Career
In 1968 O'Neill landed a small role in For Love of Ivy. In 1970 she played one of the lead female roles in Rio Lobo starring opposite John Wayne.
She is most remembered for her role in the 1971 film Summer of '42, where she played Dorothy Walker, the young widow of a pilot shot down and killed in World War II. Her agent allegedly had to fight to even get a reading for the part, since the role had been cast for an "older woman" to a coming of age 15 year old boy, and the director was only considering actresses over the age of thirty, Barbra Streisand being at the top of the list.
O'Neill continued acting for the next two decades. She appeared in The Carey Treatment (1972), Lady Ice (1973), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), Caravans (1978), A Force of One (1979), Scanners (1981), and The Cover Girl Murders (1993 made-for-television film). She went to Europe in 1976 and worked with Italian director Luchino Visconti, appearing in his last film L'innocente (1976), where she played the part of the mistress, Teresa Raffo.
In 1982, O'Neill starred in the short-lived NBC prime time soap opera Bare Essence. Her credits include singing in the Chrysler Corporation commercial Change in Charger that represented the end of the Dodge Charger in 1975. In 1984, she played the lead female role on the CBS television series Cover Up; the lead male actor, Jon-Erik Hexum, was accidentally killed on the studio set after placing a blank-loaded prop gun to his temple and pulling the trigger—the wadding from the blank cartridge drove a bone fragment from Hexum's skull into his brain.
O'Neill is also listed in the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History's Center for Advertising History for her long standing contract with Cover Girl cosmetics as its model and spokesperson in ads and television commercials.
O'Neill has been married nine times to eight husbands (she married, divorced, and remarried husband number six); at one point, she was married to four different men in four years. At age 44, she married husband number seven sooner than any other actress, sooner than Zsa Zsa Gabor (who was 63), Liza Minnelli (59) and Lana Turner (49), making her the youngest "most married" Hollywood celebrity. The August 23, 1993, issue of People magazine reports that a friend of O'Neill's says that the actress obtained the (Texas) annulment of marriage number seven (Neil L. Bonin - after less than five months) ... because she felt stifled.
O'Neill has three children from as many fathers, a daughter (Aimee) by her first husband whom she married at age 17, and a son (Reis Michael) from her fifth marriage and another son (Cooper Alan) from her sixth marriage.
At age 34, O'Neill suffered a gunshot wound. Police officers in the Westchester County town of Bedford, New York, who interviewed the actress, said that on October 23, 1982, she shot herself accidentally in the abdomen with a .38 caliber revolver at her Bedford mansion while she was trying to determine if it was loaded.
She describes many of her life experiences, including her marriages and career, to her move to her Tennessee farm in the late 1990s in her 1999 autobiography Surviving Myself. O'Neill says that she wrote this autobiography (her first book) … at the prompting of her children.
In 2004, O'Neill wrote and published From Fallen To Forgiven, a book of biographical notes and philosophical thoughts about life and existence. The actress, who had an abortion after the divorce from her first husband while dating a Wall Street socialite, became a pro-life activist and a born-again Christian in 1986 at age 38, counseling abstinence to teens. Concerning her abortion, she writes:
I was told a lie from the pit of hell: that my baby was just a blob of tissue. The aftermath of abortion can be equally deadly for both mother and unborn child. A woman who has an abortion is sentenced to bear that for the rest of her life.
O'Neill continues to be active as a writer, inspirational speaker, fundraiser for the benefit of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States. She has also served as the spokesperson for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, a non-denominational, non-political, non-profit organization dedicated to post-abortion healing and recovery.
O'Neill works for several other charitable causes as well, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa International and the Arthritis Foundation. As a breast cancer survivor she has also been a former spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. She has also hosted a one hour television special for World Vision shot in Africa concerning the HIV epidemic. In addition, she remains actively involved with her childhood love of animals and horses, sponsoring the Jennifer O'Neill Tennis Tournament to benefit the ASPCA, and fund-raiser for Guiding Eyes for the blind.
O'Neill purchased a horse farm in Tennessee called Hillenglade Farm where she runs a non-profit organization as a ministry and retreat for girls and young women.
The most beautiful women in TV and Movie History now become Barbie Collector Dolls created by acclaimed re-paint Artist Donna Brinkley.
Jennifer O'Neill was the face of beauty in the 70's and 80's with her glamorous Cover-Girl ads. O'Neill (born February 20, 1948) is an American actress, model, author and speaker, known for her role in the 1971 film Summer of '42 and as the face of Cover-Girl cosmetics starting in the 1970s til the mid 1990's. Jennifer was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the grand-daughter of a Brazilian bank president, and the daughter of a famous Spanish-Irish medical and dental supply import/export businessman, Oscar D' O'Neill and his English wife, Irene ("Rene") Freda, a homemaker. O'Neill and her older brother Michael were raised in New Rochelle, New York, and Wilton, Connecticut.
When she was 14, the family moved to New York City. On Easter Sunday, 1962, O'Neill attempted suicide because the move would separate her from her dog Mandy and horse Monty -- "her whole world". That same year, she was discovered by the Ford modeling agency and put under contract. By age 15, she was gracing the cover of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and other magazines, earning $80,000 a year in 1962 working as a fashion model in New York City and also working in Paris, France, and dating older men.
An accomplished rider, O'Neill won upwards of 200 ribbons at horse show competitions in her teens. She saved up her modeling fees and bought a horse, Alezon, who balked before a wall at a horse show, breaking O'Neill's neck and back in three places, and giving her a long period of recovery. She attended New York City's Professional Children's School and the prestigious Dalton School in Manhattan. Later, she moved on to films and worked in a number of television movies and series.
[edit] Career
In 1968 O'Neill landed a small role in For Love of Ivy. In 1970 she played one of the lead female roles in Rio Lobo starring opposite John Wayne.
She is most remembered for her role in the 1971 film Summer of '42, where she played Dorothy Walker, the young widow of a pilot shot down and killed in World War II. Her agent allegedly had to fight to even get a reading for the part, since the role had been cast for an "older woman" to a coming of age 15 year old boy, and the director was only considering actresses over the age of thirty, Barbra Streisand being at the top of the list.
O'Neill continued acting for the next two decades. She appeared in The Carey Treatment (1972), Lady Ice (1973), The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975), Caravans (1978), A Force of One (1979), Scanners (1981), and The Cover Girl Murders (1993 made-for-television film). She went to Europe in 1976 and worked with Italian director Luchino Visconti, appearing in his last film L'innocente (1976), where she played the part of the mistress, Teresa Raffo.
In 1982, O'Neill starred in the short-lived NBC prime time soap opera Bare Essence. Her credits include singing in the Chrysler Corporation commercial Change in Charger that represented the end of the Dodge Charger in 1975. In 1984, she played the lead female role on the CBS television series Cover Up; the lead male actor, Jon-Erik Hexum, was accidentally killed on the studio set after placing a blank-loaded prop gun to his temple and pulling the trigger—the wadding from the blank cartridge drove a bone fragment from Hexum's skull into his brain.
O'Neill is also listed in the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History's Center for Advertising History for her long standing contract with Cover Girl cosmetics as its model and spokesperson in ads and television commercials.
O'Neill has been married nine times to eight husbands (she married, divorced, and remarried husband number six); at one point, she was married to four different men in four years. At age 44, she married husband number seven sooner than any other actress, sooner than Zsa Zsa Gabor (who was 63), Liza Minnelli (59) and Lana Turner (49), making her the youngest "most married" Hollywood celebrity. The August 23, 1993, issue of People magazine reports that a friend of O'Neill's says that the actress obtained the (Texas) annulment of marriage number seven (Neil L. Bonin - after less than five months) ... because she felt stifled.
O'Neill has three children from as many fathers, a daughter (Aimee) by her first husband whom she married at age 17, and a son (Reis Michael) from her fifth marriage and another son (Cooper Alan) from her sixth marriage.
At age 34, O'Neill suffered a gunshot wound. Police officers in the Westchester County town of Bedford, New York, who interviewed the actress, said that on October 23, 1982, she shot herself accidentally in the abdomen with a .38 caliber revolver at her Bedford mansion while she was trying to determine if it was loaded.
She describes many of her life experiences, including her marriages and career, to her move to her Tennessee farm in the late 1990s in her 1999 autobiography Surviving Myself. O'Neill says that she wrote this autobiography (her first book) … at the prompting of her children.
In 2004, O'Neill wrote and published From Fallen To Forgiven, a book of biographical notes and philosophical thoughts about life and existence. The actress, who had an abortion after the divorce from her first husband while dating a Wall Street socialite, became a pro-life activist and a born-again Christian in 1986 at age 38, counseling abstinence to teens. Concerning her abortion, she writes:
I was told a lie from the pit of hell: that my baby was just a blob of tissue. The aftermath of abortion can be equally deadly for both mother and unborn child. A woman who has an abortion is sentenced to bear that for the rest of her life.
O'Neill continues to be active as a writer, inspirational speaker, fundraiser for the benefit of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States. She has also served as the spokesperson for the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, a non-denominational, non-political, non-profit organization dedicated to post-abortion healing and recovery.
O'Neill works for several other charitable causes as well, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa International and the Arthritis Foundation. As a breast cancer survivor she has also been a former spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. She has also hosted a one hour television special for World Vision shot in Africa concerning the HIV epidemic. In addition, she remains actively involved with her childhood love of animals and horses, sponsoring the Jennifer O'Neill Tennis Tournament to benefit the ASPCA, and fund-raiser for Guiding Eyes for the blind.
O'Neill purchased a horse farm in Tennessee called Hillenglade Farm where she runs a non-profit organization as a ministry and retreat for girls and young women.
1954 --- 1950s Bored Woman Housewife Wearing Apron Leaning On Mop On Kitchen Floor --- Image by © Camerique/ClassicStock/Corbis
German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK 342. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Klaus Collignon / UFA.
Gustav ‘Bubi’ Scholz (1930-2000) was the most prominent German boxer of the post-war period. The southpaw was only a professional boxer, never an amateur. He celebrated his greatest successes in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, and had some international successes. He also recorded Schlagers and appeared in films.
Gustav Wilhelm Hermann ‘Bubi’ Scholz was born in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin in 1930. His father was a blacksmith, his mother was a homemaker. ‘Bubi’ earned his first money with selling newspapers. He studied to become a cook. From 1947 on he visited the boxing schools of Karl Schwarz and Bruno Müller, and from 1948 on the Olympia-boxschule where he met his future trainer Lado Taubeneck. Scholz became both a good tactical and a good technical boxer, a southpaw. He never fought as an amateur and in 1948, he won his first professional match against Horst Eichler on points. In 1951 he boxed for the first time for the national title. He won from Walter Schneider and became the German welterweight champion. He defended this title twice in 1952 – against Karl Oechsle and Leo Starosch. Later that year he voluntarily gave up this title for the middleweight championship. In 1955 he was suddenly diagnosed with tuberculosis, and he was forbidden to box. Although he trained secretly he did not do any boxing matches until 1957. With a K.O. victory in the third round against Peter ‘de Aap’ (the Ape) Müller, he became National champion middleweight. From his victory in 1958 from the French champion Charles Humez till 1961 Bubi was the European champion in the middleweight and in 1964 he held the title in the heavyweight. In total he played 96 fights, of which he won 88, including 41 by knockout, he lost only twice (both defeats on points). In 1962 he had lost on points from the American World Champion middleweight, Harold Johnson. The matches of the prominent boxer were visited by such celebrities as film star Curd Jürgens and prime minister Willy Brandt. Although he would never become a world champion, Scholz takes the rank of 45th as ‘Best Boxer of all time’ in the middleweight class in the independent, eternal world computer rankings of BoxRec.
In 1965 Bubi Scholz finished his boxing career and started the advertising agency Zühlke & Scholz. During his boxing career he had done several side-activities. He had recorded some Schlagers like Sie hat nur bluejeans (She only had blue jeans) and he also had performed in a few films. In 1960 he had appeared at the side of Rocco Granata and the Italian actress Georgia Moll in the Schlagerfilm Marina (1960, Paul Martin). Although a reviewer at IMDb compared his performance as “walking through after a K.O.”, Scholz appeared the following year in another Schlagerfilm, Schlagerparade 1961 (1961, Ernst Marischka) with Renate Ewert and Chris Howland. On TV he was seen in the comedy Der Meisterboxer/The Box Champion (1960, Günter Fiedler, Willy Millowitsch). Later, he appeared with the other legendary boxing champion, Max Schmeling, as two policemen in the comedy Glückspilze/Lucky Devils (1971, Thomas Engel) with Heli Finkenzeller and Christian Wolff. After his active boxing career, Scholz became depressed and was known for his binge-drinking. He reached the low point in 1984, when he shot his wife, Helga Scholz-Druck, with whom he had been married since 1955. He was arrested the following day, and was sentenced to an imprisonment of three years for manslaughter. After his period in jail, he appeared in two more films. He appeared as a boxing coach in the short drama Chicago 6 x 6 (1989, Clemens Füsers). His last film was Mord aus Liebe/Murder out of Love (1993, Georg Stefan Troller) with actress Ingrid von Bergen, who herself had spent nearly 5 years in prison for manslaughter. In 1993, the 63-year-old Scholz married the 35-year-old Sabine Arndt. In the late 1990’s he suffered several strokes and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. His life was filmed for the TV film Die Bubi Scholz Story/The Bubi Scholz Story (1999, Roland Suso Richter). Young Bubi was interpreted by Benno Furmann, while Götz George played the older Scholz. Scholz himself could not attend the premiere because of his poor health at that time. Gustav ‘Bubi’ Scholz died in 2000 in an elderly home in Berlin.
Sources: Oliver Marschalek (Neue deutsche Biographie) (German), Michael Mielke (Weltonline) (German), BoxRec, Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.
British postcard in the Photographs series, no. 104. Photo: publicity still for Yanks (John Schlesinger, 1979).
American actor Richard Gere (1949) has been hailed as The Sexiest Man alive and a humanitarian, but he is foremost a good actor. He shone in such box office hits as American Gigolo (1980), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Pretty Woman (1990). For portraying Billy Flynn in the Academy Award-winning musical Chicago (2002), he won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the cast.
Richard Tiffany Gere was born in 1949, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was the second of five children of Doris Ann (Tiffany), a homemaker, and Homer George Gere, an insurance salesman, both Mayflower descendants. Gere had a strict Methodist upbringing. Richard started early as a musician, playing a number of instruments in high school and writing music for high school productions. He graduated from North Syracuse Central High School in 1967, and won a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he majored in philosophy. He left college after two years to pursue acting. Gere first worked professionally at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod in 1969, where he starred in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He landed the lead role as Danny Zuko in the London production of the musical Grease in 1973. While in London, Gere gained the privilege of becoming one of the few Americans ever to work with Britain's Young Vic Theater, with which he appeared in The Taming of the Shrew. He later reprised his role as Danny Zuko in Grease on Broadway. In 1974, Gere made his feature film debut with a tiny part in Report to the Commissioner (Milton Katselas, 1974). He returned to the stage the following year as part of the cast of an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's Killer's Head. Some of Gere's earliest photos, known as 'head shots' were taken by boyhood friend and struggling photographer Herb Ritts. The people handling Gere were so impressed with the photos that they began hiring Ritts for other assignments. Ritts became a top photographer. Onscreen, Gere had a few roles, and gained recognition in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977) opposite Diane Keaton. He played his first leading role in the dream-like drama Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978). Joshua Dysart at IMDb: "A poetic biblical parable played out in the Texas Panhandle at the turn of the century, it gives total preference to the emotion of imagery over the emotion of the actors. It's an exorcise in feeling and seeing that's so successful it elevated Terrence Malick into the ranks of visual storytellers like Tarkovski and Kurosawa." In Italy, Gere won the David di Donatello Award (the Italian Oscar) for Best Foreign Actor. Gere spent 1978 meeting Tibetans when he travelled to Nepal, where he spoke to many monks and lamas. Returning to the US, Gere won considerable theatrical acclaim for his performance as a gay concentration-camp prisoner in the Broadway production of Martin Sherman's Bent. For his role he received the 1980 Theatre World Award. Back in Hollywood, he played the title role in American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980), which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol. His star status was reaffirmed by An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982) with Debra Winger. The film grossed almost $130 million and won two Academy Awards out of six nominations. Gere himself received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. In The Cotton Club (Francios Coppola, 1984) he appeared with Diane Lane. In the early 1980s, Richard went to Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador amidst ongoing wars and political violence. With a doctor, he visited refugee camps. In the late 1980s, his career seemed to have a dip. His celebrity status was jeopardized with roles in the several poorly received biblical drama King David (Bruce Beresford, 1985) and the underrated political drama Power ( Sidney Lumet, 1986).
In 1990 Richard Gere returned to the front row with two excellent films. In Internal Affairs (Mike Figgis, 1990), he was a sensation as the bad guy. Andy Garcia played an Internal Affairs agent who becomes obsessed with bringing down a cop (Gere) who manages to maintain a spotless reputation despite being involved in a web of corruption. Gere then teamed up with Julia Roberts to star in the the smash romantic comedy Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990). His cool reserve as a ruthless businessman was the perfect complement to Julia's bubbling enthusiasm. The film captured the nation's heart, and it earned Gere his second Golden Globe Award nomination. Fans clamored for years for a sequel, or at least another pairing of Julia and Richard. They got that with Runaway Bride (Garry Marshall, 1999), which was a runaway success. Gere received $12 million, and the box office was $152 million. Offscreen, Richard and Cindy Crawford got married in 1991. They were divorced in 1995. Gere had a leading role in the Japanese film Hachi-gatsu no rapusodî (Akira Kurosawa, 1991), a film warning viewers of the dangers of nuclear power. Gere is also active in AIDS fundraising and agreed to play a small role in the HBO film And the Band Played On (Roger Spottiswoode, 1993) despite the prevalent belief in the film industry a film about AIDS would be detrimental to his career. It was not. He co-starred with Jodie Foster in the box office hit Sommersby (Jon Amiel, 1993). A Buddhist for over a decade, he was banned from the Oscars once after making anti-China comments on the air at the 1993 ceremony. Gere played one of his best roles in Primal Fear (Gregory Hoblit, 1996), as a fame-hungry lawyer who defends an altar boy (Edward Norton) accused of murdering a priest. People magazine had picked him as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1991, and in 1999 picked him as their Sexiest Man Alive. The following year, the actor enjoyed some of his best reviews to date as a gynecologist at once devoted to and bewildered by all of the women in his life in the aptly titled Dr. T & the Women (Robert Altman, 2000). Critics noted that Gere seemed to have finally come into his own as an actor, having matured amiably with years and experience. After his divorce from Cindy Crawford, Gere had started dating actress Carey Lowell. In 2000, they had a son, Homer James Jigme Gere. Jigme means 'fearless' in Tibetan. Gere and Lowell married in 2002. His later films include the thriller Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne, 2002) in which he reunited with Diane Lane, the Oscar winning musical Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002) with Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the ballroom dancing drama Shall We Dance? (Peter Chelsom, 2004), which grossed $170 million worldwide. In the comedy-drama The Hoax (Lasse Hallström, 2006), he played Clifford Irving who sold his bogus biography of Howard Hughes to a premiere publishing house in the early 1970s. Gere was one of the characters who embody a different aspect of Bob Dylan's life and work in I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007). Other interesting films are the crime drama Brooklyn's Finest (Antoine Fuqua, 2009) with Don Cheadle, the British comedy-drama The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden, 2015) with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, and Three Christs (Jon Avnet, 2017) with Peter Dinklage. He was notably singled out for portraying businessman Robert Miller opposite Susan Sarandon in Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki, 2012), earning his fourth Golden Globe Award nomination. Gere is also an accomplished pianist, music writer, and above all a humanitarian. He's a founding member of Tibet House, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan culture. He has been an active supporter of Survival International, which supports tribal people, including the natives of the Amazon, the Maasai of East Africa, the Wichi of Argentina. After 11 years of marriage, Gere and Lowell separated. Since April 2018, Richard Gere is married to Spanish activist Alejandra Silva.
Source: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), K.D. Haisch (IMDb), AllMovie, Wikipedia and IMDb.
Ricky Lauren: Natural Beauty
The wife of Ralph Lauren shares the family's American-luxe lifestyle in her new book
Being Mrs. Ralph Lauren requires more than a passing attention to detail. There's the blonde mane the color of frozen French butter (unsalted), the requisite flawless figure, the pool-blue eyes, and that perfect aristo air. Today, dressed in a pale-gray cashmere turtleneck and jodhpurs offset with a cognac belt, boots, and a matching watchband, striding through the hallowed halls of the Ralph Lauren offices, she's every bit the urbane, polished mogul wife.
Yet for all her cool beauty, there are no icy reserves to chip away. Somewhere along the way this woman learned the art of grace, and nobody inhabits that world quite as well as she.
With the release of her fourth book, the lifestyle cookbook The Hamptons: Food, Family, and History, she showcases the role in which she's most comfortable, that of happy (albeit haute) homemaker. A pastiche of personal photos and family recipes punctuated with signature Lauren lifestyle elements, it's a love letter from Ricky to her husband and their children, Andrew, David, and Dylan. "A lot of these recipes are of course to share with everyone, but they are for my children to have for themselves so they have a cookbook of their own of memories," she says.
Ricky and Ralph have been decamping to the Hamptons since the '70s, and through the years they have lived in many of the charming hamlets there, from Southampton to Montauk. Some of her most treasured moments have transpired out east, including a one-year-old Andrew taking his first steps, his small hands clasped around a broomstick, his father's hands clasped around his to gingerly lead the way.
Aside from those familial milestones, meals and the making of them are the focal point. "We would go picking potatoes, and the children would help," says Ricky, conjuring up one of her fondest memories. "They were little and they'd come with brown bags from the supermarket, and we'd fill them up. Then we'd go back to the house, and even the baby carriage would have potatoes in it." A surfeit of starch for her Good Old-Fashioned Garlic Mashed Potatoes recipe, which she likes to serve alongside baby "lollipop" lamb chops.
Ricky made sure that her kids always helped out—chores were de rigueur. "I remember days when the children would go to get the camp bus in the morning, everybody had a job in the kitchen. One would make the orange juice, another one would set the table, and another would pour milk in the glasses."
The idyll depicted in the book spans the past 40 years and evokes sweetly sentimental scenes—sojourns to the beach, bicycle rides at dusk, softball games on the lawn with the entire family outfitted in varying shades of denim.
"The Hamptons has always been a special place for us, starting when our children were very young," says Ralph. "Ricky's food and the creative way she sets our tables or fills a basket for a picnic on the beach have always been a personal gift to each of us. Her books, particularly this one, filled with her beautiful photographs and watercolors, heartfelt recollections and personal recipes, are another gift to our family and to all that love living simply and well. The beauty she sees in our lives is a daily inspiration."
Indeed, she inspires them to eat. Ralph has a soft spot for Wiener schnitzel (Ricky's parents hailed from Austria) as well as her mother's brownies. "Ralph wanted to put them in the store," Ricky says, "but I haven't made those in a while because we like to watch our diet."
Since the mid-'80s, the Lauren family's Hamptons headquarters has been in Montauk. Their sprawling oceanfront compound was designed in 1940 by an acolyte of Frank Lloyd Wright's. Yet the home's rustic feel and natural, raw grounds are a departure from the oft-seen East Hampton manors with their manicured lawns and privet hedges. The house has an unassuming facade and a laid-back feel that feeds into the Laurens' sensibility. "Montauk is more remote, more private, more of a fishing village, an artists' retreat," says Ricky. "It has its own magic."
She dedicated the book to Ralph, who she calls her "anchor." "He is the one who made it all possible." The legendary pair have been married for nearly 50 years. Their meet-cute happened at an eye doctor's office in New York City, where Ricky was working as a receptionist while attending Hunter College and Ralph came in for an appointment. He asked her out on the spot. On their first date, Ralph picked her up in his green Morgan sports car and spirited her to a pancake house upstate. Over coffee she told him that she was studying Shakespeare and Chaucer. "Then I started reciting The Canterbury Tales, and he said, 'This is a very strange girl, very odd,'" Ricky recalls. "'She's beautiful but she's strange.'"
They were married eight months later. Since then, Ralph went from designing ties to designing the ultimate American lifestyle brand. He has amassed a $5.6-billion-a-year empire—ranking among the industry's most influential icons—and has flourishing businesses in nearly every global niche. And he's built out his own life in a similarly impressive fashion, with gorgeously rendered homes not only in Manhattan and Montauk but in Bedford, New York; Colorado; and Jamaica.
Ricky has been by his side every genteel step of the way, including creatively, serving as her husband's muse. "I didn't like the girl with all the makeup and high heels," Lauren wrote in his 2007 memoir. "I liked the girl in jeans and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, wearing her boyfriend's jacket. That's the girl I am attracted to. That's the girl I married—Ricky." He even created the now classic Ricky bag in her honor.
She's definitely a woman who knows her own worth. During her Bazaar shoot for this story, as the sun was setting in Montauk and she perched on a twig chair in a denim jacket and a patchwork bustle skirt on the lawn of the family's home, photographer Mark Seliger told her she looked like a million bucks. Ricky coyly shot back, "Only?"
"A lot of these recipes are for my children to have for themselves so they have a cookbook of their own of memories," says Ricky Lauren
"The Hamptons has always been a special place for us, starting when our children were very young," says Ralph Lauren
Joseph Louis Barrow (1914-1981), better known in the boxing world as Joe Louis and nicknamed The Brown Bomber, was a native of Lexington, Alabama who became World Heavyweight Champion.
The son of Monroe Barrow, a cotton picker, and Lilly Reese, a homemaker, Louis became interested in boxing after the Barrows moved to Detroit in 1924. He went on to win Michigan's Golden Gloves title, after which he turned professional in 1934. Louis made his debut on July 4 of that year, knocking out Jack Kracken in the first round at Chicago, Illinois that night. He won 12 fights that year, all in Chicago, 10 by knockout. Among his opponents in 1934 was Art Sykes, a top contender.
In 1935, he boxed 13 more times, and started touring the United States and Canada. He won each of his fights, and he began to face better opposition, beating former world Heavyweight champions Primo Carnera and Max Baer, and former Carnera world title challenger Paolino Uzcudun. His last four bouts that year were exhibitions in Canada, as one fight versus Isodoro Castagana, supposed to take place December 29 at Havana, Cuba, was suspended.
He began 1936 knocking out Charlie Retzlaff in the first round. In his next fight, however, he was matched with former world Heavyweight champion Max Schmeling, who was thought to be fading when he upset Louis by a knockout in 12 at New York. The German had studied Louis and discovered that he dropped his right hand after throwing his legendary left jab. Schmeling managed to weather Louis's pummeling long enough to exploit this weakness and bring down Louis. Louis and his supporters were devastated.
Schmeling now deserved a fight for the title, but was denied a chance to challenge the world champion in large part due to his relatively weak ties to the German Nazi Party.
That year Louis had four more bouts, winning all of them, and three exhibitions. Among the boxers he defeated were former Heavyweight champ Jack Sharkey and Eddie Simms, who turned and asked the referee to take a walk on the roof with him after a hit from Louis. The referee stopped the fight right away.
1937 came by, and after a ten round decision win over Bob Pastor, Louis was matched with world champion James J. Braddock in Chicago for the World Heavyweight title. Louis was dropped in round one, but he got up and became the world champion by knocking Braddock out in round eight. He said after the fight, however, that he would not feel like a world champion until he beat one man: Schmeling. Louis retained the title three times, outpointing the capable Welshman Tommy Farr and knocking out Nathan Mann in three and Harry Thomas in five.
The rematch with Schmeling finally took place, on June 22, 1938. This time the fight was hyped on both sides of the Atlantic, and many fans around the world saw this fight as a symbol: Louis representing the American interests and Schmeling, who was wrongly seen as a Nazi, fighting for Germany and white supremacy.
The fight itself ended quickly. With his superior speed, Louis retained his title by a knockout in the first round, avenging his only loss up until that time and achieving something not too many African-Americans of the era imagined anyone could do: becoming a national hero both for the white and the black population. Louis was black, so when he won the title, he had become an example to his fellow black Americans. But by beating a German boxer, Louis won over whites too, something very hard to do during the 1930s and 1940s in the United States.
In 1940 Louis actively campaigned for Wendell Willkie for the presidency. Louis favored Willkie over FDR because he believed that Willkie and the Republicans would do more for civil rights.
Joe Louis sews on the stripes of a technical sergeant--to which he has been promotedIn between serving in the United States Army during the Second World War, Louis kept on defending his title, totalling 25 defenses from '37 to 1949. He was a world champion for 11 years and 10 months, after which he left his crown vacant. He set records for any division in number of defenses and longevity as world champion non stop, and both records still stand. Apart from Schmeling, Farr, Mann and Thomas, other notable title defenses during that period were:
his fight versus world Light Heavyweight champion John Henry Lewis, knocked out in the first.
his fight with Two Ton Tony Galento, who upset the boxing world by knocking Louis down in round one, but Louis got up and knocked Galento out in the fourth.
his two fights with Chilean Arturo Godoy, who almost did something no other boxer from Chile has ever done and no Hispanic had done before: Become world Heavyweight champion in their first bout, which Louis won by a close decision, and when Louis won the rematch by a knockout in the eight round, a riot broke loose at the Madison Square Garden.
his two fights with world Light Heavyweight champion Billy Conn, the first of which is remembered as one of the greatest fights in heavywieght history. Conn, much smaller than Louis but also much faster, said that he planned to "hit and run,' prompting Louis's famous response, "He can run, but he can't hide." For 12 rounds it appeared that Conn would prove Louis wrong; his agile footwork, blinding hand speed and ability to slip punches stymied Louis, and Conn was so far ahead on points that only a knockout could save Louis. Near the end of round 12, though, Conn visibly hurt Louis, so he decided to go for a knockout in the 13th. His decision to go toe-to-toe with Louis turned out to be his downfall, as the champion KO'd Conn with a vicious barrage. In the rematch, Louis won by a knockout in the eighth round.
his two fights versus future world Heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott, who would drop Louis in round four of their first bout and lose a close decision, then get knocked out by Louis in the rematch in 11 rounds.
Louis joined the Army from 1942 to 1945 and spent that whole period travelling around Europe visiting with the fighting troops and boxing in exhibitions. During this time, he became a national spokesman for the Army, inviting young men to join in and help their country in the war. He even acted in a couple of movies, produced by the Army to entice men to go to the war. After he came back to keep defending his title in 1946, Louis looked somewhat slower in his fights, and his best years seemed to have gone. He still managed to fend off every challenger until he retired for the first time, after the second Walcott bout. On March 1, 1949 Louis announced his retirement from boxing.
In 1950, burdened by I.R.S. debt, he announced a comeback and was promptly given a chance to recover his title, but he lost a 15 round unanimous decision to world champion Ezzard Charles, who had won the title after Louis left it vacant. He kept boxing, and in his next fight he beat fringe contender Cesar Brion by a decision in 10. Seven more wins followed, including a rematch with Brion and a decision over fellow hall of famer Jimmy Bivins. In 1951, however, he would box what would be his final fight: In front of a national television audience, Louis lost by a knockout in eight rounds to the future world Heavyweight Champion, Rocky Marciano. Louis did not embarrass himself that night, but it was obvious his best years had gone by. He retired with a record of 68 wins and 3 losses, with 54 wins by a knockout.
Louis became a professional wrestler in 1956 but quit in 1957 due to injuries suffered during a match.
Louis faced a drug problem, a fact not too many people knew about but which was made public by a boxing book published by Ring Magazine, just as in Sugar Ray Robinson's case. But later on in life, he was able to kick his drug habit.
A few years after his retirement, a movie about his life, The Joe Louis Story, was filmed in Hollywood. Louis remained a popular celebrity until his twilight years, when he began suffering various illnesses, notably Pugilistic Parkinson's syndrome, and ran out of money. It was in the late 1960s that Louis also became addicted to cocaine. He began suffering from paranoia and delusions. His wife was forced to have him committed to a Denver mental hospital in 1970. Louis was eventually able to overcome his addiction. In his later years, he got a job welcoming tourists to the Caesar's Palace hotel in Las Vegas, where many world boxing champions and legends from other walks of life, including old rival Max Schmeling, would visit him.
In fact, Schmeling and Louis became close personal friends over the years, and the compassionate Schmeling (who was awarded control of the German Coca-Cola bottler after WWII) would often send him money.
They remained friends until Joe Louis' death, when Schmeling paid for his funeral and was one of the pallbearers. Louis had also become close friends with Billy Conn. After Louis' death, Conn wrote an article in Reader's Digest magazine called "Unforgettable Joe Louis". He recalled their classic fight and how close he came to defeating Louis. He ended the article with the words, "I was proud to have fought him and prouder still to have been his friend". Max Schmeling was also heartbroken by Louis' death. When asked, on his 90th birthday, if he had any regrets he replied "I only have one. I regret Joe isn't still alive and we were still friends".
Joe Louis died of a heart attack in 1981. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. His life and his achievements prompted famed New York sportswriter Jimmy Cannon to write "Joe Louis is a credit to his race - the human race."
He has a sports complex named after him in Detroit, the Joe Louis Arena, where the Detroit Red Wings play their NHL games. A memorial to Louis was dedicated in Detroit (at Jefferson Avenue & Woodward) on October 16, 1986. The sculpture, commissioned by Time, Inc. and executed by Robert Graham, is a 24-foot long arm with a fisted hand suspended by a 24-foot high pyramidal framework. It represents the power of his punch both inside and outside the ring. On March 25, 2004, two men, Brett Cashman and John T. White, pleaded guilty on charges of defacing the monument. They had allegedly covered it with white paint on February 23 of that year.
Louis was named by Ring Magazine's as boxing's number one puncher in history in 2003. He was also named as the magazine's fighter of the year on four occasions, bettered only by Muhammad Ali's five awards.
Louis is a member of the International Boxing Hall Of Fame.
I really love this cupboard. It was £5 in Oxfam years ago, no-one wanted it. Someone had scratched or gouged some of the wood so I sanded it down and painted it. I feel that this cupboard has soul in a way some of my newer (eg Ikea) furniture cannot.
British postcard by London Postcard Company, no. PR 762. Photo: Crowvision Inc., 1996. Publicity still for The Crow: City of Angels (Tim Pope, 1996).
Soulful, exotic-looking Swiss actor Vincent Pérez (1964) is known for such French films as Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), Indochine (1992) and La Reine Margot (1994). His international breakthrough was his role as Ashe Corven in The Crow: City of Angels (1996). He is also known as a director and photographer.
Vincent Pérez was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1964. He is the son of a Spanish father and a German mother. His mother was a homemaker and his father worked in the import-export business. Vincent wanted to be an actor since he saw a film of Charles Chaplin, at the age of seven. He began putting on shows at school, which he would star in and direct. Perez eventually dropped out to enter photography school. In Geneva, he enrolled at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, followed by a training at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSAD) and at the experimental school of the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers , where he trained under famed theatre and opera director Patrice Chéreau. While still a student, he made his screen debut in Gardien de la nuit/Night Guardian (Jean-Pierre Limosin, 1986). A part followed by in the Anton Chekhov adaptation Hôtel de France (Patrice Chéreau, 1987), which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. His breakthrough role was the tongue-tied lover Christian de Neuvillette opposite Gérard Depardieu in the comedy-drama Cyrano de Bergerac (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 1990). Critics considered it the definitive film version of the Edmond Rostand play from 1897. For his standout performance, Perez was nominated for a César Award as Most Promising Actor (Meilleur espoir masculin). According to Gary Brumburgh at IMDb, Perez exudes ‘a sexy stare and irresistible charm that has swept Gallic women off their feet‘. In Italy, he appeared in title role of the comedy Il viaggio di Capitan Fracassa/Captain Fracassa's Journey (Ettore Scola, 1990) with Emmanuelle Béart. Perez was awarded the prestigious Prix Jean Gabin for his work in the World War II drama La Neige et le Feu /Snow and Fire (1991). He landed the romantic lead opposite Catherine Deneuve in Indochine/Indochina (Rëgis Wargnier, 1992), set in colonial French Indochina during the 1930s to 1950s. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. That year he directed and wrote himself the short film L'échange/The Change (1992) At the Cannes Film Festival, L'échange was nominated for the Golden Palm Award for Best Short Film. He then co-starred with Sophie Marceau in the romantic comedy Fanfan/Fanfan & Alexandre (1993) written and directed by Alexandre Jardin and based on the director's best-selling 1990 novel. James Travers at Le Film Guide: “Compelling performances from Vincent Perez and Sophie Marceau transform what looks at first like a routine romantic comedy into something far richer, far more compassionate. The second part of the film also contains some moments of artistic brilliance, notably the Cocteau-esque sequence in which the two lovers attempt to make contact through a mirrored partition. Although there are a few unexplained gaps in the narrative—some more back story about Alexandre might have helped—writer-director Alexandre Jardin succeeds in weaving a tender love story that is both original and hauntingly poetic. “ One of his best films is the French period film La Reine Margot/Queen Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994), starring Isabelle Adjani. The film won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and was an international success. It paved the way for Perez to an international career.
Vincent Perez was cast next to John Malkovich in the Italian-French-German romance Al di là delle nuvole/Beyond the Clouds (Michelangelo Antonioni, Wim Wenders, 1995). Director Antonioni, who was 83 at the time of the film's production, had a stroke that left him severely incapacitated. The film was completed with help from Wim Wenders, who wrote its prologue and epilogue and worked on the screenplay. Perez then played the lead in the American supernatural horror action film The Crow: City of Angels (Tim Pope, 1996), a sequel to the cult film The Crow (Alex Proyas, 1994) with Brandon Lee, who was accidentally killed on the set during filming by a defective blank, only 8 days before the film would have completed production. The Crow: City of Angels was a minor success. Perez then starred in the American drama Swept from the Sea (Beeban Kidron, 1997), based on a story by Joseph Conrad about a doomed love affair between a simple country girl (Rachel Weisz) and a Ukrainian peasant (Perez) who is swept onto the Cornish shore in 1888 after his emigrant ship sinks on its way to America. Back in France, he co-starred with Daniel Auteuil in the Swashbuckler Le Bossu/On Guard (Philippe de Broca, 1997). For his part asa transsexual in Ceux qui m'aiment prendront le train/Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (1998), he was nominated for the César Award for Best Supporting Actor (Meilleur second rôle masculin). His American films were less successful. Talk Of Angels was directed in 1996 by Nick Hamm, but not released by its production company, Miramax, until 1998. The drama I Dreamed of Africa (Hugh Hudson, 2000), starring Kim Basinger, was also not received well and a huge financial flop. Better received was the French comedy Le Libertin/The Libertine (Gabriel Aghion, 2000), in which Perez played the philosopher Denis Diderot, one of the modernists of the French 18th-century Age of Enlightenment movement. His next American projects, the period drama Bride of the Wind (Bruce Beresford, 2001), and the vampire horror film Queen of the Damned (Michael Rymer, 2002) were again critical and box office disappointments . Perez then directed himself the drama Peau d'Ange (Vincent Perez, 2002). Derek Elley in Variety: “Vincent Perez makes an interesting behind-the-camera debut with "Once Upon an Angel," a smartly put together, well-cast romantic drama that just needed a little more work on the script. Tale of a simple farm girl who loses her virginity to – but not her love for – a more emotionally complex, ambitious young man doesn't add up to a great deal, but features good perfs by leads Morgane More and Guillaume Depardieu.” His later films include the French-Swiss comedy Bienvenue en Suisse/Welcome to Switzerland (Léa Fazer, 2004), the Russian action film Kod apokalipsisa/The Apocalypse Code (Vadim Shmelyov, 2007), the Franco-Portuguese epic war film Linhas de Wellington/Lines of Wellington (Raúl Ruiz, 2012) and the romantic drama Ce que le jour doit à la nuit/What the Day Owes the Night (Alexandre Arcady, 2012). On television, he starred in Paris enquêtes criminelles/Paris Criminal Investigations (2007-2008), the French remake of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Pérez starred as Lieutenant Vincent Revel. He has exhibited his photographic work during festivals and in art galleries. His exhibition Face to Face, including photographs of Carla Bruni, Johnny Hallyday and Gerard Depardieu, was unveiled at Rencontres d'Arles, an annual photography festival in Arles, France. Since 1998, Vincent Perez is married to Senegalese model/actress/writer Karine Silla. They have three children together, Iman (1999), and the twins Pablo and Tess (2003). Next year, Perez can be seen in Claude Lelouch’s new ensemble film Chacun sa vie et son intime conviction (2017), and in the biopic Dalida (Lisa Azuelos 2017), in which he will play French record producer Eddie Barclay.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), James Travers (Le Film Guide), Aubry Anne D'Arminio (AllMovie), Vincent Perez.com, Wikipedia and IMDb.
German autograph card by BRAVO, 1990.
American actor Richard Gere (1949) has been hailed as The Sexiest Man alive and a humanitarian, but he is foremost a good actor. He shone in such box office hits as American Gigolo (1980), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Pretty Woman (1990). For portraying Billy Flynn in the Academy Award-winning musical Chicago (2002), he won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the cast.
Richard Tiffany Gere was born in 1949, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was the second of five children of Doris Ann (Tiffany), a homemaker, and Homer George Gere, an insurance salesman, both Mayflower descendants. Gere had a strict Methodist upbringing. Richard started early as a musician, playing a number of instruments in high school and writing music for high school productions. He graduated from North Syracuse Central High School in 1967, and won a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he majored in philosophy. He left college after two years to pursue acting. Gere first worked professionally at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod in 1969, where he starred in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He landed the lead role as Danny Zuko in the London production of the musical Grease in 1973. While in London, Gere gained the privilege of becoming one of the few Americans ever to work with Britain's Young Vic Theater, with which he appeared in The Taming of the Shrew. He later reprised his role as Danny Zuko in Grease on Broadway. In 1974, Gere made his feature film debut with a tiny part in Report to the Commissioner (Milton Katselas, 1974). He returned to the stage the following year as part of the cast of an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's Killer's Head. Some of Gere's earliest photos, known as 'head shots' were taken by boyhood friend and struggling photographer Herb Ritts. The people handling Gere were so impressed with the photos that they began hiring Ritts for other assignments. Ritts became a top photographer. Onscreen, Gere had a few roles, and gained recognition in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977) opposite Diane Keaton. He played his first leading role in the dream-like drama Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978). Joshua Dysart at IMDb: "A poetic biblical parable played out in the Texas Panhandle at the turn of the century, it gives total preference to the emotion of imagery over the emotion of the actors. It's an exorcise in feeling and seeing that's so successful it elevated Terrence Malick into the ranks of visual storytellers like Tarkovski and Kurosawa." In Italy, Gere won the David di Donatello Award (the Italian Oscar) for Best Foreign Actor. Gere spent 1978 meeting Tibetans when he travelled to Nepal, where he spoke to many monks and lamas. Returning to the US, Gere won considerable theatrical acclaim for his performance as a gay concentration-camp prisoner in the Broadway production of Martin Sherman's Bent. For his role he received the 1980 Theatre World Award. Back in Hollywood, he played the title role in American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980), which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol. His star status was reaffirmed by An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982) with Debra Winger. The film grossed almost $130 million and won two Academy Awards out of six nominations. Gere himself received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. In The Cotton Club (Francios Coppola, 1984) he appeared with Diane Lane. In the early 1980s, Richard went to Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador amidst ongoing wars and political violence. With a doctor, he visited refugee camps. In the late 1980s, his career seemed to have a dip. His celebrity status was jeopardized with roles in the several poorly received biblical drama King David (Bruce Beresford, 1985) and the underrated political drama Power ( Sidney Lumet, 1986).
In 1990 Richard Gere returned to the front row with two excellent films. In Internal Affairs (Mike Figgis, 1990), he was a sensation as the bad guy. Andy Garcia played an Internal Affairs agent who becomes obsessed with bringing down a cop (Gere) who manages to maintain a spotless reputation despite being involved in a web of corruption. Gere then teamed up with Julia Roberts to star in the the smash romantic comedy Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990). His cool reserve as a ruthless businessman was the perfect complement to Julia's bubbling enthusiasm. The film captured the nation's heart, and it earned Gere his second Golden Globe Award nomination. Fans clamored for years for a sequel, or at least another pairing of Julia and Richard. They got that with Runaway Bride (Garry Marshall, 1999), which was a runaway success. Gere received $12 million, and the box office was $152 million. Offscreen, Richard and Cindy Crawford got married in 1991. They were divorced in 1995. Gere had a leading role in the Japanese film Hachi-gatsu no rapusodî (Akira Kurosawa, 1991), a film warning viewers of the dangers of nuclear power. Gere is also active in AIDS fundraising and agreed to play a small role in the HBO film And the Band Played On (Roger Spottiswoode, 1993) despite the prevalent belief in the film industry a film about AIDS would be detrimental to his career. It was not. He co-starred with Jodie Foster in the box office hit Sommersby (Jon Amiel, 1993). A Buddhist for over a decade, he was banned from the Oscars once after making anti-China comments on the air at the 1993 ceremony. Gere played one of his best roles in Primal Fear (Gregory Hoblit, 1996), as a fame-hungry lawyer who defends an altar boy (Edward Norton) accused of murdering a priest. People magazine had picked him as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1991, and in 1999 picked him as their Sexiest Man Alive. The following year, the actor enjoyed some of his best reviews to date as a gynecologist at once devoted to and bewildered by all of the women in his life in the aptly titled Dr. T & the Women (Robert Altman, 2000). Critics noted that Gere seemed to have finally come into his own as an actor, having matured amiably with years and experience. After his divorce from Cindy Crawford, Gere had started dating actress Carey Lowell. In 2000, they had a son, Homer James Jigme Gere. Jigme means 'fearless' in Tibetan. Gere and Lowell married in 2002. His later films include the thriller Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne, 2002) in which he reunited with Diane Lane, the Oscar winning musical Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002) with Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the ballroom dancing drama Shall We Dance? (Peter Chelsom, 2004), which grossed $170 million worldwide. In the comedy-drama The Hoax (Lasse Hallström, 2006), he played Clifford Irving who sold his bogus biography of Howard Hughes to a premiere publishing house in the early 1970s. Gere was one of the characters who embody a different aspect of Bob Dylan's life and work in I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007). Other interesting films are the crime drama Brooklyn's Finest (Antoine Fuqua, 2009) with Don Cheadle, the British comedy-drama The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden, 2015) with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, and Three Christs (Jon Avnet, 2017) with Peter Dinklage. He was notably singled out for portraying businessman Robert Miller opposite Susan Sarandon in Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki, 2012), earning his fourth Golden Globe Award nomination. Gere is also an accomplished pianist, music writer, and above all a humanitarian. He's a founding member of Tibet House, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan culture. He has been an active supporter of Survival International, which supports tribal people, including the natives of the Amazon, the Maasai of East Africa, the Wichi of Argentina. After 11 years of marriage, Gere and Lowell separated. Since April 2018, Richard Gere is married to Spanish activist Alejandra Silva.
Source: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), K.D. Haisch (IMDb), AllMovie, Wikipedia and IMDb.
#springcleaning room by room, the #kitchen is supposed to be the last room I do, but now my #cleaningproducts look #clean & #tidy
#organize #dishcloth #brushes #bottlebrush #jar #dishwasherdetergent #scoop #cleaningsupplies #soap #sponge #rubbergloves #refills #bucket #sinkcabinet #cleanandtidy #scrub #homemaker
One of the least appetizing looking recipe ads I've ever come across...the onions look like moth balls!
Blog post about this ad: jbwarehouse.blogspot.com/2010/02/1660-vintage-homemakers-...
Source: Homemakers, March 1977
The American dream lives on in (occasionally) sunny Eugene, Oregon.
I was visiting old friends and one suggested we do a pinup shoot. She's got the wardrobe and the smile to back it up, so I thought 'Yeah, let's have some fun!". Little did I know, she was a 50s dream lady waiting to happen!
We did a couple different themes, but this shot just jumped out at me.We were shooting a gardener-theme and one of her house-mates came out onto the porch for a smoke. It was just too perfect! Like he's home after a long day at the, I don't know, rivet factory or something.
Can't you imagine the apple pie on the window sill? The bomb shelter in the back yard, stocked with canned goods in case the Ruskies get any ideas?
Featuring all sorts of hints and tips for the Young Homemaker. There are hints on decorating, food, fashion, needlework and your child.
Electri-Living House
Designed by R. Duane Conner
OKC
1956
The original living/dining room was quite a bit smaller than it is today.
From the Living For Young Homemakers article about the house:
"Insuring a plan that will endure family growth and change, the house is divided into three areas, almost equal in size, that blend effectlvely one into the other. Interflow of space and light is unencumbered by walls; free-standing storage partitions and furniture arrangement define activities explicitly. Family room is the dividing center section and extends through the house from the front entrance to the private patio at rear."
breastfeeding advocacy dishcloth. Pattern can be found at lizzie-q-homemaker.blogspot.com/2007/05/free-pattern-brea...
Swiss postcard by News Productions, Baulmes, no. 55775. Photo: Bruce Weber. Poster design for Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland. Design: Werner Jeker.
American actor Matt Dillon (1964) has had a successful film career has spanned over three decades. From his breakthrough performance in Francis Coppola's The Outsiders (1983) to his hilarious turn as an obsessed private investigator in There's Something About Mary, he has proven himself to be one of the most diverse actors of his generation. Dillon showcased his wide range of dramatic and comedic talents with an arresting performance as a racist cop in the critically acclaimed Crash (2004). It earned him nominations for an Oscar and other awards.
Matthew Raymond Dillon was born in 1964 in New Rochelle, New York. He was named after the protagonist in the TV series Gunsmoke. His parents are Mary Ellen, a homemaker, and Paul Dillon, a portrait painter and sales manager for Union Camp, a toy bear manufacturer. He is the second child of six and is the brother of actors Kevin Dillon and Paul Dillon. He is also a nephew of the late comic-strip artist Alex Raymond, creator of Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, and Rip Kirby. Matt began acting in elementary school, and, at the age of 14, he was discovered by Warner Bros. talent scouts while cutting class at Hommocks Middle School in Larchmont. His film debut was in Over the Edge (Jonathan Kaplan, 1979), a gritty teen drama about a group of bored teenagers in a suburb, who rebel against authority after the death of one of their own. His performance was well-received, which led to his casting in two other films released the following year. With his dark, pretty-boy eyes and glacier-cut cheekbones, Dillon became a teen idol when he played the love interest of Kristy McNichol in Little Darlings (Ron Maxwell, 1980). He then played troubled teens in three of author S.E. Hinton's books made into films consecutively: Tex (Tim Hunter, 1982), The Outsiders (Francis Coppola, 1983) and Rumble Fish (Francis Coppola, 1983). By the mid-1980s, Dillon sought to move beyond the teen mold and began taking more adult roles. He made his Broadway debut with the play The Boys of Winter in 1985, and co-narrated the TV documentary Dear America: Letters From Home (Bill Couturié, 1987), which won two Emmy awards. In 1990, he won an IFP Spirit Award for his somber, unheroic portrayal of a drug addict in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy (1989). From there he went on to star in such acclaimed films as Singles (Cameron Crowe, 1992) playing the egocentric slacker head of a terrifically bad grunge band; To Die For (Gus Van Sant, 1995) as the well-meaning but tragically dim husband of psychotic weather girl Nicole Kidman, and Beautiful Girls (Ted Demme, 1996), in which Dillon was perfectly cast as a small-town snow plower unable to make good on the promise of his high-school glory days. A huge hit was the comedy There's Something About Mary (Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly, 1998) with Cameron Diaz and Ben Stiller. Dillon had a three-year relationship with Diaz. They broke up in 1998.
Aside from being an accomplished actor, Matt Dillon wrote, and made his feature film directorial debut with City of Ghosts (2002). In this thriller, he also starred as a con man on the run from law enforcement, opposite Gérard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgård, and James Caan. Prior to City of Ghosts, Dillon made his television directorial debut with an episode of HBO's gritty prison drama Oz (1997). One of his best roles was in the film Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004), in which the narrative shifts between several different groups of seemingly unconnected people in Los Angeles whose relationships to each other are only revealed in the end. It would earn Dillon his first Oscar nomination. Dillon starred in Factotum (Bent Hamer, 2005) for which he received glowing reviews for portraying Charles Bukowski's alter ego when the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. He then appeared opposite Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson in the comedy, You, Me and Dupree (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, 2006). During his long career, Dillon appeared in several music videos. He made a cameo appearance as a detective in Madonna's 'Bad Girl' music video which also stars Christopher Walken. Dillon appeared in 1987 in the music video for 'Fairytale of New York' by the Irish folk-punk band The Pogues playing a cop who escorts lead singer Shane MacGowan into the 'drunk tank'. His more recent film credits include the comedy Girl Most Likely (Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini, 2012) opposite Annette Bening and Kristen Wiig, the drama Sunlight, Jr. (Laurie Collyer, 2013) opposite Naomi Watts, and the heist comedy The Art Of The Steal (Jonathan Sobol, 2013) opposite Kurt Russell. Dillon also starred in M. Night Shyamalan's TV series Wayward Pines (2015). Last year he surprised with his role as a serial killer in Lars von Trier's controversial film The House That Jack Built (2018), co-starring Bruno Ganz and Uma Thurman. The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, marking von Trier's return to the festival after more than six years. And as the New York Times' Film Critic A.O. Scott once wrote about Dillon, "He seems to be getting better with every film."
Sources: Rebecca Flint Marx (AllMovie), Polaris (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
American postcard by Fotofolio, no. F838. Photo: Herb Ritts. Caption: Richard Gere, San Bernardino, 1977.
American actor Richard Gere (1949) has been hailed as the Sexiest Man alive and a humanitarian, but he is foremost a good actor. He shone in such box office hits as American Gigolo (1980), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Pretty Woman (1990). For portraying Billy Flynn in the Academy Award-winning musical Chicago (2002), he won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award as part of the cast.
Richard Tiffany Gere was born in 1949 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was the second of five children of Doris Ann (Tiffany), a homemaker, and Homer George Gere, an insurance salesman, both Mayflower descendants. Gere had a strict Methodist upbringing. Richard started as a musician early on, playing several instruments and writing music for high school productions. He graduated from North Syracuse Central High School in 1967 and won a gymnastics scholarship to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he majored in philosophy. He left college after two years to pursue acting. Gere first worked professionally at the Seattle Repertory Theatre and Provincetown Playhouse on Cape Cod in 1969, where he starred in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He landed the lead role as Danny Zuko in the London production of the musical Grease in 1973. While in London, Gere gained the privilege of becoming one of the few Americans ever to work with Britain's Young Vic Theater, with which he appeared in The Taming of the Shrew. He later reprised his role as Danny Zuko in Grease on Broadway. In 1974, Gere made his feature film debut with a tiny part in Report to the Commissioner (Milton Katselas, 1974). He returned to the stage the following year as part of the cast of an off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's Killer's Head. Some of Gere's earliest photos, known as 'head shots' were taken by boyhood friend and struggling photographer Herb Ritts. The people handling Gere were so impressed with the photos that they began hiring Ritts for other assignments. Ritts became a top photographer. Onscreen, Gere had a few roles and gained recognition in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977) opposite Diane Keaton. He played his first leading role in the dream-like drama Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978). Joshua Dysart at IMDb: "A poetic biblical parable played out in the Texas Panhandle at the turn of the century, it gives total preference to the emotion of imagery over the emotion of the actors. It's an exercise in feeling and seeing that's so successful it elevated Terrence Malick into the ranks of visual storytellers like Tarkovski and Kurosawa." In Italy, Gere won the David di Donatello Award (the Italian Oscar) for Best Foreign Actor. Gere spent 1978 meeting Tibetans when he travelled to Nepal, where he spoke to many monks and lamas. Returning to the US, Gere won considerable theatrical acclaim for his performance as a gay concentration camp prisoner in the Broadway production of Martin Sherman's Bent. For his role, he received the 1980 Theatre World Award. Back in Hollywood, he played the title role in American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980), which established him as a leading man and a sex symbol. His star status was reaffirmed by An Officer and a Gentleman (Taylor Hackford, 1982) with Debra Winger. The film grossed almost $130 million and won two Academy Awards out of six nominations. Gere himself received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. In The Cotton Club (Francios Coppola, 1984), he appeared with Diane Lane. In the early 1980s, Richard went to Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador amidst ongoing wars and political violence. With a doctor, he visited refugee camps. In the late 1980s, his career seemed to have a dip. His celebrity status was jeopardized with roles in the poorly received biblical drama King David (Bruce Beresford, 1985) and the underrated political drama Power ( Sidney Lumet, 1986).
In 1990, Richard Gere returned to the front row with two excellent films. In Internal Affairs (Mike Figgis, 1990), he was a sensation as the bad guy. Andy Garcia played an Internal Affairs agent who becomes obsessed with bringing down a cop (Gere) who manages to maintain a spotless reputation despite being involved in a web of corruption. Gere then teamed up with Julia Roberts to star in the smash romantic comedy Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990). His cool reserve as a ruthless businessman was the perfect complement to Julia's bubbling enthusiasm. The film captured the nation's heart, and it earned Gere his second Golden Globe Award nomination. Fans clamored for years for a sequel, or at least another pairing of Julia and Richard. They got that with Runaway Bride (Garry Marshall, 1999), which was a runaway success. Gere received $12 million, and the box office was $152 million. Offscreen, Richard and Cindy Crawford got married in 1991. They were divorced in 1995. Gere had a leading role in the Japanese film Hachi-gatsu no rapusodî (Akira Kurosawa, 1991), a film warning viewers of the dangers of nuclear power. Gere is also active in AIDS fundraising and agreed to play a small role in the HBO film And the Band Played On (Roger Spottiswoode, 1993) despite the prevalent belief in the film industry that a film about AIDS would be detrimental to his career. It was not. He co-starred with Jodie Foster in the box-office hit Sommersby (Jon Amiel, 1993). A Buddhist for over a decade, he was banned from the Oscars once after making anti-China comments on the air at the 1993 ceremony. Gere played one of his best roles in Primal Fear (Gregory Hoblit, 1996), as a fame-hungry lawyer who defends an altar boy (Edward Norton) accused of murdering a priest. People magazine had picked him as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1991, and in 1999, picked him as their Sexiest Man Alive. The following year, the actor enjoyed some of his best reviews to date as a gynaecologist at once devoted to and bewildered by all of the women in his life in the aptly titled Dr. T & the Women (Robert Altman, 2000). Critics noted that Gere seemed to have finally come into his own as an actor, having matured amiably with years and experience. After his divorce from Cindy Crawford, Gere started dating actress Carey Lowell. In 2000, they had a son, Homer James Jigme Gere. Jigme means 'fearless' in Tibetan. Gere and Lowell married in 2002. His later films include the thriller Unfaithful (Adrian Lyne, 2002), in which he reunited with Diane Lane; the Oscar-winning musical Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2002) with Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones; and the ballroom dancing drama Shall We Dance? (Peter Chelsom, 2004), which grossed $170 million worldwide. In the comedy-drama The Hoax (Lasse Hallström, 2006), he played Clifford Irving, who sold his bogus biography of Howard Hughes to a premiere publishing house in the early 1970s. Gere was one of the characters who embodied a different aspect of Bob Dylan's life and work in I'm Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007). Other interesting films are the crime drama Brooklyn's Finest (Antoine Fuqua, 2009) with Don Cheadle, the British comedy-drama The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden, 2015) with Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, and Three Christs (Jon Avnet, 2017) with Peter Dinklage. He was notably singled out for portraying businessman Robert Miller opposite Susan Sarandon in Arbitrage (Nicholas Jarecki, 2012), earning his fourth Golden Globe Award nomination. Gere is also an accomplished pianist, music writer, and above all, a humanitarian. He's a founding member of Tibet House, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan culture. He has been an active supporter of Survival International, which supports tribal people, including the natives of the Amazon, the Maasai of East Africa, and the Wichi of Argentina. After 11 years of marriage, Gere and Lowell separated. Since April 2018, Richard Gere has been married to Spanish activist Alejandra Silva.
Source: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), K.D. Haisch (IMDb), AllMovie, Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Homemakers club and guests gathered at the library for a luncheon with a Halloween theme for the table settings.
May 2 2007
Revlimit, ElDave, Dogface, and definitely Heels may beat me in the beauty competition, but I definitely beat them in the talent, efficiency, and homemaking challenges. And I do it with a smile on my face. I'm the kind of princess you bring home to mom.
PS Woot!! I'm 1/4 of the way to 365!
PPS Please don't tell Ryan I posted this, he would be very upset because he wants you all to know that he does do things around the house a lot and that he works all day. I did take a bit of creative liberty with these secret shots, I'll give him that. He helped me do half of the vacuuming, actually.
The most beautiful women in TV and Movie History now become Barbie Collector Dolls created by acclaimed re-paint Artist Donna Brinkley.
Farrah Leni Fawcett is known as the world's Sexiest Star of all time... she will forever be one of Hollywood's greatest Icons. She was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, the younger of two daughters.[3] Her mother, Pauline Alice January 30, 1914 – March 4, 2005), was a homemaker, and her father, James William Fawcett (October 14, 1917 – August 23, 2010), was an oil field contractor. Her sister was Diane Fawcett Walls (October 27, 1938 – October 16, 2001), a graphic artist. She was of Irish, French, English, and Choctaw Native American ancestry. Fawcett once said the name Ferrah was made up by her mother because it went well with their last name.
A Roman Catholic, Fawcett's early education was at the parish school of the church her family attended, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Corpus Christi. She graduated from W. B. Ray High School in Corpus Christi, where she was voted Most Beautiful by her classmates her Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior years of High School. For three years, 1965–68, Fawcett attended the University of Texas at Austin, living one semester in Jester Center, and she became a sister of Delta Delta Delta Sorority. During her Freshman year, she was named one of the Ten Most Beautiful Coeds on Campus, the first time a Freshman had been chosen. Their photos were sent to various agencies in Hollywood. David Mirsch, a Hollywood agent called her and urged her to come to Los Angeles. She turned him down but he called her for the next two years. Finally, in 1968, the summer following her junior year, with her parents' permission to try her luck in Hollywood, Farrah moved to Hollywood. She did not return.
Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1968 she was signed to a $350 a week contract with Screen Gems. She began to appear in commercials for UltraBrite toothpaste, Noxema, Max Factor, Wella Balsam shampoo and conditioner, Mercury Cougar automobiles and Beauty Rest matresses. Fawcett's earliest acting appearances were guest spots on The Flying Nun and I Dream of Jeannie. She made numerous other TV appearances including Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, [Mayberry RFD]] and The Partridge Family. She appeared in four episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man with husband Lee Majors, The Dating Game, S.W.A.T and a recurring role on Harry O alongside David Janssen. She also appeared in the Made for TV movies, The Feminist and the Fuzz, The Great American Beauty Contest, The Girl Who Came Giftwrapped, and Murder of Flight 502.
She had a sizable part in the 1969 French romantic-drama, Love Is a Funny Thing. She played opposite Raquel Welch and Mae West in the film version of, Myra Breckinridge (1970). The film earned negative reviews and was a box office flop. However, much has been written and said about the scene where Farrah and Raquel share a bed, and a near sexual experience. Fawcett co-starred with Michael York and Richard Jordan in the well-received science-fiction film, Logan's Run in 1976.
In 1976, Pro Arts Inc., pitched the idea of a poster of Fawcett to her agent, and a photo shoot was arranged with photographer Bruce McBroom, who was hired by the poster company. According to friend Nels Van Patten, Fawcett styled her own hair and did her make-up without the aid of a mirror. Her blonde highlights were further heightened by a squeeze of lemon juice. From 40 rolls of film, Fawcett herself selected her six favorite pictures, eventually narrowing her choice to the one that made her famous. The resulting poster, of Fawcett in a one-piece red bathing suit, was a best-seller; sales estimates ranged from over 5 million[12] to 8 million to as high as 12 million copies.
On March 21, 1976, the first appearance of Fawcett playing the character Jill Munroe in Charlie's Angels was aired as a movie of the week. Fawcett and her husband were frequent tennis partners of producer Aaron Spelling, and he and his producing partner thought of casting Fawcett as the golden girl Jill because of his friendship with the couple. The movie starred Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Fawcett (then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors) as private investigators for Townsend Associates, a detective agency run by a reclusive multi-millionaire whom the women had never met. Voiced by John Forsythe, the Charles Townsend character presented cases and dispensed advice via a speakerphone to his core team of three female employees, whom he referred to as Angels. They were aided in the office and occasionally in the field by two male associates, played by character actors David Doyle and David Ogden Stiers. The program quickly earned a huge following, leading the network to air it a second time and approve production for a series, with the pilot's principal cast except David Ogden Stiers.
Fawcett's record-breaking poster that sold 12 million copies.
The Charlie's Angels series formally debuted on September 22, 1976. Fawcett emerged as a fan favorite in the show, and the actress won a People's Choice Award for Favorite Performer in a New TV Program. In a 1977 interview with TV Guide, Fawcett said: When the show was number three, I thought it was our acting. When we got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra.
Fawcett's appearance in the television show boosted sales of her poster, and she earned far more in royalties from poster sales than from her salary for appearing in Charlie's Angels. Her hairstyle went on to become an international trend, with women sporting a Farrah-do a Farrah-flip, or simply Farrah hair Iterations of her hair style predominated American women's hair styles well into the 1980s.
Fawcett left Charlie's Angels after only one season and Cheryl Ladd replaced her on the show, portraying Jill Munroe's younger sister Kris Munroe. Numerous explanations for Fawcett's precipitous withdrawal from the show were offered over the years. The strain on her marriage due to her long absences most days due to filming, as her then-husband Lee Majors was star of an established television show himself, was frequently cited, but Fawcett's ambitions to broaden her acting abilities with opportunities in films have also been given. Fawcett never officially signed her series contract with Spelling due to protracted negotiations over royalties from her image's use in peripheral products, which led to an even more protracted lawsuit filed by Spelling and his company when she quit the show.
The show was a major success throughout the world, maintaining its appeal in syndication, spawning a cottage industry of peripheral products, particularly in the show's first three seasons, including several series of bubble gum cards, two sets of fashion dolls, numerous posters, puzzles, and school supplies, novelizations of episodes, toy vans, and a board game, all featuring Fawcett's likeness. The Angels also appeared on the covers of magazines around the world, from countless fan magazines to TV Guide (four times) to Time Magazine.
The series ultimately ran for five seasons. As part of a settlement to a lawsuit over her early departure, Fawcett returned for six guest appearances over seasons three and four of the series.
In 2004, the television movie Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie's Angels dramatized the events from the show with supermodel and actress Tricia Helfer portraying Fawcett and Ben Browder portraying Lee Majors, Fawcett's then-husband.
In 1983, Fawcett won critical acclaim for her role in the Off-Broadway stage production of the controversial play Extremities, written by William Mastrosimone. Replacing Susan Sarandon, she was a would-be rape victim who turns the tables on her attacker. She described the role as the most grueling, the most intense, the most physically demanding and emotionally exhausting of her career. During one performance, a stalker in the audience disrupted the show by asking Fawcett if she had received the photos and letters he had mailed her. Police removed the man and were able only to issue a summons for disorderly conduct.
The following year, her role as a battered wife in the fact-based television movie The Burning Bed (1984) earned her the first of her four Emmy Award nominations. The project is noted as being the first television movie to provide a nationwide 800 number that offered help for others in the situation, in this case victims of domestic abuse. It was the highest-rated television movie of the season.
In 1986, Fawcett appeared in the movie version of Extremities, which was also well received by critics, and for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
She appeared in Jon Avnet's Between Two Women with Colleen Dewhurst, and took several more dramatic roles as infamous or renowned women. She was nominated for Golden Globe awards for roles as Beate Klarsfeld in Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story and troubled Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton in Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story, and won a CableACE Award for her 1989 portrayal of groundbreaking LIFE magazine photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White in Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White. Her 1989 portrayal of convicted murderer Diane Downs in the miniseries Small Sacrifices earned her a second Emmy nomination[20] and her sixth Golden Globe Award nomination. The miniseries won a Peabody Award for excellence in television, with Fawcett's performance singled out by the organization, which stated Ms. Fawcett brings a sense of realism rarely seen in television miniseries (to) a drama of unusual power Art meets life.
Fawcett, who had steadfastly resisted appearing nude in magazines throughout the 1970s and 1980s (although she appeared topless in the 1980 film Saturn 3), caused a major stir by posing semi-nude in the December 1995 issue of Playboy.[citation needed] At the age of 50, she returned to Playboy with a pictorial for the July 1997 issue, which also became a top seller. The issue and its accompanying video featured Fawcett painting on canvas using her body, which had been an ambition of hers for years.
That same year, Fawcett was chosen by Robert Duvall to play his wife in an independent feature film he was producing, The Apostle. Fawcett received an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Actress for the film, which was highly critically acclaimed.
In 2000, she worked with director Robert Altman and an all-star cast in the feature film Dr. T the Women, playing the wife of Richard Gere (her character has a mental breakdown, leading to her first fully nude appearance). Also that year, Fawcett's collaboration with sculptor Keith Edmier was exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, later traveling to The Andy Warhol Museum. The sculpture was also presented in a series of photographs and a book by Rizzoli.
In November 2003, Fawcett prepared for her return to Broadway in a production of Bobbi Boland, the tragicomic tale of a former Miss Florida. However, the show never officially opened, closing before preview performances. Fawcett was described as vibrating with frustration at the producer's extraordinary decision to cancel the production. Only days earlier the same producer closed an Off-Broadway show she had been backing.
Fawcett continued to work in television, with well-regarded appearances in made-for-television movies and on popular television series including Ally McBeal and four episodes each of Spin City and The Guardian, her work on the latter show earning her a third Emmy nomination in 2004.
Fawcett was married to Lee Majors, star of television's The Six Million Dollar Man, from 1973 to 1982, although the couple separated in 1979. During her marriage, she was known and credited in her roles as Farrah Fawcett-Majors.
From 1979 until 1997 Fawcett was involved romantically with actor Ryan O'Neal. The relationship produced a son, Redmond James Fawcett O'Neal, born January 30, 1985 in Los Angeles.[26] In April 2009, on probation for driving under the influence, Redmond was arrested for possession of narcotics while Fawcett was in the hospital.[citation needed] On June 22, 2009, The Los Angeles Times and Reuters reported that Ryan O'Neal had said that Fawcett had agreed to marry him as soon as she felt strong enough.
From 1997 to 1998, Fawcett had a relationship with Canadian filmmaker James Orr, writer and producer of the Disney feature film in which she co-starred with Chevy Chase and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Man of the House. The relationship ended when Orr was charged with and later convicted of beating Fawcett during a 1998 fight between the two.
On June 5, 1997, Fawcett received negative commentary after giving a rambling interview and appearing distracted on Late Show with David Letterman. Months later, she told the host of The Howard Stern Show her behavior was just her way of joking around with the television host, partly in the guise of promoting her Playboy pictoral and video, explaining what appeared to be random looks across the theater was just her looking and reacting to fans in the audience. Though the Letterman appearance spawned speculation and several jokes at her expense, she returned to the show a week later, with success, and several years later, after Joaquin Phoenix's mumbling act on a February 2009 appearance on The Late Show, Letterman wrapped up the interview by saying, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight and recalled Fawcett's earlier appearance by noting we owe an apology to Farrah Fawcett.
Fawcett's elder sister, Diane Fawcett Walls, died from lung cancer just before her 63rd birthday, on October 16, 2001.[33] The fifth episode of her 2005 Chasing Farrah series followed the actress home to Texas to visit with her father, James, and mother, Pauline. Pauline Fawcett died soon after, on March 4, 2005, at the age of 91.
Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006, and began treatment, including chemotherapy and surgery. Four months later, on her 60th birthday, the Associated Press wire service reported that Fawcett was, at that point, cancer free.
Less than four months later, in May 2007, Fawcett brought a small digital video camera to document a doctor's office visit. There, she was told a malignant polyp was found where she had been treated for the initial cancer. Doctors contemplated whether to implant a radiation seeder (which differs from conventional radiation and is used to treat other types of cancer). Fawcett's U.S. doctors told her that she would require a colostomy. Instead, Fawcett traveled to Germany for treatments described variously in the press as holistic aggressive and alternative. There, Dr. Ursula Jacob prescribed a treatment including surgery to remove the anal tumor, and a course of perfusion and embolization for her liver cancer by Doctors Claus Kiehling and Thomas Vogl in Germany, and chemotherapy back in Fawcett's home town of Los Angeles. Although initially the tumors were regressing, their reappearance a few months later necessitated a new course, this time including laser ablation therapy and chemoembolization. Aided by friend Alana Stewart, Fawcett documented her battle with the disease.
In early April 2009, Fawcett, back in the United States, was hospitalized, with media reports declaring her unconscious and in critical condition, although subsequent reports indicated her condition was not so dire. On April 6, the Associated Press reported that her cancer had metastasized to her liver, a development Fawcett had learned of in May 2007 and which her subsequent treatments in Germany had targeted. The report denied that she was unconscious, and explained that the hospitalization was due not to her cancer but a painful abdominal hematoma that had been the result of a minor procedure. Her spokesperson emphasized she was not at death's door adding - She remains in good spirits with her usual sense of humor ... She's been in great shape her whole life and has an incredible resolve and an incredible resilience. Fawcett was released from the hospital on April 9, picked up by longtime companion O'Neal, and, according to her doctor, was walking and in great spirits and looking forward to celebrating Easter at home.
A month later, on May 7, Fawcett was reported as critically ill, with Ryan O'Neal quoted as saying she now spends her days at home, on an IV, often asleep. The Los Angeles Times reported Fawcett was in the last stages of her cancer and had the chance to see her son Redmond in April 2009, although shackled and under supervision, as he was then incarcerated. Her 91-year-old father, James Fawcett, flew out to Los Angeles to visit.
The cancer specialist that was treating Fawcett in L.A., Dr. Lawrence Piro, and Fawcett's friend and Angels co-star Kate Jackson – a breast cancer survivor – appeared together on The Today Show dispelling tabloid-fueled rumors, including suggestions Fawcett had ever been in a coma, had ever reached 86 pounds, and had ever given up her fight against the disease or lost the will to live. Jackson decried such fabrications, saying they really do hurt a human being and a person like Farrah. Piro recalled when it became necessary for Fawcett to undergo treatments that would cause her to lose her hair, acknowledging Farrah probably has the most famous hair in the world but also that it is not a trivial matter for any cancer patient, whose hair affects [one's] whole sense of who [they] are. Of the documentary, Jackson averred Fawcett didn't do this to show that 'she' is unique, she did it to show that we are all unique ... This was ... meant to be a gift to others to help and inspire them.
The two-hour documentary Farrah's Story, which was filmed by Fawcett and friend Alana Stewart, aired on NBC on May 15, 2009.[47] The documentary was watched by nearly nine million people at its premiere airing, and it was re-aired on the broadcast network's cable stations MSNBC, Bravo and Oxygen. Fawcett earned her fourth Emmy nomination posthumously on July 16, 2009, as producer of Farrah's Story.
Controversy surrounded the aired version of the documentary, with her initial producing partner, who had worked with her four years earlier on her reality series Chasing Farrah, alleging O'Neal's and Stewart's editing of the program was not in keeping with Fawcett's wishes to more thoroughly explore rare types of cancers such as her own and alternative methods of treatment. He was especially critical of scenes showing Fawcett's son visiting her for the last time, in shackles, while she was nearly unconscious in bed. Fawcett had generally kept her son out of the media, and his appearances were minimal in Chasing Farrah.
Fawcett died at approximately 9:28 am, PDT on June 25, 2009, in the intensive care unit of Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, with O'Neal and Stewart by her side. A private funeral was held in Los Angeles on June 30. Fawcett's son Redmond was permitted to leave his California detention center to attend his mother's funeral, where he gave the first reading.
The night of her death, ABC aired an hour-long special episode of 20/20 featuring clips from several of Barbara Walters' past interviews with Fawcett as well as new interviews with Ryan O'Neal, Jaclyn Smith, Alana Stewart, and Dr. Lawrence Piro. Walters followed up on the story on Friday's episode of 20/20. CNN's Larry King Live planned a show exclusively about Fawcett that evening until the death of Michael Jackson several hours later caused the program to shift to cover both stories. Cher, a longtime friend of Fawcett, and Suzanne de Passe, executive producer of Fawcett's Small Sacrifices mini-series, both paid tribute to Fawcett on the program. NBC aired a Dateline NBC special Farrah Fawcett: The Life and Death of an Angel; the following evening, June 26, preceded by a rebroadcast of Farrah's Story in prime time. That weekend and the following week, television tributes continued. MSNBC aired back-to-back episodes of its Headliners and Legends episodes featuring Fawcett and Jackson. TV Land aired a mini-marathon of Charlie's Angels and Chasing Farrah episodes. E! aired Michael and Farrah: Lost Icons and the The Biography Channel aired Bio Remembers: Farrah Fawcett. The documentary Farrah's Story re-aired on the Oxygen Network and MSNBC.
Larry King said of the Fawcett phenomenon,
TV had much more impact back in the '70s than it does today. Charlie's Angels got huge numbers every week – nothing really dominates the television landscape like that today. Maybe American Idol comes close, but now there are so many channels and so many more shows it's hard for anything to get the audience, or amount of attention, that Charlie's Angels got. Farrah was a major TV star when the medium was clearly dominant.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner said Farrah was one of the iconic beauties of our time. Her girl-next-door charm combined with stunning looks made her a star on film, TV and the printed page.
Kate Jackson said,
She was a selfless person who loved her family and friends with all her heart, and what a big heart it was. Farrah showed immense courage and grace throughout her illness and was an inspiration to those around her... I will remember her kindness, her cutting dry wit and, of course, her beautiful smile...when you think of Farrah, remember her smiling because that is exactly how she wanted to be remembered: smiling.
She is buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
The red one-piece bathing suit worn by Farrah in her famous 1976 poster was donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH) on February 2, 2011.[65] Said to have been purchased at a Saks Fifth Avenue store, the red Lycra suit made by the leading Australian swimsuit company Speedo, was donated to the Smithsonian by her executors and was formally presented to NMAH in Washington D.C. by her longtime companion Ryan O'Neal.[66] The suit and the poster are expected to go on temporary display sometime in 2011–12. They will be made additions to the Smithsonian's popular culture department.
The famous poster of Farrah in a red swimsuit has been produced as a Barbie doll. The limited edition dolls, complete with a gold chain and the girl-next-door locks, have been snapped up by Barbie fans.
In 2011, Men's Health named her one of the 100 Hottest Women of All-Time ranking her at No. 31
The most beautiful women in TV and Movie History now become Barbie Collector Dolls created by acclaimed re-paint Artist Donna Brinkley.
Farrah Leni Fawcett is known as the world's Sexiest Star of all time... she will forever be one of Hollywood's greatest Icons. She was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, the younger of two daughters.[3] Her mother, Pauline Alice January 30, 1914 – March 4, 2005), was a homemaker, and her father, James William Fawcett (October 14, 1917 – August 23, 2010), was an oil field contractor. Her sister was Diane Fawcett Walls (October 27, 1938 – October 16, 2001), a graphic artist. She was of Irish, French, English, and Choctaw Native American ancestry. Fawcett once said the name Ferrah was made up by her mother because it went well with their last name.
A Roman Catholic, Fawcett's early education was at the parish school of the church her family attended, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Corpus Christi. She graduated from W. B. Ray High School in Corpus Christi, where she was voted Most Beautiful by her classmates her Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior years of High School. For three years, 1965–68, Fawcett attended the University of Texas at Austin, living one semester in Jester Center, and she became a sister of Delta Delta Delta Sorority. During her Freshman year, she was named one of the Ten Most Beautiful Coeds on Campus, the first time a Freshman had been chosen. Their photos were sent to various agencies in Hollywood. David Mirsch, a Hollywood agent called her and urged her to come to Los Angeles. She turned him down but he called her for the next two years. Finally, in 1968, the summer following her junior year, with her parents' permission to try her luck in Hollywood, Farrah moved to Hollywood. She did not return.
Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1968 she was signed to a $350 a week contract with Screen Gems. She began to appear in commercials for UltraBrite toothpaste, Noxema, Max Factor, Wella Balsam shampoo and conditioner, Mercury Cougar automobiles and Beauty Rest matresses. Fawcett's earliest acting appearances were guest spots on The Flying Nun and I Dream of Jeannie. She made numerous other TV appearances including Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, [Mayberry RFD]] and The Partridge Family. She appeared in four episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man with husband Lee Majors, The Dating Game, S.W.A.T and a recurring role on Harry O alongside David Janssen. She also appeared in the Made for TV movies, The Feminist and the Fuzz, The Great American Beauty Contest, The Girl Who Came Giftwrapped, and Murder of Flight 502.
She had a sizable part in the 1969 French romantic-drama, Love Is a Funny Thing. She played opposite Raquel Welch and Mae West in the film version of, Myra Breckinridge (1970). The film earned negative reviews and was a box office flop. However, much has been written and said about the scene where Farrah and Raquel share a bed, and a near sexual experience. Fawcett co-starred with Michael York and Richard Jordan in the well-received science-fiction film, Logan's Run in 1976.
In 1976, Pro Arts Inc., pitched the idea of a poster of Fawcett to her agent, and a photo shoot was arranged with photographer Bruce McBroom, who was hired by the poster company. According to friend Nels Van Patten, Fawcett styled her own hair and did her make-up without the aid of a mirror. Her blonde highlights were further heightened by a squeeze of lemon juice. From 40 rolls of film, Fawcett herself selected her six favorite pictures, eventually narrowing her choice to the one that made her famous. The resulting poster, of Fawcett in a one-piece red bathing suit, was a best-seller; sales estimates ranged from over 5 million[12] to 8 million to as high as 12 million copies.
On March 21, 1976, the first appearance of Fawcett playing the character Jill Munroe in Charlie's Angels was aired as a movie of the week. Fawcett and her husband were frequent tennis partners of producer Aaron Spelling, and he and his producing partner thought of casting Fawcett as the golden girl Jill because of his friendship with the couple. The movie starred Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Fawcett (then billed as Farrah Fawcett-Majors) as private investigators for Townsend Associates, a detective agency run by a reclusive multi-millionaire whom the women had never met. Voiced by John Forsythe, the Charles Townsend character presented cases and dispensed advice via a speakerphone to his core team of three female employees, whom he referred to as Angels. They were aided in the office and occasionally in the field by two male associates, played by character actors David Doyle and David Ogden Stiers. The program quickly earned a huge following, leading the network to air it a second time and approve production for a series, with the pilot's principal cast except David Ogden Stiers.
Fawcett's record-breaking poster that sold 12 million copies.
The Charlie's Angels series formally debuted on September 22, 1976. Fawcett emerged as a fan favorite in the show, and the actress won a People's Choice Award for Favorite Performer in a New TV Program. In a 1977 interview with TV Guide, Fawcett said: When the show was number three, I thought it was our acting. When we got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra.
Fawcett's appearance in the television show boosted sales of her poster, and she earned far more in royalties from poster sales than from her salary for appearing in Charlie's Angels. Her hairstyle went on to become an international trend, with women sporting a Farrah-do a Farrah-flip, or simply Farrah hair Iterations of her hair style predominated American women's hair styles well into the 1980s.
Fawcett left Charlie's Angels after only one season and Cheryl Ladd replaced her on the show, portraying Jill Munroe's younger sister Kris Munroe. Numerous explanations for Fawcett's precipitous withdrawal from the show were offered over the years. The strain on her marriage due to her long absences most days due to filming, as her then-husband Lee Majors was star of an established television show himself, was frequently cited, but Fawcett's ambitions to broaden her acting abilities with opportunities in films have also been given. Fawcett never officially signed her series contract with Spelling due to protracted negotiations over royalties from her image's use in peripheral products, which led to an even more protracted lawsuit filed by Spelling and his company when she quit the show.
The show was a major success throughout the world, maintaining its appeal in syndication, spawning a cottage industry of peripheral products, particularly in the show's first three seasons, including several series of bubble gum cards, two sets of fashion dolls, numerous posters, puzzles, and school supplies, novelizations of episodes, toy vans, and a board game, all featuring Fawcett's likeness. The Angels also appeared on the covers of magazines around the world, from countless fan magazines to TV Guide (four times) to Time Magazine.
The series ultimately ran for five seasons. As part of a settlement to a lawsuit over her early departure, Fawcett returned for six guest appearances over seasons three and four of the series.
In 2004, the television movie Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Charlie's Angels dramatized the events from the show with supermodel and actress Tricia Helfer portraying Fawcett and Ben Browder portraying Lee Majors, Fawcett's then-husband.
In 1983, Fawcett won critical acclaim for her role in the Off-Broadway stage production of the controversial play Extremities, written by William Mastrosimone. Replacing Susan Sarandon, she was a would-be rape victim who turns the tables on her attacker. She described the role as the most grueling, the most intense, the most physically demanding and emotionally exhausting of her career. During one performance, a stalker in the audience disrupted the show by asking Fawcett if she had received the photos and letters he had mailed her. Police removed the man and were able only to issue a summons for disorderly conduct.
The following year, her role as a battered wife in the fact-based television movie The Burning Bed (1984) earned her the first of her four Emmy Award nominations. The project is noted as being the first television movie to provide a nationwide 800 number that offered help for others in the situation, in this case victims of domestic abuse. It was the highest-rated television movie of the season.
In 1986, Fawcett appeared in the movie version of Extremities, which was also well received by critics, and for which she received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama.
She appeared in Jon Avnet's Between Two Women with Colleen Dewhurst, and took several more dramatic roles as infamous or renowned women. She was nominated for Golden Globe awards for roles as Beate Klarsfeld in Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfeld Story and troubled Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton in Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story, and won a CableACE Award for her 1989 portrayal of groundbreaking LIFE magazine photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White in Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White. Her 1989 portrayal of convicted murderer Diane Downs in the miniseries Small Sacrifices earned her a second Emmy nomination[20] and her sixth Golden Globe Award nomination. The miniseries won a Peabody Award for excellence in television, with Fawcett's performance singled out by the organization, which stated Ms. Fawcett brings a sense of realism rarely seen in television miniseries (to) a drama of unusual power Art meets life.
Fawcett, who had steadfastly resisted appearing nude in magazines throughout the 1970s and 1980s (although she appeared topless in the 1980 film Saturn 3), caused a major stir by posing semi-nude in the December 1995 issue of Playboy.[citation needed] At the age of 50, she returned to Playboy with a pictorial for the July 1997 issue, which also became a top seller. The issue and its accompanying video featured Fawcett painting on canvas using her body, which had been an ambition of hers for years.
That same year, Fawcett was chosen by Robert Duvall to play his wife in an independent feature film he was producing, The Apostle. Fawcett received an Independent Spirit Award nomination as Best Actress for the film, which was highly critically acclaimed.
In 2000, she worked with director Robert Altman and an all-star cast in the feature film Dr. T the Women, playing the wife of Richard Gere (her character has a mental breakdown, leading to her first fully nude appearance). Also that year, Fawcett's collaboration with sculptor Keith Edmier was exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, later traveling to The Andy Warhol Museum. The sculpture was also presented in a series of photographs and a book by Rizzoli.
In November 2003, Fawcett prepared for her return to Broadway in a production of Bobbi Boland, the tragicomic tale of a former Miss Florida. However, the show never officially opened, closing before preview performances. Fawcett was described as vibrating with frustration at the producer's extraordinary decision to cancel the production. Only days earlier the same producer closed an Off-Broadway show she had been backing.
Fawcett continued to work in television, with well-regarded appearances in made-for-television movies and on popular television series including Ally McBeal and four episodes each of Spin City and The Guardian, her work on the latter show earning her a third Emmy nomination in 2004.
Fawcett was married to Lee Majors, star of television's The Six Million Dollar Man, from 1973 to 1982, although the couple separated in 1979. During her marriage, she was known and credited in her roles as Farrah Fawcett-Majors.
From 1979 until 1997 Fawcett was involved romantically with actor Ryan O'Neal. The relationship produced a son, Redmond James Fawcett O'Neal, born January 30, 1985 in Los Angeles.[26] In April 2009, on probation for driving under the influence, Redmond was arrested for possession of narcotics while Fawcett was in the hospital.[citation needed] On June 22, 2009, The Los Angeles Times and Reuters reported that Ryan O'Neal had said that Fawcett had agreed to marry him as soon as she felt strong enough.
From 1997 to 1998, Fawcett had a relationship with Canadian filmmaker James Orr, writer and producer of the Disney feature film in which she co-starred with Chevy Chase and Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Man of the House. The relationship ended when Orr was charged with and later convicted of beating Fawcett during a 1998 fight between the two.
On June 5, 1997, Fawcett received negative commentary after giving a rambling interview and appearing distracted on Late Show with David Letterman. Months later, she told the host of The Howard Stern Show her behavior was just her way of joking around with the television host, partly in the guise of promoting her Playboy pictoral and video, explaining what appeared to be random looks across the theater was just her looking and reacting to fans in the audience. Though the Letterman appearance spawned speculation and several jokes at her expense, she returned to the show a week later, with success, and several years later, after Joaquin Phoenix's mumbling act on a February 2009 appearance on The Late Show, Letterman wrapped up the interview by saying, I'm sorry you couldn't be here tonight and recalled Fawcett's earlier appearance by noting we owe an apology to Farrah Fawcett.
Fawcett's elder sister, Diane Fawcett Walls, died from lung cancer just before her 63rd birthday, on October 16, 2001.[33] The fifth episode of her 2005 Chasing Farrah series followed the actress home to Texas to visit with her father, James, and mother, Pauline. Pauline Fawcett died soon after, on March 4, 2005, at the age of 91.
Fawcett was diagnosed with anal cancer in 2006, and began treatment, including chemotherapy and surgery. Four months later, on her 60th birthday, the Associated Press wire service reported that Fawcett was, at that point, cancer free.
Less than four months later, in May 2007, Fawcett brought a small digital video camera to document a doctor's office visit. There, she was told a malignant polyp was found where she had been treated for the initial cancer. Doctors contemplated whether to implant a radiation seeder (which differs from conventional radiation and is used to treat other types of cancer). Fawcett's U.S. doctors told her that she would require a colostomy. Instead, Fawcett traveled to Germany for treatments described variously in the press as holistic aggressive and alternative. There, Dr. Ursula Jacob prescribed a treatment including surgery to remove the anal tumor, and a course of perfusion and embolization for her liver cancer by Doctors Claus Kiehling and Thomas Vogl in Germany, and chemotherapy back in Fawcett's home town of Los Angeles. Although initially the tumors were regressing, their reappearance a few months later necessitated a new course, this time including laser ablation therapy and chemoembolization. Aided by friend Alana Stewart, Fawcett documented her battle with the disease.
In early April 2009, Fawcett, back in the United States, was hospitalized, with media reports declaring her unconscious and in critical condition, although subsequent reports indicated her condition was not so dire. On April 6, the Associated Press reported that her cancer had metastasized to her liver, a development Fawcett had learned of in May 2007 and which her subsequent treatments in Germany had targeted. The report denied that she was unconscious, and explained that the hospitalization was due not to her cancer but a painful abdominal hematoma that had been the result of a minor procedure. Her spokesperson emphasized she was not at death's door adding - She remains in good spirits with her usual sense of humor ... She's been in great shape her whole life and has an incredible resolve and an incredible resilience. Fawcett was released from the hospital on April 9, picked up by longtime companion O'Neal, and, according to her doctor, was walking and in great spirits and looking forward to celebrating Easter at home.
A month later, on May 7, Fawcett was reported as critically ill, with Ryan O'Neal quoted as saying she now spends her days at home, on an IV, often asleep. The Los Angeles Times reported Fawcett was in the last stages of her cancer and had the chance to see her son Redmond in April 2009, although shackled and under supervision, as he was then incarcerated. Her 91-year-old father, James Fawcett, flew out to Los Angeles to visit.
The cancer specialist that was treating Fawcett in L.A., Dr. Lawrence Piro, and Fawcett's friend and Angels co-star Kate Jackson – a breast cancer survivor – appeared together on The Today Show dispelling tabloid-fueled rumors, including suggestions Fawcett had ever been in a coma, had ever reached 86 pounds, and had ever given up her fight against the disease or lost the will to live. Jackson decried such fabrications, saying they really do hurt a human being and a person like Farrah. Piro recalled when it became necessary for Fawcett to undergo treatments that would cause her to lose her hair, acknowledging Farrah probably has the most famous hair in the world but also that it is not a trivial matter for any cancer patient, whose hair affects [one's] whole sense of who [they] are. Of the documentary, Jackson averred Fawcett didn't do this to show that 'she' is unique, she did it to show that we are all unique ... This was ... meant to be a gift to others to help and inspire them.
The two-hour documentary Farrah's Story, which was filmed by Fawcett and friend Alana Stewart, aired on NBC on May 15, 2009.[47] The documentary was watched by nearly nine million people at its premiere airing, and it was re-aired on the broadcast network's cable stations MSNBC, Bravo and Oxygen. Fawcett earned her fourth Emmy nomination posthumously on July 16, 2009, as producer of Farrah's Story.
Controversy surrounded the aired version of the documentary, with her initial producing partner, who had worked with her four years earlier on her reality series Chasing Farrah, alleging O'Neal's and Stewart's editing of the program was not in keeping with Fawcett's wishes to more thoroughly explore rare types of cancers such as her own and alternative methods of treatment. He was especially critical of scenes showing Fawcett's son visiting her for the last time, in shackles, while she was nearly unconscious in bed. Fawcett had generally kept her son out of the media, and his appearances were minimal in Chasing Farrah.
Fawcett died at approximately 9:28 am, PDT on June 25, 2009, in the intensive care unit of Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, with O'Neal and Stewart by her side. A private funeral was held in Los Angeles on June 30. Fawcett's son Redmond was permitted to leave his California detention center to attend his mother's funeral, where he gave the first reading.
The night of her death, ABC aired an hour-long special episode of 20/20 featuring clips from several of Barbara Walters' past interviews with Fawcett as well as new interviews with Ryan O'Neal, Jaclyn Smith, Alana Stewart, and Dr. Lawrence Piro. Walters followed up on the story on Friday's episode of 20/20. CNN's Larry King Live planned a show exclusively about Fawcett that evening until the death of Michael Jackson several hours later caused the program to shift to cover both stories. Cher, a longtime friend of Fawcett, and Suzanne de Passe, executive producer of Fawcett's Small Sacrifices mini-series, both paid tribute to Fawcett on the program. NBC aired a Dateline NBC special Farrah Fawcett: The Life and Death of an Angel; the following evening, June 26, preceded by a rebroadcast of Farrah's Story in prime time. That weekend and the following week, television tributes continued. MSNBC aired back-to-back episodes of its Headliners and Legends episodes featuring Fawcett and Jackson. TV Land aired a mini-marathon of Charlie's Angels and Chasing Farrah episodes. E! aired Michael and Farrah: Lost Icons and the The Biography Channel aired Bio Remembers: Farrah Fawcett. The documentary Farrah's Story re-aired on the Oxygen Network and MSNBC.
Larry King said of the Fawcett phenomenon,
TV had much more impact back in the '70s than it does today. Charlie's Angels got huge numbers every week – nothing really dominates the television landscape like that today. Maybe American Idol comes close, but now there are so many channels and so many more shows it's hard for anything to get the audience, or amount of attention, that Charlie's Angels got. Farrah was a major TV star when the medium was clearly dominant.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner said Farrah was one of the iconic beauties of our time. Her girl-next-door charm combined with stunning looks made her a star on film, TV and the printed page.
Kate Jackson said,
She was a selfless person who loved her family and friends with all her heart, and what a big heart it was. Farrah showed immense courage and grace throughout her illness and was an inspiration to those around her... I will remember her kindness, her cutting dry wit and, of course, her beautiful smile...when you think of Farrah, remember her smiling because that is exactly how she wanted to be remembered: smiling.
She is buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles.
The red one-piece bathing suit worn by Farrah in her famous 1976 poster was donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (NMAH) on February 2, 2011.[65] Said to have been purchased at a Saks Fifth Avenue store, the red Lycra suit made by the leading Australian swimsuit company Speedo, was donated to the Smithsonian by her executors and was formally presented to NMAH in Washington D.C. by her longtime companion Ryan O'Neal.[66] The suit and the poster are expected to go on temporary display sometime in 2011–12. They will be made additions to the Smithsonian's popular culture department.
The famous poster of Farrah in a red swimsuit has been produced as a Barbie doll. The limited edition dolls, complete with a gold chain and the girl-next-door locks, have been snapped up by Barbie fans.
In 2011, Men's Health named her one of the 100 Hottest Women of All-Time ranking her at No. 31
"Homemaker's Digest," 1949.
"Here the family eats, plans and plays. Restful color makes it a favorite spot."
Format: Still image
Abstract: Homemaker is putting a child to bed.
Extent: 1 photoprint.
NLM Unique ID: 101448547
NLM Image ID: A029671
Permanent Link: resource.nlm.nih.gov/101448547