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New York
An evening view of the Manhattan Skyline as seen from across New York Bay. The World Trade Center and the Statue of liberty are some of the spectacular sites the can be seen.
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New York
> Cunard Building (erbaut von 1917 bis 1921)
Postweg: Grandwood / NY - St. Gallen / Schweiz; 11. Februar 1925
Verlag: M / USA
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunard_Building_(New_York_City)
Peter Kraus - Foto: Kolibri/Enzwieser - Kolibri Foto-Karte Bestell-Nr. 282 - gescannt- alte Autogramm-Karte aus meiner Sammlung
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. N. 41.
American actress Natalie Wood (1938-1981) was one of Hollywood's most valuable and wanted actresses in the early 1960s. At 4, she started out as a child actress and at 16, she became a star, when she co-starred with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). For this role, she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. In 1961, she played Maria in the hit musical West Side Story. She was nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, for Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Only 43, Wood drowned during a boating trip with husband Robert Wagner and Brainstorm (1983) co-star Christopher Walken.
Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, USA, in 1938. Her parents were Russian immigrants. Her father Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko was a day laborer and carpenter and her mother Maria Zudilova was a housewife. Wood's parents had to migrate due to the Russian Civil War (1917-1923). Maria had unfulfilled ambitions of becoming an actress or ballet dancer. She wanted her daughters to pursue an acting career, and live out her dream. Maria frequently took a young Wood with her to the cinema, where Maria could study the films of Hollywood child stars. The impoverished family could not afford any other acting training to Wood. The Zakharenko family eventually moved to Santa Rosa, where young Wood was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot. The family moved to Los Angeles to help seek out roles for her. RKO Radio Pictures' executives William Goetz and David Lewis chose the stage name "Natalie Wood for her. The first name was based on her childhood nickname Natalia, and the last name was in reference to director Sam Wood. Natalia's younger sister Svetlana Gurdin (1946) would eventually follow an acting career as well, under the stage name Lana Wood. Natalie made her film debut in the drama Happy Land (Irving Pichel, 1943) starring Don Ameche, set in the home front of World War II. She was only 5-years-old, and her scene as the 'Little Girl Who Drops Ice Cream Cone' lasted 15 seconds. Wood somehow attracted the interest of film director Irving Pichel who remained in contact with her family over the next few years. Wood had few job offers over the following two years, but Pichel helped her get a screen test for a more substantial role opposite Orson Welles as Wood's guardian and Claudette Colbert in the romance film Tomorrow Is Forever (Irving Pichel, 1946). Wood passed through an audition and won the role of Margaret Ludwig, a post-World War II German orphan. At the time, Wood was "unable to cry on cue" for a key scene. So her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her, giving her a reason to cry for the scene. Wood started appearing regularly in films following this role and soon received a contract with the film studio 20th Century Fox. Her first major role was that of Susan Walker in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947), starring Edmund Gwenn and Maureen O'Hara. The film was a commercial and critical hit and Wood was counted among the top child stars in Hollywood. She received many more to play in films. She typically appeared in family films, cast as the daughter or sister of such protagonists as Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis. Wood appeared in over twenty films as a child actress. The California laws of the era required that until reaching adulthood, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom, Wood received her primary education on the studio lots, receiving three hours of school lessons whenever she was working on a film. After school hours ended, Wood would hurry to the set to film her scenes.
Natalie Wood gained her first major television role in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953-1954). At the age of 16, she found more success with the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) opposite James Dean and Sal Mineo. She played the role of a teenage girl who dresses up in racy clothes to attract the attention of a father (William Hopper) who typically ignores her. The film's success helped Wood make the transition from child star to ingenue. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, but the award was instead won by Jo Van Fleet. Her next significant film was the Western The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), playing the role of abduction victim Debbie Edwards, niece of the protagonist Ethan Edwards (John Wayne). The film was a commercial and critical hit and has since been regarded as a masterpiece. Also in 1956, Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School, with her graduation serving as the end of her school years. She signed a contract with Warner Brothers, where she was kept busy with several new films. To her disappointment, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the protagonist and received roles of little depth. For a while, the studio had her paired up with teenage heartthrob Tab Hunter as a duo. The studio was hoping that the pairing would serve as a box-office draw, but this did not work out. One of Wood's only serious roles from this period is the role of the eponymous protagonist in the melodrama Marjorie Morningstar (Irving Rapper, 1958) with Gene Kelly, playing a young Jewish girl whose efforts to create her own identity and career path clash with the expectations of her family. Wikipedia: "The central conflict in the film revolves around the traditional models of social behavior and religious behavior expected by New York Jewish families in the 1950s, and Marjorie's desire to follow an unconventional path." The film was a critical success, and fit well with other films exploring the restlessness of youth in the 1950s. Wood's first major box office flop was the biographical film All the Fine Young Cannibals (Michael Anderson, 1960), examining the rags to riches story of jazz musician Chet Baker (played by Robert Wagner) without actually using his name. The film's box office earnings barely covered the production costs, and film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer recorded a loss of 1,108,000 dollars. For the first time. Wood's appeal to the audience was in doubt.
With her career in decline following this failure, Natalie Wood was seen as "washed up" by many in the film community. But director Elia Kazan gave her the chance to audition for the role of the sexually-repressed Wilma Dean Loomis in Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961) with Warren Beatty. The film was a critical success and Wood for first nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The award was instead won by rival actress Sophia Loren. Wood's next important film was West Side Story (Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise, 1961), where she played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl. Wood was once again called to represent the restlessness of youth in a film, this time in a story involving youth gangs and juvenile delinquents. The film was a great commercial success with about 44 million dollars in gross, the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was also critically acclaimed and is still regarded among the best films of Wood's career. However, Wood was disappointed that her singing voice was not used in the film. She was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964), and Deborah Kerr in The King and I (Walter Lang, 1956). Wood's next leading role was as burlesque entertainer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in the Biopic Gypsy (Mervyn LeRoy, 1962) alongside Rosalind Russell. Some film historians credit the part as an even better role for Wood than that of Maria, with witty dialogue, a greater emotional range, and complex characterisation. The film was the highest-grossing film of 1962 and well-received critically. Wood's next significant role was that of Macy's salesclerk Angie Rossini in the comedy-drama Love with the Proper Stranger (Robert Mulligan, 1963). In the film, Angie has a one-night-stand with musician Rocky Papasano (Steve McQueen), finds herself pregnant, and desperately seeks an abortion. The film underperformed at the box office but was critically well-received. The 25-year-old Wood received her second nomination for the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, but it was won by Patricia Neal. Wood continued her successful film career and made two comedies with Tony Curtis: Sex and the Single Girl (Richard Quine, 1964) and The Great Race (Blake Edwards, 1965), the latter with Jack Lemmon, and Peter Falk. For Inside Daisy Clover (Sydney Pollack, 1965) and This Property Is Condemned (Sydney Pollack, 1966), both of which co-starred Robert Redford, Wood received Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. However, her health status was not as successful. She was suffering emotionally and had sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. 175,000 dollars to cancel her contract and was able to retire for a while. She also fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. She took a three-year hiatus from acting.
Natalie Wood made her comeback in the comedy-drama Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, 1969), with the themes of sexual liberation and wife swapping. It was a box office hit. Wood decided to gamble her 750,000 dollars fee on a percentage of the gross, earning a million dollars over the course of three years. Wood was pregnant with her first child, Natasha Gregson (1970). She chose to go into semi-retirement to raise the child, appearing in only four more theatrical films before her death. These films were the mystery-comedy Peeper (Peter Hyams, 1975) starring Michael Caine, the Science-Fiction film Meteor (Ronald Neame, 1979) with Sean Connery, the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America (Gilbert Cates, 1980) with George Segal and Valerie Harper, and the posthumously-released Science-Fiction film Brainstorm (Douglas Trumbull, 1983). In the late 1970s, Wood found success in television roles. Laurence Olivier asked her to co-star with him in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Robert Moore, 1976). After that, she appeared in several television films and the mini-series From Here to Eternity (Buzz Kulik, 1979), with William Devane and Kim Basinger. For From Here to Eternity, she received a Golden Globe Award and high ratings. She had plans to make her theatrical debut in a 1982 production of 'Anastasia'. On 28 November 1981, during a holiday break from the production of Brainstorm (1983), Natalie Wood joined her husband Robert Wagner, their friend Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island. The four of them were on board Wagner's yacht Splendour. On the morning of 29 November 1981, Wood's corpse was recovered 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the boat. The autopsy revealed that she had drowned. Wikipedia: "The events surrounding her death have been the subject of conflicting witness statements, prompting the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, under the instruction of the coroner's office, to list her cause of death as 'drowning and other undetermined factors' in 2012. In 2018, Wagner was named as a person of interest in the ongoing investigation into Wood's death." Natalie Wood was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her would-be comeback film Brainstorm (Douglas Trumbull, 1983) was incomplete at the time of her death. It was ultimately finished and released, but Wood's character had to be written out of three scenes while a stand-in and changing camera angles were used for crucial shots. Natalie Wood was married three times. Her second husband was the British film producer and screenwriter Richard Gregson (1969-1972). She was twice married to actor Robert Wagner, from 1957 till 1962 and from 1972 till her death in 1981. She had two daughters, Natasha Gregson Wagner (1970) with Richard Gregson, and Courtney Wagner (1974) with Robert Wagner. The 2004 TV film The Mystery of Natalie Wood chronicles Wood's life and career. It was partly based on the biographies 'Natasha: the Biography of Natalie Wood' by Suzanne Finstad and 'Natalie & R.J.' by Warren G. Harris. Justine Waddell portrays Wood.
Sources: Dimos I (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
American postcard by Fotofolio, New York, N.Y., no. PH 18, 1981. Photo: Philippe Halsman, 1962 / Hastings Galleries Collection. Alfred Hitchcock at the set of The Birds (1963).
British director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was known as 'The Master of Suspense'. He is one of the most influential and extensively studied filmmakers in the history of cinema. He had his first major success with The Lodger (1926), a silent thriller loosely based on Jack the Ripper. Hitchcock came to international attention with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and, most notably, The Lady Vanishes (1938). His first Hollywood film was the multi-Oscar-winning psychological thriller Rebecca (1940). Many classics followed including Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rear Window (1954), North by Northwest (1959) and The Birds (1963). In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films which garnered a total of 46 Oscar nominations and 6 wins.
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, on the outskirts of east London, in 1899. He was the son of Emma Jane Whelan and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock. His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William and Eileen Hitchcock. Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. In 1914, his father died. To support himself and his mother—his older siblings had left home by then—Hitchcock took a job in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in films began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals. In a trade paper, he read that Famous Players-Lasky, the production arm of Paramount Pictures, was opening a studio in London. They were planning to film The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli, so Hitch produced some drawings for the title cards and sent his work to the studio. They hired him, and in 1919 he began working for Islington Studios as a title-card designer. Hitchcock soon gained experience as a co-writer, art director, and production manager on at least 18 silent films. After Hugh Croise, the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill, Hitchcock and star and producer Seymour Hicks finished the film together. When Paramount pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock was hired as an assistant director by a new firm run in the same location by Michael Balcon, later known as Gainsborough Pictures. He began to collaborate with the editor and "script girl" Alma Reville, his future wife. He worked as an assistant to director Graham Cutts on several films, including The Blackguard (1924), which was produced at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam. There Hitchcock watched part of the making of F. W. Murnau's film Der letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924). He was impressed with Murnau's work and later used many of his techniques for the set design in his own productions. In the summer of 1925, Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct The Pleasure Garden (1925), starring Virginia Valli, a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka. Reville, by then Hitchcock's fiancée, was assistant director-editor. In 1927, Hitchcock made his first trademark film, the thriller The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) starring Ivor Novello. The Lodger is about the hunt for a serial killer who, wearing a black cloak and carrying a black bag, is murdering young blonde women in London, and only on Tuesdays. The Lodger was a commercial and critical success in the UK. In the same year, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock (1928). Reville became her husband's closest collaborator and wrote or co-wrote on many of his films. Hitchcock made the transition to sound film with his tenth film, Blackmail (1929), the first British 'talkie'. Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax taking place on the dome of the British Museum. He used early sound recording as a special element of the film, stressing the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman (Anny Ondra) suspected of murder. It was followed by Murder! (1930). In 1933 Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British on The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). It was a success. His second, The 39 Steps (1935), with Robert Donat, made him a star in the USA. It also established the quintessential English 'Hitchcock blonde' (Madeleine Carroll) as the template for his succession of ice-cold, elegant leading ladies. His next major success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), with Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. The film saw Hitchcock receive the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director.[
David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood. He directed an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1940), starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture, although Hitchcock himself was only nominated as Best Director. Hitchcock's second American film was the thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), set in Europe, and produced by Walter Wanger. It was nominated for Best Picture that year Suspicion (1941) was the first of four projects on which Cary Grant worked with Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions that Grant was cast in a sinister role. In one scene Hitchcock placed a light inside a glass of milk, perhaps poisoned, that Grant is bringing to his wife, played by Joan Fontaine. The light makes sure that the audience's attention is on the glass. Fontaine won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Hitchcock's personal favourite. Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright) suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial killer. Hitchcock was again nominated for the Oscar for Best Director for Lifeboat (1944) and Spellbound (1945), but he never won the award. Spellbound (1945), starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, explores psychoanalysis and features a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí. Notorious (1946) stars Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, both Hitchcock regulars, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium, and South America. After a brief lull of commercial success in the late 1940s, Hitchcock returned to form with Strangers on a Train (1951), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. In the film, two men casually meet, one of whom speculates on a foolproof method to murder. He suggests that two people, each wishing to do away with someone, should each perform the other's murder. Farley Granger played the innocent victim of the scheme, while boy-next-door" Robert Walker played the villain. I Confess (1953) was set in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest. It was followed by three colour films starring Grace Kelly: the 3-D film Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. With his droll delivery, gallows humour and iconic image, the series made Hitchcock a celebrity. in his films, Hitchcock often used the "mistaken identity" theme, such as in The Wrong Man (1956), and North by Northwest (1959). In Vertigo (1958), James Stewart plays Scottie, a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia. He develops an obsession with a woman he has been hired to shadow (Kim Novak). His obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock does not opt for a happy ending. Vertigo is one of his most personal and revealing films, dealing with the Pygmalion-like obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman he desires. Psycho (1960) was Hitchcock's great shock masterpiece, mostly for its haunting performances by Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins and its shower scene, and The Birds (1963) became the unintended forerunner to an onslaught of films about nature-gone-mad, and booth films were phenomenally popular. Film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's': Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), and Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976). During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralysing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. In 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. A year later, in 1980, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. Hitchcock was survived by his wife and daughter. After the funeral, his body was cremated. His remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.
Sources: Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
British postcard.
Demi Moore (1962) is an American actress and film producer who had her breakthrough with the Bratpack film St. Elmo's Fire (1985). By 1995 Moore was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood thanks to such blockbusters as Ghost (1990), A Few Good Men (1992) and Indecent Proposal (1993).
Demi Moore was born Demi Gene Guynes in Roswell, New Mexico in 1962. Her father, Air Force airman Charles Harmon, left her then 18-year-old mother Victoria (née King) after a two-month marriage and before Demi was born. When Demi Moore was three months old, her mother married Dan Guynes, a newspaper salesman, who she later saw as her real father. The family moved frequently because of her stepfather's work, more than thirty times. Her stepfather committed suicide when Demi was fifteen, two years after divorcing her mother. A year later she dropped out of school. Her mother, Virginia Guynes, was arrested many times, including for arson and drunk driving. Moore broke off contact with her in 1990 but later reconciled with her shortly before she died of cancer in 1998 at the age of 54. In 1979, three months before her 17th birthday, Demi met the rock musician Freddy Moore and they married in 1980. The marriage lasted four years. Moore signed with the Elite Modeling Agency and then enrolled in drama classes after being inspired by her next-door neighbour, 17-year-old German actress Nastassja Kinski. She appeared on the cover of the January 1981 issue of the French adult magazine Oui, taken from a photo session in which she had posed nude, and made her film debut with a brief role in the teen drama Choices (Silvio Narizzano, 1981). In 1982, she played an investigative reporter in the hospital soap General Hospital (1982-1983). She celebrated her first cinema success in the romantic comedy Blame it on Rio (Stanley Donen, 1983) opposite Michael Caine. Around the same time, she became addicted to cocaine. Her big break came with the film St. Elmo's Fire (Joel Schumacher, 1985) with Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez, to whom she was engaged for three years. Reportedly, she was fired by Schumacher during filming because of her drug abuse, after which she went to rehab and returned a week later. Interestingly, her character in the film, Jules, was also addicted to cocaine. The film was a huge success, and Moore and her film counterparts were counted among the 'Brat Pack', a group of young actors with a promising future. Moore progressed to more serious material with the romantic comedy About Last Night... (Edward Zwick, 1986), co-starring Rob Lowe, which marked a positive turning point in her career. In 1987, she became even more famous when she married actor Bruce Willis.
In 1990, Demi Moore co-starred with Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg in the highly successful fantasy Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990), for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. The love scene between Moore and Patrick Swayze that starts in front of a potter's wheel to the sound of 'Unchained Melody became an iconic moment in film history and the film grossed over US$505 million at the box office. 'The highest-grossing film of that year' earned her a spot on the A-list and offered her many leading roles in films. The following year, she received a great deal of media attention when she appeared naked on the front page of Vanity Fair magazine while seven months pregnant. The front page was frequently imitated and parodied in the years that followed. The next year, she starred in the blockbuster A Few Good Men with (Rob Reiner, 1992), opposite Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson. The following year, she scored another big film hit with the controversial Indecent Proposal (Adrian Lyne, 1993). In this film, a rich businessman (Robert Redford) presents a couple with financial problems (Moore and Woody Harrelson) with a dilemma: he gives the couple a million dollars if he can sleep with the woman. Another blockbuster was the thriller Disclosure (Barry Levinson, 1994) with Michael Douglas. Moore produced and starred in a controversial miniseries for HBO called If These Walls Could Talk (1996), a three-part anthology about abortion alongside Sissy Spacek and Cher. Its screenwriter, Nancy Savoca, directed two segments, including one in which Moore played a widowed nurse in the early 1950s seeking a back-alley abortion. For that role, Moore received a second Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress. At the time, Demi Moore was one of the highest-paid film actresses of all time, and she was the first actress to receive more than $10 million for a film role - $12.5 million for Striptease (Andrew Bergman, 1996).
Demi Moore did not manage to keep up the success. Striptease (Andrew Bergman, 1996) opened to overwhelmingly negative reviews with Moore's performance being criticised and 'won' six Golden Raspberry Awards, including for worst film, worst actress and worst director. However, it was a moderate financial success, grossing US$113 million worldwide Moore also starred in the thriller The Juror (Brian Gibson, 1996). It was a box office bomb and was heavily panned by critics. Two successes at the time was as the voice of the gypsy woman Esmeralda in Disney's animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Kirk Wise, Gary Trousdale, 1996) and the voice of Dallas Grimes in the animated comedy Beavis and Butt-head Do America (Mike Judge, 1996), alongside her then-husband Bruce Willis. When her long-cherished project G.I. Jane (Ridley Scott, 1997), for which the actress even shaved her head, turned out to be another flop, Demi Moore took a break in her acting career. As a producer, she did have a few successes with the three Austin Powers films, including Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997). Moore and Willis separated in 1998 and divorced in 2000. Together with Bruce Willis, she has three children: Rumer Glen Willis (born 1988), Scout LaRue Willis (1991) and Tallulah Belle Willis (1994). In 2003, she had a much-discussed relationship with the sixteen-year-younger actor Ashton Kutcher, whom she married in 2005. That same year, she returned to the big screen by playing the villain in the sequel Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (McG, 2005), starring Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. Since 2006, Demi has been the face and muse of cosmetics brand Helena Rubinstein. On-screen she could be seen in the ensemble cast of the drama Bobby (Emilio Estevez, 2006) and the drama Margin Call (J. C. Chandor, 2011) with Kevin Spacey. Moore and Kutcher split in 2011 and their divorce was finalised in 2013. Incidentally, she appeared in films such as the black comedy Rough Night/Girls' Night Out (Lucia Aniello, 2017) starring Scarlett Johansson. In 2019, Moore released her book 'Inside Out' about her life, which reached the top spot on the New York Times Bestseller list. Since early 2022, Demi Moore has been in a relationship with Swiss celebrity chef Daniel Humm (46).
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, English and German), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Wildhaus-Alt St. Johann
- Gräppelensee mit Schafberg (Gemälde von E. Bauer)
Postweg: Zug - St. Gallen; 23. Juli 1942
Verlag: O. J. Bücher A.G. / Luzern
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
French postcard by Compagnie des Arts Photomécaniques (CAP), Paris, no. 507. Caption: Sirene en vacances (Siren on holiday).
Join now our group Vintage Bikini Postcards. And take a look at our albums Sizzling Swimwear Postcards, Va-Va-Va-Voom Vintage Pin-ups, Beefcake, Beautiful Bikini Beach Babes and It's a Bikini World .
Amsterdam
> die Drehorgel "Pipo"
(Postversand 1973)
Verlag: Euro Color Cards / Sleeuwijk
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
The Summer of 2020 is definitively over, and our series of vintage pin-up postcards ends today. Tomorrow we will start a new, daily series of postcards.
Italian postcard by PMCE (Piccoli, Milano), no. 604/6.
Join now our group Vintage Bikini Postcards. And take a look at our albums Sizzling Swimwear Postcards, Va-Va-Va-Voom Vintage Pin-ups, Beefcake, Beautiful Bikini Beach Babes and It's a Bikini World .
London
> House of Parliament
Verlag: ?
(Postweg: London - Horgen (Schweiz) / 14. Juni 1913)
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
West-German postcard by ISV, no. B 25. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for The Tunnel of Love (Gene Kelly, 1958).
Slight, blonde Richard Widmark (1914-2008) suddenly established himself as an icon of American cinema with his debut as a giggling psychopath in Kiss of Death (1947). He was one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood for a good three decades and appeared in 75 films.
Richard Weedt Widmark was born in Sunrise County, Minnesota, in 1914. His parents were Carl Henry Widmark, a Swedish immigrant and travelling salesman, and his wife Ethel Mae Barr. Widmark could already read before he went to school and studied law after graduation to become a lawyer. He also became enthusiastic about acting at an early age. In 1938 Widmark moved to New York with his future wife Jean Hazlewood, a screenwriter he had met as a colleague in Lake Forrest, and married her in 1942. Their only child, Anne Heath Widmark, was born in 1945. In 1943 Widmark made his Broadway debut in George Abbott's theatrical production of 'Kiss and Tell'. Widmark worked as a radio announcer for ten years before making his film acting debut. Widmark made his breakthrough with his debut role as Tommy Udo in the Film Noir Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway, 1947) starring Victor Maure. Udo is a criminal who cold-heartedly pushes a paraplegic old woman down a flight of stairs in her wheelchair in the film's most famous scene. For this role, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Male Supporting Actor. Widmark received a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. After his successful debut, Widmark was initially confined to the role of the villain for years. He brought a new kind of deeply troubled or corrupt character to the screen: a hard-boiled type who does not actively court the sympathy of the audience. In the 1950s the actor managed to get away from this type and establish himself as a versatile leading man in all genres. Elia Kazan cast Widmark in his thriller Panick in the Streets (1950), not as the heavy but as the physician who tracks down Jack Palance, who has the plague, in tandem with detective Paul Douglas. He went on to play notable roles as the penny-ante hustler Harry Fabian in the Film Noir Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950) with Gene Tierney, and an airline pilot who pursues a babysitter in his hotel (Marilyn Monroe) and gradually realises she's dangerous in Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952). He later played in the Western The Alamo (John Wayne, 1960), the drama Judgment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer, 1961) starring Spencer Tracy, and the epic Western How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, 1962).
During the 1970s and 1980s, Richard Widmark advanced over the years to become a sought-after character actor. He starred in such well-known films as the Agatha Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974), the disaster thriller Rollercoaster (James Goldstone, 1977), the thriller Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978) starring Genevieve Bujold and Michael Douglas, and the Neo Noir Against All Odds (Taylor Hackford, 1984) with Jeff Bridges. In 1987 he appeared with Louis Gossett jr. in Volker Schlöndorff's film A Gathering of Old Men, based on the novel 'A Gathering of Old Men' by Ernest J. Gaines. In 1991 Richard Widmark appeared in front of the film camera for the last time in the political thriller True Colors (Herbert Ross, 1991) starring John Cusack. His last work was a voice-over for the television film Lincoln (Peter W. Kunhardt, James A. Edgar, 1992). Widmark spent his retirement in seclusion on his farm in Connecticut. Widmark was first married to Jean Hazlewood from 1952 until her death in 1997. A daughter was born to Hazlewood. He married Susan Blanchard, who had previously been married to Henry Fonda, in 1999 and remained with her until his death. In 2008, Richard Widmark died at home in Roxbury, Connecticut, at the age of 93. His death followed a fall in 2007, which he did not recover from.
Sources: Martin Lewison and Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and German) and IMDb.
For more postcards, a bio and clips check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 559. Photo: Universal International. Arlene Dahl in Desert Legion (Joseph Pevney, 1953).
Elegant American actress Arlene Dahl (1925) is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. The former MGM star achieved notability during the 1950s. She has three children, the eldest of whom is actor Lorenzo Lamas.
Arlene Carol Dahl was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1925. She was the daughter of Idelle (née Swan) and Rudolph S. Dahl, a Ford Motor dealer and executive. Dahl's mother was involved in local amateur theatre. As a child, Dahl took elocution and dancing lessons and was active in theatrical events at Margaret Fuller Elementary School, Ramsey Junior High School and Washburn Senior High School. After graduating from Washburn High School. The following year, she was voted Miss Rheingold Beer of 1946. The Rheingold ad campaign was one of the most famous beer campaigns from the 1940s through the 1950s. There was a Miss Rheingold contest each year, and by the early 1950s, more than 25 million votes were cast annually. The winner received a cash payment as well as a modeling contract and many other opportunities. Dahl held various jobs, including performing in a local drama group and briefly working as a model for department stores. Dahl briefly attended the University of Minnesota, and then went to Chicago where she was a buyer for Marshall and Brown and worked as a model. She travelled to New York where she successfully auditioned for a part in the play Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston. This led to her getting the lead in another play, Questionable Ladies which was seen by a talent scout from Hollywood. Dahl had an uncredited bit in Life with Father (1947). She was promoted to leading lady in My Wild Irish Rose (David Butler, 1947) with Dennis Morgan. The film was a big hit and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1948. This led to an offer from MGM for a long-term contract. At MGM she played a supporting role in the romantic comedy The Bride Goes Wild (Norman Taurog, 1948). She remained there to play the female lead in a Red Skelton comedy A Southern Yankee (Edward Sedgwick, 1948). Both were very popular. Eagle-Lion hired her to star as the female lead in Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann, 1949), then at MGM she acted opposite Van Johnson in the Film Noir Scene of the Crime (Roy Rowland, 1949), Robert Taylor in the Western Ambush (Sam Wood, 1950), Joel McCrea in The Outriders (Roy Rowland, 1950), Fred Astaire and Skelton in the musical Three Little Words (Richard Thorpe, 1950), and Skelton again in Watch the Birdie (Jack Donohue, 1950). Of these MGM films only The Outriders was not profitable.
MGM gave Arlene Dahl the lead in several B-films, such as the drama Inside Straight (Gerald Mayer, 1951) and the Film Noir No Questions Asked (Harold F. Kress, 1951). Both flopped. Dahl was hired by Pine-Thomas Productions who signed her to a multi-picture contract and put her in a swashbuckler with John Payne, Caribbean Gold (Edward Ludwig, 1952). She went to Universal to co-star with Alan Ladd in a French Foreign Legion story, Desert Legion (Joseph Pevney, 1953), then Pine-Thomas used her again in Jamaica Run (Lewis R. Forster, 1953) opposite Ray Milland, and Sangaree (Edward Ludwig, 1953). In the latter, Paramount's first 3-Dimensional film release, Fernando Lamas starred. Lamas and Dahl soon marred. She supported Bob Hope in the comedy Here Come the Girls (Claude Binyon, 1953). Dahl and Lamas reunited on the adventure film The Diamond Queen (John Brahm, 1953) at Warners. In 1953 Dahl played Roxanne on stage in a short lived revival of Cyrano de Bergerac opposite Jose Ferrer. Dahl played the ambitious Carol Talbot in Woman's World (Jean Negulesco, 1954) at Fox, and she was Rock Hudson's leading lady in Universal's adventure war film Bengal Rifles (Laslo Benedek, 1954). She began writing a syndicated beauty column in 1952, and opened Arlene Dahl Enterprises in 1954, marketing cosmetics and designer lingerie. Dahl began appearing on television, including episodes of Lux Video Theatre and The Ford Television Theatre. In 1954, she played Ilsa in a TV adaptation of Casablanca. She and John Payne were reunited in a Film Noir, Slightly Scarlet (Allan Dwan, 1956), alongside Rhonda Fleming, another red-haired star. Dahl made some films in England for Columbia: Wicked as They Come (Ken Hughes, 1956) and Fortune Is a Woman (Sidney Gilliat, 1957) with Jack Hawkins. In 1957 she sued Columbia for $1 million saying the film's advertisements for Wicked as They Come were "lewd" and "degraded" her. A judge threw out the suit. Dahl hosted the short-lived TV series Opening Night (1958) and had the female lead in the adventure film Journey to the Center of the Earth (Henry Levin, 1959), opposite James Mason and Pat Boone. She was injured on set making the latter, but it turned out to be one of her most successful films.
In 1960, Arlene Dahl played the role of Lucy Belle in the episode 'That Taylor Affair' of Riverboat, alongside Darren McGavin. The same year she married Texas oilman Christian Holmes and announced her retirement from acting. The marriage did not last but Dahl increasingly diversified her work to become a lecturer, and beauty consultant as well as continuing her acting. She had a supporting role in Kisses for My President (Curtis Bernhardt, 1964) and could be seen on TV in Burke's Law, and Theatre of Stars. In the cinema, Dahl appeared in the French drama Du blé en liasses/Big Bank Roll (Alain Brunet, 1969) opposite Marcel Dalio and Jean Richard, the French-Italian crime-drama Les Chemins de Katmandou/The Pleasure Pit (André Cayatte, 1969) with Renaud Verley and Jane Birkin, and the Western The Land Raiders (Nathan Juran, 1970), starring Telly Savalas. Dahl returned to Broadway in the early 1970s, replacing Lauren Bacall in the role of Margo Channing in Applause. On TV, she appeared in a TV movie The Deadly Dream (Alf Kjellin, 1971) with Janet Leigh, and guest starred on Love, American Style (1971), Jigsaw John (1976), Fantasy Island (1981), and The Love Boat (1979-1987). Her focus was on business by now. After closing her company in 1967, she began working as a vice president at ad agency Kenyon and Eckhardt that same year. Dahl moved to Sears Roebuck as director of beauty products in 1970, earning nearly $750,000 annually, but left in 1975 to found her short-lived fragrance company Dahlia. In 1981, Dahl declared bankruptcy. From 1981-1984, Dahl appeared on the soap opera One Life to Live as Lucinda Schenck Wilson. The character was planned as a short-termed role (she guest-starred from late 1981 to early 1982 and in late 1982), but Dahl was later offered a one-year contract to appear on the series from September 1983 to October 1984. Later, she starred in the film A Place to Hide (Scott Thomas, 1988) opposite Dana Ashbrook.
Arlene Dahl was married six times. In the early 1950s, she met actor Lex Barker; they wed in 1951, and divorced the following year. Dahl went on to marry another matinee idol, Fernando Lamas. In 1958, Dahl and Lamas had their only child, Lorenzo Lamas. Shortly after giving birth to Lorenzo, Dahl slowed and eventually ended her career as an actress, although she still appeared in films and on television occasionally. Dahl and Lamas divorced in 1960, and Dahl later remarried. In addition to Lorenzo Lamas, Dahl has two other children: a daughter Christina Carole Holmes (1961) by third husband Christian R. Holmes, and a second son, Rounsevelle Andreas Schaum (1970), by her fifth husband, Rounsevelle W. Schaum. Her fourth husband was Alexis Lichine (1964-1969). Dahl has been married to Marc Rosen, a packaging designer, since 1984. She has six grandchildren, one of whom is Shayne Lamas, and two great-grandchildren. In the 1980, she entered the field of astrology , writing a syndicated column and later operating a premium phoneline company. Dahl has written more than two dozen books on the topics of beauty and astrology. Her last feature film role was in Night of the Warrior (Rafal Zielinski, 1991), which starred her son, Lorenzo Lamas. Dahl also guest-starred on episodes of the TV shows Renegade (1995-1997) and Air America (1999), which also starred her son. And she had a role on the soap opera All My Children (1995). Arlene Dahl divides her time between New York City and West Palm Beach, Florida.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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Motivkarte / Blumen
- Alpen-Akelei
Postweg: Winterthur - St. Gallen; 14. April 1949
Verlag: Edition Stehli / Schweiz
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
British postcard by Memory Card, no. 530. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Jodie Foster and Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).
American actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster (1962) has received two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and the Cecil B DeMille Award. A child prodigy, Foster began her professional career at the age of 3. Foster's breakthrough came at 14 with Martin Scorsese's psychological thriller Taxi Driver (1976). She played a child prostitute, for which she received an Oscar nomination. As an adult she won new acclaim with The Accused (1988), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Nell (1994). She later starred in four thrillers, Panic Room (2002), Flightplan (2005), Inside Man (2006) and The Brave One (2007), which were commercially successful and well-received by critics. She has focused on directing in the 2010s.
Legendary American actor Robert De Niro (1943) has starred in such classic films as Taxi Driver (1976), Novecento/1900 (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978), Awakenings (1990) and GoodFellas (1990). His role in The Godfather: Part II (1974) brought him his first Academy Award, and he scored his second Oscar for his portrayal of Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). De Niro worked with many acclaimed film directors, including Brian DePalma, Francis Coppola, Elia Kazan, Bernardo Bertolucci and, most importantly, Martin Scorsese. He also appeared in French, British and Italian films.
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Motivkarte / Blumen
Postweg: Winterthur - St. Gallen; 30. Dezember 1933
Verlag: St. F. Z No. 205 / Schweiz
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
Löwen Kashi & Zarina
Zooshop Frankfurt
2016
Gestaltung und Fotos:
© Matthias Besant,
außer Bild links unten: Kerstin Finze-Rieß
One of a set of 6 that I found, after my grandfather's death, in a secret compartment in his desk, almost certainly souvenirs of his time in the trenches in 1916 during the Great War. The illustration is by Leo Fontan, 1883-1965.
Motivkarte / Kunst
- Hol' über (Gemälde von Ernst Henseler)
Postweg: St. Gallen - Winterthur; 13. September 1939
Verlag: ? / Schweiz
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
Swiss-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Stroud, no. 56736, 1996. Photo: Sam Shaw. Caption: Jane Fonda, New York City, 1960.
American actress Jane Fonda (1937) is a two-time Academy Award winner for the crime thriller Klute (1971) and the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Roger Vadim's psychedelic Science Fiction spoof Barbarella (1968) made her one of the icons of the European cinema of the 1960s. In 2014, she was the recipient of the American Film Institute AFI Life Achievement Award.
Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in New York in 1937. She was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour. She has a brother, actor Peter Fonda, and a maternal half-sister, Frances. Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice. In 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and she went to the Actors Studio. In 1960, she made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations. Later the same year, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (Joshua Logan, 1960), in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. In Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962), she played a prostitute and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. She rose to fame in such films as Period of Adjustment (1962), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963), Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) opposite Lee Marvin, and Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967), co-starring Robert Redford. In 1968, she played the title role in the science fiction spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol. Barbarella director Roger Vadim became her first husband. In France, Fonda also starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972). A seven-time Academy Award nominee, she received her first nomination for They Shoot Horses, Don't They (Sydney Pollack, 1969) and went on to win two Best Actress Oscars for the crime thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971) and the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for her portrayal of the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) opposite Michael Douglas, On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) with Katherine Hepburn and her father Henry Fonda, and The Morning After (Sidney Lumet, 1986) with Jeff Bridges.
In 1982, Jane Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of 22 workout videos released by her over the next 13 years which would collectively sell over 17 million copies. Divorced from second husband Tom Hayden, she married billionaire media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the comedy Monster in Law (Robert Luketic, 2005) opposite Jennifer Lopez. Subsequent films have included Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall, 2007) with Lindsay Lohan, the French drama Et si on vivait tous ensemble?/All Together (Stéphane Robelin, 2011), The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) as First Lady Nancy Reagan, and This Is Where I Leave You (Shawn Levy, 2014). In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45-year absence, in the play 33 Variations, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), has earned her two Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012. Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture-era opposition to the Vietnam War included her being photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, which was very controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women and describes herself as a feminist. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization. She published an autobiography in 2005. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
British postcard.
American actor and martial arts artist Brandon Lee (1965-1993) was more than the son of his famous father. His last film The Crow (1994), will be forever remembered in years to come for his acting talent. During the shooting of the film, Brandon died by an accidental gunshot wound from a faulty prop revolver. In 2000, he returned to the screen in a little Swedish film.
Brandon Bruce Lee was born in Oakland, California, the USA in 1965 to Martial Arts idol and film star Bruce Lee and Linda Lee Cadwell, an American of Swedish heritage. He was born on Chinese New Year's eve, the last day of the dragon. Brandon had a sister, Shannon Lee. Brandon was born with blond hair. As he aged, his hair color changed to brown. By the time he was able to walk, he was already involved in learning about martial arts from his father. In 1970-1971, the family moved to Hong Kong, and at the age of 8, Brandon was fluent in Cantonese. After Bruce Lee's untimely death in 1973, Brandon, his mother, and his sister moved to Los Angeles. He attended Boston's Art-Oriented Emerson College in Massachusetts and studied Martial Arts and drama, like his father. In 1983, he was expelled from school because of misbehaviour but received his diploma at Miraleste High School. Having chosen an acting career, Lee took his work seriously. He studied at the Strasberg Academy, with Eric Morris in New York and in Los Angeles, and in Lynette Katselas' class in Los Angeles. His first professional job as an actor came at age twenty when casting director Lynn Stalmaster asked him to read for a CBS television film, Kung Fu: The Movie (Richard Lang, 1986) with David Carradine. It was a spin-off of the 1970s television series Kung Fu (1972-1975). Lee's first role in a feature film was Long zai jiang hu/Legacy of Rage (Ronny Yu, 1986), Lee's first and only Hong Kong film and spoken in Cantonese. Dee Reid at IMDb: "Brandon Lee is in fine form here (despite never hearing his natural speaking voice), though the film itself - written and directed by Hong Kong action veteran Ronny Yu (who would later gain fame in the West with the American horror films Bride of Chucky and Freddy vs. Jason, and the martial arts epic Fearless with Jet Li) - is somewhat of a mixed bag; it's more or less a standard action film, with lots of stuff about gangsters, drugs, and John Woo-style gun-play. " Shortly after, on television, Lee played a lead in the pilot Kung Fu: The Next Generation (Tony Wharmby, 1987), and guest-starred in an episode of the television series Ohara (1988) with Pat Morita. He also starred in the B-film Laser Mission (BJ Davis, 1989) with Ernest Borgnine. In Hollywood, Brandon Lee co-starred with Dolph Lundgren in the buddy cop action film Showdown in Little Tokyo (Mark L. Lester, 1991). They play two L.A. cops with opposing views on what is the best way to uphold the law have to work together to bring down the Yakuza while trying to protect a beautiful woman (Tia Carrere). Next, he was in Rapid Fire (Dwight H. Little, 1992) with Powers Boothe. Lee also did the fight choreography. While some critics liked the film, most felt the script was too simple, however, almost all described Lee to be charismatic, in a slick Hollywood action film. Dee Reid at IMDb: "it was a showcase for his fighting talents. Rapid Fire is decent, certainly not perfect, but very fun to watch nonetheless." Lee turned down the offer to play his father in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (Rob Cohen, 1993). The role was later given to Jason Scott Lee.
In 1992, Brandon Lee landed his breakthrough role as Eric Draven in Alex Proyas' The Crow (1994), based on the comic book of the same name, which would be his final and best film. He died while filming at the age of 28, of what is to be believed, a brain hemorrhage on the set. The film crew shot a scene in which it was decided to use a gun without consent from the weapons coordinator, who had been sent home early that night. Michael Massee, the actor portraying Funboy, was required to fire a .44 magnum revolver loaded with blanks at Lee. The revolver had been inspected days earlier for a previously filmed scene in which it was not fired but needed to be seen loaded. Dummy rounds are used for this, which have a bullet, a spent primer, but no powder. One of the dummy rounds had a bullet, a live primer, and no powder. When test-fired, the primer propelled the bullet into the barrel, where it stopped. The gun was then rechecked, but no anomalies were found because the primer was now spent and the barrel was not inspected. Then, when filming the fateful scene days later, the same gun was used with blanks. Blanks are fully charged rounds with no bullets, but there was a bullet in the barrel. The blank round propelled it into Lee's abdomen just as if he had been shot with a live .44 magnum round. Michael Massee spent a year, devastated by what happened, deciding whether or not to return to acting. The crew only noticed when Lee was slow getting up. The doctors worked desperately for five hours, but it was no use. The bullet had lodged itself in Mr. Lee's lower spine. He was pronounced dead at 1:04 P.M. the next day. He was supposed to marry Eliza Hutton on 17 April 1993. His body was flown to Seattle to be buried beside his father in Lake View Cemetery. With the blessing of Lee's family and very few scenes to shoot, the film was completed by re-writing the script, using early CGI technology and stunt doubles. Wikipedia: "Released a year after, the film is known to present Lee's dramatic abilities, in which he had less of a chance to show in his previous films. It was a commercial success and now considered a cult classic. Upon release, the film received great critical acclaim and made $50 million at the box office and was also a success overseas. Many saw parallels between Lee and his father comparing their careers as action film leading men who passed young, prior to the release of their breakthrough film, with the difference that his father demonstrated high martial arts skills, while Lee showed a strong dramatic performance." In 2000, a new film with Lee was released, the Swedish production Sex, lögner & videovåld/Sex, Lies and Video Violence (Richard Holm, 2000). In 1992 Brandon Lee came to Sweden to promote Rapid Fire (1992). His host, director Richard Holm, asked Lee to make a cameo appearance in this film, and he gladly agreed. The film was shot over an extended period between 1990 to 1993, but for different reasons delayed over and over again in post-production. Finally released in 2000, seven years after Lee's death, the film was dedicated to him, in the last line in the end credits.
Sources: Caryn Liles (IMDb), Dee Reid (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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Saint-Nazaire
- Pont de Saint-Nazaire
(Postversand 1989)
Verlag: Editions d'Art Jos le Doare / Chateaulin
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
Vintage postcard. Photo: United Artists. Jennifer Jones in Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
On 29 August 2022, a La Collectionneuse post on Jennifer Jones will be published on our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Fréjus
- La Mediterranee / Falaises
Postweg: Fréjus - St. Gallen; 17. März 1973
Verlag: GT / Nice
ex Ephemera-Sammlung MTP
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 405. Photo: Warner Bros, 1953.
At 19, legendary film actress Lauren Bacall (1924-2014) became an overnight star as 'Slim' opposite Humphrey Bogart in her memorable film debut in Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not (1942). She became known for her distinctive husky voice and glamorous looks in Film Noirs such as The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), and the delicious comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe. After a 50-year career, she received a Golden Globe and her first Oscar nomination for supporting actress for her role as Barbra Streisand’s mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1997).
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in 1924 in The Bronx in New York City. She was the daughter of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. Her family was middle-class, with her father working as a salesman and her mother as a secretary. They divorced when she was five and she rarely saw her father after that. Following a study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she was crowned Miss Greenwich Village in 1942. Bacall gained nationwide attention by posing for a 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar magazine. This photo was spotted by Nancy Gross "Slim" Hawks, the wife of film director Howard Hawks, and prompted Hawks to put her under personal contract. He wanted to "create" a star from fresh, raw material and changed her name to Lauren Bacall. For her screen debut, Hawks cast Bacall as Marie Browning opposite Humphrey Bogart in the thriller To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The young actress was so nervous that she walked around with her chin pressed against her collarbone to keep from shaking. As a result, she had to glance upward every time she spoke, an affectation which came across as sexy and alluring, earning Bacall the nickname 'The Look'. She also spoke in a deep, throaty manner, effectively obscuring the fact that she was only 19-years-old. Thanks to the diligence of Hawks and his crew - and the actress' unique delivery of such lines as "If you want anything, just whistle..." - Bacall found herself lauded as the most sensational newcomer of 1944. She also found herself in love with Humphrey Bogart, whom she subsequently married." Bogie and Bacall co-starred in three more crime films, The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946), Dark Passage (Delmer Daves, 1947), and Key Largo (John GHuston, 1948), also with Edward G. Robinson, and Lionel Barrymore. These films increased the actress' popularity, but also led critics to suggest that she was incapable of carrying a picture on her own. Bacall's disappointing solo turn opposite Charles Boyer in Confidential Agent (Herman Shumlin, 1945) seemed to confirm this.
Lauren Bacall was a quick study and good listener, and in 1950, she starred without her husband in Bright Leaf (Michael Curtiz, 1950), a drama set in 1894 with Gary Cooper. Before long she was turning in more first-rate performances in such films as Young Man With a Horn (Michael Curtiz, 1950) opposite Kirk Douglas and Doris Day, and the comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (Jean Negulesco, 1953) with Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe. Her first comedy was a smash hit. Bogart's death in 1957 after a long and painful bout with throat cancer left Lauren Bacall personally devastated. At the funeral, she put a whistle in his coffin. It was a reference to the famous line she says to him in their first film together To Have and Have Not (1944): "You know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and blow." In the tradition of her show-must-go-on husband, she continued to perform to the best of her ability in films such as the sophisticated comedy Designing Woman (Vincente Minnelli, 1957) with Gregory Peck, and the drama The Gift of Love (Jean Negulesco, 1958) opposite Robert Stack. The latter turned out to be a big disappointment. Denny Jackson at IMDb: "Undaunted, Lauren moved back to New York City and appeared in several Broadway plays to huge critical acclaim. She was enjoying acting before live audiences and the audiences, in turn, enjoyed her fine performances."
Lauren Bacall was away from the big screen for five years, but she returned in 1964 to appear in the thriller Shock Treatment (Denis Sanders, 1964) with Stuart Whitman and Carol Lynley, and the comedy Sex and the Single Girl (Richard Quine, 1964) with Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, and Henry Fonda. In 1966, Lauren starred in the crime film Harper (Jack Smight, 1966) with Paul Newman and Julie Harris. In the late 1960s, after Bacall's second marriage to another hard-case actor, Jason Robards Jr., she received only a handful of negligible film roles and all but dropped out of filmmaking. In 1970, Bacall made a triumphant comeback in the stage production 'Applause', a musical adaptation of All About Eve. For her role as grand dame Margo Channing, originally played by Bette Davis in the film version, Bacall won a Tony Award. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Her sultry-vixen persona long in the past, Bacall spent the '70s playing variations on her worldly, resourceful Applause role, sometimes merely being decorative (Murder on the Orient Express, 1974), but most often delivering class-A performances (The Shootist, 1976). After playing the quasi-autobiographical part of a legendary, outspoken Broadway actress in 1981's The Fan, she spent the next ten years portraying Lauren Bacall -- and no one did it better."
Lauren Bacall was away from films again, this time for seven years. In the interim, she again appeared on the stages of Broadway. In 1981, she won her second Tony for 'Woman of the Year', based on the film Woman of the Year (George Stevens, 1942) with Katharine Hepburn. When she returned, it was for the filming of the Agatha Christie mystery Appointment with Death (Michael Winner, 1988) with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, and Mr. North (Danny Huston, 1988), starring Anthony Edwards and Robert Mitchum. Then followed the Stephen King adaptation Misery (Rob Reiner, 1990) and several made for television film. In one of these, The Portrait (Arthur Penn, 1993, she and her Designing Woman co-star Gregory Peck played a still-amorous elderly couple. Once more, Bacall proved here that she was a superb actress and not merely a "professional personality". In 1994, she paid tribute to her first role as 'Slim' in To Have and Have Not with a character called 'Slim Chrysler' in Prêt-à-Porter (Robert Altman, 1994), released to theatres fifty years after the premiere of To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944). During the filming of The Mirror Has Two Faces (Barbra Streisand, 1996), Lauren Bacall traveled to France to accept a special César Award for her lifetime achievement in film. For her role in Mirror, which cast her as Barbra Streisand's mother, Bacall earned a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination. She continued to work on a number of projects into the next decade, including Diamonds (John Asher, 1999), in which she appeared alongside Kirk Douglas, with whom she last co-starred in the romantic drama Young Man with a Horn (Michael Curtiz, 1950). In the new century, she worked twice with internationally respected filmmaker Lars von Trier, appearing in his films Dogville and Manderlay. She was in the Nicole Kidman film Birth and appeared in the documentary Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff. Bacall won an Honorary Oscar in 2010. Her autobiography, 'By Myself and Then Some', won a National Book Award in 1980. Lauren Bacall died in 2014 in New York, at age 89. She was the mother of producer Stephen H. Bogart (1949), Leslie Bogart (1952), and actor Sam Robards (1961).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, no. 16. Photo: United Artists. Alla Nazimova in Salome (Charles Bryant, 1923). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
Alla Nazimova (1879–1945) was a grand, highly flamboyant star of the American silent cinema. The Russian-born film and theatre actress, screenwriter, and film producer was widely known as just Nazimova. On Broadway, she was noted for her work in the classic plays of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Turgenev. Her efforts at silent film production were less successful, but a few sound-film performances survive as a record of her art.
Alla Nazimova (Russian: Алла Назимовa) was born Marem-Ides Leventon (Russian name Adelaida Yakovlevna Leventon) in Yalta, Crimea, Russian Empire, in 1879. She was the youngest of three children of Jewish parents Yakov Abramovich Leventon, a pharmacist, and Sofia (Sara) Lvovna Horowitz, who moved to Yalta in 1870 from Kishinev. At age 17 Alla Leventon abandoned her training as a violinist and went to Moscow to work in theatre with V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. In 1892, she joined Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre using the name of Alla Nazimova for the first time. Her stage name was a combination of Alla (a diminutive of Adelaida) and the surname of Nadezhda Nazimova, the heroine of the Russian novel Children of the Streets. Nazimova's theatre career blossomed early. In 1899 she married Sergei Golovin, a fellow actor, but they soon separated. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: “She grew discontented with Stanislavsky and later performed in repertory. She met the legendary Pavel Orlenev, a close friend of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, and entered into both a personal and professional relationship with him.” By 1903 she was a major star in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. She toured Europe, including London and Berlin, with Orlenev. They immigrated to the United States in 1905. She was signed up by the American producer Henry Miller. Although she spoke not a word of English, she so impressed the Shubert brothers that they hired her on the condition she learns English in six months. In 1906 she made her Broadway debut in the title role of Hedda Gabler to critical and popular success. She also played other Ibsen characters: Nora in A Doll’s House, Hedwig in The Wild Duck, and Hilda in The Master Builder. She quickly became extremely popular and remained a major Broadway star for years. From 1912 to 1925 Nazimova maintained a ‘fake marriage’ with British actor and director Charles Bryant, who often was her co-star. In order to bolster this arrangement with Bryant, Nazimova kept her marriage to Golovin secret. Due to her notoriety in a 35-minute 1915 pacifist play entitled War Brides, Nazimova made her silent film debut in the film version, War Brides (Herbert Brenon, 1916), which was produced by independent producer Lewis J. Selznick. She made $100,000 touring in War Brides and an additional $60,000 for the film version. The film's lost status makes it now a sought-after title. In 1917, she negotiated a contract with Metro Pictures, a precursor to MGM, that included a weekly salary of $13,000. She moved from New York to Hollywood, where she made a number of highly successful films for Metro, including a part as a reformed prostitute in Revelation (George D. Baker, 1918), that earned her a considerable amount of money. Nazimova soon felt confident enough in her abilities to begin producing and writing films in which she also starred. Examples are Eye for Eye (Albert Capellani, 1918), The Brat (Herbert Blache, 1919) and Madame Peacock (Ray C. Smallwood, 1920).
Alla Nazimova starred in Camille (Ray C. Smallwood, 1921) as the courtesan Marguerite opposite Rudolph Valentino as her idealistic young lover Armand. Camille is based on the play adaptation La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias) by Alexandre Dumas, fils. The film was set in 1920s Paris, whereas the original version took place in Paris in the 1840s. It had lavish Art Deco sets and Rudolph Valentino later married the art director, Natacha Rambova. Jennifer Horne at The Women Film Pioneers Project: “Working under contract with Metro Pictures Corporation between late 1917 and April 1921, her company, Nazimova Productions, produced nine largely profitable, feature-length films and brought along the writing talent of writer-producer June Mathis. Details regarding the supervisory roles Nazimova played in the production of many of her films remain confusing since not all of Nazimova’s contributions are reflected in the official credits on films.” In her film adaptations A Doll's House (Charles Bryant, 1922), based on Henrik Ibsen, and Salomé (Charles Bryant, 1923), based on Oscar Wilde's play, Nazimova developed her own film making techniques, which were considered daring at the time. Despite the film being only a little over an hour in length and having no real action to speak of, Salomé cost over $350,000 to make. All the sets were constructed indoors to be able to have complete control over the lighting. The film was shot completely in black and white, matching the illustrations done by Aubrey Beardsley in the printed edition of Wilde's play. The costumes, designed by Natacha Rambova, used material only from Maison Lewis of Paris, such as the real silver lamé loincloths worn by the guards. Both A Doll's House and Salomé were critical and commercial failures. Gary Brumburgh: “The monetary losses she suffered as producer were astronomical. The Hays Code, which led to severe censorship in pictures, also led to her downfall, as did her outmoded acting style.” By 1925 Nazimova could no longer afford to invest in more films; and financial backers withdrew their support. Left with few options, she gave up on the film industry. She became an American citizen in 1927.
In 1928, Alla Nazimova returned to the Broadway stage as Madame Ranevsky in Eva Le Gallienne’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Acclaimed were also her starring roles as Natalya Petrovna in Rouben Mamoulian's 1930 production of Turgenev's A Month in the Country, Christine in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), O-Lan in Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth (1932), and as Mrs. Alving in Ibsen's Ghosts (1935). In the early 1940s, she played character roles in a few more films. She played Robert Taylor's mother who is in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany in Escape (Mervyn Le Roy, 1940) and Tyrone Power's mother in Blood and Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941). Her final film was Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944), an epic about the American home front during World War II. Nazimova openly conducted relationships with women, and there were outlandish parties at her mansion on Sunset Boulevard, in Hollywood, California, known as ‘The Garden of Alla’. She is credited with having originated the phrase ‘sewing circle’ as a discreet code for lesbian or bisexual actresses. Nazimova helped start the careers of both of Rudolph Valentino's wives, Jean Acker and Natacha Rambova. Although she was involved in a lesbian affair with Acker, it is debated if Nazimova and Rambova had a sexual affair. Nazimova was impressed by Rambova's skills as an art director, and Rambova designed the innovative sets for Nazimova's film productions of Camille and Salomé. Of those Nazimova is confirmed to have been involved with romantically, the list includes actress Eva Le Gallienne, director Dorothy Arzner, writer Mercedes de Acosta, and Oscar Wilde's niece, Dolly Wilde. Nazimova lived with Glesca Marshall from 1929 until her death. In 1945 Nazimova died of coronary thrombosis in a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 66.
Sources: Jennifer Horne (Women Film Pioneers Project), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
On 31 January 2022, there will be a special Salome post by La Collectionneuse at European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Ed. Soc. Anon. It. 'Bettini', Roma, no. 488. Photo: Bettini, Roma.
Luigi Serventi, aka Gigi Serventi (1885-1976), was a male star of Italian silent cinema, who often costarred with Italian divas such as Pina Menichelli. After his Italian career, he continued in Germany and Czechoslovakia in the 1920s.
Luigi Serventi, born in Rome in 1885, came from a Roman bourgeois family. He started his stage acting career in 1911, entering the theatre company of Vittoria Lepanto, and afterwards moving over to those of Ermete Novelli and Ettore Berti. In 1914 he abandoned the stage to fully dedicate himself to film acting, first as extra at the Latium Film company. Afterwards he moved to other production companies, such as Pasquali, Cines, Milano, Itala, etc. He was the male lead in successful films such as Il vetturale del Moncenisio (Leopoldo Carlucci, 1916) with Lina Millefleurs, Il Re, le Torri e gli Alfieri (Ivo Illuminati, 1917), a rare, lost futurist film with Giorgina Dentice di Frasso, Il padrone delle ferriere (Eugenio Perego, 1919) with Amleto Novelli and Pina Menichelli, and Il romanzo di un giovane povero (1920) with again Menichelli.
Serventi confirmed himself as one the male stars of Italian cinema in the silent era. He specialized in romantic roles, and often he acted together with Italian female stars such as Mercedes Brignone (Vizio atavico, 1914; La dote del burattinaio, 1914; Lo spettro bianco a Saint Moritz, 1914; Mezzanotte, 1915), Hesperia (Per la felicità degli altri, 1914; Dopo il veglione, 1914), Bianca Virginia Camagni (Non è tutto oro, 1914; La fioraia di Como, 1915; La gelosia, 1915; La crociata degli innocenti, 1917), Gemma Stagno Belllincioni (Cavalleria rusticana, 1916), Leda Gys (La Bohème, 1918), and, particularly, Pina Menichelli. Serventi acted opposite Menichelli in two films directed by Augusto Genina (La parola che uccide, 1914; Il mistero del castello di Monroe, 1914), and later five by Eugenio Perego (Il giardino incantato, 1919; Il padrone delle ferriere, 1919; Noris, 1919; La disfatta degli Erinni, 1919; La storia di una donna, 1920), and one by Amleto Palermi (the Octave Feuillet adaptation Il romanzo di un giovane povero, 1920). In 1914-1915 Genina directed Serventi in eight films and two more in the twenties. Other directors of Serventi were e.g. Baldassarre Negroni (1914-1915), Ugo Falena (1916-1917) and Eugenio Perego (191-1920). Occasionally, Serventi tried his luck with film direction: Le mogli e le arance (1917), co-directed with Lucio D’Ambra, and Suprema bellezza (1921). In both films he also played the male lead.
Because of the crisis in the Italian film industry, Luigi Serventi emigrated to Germany in 1922. Here he met the same public acclaim, appearing in several films, opposite female stars emigrated to Berlin like him, such as Lucy Doraine, Maria Jacobini and Diana Karenne. His first German film was Sterbende Völker (Robert Reinert 1922), which all-star cast included Fritz Kortner, Helena Makowska, Aud Egede Nissen, Otto Gebühr, Gustavo Serena and Paul Wegener. In Germany he often played aristocrats, as in Bohème - Künstlerliebe (Gennaro Righelli, 1923), Der Geldteufel (Heinz Goldberg, 1923), Finale der Liebe (Felix Basch, 1925), and Die Ausgestoßenen (Martin Berger, 1927). Serventi also acted in Czechoslovakia (Muz bez srdce/ The Man Without a Heart, 1923; Vyznavaci slunce/ The Sun Disciples, 1926; Erotikon, 1929) and in Austria (Lebende Ware, 1929). Yet, Serventi was also called back to Italy to act in films such as Voglio tradire mio marito (Mario Camerini 1925) with Linda Pini and Alberto Collo, Il gigante delle Dolomiti (Guido Brignone, 1927) with Bartolomeo Pagano, and Il cantastorie di Venezia (Atto Retti-Marsani, 1929). When sound cinema set in, Serventi’s career started to fade way. His last true film part was in Berge in Flammen/Mountains in Flames (Luis Trenker, Karl Hartl, 1931) with Trenker and Lissi Arna. In the same year Serventi settled in Kitzbühel, Austria, and remained there for many years. Only at a very high age he returned to Italy. Luigi Serventi died in Rome in 1976.
Sources: Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.
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