German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., no. 1827. Photo: Paramount. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

Chinese-American actress Nancy Kwan (1939) played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian ancestry in major Hollywood film roles. She is best known for her debut as a free-spirited Hong Kong prostitute who captivates artist William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (Richard Quine, 1960). She followed it the next year with the hit musical, Flower Drum Song (1961). Kwan spent the 1960s commuting between film roles in America and Europe.

 

Nancy Kwan Ka Shen (Chinese: 關家蒨) was born in Hong Kong in 1939 and grew up in Kowloon Tong. She is the daughter of Kwan Wing Hong, a Cantonese architect and Marquita Scott, a European model of English and Scottish ancestry. Kwan has an older brother, Ka Keung. In fear of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during World War II, Wing Hong, in the guise of a coolie, escaped from Hong Kong to North China in Christmas 1941 with his two children, whom he hid in wicker baskets. Kwan and her brother were transported by servants, evading Japanese sentries. They remained in exile in western China for five years until the war ended, after which they returned to Hong Kong and lived in a spacious, contemporary home her father designed. Scott escaped to England and never rejoined the family. Kwan's parents divorced when she was two years old. Her mother later moved to New York and married an American. Remaining in Hong Kong with the children, her father married a Chinese woman, whom Kwan called "Mother". Her father and her stepmother raised her, in addition to her brother and five half-brothers and half-sisters Five of Kwan's siblings became lawyers. Kwan attended the Catholic Maryknoll Convent School until she was 13 years old, after which she travelled to Kingsmoor School in Glossop, England a boarding school that her brother, Ka Keung, was then attending. Her brother studied to become an architect and she studied to become a dancer, soon also at the Royal Ballet School in London. Afterward, she travelled back to Hong Kong, where she started a ballet school. Stage producer Ray Stark posted an advertisement in the Hong Kong Tiger Standard (later renamed The Standard) regarding auditions for the character Suzie Wong for a play. Kwan was discovered by Stark in a film studio constructed by her architect father. After auditioning for Stark, she was asked to screen test to play a character in the film The World of Suzie Wong. Kwan did three screen tests, and a deadlock existed between whether to choose Kwan or France Nuyen, who played Suzie Wong on stage. Owing to Kwan's lack of acting experience, at Stark's request, she travelled to the United States, where she attended acting school in Hollywood and resided in the Hollywood Studio Club, a chaperoned dormitory, with other junior actresses. She later moved to New York. Kwan signed a seven-year contract with Stark's Seven Arts Productions at a beginning salary of $300 a week though she was not given a distinct role. When The World of Suzie Wong began to tour, Kwan was assigned the part of a bargirl. In addition to her small supporting character role, Kwan became an understudy for France Nuyen. Though Stark and the male lead William Holden preferred Kwan, despite her somewhat apprehensive demeanor during the screen test, she did not get the role. Paramount favored the eminent France Nuyen, who had been widely praised for her performance in the film South Pacific (1958) Stark acquiesced to Paramount's wishes. Nuyen received the role and Kwan later took the place of Nuyen on Broadway. In a September 1960 interview with Associated Press journalist Bob Thomas, she said, "I was bitterly disappointed, and I almost quit and went home when I didn't get the picture." In 1959, one month after Nuyen was selected for the film role and while Kwan was touring in Toronto, Stark told her to screen test again for the film. Nuyen, who was in an unstable relationship with Marlon Brando, had a nervous breakdown and was fired from the role because of her erratic actions. The film's director, Jean Negulesco, was fired and replaced by Richard Quine. Kwan began filming in London with co-star William Holden.

 

The World of Suzie Wong (Richard Quine, 1960) was a "box-office sensation". Critics lavished praise on Kwan for her performance. She was given the nickname "Chinese Bardot" for her unforgettable dance performance. Kwan and two other actresses, Ina Balin and Hayley Mills, were awarded the Golden Globe for the "Most Promising Newcomer–Female" in 1960. Scholar Jennifer Leah Chan of New York University wrote that Suzie provided an Asian actress—Kwan—with the most significant Hollywood role since actress Anna May Wong's success in the 1920s. Kwan was on the October 1960 cover of Life, cementing her status as an eminent sex symbol in the 1960s. In 1961, Nancy Kwan starred in Flower Drum Song (Henry Koster, 1961) in a related role. The film, based on the Broadway musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, was distinguished for being the first major Hollywood feature film with an all-Asian cast. It would be also the last film to do so for more than 30 years. Her prior ballet education provided a strong foundation for her role in Flower Drum Song, where she had much space to dance. After starring in The World of Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song, Kwan's fame peaked in 1962. As a Hollywood icon, Kwan lived in a house atop Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles. She commuted in a white British sports car and danced to Latin verses. The 22-years-old Kwan was dating Swiss actor Maximilian Schell. Kwan's success in her early career was not mirrored in later years, due to the cultural nature of 1960s America. Kwan had to journey to Europe and Hong Kong to escape the ethnic typecasting in Hollywood that confined her largely to Asian roles in spite of her Eurasian appearance. Her third film was the British drama The Main Attraction (Daniel Petrie, 1962) with Pat Boone. She played an Italian circus performer who was the love interest of Boone's character. While she was filming in the Austrian Alps, she met Peter Pock, a hotelier and ski teacher, with whom she immediately fell in love. After several weeks, the two married and resided in Innsbruck, Austria. Kwan later gave birth to Bernhard "Bernie" Pock. Her contract with Seven Arts led her to travel around the world to make films. In 1963, Kwan starred as the title character of the comedy Tamahine (Philip Leacock, 1963), opposite Dennis Price. She played an English-Tahitian ward of the headmaster at an old English public school. In the aviation disaster film Fate Is the Hunter (Ralph Nelson, 1964), her seventh film, Kwan played an ichthyologist opposite Glenn Ford. It was her first role as a Eurasian character. Kwan's roles were predominantly comic characters. She divorced Peter Pock in 1968. Kwan met Bruce Lee when he choreographed the martial arts moves in the spy comedy The Wrecking Crew (Phil Karlson, 1969), starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm. In Kwan's role in the film, she fought the character played by Sharon Tate by throwing a flying kick. Her martial arts move was based not on karate training, but on her dance foundation. In 2019, the film was referenced and briefly seen in Quentin Tarantino's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in which Tate is shown enjoying the film at the Fox Bruin Theater. She became close friends with Lee and met his wife and two children. In the 1970s, both Kwan and Lee returned to Hong Kong, where they carried on their companionship.

 

Nancy Kwan married Hollywood scriptwriter David Giler in July 1970 in a civil ceremony in Carson City, Nevada. That year, Kwan returned to Hong Kong with her son because her father was sick. She initially intended to remain for one year to assist him, but ultimately remained for about seven years. In 1972 she divorced Giler. She did not stop her work, starring as Dr. Sue in the action film Wonder Women (Robert Vincent O'Neil, 1973), Supercock (Gus Trikonis, 1975), and Fear/Night Creature (Lee Madden, 1978) with Donald Pleasance and Ross Hagen. The latter introduced her to filmmaker Norbert Meisel, who became her third husband. . While in Hong Kong, Kwan founded a production company, Nancy Kwan Films, which made dozens of commercials for the Southeast Asia market. In 1979, she returned to the United States, because Kwan wanted her son Bernie to finish his schooling there. There she played characters in the television series Fantasy Island (1978), Knots Landing (1984), and The A-Team (1986). In 1987, Nancy Kwan co-owned the dim sum restaurant, Joss. Kwan, producer Ray Stark, and restaurateur and Hong Kong film director Cecile Tang financed the restaurant, located on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. In 1993, Kwan played Gussie Yang, a tough-talking, soft-hearted Hong Kong restaurateur, in the fictional Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (Rob Cohen, 1993). starring Jason Scott Lee. She played a pivotal role in the film, a character based on Seattle restaurateur and political leader Ruby Chow who hires Bruce Lee as a dishwasher and gives him the funds to open a martial arts school. She also wrote, directed, and starred in a film about Eurasians, Loose Woman With No Face (Nancy Kwan, 1993). She was asked about whether she was confronted with racism as a leading Asian Hollywood actress in the 1960s. Kwan replied, "That was 30 years ago and (prejudice) wasn't such a heavy issue then. I was just in great Broadway productions that were turned into films. I personally never felt any racial problems in Hollywood." In the 1990s, she faced a severe shortage of strong roles. She attributed this to both her age and the movie enterprise's aversion to selecting Asians for non-Asian roles. In earlier years, she was able to play an Italian and a Tahitian. She passed on a role in The Joy Luck Club (1993) because the filmmakers refused to excise a line calling The World of Suzie Wong a "...horrible racist film". In 1993, Kwan co-starred in the two-character play Arthur and Leila about two siblings who struggle with their Chinese identities, and in 1994 she assumed the role of 52-year-old Martha in Singapore Repertory Theatre's showing of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' by Edward Albee. She and her husband produced the feature film Biker Poet. of which Bernie was the director and an actor. In 1996, when he was 33, Kwan's son, Bernie, died after contracting AIDS. Four years after his death, poet and actress Amber Tamblyn compiled her debut poetry book 'Of the Dawn' and dedicated it to Pock. She acted in the film Biker Poet with him when she was nine. Into the 1990s, Kwan appeared on television commercials and appeared in infomercials as the spokesperson for the cosmetic Oriental Pearl Cream. Kwan has been involved in philanthropy for AIDS awareness. In 1997, she published 'A Celebration of Life – Memories of My Son'. In 2006, Kwan reunited with Flower Drum Song co-star James Shigeta to perform A. R. Gurney's two-person play Love Letters. Kwan appeared in the documentary Hollywood Chinese (Arthur Dong, 2007). Kwan and her husband Norbert Meisel wrote, directed, and produced Ray of Sunshine (Norbert Meisel, 2007), a Bildungsroman film starring Cheyenne Rushing and with Kwan in a supporting role. Kwan wrote an introduction for the 2008 book 'For Goodness Sake: A Novel of the Afterlife of Suzie Wong' by James Clapp. During her career, Kwan has appeared in two television series and over 50 films. Kwan currently resides in Los Angeles and has family members in Hong Kong. She recently appeared in the feature Paint It Black (Amber Tamblyn, 2016), and the documentary Be Water (Bao Nguyen, 2020) about Bruce Lee.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Dutch postcard, no. 198. Photo: Universal-International. Publicity still for Lady Godiva of Coventry (Arthur Lubin, 1955).

 

Irish born Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015) was one of the icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The feisty and fearless actress starred in John Ford’s Oscar-winning drama How Green Was My Valley (1941), set in Wales, and Ford’s Irish-set The Quiet Man (1952) opposite John Wayne. The famously red-headed actress also worked successfully with Charles Laughton at Jamaica Inn (1939) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), starred in the perennial Christmas hit Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and appeared in the Disney children’s hit The Parent Trap (1961).

 

Maureen O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh in 1920. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team The Shamrock Rovers. From the age of 6 to 17, Maureen trained in drama, music, and dance, and at the age of 10, she joined the Rathmines Theatre Company and worked in amateur theatre in the evenings after her lessons. O'Hara's dream at this time was to be a stage actress. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. Her first screen test was for a British film called Kicking the Moon Around (Walter Forde, 1938) at Elstree Studios, It was arranged by American bandleader Harry Richman, who was then appearing in Dublin. The result was deemed unsatisfactory, but when Charles Laughton later saw it he was intrigued by her large and expressive eyes. He arranged for her to co-star with him in the British film Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939). Laughton was so pleased with O'Hara's performance that she was cast in the role of Esmeralda opposite him in the Hollywood production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939). The epic film was an extraordinary success and international audiences were now alerted to her natural beauty and talent. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career in Hollywood. Director John Ford cast her as Angharad in How Green Was My Valley (1941), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. She starred in Swashbucklers such as The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942), opposite Tyrone Power, and Sinbad the Sailor (Richard Wallace, 1947), with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., She also starred as Doris Walker and the mother of a young Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947), which became a perennial Christmas classic.

 

Maureen O'Hara made a number of films with John Wayne. She met Wayne through director John Ford, and the two hit it right off. O'Hara: "I adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever.” Opposite Wayne, she played Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952), an iconic film that is still very much celebrated in Ireland and abroad. In total, they made five films together between 1948 and 1972, also including Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950), The Wings of Eagles (John Ford, 1957), McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) and Big Jake (George Sherman, 1971). O’Hara most often played strong and willful women, but offscreen she was the same. In 1957 her career was threatened by scandal when the tabloid Confidential magazine claimed she and a man had engaged in 'the hottest show in town' in the back row of Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. However, as she later told the Associated Press, at the time she “was making a movie in Spain, and I had the passport to prove it”. She testified against the magazine in a criminal libel trial and brought a lawsuit that was settled out of court. The magazine eventually went out of business.

 

Maureen O'Hara was married three times. In 1939, at the age of 19, O'Hara secretly married Englishman George H. Brown, a film producer, production assistant and occasional scriptwriter, who she had met on the set of Jamaica Inn. The marriage was annulled in 1941. Later that year, O'Hara married American film director William Houston Price (dialogue director in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), but the union ended in 1953, reportedly as a result of his alcohol abuse. They had one child, a daughter named Bronwyn FitzSimons Price (1944). In later life, Maureen O’Hara married her third husband, Brigadier General Charles Blair. The couple lived in the US Virgin Islands, where he operated an airline. He died in a plane crash in 1978 and O’Hara took over management of the airline, which she eventually sold. “Being married to Charlie Blair and traveling all over the world with him, believe me, was enough for any woman,” she said in 1995. “It was the best time of my life.” O'Hara remained retired from acting until 1991, when she starred in the film Only the Lonely (Chris Columbus, 1991), playing Rose Muldoon, the domineering mother of a Chicago cop played by John Candy. In the following years, she continued to work, starring in several made-for-TV films. Her autobiography, 'Tis Herself, was published in 2004 and was a New York Times Bestseller. She was never nominated for an Oscar, instead of being given an honorary award in 2014. After accepting her statuette from a wheelchair, the then 94-year-old star protested when her speech of thanks was cut short. Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at home in Boise, Idaho, in 2015. She was 95 years old.

 

Sources: The Guardian, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Vintage playcard. Photo: Ernest A. Bachrach. Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941).

 

American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).

 

George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose instead to travel to Europe. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.

 

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”

 

Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals, but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically, and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.

 

Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons, and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut, and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.

 

Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.

 

In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box-office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.

 

In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an aging film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973) , a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared on his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

Vintage card. Photo: Columbia.

 

American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).

 

George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose instead to travel to Europe. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.

 

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”

 

Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals, but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically, and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.

 

Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons, and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut, and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.

 

Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.

 

In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box-office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.

 

In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an aging film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973) , a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared on his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

German postcard by Ross Verlag in the Luxus series, no. 576. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-year-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers to revolt and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh-so-seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoisted on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision was the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "In addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100 per cent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

American postcard by Fotofolio, New York, N.Y., no. P27. Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. Caption: Orson Welles, 1979.

 

American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).

 

George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose instead to travel to Europe. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.

 

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”

 

Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals, but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically, and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.

 

Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons, and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut, and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.

 

Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.

 

In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box-office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.

 

In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an aging film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973) , a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared on his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

East-German postcard by Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 2/74, 1974. Photo: Unifrance Film.

 

Yesterday, 14 December 2019, the queen of the Nouvelle Vague, film actress, singer and director Anna Karina (1940) has passed away. French, but Danish-born Karina was the muse of director Jean-Luc Godard and starred in eight of his films. “Today, French cinema has been orphaned. It has lost one of its legends,” culture minister Franck Riester tweeted. Anna Karina was 79.

 

Anna Karina was born Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer in Solbjerg, Denmark, in 1940. Her mother was a dress shop owner and her father a ship's captain. Before she turned one, her father had left her mother. First she was raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four. Then she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as 'terribly wanting to be loved' and as a child, she made numerous attempts to run away from home. She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in the Danish short film Pigen og skoene/Girls and Shoes (Ib Schedes, 1954), which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. She studied dance and painting in Denmark and for a while made a living selling her paintings. In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris. She had a break when, sitting briefly at the cafe Les Deux Magots, she was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to do some photos. Hanne became a rising fashion model, and met Coco Chanel and Pierre Cardin. Chanel advised her to use as a professional name Anna Karina. She made a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered in soapsuds, and was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Godard was casting his debut feature film, À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. He offered her a small role, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene. However, she eventually accepted his offer to play a major role in his second film, Le Petit Soldat/The Little Soldier (1960) with Michel Subor. Karina, who was still under 21 had to persuade her estranged mother to sign the contract for her.

 

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard married during the shooting of their next film, Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy. It is a tribute to American musical comedy and the first film Godard shot in color and Cinemascope. Judd Blaise at AllMovie: "Rather than the sometimes alienating, dense intellectualism of later Godard works, Une femme est une femme offers aesthetic pleasure through luxurious visuals and a charming musical score by Michel Legrand. Against this bright backdrop, Karina proves particularly fetching, capturing the film's frolicsome mood in an unforced manner. While not one of Godard's most groundbreaking or influential films, Une femme est une femme is one of his most appealing and pleasurable efforts." J. Hoberman at Criterion: "Mainly, A Woman Is a Woman is a valentine to Karina, who became pregnant during the course of the movie’s production; she and Godard were married in March 1961, an event that made the cover of Paris Match." At the Berlin Film Festival in 1961, Anna Karina was awarded as Best Actress for Une femme est une femme. In the following years, the couple made Vivre sa Vie/My Life to Live (1962), Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution/Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine, Pierrot le fou/Pierrot Goes Wild (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Made in U.S.A. (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud and the anthology film Le plus vieux métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (1967). Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, behind the scenes, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. In 1967, Godard and Karina divorced.

 

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "From all reports, Karina and Godard's relationship was symbiotic; it is certainly no coincidence that both actress and director went into a temporary artistic eclipse after their 1967 breakup." Anna Karina's acting career was not, however, limited to Godard's films, and she had a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Some consider as her best performance her role in La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966) in which she plays an intelligent, freedom-loving woman who is forced into a convent against her will. She also acted in the Italian productions Le Soldatesse/The Camp Followers (Valerio Zurlini, 1965) and the Albert Camus adaptation Lo Straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) starring Marcello Mastroianni. Karina also maintained a singing career and scored hits with Sous le soleil exactement and Roller Girl. Both songs were taken from the TV musical Anna (Pierre Koralnik, 1967), which Serge Gainsbourg had especially written for her. After her divorce in 1967 she went to Hollywood. She acted in Justine (George Cukor, 1969) and returned to Paris. Her later films included Laughter in the Dark (Tony Richardson, 1969), Rendez-vous à Bray/Appointment in Bray (André Delvaux, 1971) with Mathieu Carrière, Pane e cioccolata/Bread and Chocolate (Franco Brusati, 1973) starring Nino Manfredi, Chinesisches Roulette/Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976), and Olyan mint otthon/Just Like Home (Márta Mészáros, 1978) with Jan Nowicki.

 

Anna Karina acted in but also wrote, produced and directed Vivre ensemble/Living Together (1973). She has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. She appeared on stage in Jacques Rivette's adaptation of La Religieuse/The Nun, Pour Lucrece, Toi et Tes Nuages, Francoise Sagan's Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit and Ingmar Bergman's Apres La Répétition/After the Repetition. In 2005 she released Chansons de films, a collection of songs sung in films. Incidentally she played in films like L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss (André Delvaux, 1988) with Gian Maria Volonté, Haut bas fragile/Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995) and the romantic thriller The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme, 2002) starring Mark Wahlberg. James Travers at Le Film Site on L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss : "This sombre adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar’s acclaimed literary work was directed by the acclaimed Belgian film-maker André Delvaux. Visually, the film is impressive and it boasts an excellent cast, but for all its excellent production values it is a heavy and somewhat laboured affair." Karina's most recent film as a director was Victoria (2008) in which she also starred. Mark Deming at AllMovie: "Thirty-five years after directing her first feature film, iconic actress Anna Karina once again steps behind the camera for this charming comedy-drama shot in Canada. Jimmy (Emmanuel Reichenbach) and Stanislas (Jean-Francois Moran) are a pair of nightclub performers who play second-rate gay nightclubs as part of a drag act called 'Les Lolitas'." After Godard, Anna Karina was married three times more: to scriptwriter-actor Pierre Fabre (1968–1973), actor-director Daniel Duval (1978–1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982–1994). Since 2009 she was married to Maurice Cooks. On 14 December 2019, Anna Karina has died in a Paris hospital of the effects of cancer at the age of 79, her agent Laurent Balandras told AFP, adding that she passed away in the company of her fourth husband, American director Dennis Berry.

 

Sources: Judd Blaise (AllMovie), J. Hoberman (Criterion), James Travers (Le Film Guide), Mark Deming (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), The Guardian, Fuck yeah! Anna Karina, IMDb and Wikipedia.

 

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Swiss postcard by Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne / News Productions, Baulmes, no. 55459. Photo: Horst von Harbou, 1926 / Collection de la Cinemathèque française, Paris. Brigitte Helm in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927).

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double, the evil robot Maria, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was in 1925 chosen by Fritz Lang to star in Metropolis. Reportedly her mother had sent her photograph to scriptwriter Thea von Harbou and Lang made a screen test with her. The Ufa gave her a ten-year contract and Metropolis made her a star overnight. The wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927) was her first project working with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who was probably best able to bring out her mysterious adaptability. His films Abwege (1928) and L’ Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis (1932) are among the films that allowed Helm to act outside all the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers. Her other silent film appearances include Am Rande der Welt (1927, Karl Grune), the SF film Alraune (Henrik Galeen, 1928), Geheimnisse des Orients (Alexandre Volkoff, 1928), L’ Argent (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928), and Die Wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna (Hanns Schwarz, 1929).

 

Her first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She went on from her silent successes with a successful sound remake of Alraune (Richard Oswald, 1930). In addition, she also played in France and England, where she appeared among other things in foreign versions of her German films. Her relationship with the Ufa was very rocky. While the studio made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material offered to her and with restrictive clauses dictating over her weight. Her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Reportedly she was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel (1930) which went to Marlene Dietrich and she was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but she refused to come to America. In 1935, reportedly angered by Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision was the negative press reports which went round because of several traffic accidents she caused and of a short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of Oscar Wilde. She married industrialist Dr. Hugo Kunheim and retired. The pair would raise four children. Brigitte Helm lived out the rest of her life in quiet solitude in Italy and from the 1960s on in Switzerland. In 1968 she received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again or even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered questions of her old fans for her signature and her signature adorns a good many collections.

 

Sources: Thomas Staedeli, Wikipedia, Film Reference, Lenin Imports, and IMDb.

 

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

British postcard by London Postcard Company, no YS 5314 (Series 2 set of 9). Photo: Subafilms Ltd. Film image of The Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968). Caption: Up on the hill.

 

Yellow Submarine (1968) is an animated full-length film based on the music of The Beatles. It is also the title of the film's album of music, which is part of the Beatles' musical oeuvre. The film was directed by Canadian-born animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. With over 200 employees, chief designer Heinz Edelmann and director Charles Dunning worked on the film for eleven months. The animators came from England, but also from the USA and other countries in Europe. The real Beatles themselves do not appear until the final scene of the film.

 

In 1963, the American film studio United Artists approached The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein for a contract to make a number of films around the group. Epstein saw the deal as a good way to promote The Beatles and sell their music. United Artists was particularly interested in the money that would come in from selling the music albums. The Beatles were under contract to Capitol Records in the US, but that agreement excluded music albums. The studio knew that album sales would always make money even if the film flopped, so they saw the film deal with The Beatles as one in which they could not lose. On the other hand, the deal United Artists made with Epstein was not very favourable to The Beatles. Epstein was not a good negotiator and was an amateur in many financial matters. Admittedly, The Beatles were not at their peak of popularity at the time (certainly not in the US), but even in that context it was a disappointing contract. He had no idea of the normal profit percentages that could be negotiated, so he proposed a 7.5 % share. The United Artists studio bosses couldn't believe their luck; they had been afraid of tough negotiations and perhaps a higher percentage than 25%, and now Epstein came up with the ludicrous 7.5%. They immediately made a deal for three films. Not long after, the Beatles' popularity shot through the roof (also in the US), and Richard Lester made the first Beatles film A Hard Day's Night one of the most successful films of all time. This did not only deprive The Beatles of millions in earnings. They were also stuck with a financially disappointing film contract that would hang around their necks like a millstone.

 

The second film that The Beatles made for United Artists was Help, also directed by Lester. Although the film was as successful as its predecessor, the Beatles were not very enthusiastic about the end result. They were afraid of getting stuck in the format of "the happy adventures of the Beatles". But Brian Epstein had signed a contract with United Artists in 1963, and the film production company demanded a third film. All sorts of ideas were floated, such as a film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings with Ringo as Frodo and John as Gandalf, but the third film did not materialise. In 1967, the four Beatles thought they could direct themselves and made the television production "Magical Mystery Tour". The TV movie was broadcast by the BBC in black and white and was received by viewers and critics with dismay. After this, The Beatles' interest in films dropped to a low point. Their manager Brian Epstein came up with the solution. He was approached by Al Brodax, the head of King Features Syndicate, with the idea of making a full-length animated film based on a number of Beatles songs. The idea was based on the animated series about The Beatles that had been broadcast since 1965. TVC produced this series, in which an animated adventure was always made around a Beatles song. The Beatles were excited because they did not have to contribute to the film. But for this very reason, United Artists rejected Yellow Submarine as the third film. It was only with the documentary Let it Be that the Beatles fulfilled their contractual obligations. However, Yellow Submarine was a hit in cinemas and the critics were also enthusiastic. They especially praised the innovations in animation. The drawn appearance of The Beatles was based on the appearance of the real Beatles at the time of the recording of the film that accompanied the single Strawberry Fields Forever. Only, Paul McCartney's moustache had disappeared from his alter ego in the film. The Beatles themselves, who had expected some kind of Disney film, were pleasantly surprised by the result of Yellow Submarine and decided to appear in the final scene themselves.

 

The starting point for the film was the song "Yellow Submarine". Paul McCartney wrote it as one of the songs that drummer Ringo Starr could sing with his limited singing voice. It was intended as a children's song with simple lyrics and melody. Subsequent accusations that "yellow submarines" were a code name for yellow pills, namely Nembutol capsules, so-called "downers" (hence "submarine": submarine) were dismissed by McCartney. Producer Lee Minoff based himself on the idea of a children's song and wrote the first draft of the story. Soon, several scriptwriters were working on the scenario. It was decided to include a number of recent Beatles songs alongside 'Yellow Submarine'. Some of these songs were taken from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This Beatles album, released in 1967, caused a sensation in the music world. The idea behind the album was that The Beatles were transformed into the fictional pop group Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. On the cover, they can be seen in satin military uniforms in bright colours. This was the impetus for the idea of including in the film a Sgt. Pepper who lives in Pepperland with his band. At one point, there were about twenty versions of the screenplay circulating. One of the writers was Roger McCough, a poet from Liverpool, who contributed much to the dialogues with their typical ambiguities, expressions from Liverpool, and private jokes from The Beatles. McCough received 500 pounds for his contribution, but no mention in the credits. Mention was made of Jack Mendelsohn and Erich Segal. Mendelsohn had worked on the Beatles' animated series, but Segal was unfamiliar with the film business in 1967. He was working at Yale as an assistant to the professor of Classics. He was brought to London by Brodax to put together a coherent script from the large amount of material, some of which consisted only of fragments. Segal worked on the script continuously for several weeks under the threat of a deadline. He was barely allowed to leave his hotel room to jog. However, Segal was able to take advantage of a brilliant suggestion by lead designer Heinz Edelmann. During a production meeting, the collaborators came to a disturbing conclusion: the screenplay lacked an enemy. Pepperland was a paradise without a snake. Edelmann came up with the concept of the Blue Meanies and their attack on everything that smelt of music. (Incidentally, the meanies were originally red, entirely in keeping with the Cold War. An error by Edelmann's assistant caused the colours to be switched and the meanies became blue). Despite all the creative contributions, Yellow Submarine's screenplay also suffered from the fact that the music overshadowed the story and the story was adapted to the songs. It did result in a modern fairy tale about the 1967 hippy generation.

 

Source: Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

They F*** You Up : How to survive family life by Oliver James

 

In this groundbreaking book, clinical psychologist Oliver James shows that it is the way we were cared for in the first six years of life that has a crucial effect on who we are and how we behave. Nurture, in effect, shapes our very nature. In a remarkable analysis of science and popular culture, James combines the latest research with revealing case studies, interviews, and biographies with the likes of Michael Jackson, Mia Farrow, and Prince Charles to prove his point. In addition to presenting his findings, James explains how they can be a source of liberation in our lives. Through the use of provocative questions and insightful examples, he helps readers better understand the way their childhood past is affecting their present and how to "be your own scriptwriter." He also argues that his findings could have huge implications for society as a whole. A top-seller and recipient of significant attention in the U.K., They F*** You Up is an opinionated, entertaining read which causes us to ponder the origins of our present behavior.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 394, offered by Hardy, France, "La vedette du Chocolat". Photo: Paramount, 1952.

 

American actor William Holden (1918-1981) was called 'The Golden Boy' thanks to his first starring role as a young man torn between the violin and boxing in Golden Boy (1939). From then on he was typecast as the boy-next-door. After returning from World War II military service, he got two important roles: Joe Gillis, the gigolo, in Sunset Blvd. (1950), and the tutor in Born Yesterday (1950). These were followed by his Oscar-winning role as the cynical sergeant in Stalag 17 (1953). He stayed popular through the 1950s, appearing in such films as Picnic (1955) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

 

William 'Bill' Holden was born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, in 1918. Holden grew up in a wealthy family, which moved to Pasadena when Holden was three. His father, William Franklin Beedle, Sr., was an industrial chemist, head of the George W. Gooch Laboratories in Pasadena and his mother, Mary Blanche (Ball), a teacher. His father, a keen physical fitness enthusiast, taught young Bill the art of tumbling and boxing. He went to study chemistry at Pasadena Junior College. A trip to New York and Broadway set Bill's path firmly toward an acting career. He had already performed in school plays and lent his voice to several radio plays in Los Angeles. When he played the part of octogenarian Eugene Curie at the Pasadena Workshop Theatre, he was spotted by a Paramount talent scout. In 1938, he made his feature film debut with a role in Prison Farm. Having joined Paramount's Golden Circle Club of promising young actors, Bill was now groomed for stardom. However, it was a loan-out to Columbia that secured him his breakthrough role. He was the sixty-sixth actor to audition for the part of an Italian violinist forced to become a boxer in Golden Boy (Rouben Mamoulian, 1939) opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Adolphe Menjou. The picture was a minor hit and Columbia consequently acquired half his contract. Since then, he was cast many times as the 'boy-next-door' or a rookie serviceman in pictures like Our Town (Sam Wood, 1940), I Wanted Wings (Mitchell Leisen, 1941) opposite 'peek-a-boo' star Veronica Lake, and The Fleet's In (Victor Schertzinger, 1942). His salary had been enhanced and he now earned $150 a week. In July 1941, he married 25-year old actress Brenda Marshall, who commanded five times his income. In 1942, he enlisted in the Officers Candidate School in Florida, graduating as an Air Force second lieutenant. He spent the next three years on P.R. duties and making training films for the Office of Public Information. One of his brothers, a naval pilot, was shot down and killed over the Pacific in 1943.

 

After the war, William Holden got two very important roles. He played caddish, down-on-his-luck scriptwriter Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) and a teacher in Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950). I.S. Mowis at IMDb: "Holden had effectively graduated from leading man to leading actor. No longer typecast, he was now allowed more hard-edged or even morally ambiguous roles." His Oscar-winning role was that of a self-serving, cynical prisoner-of-war in Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953). Throughout the 1950s, Holden remained popular, thanks in part to films such as Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) with Audrey Hepburn, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Mark Robson, 1954), and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (Henry King, 1955). In Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955) he played an unemployed drifter who disrupts and changes the lives (particularly of the women) in a small Kansas town. Already one of the highest paid stars of the 1950s, Holden received 10% of the gross for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), making him an instant multi-millionaire. He invested much of his earnings in various enterprises, even a radio station in Hong Kong. At the end of the decade, he relocated his family to Geneva, Switzerland, but spent more and more of his own time globetrotting. In the 1960s, Holden founded the exclusive Mount Kenya Safari Club with oil billionaire Ray Ryan and Swiss financier Carl Hirschmann. His fervent advocacy of wildlife conservation now consumed more of his time than his acting. His films, consequently, dropped in quality. I.S. Mowis: "Drinking ever more heavily, he also started to show his age. By the time he appeared as the leader of an outlaw gang on their last roundup in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), his face was so heavily lined that someone likened it to "a map of the United States. He still had a couple more good performances in him", in The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974) with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) opposite Faye Dunaway. His last film was the excellent comedy S.O.B. (Blake Edwards, 1981) with Julie Andrews. William Holden married actress Brenda Marshall in 1941, from whom he divorced in 1971. They had two children, born in 1943 (Peter) and 1946 (Scott). Holden also had a daughter, Virginia, from a previous marriage. Virginia was not Holden's child, but he adopted her. Holden was good friends with fellow actor Ronald Reagan. In 1952, he and his wife were best men at the wedding of Reagan and Nancy Davis. However, he had no interest in politics. In 1981, William Holden died from a head injury caused by a fall. Holden had drunk too much and remained conscious for at least half an hour after his fall. He did not realise that he had to call an ambulance, otherwise, he would certainly have survived.

 

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

Dutch postcard by Filma. Brigitte Helm in Die Herrin von Atlantis/Lost Atlantis (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1932). Caption: Friday 6 December Premiere at the Tuschinski Theatre. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

German postcard by Verlag Harlip, no. 465. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. Star 130. Photo: Air France / Distribution VU. Caption: Orson Wells (sic), Septembre 1967.

 

American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).

 

George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose instead to travel to Europe. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.

 

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”

 

Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals, but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically, and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.

 

Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons, and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut, and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.

 

Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.

 

In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box-office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.

 

In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an aging film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973) , a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared on his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

Historic Dales Country pub set in Upper Wharfedale nestling beneath the rising fells of Langstrothdale, standing in a stunning location a favourite watering hole of Bradford born J B Priestley author, novelist, playwright, scriptwriter,

French postcard by Editions d'art Yvon, Paris, no. 40-110-07. Photo: Parc Film / KIM. Micheline Presle and Jacques Perrin in Peau d'âne/Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy, 1970). Caption: Donkey Skin. A Tale by Charles Perrault. A film written and directed by Jacques Demi. My mother, I want Donkey Skin to make me a cake.

 

On Thursday 21 April 2022, French actor Jacques Perrin (1941-2022) passed away. Handsome and talented, Perrin started his career as the romantic hero in the films of Italian director Valerio Zurlini. Later he made powerful films with Costa-Gravas and played the adult Salvatore in the international hit Cinema Paradiso (1988). With his studio, he produced successful political films such as Z (1969) and nature documentaries as Microcosmos (1996).

 

Jacques Perrin was born Jacques André Simonet in Paris in 1941. Occasionally, he is credited as Jacques Simonet. Perrin was his mother's name. His father, Alexandre Simonet, was a theatre director. In 1946, the five years old made his uncredited film debut in Les Portes de la nuit/Gates of the Night (1946, Marcel Carné), starring Serge Reggiani and Yves Montand. Perrin was trained as an actor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique. On stage, he gave over 400 performances of L'Année du bac in a Paris theatre. In the cinema he played his first major juvenile parts in Italy for director Valerio Zurlini. He played Claudia Cardinale’s boyfriend in the romantic comedy La Ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (1961, Valerio Zurlini) and Marcello Mastroianni’s younger brother in Cronaca familiar/Family Diary (1962, Valerio Zurlini). In France he acted with Brigitte Bardot in La Vérité/The Truth (1960, Henri-Georges Clouzot), with Anna Karina in Le Soleil dans l'oeil/Sun in Your Eyes (1962, Jacques Bourdon), and with Bruno Cremer in the war film La 317ème section/317th Platoon (1965, Pierre Schoendoerffer). He also worked on the thriller film Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murders (1965, Costa-Gravas). Hames Travers at Films de France: “Costa-Gavras made his directoral debut with this fast-moving, convoluted but magnificently assembled crime thriller. The film reflects the director’s interest for American film noir and, thanks largely to an impressive cast, is one of his most entertaining films.” It was the start of a long-time cooperation between actor and director. In 1966, Perrin won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival or the Italian film Un uomo a metà/Almost a Man (1966, Vittorio De Seta), and the Spanish film La busca/The Search (1966, Angelino Fons). The next year he co-starred in the musical Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy) with Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac. He would cooperate again with Demy and Deneuve on the fairytale Peau d'âne/Donkey Skin (1970, Jacques Demy) in which he played an appealing Prince Charming. Craig Butler at AllMovie: “Donkey Skin is a strange but utterly captivating little fantasy, and one that, despite its fairy tale origins, is really aimed more at adults than at children. Jacques Demy has directed with an eye toward whimsy, but whimsy mixed both with magic and subtle disorientation.”

 

At 27, Jacques Perrin created his own studio. He produced and acted in Z (1969), directed by Costa Gavras and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. Dan Pavlides at AllMovie: “Z is one of the most politically insightful films ever made, exposing government hypocrisy and cover-up in the wake of a political assassination.” The production had nearly 4 million admissions in France and was the 4th highest grossing film of the year. It was also the 10th highest grossing film of 1969 in the United States. Z is also one of the few films to be nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture. Perrin worked with Costa-Gavras again on État de Siège/State of Siege (1972, Costa-Gavras) and Section special/Special Section (1975, Costa-Gavras). Both films had political themes, and Perrin continued this trend with La guerre d'Algérie (1975, Yves Courrière, Philippe Monnier), a documentary on the Algerian uprising, and La Spirale (1976, Armand Mattelart, Valérie Mayoux, Jacqueline Meppiel), a film on the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende . In 1976, Perrin produced another Oscar-winning film in La Victoire en chantant/Black and White in Color (1976, Jean-Jacques Annaud). That year, he also embarked on Il deserto dei Tartari/Le Désert des Tartares/ The Desert of the Tartars (1976, Valerio Zurlini), with a cast filled with such big-name actors as Jean-Louis Trintignant, Vittorio Gassman, Max von Sydow, Francisco Rabal, Helmut Griem, Giuliano Gemma, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey, Laurent Terzieff and Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film, based on the Dino Buzzati's novel The Tartar Steppe, tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo (Jacques Perrin), and the time that he spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. Although the film won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français and three David di Donatello Awards 1977, it was not very successful and left Perrin with debts.

 

Jacques Perrin had a huge success with the Italian drama Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore). He played a famous film director remembers his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist (Philippe Noiret), first brought about his love of films. Cinema Paradiso was a critical and box-office success and won many awards including the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Two years later, he also appeared in Tornatore’s Stanno tutti bene/Everybody’s Fine (1990, Giuseppe Tornatore) starring Marcello Mastroianni. As a producer Perrin changed direction when he decided that the natural life around us could tell stories as fascinating and varied as anything dreamt up by a scriptwriter. He produced nature documentaries that transformed the scope of wildlife films, from Microcosmos (1996, Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou), in which ants performed the starring role, to the austere travelogue Himalaya (1999, Eric Valli), nominated for an Oscar, and Le Peuple Migrateur/Winged Migration (2001, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, Jacques Perrin), which followed some 50 species of birds across 30 countries. All were filmed by Perrin’s studio Galatée Films. Another successful production was Les choristes/The Chorus (2004, Christophe Barratier). In this drama Perrin played the narrator, the old orchestra conductor Pierre Morhange, who reminisces about his childhood inspirations through the pages of a diary kept by his old music teacher. The young Pépinot was played by Perrin’s son Maxence. Other films in which he played were the historical horror film Le pacte des loups/Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001, Christophe Gans), and the crime drama Le petit lieutenant/The Young Lieutenant (2005, Xavier Beauvois) with Nathalie Baye. In 1985, Perrin was made Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite, in 1997 he was promoted to Officer and in 2003 to Commander. He was also made Knight of the Légion d'honneur in 1990 and promoted to Officer in 2007. Jacques Perrin has three sons, actor MathieuPerrin (1975), actor Maxence Perrin (1995), and Lancelot Perrin (2000). His most recent film production is Océans/Oceans (2009, Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud). Tracie Cooper at AllMovie: “Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, Oceans is made up of a compilation of underwater photography from over 75 diving expeditions that took place over a period of four years, and captures an astoundingly intimate glimpse into the lives of a wide array of sea life”.

 

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Dan Pavlides (AllMovie), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), John Whitley (The Telegraph), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

It all started in 1994. TV scriptwriter Stefan Struik had an interview with a meditating hermit in Baarn (NL) who was complaining about gnomes who disturbed the power network in his house. A month later he ran into trolls in a Norwegian clothing store in the Dutch-Frisian village Dokkum. A year before he got surprised by the amount of one meter high garden gnomes just across the border between Germany and Poland. It all seemed to point into a new direction he would hit a few months later. In December 1994 he opened with his sister a small game and bookstore in Delft (NL), named Elf Fantasy Shop. The games were a golden opportunity. Three years later the duo could open an second store in The Hague.

 

In 1995 Stefan also started a new adventure with a free magazine called Elf Fantasy Magazine. In 2001 the magazine became professionalized and despite it never realised any profits it existed until 2009.

 

Stefan and his sister already organised lectures in the Elf Fantasy Shops about druidism, Tolkien and other fantasy related subjects. In 2001 Stefan decided to combine a few things into a totally new and unique festival concept that later would be copied many times: the Elf Fantasy fair. Starting in the historical theme parc Archeon (NL) it moved the year after to the largest castle in the Netherlands: castle de Haar. With the exception of 2004 (castle Keukenhof, Lisse) it remained in castle de Haar, Haarzuilens since then. In 2009 a second version of the Elf Fantasy Fair started 400 meters from the border with Germany in the small village Arcen in Northern Limburg. In January 2013 the name Elf Fantasy Fair™ was replaced by the name Elfia™. The spring edition of Elfia is also called the 'Light Edition', while the autumn edition is characterized as the 'dark edition'.

 

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 71/6. Photo: Parufamet / Ufa. Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Brigitte Helm in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

British postcard by Picturegoer, London, no. W. 410. Photo: Columbia. Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947).

 

American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).

 

George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten, Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose instead to travel to Europe. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.

 

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”

 

Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.

 

Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.

 

Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy, he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.

 

In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong, he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris, he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia, he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.

 

In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an ageing film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973), a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared in his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

This picture was taken at 9th Bengaluru International Film Festival 2017.

Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor.

 

Yesterday, 14 December 2019, the queen of the Nouvelle Vague, film actress, singer, and director Anna Karina (1940) has passed away. French, but Danish-born Karina was the muse of director Jean-Luc Godard and starred in eight of his films. “Today, French cinema has been orphaned. It has lost one of its legends,” culture minister Franck Riester tweeted. Anna Karina was 79.

 

Anna Karina was born Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer in Solbjerg, Denmark, in 1940. Her mother was a dress shop owner and her father a ship's captain. Before she turned one, her father had left her mother. First she was raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four. Then she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as 'terribly wanting to be loved' and as a child, she made numerous attempts to run away from home. She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in the Danish short film Pigen og skoene/Girls and Shoes (Ib Schedes, 1954), which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. She studied dance and painting in Denmark and for a while made a living selling her paintings. In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris. She had a break when, sitting briefly at the cafe Les Deux Magots, she was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to do some photos. Hanne became a rising fashion model, and met Coco Chanel and Pierre Cardin. Chanel advised her to use as a professional name Anna Karina. She made a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered in soapsuds, and was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Godard was casting his debut feature film, À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. He offered her a small role, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene. However, she eventually accepted his offer to play a major role in his second film, Le Petit Soldat/The Little Soldier (1960) with Michel Subor. Karina, who was still under 21 had to persuade her estranged mother to sign the contract for her.

 

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard married during the shooting of their next film, Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy. It is a tribute to American musical comedy and the first film Godard shot in color and Cinemascope. Judd Blaise at AllMovie: "Rather than the sometimes alienating, dense intellectualism of later Godard works, Une femme est une femme offers aesthetic pleasure through luxurious visuals and a charming musical score by Michel Legrand. Against this bright backdrop, Karina proves particularly fetching, capturing the film's frolicsome mood in an unforced manner. While not one of Godard's most groundbreaking or influential films, Une femme est une femme is one of his most appealing and pleasurable efforts." J. Hoberman at Criterion: "Mainly, A Woman Is a Woman is a valentine to Karina, who became pregnant during the course of the movie’s production; she and Godard were married in March 1961, an event that made the cover of Paris Match." At the Berlin Film Festival in 1961, Anna Karina was awarded as Best Actress for Une femme est une femme. In the following years, the couple made Vivre sa Vie/My Life to Live (1962), Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution/Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine, Pierrot le fou/Pierrot Goes Wild (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Made in U.S.A. (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud and the anthology film Le plus vieux métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (1967). Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, behind the scenes, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. In 1967, Godard and Karina divorced.

 

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "From all reports, Karina and Godard's relationship was symbiotic; it is certainly no coincidence that both actress and director went into a temporary artistic eclipse after their 1967 breakup." Anna Karina's acting career was not, however, limited to Godard's films, and she had a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Some consider as her best performance her role in La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966) in which she plays an intelligent, freedom-loving woman who is forced into a convent against her will. She also acted in the Italian productions Le Soldatesse/The Camp Followers (Valerio Zurlini, 1965) and the Albert Camus adaptation Lo Straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) starring Marcello Mastroianni. Karina also maintained a singing career and scored hits with Sous le soleil exactement and Roller Girl. Both songs were taken from the TV musical Anna (Pierre Koralnik, 1967), which Serge Gainsbourg had especially written for her. After her divorce in 1967 she went to Hollywood. She acted in Justine (George Cukor, 1969) and returned to Paris. Her later films included Laughter in the Dark (Tony Richardson, 1969), Rendez-vous à Bray/Appointment in Bray (André Delvaux, 1971) with Mathieu Carrière, Pane e cioccolata/Bread and Chocolate (Franco Brusati, 1973) starring Nino Manfredi, Chinesisches Roulette/Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976), and Olyan mint otthon/Just Like Home (Márta Mészáros, 1978) with Jan Nowicki.

 

Anna Karina acted in but also wrote, produced and directed Vivre ensemble/Living Together (1973). She has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. She appeared on stage in Jacques Rivette's adaptation of La Religieuse/The Nun, Pour Lucrece, Toi et Tes Nuages, Francoise Sagan's Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit and Ingmar Bergman's Apres La Répétition/After the Repetition. In 2005 she released Chansons de films, a collection of songs sung in films. Incidentally she played in films like L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss (André Delvaux, 1988) with Gian Maria Volonté, Haut bas fragile/Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995) and the romantic thriller The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme, 2002) starring Mark Wahlberg. James Travers at Le Film Site on L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss : "This sombre adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar’s acclaimed literary work was directed by the acclaimed Belgian film-maker André Delvaux. Visually, the film is impressive and it boasts an excellent cast, but for all its excellent production values it is a heavy and somewhat laboured affair." Karina's most recent film as a director was Victoria (2008) in which she also starred. Mark Deming at AllMovie: "Thirty-five years after directing her first feature film, iconic actress Anna Karina once again steps behind the camera for this charming comedy-drama shot in Canada. Jimmy (Emmanuel Reichenbach) and Stanislas (Jean-Francois Moran) are a pair of nightclub performers who play second-rate gay nightclubs as part of a drag act called 'Les Lolitas'." After Godard, Anna Karina was married three times more: to scriptwriter-actor Pierre Fabre (1968–1973), actor-director Daniel Duval (1978–1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982–1994). Since 2009 she was married to Maurice Cooks. On 14 December 2019, Anna Karina has died in a Paris hospital of the effects of cancer at the age of 79, her agent Laurent Balandras told AFP, adding that she passed away in the company of her fourth husband, American director Dennis Berry.

 

Sources: Judd Blaise (AllMovie), J. Hoberman (Criterion), James Travers (Le Film Guide), Mark Deming (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), The Guardian, Fuck yeah! Anna Karina, IMDb and Wikipedia.

 

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

British postcard by London Postcard Company, no YS 5314 (Series 2 set of 9). Photo: Subafilms Ltd. Film image of The Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968). Caption: Up on the hill.

 

Yellow Submarine (1968) is an animated full-length film based on the music of The Beatles. It is also the title of the film's album of music, which is part of the Beatles' musical oeuvre. The film was directed by Canadian-born animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. With over 200 employees, chief designer Heinz Edelmann and director Charles Dunning worked on the film for eleven months. The animators came from England, but also from the USA and other countries in Europe. The real Beatles themselves do not appear until the final scene of the film.

 

In 1963, the American film studio United Artists approached The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein for a contract to make a number of films around the group. Epstein saw the deal as a good way to promote The Beatles and sell their music. United Artists was particularly interested in the money that would come in from selling the music albums. The Beatles were under contract to Capitol Records in the US, but that agreement excluded music albums. The studio knew that album sales would always make money even if the film flopped, so they saw the film deal with The Beatles as one in which they could not lose. On the other hand, the deal United Artists made with Epstein was not very favourable to The Beatles. Epstein was not a good negotiator and was an amateur in many financial matters. Admittedly, The Beatles were not at their peak of popularity at the time (certainly not in the US), but even in that context it was a disappointing contract. He had no idea of the normal profit percentages that could be negotiated, so he proposed a 7.5 % share. The United Artists studio bosses couldn't believe their luck; they had been afraid of tough negotiations and perhaps a higher percentage than 25%, and now Epstein came up with the ludicrous 7.5%. They immediately made a deal for three films. Not long after, the Beatles' popularity shot through the roof (also in the US), and Richard Lester made the first Beatles film A Hard Day's Night one of the most successful films of all time. This did not only deprive The Beatles of millions in earnings. They were also stuck with a financially disappointing film contract that would hang around their necks like a millstone.

 

The second film that The Beatles made for United Artists was Help, also directed by Lester. Although the film was as successful as its predecessor, the Beatles were not very enthusiastic about the end result. They were afraid of getting stuck in the format of "the happy adventures of the Beatles". But Brian Epstein had signed a contract with United Artists in 1963, and the film production company demanded a third film. All sorts of ideas were floated, such as a film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings with Ringo as Frodo and John as Gandalf, but the third film did not materialise. In 1967, the four Beatles thought they could direct themselves and made the television production "Magical Mystery Tour". The TV movie was broadcast by the BBC in black and white and was received by viewers and critics with dismay. After this, The Beatles' interest in films dropped to a low point. Their manager Brian Epstein came up with the solution. He was approached by Al Brodax, the head of King Features Syndicate, with the idea of making a full-length animated film based on a number of Beatles songs. The idea was based on the animated series about The Beatles that had been broadcast since 1965. TVC produced this series, in which an animated adventure was always made around a Beatles song. The Beatles were excited because they did not have to contribute to the film. But for this very reason, United Artists rejected Yellow Submarine as the third film. It was only with the documentary Let it Be that the Beatles fulfilled their contractual obligations. However, Yellow Submarine was a hit in cinemas and the critics were also enthusiastic. They especially praised the innovations in animation. The drawn appearance of The Beatles was based on the appearance of the real Beatles at the time of the recording of the film that accompanied the single Strawberry Fields Forever. Only, Paul McCartney's moustache had disappeared from his alter ego in the film. The Beatles themselves, who had expected some kind of Disney film, were pleasantly surprised by the result of Yellow Submarine and decided to appear in the final scene themselves.

 

The starting point for the film was the song "Yellow Submarine". Paul McCartney wrote it as one of the songs that drummer Ringo Starr could sing with his limited singing voice. It was intended as a children's song with simple lyrics and melody. Subsequent accusations that "yellow submarines" were a code name for yellow pills, namely Nembutol capsules, so-called "downers" (hence "submarine": submarine) were dismissed by McCartney. Producer Lee Minoff based himself on the idea of a children's song and wrote the first draft of the story. Soon, several scriptwriters were working on the scenario. It was decided to include a number of recent Beatles songs alongside 'Yellow Submarine'. Some of these songs were taken from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This Beatles album, released in 1967, caused a sensation in the music world. The idea behind the album was that The Beatles were transformed into the fictional pop group Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. On the cover, they can be seen in satin military uniforms in bright colours. This was the impetus for the idea of including in the film a Sgt. Pepper who lives in Pepperland with his band. At one point, there were about twenty versions of the screenplay circulating. One of the writers was Roger McCough, a poet from Liverpool, who contributed much to the dialogues with their typical ambiguities, expressions from Liverpool, and private jokes from The Beatles. McCough received 500 pounds for his contribution, but no mention in the credits. Mention was made of Jack Mendelsohn and Erich Segal. Mendelsohn had worked on the Beatles' animated series, but Segal was unfamiliar with the film business in 1967. He was working at Yale as an assistant to the professor of Classics. He was brought to London by Brodax to put together a coherent script from the large amount of material, some of which consisted only of fragments. Segal worked on the script continuously for several weeks under the threat of a deadline. He was barely allowed to leave his hotel room to jog. However, Segal was able to take advantage of a brilliant suggestion by lead designer Heinz Edelmann. During a production meeting, the collaborators came to a disturbing conclusion: the screenplay lacked an enemy. Pepperland was a paradise without a snake. Edelmann came up with the concept of the Blue Meanies and their attack on everything that smelt of music. (Incidentally, the meanies were originally red, entirely in keeping with the Cold War. An error by Edelmann's assistant caused the colours to be switched and the meanies became blue). Despite all the creative contributions, Yellow Submarine's screenplay also suffered from the fact that the music overshadowed the story and the story was adapted to the songs. It did result in a modern fairy tale about the 1967 hippy generation.

 

Source: Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

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The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series created in the 1960s. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel (Ian Hendry) and his assistant John Steed (Patrick Macnee). Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants. Steed's most famous assistants were intelligent, stylish and assertive women: Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), Emma Peel (Diana Rigg), and later Tara King (Linda Thorson). Later episodes increasingly incorporated elements of science fiction and fantasy, parody and British eccentricity. The Avengers ran from 1961 until 1969, screening as one hour episodes its entire run.

 

The pilot episode, "Hot Snow", aired on 7 January 1961.

The final episode, "Bizarre", aired on 21 May 1969.

 

The Avengers was produced by ABC Television, a contractor within the ITV network. After a merger in July 1968 ABC Television became Thames Television, which continued production of the series although it was still broadcast under the ABC name. By 1969 The Avengers was shown in more than 90 countries. ITV produced a sequel series The New Avengers (1976–1977) with Patrick Macnee returning as John Steed, and two new partners.

 

In 2007 The Avengers was ranked #20 on TV Guide's Top Cult Shows Ever

 

1961: With Dr David Keel (Ian Hendry)

 

The Avengers began in the episode Hot Snow, with medical doctor, Dr David Keel (Ian Hendry), investigating the murder of his fiancée and office receptionist Peggy by a drug ring. A stranger named John Steed, who was investigating the ring, appeared and together they set out to avenge her death in the first two episodes. Afterwards, Steed asked Keel to partner him as needed to solve crimes.

 

The Avengers followed Hendry's Police Surgeon, in which he played police surgeon Geoffrey Brent.[3] While Police Surgeon did not last long, viewers praised Hendry. Hendry was considered the star of the new series, receiving top billing over Macnee, and Steed did not appear in two episodes.

 

As the series progressed, Steed's importance increased, and he carried the final episode solo. While Steed and Keel used wit while discussing crimes and dangers, the series also depicted the interplay—and often tension—between Keel's idealism and Steed's professionalism. As seen in one of the two surviving episodes from the first series, "The Frighteners", Steed also had helpers among the population who provided information, similar to the "Baker Street Irregulars" of Sherlock Holmes.

 

The other regular in the first series was Carol Wilson (Ingrid Hafner), the nurse and receptionist who replaced the slain Peggy. Carol assisted Keel and Steed in cases, without being part of Steed's inner circle. Hafner had played opposite Hendry as a nurse in Police Surgeon.[3]

 

The series was shot on 405-line videotape using a multicamera setup. There was little provision for editing and virtually no location footage (although the very first shot of the first episode consisted of location footage). As was standard practice at the time, videotapes of early episodes of The Avengers were reused. Of the first series, two complete episodes still exist, as 16 mm film telerecordings. One of the episodes remaining does not feature Steed. The first 15 minutes of the first episode also exists as a telerecording; the extant footage ends at the conclusion of the first act, prior to the introduction of John Steed.

 

The missing television episodes are currently being re-created for audio by Big Finish Productions under the title of The Avengers - The Lost Episodes[4] and star Julian Wadham as Steed, Anthony Howell as Dr. Keel and Lucy Briggs-Owen as Carol Wilson.

 

1962–64: With Cathy Gale (Honor Blackman), Venus Smith (Julie Stevens) and Dr Martin King (Jon Rollason)

  

Patrick Macnee as John Steed and Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale

Production of the first series was cut short by a strike. By the time production could begin on the second series, Hendry had quit to pursue a film career. Macnee was promoted to star and Steed became the focus of the series, initially working with a rotation of three different partners. Dr Martin King (Jon Rollason), a thinly disguised rewriting of Keel, saw action in only three episodes produced from scripts written for the first series. King was intended to be a transitional character between Keel and Steed's two new female partners, but while the Dr. King episodes were shot first, they were shown out of production order in the middle of the season. The character was thereafter quickly and quietly dropped.

 

Nightclub singer Venus Smith (Julie Stevens) appeared in six episodes. She was a complete "amateur", meaning that she did not have any professional crime-fighting skills as did the two doctors. She was excited to be participating in a "spy" adventure alongside secret agent Steed (although at least one episode—"The Removal Men"—indicates she is not always enthusiastic). Nonetheless, she appears to be attracted to him and their relationship appears similar to that later displayed between Steed and Tara King. Her episodes featured musical interludes showcasing her singing performances. The character of Venus underwent some revision during her run, adopting more youthful demeanour and dress.

 

The first episode broadcast in the second series had introduced the partner who would change the show into the format for which it is most remembered. Honor Blackman played Dr Cathy Gale, a self-assured, quick-witted anthropologist who was skilled in judo and had a passion for wearing leather clothes.[5] Widowed during the Mau Mau years in Kenya, she was the "talented amateur" who saw her aid to Steed's cases as a service to her nation. Gale was said to have been born 5 October 1930 at midnight, and was raised in Africa. Gale was early-to-mid 30s during her tenure, in contrast to female characters in similar series who tended to be younger.

 

Gale was unlike any female character seen before on British TV and became a household name. Reportedly, part of her charm came from the fact that her earliest appearances were episodes in which dialogue written for Keel was simply transferred to her. Said series script writer Dennis Spooner "there's the famous story of how Honor Blackman played Ian Hendry's part, which is why they stuck her in leather and such—it was so much cheaper than changing the lines!"[6]

 

Venus Smith did not return for the third series and Cathy Gale became Steed's only regular partner. The series established a level of sexual tension between Steed and Gale, but the writers were not allowed to go beyond flirting and innuendo. Despite this the relationship between Steed and Gale was progressive for 1962–63. In "The Golden Eggs" it is revealed that Gale lived in Steed's flat; her rent according to Steed was to keep the refrigerator well-stocked and to cook for him (she appears to do neither). However, this was said to be a temporary arrangement while Gale looked for a new home, and Steed was sleeping at a hotel.

 

During the first series there were hints Steed worked for a branch of British Intelligence, and this was expanded in the second series. Steed initially received orders from different superiors, including someone referred to as "Charles", and "One-Ten" (Douglas Muir). By the third series the delivery of Steed's orders was not depicted on screen or explained. In "The Nutshell" the secret organisation to which Steed belongs is shown, and it is Gale's first visit to their HQ.

 

Small references to Steed's background were occasionally made. In series three's "Death of a Batman" it was said that Steed was with I Corps in World War II, and in Munich in 1945. In series four episode "The Hour That Never Was" Steed goes to a reunion of his RAF regiment.

 

A film version of the series was in its initial planning stages by late 1963 after series three was completed. An early story proposal paired Steed and Gale with a male and female duo of American agents, to make the movie appeal to the American market. Before the project could gain momentum Blackman was cast opposite Sean Connery in Goldfinger, requiring her to leave the series.

 

Series transformation

 

During the Gale era, Steed was transformed from a rugged trenchcoat-wearing agent into the stereotypical English gentleman (he had first donned bowler and carried his distinctive umbrella part way through the first season as 'The Frighteners' depicts), complete with Savile Row suit, bowler hat and umbrella with clothes later designed by Pierre Cardin. (The bowler and umbrella were soon changed to be full of tricks, including a sword hidden within the umbrella handle and a steel plate concealed in the hat.) These items were referred to in the French, German and Polish titles of the series, Chapeau melon et bottes de cuir ("Bowler hat and leather boots"), Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone ("With Umbrella, Charm and Bowler Hat") and Rewolwer i melonik ("A Revolver and a Bowler Hat"), respectively. With his impeccable manners, old world sophistication, and vintage automobiles, Steed came to represent the traditional Englishman of an earlier era.

 

By contrast his partners were youthful, forward-looking, and always dressed in the latest mod fashions. Gale's innovative leather outfits suited her many athletic fight scenes. Honor Blackman became a star in Britain with her black leather outfits and boots (nicknamed "kinky boots") and her judo-based fighting style. Macnee and Blackman even released a novelty song called "Kinky Boots". Some of the clothes seen in The Avengers were designed at the studio of John Sutcliffe who published the AtomAge fetish magazine.

 

Series script writer Dennis Spooner said that the series would frequently feature Steed visiting busy public places such as the main airport in London, without anyone else present in the scene. "'Can't you afford extras?' they'd ask. Well it wasn't like that; it's just that Steed had to be alone to be accepted. Put him in a crowd and he sticks out like a sore thumb! Let's face it, with normal people he's weird. The trick to making him acceptable is never to show him in a normal world, just fighting villains who are odder than he is!"[6]

 

1965–68: With Emma Peel (Diana Rigg)

 

In 1965 the show was sold to United States network, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC). The Avengers became one of the first British series to be aired on prime time U.S. television. The ABC network paid the then-unheard of sum of $2 million for the first 26 episodes. The average budget for each episode was reportedly £56,000, high for the British industry. The fourth series aired in the U.S. from March to December 1966.

 

Previously The Avengers had been shot on 405-line videotape using a multicamera setup, with very little provision for editing and virtually no location footage. The U.S. deal meant that the producers could afford to start shooting the series on 35mm film. The use of film rather than videotape was essential, as British 405-line video was technically incompatible with the U.S. NTSC videotape format. Filmed productions were standard on U.S. prime time television at that time. The Avengers continued to be produced in black and white.

 

The transfer to film meant that episodes would be shot using the single camera setup, giving the production greater flexibility. The use of film production and the single camera production style allowed more sophisticated visuals and camera angles and more outdoor location shots, all of which greatly improved the look of the series. As was standard on British television filmed production through the 1960s, all location work on series four was shot mute with the soundtrack created in post production. Dialogue scenes were filmed in the studio, leading to some jumps between location and studio footage.

     

Diana Rigg as Mrs Emma Peel

New female partner Mrs Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) debuted in this series, in October 1965. The name of the character derived from a comment by writers, during development, that they wanted a character with "man appeal". In an early attempt to incorporate this concept into the character's name, she was called "Samantha Peel", shortened to the awkward "Mantha Peel".[7] Eventually the writers began referring to the idea by the verbal shorthand, "M. Appeal",[8] which gave rise to the character's ultimate name. Emma Peel, whose husband went missing while flying over the Amazon, retained the self-assuredness of Gale, combined with superior fighting skills, intelligence, and a contemporary fashion sense.

 

After more than 60 actresses had been auditioned, the first choice to play the role was Elizabeth Shepherd. However, after filming one and a half episodes (the pilot; 'The Town of No Return' and part of 'The Murder Market'), Shepherd was released. Her on-screen personality was deemed less interesting than that of Blackman's Gale and it was decided she was not right for the role. Another 20 actresses were auditioned before the show's casting director suggested that producers Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell check out a televised drama featuring the relatively unknown Rigg (she had earlier guested in an episode of the TV show; 'The Sentimental Agent' that Clemens had written). Her screen test with Macnee showed that the two immediately worked well together, and a new era in Avengers history began.

 

A prologue was added to the beginning of all the fourth series episodes for the American transmissions. This was to clarify some initial confusion audiences had regarding the characters and their mission. In the opener, a waiter holding a champagne bottle falls dead onto a human-sized chessboard; a dagger protruding from a target on his back. Steed and Mrs. Peel (dressed in her trademark leather catsuit) walk up to the body as the voice over explains: "Extraordinary crimes against the people, and the state, have to be avenged by agents extraordinary. Two such people are John Steed, top professional, and his partner Emma Peel, talented amateur. Otherwise known as The Avengers." During this voice over, Steed pours two drinks from the wine bottle and Mrs Peel replaces her gun in her boot. They clink glasses and depart together. Fade to black and then the opening titles proper begin.

     

Film location plate presented by ABC TV to the Stapleford Miniature Railway, which is still in use today

In contrast to the Gale episodes, there was a lighter, comic touch in Steed and Peel's interactions with each other and their reactions to other characters and situations. Earlier series had a harder tone, with the Gale era including some quite serious espionage dramas. This almost completely disappeared as Steed and Peel visibly enjoyed topping each other's witticisms. The layer of conflict with Gale – who on occasion openly resented being used by Steed, often without her permission – was absent from Steed's interaction with Peel. Also the sexual tension between Steed and Gale was not present with Peel. In both cases, the exact relationship between the partners was left ambiguous, although they seemed to have carte blanche to visit each other's homes whenever they pleased and it was not uncommon for scenes to suggest Steed had spent the night at Gale's or Peel's home, or vice-versa. Although nothing "improper" was displayed, the obviously much closer chemistry between Steed and Peel constantly suggests intimacy between the two.

 

Science fiction fantasy elements (a style later known as Spy-fi) emerged in stories. The duo encountered killer robots ("The Cybernauts") and giant alien carnivorous plants ("The Man-Eater of Surrey Green").

 

In her fourth episode, "Death at Bargain Prices", Mrs Peel takes an undercover job at a department store. Her uniform for promoting space-age toys is an elaborate leather catsuit plus silver boots, sash, and welder's gloves. The suit minus the silver accessories became her signature outfit, which she wore primarily for fight scenes, in early episodes, and in the titles. There was a fetishistic undercurrent in some episodes. In "A Touch of Brimstone" Mrs Peel dressed in a dominatrix outfit of corset, laced boots and spiked collar to become the "Queen of Sin".

 

Peel's avant-garde fashions, featuring bold accents and high-contrast geometric patterns, emphasized her youthful, contemporary personality. She represented the modern England of the Sixties – just as Steed, with his vintage style and mannerisms, personified Edwardian era nostalgia. According to Macnee in his book The Avengers and Me, Rigg disliked wearing leather and insisted on a new line of fabric athletic wear for the fifth series. Alun Hughes, who had designed clothing for Diana Rigg's personal wardrobe, was suggested by the actress to design Emma Peel's "softer" new wardrobe. Pierre Cardin was brought in to design a new wardrobe for Macnee. In America, TV Guide ran a four-page photospread on Rigg's new "Emmapeeler" outfits (10–16 June 1967). Eight tight-fitting jumpsuits in a variety of bright colors were created using the stretch fabric crimplene.

 

Another memorable feature of the show from this point onwards was its automobiles. Steed's signature cars were vintage 1926–1928 Bentley racing or town cars, including Blower Bentleys and Bentley Speed Sixes (although, uniquely, in "The Thirteenth Hole" he drives a Vauxhall 30/98), while Peel drove a sporty Lotus Elan convertible which, like her clothes, emphasized her independence and vitality. During the first Peel series, each episode ended with a short, comedic scene of the duo leaving the scene of their most recent adventure in some unusual vehicle.

 

For this series Diana Rigg's stunt double was stuntman Billy Westley, Patrick Macnee's stunt double was Peter Clay.

 

Fifth series

 

After one filmed series (of 26 episodes) in black and white, The Avengers began filming in colour for the fifth series in 1966. It was three years before Britain's ITV network began full colour broadcasting.

 

This series was broadcast in the U.S. from January to May 1967. The American prologue of the previous series was rejigged for the colour episodes. It opened with the caption The Avengers In Color (required by ABC for colour series at that time). This was followed by Steed unwrapping the foil from a champagne bottle and Peel shooting the cork away. (Unlike the "chessboard" opening of the previous series, this new prologue was also included in UK broadcasts of the series.)

 

The first 16 episodes of the fifth series begin with Peel receiving a call-to-duty message from Steed: "Mrs Peel, we're needed." Peel was conducting her normal activities when she unexpectedly received a message on a calling card or within a delivered gift, at which point Steed suddenly appeared (usually in her apartment). The messages were delivered by Steed in increasingly bizarre ways as the series progressed: in a newspaper Peel had just bought, or on traffic lights while she was out driving. On one occasion Steed appeared on her television set, interrupting an old science-fiction movie (actually clips from their Year Four episode "The Cybernauts") to call her to work. Another way Steed contacted her was in the beginning of episode 13, "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Station" when she enters her flat and sees a Meccano Percy the Small Engine going around a circular track with a note on one of the train cars that says "Mrs. Peel" in bold letters, she then walks over to Steed who says "you're needed". At the start of "The Hidden Tiger" Peel is redecorating her apartment (wearing a jumpsuit and drinking champagne); she peels off a strip of wallpaper, revealing the words "Mrs Peel" painted on the wall beneath. She turns to see Steed in the apartment removing another strip of wallpaper, revealing "We're needed" painted underneath on another wall. In another instance Emma enters Steed's flat to find he has just fallen down the stairs, and he painfully gasps, "Mrs Peel, you're needed." Often the episode's tag scene returned to the situation of the "Mrs Peel, we're needed" scene. "The Hidden Tiger" returns to the partially redecorated apartment where Steed begins painting a love heart and arrow and the initials of two people on the wall, but paints over the initials when Peel sees his graffito. In "The Superlative Seven" the call to duty and the tag both involve a duck shooting situation where unexpected items fall from the sky after shots are fired.

 

The series also introduced a comic tag line caption to the episode title, using the format of "Steed [does this], Emma [does that]." For example "The Joker" had the opening caption: "Steed trumps an ace, Emma plays a lone hand".('The Joker' was to a large extent a re-write colour episode of the earlier Cathy Gale b/w era story; 'Don't Look Behind You' as were a few other later episodes re-writes in colour of b/w era tales.)

 

The "Mrs Peel, we're needed" scenes and the alternate tag lines were dropped after the first 16 episodes, after a break in production, for financial reasons. They were deemed by the U.K. networks as disposable if The Avengers was to return to ITV screens. (Dave Rogers' book The Avengers Anew lists a set for every Steed/Peel episode except "The Forget-Me-Knot".)

 

Stories were increasingly characterised by a futuristic, science fiction bent, with mad scientists and their creations wreaking havoc. The duo dealt with being shrunk to doll size ("Mission... Highly Improbable"), pet cats being electrically altered into ferocious and lethal "miniature tigers" ("The Hidden Tiger"), killer automata ("Return of The Cybernauts"), mind-transferring machines ("Who's Who???"), and invisible foes ("The See-Through Man").

 

The series parodied its American contemporaries with episodes such as "The Girl From AUNTIE", "Mission... Highly Improbable" and "The Winged Avenger" (spoofing The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission: Impossible and Batman, respectively). The show still carried the basic format – Steed and his associate were charged with solving the problem in the space of a 50-minute episode, thus preserving the safety of 1960s Britain.

 

Comedy was evident in the names and acronyms of the organizations. For example, in "The Living Dead", two rival groups examine reported ghost sightings: FOG (Friends Of Ghosts) and SMOG (Scientific Measurement Of Ghosts). "The Hidden Tiger" features the Philanthropic Union for Rescue, Relief and Recuperation of Cats—PURRR—led by characters named Cheshire, Manx, and Angora.

 

The series also occasionally adopted a metafictional tone, coming close to breaking the fourth wall. In the series 5 episode "Something Nasty in the Nursery" Peel directly references the series' storytelling convention of having potentially helpful sources of information killed off just before she or Steed arrive. This then occurs a few minutes later. In the tag scene for the same episode, Steed and Peel tell viewers – indirectly – to tune in next week.

 

For this series Diana Rigg's stunt double was stuntwoman Cyd Child, though stuntman Peter Elliot doubled for Rigg in a stunt dive in "The Bird Who Knew Too Much".

 

Rigg's departure

 

Rigg was initially unhappy with the way she was treated by the show's producers. During her first series she learned she was being paid less than the camera man. She demanded a raise, to put her more on a par with her co-star, or she would leave the show. The producers gave in, thanks to the show's great popularity in the US.

 

At the end of the fifth series in 1967, Rigg left to pursue other projects. This included following Honor Blackman to play a leading role in a James Bond film, in this case On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

 

Rigg and Macnee have remained lifelong friends.

 

1968–69: With Tara King (Linda Thorson)

  

Thorson and Macnee

When Diana Rigg left the series in October 1967, the British network executives decided that the current series formula, despite resulting in popular success, could not be pursued further. Thus they decided that a "return to realism" was appropriate for the sixth series (1968–69). Brian Clemens and Albert Fennel were replaced by John Bryce, producer of most of the Cathy Gale-era episodes.

 

Bryce had a difficult situation in hand. He had to find a replacement for Diana Rigg and shoot the first seven episodes of the new series, which were supposed to be shipped to America together with the last eight Emma Peel colour episodes.

 

Bryce signed his then-girlfriend, 20-year-old newcomer Linda Thorson, as the new female costar and chose the name "Tara King" for her character. Thorson played the role with more innocence in mind and at heart; and unlike the previous partnerships with Cathy and Emma, the writers allowed subtle hints of romance to blossom between Steed and King. King also differed from Steed's previous partners in that she was a fully fledged (albeit initially inexperienced) agent working for Steed's organisation; his previous partners had all been (in the words of the prologue used for American broadcasts of the first Rigg series) talented amateurs. Bryce wanted Tara to be blonde, so Thorson's brown hair was bleached. However the process badly damaged Thorson's hair, so she had to wear wigs for the first third of her episodes, until her own hair grew back. Her natural brown hair was not seen until the episode "All Done with Mirrors".

 

Production of the first seven episodes of the sixth series began. However financial problems and internal difficulties undermined Bryce's effort. He only managed to complete three episodes: "Invitation to a Killing" (a 90-minute episode introducing Tara King), "The Great, Great Britain Crime" (some of its original footage was reused in the 1969 episode "Homicide and Old Lace") and "Invasion of the Earthmen" (which survived relatively intact except for the scenes in which Tara wears a brown wig.)

 

After a rough cut screening of these episodes to studio executives, Bryce was fired and Clemens and Fennel were summoned back. At their return, a fourth episode called "The Murderous Connection" was in its second day of production. After revising the script, it was renamed as "The Curious Case of the Countless Clues" and production was resumed. Production of the episode "Split!", a leftover script from the Emma Peel colour series, proceeded. Two completely new episodes were also shot: "Get-A-Way", and "Look (Stop Me If You've Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellers".

 

Dennis Spooner said of the event that "Brian left The Avengers for about three episodes, someone took over, and when Brian came back, it was in a terrible state. He was faced with doing a rewrite on a film they'd already shot." The episode had a story error where Steed leaves for a destination. The villains then realise this and pursue him – yet arrive there before Steed does. It was fixed by having a character ask Steed 'What took you so long?', to which he replies 'I came the pretty way'. "You can only do that on The Avengers you see. It was just my favourite show to work on."[10]

 

Clemens and Fennel decided to film a new episode to introduce Tara King. This, the third episode filmed for the sixth series, was titled "The Forget-Me-Knot" and bade farewell to Emma Peel and introduced her successor, a trained but inexperienced agent named Tara King. It would be broadcast as the first episode of the sixth series. Tara debuts in dynamic style: when Steed is called to Headquarters, he is attacked and knocked down by trainee agent King who mistakes him for her training partner.

 

No farewell scenes for Emma Peel had been shot when Diana Rigg left the series. Rigg was recalled for "The Forget-Me-Knot", through which Emma acts as Steed's partner as usual. Rigg also filmed a farewell scene for Emma which appeared as the tag scene of the episode. It was explained that Emma's husband, Peter Peel, was found alive and rescued, and she left the British secret service to be with him. Emma visits Steed to say goodbye, and while leaving she passes Tara on the stairway giving the advice that "He likes his tea stirred anti-clockwise." Steed looks out the window as a departing Emma enters the Bentley driven by Peter – who from a distance seems to resemble Steed (and was played by Patrick Macnee, wearing a bowler hat and umbrella).

 

Bryce's original episode introducing Tara, "Invitation to a Killing", was revised as a regular 60-minute episode named "Have Guns Will Haggle". These episodes, together with "Invasion of the Earthmen" and the last eight Peel colour episodes, were shipped to America in February 1968.

 

For this series the government official who gave Steed his orders was depicted on screen. Mother, introduced in "The Forget-Me-Knot", is a man in a wheelchair. The role was taken by Patrick Newell who had played different roles in two earlier episodes, most recently in series five. Mother's headquarters would shift from place to place, including one episode where his complete office was on the top level of a double-decker bus. (Several James Bond films of the 1970s would make use of a similar gimmick for Bond's briefings.)

 

Added later as a regular was Mother's mute Amazonian assistant, Rhonda (Rhonda Parker). There was one appearance by an agency official code-named "Father", a blind older woman played by Iris Russell. (Russell had appeared in the series several times previously in other roles.) In one episode, "Killer", Steed is paired with Lady Diana Forbes Blakeney (Jennifer Croxton) while King is on holiday.

 

Scriptwriter Dennis Spooner later reflected on this series. "When I wrote "Look (Stop Me If You've Heard This One) But There Were These Two Fellers", that was definitely the last series. They were going to make no more, so in that series we went right over the top; we went really weird, because they knew there weren't going to be any more."[11]

 

Spooner said the series "worked because it became a parody on itself, almost. You can only do that so long." Overall he attributes the success of the show to its light approach. "We spoofed everything, we took Mission: Impossible, Bad Day at Black Rock, High Noon, The Dirty Dozen, The Birds... we took them all. The film buffs used to love it. There were always lines in it that people knew what we were talking about."[11]

 

Vehicle wise, Steed continued to drive vintage green Bentleys in the first seven episodes in production. His regular transport for the remainder of the series were two yellow Rolls-Royce cars. Mother also occasionally appeared in silver Rolls-Royces. Tara King drove an AC 428 and a Lotus Europa. Lady Diana Forbes Blakeney drove an MGC Roadster.

 

The revised series continued to be broadcast in America. The episodes with Linda Thorson as King proved to be highly rated in Europe and the UK. In the United States however, the ABC network that carried the series chose to air it opposite the number one show in the country at the time, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Steed and King could not compete, and the show was cancelled in the US. Without this vital commercial backing, production could not continue in Britain either, and the series ended in May 1969. The final scene of the final episode ("Bizarre") has Steed and King, champagne glasses in hand, accidentally launching themselves into orbit aboard a rocket, as Mother breaks the fourth wall and says to the audience, "They'll be back!" before adding in shock, "They're unchaperoned up there!"

 

************************************************************************************

Courtesy of Chatwick University Archives, 1960

 

French postcard by Éditions Hazan, Paris, no. 6007, 1988. Photo: Sam Levin, 1969. Federico Fellini on the set of Satyricon (1969).

 

Italian film director and screenwriter Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He was known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d'Or for La Dolce Vita (1960), was nominated for twelve Academy Awards. He won an Oscar for La Strada (1954), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973).

 

Federico Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini in the Emilia-Romagna region. His native Rimini and characters there like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would later be remembered in several of his films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La dolce vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. Fellini's first passion was the theater, and at the age of 12, he briefly ran away from home to join the circus, later entering college solely to avoid being drafted. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real-life role of a journalist. Additionally, Fellini worked as an artist on fumetti (Italy's illustrated magazines), and occasionally even made his living as a caricaturist at Roman restaurants. He caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds 'Cico and Pallina'. Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became Fellini's real-life wife in 1943. They remained together until his death. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1939 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Fabrizi recruited Fellini to supply stories and ideas for his performances; between 1939 and 1944. The two men worked in tandem on a number of largely forgotten comedies, among them No Me Lo Dire, Quarta Pagina, and Campo de Fiori. When young director Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Roma città aperta (Roberto Rosselini, 1945), he made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisà (Roberto Rosselini, 1946). Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "On that film, he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work."

 

Federico Fellini collaborated on films by Pietro Germi (including In Nomine Della Legge and Il Cammino Della Speranza) and Alberto Lattuda (Il Delitto di Giovanni Episcopo and Il Mulino del Po), among others. In 1948, Fellini completed the screenplay for Il Miracolo, the second and longer section of Rossellini's two-part effort Amore. Here Fellini's utterly original worldview first began to truly take shape in the form of archetypal characters (a simple-minded peasant girl and her male counterpart, a kind of holy simpleton), recurring motifs (show business, parties, the sea), and an ambiguous relationship with religion and spirituality. He further explored this in his script for Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Roberto Rosselini, 1949). In 1950, Fellini made his first attempt at directing one of his own screenplays (with help of Alberto Lattuda), Luci del Varieta (Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattudada, 1950), which further developed his fusion of neorealism with the atmosphere of surrealism. Fellini then directed the romantic satire Lo Sciecco Bianc. The film marked his first work with composer Nino Rota. Fellini's initial masterpiece, I Vitteloni, followed in 1953. The first of his features to receive international distribution, it later won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the first of many similar honours. The brilliant La Strada followed in 1954, also garnering the Silver Lion as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. After helming Il Bidone (1955), Fellini and a group of screenwriters (including a young Pier Paolo Pasolini) began work on Le Notti di Cabiria (1956), which also won an Oscar. Then he mounted La Dolce Vita (1960), the first of his pictures to star actor Marcello Mastroianni. He would become Fellini's cinematic alter ego over the course of several subsequent collaborations, its portrait of sex and death in Rome's high society created a tremendous scandal at its Milan premiere, where the audience booed, insulted, and spat on the director. Regardless, La Dolce Vita won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and remains a landmark in cinematic history.

 

During the 1960s, many films by Federico Fellini were influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his ideas on the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious. The women who had both attracted and frightened him in his youth and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII inspired Fellini's dreams. In the 1960s, he started to record them in notebooks, and life and dreams became the raw material for such films as 8½ (1963) or Fellini - Satyricon (1969). With 1965's Giulietta Degli Spiriti, Fellini worked for the first time in color. After experimenting with LSD under the supervision of doctors, he began scripting Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna. Over a year of pre-production followed, hampered by difficulties with producers, actors, and even a jury trial. Finally on April 10th, 1967, Fellini suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting in a month-long nursing homestay. Ultimately, he gave up on ever bringing Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna to the screen, and his new producer, Alberto Grimaldi, was forced to buy out former producer Dino De Laurentis for close to half a billion liras. As the decade drew to a close, Fellini returned to work with a vengeance, first resurfacing with Toby Dammitt, a short feature for the collaborative film Tre Passi nel Delirio. Turning to television, he helmed Fellini: A Director's Notebook, a one-hour special for NBC, followed by the feature effort Fellini Satyricon. I Clown followed in 1970, with Roma bowing in 1972. Amarcord, a childhood reminiscence, won a fourth Academy Award in 1974. It proved to be his final international success. He later shot Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976), Prova d'Orchestra (1979), and La Citta delle Donne (1980), which were less successful. Fellini turned to publishing with Fare un Film, an anthology of notes about his life and work. E la Nave Va (1983) and Ginger e Fred (1985) followed, but by the time of L'Intervista (1987), he was facing considerable difficulty finding financing for his projects. His last completed film was La Voce Della Luna (1989). In the early 1990s, Fellini helmed a handful of television commercials, and in 1993 he won his fifth Academy Award for a lifetime of service to the film industry. In 1993, Federico Fellini died the day after his 50th wedding anniversary. He was 73 years old. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "One of the most visionary figures to emerge from the fertile motion picture community of postwar-era Italy, Federico Fellini brought a new level of autobiographical intensity to his craft; more than any other filmmaker of his era, he transformed the realities of his life into the surrealism of his art. Though originally a product of the neorealist school, the eccentricity of Fellini's characterizations and his absurdist sense of comedy set him squarely apart from contemporaries like Vittorio De Sica or Roberto Rossellini, and at the peak of his career his work adopted a distinctively poetic, flamboyant, and influential style so unique that only the term "Felliniesque" could accurately describe it. "

 

Source: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Dale O' Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

still from my archive.

 

pseudo-HDR from a single RAW.

 

slideshow, LARGE

 

Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. C-136, 1964. Photo: Radio Films. Jacques Perrin in La ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (Valerio Zurlini, 1961).

 

On Thursday 21 April 2022, French actor Jacques Perrin (1941-2022) passed away. Handsome and talented, Perrin started his career as the romantic hero in the films of Italian director Valerio Zurlini. Later he made powerful films with Costa-Gravas and played the adult Salvatore in the international hit Cinema Paradiso (1988). With his own studio, he produced successful political films as Z (1969) and nature documentaries as Microcosmos (1996).

 

Jacques Perrin was born Jacques André Simonet in Paris in 1941. Occasionally, he is credited as Jacques Simonet. Perrin was his mother's name. His father, Alexandre Simonet, was a theatre director. In 1946, the five years old made his uncredited film debut in Les Portes de la nuit/Gates of the Night (1946, Marcel Carné), starring Serge Reggiani and Yves Montand. Perrin was trained as an actor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique. On stage, he gave over 400 performances of L'Année du bac in a Paris theatre. In the cinema, he played his first major juvenile parts in Italy for director Valerio Zurlini. He played Claudia Cardinale’s boyfriend in the romantic comedy La Ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (1961, Valerio Zurlini) and Marcello Mastroianni’s younger brother in Cronaca familiar/Family Diary (1962, Valerio Zurlini). In France he acted with Brigitte Bardot in La Vérité/The Truth (1960, Henri-Georges Clouzot), with Anna Karina in Le Soleil dans l'oeil/Sun in Your Eyes (1962, Jacques Bourdon), and with Bruno Cremer in the war film La 317ème section/317th Platoon (1965, Pierre Schoendoerffer). He also worked on the thriller film Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murders (1965, Costa-Gravas). Hames Travers at Films de France: “Costa-Gavras made his directoral debut with this fast-moving, convoluted but magnificently assembled crime thriller. The film reflects the director’s interest in American Film Noir and, thanks largely to an impressive cast, is one of his most entertaining films.” It was the start of long-time cooperation between actor and director. In 1966, Perrin won two Best Actor awards at the Venice Film Festival for the Italian film Un uomo a metà/Almost a Man (1966, Vittorio De Seta), and the Spanish film La busca/The Search (1966, Angelino Fons). The next year he co-starred in the musical Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy) with Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorleac. He would cooperate again with Demy and Deneuve on the fairytale Peau d'âne/Donkey Skin (1970, Jacques Demy) in which he played an appealing Prince Charming. Craig Butler at AllMovie: “Donkey Skin is a strange but utterly captivating little fantasy, and one that, despite its fairy tale origins, is really aimed more at adults than at children. Jacques Demy has directed with an eye toward whimsy, but whimsy mixed both with magic and subtle disorientation.”

 

At 27, Jacques Perrin created his own studio. He produced and acted in Z (1969), directed by Costa Gavras and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas. The film presents a thinly fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of democratic Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. Dan Pavlides at AllMovie: “Z is one of the most politically insightful films ever made, exposing government hypocrisy and cover-up in the wake of a political assassination.” The production had nearly 4 million admissions in France and was the 4th highest-grossing film of the year. It was also the 10th highest-grossing film of 1969 in the United States. Z is also one of the few films to be nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture. Perrin worked with Costa-Gavras again on État de Siège/State of Siege (1972, Costa-Gavras) and Section special/Special Section (1975, Costa-Gavras). Both films had political themes, and Perrin continued this trend with La guerre d'Algérie (1975, Yves Courrière, Philippe Monnier), a documentary on the Algerian uprising, and La Spirale (1976, Armand Mattelart, Valérie Mayoux, Jacqueline Meppiel), a film on the Chilean presidency of Salvador Allende. In 1976, Perrin produced another Oscar-winning film La Victoire en chantant/Black and White in Color (1976, Jean-Jacques Annaud). That year, he also embarked on Il deserto dei Tartari/Le Désert des Tartares/ The Desert of the Tartars (1976, Valerio Zurlini), with a cast filled with such big-name actors as Jean-Louis Trintignant, Vittorio Gassman, Max von Sydow, Francisco Rabal, Helmut Griem, Giuliano Gemma, Philippe Noiret, Fernando Rey, Laurent Terzieff and Jean-Louis Trintignant. The film, based on Dino Buzzati's novel The Tartar Steppe, tells the story of a young officer, Giovanni Drogo (Jacques Perrin), and the time that he spent guarding the Bastiani Fortress, an old, unmaintained border fortress. Although the film won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français and three David di Donatello Awards 1977, it was not very successful and left Perrin with debts.

 

Jacques Perrin had a huge success with the Italian drama Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (1988, Giuseppe Tornatore). He played a famous film director remembers his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist (Philippe Noiret), first brought about his love of films. Cinema Paradiso was a critical and box-office success and won many awards including the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Two years later, he also appeared in Tornatore’s Stanno tutti bene/Everybody’s Fine (1990, Giuseppe Tornatore) starring Marcello Mastroianni. As a producer, Perrin changed direction when he decided that the natural life around us could tell stories as fascinating and varied as anything dreamt up by a scriptwriter. He produced nature documentaries that transformed the scope of wildlife films, from Microcosmos (1996, Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou), in which ants performed the starring role, to the austere travelogue Himalaya (1999, Eric Valli), nominated for an Oscar, and Le Peuple Migrateur/Winged Migration (2001, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats, Jacques Perrin), which followed some 50 species of birds across 30 countries. All were filmed by Perrin’s studio Galatée Films. Another successful production was Les choristes/The Chorus (2004, Christophe Barratier). In this drama Perrin played the narrator, the old orchestra conductor Pierre Morhange, who reminisces about his childhood inspirations through the pages of a diary kept by his old music teacher. The young Pépinot was played by Perrin’s son Maxence. Other films in which he played were the historical horror film Le pacte des loups/Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001, Christophe Gans), and the crime drama Le petit lieutenant/The Young Lieutenant (2005, Xavier Beauvois) with Nathalie Baye. In 1985, Perrin was made Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite, in 1997 he was promoted to Officer and in 2003 to Commander. He was also made Knight of the Légion d'honneur in 1990 and promoted to Officer in 2007. Jacques Perrin has three sons, actor Mathieu Perrin (1975), actor Maxence Perrin (1995), and Lancelot Perrin (2000). His most recent film production is Océans/Oceans (2009, Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud). Tracie Cooper at AllMovie: “Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, Oceans is made up of a compilation of underwater photography from over 75 diving expeditions that took place over a period of four years, and captures an astoundingly intimate glimpse into the lives of a wide array of sea life”.

 

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Dan Pavlides (AllMovie), Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), John Whitley (The Telegraph), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 297. Photo: Universal International. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

Irish born Maureen O’Hara (1920-2015) was one of the icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The feisty and fearless actress starred in John Ford’s Oscar-winning drama How Green Was My Valley (1941), set in Wales, and Ford’s Irish-set The Quiet Man (1952) opposite John Wayne. The famously red-headed actress also worked successfully with Charles Laughton at Jamaica Inn (1939) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), starred in the perennial Christmas hit Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and appeared in the Disney children’s hit The Parent Trap (1961).

 

Maureen O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh in 1920. Her mother, Marguerita Lilburn FitzSimons, was an accomplished contralto. Her father, Charles FitzSimons, managed a business in Dublin and also owned part of the renowned Irish soccer team The Shamrock Rovers. From the age of 6 to 17, Maureen trained in drama, music, and dance, and at the age of 10, she joined the Rathmines Theatre Company and worked in amateur theatre in the evenings after her lessons. O'Hara's dream at this time was to be a stage actress. By age 14 she was accepted to the prestigious Abbey Theater and pursued her dream of classical theater and operatic singing. Her first screen test was for a British film called Kicking the Moon Around (Walter Forde, 1938) at Elstree Studios, It was arranged by American bandleader Harry Richman, who was then appearing in Dublin. The result was deemed unsatisfactory, but when Charles Laughton later saw it he was intrigued by her large and expressive eyes. He arranged for her to co-star with him in the British film Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939). Laughton was so pleased with O'Hara's performance that she was cast in the role of Esmeralda opposite him in the Hollywood production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, 1939). The epic film was an extraordinary success and international audiences were now alerted to her natural beauty and talent. From there, she went on to enjoy a long and highly successful career in Hollywood. Director John Ford cast her as Angharad in How Green Was My Valley (1941), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. She starred in Swashbucklers such as The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942), opposite Tyrone Power, and Sinbad the Sailor (Richard Wallace, 1947), with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., She also starred as Doris Walker and the mother of a young Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947), which became a perennial Christmas classic.

 

Maureen O'Hara made a number of films with John Wayne. She met Wayne through director John Ford, and the two hit it right off. O'Hara: "I adored him, and he loved me. But we were never sweethearts. Never, ever.” Opposite Wayne, she played Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952), an iconic film that is still very much celebrated in Ireland and abroad. In total, they made five films together between 1948 and 1972, also including Rio Grande (John Ford, 1950), The Wings of Eagles (John Ford, 1957), McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963) and Big Jake (George Sherman, 1971). O’Hara most often played strong and willful women, but offscreen she was the same. In 1957 her career was threatened by scandal when the tabloid Confidential magazine claimed she and a man had engaged in 'the hottest show in town' in the back row of Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. However, as she later told the Associated Press, at the time she “was making a movie in Spain, and I had the passport to prove it”. She testified against the magazine in a criminal libel trial and brought a lawsuit that was settled out of court. The magazine eventually went out of business.

 

Maureen O'Hara was married three times. In 1939, at the age of 19, O'Hara secretly married Englishman George H. Brown, a film producer, production assistant, and occasional scriptwriter, who she had met on the set of Jamaica Inn. The marriage was annulled in 1941. Later that year, O'Hara married American film director William Houston Price (dialogue director in The Hunchback of Notre Dame), but the union ended in 1953, reportedly as a result of his alcohol abuse. They had one child, a daughter named Bronwyn FitzSimons Price (1944). In later life, Maureen O’Hara married her third husband, Brigadier General Charles Blair. The couple lived in the US Virgin Islands, where he operated an airline. He died in a plane crash in 1978 and O’Hara took over management of the airline, which she eventually sold. “Being married to Charlie Blair and traveling all over the world with him, believe me, was enough for any woman,” she said in 1995. “It was the best time of my life.” O'Hara remained retired from acting until 1991, when she starred in the film Only the Lonely (Chris Columbus, 1991), playing Rose Muldoon, the domineering mother of a Chicago cop played by John Candy. In the following years, she continued to work, starring in several made-for-TV films. Her autobiography, 'Tis Herself, was published in 2004 and was a New York Times Bestseller. She was never nominated for an Oscar, instead of being given an honorary award in 2014. After accepting her statuette from a wheelchair, the then 94-year-old star protested when her speech of thanks was cut short. Maureen O'Hara died in her sleep at home in Boise, Idaho, in 2015. She was 95 years old.

 

Sources: The Guardian, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

German collectors card in the Unsere Bunten Filmbilder series by Ross Verlag for Cigarettenfabrik Josetti, Berlin, no. 7 (of 275). Photo: Ufa.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1377. Photo: Columbia.

 

American actor William Holden (1918-1981) was called 'The Golden Boy' thanks to his first starring role as a young man torn between the violin and boxing in Golden Boy (1939). From then on he was typecast as the boy-next-door. After returning from World War II military service, he got two important roles: Joe Gillis, the gigolo, in Sunset Blvd. (1950), and the tutor in Born Yesterday (1950). These were followed by his Oscar-winning role as the cynical sergeant in Stalag 17 (1953). He stayed popular through the 1950s, appearing in such films as Picnic (1955) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

 

William 'Bill' Holden was born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, in 1918. Holden grew up in a wealthy family, which moved to Pasadena when Holden was three. His father, William Franklin Beedle, Sr., was an industrial chemist, head of the George W. Gooch Laboratories in Pasadena and his mother, Mary Blanche (Ball), a teacher. His father, a keen physical fitness enthusiast, taught young Bill the art of tumbling and boxing. He went to study chemistry at Pasadena Junior College. A trip to New York and Broadway set Bill's path firmly toward an acting career. He had already performed in school plays and lent his voice to several radio plays in Los Angeles. When he played the part of octogenarian Eugene Curie at the Pasadena Workshop Theatre, he was spotted by a Paramount talent scout. In 1938, he made his feature film debut with a role in Prison Farm. Having joined Paramount's Golden Circle Club of promising young actors, Bill was now groomed for stardom. However, it was a loan-out to Columbia that secured him his breakthrough role. He was the sixty-sixth actor to audition for the part of an Italian violinist forced to become a boxer in Golden Boy (Rouben Mamoulian, 1939) opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Adolphe Menjou. The picture was a minor hit and Columbia consequently acquired half his contract. Since then, he was cast many times as the 'boy-next-door' or a rookie serviceman in pictures like Our Town (Sam Wood, 1940), I Wanted Wings (Mitchell Leisen, 1941) opposite 'peek-a-boo' star Veronica Lake, and The Fleet's In (Victor Schertzinger, 1942). His salary had been enhanced and he now earned $150 a week. In July 1941, he married 25-year old actress Brenda Marshall, who commanded five times his income. In 1942, he enlisted in the Officers Candidate School in Florida, graduating as an Air Force second lieutenant. He spent the next three years on P.R. duties and making training films for the Office of Public Information. One of his brothers, a naval pilot, was shot down and killed over the Pacific in 1943.

 

After the war, William Holden got two very important roles. He played caddish, down-on-his-luck scriptwriter Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) and a teacher in Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950). I.S. Mowis at IMDb: "Holden had effectively graduated from leading man to leading actor. No longer typecast, he was now allowed more hard-edged or even morally ambiguous roles." His Oscar-winning role was that of a self-serving, cynical prisoner-of-war in Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953). Throughout the 1950s, Holden remained popular, thanks in part to films such as Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) with Audrey Hepburn, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Mark Robson, 1954), and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (Henry King, 1955). In Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955) he played an unemployed drifter who disrupts and changes the lives (particularly of the women) in a small Kansas town.Already one of the highest paid stars of the 1950s, Holden received 10% of the gross for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), making him an instant multi-millionaire. He invested much of his earnings in various enterprises, even a radio station in Hong Kong. At the end of the decade, he relocated his family to Geneva, Switzerland, but spent more and more of his own time globetrotting. In the 1960s, Holden founded the exclusive Mount Kenya Safari Club with oil billionaire Ray Ryan and Swiss financier Carl Hirschmann. His fervent advocacy of wildlife conservation now consumed more of his time than his acting. His films, consequently, dropped in quality. I.S. Mowis: "Drinking ever more heavily, he also started to show his age. By the time he appeared as the leader of an outlaw gang on their last roundup in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), his face was so heavily lined that someone likened it to "a map of the United States. He still had a couple more good performances in him"" , in The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974) with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) opposite Faye Dunaway. His last film was the excellent comedy S.O.B. (Blake Edwards, 1981) with Julie Andrews. William Holden married actress Brenda Marshall in 1941, from whom he divorced in 1971. They had two children, born in 1943 (Peter) and 1946 (Scott). Holden also had a daughter, Virginia, from a previous marriage. Virginia was not Holden's child, but he adopted her. Holden was good friends with fellow actor Ronald Reagan. In 1952, he and his wife were best men at the wedding of Reagan and Nancy Davis. However, he had no interest in politics. In 1981, William Holden died from a head injury caused by a fall. Holden had drunk too much and remained conscious for at least half an hour after his fall. He did not realise that he had to call an ambulance, otherwise, he would certainly have survived.

 

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: Anna Karina in Shéhérazade (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1963).

 

Yesterday, 14 December 2019, the queen of the Nouvelle Vague, film actress, singer and director Anna Karina (1940) has passed away. French, but Danish-born Karina was the muse of director Jean-Luc Godard and starred in eight of his films. “Today, French cinema has been orphaned. It has lost one of its legends,” culture minister Franck Riester tweeted. Anna Karina was 79.

 

Anna Karina was born Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer in Solbjerg, Denmark, in 1940. Her mother was a dress shop owner and her father a ship's captain. Before she turned one, her father had left her mother. First she was raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four. Then she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight. She has described her childhood as 'terribly wanting to be loved' and as a child, she made numerous attempts to run away from home. She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in the Danish short film Pigen og skoene/Girls and Shoes (Ib Schedes, 1954), which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. She studied dance and painting in Denmark and for a while made a living selling her paintings. In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris. She had a break when, sitting briefly at the cafe Les Deux Magots, she was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to do some photos. Hanne became a rising fashion model, and met Coco Chanel and Pierre Cardin. Chanel advised her to use as a professional name Anna Karina. She made a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered in soapsuds, and was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Godard was casting his debut feature film, À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. He offered her a small role, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene. However, she eventually accepted his offer to play a major role in his second film, Le Petit Soldat/The Little Soldier (1960) with Michel Subor. Karina, who was still under 21 had to persuade her estranged mother to sign the contract for her.

 

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard married during the shooting of their next film, Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy. It is a tribute to American musical comedy and the first film Godard shot in color and Cinemascope. Judd Blaise at AllMovie: "Rather than the sometimes alienating, dense intellectualism of later Godard works, Une femme est une femme offers aesthetic pleasure through luxurious visuals and a charming musical score by Michel Legrand. Against this bright backdrop, Karina proves particularly fetching, capturing the film's frolicsome mood in an unforced manner. While not one of Godard's most groundbreaking or influential films, Une femme est une femme is one of his most appealing and pleasurable efforts." J. Hoberman at Criterion: "Mainly, A Woman Is a Woman is a valentine to Karina, who became pregnant during the course of the movie’s production; she and Godard were married in March 1961, an event that made the cover of Paris Match." At the Berlin Film Festival in 1961, Anna Karina was awarded as Best Actress for Une femme est une femme. In the following years, the couple made Vivre sa Vie/My Life to Live (1962), Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution/Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine, Pierrot le fou/Pierrot Goes Wild (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Made in U.S.A. (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud and the anthology film Le plus vieux métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (1967). Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, behind the scenes, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. In 1967, Godard and Karina divorced.

 

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "From all reports, Karina and Godard's relationship was symbiotic; it is certainly no coincidence that both actress and director went into a temporary artistic eclipse after their 1967 breakup." Anna Karina's acting career was not, however, limited to Godard's films, and she had a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Some consider as her best performance her role in La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966) in which she plays an intelligent, freedom-loving woman who is forced into a convent against her will. She also acted in the Italian productions Le Soldatesse/The Camp Followers (Valerio Zurlini, 1965) and the Albert Camus adaptation Lo Straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) starring Marcello Mastroianni. Karina also maintained a singing career and scored hits with Sous le soleil exactement and Roller Girl. Both songs were taken from the TV musical Anna (Pierre Koralnik, 1967), which Serge Gainsbourg had especially written for her. After her divorce in 1967 she went to Hollywood. She acted in Justine (George Cukor, 1969) and returned to Paris. Her later films included Laughter in the Dark (Tony Richardson, 1969), Rendez-vous à Bray/Appointment in Bray (André Delvaux, 1971) with Mathieu Carrière, Pane e cioccolata/Bread and Chocolate (Franco Brusati, 1973) starring Nino Manfredi, Chinesisches Roulette/Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976), and Olyan mint otthon/Just Like Home (Márta Mészáros, 1978) with Jan Nowicki.

 

Anna Karina acted in but also wrote, produced and directed Vivre ensemble/Living Together (1973). She has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. She appeared on stage in Jacques Rivette's adaptation of La Religieuse/The Nun, Pour Lucrece, Toi et Tes Nuages, Francoise Sagan's Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit and Ingmar Bergman's Apres La Répétition/After the Repetition. In 2005 she released Chansons de films, a collection of songs sung in films. Incidentally she played in films like L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss (André Delvaux, 1988) with Gian Maria Volonté, Haut bas fragile/Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995) and the romantic thriller The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme, 2002) starring Mark Wahlberg. James Travers at Le Film Site on L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss : "This sombre adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar’s acclaimed literary work was directed by the acclaimed Belgian film-maker André Delvaux. Visually, the film is impressive and it boasts an excellent cast, but for all its excellent production values it is a heavy and somewhat laboured affair." Karina's most recent film as a director was Victoria (2008) in which she also starred. Mark Deming at AllMovie: "Thirty-five years after directing her first feature film, iconic actress Anna Karina once again steps behind the camera for this charming comedy-drama shot in Canada. Jimmy (Emmanuel Reichenbach) and Stanislas (Jean-Francois Moran) are a pair of nightclub performers who play second-rate gay nightclubs as part of a drag act called 'Les Lolitas'." After Godard, Anna Karina was married three times more: to scriptwriter-actor Pierre Fabre (1968–1973), actor-director Daniel Duval (1978–1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982–1994). Since 2009 she was married to Maurice Cooks. On 14 December 2019, Anna Karina has died in a Paris hospital of the effects of cancer at the age of 79, her agent Laurent Balandras told AFP, adding that she passed away in the company of her fourth husband, American director Dennis Berry.

 

Sources: Judd Blaise (AllMovie), J. Hoberman (Criterion), James Travers (Le Film Guide), Mark Deming (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), The Guardian, Fuck yeah! Anna Karina, IMDb and Wikipedia.

 

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

French postcard by Delta Productions, Montpellier, no. CP152. Orson Welles in Casino Royale (Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, 1967).

 

American actor, director, writer and producer Orson Welles (1915-1985) worked in theatre, radio and film, both in the US and in Europe. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaptation of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), one of the most famous broadcasts in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), ranked as one of the all-time greatest films. His other films include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958) and Le Procès/The Trial (1962).

 

George Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1915. He was the second son of Beatrice (née Ives) and Richard Hodgdon Head Welles. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. His brother ‘Dickie’ was institutionalised at an early age because he had learning difficulties. Welles's mother, a beautiful concert pianist, had to support her son and herself. In 1924, Beatrice died of hepatitis in a Chicago hospital, just after Welles's ninth birthday. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson. At the age of ten, Orson ran away from home with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. Welles' father died when Orson was 15. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian. His school teacher Roger Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to perform and stage theatrical experiments and productions. Welles was awarded a scholarship to Harvard University, but he chose to travel to Europe instead. In Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, was impressed by his brashness and an impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in 'Jew Suss' as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, word of which reached the United States. On returning to the United States he wrote the immensely successful 'Everybody's Shakespeare'. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in 'Romeo and Juliet'. In 1934, he shot his first film, an eight-minute short titled The Hearts of Age, and he married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson. By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theatre as a radio actor, working with many actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre.

 

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work. Orson Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theatre Unit. His production of Macbeth was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. At 20, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of Welles’ ‘Voodoo Macbeth’ was recorded on film in the documentary We Work Again (1937). Welles rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, but because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was cancelled. In a last-minute move, Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, twenty blocks away. Some cast, crew and audience members walked the distance on foot. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received and played at the Venice for two more weeks. Welles and Houseman then formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became the executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included the actors Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Everett Sloane, and Erskine Sanford. The first Mercury Theatre production was William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. The production was widely acclaimed. In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to the radio. He adapted, directed and played Hamlet for CBS and Les Misérables for Mutual with great success. CBS gave the Mercury Theatre a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. In 1938, their adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion. Wikipedia: “Panic was reportedly spread among listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech some months later. The 1975 docudrama The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering on the production of, and events that resulted from the program.”

 

Orson Welles's growing fame drew Hollywood offers, lures that the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered him complete artistic control and signed Welles in a two-picture deal, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. In Hollywood, Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project. RKO rejected Welles's first two movie proposals but agreed on the third offer, Citizen Kane (1941), for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed and performed the lead role. Co-scriptwriter Joseph Mankiewicz based the original outline on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst, whom he knew socially and came to hate, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Kane's megalomania was modelled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. On Welles's instruction, John Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Once the script was complete, Welles attracted cinematographer Gregg Toland, and actors from his Mercury Theatre. After gossip columnist Hedda Hopper saw a preview screening of Citizen Kane, the attempted suppression of Citizen Kane started. Hearst's media outlets boycotted the film. They exerted enormous pressure on Hollywood, but RKO gave the film a limited release. The film was well-received critically and garnered nine Academy Award nominations. Welles was nominated as a producer, director, writer and actor, but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared with Mankiewicz. Today, the film is considered by most film critics and historians to be one of the classics in film history.

 

Orson Welles's second film for RKO was The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Booth Tarkington. At RKO's request, Welles worked also on an adaptation of Eric Ambler's spy thriller, Journey into Fear (Norman Foster, 1943), co-written with Joseph Cotten. In addition to acting in the film, Welles was the producer. Changes throughout RKO caused re-evaluations of both projects. RKO took control of The Magnificent Ambersons and ordered to edit the film into a ‘commercial’ format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. It resulted in an expensive flop for RKO, although The Magnificent Ambersons received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead. Welles found no studios interested in him as a director after the disaster of The Magnificent Ambersons and worked on radio. In 1943, he married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other films. He starred in the film adaptation of Jane Eyre (Robert Stevenson, 1944), trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He had a cameo in the wartime salute Follow the Boys (A. Edward Sutherland, 1944), in which he performed his magic act ‘sawing’ Marlene Dietrich in half. In 1946, Sam Spiegel produced The Stranger (Orson Welles, 1946), starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young and Welles. The film follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in the United States. Although disputes occurred during editing between Spiegel and Welles, the film was a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios. He then filmed The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) for Columbia Pictures, in which his then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-starred. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut and ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. Approximately one hour of Welles's first cut was removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become a touchstone of film noir. Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948). Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents and held up general release for almost a year after the early negative press reaction. In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision.

 

Orson Welles left Hollywood for Europe. In Italy, he starred as Cagliostro in Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1948) with Akim Tamiroff. His co-star impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's later productions. Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), alongside Joseph Cotten. The film was an international smash hit. Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the Italian film Prince of Foxes (Henry King, 1949), and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in The Black Rose (Henry Hathaway, 1950), both with Tyrone Power. Welles was channelling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles filmed Othello (1952) on location in Europe and Morocco. Suzanne Cloutier co-starred as Desdemona. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but the film did not receive a general release in the United States until 1955. Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith, restored Othello in 1992 for a wide re-release. Welles played the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case (Herbert Wilcox, 1952) and the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder (George More O'Ferrall, 1954). Herbert Wilcox cast Welles as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen (1954) opposite Margaret Lockwood, and John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in Moby-Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck. Welles's next turn as director was Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles, 1955), filmed in France, Germany, Spain and Italy on a very limited budget. Welles played a billionaire who hires a man (Robert Arden) to delve into the secrets of his past. The film co-starred Welles's third wife, Paola Mori. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Louis Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him as Confidential Report. In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood and guest-starred on radio and television shows. His next film role was in Man in the Shadow (Jack Arnold, 1957) for Universal Pictures, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually cause a deterioration in his health. Welles stayed on at Universal to co-star with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal at the insistence of Heston. He reunited with many actors and technicians with whom he had worked in the 1940s including Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich and Akim Tamiroff. Filming proceeded smoothly, but after the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. In 1978, a longer preview version of the film was discovered and released. Next, Welles filmed his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project. Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (Marin Ritt, 1958) and Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959), but soon he returned to Europe.

 

In Italy, Orson Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1959). In Hong Kong, he co-starred with Curt Jürgens in Ferry to Hong Kong (Lewis Gilbert, 1959). In Paris, he co-starred in Crack in the Mirror (Richard Fleischer, 1960). In Yugoslavia, he starred in I tartari/The Tartars (Richard Thorpe, 1962) and Bitka na Neretvi/Battle of Neretva (Veljko Bulajić, 1969). In 1962, Welles directed Le Procès/The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962), based on the novel by Franz Kafka and starring Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider. The film failed at the box office, but during the filming, he met Oja Kodar, who became his muse, star and mistress for the rest of his life. Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the anthology film Ro.Go.Pa.G. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1966). Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff (Welles) and his relationship with Prince Hal (Keith Baxter). Then followed Histoire immortelle/The Immortal Story (Orson Welles, 1968) with Jeanne Moreau, which had a successful run in French theatres. He appeared as Cardinal Wolsey in A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966) for which he won considerable acclaim. Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Oja Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1969, Welles played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles moved back to America in 1970.

 

In Hollywood, Orson Welles continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on television talk shows. His primary focus during his final years was The Other Side of the Wind, an unfinished project that was filmed intermittently between 1970 and 1976. Written by Welles, it is the story of an ageing film director (John Huston) looking for funds to complete his final film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed, and disputes still prevent its release. Welles portrayed Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1970), and narrated the historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me (Bud Yorkin, 1970). He appeared in La décade prodigieuse/Ten Days' Wonder (Claude Chabrol, 1971), co-starring with Anthony Perkins. Wikipedia: “That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles, even while they refused to give Welles any work.” Welles played Long John Silver in Treasure Island (John Hough, 1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel. He completed F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1973), a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving, and his documentary Filming Othello (Orson Welles, 1979). During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love (1987), released after his death. Welles had three daughters: Chris Welles Feder (1938), with Virginia Nicholson; Rebecca Welles Manning (1944–2004), with Rita Hayworth; and Beatrice Welles (1955), with Paola Mori. His only known son, British director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (1940), is from Welles's affair with Irish actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, then the wife of Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 4th baronet. On 10 October 1985, Orson Welles appeared in his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died several hours later of a heart attack at his home in Los Angeles. His estranged wife Paola Mori refused to allow most of Welles's friends to attend the funeral, limiting the mourners to just nine: herself, Welles's three daughters, Roger Hill, and three of Welles's friends, as well as the doctor who had signed Welles's death certificate. Welles's companion for the last 20 years, Oja Kodar, was not invited, nor were either of his ex-wives. Welles's ashes were taken to Ronda, Spain, where they were buried in an old well covered by flowers, within the rural property of a long-time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez.

 

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

German press photo. Photo: Felicitas Timpe, München. Jean-Pierre Léaud in Umarmungen und andere Sachen/Embraces (Jochen Richter, 1975). Issued for the broadcasting of the film by the ARD on 4 October 1977.

 

French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud (1944) is best known for playing Antoine Doinel in Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959) and François Truffaut's following series of films about that character. He also worked several times with Jean-Luc Godard, and is one of the icons of the French New Wave. He is also known for his staccato diction.

 

Jean-Pierre Léaud was born in Paris in 1944. He was the son of an assistant scriptwriter, Pierre Léaud, and the actress Jacqueline Pierreux. Léaud made his major debut as an actor at the age of 14 as Antoine Doinel, a semi-autobiographical character based on the life events of French film director François Truffaut, in Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959). To cast the two adolescents, Truffaut published an announcement in France-Soir and auditioned several hundred children in September and October 1958. Jean Domarchi, a critic at Cahiers du cinéma, recommended Léaud. Truffaut was immediately captivated by the fourteen-year-old adolescent, who had already appeared with Jean Marais in the Swashbuckler La Tour, prends garde !/The Tower, watch out! (Georges Lampin, 1958). Jean-Pierre Léaud, then in the eighth grade at a private school in Pontigny, was a far from ideal student. He often ran away with the older students on their nights out, but could also be brilliant, generous, and affectionate. During and following the filming of Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959), Truffaut's concern for Léaud extended beyond the film set. He took charge of the difficult adolescent's upbringing after Léaud was expelled from school and kicked out of the home of the retired couple taking care of him. Truffaut subsequently rented a studio apartment for Léaud. Truffaut also hired him for assistant work on La peau douce/The Soft Skin (1964) and Mata Hari, Agent H21 (1964). After the short-film Antoine et Colette (1962), a segment of the anthology L'amour à vingt ans (1962), Léaud starred in four more Truffaut films depicting the life of Doinel, spanning a period of 20 years. Those films are Baisers volés/Stolen Kisses (1968), Domicile conjugal/Bed and Board (1970) and L'amour en fuite/Love on the Run (1979), all with Claude Jade. He also collaborated with Truffaut on non-Antoine Doinel films like Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent/Two English Girls (1971) and La Nuit américaine/Day for Night (1973) and became the actor most commonly affiliated with him. Although Antoine Doinel is his most familiar character, he often found his performances in other films to be compared to his Doinel character whether there were legitimate similarities or not.

 

Jean-Pierre Léaud is one of the most visible and well-known actors to be associated with the French New Wave film movement and, aside from his work with Truffaut, collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard on nine films, Jean Eustache, Jacques Rivette and Agnès Varda. In 1966, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival for his role in Masculin Féminin (Jean Luc Godard, 1966). He was in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Porcile/Pigsty (1968), in Jerzy Skolimowski’s Dialog 20-40-60/Dialogue 20-40-60 (1968), Brazilian Carlos Diegues' Os herdeiros/The Heirs (1970) and Glauber Rocha's Der Leone have sept cabeças/The Lion Has Seven Heads (1971). The early 1970s was perhaps the peak of his professional career when he had three critically acclaimed films released: Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo tango a Parigi/Last Tango in Paris (1972), Truffaut's La Nuit américaine/Day for Night (1973), and Jean Eustache's La Maman et la Putain/The Mother and the Whore (1973) with Bernadette Lafont. In the Bertolucci film, Léaud appeared in the same film as a hero of his, Marlon Brando, although the two men never met, since all of Léaud's scenes were shot on Saturdays and Brando refused to work on Saturdays. In 1988, he was nominated for a César Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for the comedy Les Keufs/Lady Cops (Josiane Balasko, 1987) and was awarded an Honorary César for lifetime achievement in 2000. He made an exciting comeback in the nineties when several ‘new New Wave’ directors hired Léaud to pay homage to their elders. Among them French film makers such as Olivier Assayas, Danièle Dubroux , Serge Le Péron or Bertrand Bonello and foreigners like Finnish Aki Käurismäki and Taiwanese Tsai Ming-Liang. In 2016, Léaud received the Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and in 2017, he won the Lumières Award for Best Actor for his role in the historical drama La Mort de Louis XIV/The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra, 2017). Jean-Pierre Léaud is married to the French actress Brigitte Duvivier.

 

Sources: Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1481/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that author and broadcaster Michael Rosen has been voted Beard of the Year 2024. Michael Rosen was born in 1946 in North London. One of the best-known figures in the children's book world, he is renowned for his work as a poet, performer, broadcaster and scriptwriter. As an author and by selecting other writers' works for anthologies he has been involved with over 140 books.

 

Gary Lineker, Alexei Sayle and Michael Rosen each won a Close Shave round of voting and Chris McCausland was the highest placed runner up. There were over 8,000 votes cast across the three rounds

 

In the final Beard Off round Michael Rosen won 40.1% of the 11,000 votes cast with broadcaster and comedian Alexei Sayle on 28.5%.

(kmflett blog)

Vintage postcard, no. 12. Photo: Filma.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

Shanghai Ballet: Echoes of Eternity

 

Shanghai Ballet presents 'Echoes of Eternity ' at the London Coliseum, choreographed by Patrick de Bana and inspired by the ancient Chinese poem ‘Song of Everlasting Sorrow. 7-21 August 2016.

 

Choreographer: Patrick de Bana

Set designer: Jaya Ibrahim

Costume designer: Agnes Letestu

Light designer: James Angot

Scriptwriter: Jean Francois Vazelle

Literature Consultant: Sifu TANG

 

Dancers:

Emperor: WU Husheng

Lady Yang: QI Bingxue

Moon Fairy: ZHAO Hanbing

Gao Lishi: ZHANG Yao

Chen Xuanli: WU Bin

An Lushan: ZHANG Wenjun

 

see www.dancetabs.com

photo - © Foteini Christofilopoulou | All rights reserved | For all usage/licensing enquiries please contact www.foteini.com

Italian postcard in the Federico Fellini series by Gruppo Prospettive. Film poster for I Clowns (Federico Fellini, 1970) by Rinaldo Geleng.

 

Italian film director and screenwriter Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He was known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d'Or for La Dolce Vita (1960), was nominated for twelve Academy Awards. He won an Oscar for La Strada (1954), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973).

 

Federico Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini in the Emilia-Romagna region. His native Rimini and characters there like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would later be remembered in several of his films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La dolce vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. Fellini's first passion was the theater, and at the age of 12, he briefly ran away from home to join the circus, later entering college solely to avoid being drafted. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real-life role of a journalist. Additionally, Fellini worked as an artist on fumetti (Italy's illustrated magazines), and occasionally even made his living as a caricaturist at Roman restaurants. He caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds 'Cico and Pallina'. Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became Fellini's real-life wife in 1943. They remained together until his death. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1939 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Fabrizi recruited Fellini to supply stories and ideas for his performances; between 1939 and 1944. The two men worked in tandem on a number of largely forgotten comedies, among them No Me Lo Dire, Quarta Pagina, and Campo de Fiori. When young director Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Roma città aperta (Roberto Rosselini, 1945), he made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisà (Roberto Rosselini, 1946). Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "On that film, he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work."

 

Federico Fellini collaborated on films by Pietro Germi (including In Nomine Della Legge and Il Cammino Della Speranza) and Alberto Lattuda (Il Delitto di Giovanni Episcopo and Il Mulino del Po), among others. In 1948, Fellini completed the screenplay for Il Miracolo, the second and longer section of Rossellini's two-part effort Amore. Here Fellini's utterly original worldview first began to truly take shape in the form of archetypal characters (a simple-minded peasant girl and her male counterpart, a kind of holy simpleton), recurring motifs (show business, parties, the sea), and an ambiguous relationship with religion and spirituality. He further explored this in his script for Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Roberto Rosselini, 1949). In 1950, Fellini made his first attempt at directing one of his own screenplays (with help of Alberto Lattuda), Luci del Varieta (Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattudada, 1950), which further developed his fusion of neorealism with the atmosphere of surrealism. Fellini then directed the romantic satire Lo Sciecco Bianc. The film marked his first work with composer Nino Rota. Fellini's initial masterpiece, I Vitteloni, followed in 1953. The first of his features to receive international distribution, it later won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the first of many similar honours. The brilliant La Strada followed in 1954, also garnering the Silver Lion as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. After helming Il Bidone (1955), Fellini and a group of screenwriters (including a young Pier Paolo Pasolini) began work on Le Notti di Cabiria (1956), which also won an Oscar. Then he mounted La Dolce Vita (1960), the first of his pictures to star actor Marcello Mastroianni. He would become Fellini's cinematic alter ego over the course of several subsequent collaborations, its portrait of sex and death in Rome's high society created a tremendous scandal at its Milan premiere, where the audience booed, insulted, and spat on the director. Regardless, La Dolce Vita won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and remains a landmark in cinematic history.

 

During the 1960s, many films by Federico Fellini were influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his ideas on the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious. The women who had both attracted and frightened him in his youth and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII inspired Fellini's dreams. In the 1960s, he started to record them in notebooks, and life and dreams became the raw material for such films as 8½ (1963) or Fellini - Satyricon (1969). With 1965's Giulietta Degli Spiriti, Fellini worked for the first time in color. After experimenting with LSD under the supervision of doctors, he began scripting Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna. Over a year of pre-production followed, hampered by difficulties with producers, actors, and even a jury trial. Finally on April 10th, 1967, Fellini suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting in a month-long nursing homestay. Ultimately, he gave up on ever bringing Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna to the screen, and his new producer, Alberto Grimaldi, was forced to buy out former producer Dino De Laurentis for close to half a billion liras. As the decade drew to a close, Fellini returned to work with a vengeance, first resurfacing with Toby Dammitt, a short feature for the collaborative film Tre Passi nel Delirio. Turning to television, he helmed Fellini: A Director's Notebook, a one-hour special for NBC, followed by the feature effort Fellini Satyricon. I Clown followed in 1970, with Roma bowing in 1972. Amarcord, a childhood reminiscence, won a fourth Academy Award in 1974. It proved to be his final international success. He later shot Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976), Prova d'Orchestra (1979), and La Citta delle Donne (1980), which were less successful. Fellini turned to publishing with Fare un Film, an anthology of notes about his life and work. E la Nave Va (1983) and Ginger e Fred (1985) followed, but by the time of L'Intervista (1987), he was facing considerable difficulty finding financing for his projects. His last completed film was La Voce Della Luna (1989). In the early 1990s, Fellini helmed a handful of television commercials, and in 1993 he won his fifth Academy Award for a lifetime of service to the film industry. In 1993, Federico Fellini died the day after his 50th wedding anniversary. He was 73 years old. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "One of the most visionary figures to emerge from the fertile motion picture community of postwar-era Italy, Federico Fellini brought a new level of autobiographical intensity to his craft; more than any other filmmaker of his era, he transformed the realities of his life into the surrealism of his art. Though originally a product of the neorealist school, the eccentricity of Fellini's characterizations and his absurdist sense of comedy set him squarely apart from contemporaries like Vittorio De Sica or Roberto Rossellini, and at the peak of his career his work adopted a distinctively poetic, flamboyant, and influential style so unique that only the term "Felliniesque" could accurately describe it. "

 

Source: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Dale O' Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

French postcard, no. 107.

 

American actor William Holden (1918-1981) was called 'The Golden Boy' thanks to his first starring role as a young man torn between the violin and boxing in Golden Boy (1939). From then on he was typecast as the boy-next-door. After returning from World War II military service, he got two important roles: Joe Gillis, the gigolo, in Sunset Blvd. (1950), and the tutor in Born Yesterday (1950). These were followed by his Oscar-winning role as the cynical sergeant in Stalag 17 (1953). He stayed popular through the 1950s, appearing in such films as Picnic (1955) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

 

William 'Bill' Holden was born William Franklin Beedle Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, in 1918. Holden grew up in a wealthy family, which moved to Pasadena when Holden was three. His father, William Franklin Beedle, Sr., was an industrial chemist, head of the George W. Gooch Laboratories in Pasadena and his mother, Mary Blanche (Ball), a teacher. His father, a keen physical fitness enthusiast, taught young Bill the art of tumbling and boxing. He went to study chemistry at Pasadena Junior College. A trip to New York and Broadway set Bill's path firmly toward an acting career. He had already performed in school plays and lent his voice to several radio plays in Los Angeles. When he played the part of octogenarian Eugene Curie at the Pasadena Workshop Theatre, he was spotted by a Paramount talent scout. In 1938, he made his feature film debut with a role in Prison Farm. Having joined Paramount's Golden Circle Club of promising young actors, Bill was now groomed for stardom. However, it was a loan-out to Columbia that secured him his breakthrough role. He was the sixty-sixth actor to audition for the part of an Italian violinist forced to become a boxer in Golden Boy (Rouben Mamoulian, 1939) opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Adolphe Menjou. The picture was a minor hit and Columbia consequently acquired half his contract. Since then, he was cast many times as the 'boy-next-door' or a rookie serviceman in pictures like Our Town (Sam Wood, 1940), I Wanted Wings (Mitchell Leisen, 1941) opposite 'peek-a-boo' star Veronica Lake, and The Fleet's In (Victor Schertzinger, 1942). His salary had been enhanced and he now earned $150 a week. In July 1941, he married 25-year old actress Brenda Marshall, who commanded five times his income. In 1942, he enlisted in the Officers Candidate School in Florida, graduating as an Air Force second lieutenant. He spent the next three years on P.R. duties and making training films for the Office of Public Information. One of his brothers, a naval pilot, was shot down and killed over the Pacific in 1943.

 

After the war, William Holden got two very important roles. He played caddish, down-on-his-luck scriptwriter Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950) and a teacher in Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950). I.S. Mowis at IMDb: "Holden had effectively graduated from leading man to leading actor. No longer typecast, he was now allowed more hard-edged or even morally ambiguous roles." His Oscar-winning role was that of a self-serving, cynical prisoner-of-war in Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953). Throughout the 1950s, Holden remained popular, thanks in part to films such as Sabrina (Billy Wilder, 1954) with Audrey Hepburn, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (Mark Robson, 1954), and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (Henry King, 1955). In Picnic (Joshua Logan, 1955) he played an unemployed drifter who disrupts and changes the lives (particularly of the women) in a small Kansas town.Already one of the highest paid stars of the 1950s, Holden received 10% of the gross for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), making him an instant multi-millionaire. He invested much of his earnings in various enterprises, even a radio station in Hong Kong. At the end of the decade, he relocated his family to Geneva, Switzerland, but spent more and more of his own time globetrotting. In the 1960s, Holden founded the exclusive Mount Kenya Safari Club with oil billionaire Ray Ryan and Swiss financier Carl Hirschmann. His fervent advocacy of wildlife conservation now consumed more of his time than his acting. His films, consequently, dropped in quality. I.S. Mowis: "Drinking ever more heavily, he also started to show his age. By the time he appeared as the leader of an outlaw gang on their last roundup in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), his face was so heavily lined that someone likened it to "a map of the United States. He still had a couple more good performances in him"" , in The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974) with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, and Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976) opposite Faye Dunaway. His last film was the excellent comedy S.O.B. (Blake Edwards, 1981) with Julie Andrews. William Holden married actress Brenda Marshall in 1941, from whom he divorced in 1971. They had two children, born in 1943 (Peter) and 1946 (Scott). Holden also had a daughter, Virginia, from a previous marriage. Virginia was not Holden's child, but he adopted her. Holden was good friends with fellow actor Ronald Reagan. In 1952, he and his wife were best men at the wedding of Reagan and Nancy Davis. However, he had no interest in politics. In 1981, William Holden died from a head injury caused by a fall. Holden had drunk too much and remained conscious for at least half an hour after his fall. He did not realise that he had to call an ambulance, otherwise, he would certainly have survived.

 

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

…we went upstairs into a spacious studio. The invigorating, nutty smell of

oil paint delighted my senses. It seemed as if I had stepped inside of the

painting. The enormous room dissolved the concentrated scent of oil paints and transformed into Asian perfume. Stepping inside an artist’s studio every time put me into the position of Alice in Wonderland. Surrounded by scattered paintings, brushes, pallets, paint tubes, roles of canvases, and sketch pads, I was searching for the special conversational piece. If I could only find the right piece, which would be the artist’s favorite, I knew it

would break the ice. The first painting that caught my attention put me suddenly under hypnosis and I don’t recall for how long I was staring at it, whether it was a minute or an hour. This is not, in any way, an exaggeration but a real-live experience.

Evidently, Jaisini noticed that I was trapped by one of his paintings and broke the silence.

-Do you like that piece, or are you looking for a starting point to criticize it?

However it is, I welcome your criticisms rather than flattery.

-Your painting develops in my mind like photosensitive paper in a developer. On second thought, I sense an aesthetic pleasure from just the color harmony, but I still need more time-I said.

-No problem, take your time while I finish a sketch.

I had to postpone the interview in order to get a better look at the painting

that captured me. The artist put on some classical music. I began taking notes about what I had seen while he was silently sketching. As time flew

  

by, it was getting dark outside and the music ended long ago. I glanced at

  

the watch and realized that 4 hours had already elapsed and I didn’t even start the interview.

Jaisini was still concentrating on his work and it was obvious that I should’ve called it a day. Setting the convenient time for tomorrow I left.

…we met at the café.

I could tell that Jaisini was in a good mood and the interview has a better chance today. Perhaps his work went well, I thought. Jaisini greeted me as someone he had already befriended….

…-Positively, the painting I was contemplating in your studio sticks to my mind

Jaisini answered;

-It happens to many. I like this cafe. It is always so picturesque. The people

here make it colorful. For example, do you see that waitress?

-The small blond in her late thirties?

-Yes, her name is Nancy. Three years ago she told me that she wanted to become famous and in her free time she writes a script for a movie, convincing me that it will be the first script of its kind, a love story based on

her memoir.

Jaisini smiled charmingly, adding: -Oh, no, I am not joking. I believe in her. Once I invited her to the studio, as

she seemed like such a peculiar person. I was just finishing my painting called “Organ Grinder”. She declared frankly and firmly: ”I want this picture. How much?”

I explained to her that I don’t sell paintings.

Then I experienced certain chemistry. When such a “simple” person, but still

the one who writes the script, says: “I want the “Organ Grinder”, it was the

strangest thing. I didn’t like the painting one bit and after that, all of a sudden, I started seeing it in a different light of something very pure and

divine. She wanted so badly to own the picture that she induced her desire on me. I think that to create this “divine” we have to get down with people, declass to become simple and understand art with awe. Even though Gleitzeit is not for regular people, it can be understood by a mailman who asked me for an autograph, by an immigrant who came to the US to earn

money, or by a priest from England who told me that this art is for intellectuals, not for ambitious people who say, “I understand this art while others don’t.”.

-Do you think that your pictures relate to people as if they are puzzles of human life?

-When a man is awake, a man is asleep; everything encloses. And when you enclose your line you create the reality in which the man truly exists not knowing that he is entrapped in a secluded world of his own doing which he cannot escape. The enclosed line may provoke the desire to breakout, to find an exit.

-The question arises, what is fine art now and who needs it? The elite?

-Yes, but people crave art too if a mailman asked me for my autograph on a postcard after I had to explain him about the picture he saw. Before I explained the painting the man felt scared of breaking his head over it. It is understandable when in schools art is taught as an entertainment, not as a psychological significance, a process of growth, a visualization of today’s reality, an analysis of social life and ancient history, or the world’s history that brought people to the technical progress.

- To build a family is more important for that man.

-Yes, he understands his purpose of trying to build a family of five with eighteen grandchildren. A man’s genetic structure is of a turtle’s and is directed to one, laying eggs by any means and returning in a year through six thousand miles across the ocean to lay eggs again at the same place. But pay attention that bravado of the civilized world brings a realization that everything is a sham. Real is what is encoded by nature; real is when you see a beautiful ocean, a beautiful sunrise, or the grace of a horse. This is real.

- Then what is fine art? Is fine beautiful or good?

-Beautiful. It began from nature, from the copying of beautiful bodies of people and horses…. My main direction in art is most progressive, to achieve in composition the grace of color combinations, an intellectual color climax, tone, contrast, and so on. The idea of the painting unites in itself everything we see in the real world, but in an intricate, puzzle-like concept.

-Art in America is a tendency for immediate recognition. The remembrance is strictly visual since there was no comprehension. First they want to see that it’s different. What about Gleitzeit, how do you see this visual effect expressed?

-A regular person, either a lady florist, my tennis partner, or a teenage cowboy comes to my studio and says: “I don’t understand this art and

I don’t want to see it, it’s not mine. When the lady florist starts seeing some figures in a painting, she shouts, “I see! Look! Look! I see it now!” like a child. A man denies what he doesn’t understand as an immediate reaction. An everyday man is brought up on the understanding of natural grace. He doesn’t assimilate it in an abstract

way. He sees an egg and a hen and points out which are the egg and the hen. In my picture he can’t say that this is an egg and this is a hen at first. Moreover, he can’t say what came first, the egg or the hen. He sees something very simple or very complicating. The man refuses to do an effort. Slowly, not even slowly, but pretty quickly the man can

transform if he learns.

-Do you want to change the process of art cognition? The judgment is not based on the appearance since ‘we’ve seen all there is to see’ with and without philosophy, like when they sell us Coca-Cola they tell us about the transcendental. We are understanding folks. Do you want this “flat” cognition to change?

- A man is looking for an escape. I try to attach him to a thread in the picture, which is twisted, to untangle it. What is next? Did he learn something? Yes, and he also begins to understand abstraction after the knot is undone. This is flexitime. Will the work turn blank? No, since it still has an idea. If it would be an automated drawing by a schoolchild that may look like something there is no concept. In my art you have an idea and mastership. The key is the artist’s mastership. A weak painting will not survive. What is left to the spectator is aesthetic pleasure and confidence.

-What if people ask you for a simpler art? Why do they have to untangle your art?

- I answer simply. It’s not my doing and decision. I didn’t decide it. The art critics said so, they who studied art all their life and read volumes of books. They say that they analyzed it and it has this and that meaning, non other. That an artist is a reflection of society.

- Do you consider yourself a reflection?

-No, I don’t. Philosophers try to understand what is art and life. I only

insist that grace will not diminish in value.

… and I caught myself on a thought that I wanted to know how the story with the scriptwriter waitress ended. If the painting is still in the artist’s holdings I would like to see it to know why she wanted it so badly. And I asked…From 48 hours of the Interview with Paul Jaisini in his New York studio

Visiting Alford Museum I was delighted to find this genuine Dalek from the BBC Television Show "Dr Who", it was displayed among other materials from the 70s etc, hence a quick video to archive the scene.

 

I've followed the Dr Who series from my school days ( a long time ago) hence absolute joy to view this item.

 

The Daleks - (DAH-leks) are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. The Daleks were conceived by science-fiction writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in the shells designed by Raymond Cusick.

 

Drawing inspirations from the real-life example of the Nazis, the Daleks are merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens, demanding total conformity, bent on conquest of the universe and the extermination of what they see as inferior races.

 

Their catchphrase, "Exterminate!", is a well-recognised reference in British popular culture.

 

Within the programme's narrative, the Daleks were engineered by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war between his people, the Kaleds, and their enemies the Thals.

 

With some Kaleds already badly mutated and damaged by nuclear war, Davros genetically modified the Kaleds and integrated them with a tank-like, robotic shell, removing their every emotion apart from hate. His creations soon came to view themselves as the supreme race in the universe, intent on purging the universe of all non-Dalek life. Collectively they are the greatest enemies of Doctor Who's protagonist, the Time Lord known as The Doctor.

 

Later in the programme's run, the Daleks acquired time travel technology and engaged the Time Lords in a brutal Time War affecting most of the universe, with battles taking place across all of history.

 

They are among the show's most popular villains and their various returns to the series over the years have typically been widely reported in the television press.

 

Creation

 

The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation and designed by BBC designer Raymond Cusick.

 

They were introduced in December 1963 in the second Doctor Who serial, colloquially known as The Daleks.

 

They became an immediate and huge hit with viewers, featuring in many subsequent serials and two 1960s motion pictures.

 

They have become as synonymous with Doctor Who as the Doctor himself, and their behaviour and catchphrases are now part of British popular culture. "Hiding behind the sofa whenever the Daleks appear" has been cited as an element of British cultural identity;and a 2008 survey indicated that nine out of ten British children were able to identify a Dalek correctly.

 

In 1999 a Dalek photographed by Lord Snowdon appeared on a postage stamp celebrating British popular culture.

 

In 2010, readers of science-fiction magazine SFX voted the Dalek as the all-time greatest monster, beating competition including Japanese movie monster Godzilla and J. R. R. Tolkien's Gollum, of The Lord of the Rings.

 

Entry into popular culture

 

As early as one year after first appearing on Doctor Who, the Daleks had become popular enough to be recognized even by non-viewers. In December 1964 editorial cartoonist Leslie Gilbert Illingworth published a cartoon in the Daily Mail captioned "THE DEGAULLEK", caricaturing French President Charles de Gaulle arriving at a NATO meeting as a Dalek with de Gaulle's prominent nose.

 

The word "Dalek" has entered major dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines "Dalek" as "a type of robot appearing in 'Dr. Who' [sic], a B.B.C. Television science-fiction programme; hence used allusively."

 

But English-speakers sometimes use the term metaphorically to describe people, usually authority figures, who act like robots unable to break from their programming. For example, John Birt, the Director-General of the BBC from 1992 to 2000, was publicly called a "croak-voiced Dalek" by playwright Dennis Potter in the MacTaggart Lecture at the 1993 Edinburgh Television Festival.

 

Physical characteristics

 

Externally, Daleks resemble human-sized pepper pots with a single mechanical eyestalk mounted on a rotating dome, a gun mount containing an energy weapon ("gunstick" or "death ray") resembling an egg whisk, and a telescopic manipulator arm usually tipped by an appendage resembling a sink plunger. Daleks have been known to use their plungers to interface with technology, crush a man's skull by suction,[measure the intelligence of a subject, and extract information from a man's mind.[

 

Dalek casings are made of a bonded polycarbide material dubbed "dalekanium" by a member of the human resistance in The Dalek Invasion of Earth and by the Cult of Skaro in "Daleks in Manhattan".

 

The lower half of a Dalek's shell is covered with hemispherical protrusions, or "Dalek bumps", which are shown in the episode "Dalek" to be spheres embedded in the casing.[11] Both the BBC-licensed Dalek Book (1964) and The Doctor Who Technical Manual (1983) describe these items as being part of a sensory array,[ whilst in the 2005 series episode "Dalek", they are integral to a Dalek's self-destruct mechanism.

 

Their armour has a forcefield that evaporates most bullets and resists most types of energy weapons. The forcefield seems to be concentrated around the Dalek's midsection (where the mutant is located), as normally ineffective firepower can be concentrated on the eyestalk to blind a Dalek. Daleks have a very limited visual field, with no peripheral sight at all, and are relatively easy to hide from in fairly exposed places. Their own energy weapons are capable of destroying them.

 

Their weapons fire a beam that has electrical tendencies, is capable of propagating through water, and may be a form of plasma or electrolaser.

 

The eyepiece is a Dalek's most vulnerable spot; impairing its vision often leads to a blind, panicked firing of its weapon while exclaiming "My vision is impaired; I cannot see!" Russell T Davies subverted the catchphrase in his 2008 episode "The Stolen Earth", in which a Dalek vaporises a paintball that has blocked its vision while proclaiming "My vision is not impaired!"

 

Kaled mutants are octopus-like; many are coloured green, such as this one from "Resurrection of the Daleks".

 

The creature inside the mechanical casing is soft and repulsive in appearance and vicious in temperament. The first-ever glimpse of a Dalek mutant, in The Daleks, was a claw peeking out from under a Thal cloak after it had been removed from its casing.

 

The mutants' actual appearance has varied, but often adheres to the Doctor's description of the species in Remembrance of the Daleks as "little green blobs in bonded polycarbide armour".

 

In Resurrection of the Daleks a Dalek creature, separated from its casing, attacks and severely injures a human soldier; in Remembrance of the Daleks, there are two Dalek factions (Imperial and Renegade) and the creatures inside have a different appearance in each case, one resembling the amorphous creature from Resurrection, the other the crab-like creature from the original Dalek serial.

 

As the creature inside is rarely seen on screen, a common misconception exists that Daleks are wholly mechanical robots.

 

In the new series Daleks are retconned to be mollusc-like in appearance, with small tentacles, one or two eyes, and an exposed brain.

 

Daleks' voices are electronic; when out of its casing the mutant is only able to squeak. Once the mutant is removed, the casing itself can be entered and operated by humanoids; for example, in The Daleks, Ian Chesterton (William Russell) enters a Dalek shell to masquerade as a guard as part of an escape plan.

 

In a dark basement, a white Dalek (see previous description) appears to levitate up a small staircase of approximately seven stairs. The body of the Dalek is white, with shiny gold vertical slats and gold balls on its lower half. There is an orange-yellow glow at the Dalek's base.

 

For many years it was assumed that, due to their design and gliding motion, Daleks were unable to climb stairs, and that this was a simple way of escaping them. A well-known cartoon from Punch pictured a group of Daleks at the foot of a flight of stairs with the caption, "Well, this certainly buggers our plan to conquer the Universe".

 

In a scene from the serial Destiny of the Daleks, the Doctor and companions escape from Dalek pursuers by climbing into a ceiling duct. The Fourth Doctor calls down, "If you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us?"

 

The Daleks generally make up for their lack of mobility with overwhelming firepower; a joke among Doctor Who fans goes, "Real Daleks don't climb stairs; they level the building."

 

Dalek mobility has improved over the history of the series: in their first appearance, The Daleks, they were capable of movement only on the conductive metal floors of their city; in The Dalek Invasion of Earth a Dalek emerges from the waters of the River Thames, indicating that they not only had become freely mobile, but are amphibious;Planet of the Daleks showed that they could ascend a vertical shaft by means of an external anti-gravity mat placed on the floor; Revelation of the Daleks showed Davros in his life-support chair and one of his Daleks hovering and Remembrance of the Daleks depicted them as capable of hovering up a flight of stairs.

 

Despite this, journalists covering the series frequently refer to the Daleks' supposed inability to climb stairs; characters escaping up a flight of stairs in the 2005 episode "Dalek" made the same joke, and were shocked when the Dalek began to hover up the stairs after uttering the phrase "ELEVATE", in a similar manner to their normal phrase "EXTERMINATE".

 

The new series depicts the Daleks as fully capable of flight, even space flight.

 

Prop details

 

The non-humanoid shape of the Dalek did much to enhance the creatures' sense of menace[citation needed]. A lack of familiar reference points differentiated them from the traditional "bug-eyed monster" of science fiction, which Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman had wanted the show to avoid.

 

The unsettling Dalek form, coupled with their alien voices, made many believe that the props were wholly mechanical and operated by remote control.

 

The Daleks were actually controlled from inside by short operators who had to manipulate their eyestalks, domes, and arms, as well as flashing the lights on their heads in sync with the actors supplying their voices. The Dalek cases were built in two pieces; an operator would step into the lower section, and then the top would be secured. The operators looked out between the cylindrical louvres just beneath the dome, which were lined with mesh to conceal their faces.

 

In addition to being hot and cramped the Dalek casings also muffled external sounds, making it difficult for operators to hear the director's commands or studio dialogue. John Scott Martin, a Dalek operator from the original series, said that Dalek operation was a challenge: "You had to have about six hands: one to do the eyestalk, one to do the lights, one for the gun, another for the smoke canister underneath, yet another for the sink plunger. If you were related to an octopus then it helped."

 

For Doctor Who's 21st-century revival the Dalek casings retain the same overall shape and dimensional proportions of previous Daleks, although many details have been re-designed to give the Dalek a heavier and more solid look.

 

Changes include a larger, more pointed base; a glowing eyepiece; an all-over metallic-brass finish (specified by Davies); thicker, nailed strips on the "neck" section; a housing for the eyestalk pivot; and significantly larger dome lights.

 

The new prop made its on-screen debut in the 2005 episode "Dalek". These Dalek casings use a short operator inside the housing while the 'head' and eyestalk are operated via remote control. A third person, Nicholas Briggs, supplies the voice in their various appearances.

 

In the 2010 season a new, larger model appeared in several colours representing different parts of the Dalek command hierarchy.

 

Movement

 

Terry Nation's original plan was for the Daleks to glide across the floor. Early versions of the Daleks rolled on nylon castors, propelled by the operator's feet. Although castors were adequate for the Daleks' debut serial, which was shot entirely at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios, for The Dalek Invasion of Earth Terry Nation wanted the Daleks to be filmed on the streets of London. To enable the Daleks to travel smoothly on location, designer Spencer Chapman built the new Dalek shells around miniature tricycles with sturdier wheels, which were hidden by enlarged fenders fitted below the original base.

 

The uneven flagstones of Central London caused the Daleks to rattle as they moved and it was not possible to remove this noise from the final soundtrack. A small parabolic dish was added to the rear of the prop's casing to explain why these Daleks, unlike the ones in their first serial, were not dependent on static electricity drawn up from the floors of the Dalek city for their motive power.

 

Later versions of the prop had more efficient wheels and were once again simply propelled by the seated operators' feet, but they remained so heavy that when going up ramps they often had to be pushed by stagehands out of camera shot. The difficulty of operating all the prop's parts at once contributed to the occasionally jerky Dalek movements.

 

This problem has largely been eradicated with the advent of the "new series" version, as its remotely controlled dome and eyestalk allow the operator to concentrate on the smooth movement of the Dalek and its arms.

 

Voices

 

The staccato delivery, harsh tone, and rising inflection of the Dalek voice were initially developed by voice actors Peter Hawkins and David Graham, who would vary the pitch and speed of the lines according to the emotion needed. Their voices were further processed electronically by Brian Hodgson at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

 

Although the exact sound-processing devices used have varied, the original 1963 effect used equalisation to boost the mid-range of the actor's voice, then subjected it to ring modulation with a 30 Hz sine wave. The distinctive harsh grating vocal timbre this produced has remained the pattern for all Dalek voices since (with the exception of those in the 1985 serial Revelation of the Daleks, for which director Graeme Harper deliberately used less distortion).

 

Besides Hawkins and Graham, notable voice actors for the Daleks have included Roy Skelton, who first voiced the Daleks in the 1967 story The Evil of the Daleks and went on to provide voices for five additional Dalek serials including Planet of the Daleks, and for the one-off anniversary special The Five Doctors. Michael Wisher, the actor who originated the role of Dalek creator Davros in Genesis of the Daleks, provided Dalek voices for that same story, as well as for Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, and Death to the Daleks. Other Dalek voice actors include Royce Mills (three stories),Brian Miller (two stories), and Oliver Gilbert and Peter Messaline (one story).

 

John Leeson, who performed the voice of K9 in several Doctor Who stories, and Davros actors Terry Molloy and David Gooderson also contributed supporting voices for various Dalek serials.

 

Since 2005, the Dalek voice in the television series has been provided by Nicholas Briggs, speaking into a microphone connected to a voice modulator.

 

Briggs had previously provided Dalek and other alien voices for Big Finish Productions audio plays, and continues to do so. In a 2006 BBC Radio interview, Briggs said that when the BBC asked him to do the voice for the new television series, they instructed him to bring his own analogue ring modulator that he had used in the audio plays. The BBC's sound department had changed to a digital platform and could not adequately create the distinctive Dalek sound with their modern equipment. Briggs went as far as to bring the voice modulator to the actors' readings of the scripts.

 

Construction

 

Manufacturing the props was expensive. In scenes where many Daleks had to appear, some of them would be represented by wooden replicas (Destiny of the Daleks) or life-size photographic enlargements in the early black-and-white episodes (The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and The Power of the Daleks).

 

In stories involving armies of Daleks, the BBC effects team even turned to using commercially available toy Daleks, manufactured by Louis Marx & Co and Herts Plastic Moulders Ltd. Examples of this can be observed in the serials The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, and Planet of the Daleks.[48] Judicious editing techniques also gave the impression that there were more Daleks than were actually available, such as using a split screen in "The Parting of the Ways".

 

Four fully functioning props were commissioned for the first serial "The Daleks" in 1963, and were constructed from BBC plans by Shawcraft Engineering.

 

These became known in fan circles as "Mk I Daleks". Shawcraft were also commissioned to construct approximately 20 Daleks for the two Dalek movies in 1965 and 1966 (see below). Some of these movie props filtered back to the BBC and were seen in the televised serials, notably The Chase, which was aired before the first movie's debut. The remaining props not bought by the BBC were either donated to charity or given away as prizes in competitions.

 

The BBC's own Dalek props were reused many times, with components of the original Shawcraft "Mk I Daleks" surviving right through to their final classic series appearance in 1988.

But years of storage and repainting took their toll. By the time of the Sixth Doctor's Revelation of the Daleks new props were being manufactured out of fibreglass.

 

These models were lighter and more affordable to construct than their predecessors. These newer models were slightly bulkier in appearance around the mid-shoulder section, and also had a redesigned skirt section which was more vertical at the back. Other minor changes were made to the design due to these new construction methods, including altering the fender and incorporating the arm boxes, collars, and slats into a single fibreglass moulding.

 

These props were repainted in grey for the Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks and designated as "Renegade Daleks"; another redesign, painted in cream and gold, became the "Imperial Dalek" faction.

 

New Dalek props were built for the 21st century version of Doctor Who. The first, which appeared alone in the 2005 episode "Dalek", was built by modelmaker Mike Tucker.

Additional Dalek props based on Tucker's master were subsequently built out of fibreglass by Cardiff-based Specialist Models.

 

Development

 

Wishing to create an alien creature that did not look like a "man in a suit", Terry Nation stated in his script for the first Dalek serial that they should have no legs. He was also inspired by a performance by the Georgian National Ballet, in which dancers in long skirts appeared to glide across the stage.[56] For many of the shows, the Daleks were operated by retired ballet dancers wearing black socks while sitting inside the Dalek. Raymond Cusick (who died on 21 February 2013) was given the task of designing the Daleks when Ridley Scott, then a designer for the BBC, proved unavailable after having been initially assigned to their debut serial.

 

An account in Jeremy Bentham's Doctor Who—The Early Years (1986) says that after Nation wrote the script, Cusick was given only an hour to come up with the design for the Daleks, and was inspired in his initial sketches by a pepper shaker on a table. Cusick himself, however, states that he based it on a man seated in a chair, and only used the pepper shaker to demonstrate how it might move.

 

In 1964 Nation told a Daily Mirror reporter that the Dalek name came from a dictionary or encyclopaedia volume, the spine of which read "Dal – Lek" (or, according to another version, "Dal – Eks"). He later admitted that this book and the origin of the Dalek name was completely fictitious, and that anyone bothering to check out his story would have found him out.[61] The name had in reality simply rolled off his typewriter.

 

Later, Nation was pleasantly surprised to discover that in Serbo-Croatian the word "dalek" means "far", or "distant".

 

Nation grew up during World War II, and remembered the fear caused by German bombings. He consciously based the Daleks on the Nazis, conceiving the species as faceless, authoritarian figures dedicated to conquest and complete conformity. The allusion is most obvious in the Dalek stories penned by Nation, in particular The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) and Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

 

Prior to writing the first Dalek serial, Nation was chief scriptwriter for comedian Tony Hancock. The two had a falling out, and Nation either resigned or was fired.

 

When Hancock left the BBC, he worked on several series proposals, one of which was called From Plip to Plop, a comedic history of the world which would have ended with a nuclear apocalypse, the survivors being reduced to living in dustbin-like robot casings and eating radiation to stay alive. According to biographer Cliff Goodwin, when Hancock saw the Daleks, he allegedly shouted at the screen, "That bloody Nation—he's stolen my robots!"[69]

 

The naming of early Doctor Who stories is complex and sometimes controversial. The first Dalek serial is called, variously, The Survivors (the pre-production title), The Mutants (its official title at the time of production and broadcast, later taken by another unrelated story), Beyond the Sun (used on some production documentation), The Dead Planet (the on-screen title of the serial's first episode), or simply The Daleks.

 

The instant appeal of the Daleks caught the BBC off guard,and transformed Doctor Who from a Saturday tea-time children's educational programme to a must-watch national phenomenon. Children were alternately frightened and fascinated by the alien look of the monsters, and the Doctor Who production office was inundated by letters and calls asking about the creatures. Newspaper articles focused attention on the series and the Daleks, further enhancing their popularity.

 

Nation jointly owned the intellectual property rights to the Daleks with the BBC, and the money-making concept proved nearly impossible to sell to anyone else; he was dependent on the BBC wanting to produce stories featuring the creatures.

Several attempts to market the Daleks outside of the series were unsuccessful.Since Nation's death in 1997, his share of the rights is now administered by his former agent, Tim Hancock.

 

Early plans for what eventually became the 1996 Doctor Who television movie included radically redesigned Daleks whose cases unfolded like spiders' legs. The concept for these "Spider Daleks" was abandoned, but picked up again in several Doctor Who spin-offs.

 

When the new series was announced, many fans hoped the Daleks would return once more to the programme.

 

The Nation estate however demanded levels of creative control over the Daleks' appearances and scripts that were unacceptable to the BBC.[80] Eventually the Daleks were cleared to appear in the first series.

 

Fictional history

 

Main article: History of the Daleks

Dalek in-universe history has seen many retroactive changes, which have caused continuity problems. When the Daleks first appeared, they were presented as the descendants of the Dals, mutated after a brief nuclear war between the Dal and Thal races 500 years ago. This race of Daleks is destroyed when their power supply is wrecked.

 

However, when they reappear in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, they have conquered Earth in the 22nd century. Later stories saw them develop time travel and a space empire. In 1975, Terry Nation revised the Daleks' origins in Genesis of the Daleks, where the Dals were now called Kaleds (of which "Daleks" is an anagram), and the Dalek design was attributed to one man, the crippled Kaled chief scientist and evil genius, Davros.[84] Instead of a short nuclear exchange, the Kaled-Thal war was portrayed as a thousand-year-long war of attrition, fought with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons which caused widespread mutations among the Kaled race.

 

Davros experimented on living Kaled cells to find the ultimate mutated form of the Kaled species and placed the subjects in tank-like "travel machines" whose design was based on his own life-support chair.

 

Genesis of the Daleks marked a new era for the depiction of the species, with most of their previous history either forgotten or barely referred to again.Future stories in the original Doctor Who series, which followed a rough story arc,would also focus more on Davros, much to the dissatisfaction of some fans who felt that the Daleks should take centre stage rather than merely becoming minions of their creator.

 

Davros made his last televised appearance for 20 years in Remembrance of the Daleks, which depicted a civil war between two factions of Daleks. One faction, the "Imperial Daleks", were loyal to Davros, who had become their Emperor, whilst the other, the "Renegade Daleks", followed a black Supreme Dalek. By the end of the story, both factions have been wiped out and the Doctor has tricked them into destroying Skaro, though Davros escapes.

 

A single Dalek appeared in "Dalek", written by Robert Shearman, which was broadcast on BBC One on 30 April 2005. This Dalek appeared to be the sole Dalek survivor of the Time War which had destroyed both the Daleks and the Time Lords.

 

A Dalek Emperor returned at the end of the 2005 series, having rebuilt the Dalek race with genetic material harvested from human subjects. It saw itself as a god, and the new Daleks were shown worshipping it. These Daleks and their fleet were destroyed in "The Parting of the Ways".

 

The 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" featured a squad of four Dalek survivors from the old Empire, known as the Cult of Skaro, led by a black Dalek known as "Sec", that had survived the Time War by escaping into the Void between dimensions. They emerged, along with the Genesis Ark, a Time Lord prison vessel containing millions of Daleks, at Canary Wharf due to the actions of the Torchwood Institute and Cybermen from a parallel world.

 

This resulted in a Cyberman-Dalek clash in London, which was resolved when the Tenth Doctor caused both groups to be sucked back into the Void. The Cult survived by utilising an "emergency temporal shift" to escape.

 

These four Daleks - Sec, Jast, Thay and Caan - returned in the two-part story "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks", in which whilst stranded in 1930s New York, they set up a base in the partially built Empire State Building and attempt to rebuild the Dalek race. To this end, Dalek Sec merges with a human being to become a Human/Dalek hybrid. The Cult then set about creating "Human Daleks" by "formatting" the brains of a few thousand captured humans, with the intention of producing hybrids which remain fully human in appearance but with Dalek minds.[

 

Dalek Sec, however, starts to become so human that he changes the DNA to make the hybrids more human. This angers the rest of the Cult, resulting in mutiny and the death of Sec, Thay and Jast as well as the wiping out of all the hybrids. This leaves Dalek Caan as the last Dalek in existence. When the Doctor makes Caan realise that he is the last of his kind, Caan uses emergency temporal shift and escapes once more.

 

The Daleks returned in the 2008 season's two-part finale, "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", accompanied once again by their creator Davros. The story reveals that Caan's temporal shift sent him into the Time War whence he rescued Davros, in the process gaining the ability to see the future at the cost of his own sanity. Davros has created a new race using his own body's cells.

 

The episode depicts a Dalek invasion of Earth, which with other planets is taken to the Medusa Cascade, led by a red Supreme Dalek, who has kept Caan and Davros imprisoned in "The Vault", a section of the Dalek flagship, the Crucible. Davros and the Daleks plan to destroy reality itself with a "reality bomb" for which they need the stolen planets. The plan fails due to the interference of Donna Noble, a companion of the Doctor, and Caan himself, who has been manipulating events to destroy the Daleks after realising the severity of the atrocities they have committed.

 

The Daleks returned in the 2010 episode "Victory of the Daleks", the third episode of the series; Daleks who escaped the destruction of Davros' empire fell back in time and, by chance, managed to retrieve the "Progenitor".

 

This is a tiny apparatus which contains 'original' Dalek DNA. The activation of the Progenitor results in the creation of a "new paradigm" of Daleks. The New Paradigm Daleks deem their creators inferior and exterminate them; their creators make no resistance to this, deeming themselves inferior as well. They are organised into different roles (drone, scientist, strategists, supreme and eternal), which are identifiable with colour-coded armour instead of the identification plates under the eyestalk used by their predecessors. They escape the Doctor at the end of the episode via time travel with the intent to rebuild their Empire.

 

The Daleks only appeared briefly in subsequent finales "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang" (2010) and The Wedding of River Song (2011) as Steven Moffat decided to "give them a rest" and stated "There's a problem with the Daleks. They are the most famous of the Doctor's adversaries and the most frequent, which means they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe."

 

They next appear in "Asylum of the Daleks" (2012), where the Daleks are shown to have greatly increased numbers and have a Parliament; in addition to the traditional "modern" Daleks, several designs from both the original and new series appear. All record of the Doctor is removed from their collective consciousness at the end of the episode. The Daleks then appear in the 50th Anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", where they are seen being defeated in the Time War. In "The Time of the Doctor", the Daleks are one of the races that travel to Trenzalore and besiege it for centuries to stop the Doctor from releasing the Time Lords.

 

Due to converting Tasha Lem into a Dalek puppet, they regain knowledge of the Doctor. In the end, they are the only enemy left, the others having retreated or been destroyed and nearly kill the near-death Doctor before the Time Lords intervene and grant him a new regeneration cycle. The Doctor then uses his regeneration energy to obliterate the Daleks on the planet.

 

The Twelfth Doctor's first encounter with the Daleks is in his second full episode, "Into the Dalek" (2014), where he encounters a damaged Dalek, which he names 'Rusty', aboard a human resistance ship. Left with the Doctor's love of the universe and his hatred of the Daleks, he spares its life; it assumes a mission to destroy other Daleks. In "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar" (2015), the Doctor is summoned to Skaro where he learns Davros is alive, but dying, and has rebuilt the Dalek Empire. He escapes Davros' clutches by enlivening the decrepit Daleks of Skaro's sewers, who tear the empire apart, leaving behind the Master (Michelle Gomez), who accompanied him to Skaro. In "The Pilot" (2017), the Doctor briefly visits a battle in the Dalek-Movellan war while trying to escape a time travelling enemy.

 

Dalek culture

 

Daleks have little, if any, individual personality, ostensibly no emotions other than hatred and anger,[11] and a strict command structure in which they are conditioned to obey superiors' orders without question.

 

Dalek speech is characterised by repeated phrases, and by orders given to themselves and to others.

 

Unlike the stereotypical emotionless robots often found in science fiction, Daleks are often angry; author Kim Newman has described the Daleks as behaving "like toddlers in perpetual hissy fits", gloating when in power and flying into rage when thwarted.

 

They tend to be excitable and will repeat the same word or phrase over and over again in heightened emotional states, most famously "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

 

Daleks are extremely aggressive, and seem driven by an instinct to attack. This instinct is so strong that Daleks have been depicted fighting the urge to kill or even attacking when unarmed.

 

The Fifth Doctor characterises this impulse by saying, "However you respond [to Daleks] is seen as an act of provocation."

 

The fundamental feature of Dalek culture and psychology is an unquestioned belief in the superiority of the Dalek race,and their default directive is to destroy all non-Dalek life-forms.[

 

Other species are either to be exterminated immediately or enslaved and then exterminated once they are no longer useful.

 

The Dalek obsession with their own superiority is illustrated by the schism between the Renegade and Imperial Daleks seen in Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks: the two factions each consider the other to be a perversion despite the relatively minor differences between them.

 

This intolerance of any "contamination" within themselves is also shown in "Dalek", The Evil of the Daleks and in the Big Finish Productions audio play The Mutant Phase.

 

This superiority complex is the basis of the Daleks' ruthlessness and lack of compassion.[11][93] This is shown in extreme in "Victory of the Daleks", where the new, pure Daleks destroy their creators, impure Daleks, with the latters' consent. It is nearly impossible to negotiate or reason with a Dalek, a single-mindedness that makes them dangerous and not to be underestimated.

 

The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) is later puzzled in the "Asylum of the Daleks" as to why the Daleks don't just kill the sequestered ones that have "gone wrong". Although the Asylum is subsequently obliterated, the Prime Minister of the Daleks explains that "it is offensive to us to destroy such divine hatred", and the Doctor is sickened at the revelation that hatred is actually considered beautiful by the Daleks.

 

Dalek society is depicted as one of extreme scientific and technological advancement; the Third Doctor states that "it was their inventive genius that made them one of the greatest powers in the universe."

 

However, their reliance on logic and machinery is also a strategic weakness which they recognise, and thus use more emotion-driven species as agents to compensate for these shortcomings.

 

Although the Daleks are not known for their regard for due process, they have taken at least two enemies back to Skaro for a "trial", rather than killing them immediately. The first was their creator, Davros, in Revelation of the Daleks,[39] and the second was the renegade Time Lord known as the Master in the 1996 television movie.[98] The reasons for the Master's trial, and why the Doctor would be asked to retrieve the Master's remains, have never been explained on screen.

 

The Doctor Who Annual 2006 implies that the trial may have been due to a treaty signed between the Time Lords and the Daleks. The framing device for the I, Davros audio plays is a Dalek trial to determine if Davros should be the Daleks' leader once more.

 

Spin-off novels contain several tongue-in-cheek mentions of Dalek poetry, and an anecdote about an opera based upon it, which was lost to posterity when the entire cast was exterminated on the opening night. Two stanzas are given in the novel The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch.

 

In an alternative timeline portrayed in the Big Finish Productions audio adventure The Time of the Daleks, the Daleks show a fondness for the works of Shakespeare.

 

A similar idea was satirised by comedian Frankie Boyle in the BBC comedy quiz programme Mock the Week; he gave the fictional Dalek poem "Daffodils; EXTERMINATE DAFFODILS!" as an "unlikely line to hear in Doctor Who".

 

Because the Doctor has defeated the Daleks so often, he has become their collective arch-enemy and they have standing orders to capture or exterminate him on sight. In later fiction, the Daleks know the Doctor as "Ka Faraq Gatri" ("Bringer of Darkness" or "Destroyer of Worlds"), and "The Oncoming Storm".

 

Both the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) suggest that the Doctor is one of the few beings the Daleks fear. In "Doomsday", Rose notes that while the Daleks see the extermination of five million Cybermen as "pest control", "one Doctor" visibly un-nerves them (to the point they physically recoil).[13] To his indignant surprise, in "Asylum of the Daleks", the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) learns that the Daleks have designated him as "The Predator".

 

As the Doctor escapes the Asylum (with companions Amy and Rory), a Dalek-converted-human (Oswin Oswald) prisoner provides critical assistance, which culminates in completely deleting the Doctor from the Dalek hive-consciousness (the PathWeb), thus wiping the slate entirely blank. However, this was reversed in "The Time of the Doctor", when the Daleks regained knowledge of the Doctor through the memory of an old acquaintance of the Doctor, Tasha Lem.

 

Measurements

 

A rel is a Dalek and Kaled unit of measurement. It was usually a measurement of time, with a duration of slightly more than one second, as mentioned in "Doomsday", "Evolution of the Daleks" and "Journey's End", counting down to the ignition of the reality bomb. (One earth minute most likely equals about 50 rels.) However, in some comic books it was also used as a unit of velocity. Finally, in some cases it was used as a unit of hydroelectric energy (not to be confused with a vep, the unit used to measure artificial sunlight).

 

The rel was first used in the non-canonical feature film Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., soon after appearing in early Doctor Who comic books.

   

…we went upstairs into a spacious studio. The invigorating, nutty smell of

oil paint delighted my senses. It seemed as if I had stepped inside of the

painting. The enormous room dissolved the concentrated scent of oil paints and transformed into Asian perfume. Stepping inside an artist’s studio every time put me into the position of Alice in Wonderland. Surrounded by scattered paintings, brushes, pallets, paint tubes, roles of canvases, and sketch pads, I was searching for the special conversational piece. If I could only find the right piece, which would be the artist’s favorite, I knew it

would break the ice. The first painting that caught my attention put me suddenly under hypnosis and I don’t recall for how long I was staring at it, whether it was a minute or an hour. This is not, in any way, an exaggeration but a real-live experience.

Evidently, Jaisini noticed that I was trapped by one of his paintings and broke the silence.

-Do you like that piece, or are you looking for a starting point to criticize it?

However it is, I welcome your criticisms rather than flattery.

-Your painting develops in my mind like photosensitive paper in a developer. On second thought, I sense an aesthetic pleasure from just the color harmony, but I still need more time-I said.

-No problem, take your time while I finish a sketch.

I had to postpone the interview in order to get a better look at the painting

that captured me. The artist put on some classical music. I began taking notes about what I had seen while he was silently sketching. As time flew

  

by, it was getting dark outside and the music ended long ago. I glanced at

  

the watch and realized that 4 hours had already elapsed and I didn’t even start the interview.

Jaisini was still concentrating on his work and it was obvious that I should’ve called it a day. Setting the convenient time for tomorrow I left.

…we met at the café.

I could tell that Jaisini was in a good mood and the interview has a better chance today. Perhaps his work went well, I thought. Jaisini greeted me as someone he had already befriended….

…-Positively, the painting I was contemplating in your studio sticks to my mind

Jaisini answered;

-It happens to many. I like this cafe. It is always so picturesque. The people

here make it colorful. For example, do you see that waitress?

-The small blond in her late thirties?

-Yes, her name is Nancy. Three years ago she told me that she wanted to become famous and in her free time she writes a script for a movie, convincing me that it will be the first script of its kind, a love story based on

her memoir.

Jaisini smiled charmingly, adding: -Oh, no, I am not joking. I believe in her. Once I invited her to the studio, as

she seemed like such a peculiar person. I was just finishing my painting called “Organ Grinder”. She declared frankly and firmly: ”I want this picture. How much?”

I explained to her that I don’t sell paintings.

Then I experienced certain chemistry. When such a “simple” person, but still

the one who writes the script, says: “I want the “Organ Grinder”, it was the

strangest thing. I didn’t like the painting one bit and after that, all of a sudden, I started seeing it in a different light of something very pure and

divine. She wanted so badly to own the picture that she induced her desire on me. I think that to create this “divine” we have to get down with people, declass to become simple and understand art with awe. Even though Gleitzeit is not for regular people, it can be understood by a mailman who asked me for an autograph, by an immigrant who came to the US to earn

money, or by a priest from England who told me that this art is for intellectuals, not for ambitious people who say, “I understand this art while others don’t.”.

-Do you think that your pictures relate to people as if they are puzzles of human life?

-When a man is awake, a man is asleep; everything encloses. And when you enclose your line you create the reality in which the man truly exists not knowing that he is entrapped in a secluded world of his own doing which he cannot escape. The enclosed line may provoke the desire to breakout, to find an exit.

-The question arises, what is fine art now and who needs it? The elite?

-Yes, but people crave art too if a mailman asked me for my autograph on a postcard after I had to explain him about the picture he saw. Before I explained the painting the man felt scared of breaking his head over it. It is understandable when in schools art is taught as an entertainment, not as a psychological significance, a process of growth, a visualization of today’s reality, an analysis of social life and ancient history, or the world’s history that brought people to the technical progress.

- To build a family is more important for that man.

-Yes, he understands his purpose of trying to build a family of five with eighteen grandchildren. A man’s genetic structure is of a turtle’s and is directed to one, laying eggs by any means and returning in a year through six thousand miles across the ocean to lay eggs again at the same place. But pay attention that bravado of the civilized world brings a realization that everything is a sham. Real is what is encoded by nature; real is when you see a beautiful ocean, a beautiful sunrise, or the grace of a horse. This is real.

- Then what is fine art? Is fine beautiful or good?

-Beautiful. It began from nature, from the copying of beautiful bodies of people and horses…. My main direction in art is most progressive, to achieve in composition the grace of color combinations, an intellectual color climax, tone, contrast, and so on. The idea of the painting unites in itself everything we see in the real world, but in an intricate, puzzle-like concept.

-Art in America is a tendency for immediate recognition. The remembrance is strictly visual since there was no comprehension. First they want to see that it’s different. What about Gleitzeit, how do you see this visual effect expressed?

-A regular person, either a lady florist, my tennis partner, or a teenage cowboy comes to my studio and says: “I don’t understand this art and

I don’t want to see it, it’s not mine. When the lady florist starts seeing some figures in a painting, she shouts, “I see! Look! Look! I see it now!” like a child. A man denies what he doesn’t understand as an immediate reaction. An everyday man is brought up on the understanding of natural grace. He doesn’t assimilate it in an abstract

way. He sees an egg and a hen and points out which are the egg and the hen. In my picture he can’t say that this is an egg and this is a hen at first. Moreover, he can’t say what came first, the egg or the hen. He sees something very simple or very complicating. The man refuses to do an effort. Slowly, not even slowly, but pretty quickly the man can

transform if he learns.

-Do you want to change the process of art cognition? The judgment is not based on the appearance since ‘we’ve seen all there is to see’ with and without philosophy, like when they sell us Coca-Cola they tell us about the transcendental. We are understanding folks. Do you want this “flat” cognition to change?

- A man is looking for an escape. I try to attach him to a thread in the picture, which is twisted, to untangle it. What is next? Did he learn something? Yes, and he also begins to understand abstraction after the knot is undone. This is flexitime. Will the work turn blank? No, since it still has an idea. If it would be an automated drawing by a schoolchild that may look like something there is no concept. In my art you have an idea and mastership. The key is the artist’s mastership. A weak painting will not survive. What is left to the spectator is aesthetic pleasure and confidence.

-What if people ask you for a simpler art? Why do they have to untangle your art?

- I answer simply. It’s not my doing and decision. I didn’t decide it. The art critics said so, they who studied art all their life and read volumes of books. They say that they analyzed it and it has this and that meaning, non other. That an artist is a reflection of society.

- Do you consider yourself a reflection?

-No, I don’t. Philosophers try to understand what is art and life. I only

insist that grace will not diminish in value.

… and I caught myself on a thought that I wanted to know how the story with the scriptwriter waitress ended. If the painting is still in the artist’s holdings I would like to see it to know why she wanted it so badly. And I asked…From 48 hours of the Interview with Paul Jaisini in his New York studio

British postcard by London Postcard Company, no YS 5314 (Series 2 set of 9). Photo: Subafilms Ltd. Film image of The Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968). Caption: Up on the hill.

 

Yellow Submarine (1968) is an animated full-length film based on the music of The Beatles. It is also the title of the film's album of music, which is part of the Beatles' musical oeuvre. The film was directed by Canadian-born animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. With over 200 employees, chief designer Heinz Edelmann and director Charles Dunning worked on the film for eleven months. The animators came from England, but also from the USA and other countries in Europe. The real Beatles themselves do not appear until the final scene of the film.

 

In 1963, the American film studio United Artists approached The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein for a contract to make a number of films around the group. Epstein saw the deal as a good way to promote The Beatles and sell their music. United Artists was particularly interested in the money that would come in from selling the music albums. The Beatles were under contract to Capitol Records in the US, but that agreement excluded music albums. The studio knew that album sales would always make money even if the film flopped, so they saw the film deal with The Beatles as one in which they could not lose. On the other hand, the deal United Artists made with Epstein was not very favourable to The Beatles. Epstein was not a good negotiator and was an amateur in many financial matters. Admittedly, The Beatles were not at their peak of popularity at the time (certainly not in the US), but even in that context it was a disappointing contract. He had no idea of the normal profit percentages that could be negotiated, so he proposed a 7.5 % share. The United Artists studio bosses couldn't believe their luck; they had been afraid of tough negotiations and perhaps a higher percentage than 25%, and now Epstein came up with the ludicrous 7.5%. They immediately made a deal for three films. Not long after, the Beatles' popularity shot through the roof (also in the US), and Richard Lester made the first Beatles film A Hard Day's Night one of the most successful films of all time. This did not only deprive The Beatles of millions in earnings. They were also stuck with a financially disappointing film contract that would hang around their necks like a millstone.

 

The second film that The Beatles made for United Artists was Help, also directed by Lester. Although the film was as successful as its predecessor, the Beatles were not very enthusiastic about the end result. They were afraid of getting stuck in the format of "the happy adventures of the Beatles". But Brian Epstein had signed a contract with United Artists in 1963, and the film production company demanded a third film. All sorts of ideas were floated, such as a film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings with Ringo as Frodo and John as Gandalf, but the third film did not materialise. In 1967, the four Beatles thought they could direct themselves and made the television production "Magical Mystery Tour". The TV movie was broadcast by the BBC in black and white and was received by viewers and critics with dismay. After this, The Beatles' interest in films dropped to a low point. Their manager Brian Epstein came up with the solution. He was approached by Al Brodax, the head of King Features Syndicate, with the idea of making a full-length animated film based on a number of Beatles songs. The idea was based on the animated series about The Beatles that had been broadcast since 1965. TVC produced this series, in which an animated adventure was always made around a Beatles song. The Beatles were excited because they did not have to contribute to the film. But for this very reason, United Artists rejected Yellow Submarine as the third film. It was only with the documentary Let it Be that the Beatles fulfilled their contractual obligations. However, Yellow Submarine was a hit in cinemas and the critics were also enthusiastic. They especially praised the innovations in animation. The drawn appearance of The Beatles was based on the appearance of the real Beatles at the time of the recording of the film that accompanied the single Strawberry Fields Forever. Only, Paul McCartney's moustache had disappeared from his alter ego in the film. The Beatles themselves, who had expected some kind of Disney film, were pleasantly surprised by the result of Yellow Submarine and decided to appear in the final scene themselves.

 

The starting point for the film was the song "Yellow Submarine". Paul McCartney wrote it as one of the songs that drummer Ringo Starr could sing with his limited singing voice. It was intended as a children's song with simple lyrics and melody. Subsequent accusations that "yellow submarines" were a code name for yellow pills, namely Nembutol capsules, so-called "downers" (hence "submarine": submarine) were dismissed by McCartney. Producer Lee Minoff based himself on the idea of a children's song and wrote the first draft of the story. Soon, several scriptwriters were working on the scenario. It was decided to include a number of recent Beatles songs alongside 'Yellow Submarine'. Some of these songs were taken from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This Beatles album, released in 1967, caused a sensation in the music world. The idea behind the album was that The Beatles were transformed into the fictional pop group Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. On the cover, they can be seen in satin military uniforms in bright colours. This was the impetus for the idea of including in the film a Sgt. Pepper who lives in Pepperland with his band. At one point, there were about twenty versions of the screenplay circulating. One of the writers was Roger McCough, a poet from Liverpool, who contributed much to the dialogues with their typical ambiguities, expressions from Liverpool, and private jokes from The Beatles. McCough received 500 pounds for his contribution, but no mention in the credits. Mention was made of Jack Mendelsohn and Erich Segal. Mendelsohn had worked on the Beatles' animated series, but Segal was unfamiliar with the film business in 1967. He was working at Yale as an assistant to the professor of Classics. He was brought to London by Brodax to put together a coherent script from the large amount of material, some of which consisted only of fragments. Segal worked on the script continuously for several weeks under the threat of a deadline. He was barely allowed to leave his hotel room to jog. However, Segal was able to take advantage of a brilliant suggestion by lead designer Heinz Edelmann. During a production meeting, the collaborators came to a disturbing conclusion: the screenplay lacked an enemy. Pepperland was a paradise without a snake. Edelmann came up with the concept of the Blue Meanies and their attack on everything that smelt of music. (Incidentally, the meanies were originally red, entirely in keeping with the Cold War. An error by Edelmann's assistant caused the colours to be switched and the meanies became blue). Despite all the creative contributions, Yellow Submarine's screenplay also suffered from the fact that the music overshadowed the story and the story was adapted to the songs. It did result in a modern fairy tale about the 1967 hippy generation.

 

Source: Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

British postcard by London Postcard Company, no YS 5314 (Series 2 set of 9). Photo: Subafilms Ltd. Film image of The Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968). Caption: Up on the hill.

 

Yellow Submarine (1968) is an animated full-length film based on the music of The Beatles. It is also the title of the film's album of music, which is part of the Beatles' musical oeuvre. The film was directed by Canadian-born animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. With over 200 employees, chief designer Heinz Edelmann and director Charles Dunning worked on the film for eleven months. The animators came from England, but also from the USA and other countries in Europe. The real Beatles themselves do not appear until the final scene of the film.

 

In 1963, the American film studio United Artists approached The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein for a contract to make a number of films around the group. Epstein saw the deal as a good way to promote The Beatles and sell their music. United Artists was particularly interested in the money that would come in from selling the music albums. The Beatles were under contract to Capitol Records in the US, but that agreement excluded music albums. The studio knew that album sales would always make money even if the film flopped, so they saw the film deal with The Beatles as one in which they could not lose. On the other hand, the deal United Artists made with Epstein was not very favourable to The Beatles. Epstein was not a good negotiator and was an amateur in many financial matters. Admittedly, The Beatles were not at their peak of popularity at the time (certainly not in the US), but even in that context it was a disappointing contract. He had no idea of the normal profit percentages that could be negotiated, so he proposed a 7.5 % share. The United Artists studio bosses couldn't believe their luck; they had been afraid of tough negotiations and perhaps a higher percentage than 25%, and now Epstein came up with the ludicrous 7.5%. They immediately made a deal for three films. Not long after, the Beatles' popularity shot through the roof (also in the US), and Richard Lester made the first Beatles film A Hard Day's Night one of the most successful films of all time. This did not only deprive The Beatles of millions in earnings. They were also stuck with a financially disappointing film contract that would hang around their necks like a millstone.

 

The second film that The Beatles made for United Artists was Help, also directed by Lester. Although the film was as successful as its predecessor, the Beatles were not very enthusiastic about the end result. They were afraid of getting stuck in the format of "the happy adventures of the Beatles". But Brian Epstein had signed a contract with United Artists in 1963, and the film production company demanded a third film. All sorts of ideas were floated, such as a film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings with Ringo as Frodo and John as Gandalf, but the third film did not materialise. In 1967, the four Beatles thought they could direct themselves and made the television production "Magical Mystery Tour". The TV movie was broadcast by the BBC in black and white and was received by viewers and critics with dismay. After this, The Beatles' interest in films dropped to a low point. Their manager Brian Epstein came up with the solution. He was approached by Al Brodax, the head of King Features Syndicate, with the idea of making a full-length animated film based on a number of Beatles songs. The idea was based on the animated series about The Beatles that had been broadcast since 1965. TVC produced this series, in which an animated adventure was always made around a Beatles song. The Beatles were excited because they did not have to contribute to the film. But for this very reason, United Artists rejected Yellow Submarine as the third film. It was only with the documentary Let it Be that the Beatles fulfilled their contractual obligations. However, Yellow Submarine was a hit in cinemas and the critics were also enthusiastic. They especially praised the innovations in animation. The drawn appearance of The Beatles was based on the appearance of the real Beatles at the time of the recording of the film that accompanied the single Strawberry Fields Forever. Only, Paul McCartney's moustache had disappeared from his alter ego in the film. The Beatles themselves, who had expected some kind of Disney film, were pleasantly surprised by the result of Yellow Submarine and decided to appear in the final scene themselves.

 

The starting point for the film was the song "Yellow Submarine". Paul McCartney wrote it as one of the songs that drummer Ringo Starr could sing with his limited singing voice. It was intended as a children's song with simple lyrics and melody. Subsequent accusations that "yellow submarines" were a code name for yellow pills, namely Nembutol capsules, so-called "downers" (hence "submarine": submarine) were dismissed by McCartney. Producer Lee Minoff based himself on the idea of a children's song and wrote the first draft of the story. Soon, several scriptwriters were working on the scenario. It was decided to include a number of recent Beatles songs alongside 'Yellow Submarine'. Some of these songs were taken from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This Beatles album, released in 1967, caused a sensation in the music world. The idea behind the album was that The Beatles were transformed into the fictional pop group Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. On the cover, they can be seen in satin military uniforms in bright colours. This was the impetus for the idea of including in the film a Sgt. Pepper who lives in Pepperland with his band. At one point, there were about twenty versions of the screenplay circulating. One of the writers was Roger McCough, a poet from Liverpool, who contributed much to the dialogues with their typical ambiguities, expressions from Liverpool, and private jokes from The Beatles. McCough received 500 pounds for his contribution, but no mention in the credits. Mention was made of Jack Mendelsohn and Erich Segal. Mendelsohn had worked on the Beatles' animated series, but Segal was unfamiliar with the film business in 1967. He was working at Yale as an assistant to the professor of Classics. He was brought to London by Brodax to put together a coherent script from the large amount of material, some of which consisted only of fragments. Segal worked on the script continuously for several weeks under the threat of a deadline. He was barely allowed to leave his hotel room to jog. However, Segal was able to take advantage of a brilliant suggestion by lead designer Heinz Edelmann. During a production meeting, the collaborators came to a disturbing conclusion: the screenplay lacked an enemy. Pepperland was a paradise without a snake. Edelmann came up with the concept of the Blue Meanies and their attack on everything that smelt of music. (Incidentally, the meanies were originally red, entirely in keeping with the Cold War. An error by Edelmann's assistant caused the colours to be switched and the meanies became blue). Despite all the creative contributions, Yellow Submarine's screenplay also suffered from the fact that the music overshadowed the story and the story was adapted to the songs. It did result in a modern fairy tale about the 1967 hippy generation.

 

Source: Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

British postcard by London Postcard Company, no YS 5314 (Series 2 set of 9). Photo: Subafilms Ltd. Film image of The Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968). Caption: Up on the hill.

 

Yellow Submarine (1968) is an animated full-length film based on the music of The Beatles. It is also the title of the film's album of music, which is part of the Beatles' musical oeuvre. The film was directed by Canadian-born animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. With over 200 employees, chief designer Heinz Edelmann and director Charles Dunning worked on the film for eleven months. The animators came from England, but also from the USA and other countries in Europe. The real Beatles themselves do not appear until the final scene of the film.

 

In 1963, the American film studio United Artists approached The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein for a contract to make a number of films around the group. Epstein saw the deal as a good way to promote The Beatles and sell their music. United Artists was particularly interested in the money that would come in from selling the music albums. The Beatles were under contract to Capitol Records in the US, but that agreement excluded music albums. The studio knew that album sales would always make money even if the film flopped, so they saw the film deal with The Beatles as one in which they could not lose. On the other hand, the deal United Artists made with Epstein was not very favourable to The Beatles. Epstein was not a good negotiator and was an amateur in many financial matters. Admittedly, The Beatles were not at their peak of popularity at the time (certainly not in the US), but even in that context it was a disappointing contract. He had no idea of the normal profit percentages that could be negotiated, so he proposed a 7.5 % share. The United Artists studio bosses couldn't believe their luck; they had been afraid of tough negotiations and perhaps a higher percentage than 25%, and now Epstein came up with the ludicrous 7.5%. They immediately made a deal for three films. Not long after, the Beatles' popularity shot through the roof (also in the US), and Richard Lester made the first Beatles film A Hard Day's Night one of the most successful films of all time. This did not only deprive The Beatles of millions in earnings. They were also stuck with a financially disappointing film contract that would hang around their necks like a millstone.

 

The second film that The Beatles made for United Artists was Help, also directed by Lester. Although the film was as successful as its predecessor, the Beatles were not very enthusiastic about the end result. They were afraid of getting stuck in the format of "the happy adventures of the Beatles". But Brian Epstein had signed a contract with United Artists in 1963, and the film production company demanded a third film. All sorts of ideas were floated, such as a film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings with Ringo as Frodo and John as Gandalf, but the third film did not materialise. In 1967, the four Beatles thought they could direct themselves and made the television production "Magical Mystery Tour". The TV movie was broadcast by the BBC in black and white and was received by viewers and critics with dismay. After this, The Beatles' interest in films dropped to a low point. Their manager Brian Epstein came up with the solution. He was approached by Al Brodax, the head of King Features Syndicate, with the idea of making a full-length animated film based on a number of Beatles songs. The idea was based on the animated series about The Beatles that had been broadcast since 1965. TVC produced this series, in which an animated adventure was always made around a Beatles song. The Beatles were excited because they did not have to contribute to the film. But for this very reason, United Artists rejected Yellow Submarine as the third film. It was only with the documentary Let it Be that the Beatles fulfilled their contractual obligations. However, Yellow Submarine was a hit in cinemas and the critics were also enthusiastic. They especially praised the innovations in animation. The drawn appearance of The Beatles was based on the appearance of the real Beatles at the time of the recording of the film that accompanied the single Strawberry Fields Forever. Only, Paul McCartney's moustache had disappeared from his alter ego in the film. The Beatles themselves, who had expected some kind of Disney film, were pleasantly surprised by the result of Yellow Submarine and decided to appear in the final scene themselves.

 

The starting point for the film was the song "Yellow Submarine". Paul McCartney wrote it as one of the songs that drummer Ringo Starr could sing with his limited singing voice. It was intended as a children's song with simple lyrics and melody. Subsequent accusations that "yellow submarines" were a code name for yellow pills, namely Nembutol capsules, so-called "downers" (hence "submarine": submarine) were dismissed by McCartney. Producer Lee Minoff based himself on the idea of a children's song and wrote the first draft of the story. Soon, several scriptwriters were working on the scenario. It was decided to include a number of recent Beatles songs alongside 'Yellow Submarine'. Some of these songs were taken from the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This Beatles album, released in 1967, caused a sensation in the music world. The idea behind the album was that The Beatles were transformed into the fictional pop group Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. On the cover, they can be seen in satin military uniforms in bright colours. This was the impetus for the idea of including in the film a Sgt. Pepper who lives in Pepperland with his band. At one point, there were about twenty versions of the screenplay circulating. One of the writers was Roger McCough, a poet from Liverpool, who contributed much to the dialogues with their typical ambiguities, expressions from Liverpool, and private jokes from The Beatles. McCough received 500 pounds for his contribution, but no mention in the credits. Mention was made of Jack Mendelsohn and Erich Segal. Mendelsohn had worked on the Beatles' animated series, but Segal was unfamiliar with the film business in 1967. He was working at Yale as an assistant to the professor of Classics. He was brought to London by Brodax to put together a coherent script from the large amount of material, some of which consisted only of fragments. Segal worked on the script continuously for several weeks under the threat of a deadline. He was barely allowed to leave his hotel room to jog. However, Segal was able to take advantage of a brilliant suggestion by lead designer Heinz Edelmann. During a production meeting, the collaborators came to a disturbing conclusion: the screenplay lacked an enemy. Pepperland was a paradise without a snake. Edelmann came up with the concept of the Blue Meanies and their attack on everything that smelt of music. (Incidentally, the meanies were originally red, entirely in keeping with the Cold War. An error by Edelmann's assistant caused the colours to be switched and the meanies became blue). Despite all the creative contributions, Yellow Submarine's screenplay also suffered from the fact that the music overshadowed the story and the story was adapted to the songs. It did result in a modern fairy tale about the 1967 hippy generation.

 

Source: Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

French postcard by Editions Mercuri, no. 466. Image: Spanish lobby card for Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979). The Spanish title is 'Alien, el octavo pasajero'.

 

"In space, no one can hear you scream" is the tagline of the Sci-Fi Horror classic Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979). A close encounter of the third kind becomes a Jaws-style nightmare when an alien invades a spacecraft. Alien stands as one of the more thought-provoking, yet utterly terrifying horror films ever. Sigourney Weaver is amazing as Ellen Ripley, who became an iconic character in film history. The film won an Oscar for special effects, including the alien designed by Swiss artist H.R. Giger.

 

It is the year 2122. The U.S.C.S. Nostromo (Italian for "mate"), a commercial cargo spacecraft, is flying to Earth with several million tonnes of ore on board. The ship is manned by seven people and a sophisticated computer, which the crew call "Mother". The crew members are the men Dallas, Ash, Kane, Parker and Brett and the women Ripley and Lambert. The crew is woken up from hibernation by the ship's Mother computer to answer a distress signal from a nearby planet. Capt. Dallas's (Tom Skerritt) rescue team discovers a bizarre pod field, but things get even stranger when a face-hugging creature bursts out of a pod and attaches itself to Kane (John Hurt). Over the objections of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), science officer Ash (Ian Holm) lets Kane back on the ship. The acid-blooded incubus detaches itself from an apparently recovered Kane, but an alien erupts from Kane's stomach and escapes. The alien starts stalking the humans, pitting Dallas and his crew (and cat) against a malevolent killing machine that also has a protector in the nefarious Company. While still a student at the University of Southern California, scriptwriter Dan O'Bannon had teamed up with director John Carpenter to make a comic science fiction film called Dark Star. His experience making this film gave Bannon the idea of making a similar film, but with a horror theme instead of a comedy. A few years later, he began writing a screenplay around this idea. Around the same time, Ronald Shusett began working on a screenplay that would eventually become Total Recall. He contacted O'Bannon after seeing Dark Star, after which the two decided to work together on Alien. However, O'Bannon had not yet thought about what the monster should look like.

 

Swiss artist H.R. Giger's alien design and Carlo Rambaldi's visual effects for Alien (1979) creepily meld technology with corporeality, creating a claustrophobic environment that is coldly mechanical yet horribly anthropomorphized, like the metallic monster itself. Director Ridley Scott keeps the alien out of full view, hiding it in the dark or camouflaging it in the workings of the Nostromo. Lucia Bozzola at AllMovie: "Signs of '70s cultural upheaval permeate Alien's future world, from the relationship between corporate capitalism and rapacious monstrosity to the heterogeneous crew and Ripley's forceful horror heroine. However, the intense frights and gross-outs are credited with making Alien one of the biggest hits of 1979 (it premiered on the two-year anniversary of Star Wars); Giger, Rambaldi, et al. won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects." Alien went on to spawn some genre-bending sequels: the actioner Aliens (1986), dark prison drama Alien 3 (1992), and the exotically grotesque Alien Resurrection (1997). In 2003, a director's cut of Alien (1979) was released in cinemas, with some additional scenes. The franchise now counts seven films. Roger Ebert: "Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession."

 

Sources: Roger Ebert (RogerEbert.com), Lucia Bozzola (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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

French postcard, no. 51. Brigitte Helm in Spione am Werk/Spies at Work (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1933).

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

Italian postcard by Rizzoli e c., Milano, 1936, XV. Photo: Ufa. Brigitte Helm in L'Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Lost Atlantis (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1932).

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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

German press photo. Jean-Pierre Léaud in L'amour en fuite/Love on the Run (François Truffaut, 1979).

 

French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud (1944) is best known for playing Antoine Doinel in Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959) and François Truffaut's following series of films about that character. He also worked several times with Jean-Luc Godard, and is one of the icons of the French New Wave. He is also known for his staccato diction.

 

Jean-Pierre Léaud was born in Paris in 1944. He was the son of an assistant scriptwriter, Pierre Léaud, and the actress Jacqueline Pierreux. Léaud made his major debut as an actor at the age of 14 as Antoine Doinel, a semi-autobiographical character based on the life events of French film director François Truffaut, in Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959). To cast the two adolescents, Truffaut published an announcement in France-Soir and auditioned several hundred children in September and October 1958. Jean Domarchi, a critic at Cahiers du cinéma, recommended Léaud. Truffaut was immediately captivated by the fourteen-year-old adolescent, who had already appeared with Jean Marais in the Swashbuckler La Tour, prends garde !/The Tower, watch out! (Georges Lampin, 1958). Jean-Pierre Léaud, then in the eighth grade at a private school in Pontigny, was a far from ideal student. He often ran away with the older students on their nights out, but could also be brilliant, generous, and affectionate. During and following the filming of Les Quatre Cents Coups/The 400 Blows (1959), Truffaut's concern for Léaud extended beyond the film set. He took charge of the difficult adolescent's upbringing after Léaud was expelled from school and kicked out of the home of the retired couple taking care of him. Truffaut subsequently rented a studio apartment for Léaud. Truffaut also hired him for assistant work on La peau douce/The Soft Skin (1964) and Mata Hari, Agent H21 (1964). After the short-film Antoine et Colette (1962), a segment of the anthology L'amour à vingt ans (1962), Léaud starred in four more Truffaut films depicting the life of Doinel, spanning a period of 20 years. Those films are Baisers volés/Stolen Kisses (1968), Domicile conjugal/Bed and Board (1970) and L'amour en fuite/Love on the Run (1979), all with Claude Jade. He also collaborated with Truffaut on non-Antoine Doinel films like Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent/Two English Girls (1971) and La Nuit américaine/Day for Night (1973) and became the actor most commonly affiliated with him. Although Antoine Doinel is his most familiar character, he often found his performances in other films to be compared to his Doinel character whether there were legitimate similarities or not.

 

Jean-Pierre Léaud is one of the most visible and well-known actors to be associated with the French New Wave film movement and, aside from his work with Truffaut, collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard on nine films, Jean Eustache, Jacques Rivette and Agnès Varda. In 1966, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival for his role in Masculin Féminin (Jean Luc Godard, 1966). He was in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Porcile/Pigsty (1968), in Jerzy Skolimowski’s Dialog 20-40-60/Dialogue 20-40-60 (1968), Brazilian Carlos Diegues' Os herdeiros/The Heirs (1970) and Glauber Rocha's Der Leone have sept cabeças/The Lion Has Seven Heads (1971). The early 1970s was perhaps the peak of his professional career when he had three critically acclaimed films released: Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo tango a Parigi/Last Tango in Paris (1972), Truffaut's La Nuit américaine/Day for Night (1973), and Jean Eustache's La Maman et la Putain/The Mother and the Whore (1973) with Bernadette Lafont. In the Bertolucci film, Léaud appeared in the same film as a hero of his, Marlon Brando, although the two men never met, since all of Léaud's scenes were shot on Saturdays and Brando refused to work on Saturdays. In 1988, he was nominated for a César Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for the comedy Les Keufs/Lady Cops (Josiane Balasko, 1987) and was awarded an Honorary César for lifetime achievement in 2000. He made an exciting comeback in the nineties when several ‘new New Wave’ directors hired Léaud to pay homage to their elders. Among them French film makers such as Olivier Assayas, Danièle Dubroux , Serge Le Péron or Bertrand Bonello and foreigners like Finnish Aki Käurismäki and Taiwanese Tsai Ming-Liang. In 2016, Léaud received the Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and in 2017, he won the Lumières Award for Best Actor for his role in the historical drama La Mort de Louis XIV/The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra, 2017). Jean-Pierre Léaud is married to the French actress Brigitte Duvivier.

 

Sources: Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

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

French postcard by Europe, no. 401. Photo: Studio Lorelle, Paris. Brigitte Helm in L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

 

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

 

Brigitte Helm was born as Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, in 1906 (some sources say 1908). Her father was a Prussian army officer, who left his wife a widow not long after. Brigitte gained her acting experience in school productions but never thought of acting classes. After her school exams, she wanted to be an astronomer. But then she was discovered by the famous director Fritz Lang for the lead in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), then the most expensive German film ever made. Her mother had sent a photograph of her beautiful 16-years-old daughter to Lang's wife, scriptwriter Thea von Harbou. Helm was invited to the set of Die Nibelungen and was given a screen test. She got the double role of the noble and virginal Maria and her evil and sensual twin, the Maschinenmensch, a robot created to urge the workers in revolting and destroy their own city. In their 1996 obituary in The New York Times, Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog note: "The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the loft heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toll in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters. But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the staring transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel." Metropolis made Brigitte Helm a star overnight.

 

UFA gave Brigitte Helm a contract, and over the next 10 years, she acted in 29 German, French, and English films. She was cast as the evil but oh so seductive protagonist in the Sci-Fi-horror film Alraune. First in the silent version of 1928, directed by Henrik Galeen. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel 'Alraune' has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his 'mad doctor' roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, the sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions - least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself." Two years later Helm also starred in the sound version, Alraune/A Daughter of Destiny (Richard Oswald, 1930), for which the Dutch postcard lower in this post was made.

 

Brigitte Helm played a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue in the wartime melodrama Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (G.W. Pabst, 1927). It was Brigitte Helm's first project with Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the director who could - better than any other director - bring out her mysterious adaptability. In his films Abwege/The Devious Path (1928) and L’Atlantide/Die Herrin von Atlantis/Queen of Atlantis (1932) she proved that she could perform more restrained and emotionally expressive characters. In Abwege, she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. In L'Atlantide (1932), Helm plays a goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Werner Sudendorff wrote in his obituary of Helm in The Independent: "Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema." These films and Marcel L'Herbier's late silent film L'Argent/The Money (Marcel L’ Herbier, 1928) allowed Helm to act outside the tired cliches she was later often subjected to by scriptwriters and producers.

 

Brigitte Helm's first sound film was the musical Die singende Stadt/City of Song (Carmine Gallone, 1930) with Jan Kiepura. She also appeared in the French and English versions of her German films. Werner Sudendorff: "In her films of the early 1930s, Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the down-to-earth, affluent modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker." However, her sound films, like Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1931), The Blue Danube (Herbert Wilcox, 1932), and Gold/L’Or (Karl Hartl, 1934), do not have the artistic cachet of her best silent films. Her relationship with the Ufa happened to be very rocky. While the studio had made her a star and kept increasing her pay, the actress was unhappy with the material the Ufa offered her and she was annoyed about the restrictive clauses dictating her weight.

 

Reportedly Brigitte Helm was Josef Von Sternberg's original choice for the starring role of Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (1930), but the part went to Marlene Dietrich. Helm was also James Whale's first choice for his Bride of Frankenstein (1935), but reportedly she refused to go to America. In 1935, angered by the Nazi control of the German film industry, she didn’t extend her contract with the Ufa. Perhaps another reason for her decision were the negative press reports about her many traffic accidents and the short prison sentence as a result of it. Her last film was Ein Idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935), an adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde.

 

In private, Brigitte Helm was a timid, modest, and not very ambitious personality. In 1935, after a short but prolific career of 32 films, she married Dr. Hugo Von Kunheim, a German industrialist of Jewish descent, and retired. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "in addition to no longer needing to pursue her acting, with which she was never 100-percent comfortable, she was repelled by the takeover of the German movie industry by the Hitler government. Her marital status, coupled with her anti-Nazi political views, made it impossible for Helm to continue working in movies or living in Germany. From 1935 onward, the couple lived in Switzerland. After the war, they divided their time between Germany and Switzerland, but Helm chose to live quietly and remain anonymous." The pair would raise four children. In 1968 Helm received the Filmband in Gold for “continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years". She steadfastly refused to appear in a film again, nor even grant an interview about her film career, but she always answered requests from her old fans for her signature. Brigitte Helm died in 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland. In particular, her Evil Maria won't be forgotten. Apt for her is the Mae West line: "When I am good, I am very good; but when I am bad, I am better."

 

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Robert McThomas and Peter Herzog (The New York Times), Werner Sudendorff (The Independent), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Film Reference, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

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