The Best Actress 1961
From my list: https://www.imdb.com/list/ls027024353/
List activity
41 views
• 5 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
49 people
- Michiyo Aratama was born on 15 January 1930 in Nara, Japan. She was an actress, known for The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (1959), The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959) and The Sword of Doom (1966). She died on 17 March 2001 in Tokyo, Japan.1688 points
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Audrey Hepburn was born as Audrey Kathleen Ruston on May 4, 1929 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. Her mother, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman, while her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was born in Úzice, Bohemia, to English and Austrian parents.
After her parents' divorce, Audrey went to London with her mother where she went to a private girls school. Later, when her mother moved back to the Netherlands, she attended private schools as well. While she vacationed with her mother in Arnhem, Netherlands, Hitler's army took over the town. It was here that she fell on hard times during the Nazi occupation. Audrey suffered from depression and malnutrition.
After the liberation, she went to a ballet school in London on a scholarship and later began a modeling career. As a model, she was graceful and, it seemed, she had found her niche in life--until the film producers came calling. In 1948, after being spotted modeling by a producer, she was signed to a bit part in the European film Nederlands in zeven lessen (1948). Later, she had a speaking role in the 1951 film, Young Wives' Tale (1951) as Eve Lester. The part still wasn't much, so she headed to America to try her luck there. Audrey gained immediate prominence in the US with her role in Roman Holiday (1953). This film turned out to be a smashing success, and she won an Oscar as Best Actress.
On September 25, 1954, she married actor Mel Ferrer. She also starred in Sabrina (1954), for which she received another Academy Award nomination. She starred in the films Funny Face (1957) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). She received yet another Academy Award nomination for her role in The Nun's Story (1959). On July 17, 1960, she gave birth to her first son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer.
Audrey reached the pinnacle of her career when she played Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), for which she received another Oscar nomination. She scored commercial success again playing Regina Lampert in the espionage caper Charade (1963). One of Audrey's most radiant roles was in the fine production of My Fair Lady (1964). After a couple of other movies, most notably Two for the Road (1967), she hit pay dirt and another nomination in Wait Until Dark (1967).
In 1967, Audrey decided to retire from acting while she was on top. She divorced from Mel Ferrer in 1968. On January 19, 1969, she married Dr. Andrea Dotti. On February 8, 1970, she gave birth to her second son, Luca Dotti in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland. From time to time, she would appear on the silver screen.
In 1988, she became a special ambassador to the United Nations UNICEF fund helping children in Latin America and Africa, a position she retained until 1993. She was named to People's magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. Her last film was Always (1989).
Audrey Hepburn died, aged 63, on January 20, 1993 in Tolochnaz, Vaud, Switzerland, from appendicular cancer. She had made a total of 31 high quality movies. Her elegance and style will always be remembered in film history as evidenced by her being named in Empire magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time".1593 points- Actress
- Director
- Writer
She was born in Viareggio (Tuscany, Italy) on June 5th, 1946. She won a beauty contest when she was just 15 years old, which led to her first role in "Il federale" together with the great Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi. She was then cast by Germi for the Italian comedy "Divorzio all'Italiana", working with Marcello Mastroianni, but she became well known a few years later performing in the movie "Sedotta e abbandonata". At 16 she had a relationship with the Italian musician Gino Paoli and in 1964 she gave birth to her first daughter Amanda. In the 70s she worked with directors Bernardo Bertolucci, Ettore Scola, Comencini and acted with Vittorio Gassman, Dustin Hoffman (Alfredo, Alfredo), Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu (Novecento). In the 80s she performed her sexiest role in "La chiave" by Tinto Brass, which made her an erotic icon for a whole generation of men, and participated in important Italian movies (for example Speriamo che sia femmina, with Catherine Deneuve and Liv Ullman). In the 90s she especially worked for tv series and became very popular as Gigi Proietti's fiancée in "Il Maresciallo Rocca". She worked a little less for the cinema industry, nevertheless she participated in Bertolucci's "Io ballo da sola" and in Muccino's "L'ultimo bacio", where she portrayed a woman in the deep of a midlife crises. On September 10th 2005 she received the Golden Lion at the 62th Venice Film Festival for her life achievements.
Stefania Sandrelli represents one of the few actresses who are able to age gracefully and still get interesting roles. She is still regarded as one of the most beautiful women in Italy and she is still able to charm the audience with her sweet smile and sparkling eyes.1513 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Like many other female Italian film stars, Claudia Cardinale's entry into the business was by way of a beauty pageant. She was 17 years old and studying at the Centro Sperimentale in Rome when she entered a beauty contest, which resulted in her getting a succession of small film roles. Her earthy interpretations of Sicilian women got her noticed by Italian producers, and the combination of her beauty, dark, flashing eyes, explosive sexuality and genuine acting talent virtually guaranteed her stardom. After Careless (1962) she rose to the front ranks of Italian cinema, and became an international star in Federico Fellini's classic 8½ (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni. American audiences may best remember her from her starring role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).1486 points- Actress
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.
Wood was born July 20, 1938 in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents: housewife Maria Gurdin (née Zoodiloff), known by multiple aliases including Mary, Marie and Musia, and second husband Nick Gurdin (née Zacharenko), a janitor and prop builder. Nicholas was born in Primorsky Krai, son of a chocolate-factory worker. Maria was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia to a wealthy industrialist. Natalie's maternal grandfather owned soap and candle factories.
Wood's parents had to migrate due to the Russian Civil War. Her paternal grandfather joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces early in the war and was killed in a street fight between Red and White Russian soldiers. This convinced the Zacharenkos to migrate to Shanghai, China, where they had relatives. Wood's paternal grandmother remarried in 1927 and moved the family to Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1933 they resettled along the U.S. West Coast. Nicholas met Wood's mother, four years his senior, while she was still married to Alexander Tatuloff, an Armenian mechanic she divorced in 1936.
Mary Tatuloff, Wood's mother, had unfulfilled ambitions of becoming a ballet dancer. She grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin and had married Alexander there in 1925. The Tatuloffs had one daughter, Ovsanna, before coming to America in 1930. After marrying Nicholas Zacharenko in 1938, five months before Wood's birth, Mary (now calling herself Marie) transferred her dream of stardom onto her second child. Marie frequently took a young Wood with her to the cinema, where she could study the films of Hollywood child stars.
Wood's parents changed the family name to Gurdin upon obtaining U.S. citizenship, and her pseudonymous mother finally settled on a permanent first name: Maria. In 1942 they bought a house in Santa Rosa, where young Natalie was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot. She got to audition for roles as an actress, and the family moved to Los Angeles to help seek out roles for her. RKO Radio Pictures' executives William Goetz and David Lewis chose the stage name Wood for her, in reference to director Sam Wood. Natalie's younger sister Svetlana Gurdin would eventually follow an acting career as well, under the stage name Lana Wood.
Wood made her film debut in Happy Land (1943). She was only five years old, and her scene as the "Little Girl Who Drops Ice Cream Cone" lasted 15 seconds. Wood somehow attracted the interest of film director Irving Pichel who remained in contact with her family. She had few job offers over the following two years, but Pichel helped her get a screen test for a more substantial role in the romance film Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). Wood passed through an audition and won the role of Margaret Ludwig, a post-World War II German orphan. At the time, Wood was unable to "cry on cue" for a key scene, so her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her, giving her a reason to cry for the scene.
Wood started appearing regularly in films following this role and soon received a contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first major role was that of Susan Walker in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which was a commercial and critical hit. Wood got her first taste of fame, and afterwards Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Following her early success, Wood receive many more film offers. She typically appeared in family films, cast as the daughter of such stars as Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis. Wood found herself in high demand and appeared in over twenty films as a child actress.
The California laws of the era required that until reaching adulthood, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom. Wood received her primary education on the studio lots, receiving three hours of school lessons whenever she was working on a film. She was reportedly a "straight A student." Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was quite impressed by Wood's intellect. After school hours ended, Wood would hurry to the set to film her scenes.
While Wood acquired the services of agents, her early career was micromanaged by her mother. An older Wood gained her first major television role in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953). At the age of 16, she found more success with the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She played the role of a teenage girl who wears makeup and dresses up in racy clothes to attract the attention of a father who typically ignores her. The film's success helped Wood make the transition from child actress to an ingenue. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Her next significant film was The Searchers (1956), a western in which she played the role of abduction victim Debbie Edwards, niece of John Wayne's character. The film was a commercial and critical hit, and has since become regarded as a masterpiece. Also in 1956, Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School. She signed a contract with Warner Brothers, where she was kept busy with several new films. To her disappointment, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the protagonist and received roles of little depth. For a while, WB had her paired with teen heartthrob Tab Hunter. The studio was hoping that the pairing would serve as a box-office draw, but this did not work out. One of Wood's only serious roles from this period was the title character in Marjorie Morningstar (1958), as a young Jewish girl whose efforts to create her own identity and career path clash with the expectations of her family. The film was a critical success, and fit well with other films exploring the restlessness of youth in the '50s.
Wood's first major box office flop was the biographical film All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), examining the rags to riches story of jazz musician Chet Baker without actually using his name. The film's box office earnings barely covered the production costs, and MGM recorded a loss of $1,108,000. For the first time. Wood's appeal to the audience was in doubt. With her career in decline following this failure, Wood was seen as "washed up" by many in the film community. But director Elia Kazan gave her the chance to audition for the role of the sexually-repressed Wilma Dean Loomis in his upcoming film Splendor in the Grass (1961). Kazan cast Wood as the female lead, because he found in her (in his words): a "true-blue quality with a wanton side that is held down by social pressure." Kazan is credited for producing Wood's most powerful moment as an actress. The film was a critical success, with Wood nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Wood's next important film was West Side Story (1961), where she played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl. Wood was once again called to represent the restlessness of youth, this time in a story involving youth gangs and juvenile delinquents. The film was a great commercial success with about $44 million gross, the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was also critically acclaimed, and is still regarded as one of the best films of Wood's career. Her next film was Gypsy (1962), playing the role of burlesque entertainer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Film historians credit the film as an even better role for Wood than that of Maria, with witty dialogue, a greater emotional range, and complex characterization. The film was the eighth highest-grossing release of 1962, and was well-received critically.
Wood's next significant role was that of Macy's salesclerk Angie Rossini in Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). In the film, Angie has a one-night-stand with musician Rocky Papasano, played by Steve McQueen, finds herself pregnant and desperately seeks an abortion. The film under-performed at the box office but was critically well-received. Wood received her third (and last) nomination for an Academy Award. At age 25, Wood was tied with Teresa Wright as the youngest person to score three Oscar nominations. Wood held that designation until 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence achieved her third nomination at age 23.
Wood continued her successful film career until 1966, but her health status was not as successful. She was suffering emotionally and had sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. $175,000 to cancel her contract and was able to retire for a while. She also fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. She took a three-year hiatus from acting.
Wood made her comeback in the comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) with the themes of sexual liberation and wife swapping. It was a box office hit. Wood decided to gamble her $750,000 fee on a percentage of the gross, earning a million dollars in profits. She chose not to capitalize on the film's success, however, and did not take another acting job for five years.
In 1970, Wood was married to the screenwriter Richard Gregson and was expecting her first child, Natasha Gregson Wagner. She went into semi-retirement to be a stay-at-home mom, appearing in only four more theatrical films before her death. These films were the mystery comedy Peeper (1975), the science fiction film Meteor (1979), the comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980), and the posthumously-released science fiction film Brainstorm (1983).
In the late '70s, Wood found success in television roles, appearing in several made-for-TV movies and the mini-series From Here to Eternity (1979). Her project received high ratings, and she had plans to make her theatrical debut in a 1982 production of Anastasia.
On November 28, 1981, Wood joined her last husband Robert Wagner, their married friend Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island. Conspicuously absent from the group was Christopher's wife, casting director Georgianne Walken. The four of them were on board the Wagners' yacht "Splendour." Earwitness Marilyn Wayne heard cries for help around 11:05 P.M. and a "man's voice slurred, and in aggravated tone, say something to the effect of, 'Oh, hold on, we're coming to get you,' and not long after, the cries for help subsided." On the morning of November 29, Wood's corpse was recovered 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the boat, near small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. The toxicology report revealed her blood alcohol level was at .14, over the legal limit of .10. Wood was buried on December 2 at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Nine days later, the LACSD officially closed the case.1481 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in Oklahoma City in 1942, Pamela Tiffin Wonso grew up in Chicago, where she began a modeling career while in her early teens. She moved to New York to model and attend college, but became so successful in her modeling career that college soon took a back seat. On a trip to California she met producer Hal B. Wallis (husband of actress Martha Hyer) who was so impressed with the beautiful teenager that he cast her in the Tennessee Williams drama Summer and Smoke (1961). Her sterling performance netted her nominations for two Golden Globe awards (in the Best Supporting Actress and Most Promising Female Newcomer categories) in early 1962. Later that year she married American journalist, editor, and magazine publisher, Clay Felker.
She posed for a number of cheesecake shots in the 1960s and appeared in several lighthearted, frothy romantic comedies. Legendary director Billy Wilder was taken with her comedic skills and cast her in the Coca-Cola-themed One, Two, Three (1961) (with James Cagney and Arlene Francis), and she appeared in such comedies as The Pleasure Seekers (1964) (with Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley) and For Those Who Think Young (1964) (with James Darren and Tina Louise) and Harper (1966) (starring Paul Newman).
By the mid-1960s, with her marriage ending, she went to Italy to star in some comedies including Straziami ma di baci saziami (1968) (with Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi), directed by Dino Risi. In these comedies she showed an excellent adaptability to act as a small-town Italian girl. In 1974, she remarried and retired from the screen to raise a family and pursue other interests. She lived in New York with husband Edmondo Danon and her two daughters until her death in 2020, aged 78.839 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Arlene Francis, the witty actress and popular television personality, was born Arlene Francis Kazanjian on Oct. 20, 1907, in Boston. Her father was an Armenian immigrant, later painter and portrait photographer; her mother was the daughter of actor Alfred Davis. Even at an early age, Arlene said, "I started out with one goal: I wanted to be a serious actress." She studied at the Theatre Guild and then went to Hollywood. Her movie debut was in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), in which Bela Lugosi (often cast as a villain or mad scientist in many of his over 40 horror movies) tied her to an X-cross to extract her blood (trivia: Arlene and Bela were both born on Oct. 20). The live theater, however, was her first love, and she appeared in many plays. In 1935, she married movie executive Neil Agnew; they'd stay together for 10 years. Arlene made her Broadway debut in 1936 and had her first major role in "All That Glitters" two years later. She appeared with Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of "Danton's Death" in 1938, and in "Journey to Jerusalem" in 1940. Her big hit was "The Doughgirls" in 1942; it ran for 1-1/2 years. Arlene had auditioned for her first radio part at the same time she was getting started in the theater; she later recalled, "Radio came easily." In the 1940s, she played in as many as five radio serials a day. Arlene married actor Martin Gabel in 1946 (he died in 1986), and they had a son, Peter. She also was host of a radio dating show called "Blind Date," which was adapted to a TV series in 1949 (Your Big Moment (1949)), and she was the host (1949-1952). It was television that brought Arlene fame, and she became one of the highest-paid women in TV. Arlene was a permanent panelist on CBS' What's My Line? (1950) (a Mark Goodson-Bill Todman production) from 1950 through 1967 and continued as a panelist in a syndicated version that ran until 1975, thus being with the show for its entire 25-year run. She was warm, witty and had a cute laugh--and was always fashionably dressed. She wore a diamond heart-shaped necklace, which started a fad. She was still doing radio while on TV, and in 1960, she was the star of "The Arlene Francis Show," a daily interview show in New York, on WOR; it ran for 23 years. Arlene retired from show business after that and lived comfortably. She was still giving interviews in 1991. Arlene spent her last years living in San Francisco. Arlene died of cancer on Thursday, May 31, 2001, in a San Francisco hospital, at age 93. Her many fans will miss her, Arlene was truly one of the greats.839 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
She attended business school, after graduating from which she turned to acting. Pulver quickly received his first major roles in the theater. In 1949 she celebrated her film debut in "Swiss Tour" alongside Simone Signoret, Cornel Wilde and Heinrich Gretler. In 1954 the actress made her breakthrough with the Swiss production "Uli, the Knecht". This success was followed in 1955 by the sequel film "Uli, the Tenant". In the same year she played in "I often think of Piroschka", which also made her popular in Germany. This film was directed by Kurt Hoffmann. From 1957 Hoffmann also directed Pulver's trilogy of the so-called Spessart films: These included "Das Wirtshaus im Spessart" (1957), for which she received the silver film ribbon as best actress, "Das Spukschloss im Spessart" (1960) and "Magnificent Times in the Spessart" (1967). In 1957, Pulver took part in her first film adaptation of a Thomas Mann novel in "Confessions of the Imposter Felix Krull" alongside Horst Buchholz.
In 1959 she appeared in front of the camera alongside Nadja Tiller for the film adaptation of Mann's novel "The Buddenbrooks". The first highlight in Pulver's career was the 1960 film "The Glass of Water" by Helmut Käutner, in which she played alongside Gustav Gründgens. Pulver now became, alongside Maria Schell, one of the most popular actresses in German post-war films. In 1960 she presented one of her brilliant roles alongside Curd Jürgens in "Gustav Adolf's Page". In 1961, Pulver starred in the famous Hollywood film "One, Two, Three!" by Billy Wilder. In the same year she married the actor Helmut Schmid. She also appeared in front of the camera for "The Young General" and "Lafayette". Pulver also gained great audience sympathy for her collaboration with the German film star Heinz Rühmann, alongside whom she appeared in the humorous films "Dr. med. Hiob Prätorius" and "Hocus Pocus or: How do I make my husband disappear...?" in 1965. was to be seen. The actress has also appeared in successful roles in films and on the theater stage in international productions.
She received a Golden Globe nomination in 1963 for her role in "State Affairs." However, she failed to achieve a breakthrough in America. She couldn't accept the offer to play the lead role alongside Charlton Heston in "El Cid". The role was successfully cast with Sophia Loren. In the 1970s, Pulver appeared in films such as "Monika and the Sixteen-Year-Olds" and "I Think My Hat is Burning." She also starred in series such as "Hooper's Last Hunt" and "The Old Man: A Suitcase". One of her most popular jobs of these years, however, was hosting the children's show "Sesame Street". The actress's family life was overshadowed by tragic events: her daughter committed suicide in 1989 and her husband died in 1992 after 31 years of marriage. In 1995, Pulver took on another film role in "Everything Lies". In the same year she presented her last major performance in the Hera Lind novel adaptation "Das Superweib" alongside Veronica Ferres and Heiner Lauterbach.
In 1998, Pulver published her memoirs under the title "Stay a little longer". The sequel to her autobiography followed in 2001 under the title "... if you still laugh. Diary of my life". Lieselotte Pulver, meanwhile, became a five-time Bambi award winner. At the "Golden Camera" award ceremony in 2007, she was honored for her life's work. In 2008, Pulver was honored with the Swiss Television Prize. In 2018 she received the sixth Bambi for her life's work and in 2021 the honorary award of the Swiss Film Prize.839 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Deborah Jane Trimmer was born on 30 September 1921 in Glasgow, Scotland, the daughter of Captain Arthur Kerr Trimmer. She was educated at Northumberland House, Clifton, Bristol. She first performed at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London. She subsequently performed with the Oxford Repertory Company 1939-40. Her first appearance on the West End stage was as Ellie Dunn in "Heartbreak House" at the Cambridge Theatre in 1943. She performed in France, Belgium and Holland with ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association, or Every Night Something Awful) - The British Army entertainment service. She has appeared in many films from her first appearance in Major Barbara (1941).838 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills in London in 1946, she is the daughter of the great actor Sir John Mills and the well-known novelist-playwright Mary Hayley Bell. Her sister is the actress Juliet Mills. She grew up in her parents' home, an outgoing, funny child, and, because she spent so much time with her parents and their friends, very intelligent. When she went to boarding school at age nine, however, she became very shy around kids her own age. She found solace in theater productions at her school. She was noticed playing at her parent's home in 1958 by director J. Lee Thompson, who immediately cast her opposite her father in the thriller Tiger Bay (1959). Her debut performance turned heads around the world, from Germany, where she won an award at the Berlin Film Festival, to Hollywood, when Walt Disney came knocking at her door. He signed her to a five-year contract. For her first film for the studio, Pollyanna (1960), she won critical raves, box-office success, and a special Juvenile Academy Award. Her second Disney film, The Parent Trap (1961), in which she played twins, was even more popular. She continued to appear in routine Disney films like In Search of the Castaways (1962) and Summer Magic (1963), as well as films outside the studio like Whistle Down the Wind (1961), based on her mother's novel, and The Chalk Garden (1964), again co-starring with her father. Though Disney gave her a somewhat more adult role in the mystery film The Moon-Spinners (1964), she had begun to tire of her sunny, innocent Pollyanna image. After completing That Darn Cat! (1965), she left the studio for good. That Darn Cat! (1965) was still a success, as was her first post-Disney film, Columbia's The Trouble with Angels (1966). Then, she shocked her fans by appearing in the comedy The Family Way (1966) with her father. There was an even bigger surprise in store when she fell in love with the film's director, Roy Boulting, who was 33 years her senior. She lived with Boulting for five years after he divorced his wife. They married in 1971 and had a son, Crispian Mills, in 1973. By this time, he'd taken control of her career, and, as a result, she made many bad film choices that left critics and audiences cold. By 1975, her film career had pretty much tanked. She separated from Boulting that year and moved in with actor Leigh Lawson, with whom she had a son, Jason, in 1976. They split up in 1984. She appeared in three TV-movie sequels to The Parent Trap (1961) in the 1980s, and also appeared in the BBC miniseries The Flame Trees of Thika (1981) and the TV series Good Morning, Miss Bliss (1987), later re-titled Saved by the Bell (1989). She hasn't done much film work in several years, preferring to concentrate on her burgeoning career in theater. Her greatest success in theater, so far, has been the role of Anna in "The King and I", which she has played in many touring stage productions throughout the 1990s.833 points- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator then as a cabaret singer. In 1923, she married and, although she and Rudolf Sieber lived together only 5 years, they remained married until his death. She was in over a dozen silent films in increasingly important roles. In 1929, she was seen in a Berlin cabaret by Josef von Sternberg and, after a screen test, captured the role of the cabaret singer in The Blue Angel (1930) (and became von Sternberg's lover). With the success of this film, von Sternberg immediately took her to Hollywood, introducing her to the world in Morocco (1930), and signing an agreement to produce all her films. A series of successes followed, and Marlene became the highest paid actress of her time, but her later films in the mid-part of the decade were critical and popular failures. She returned to Europe at the end of the decade, with a series of affairs with former leading men (she had a reputation of romancing her co-stars), as well as other prominent artistic figures. In 1939, an offer came to star with James Stewart in a western and, after initial hesitation, she accepted. The film was Destry Rides Again (1939) - the siren of film could also be a comedienne and a remarkable comeback was reality. She toured extensively for the allied effort in WW II (she had become a United States citizen) and, after the war, limited her cinematic life. But a new career as a singer and performer appeared, with reviews and shows in Las Vegas, touring theatricals, and even Broadway. New success was accompanied by a too close acquaintance with alcohol, until falls in her performance eventually resulted in a compound fracture of the leg. Although the last 13 years of her life were spent in seclusion in her apartment in Paris, with the last 12 years in bed, she had withdrawn only from public life and maintained active telephone and correspondence contact with friends and associates.820 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota, the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Ethel Marian (Milne) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm. She was of English, along with some Scottish and Irish, descent. Her mother, an ambitious woman gifted in playing various musical instruments, saw the potential in her daughter at the tender age of just 2 years old when Baby Frances repeatedly sang "Jingle Bells" until she was dragged from the stage kicking and screaming during one of their Christmas shows and immediately drafted her into a dance act, entitled "The Gumm Sisters," along with her older sisters Mary Jane Gumm and Virginia Gumm. However, knowing that her youngest daughter would eventually become the biggest star, Ethel soon took Frances out of the act and together they traveled across America where she would perform in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theaters solo.
Her family life was not a happy one, largely because of her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town owing to her father's illicit affairs with other men, and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile. However, in September 1935 the Gumms', in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular '30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.
Tragedy soon followed, however, in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935. Having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, Judy faced the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs, "You Made Me Love You," at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.
Prior to this her film debut in Pigskin Parade (1936), in which she played a teenage hillbilly, had left her career hanging in the balance. However, following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You," MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager, and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This soon produced the downward spiral that resulted in her lifelong drug addiction.
In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in the dry plains of Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song, 'Over The Rainbow,' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29 February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for meatier adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14. She was now taking an interest in men, and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to bandleader David Rose in May 1941, just two months after his divorce from Martha Raye. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on July 28, 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions.' The couple separated in January 1943.
By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Gal (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power, who was married to French actress Annabella. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own instead of being influenced by her domineering mother and MGM. Their affair ended in November 1943, and soon afterward Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to be a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen, having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full, thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.
Vincente began to mold Judy and her career, making her more beautiful and more popular with audiences worldwide. He directed her in The Clock (1945), and it was during the filming of this movie that the couple announced their engagement on set on January 9, 1945. Judy's divorce from David Rose had been finalized on June 8, 1944 after almost three years of marriage, and despite her brief fling with Orson Welles, who at the time was married to screen sex goddess Rita Hayworth, on June 15, 1945 Judy made Vincente her second husband, tying the knot with him that afternoon at her mother's home with her boss Louis B. Mayer giving her away and her best friend Betty Asher serving as bridesmaid. They spent three months on honeymoon in New York and afterwards Judy discovered that she was pregnant.
On March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter, Liza Minnelli, via cesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the cesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time recuperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations toward people, especially her husband, making the filming a nightmare. She also began an affair with aspiring Russian actor Yul Brynner, but after the affair ended, Judy soon regained health and tried to salvage her failing marriage. She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which resulted in a successful comeback despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She soon regained strength and was visited frequently by her lover Frank Sinatra, but never saw much of Vincente or Liza. On returning, Judy made In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which was also Liza's film debut, albeit via an uncredited cameo. She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again before making her final film for MGM, entitled Summer Stock (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM, and her second marriage was soon dissolved.
Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce from Vincente Minnelli was finalized on March 29, 1951 after almost six years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she became pregnant by her new lover, Sid. At the age of 30, she made him her third husband on June 8, 1952; the wedding was held at a friend's ranch in Pasadena. Her relationship with her mother had long since been dissolved by this point, and after the birth of her second daughter, Lorna Luft, on November 21, 1952, she refused to allow her mother to see her granddaughter. Ethel then died in January 1953 of a heart attack, leaving Judy devastated and feeling guilty about not reconciling with her mother before her untimely demise.
After the funeral, Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began, resulting in an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra, and after filming was complete Judy was yet again lauded as a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out on the Best Actress Oscar to Grace Kelly for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). Many still argue that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly. Continuing her work on stage, Judy gave birth to her beloved son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She soon began to lose her millions of dollars as a result of her husband's strong gambling addiction, and with hundreds of debts to pay, Judy and Sid began a volatile, on-off relationship resulting in numerous divorce filings.
In 1961, at the age of 39, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time she lost out to Rita Moreno for her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy's making numerous headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently, and on May 19, 1965 their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage. By this time, Judy, now 41, had made her final performance on film alongside Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963). She married her fourth husband, Mark Herron, on November 14, 1965 in Las Vegas, but they separated in April 1966 after five months of marriage owing to his homosexuality. It was also that year that she began an affair with young journalist Tom Green. She then settled down in London after their affair ended, and she began dating disk jockey Mickey Deans in December 1968. They became engaged once her divorce from Mark Herron was finalized on January 9, 1969 after three years of marriage. She married Mickey, her fifth and final husband, in a register office in Chelsea, London, England on March 15, 1969.
She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London, England that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her much of her life, on June 22, 1969 at the age of 47. Her daughter Liza Minnelli paid for her funeral, and her former lover James Mason delivered her touching eulogy. She is still an icon to this day with her famous performances in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and A Star Is Born (1954).820 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Patricia Neal, the Oscar and Tony Award-winning actress, was born Patsy Louise Neal in Packard, Kentucky, where her father managed a coal mine and her mother was the daughter of the town doctor. She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended high school. She was first bit by the acting bug at the age of 10, after attending an evening of monologues at a Methodist church. She subsequently wrote a letter to Santa Claus, telling him, "What I want for Christmas is to study dramatics". She won the Tennessee State Award for dramatic reading while she was in high school.
She apprenticed at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, when she was 16-years-old, between her junior and senior years in high school. After studying drama for two years at Northwestern University, she headed to New York City and landed the job as an understudy in The Voice of the Turtle (1947). It was the producer of the play that had her change her name from Patsy Louise to Patricia. After replacing Vivian Vance in the touring company of "Turtle", she won a role in a play that closed in Boston and then appeared in summer stock. She won the role of the teenage "Regina" in Lillian Hellman's play, Another Part of the Forest (1948), for which she won a Tony Award in 1947. Subsequently, she signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros.
In the first part of her film career, her most impressive roles were in The Fountainhead (1949), opposite Gary Cooper, with whom she had three-year-long love affair, and in director Robert Wise's sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), which she made at 20th Century-Fox. Warners hadn't been thrilled with her and let her go before her contract was up, so she signed with Fox. With her film career stagnating, she returned to Broadway and achieved the success that eluded her in films, appearing in the revival of Hellman's play, The Children's Hour (1961), in 1952. She met and married writer, Roald Dahl, in 1953, and they would have five children in 30 years of marriage.
In 1957, she had one of her finest roles in Elia Kazan's parable about the threat of mass-media demagoguery and home-grown fascism in A Face in the Crowd (1957). Before she had appeared in the movie, Neal had taken over the role of "Maggie" in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), the Broadway smash that had been directed by Kazan. Returning to the stage, she appeared in the London production of Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and co-starred with Anne Bancroft in the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker (1962).
After appearing in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), she had what was arguably her finest role, as Alma the housekeeper, in Hud (1963) opposite Paul Newman. The film was a hit and Neal won the Best Actress Oscar. In 1965, she suffered a series of strokes that nearly killed her. She was filming John Ford's film, 7 Women (1965), at the time, and had to be replaced by Anne Bancroft (who would later take a role she turned down, that of "Mrs. Robinson" in The Graduate (1967)). Neal was pregnant at the time.
She underwent a seven-hour operation on her brain and survived, later delivering her fifth child. She underwent rehabilitation supervised by her husband. She had turned down The Graduate (1967) as she had not recovered fully from her stroke. When she returned to the screen, in 1968 in The Subject Was Roses (1968), she suffered from memory problems. According to her director, Ulu Grosbard, "The memory element was the uncertain one. But when we started to shoot, she hit her top level. She really rises to the challenge. She has great range, even more now than before".
She received an Oscar nomination for her work. Subsequently, new acting roles equal to her talent were sparse. She did receive three Emmy nominations, the first for originating the role of "Olivia Walton" in the 1971 TV movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), that gave birth to the TV show The Waltons (1972).
Patricia Neal died on August 9, 2010 in Edgarton, Massachusetts from lung cancer. She was 84 years old.806 points- An only child, Emmanuelle was born Paulette Germaine Riva in Cheniménil, but eventually grew up in Remiremont. Her mother, Jeanne Fernande Nourdin, was a seamstress. Her father, René Alfred "Alfredo" Riva, was a sign writer. Her paternal grandfather was Italian. She dreamed of becoming an actress since she was six, so that the entire world would take notice of her. This ambition was, however, to be met with firm opposition from her own family. Emmanuelle's father, a strict disciplinarian to whom the word "actress" was basically a synonym for "prostitute", disapproved of her way of thinking, since it clashed with the simple values he wished to pass on to her. Emmanuelle felt great affection towards her parents, but, at the same time, was under the impression that they couldn't really understand what she wanted. A bit of a tomboy and a rebel in her schooldays, she showed little interest in studying, but always directed her passion towards acting, appearing in every year-end play. In her early 20's, Emmanuelle was to find out the true meaning of nervous depression. Having completed the seamstress apprenticeship she had started at age 15, she eventually resigned herself to take up this profession, also discouraged by the thought that, in a city like Remiremont, the only possible alternative was to become a hairdresser. The sense of boredom that was weighing her down actually got so devouring that sewing sort of became the only form of escape from the horror of her everyday reality. But luckily, things were soon to change for the better. The day Emmanuelle discovered the announcement of a contest at the Dramatic Arts Centre of Rue Blanche was the day she found the courage to stand up to her parents and state that she would have traveled to Paris to become an actress. Having finally understood the depth of her sadness, her family couldn't oppose her wishes any longer, so, on the 13th May of 1953, she arrived in Paris.
At the Rue Blanche contest, Emmanuelle auditioned in front of one of the leading actors and directors of the Comédie-Française, the great Jean Meyer. She acted one scene from "On ne badine pas avec l'Amour" by Alfred de Musset. Meyer and the other acting teachers in the jury were just mesmerized by her performance and immediately realized that they had found the next big thing. It goes without saying that Emmanuelle was awarded a scholarship and Meyer himself decided to take her as his own pupil. At 26, Riva was too old to enter the French National Academy of Dramatic Arts, but she soon got her big break anyway, since French stage pillar René Dupuy cast her in a production of George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man". Her next theatrical credits were "Mrs.Warren's Profession" (Shaw), "L'espoir" (Henri Bernstein), "Le dialogue des Carmélites" (Georges Bernanos), Britannicus (Jean Racine), "Il seduttore" (Diego Fabbri). Emmanuelle's small screen debut was in a 1957 episode of the history program Énigmes de l'histoire (1956), "Le Chevalier d'Éon". In the program, she played the Queen of England opposite Marcelle Ranson-Hervé as the cross-dressing knight in the service of the French crown. 1958, on the other hand, was the year that saw her first film appearance, an uncredited role in the Jean Gabin movie The Possessors (1958). The following year would, however, mark a turning point in her career. Emmanuelle was starring in the Dominique Rolin play "L'Epouvantail" at the "théatre de L'Oeuvre" in Paris when one night she found a visitor in her dressing room. His name was Alain Resnais and he was a young director responsible for a few shorts and documentaries (including the Holocaust-themed masterpiece Night and Fog (1956)). He was apparently looking for the female lead of his first feature film, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), based on a script by the great author, Marguerite Duras. Having seen a picture of Riva in a playbill of the production she was starring in, Resnais had immediately urged to see her. Without promising her anything, the director just asked Emmanuelle if he could take a few photos of her, so that he would have later shown them to Duras for a response. In addition to this, he also invited her at his place where he filmed her reciting some lines from "Arms and the Man". When he brought Duras the material, the author set her eyes on Emmanuelle's melancholic, enigmatic expression and immediately realized that they had found the one they were looking for. "Hiroshima Mon Amour" turned out to be one of the most acclaimed and representative movies of the French New Wave and launched both Resnais and Riva's careers in full orbit. Being somehow familiar with a sense of captivity, Emmanuelle gave an incredibly personal and involving performance as the unnamed heroine of the movie, and it was one that came straight from her heart. Playing an actress from Nevers who develops a love affection towards a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) while filming an anti-war movie in Hiroshima, Emmanuelle helped modernizing acting and female figures in film through an intimate, almost minimalistic woman portrayal that was quite unlike anything else that had been seen on the silver screen to that moment. Speaking her character's thoughts through a great deal of voice-over that could give the viewer constant access to her mind (making for an unusual amount of psychological introspection) , she was able to masterfully translate every last one of these feelings to subtle facial expressions whose richness and eloquence made her face the mirror of the compex soul she was baring before the camera. Combining this heartfelt approach with a refined diction that could perfectly deliver Duras' deep, existentialist lines of dialogue, she gave the world a new type of heroine who, while set apart by a distinctive intellectual charm, remained very humanly relatable. This ground-breaking acting was greatly praised by the critics of the time who were most open to innovation, including some that later became masters of revolutionary cinema themselves. Jean-Luc Godard stated: "Let's take the character played by Emmanuelle Riva. If you ran into her on the street, or saw her every day, I think she would only be of interest to a very limited number of people. But in the film she interests everyone. For me, she's the kind of girl who works at the "Editions du Seuil" or for "L'Express", a kind of 1959 George Sand. A priori, she doesn't interest me, because I prefer the kind of girl you see in [Renato] Castellani's film. This said, Resnais has directed Emmanuelle Riva in such a prodigious way that now I want to read books from "Le Seuil" or "L'Express"." This was Éric Rohmer's take on Riva's 'Elle': " She isn't a classical heroine, at least not one that a certain classical cinema has habituated us to see, from David Griffith to 'Nicholas Ray'." Jacques Doniol-Valcroze summed her up this way: "She is unique. It's the first time that we've seen on the screen an adult woman with an interiority and a capacity for reasoning pushed to such a degree. Emmanuelle Riva is a modern adult woman because she is not an adult woman. She is, on the contrary, very childlike, guided by her impulses alone and not by her ideas." And Jean Domarchi commented that "In a sense, Hiroshima is a documentary on Emmanuelle Riva." The phenomenal intelligence and dramatic intensity of Emmanuelle's performance made "Elle" one of the most indelible characters in film history: however, while Duras' screenplay received an Oscar nomination, her star-making turn was sadly overlooked by the Academy. At least she won the "Étoile de Cristal" (the top film award in France between 1955 and 1975, given by the "Académie française" and later replaced by the César) for Best Actress for her work in the movie.
One year later, Emmanuelle was known as a major talent and, consequently, plenty of directors from different nationalities were knocking at her door. She followed her Hiroshima success with two acclaimed turns in Le huitième jour (1960) and Recours en grâce (1960). In addition to playing these leading roles for French cinema, a scene-stealing Riva was also seen as Simone Signoret's feisty friend in Antonio Pietrangeli's excellent Adua e le compagne (1960) and gave the standout performance in Gillo Pontecorvo's superb Kapo (1960) as a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp. Enter 1961: another year, another career highlight. Emmanuelle was cast opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Pierre Melville's ground-breaking (and shocking for its time) Léon Morin, Priest (1961). In the movie, Riva's Barny, an atheist widow, and Belmondo's Morin, a young and seductive priest, develop a deep, theological relationship with strong sexual implications. Melville cast Emmanuelle thinking that she possessed the kind of intellectual eroticism the character needed and decided to demean her appearance as much as possible by having her dressed in the plainest clothes, so that Barny's major appeal would have been the cultural vivacity shining through her beautiful facial features. Riva and Belmondo's performances turned out to be outstanding and the film, against all odds, ended up being a big success. Riva next appeared in Climats (1962), the first (and only) feature film of TV writer and director Stellio Lorenzi, the man behind celebrated history programs such as La caméra explore le temps (1957) and its immediate predecessor, "Énigmes de L'Histoire", where Emmanuelle had done her screen debut. Adapting André Maurois' novel, Lorenzi hired Emmanuelle seeing her great interpretative sensitivity as being close to the nature of the character she would have played in the movie, also starring Jean-Pierre Marielle and Marina Vlady. In the story, Marielle is torn between sacred and profane love, leaving Vlady's vain and frivolous Odile for Riva's kind and good-hearted Isabelle. The same year, Emmanuelle scored another huge personal triumph as the title heroine of Georges Franju's Therese (1962). Her performance as François Mauriac's ill-fated 20th century Emma Bovary was a true masterpiece of psychological introspection: she perfectly captured all the key traits of the character at once, making her vulnerability coexist with her spirit of rebellion and her desire for freedom go along with a strong sense of self-destruction. Emmanuelle's work in the movie won her enormous raves and a sacred, unanimous Volpi Cup at Venice Film Festival. For the rest of the 60's (her golden period), Emmanuelle kept playing leading roles in French and Italian movies alike and also kept expanding her work to the TV medium. She found excellent, showcasing roles both in Thomas the Impostor (1965) (where she was directed by Franju for the second and last time) and in the lovely comedy The Hours of Love (1963) where she enjoyed a very unusual kind of wedding to Ugo Tognazzi. The third segment of Io uccido, tu uccidi (1965) paired her for the first time with Jean-Louis Trintignant. In this story of "Amour Fou", Riva plays a woman willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to save Trintignant's character, a man undeserving of her affection. Some TV work the actress did in this decade deserves to be noted as well. She reprised the role of Thérèse Desqueyroux in La fin de la nuit (1966), a dark and crepuscular adaptation of the Mauriac novel of the same name. This sequel follows Thérèse as she relocates to Paris where she has nothing to do but waiting for death to come. The TV play La forêt noire (1968), a fictionalized retelling of the relationship between Brahms and the Schumanns, featured another remarkable Riva performance, and so did Caterina (1963), which saw her taking on the role of Caterina Cornaro.
Going into the 70's and 80's, it wasn't easy for Emmanuelle to keep replicating the impact of her early performances and, while she always played leading roles in her native France, the majority of her movies didn't have a great international resonance. Misguided productions like Fernando Arrabal's I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973) proved totally unworthy of her talent. Like her contemporaries Delphine Seyrig, Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier and Edith Scob, she liked to pick alternative, anti-mainstream projects, stating that she had no interest in doing things that had already been done before. In this period, she declined countless roles because she found them too traditional and, as a direct consequence of this, most directors stopped making her any more offers. Between 1982 and 1983 she was served with another couple of meaty parts to sink her teeth into. The first was in Marco Bellocchio's The Eyes, the Mouth (1982) (an underrated sequel of sorts to Fists in the Pocket (1965)) as the mother of Lou Castel, here taking on the role of Giovanni, the actor who had supposedly played Alessandro in the classic movie. The second was in Philippe Garrel's poignant Liberté, la nuit (1984) where she was paired with the director's father, the glorious actor, Maurice Garrel. In the subsequent years, Emmanuelle always found work in respectable productions, with the great director occasionally calling her for a project of superior quality (like Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Blue (1993)) but the great roles seemed to be way behind her by now. In 2008, she had a nice cameo in A Man and His Dog (2008), a French remake of Umberto D. (1952) which reunited her with her "Léon Morin, prêtre" co-star, Jean-Paul Belmondo. Riva briefly appears in the movie as a gentle lady who meets Belmondo's character -not coincidentally- in a church. She was soon to enjoy, however, an incredible and unforeseen career renaissance.
In 2010, Emmanuelle was cast in Michael Haneke's latest movie, Amour (2012). The script managed as well to get Jean-Louis Trintignant out of retirement and frequent Haneke collaborator Isabelle Huppert also got on board for the ride. Haneke had written the script with precisely Trintignant in mind, but hadn't already thought of a specific actress to play the leading female role. The director had greatly admired Emmanuelle's performance in "Hiroshima Mon Amour", but wasn't much familiar with her subsequent work. Still, a recent photo of hers lead him to think that she would have been believable as Trintignant's wife and decided to audition her along with a few other actresses her age. It soon became obvious that she was the best choice in the world. The Austrian director's most recent masterpiece follows Georges (Trintignant) and Anne (Riva), a long time married couple whose life changes drastically when she suffers a stroke. An incredibly deep reflection about the two most important components of life, love and death, Haneke's heartbreaking movie took Cannes film festival by storm, making obvious from the day it was screened that no other film had the slightest possibility to win the Golden Palm. A fundamental part of "Amour"'s success were of course the immense central performances of its two leads. Jury president Nanni Moretti would have liked to give "Amour" the main festival prize along with top acting honors for its two veteran stars, but unfortunately a festival rule forbids to give any other major award to the Golden Palm winner. Moretti was displeased by this, but he still managed to find a way to recognize Trintignant and Riva's work. Although the Best Actor Award went to Mads Mikkelsen for The Hunt (2012) and the Best Actress Award was given to Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur for Beyond the Hills (2012), the Golden Palm which the director was awarded was given alongside a special mention to the film's leads for their indispensable work. All three were invited on the stage to make an acceptance speech: it was one of the highest honors a thespian could ever dream of. Although Haneke remains the only official recipient of the Palm, Riva and Trintignant were, in spirit, the big acting winners of the 65th edition of the prestigious film festival. But the love for "Amour" wasn't to end here. After it amazed the audience at Toronto film festival, it became clear that the film would have done this over and over while getting screened all around the globe. Further accolades for the movie came at the end of November, when it scored an impressive four wins at the European Film Awards (Picture, Director, Actor and Actress). In the following weeks, Emmanuelle also racked up a good share of critic awards in America, including wins from major groups such as the National Society of Film Critics. On Oscar nominations day, Emmanuelle's performance was recognized along with the movie, its director and its screenplay. Having traveled to New York to attend the 2013 National Board of Review awards (where Amour had been named "Best Foreign Language Film"), Emmanuelle was still there when, bright and early, her room neighbors' jubilation cheers told her that she had been nominated. In great humbleness, she stated that she didn't expect it because 'there's plenty of talented people everywhere'. Shortly after, she also added a BAFTA to her mantle. After her triumph, Culture and communication Minister Aurélie Filippetti complimented Emmanuelle on her charisma and on the quality of her performance and stated that she would have defended France's colors at the upcoming Oscars. Emmanuelle's next appointment was with an overdue first César. After receiving a well-deserved standing ovation, she made a very beautiful and moving speech, quoting Von Kleist and paying homage to Maurice Garrel. A couple of days later she attended the Oscars and eventually failed to win the award, but this couldn't change the fact that she had made history already. Having always been in possession of one of cinema's most expressive faces, being equally effective with her physical language and having displayed unsurpassable courage and honesty in portraying the deterioration of Anne's body and soul, Emmanuelle gave a performance that went beyond every linguistic barrier and strongly touched and affected everyone who saw it. Her stunning work is for the ages.
Having hit such a high note near the end of her film career, it seems only natural that Emmanuelle did the same thing on the Parisian stage shortly after, scoring a new triumph in Didier Bezace's production of Marguerite Duras' play "Savannah Bay", which marked her theatrical return after a 13 years absence. Acting a text of the celebrated author who had penned the movie which had simultaneously given her immediate fame and screen immortality was the most inspired way to bring her exceptional career to full circle. Duras had written the part (originally performed by Madeleine Renaud) on the condition that only an actress no longer in the spring of youth would have played it: disregarding this wish would have been a mistake, but it must be added that no other actress in the same age range and associated with the author could have been an equally perfect choice. Wearing that slightly absent look loaded with a mixture of vulnerability and melancholy that only she can do so effectively, the actress reached- for the few, privileged ones who witnessed this new achievement- some basically unmatchable levels of heartbreak, repeating several times the words 'mon amour' to such an involving and powerful effect no one else could have produced. The actress stated that she would have probably refused to ever return to the stage hadn't she been offered this part. And her choice was, once again, a winning one. Emmanuelle kept working regularly for the next two years-- shooting films and doing poetry recitals all around Europe-- until she died on the 27 January 2017 after a secret battle with cancer. As profoundly devastating as the news of this artistic and human loss were, the world had to salute with utmost admiration a woman who, true to her formidable spirit, always lived a life that was determined by the choices she wanted.
Now, considering that she won her first audience by acting one scene from "On ne badine pas avec l'Amour" in front of her future mentor, got her international consecration by playing the leading role in "Hiroshima Mon Amour" and rose from her ashes with her superlative work in "Amour", one can conclude that the word Amour is most definitely a good luck charm to Emmanuelle Riva.797 points - Daniela Rocca was a beautiful and talented model, actress and writer, born in one of the poorest districts of Sicily, who found fleeting success in Italian cinema. Although she had envisioned herself as a writer, she entered a beauty pageant, was elected Miss Catania in 1953, and after competing for the Miss Italy title, she made her screen debut in 1954 in «La Luciana».
Rocca was cast in horror films as Riccardo Freda's «Caltiki, the Immortal Monster» (co-directed by Mario Bava) and international productions as Abel Gance's «Austerlitz», but her attractive looks made her ideal for the péplum genre, appearing in Fernando Cerchio's «Judith and Holofernes», Vittorio Cottafavi's «The Legions of Cleopatra», Bruno Vailati's «The Giant of Marathon» (also co-directed by Bava), Vittorio Sala's «The Queen of the Amazons» and most notably in the Italian-American co-production co-directed by Raoul Walsh and Bava, «Esther and the King», in which she played adulterous Queen Vashti, who dances to the court and ends her performance baring her breasts as an act of defiance to King Ahasuerus, and to the prudish film industries of those days.
The following year director Pietro Germi decided to make «Divorce Italian Style», a comedy denouncing the prohibition of divorce by Italian society, while being indulgent to crimes of passion. Germi gave Rocca the role of her career at 24. When she accepted to play an unattractive wife with a mustachioed upper lip, it was seen as an act of great courage for a young symbol of Mediterranean beauty. The movie became an international hit, she won the Best Actress award at the Avellino Neorealism Film Festival, and the movie received the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
But Rocca had fallen hopelessly in love with Germi and when he rejected her, she attempted suicide. Although she continued to appear in films, by 1963 she was considered unreliable and received no film offers. She appeared in Fred Zinnemann's «Behold a Pale Horse» in 1964, but fell into a state of severe depression. She recovered in a mental institution, in Palermo. In 1978 Rocca gave and interview to Marco Bellocchio for the documentary «The Cinema Machine», in which the actress claimed she had been abandoned by her former colleagues. "They said I was crazy, when all I had was a nervous breakdown. They sent me off to the hospital. It took a long time for the doctors to realize that I wasn't mad and let me go."
Daniela Rocca spent the last years of her life near Catania, at a retirement home where she wrote the books «Secret Agent with License to Live», «Lawyer for Rent», «Condemned to Death», «Psychoanalysis, Dreams, and Fantasies Hidden in the Mind», and the poetry collection «Ara».
A tragic symbol of short-lived fame in cinema and of unrequited love, Rocca was the object of two literary homages: the Argentine poet Juan Gelman dedicated a poem to the actress called «Theory About Daniela Rocca», and on April 12, 2016 Domenico Trischitta opened his drama in two acts «Quick Sands» in the Musco theater in Catania, based on her life.794 points - Actress
- Director
- Writer
When people gave Louis Malle credit for making a star of Jeanne Moreau in Elevator to the Gallows (1958) immediately followed by The Lovers (1958), he would point out that Moreau by that time had already been "recognized as the prime stage actress of her generation." She had made it to the Comédie Française in her 20s. She had appeared in B-movie thrillers with Jean Gabin and Ascenseur was in that genre. The technicians at the film lab went to the producer after seeing the first week of dailies for Ascenseur and said: "You must not let Malle destroy Jeanne Moreau". Malle explained: "She was lit only by the windows of the Champs Elysées. That had never been done. Cameramen would have forced her to wear a lot of make-up and they would put a lot of light on her, because, supposedly, her face was not photogenic". This lack of artifice revealed Moreau's "essential qualities: she could be almost ugly and then ten seconds later she would turn her face and would be incredibly attractive. But she would be herself".
Moreau has told interviewers that the characters she played were not her. But even the most famous film critic of his generation, Roger Ebert, thinks that she is a lot like her most enduring role, Catherine in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962). Behind those eyes and that enigmatic smile is a woman with a mind. In a review of The Clothes in the Wardrobe (1993) Ebert wrote: "Jeanne Moreau has been a treasure of the movies for 35 years... Here, playing a flamboyant woman who nevertheless keeps her real thoughts closely guarded, she brings about a final scene of poetic justice as perfect as it is unexpected".
Moreau made her debut as a director in Lumiere (1976) -- also writing the script and playing Sarah, an actress the same age as Moreau whose romances are often with directors for the duration of making a film. She made several films with Malle.
Still active in international cinema, Moreau presided over the jury of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.793 points- Actress
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Monica Vitti was born on 3 November 1931 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. She was an actress and writer, known for L'Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964) and L'Eclisse (1962). She was married to Roberto Russo. She died on 2 February 2022 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.793 points- Actress
The daughter of actress Geneviève Sorya, in 1948 she played the part of Juliette in The Lovers of Verona (1949). During the 1950s and 1960s she made various films, including Montparnasse 19 (1958) and La Dolce Vita (1960), but only Lola (1961) , Jacques Demy, and A Man and a Woman (1966) Claude Lelouch saw major success. With the latter she had, but did not use, the chance to establish herself in America. Therefore she was only participating in second-row productions in Europe and America.792 points- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Shirley MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and her father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. Her brother, Warren Beatty, was born on March 30, 1937. Her ancestry includes English and Scottish.
Shirley was the tallest in her ballet classes at the Washington School of Ballet. Just after she graduated from Washington-Lee High School, she packed her bags and headed for New York. While auditioning for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's "Me and Juliet", the producer kept mispronouncing her name. She then changed her name from Shirley MacLean Beaty to Shirley MacLaine. She later had a role in "The Pajama Game", as a member of the chorus and understudy to Carol Haney. A few months into the run, Shirley was going to leave the show for the lead role in "Can-Can" but ended up filling in for Haney, who had broken her ankle and could not perform. She would fill in for Carol, again, three months later, following another injury, the very night that movie producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience. Wallis signed MacLaine to a five-year contract to Paramount Pictures. Three months later, she was off to shoot The Trouble with Harry (1955). She then took roles in Hot Spell (1958) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956), completed not too long before her daughter, Sachi Parker (born Stephanie), was born. With Shirley's career on track, she played one of her most challenging roles: "Ginny Moorhead" in Some Came Running (1958), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She went on to do The Sheepman (1958) and The Matchmaker (1958). In 1960, she got her second Academy Award nomination for The Apartment (1960). Three years later, she received a third nomination for Irma la Douce (1963). In 1969, she brought her friend Bob Fosse from Broadway to direct her in Sweet Charity (1969), from which she got her "signature" song, "If My Friends Could See Me Now". After a five-year hiatus, Shirley made a documentary on China called The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), for which she received an Oscar nomination for best documentary.
In 1977, she got her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination for The Turning Point (1977). In 1979, she worked with Peter Sellers in Being There (1979), made shortly before his death. After 20 years in the film industry, she finally took home the Best Actress Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983). After a five-year hiatus, Shirley made Madame Sousatzka (1988), a critical and financial hit that took top prize at the Venice Film Festival. In 1989, she starred with Dolly Parton, Sally Field and Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias (1989). She received rave reviews playing Meryl Streep's mother in Postcards from the Edge (1990) and for Guarding Tess (1994). In 1996, she reprised her role from "Terms of Endearment" as "Aurora Greenway" in The Evening Star (1996), which didn't repeat its predecessor's success at the box office. In mid-1998, she directed Bruno (2000), which starred Alex D. Linz. In February 2001, Shirley worked with close friends once again in These Old Broads (2001), and co-starred with Julia Stiles in Carolina (2003) and with Kirstie Alley in Salem Witch Trials (2002).
MacLaine as her own website which includes her own radio show and interviews, the Encounter Board, and Independent Expression, a members-only section of the site. In the past few years, Shirley starred in a CBS miniseries based on the life of cosmetics queen Mary Kay Ash--Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay (2002), and wrote two more books, "The Camino" in 2001, and "Out On A Leash" in 2003. After taking a slight hiatus from motion pictures, Shirley returned with roles in the movies that were small, but wonderfully scene-stealing: Bewitched (2005) with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, In Her Shoes (2005) with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette, in which Shirley was nominated for a Golden Globe in the best supporting actress category, and Rumor Has It... (2005) with Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner. Shirley completed filming of Closing the Ring (2007), directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, in 2007. Her latest book is entitled "Sage-ing While Ag-ing"; Shirley's latest film is Valentine's Day (2010), which debuted in theaters on February 12, 2010.787 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born into wealth in Savannah, Georgia, on October 18, 1902, Ellen Miriam Hopkins was able to attend the finest educational institutions, including Goddard Seminary in Plainfield, Vermont, and Syracuse University in New York State. Studying dance in New York, she received her first taste of show business as a chorus girl at twenty. She appeared in local musicals before she began expanding her horizons by trying out dramatic roles four years later. By 1928, Miriam was appearing in stock companies on the East Coast, and her reviews were getting better after she had been vilified earlier in her career. In 1930, Miriam decided to try the silver screen and signed with Paramount Studios. Because she was already established on Broadway, Paramount felt it was getting a seasoned performer after the rave reviews she had received on Broadway. Her first role was in Fast and Loose (1930). The role, in which Miriam played a rebellious girl, was a good start. After appearing in 24 Hours (1931), in which she is killed by her husband, Miriam played Princess Anna in The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) opposite Maurice Chevalier. Still considered a newcomer, Miriam displayed a talent that had all the earmarks of stardom. She was to finish out the year by playing Ivy Pearson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Miriam began filming The World and the Flesh (1932), which was not a box-office blockbuster. Later, she appeared in Dancers in the Dark (1932) with George Raft. The film was unexpectedly strong and enjoyable, which served as a catalyst to propel Miriam and Raft to bigger stardom. In Two Kinds of Women (1932), directed by William C. de Mille, Miriam once again performed magnificently. Later that year, she played Lily Vautier in the sophisticated comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932). A film that should have been nominated for an Academy Award, it has lasted through the years as a masterpiece in comedy. Even today, film buffs and historians rave about it. Miriam's brilliant performance in Design for Living (1933) propelled her to the top of Paramount's salary scale. Later that year, Miriam played the title role in The Story of Temple Drake (1933). Paramount was forced to tone down the film's violence and the character's rape in order to pass the Hayes Office code. Despite being watered down, it was still a box-office smash. In 1934, Miriam filmed All of Me (1934), which was less than well received. Soon, the country was abuzz as to who would play Scarlett O'Hara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1939). Miriam wanted the coveted spot, especially because she was a Southern lady and a Georgia native. Unfortunately, as we all know, she didn't win the role. As a matter of fact, her only movie role that year was in The Old Maid (1939). By that time, the roles were only trickling in for her. With the slowdown in film work, Miriam found herself returning to the stage. She made two films in 1940, none in 1941, one in 1942, and one in 1943. The stage was her work now. However, in 1949, she received the role of Lavinia Penniman in The Heiress (1949). Miriam made only three films in the 1950s, but she had begun making appearances on television programs. Miriam made her final big-screen appearance in Hollywood Horror House (1970). Nine days before her 70th birthday, on October 9, 1972, Miriam died of a heart attack in New York.787 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Setsuko Hara became one of Japan's best-loved stars over her 30-year film career. Her signature character type, variations on a daughter devoted to her parents and home, inspired the nickname that stayed with her until retirement: the Eternal Virgin. To some extent, reality mirrored her roles in these films. In a society that considers marriage and parenting almost obligatory, she remained single and childless, something of a controversy in Japan in the 1950s. Fortunately she was popular enough to avoid criticism, but the 1950s were still a hard decade. She was plagued by ill health, missing out on several top roles as a result, and she witnessed the death of her camera-man brother in a freak train accident on set.
In 1963, shortly after the death of her mentor, director Yasujirô Ozu, she suddenly walked away from the film industry. At age 43, and at the height of her popularity, she bluntly refused to perform again, angering her fans, the industry, and the press. She implied acting had never been a pleasure and that she had only pursued a career in order to provide for her large family; this explanation is seen as the cause of her popularity backlash. She moved to a small house in picturesque Kamakura where she remained, living alone (though apparently sociable with friends), and refusing all roles offered.
She is undoubtedly known mostly for her work with Yasujiro Ozu, making six films with the great director, including the so-called Noriko trilogy, of which Tokyo Story (1953) is probably the best-known. She also worked with Akira Kurosawa, Mikio Naruse, Hiroshi Inagaki, and many others.785 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Yôko Tsukasa was born on 20 August 1934 in Sakai-minato, Japan. She is an actress, known for Yojimbo (1961), The Kii River (1966) and Moment of Terror (1966). She has been married to Hideyuki Aizawa since 1969.785 points- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Now a living legend and still very active, Silvia Pinal began her career in theater and became a leading lady in her first movie roles, in the late 1940s. Always a smart urban girl, she belongs to the second and most versatile generation of Mexican movie stars of the Golden Era, together with Pedro Infante, Marga López and Silvia Derbez, among others. Her great acting abilities were displayed in her most memorable roles, directed by Luis Buñuel: Viridiana (1961), The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Simon of the Desert (1965). Famous for her many marriages, Pinal's career has been in a way influenced by her husbands, although she deserves all the credit for being a star. She acted on stage when she was married to stage director Rafael Banquells; second husband Gustavo Alatriste produced Buñuel films for her; she sang and starred on TV shows when she was married to pop singer Enrique Guzmán; she even won a political election when she was married to Gov. Tulio Hernández. In between, she became a TV producer with a successful show: Mujer, casos de la vida real (1985). Besides, she owns two theaters (Teatro Silvia "Mame" and "Hello Dolly!" among them). Pinal's legacy to Mexican show business is great. Her family includes three daughters: Silvia Pasquel (actress), Viridiana Alatriste (actress, deceased) and Alejandra Guzmán (pop singer); her son Enrique Guzmán Jr. (musician) and granddaughter Stephanie Salas (pop singer).784 points- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Enigmatic, dark-haired foreign import Alida Valli was dubbed "The Next Garbo" but didn't live up to postwar expectations despite her cool, patrician beauty, remote allure and significant talent. Born in Pola, Italy (now Croatia), on May 3, 1921, the daughter of a Tridentine journalist and professor and an Istrian homemaker, she studied dramatics as a teen at the Motion Picture Academy of Rome and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia before snaring bit roles in such films as Il cappello a tre punte (1935) ["The Three-Cornered Hat"] and I due sergenti (1936) ["The Two Sergeants"]. She made a name for herself in Italy during WWII playing the title role in Manon Lescaut (1940), won a Venice Film Festival award for Piccolo mondo antico (1941) ["Little Old World"] and was a critical sensation in We the Living (1942) ["We the Living"]. She briefly abandoned her career, however, in 1943, refusing to appear in what she considered fascist propaganda, and was forced into hiding. The next year she married surrealist painter/pianist/composer Oscar De Mejo. They had two children, and one of them, Carlo De Mejo, became an actor. She divorced in 1955, then she came back to Italy,
Following her potent, award-winning work in the title role of Eugenie Grandet (1946), she was discovered and contracted by David O. Selznick to play the murder suspect Maddalena Paradine in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). She was billed during her Hollywood years simply as "Valli," and Selznick also gave her top femme female billing in Carol Reed's classic film noir The Third Man (1949), but for every successful film--such as the ones previously mentioned--she experienced such failures as The Miracle of the Bells (1948), and audiences stayed away. In 1951 she bid farewell to Hollywood and returned to her beloved Italy. In Europe again, she was sought after by the best directors. Her countess in Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954) was widely heralded, and she moved easily from ingénue to vivid character roles. Later standout films encompassed costume dramas as well as shockers and had her playing everything from baronesses to grandmothers in such films as Eyes Without a Face (1960) ["Eyes Without a Face"], Le gigolo (1960), Oedipus Rex (1967) ["Oedipus Rex"], The Big Scare (1974), 1900 (1976), Suspiria (1977), Luna (1979), Inferno (1980), Aspern (1982), A Month by the Lake (1995) and, her most recent, Angel of Death (2001).783 points- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Maria Schell studied in a religious institution in Colmar (Haut-Rhin, France). She received a dramatic training in Zurich, Switzerland. To pay her studies, she was a secretary there. Besides being a film star; Maria appeared in plays in Zurich, Basel, in Vienna (Josefstad Theater), Berlin, Munich (Kammerspiel Theater), at the Salzburg Festival and went on provincial tours from 1963. Among the plays she performed there were such classics as William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust" and such modern classics as "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw.770 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
The daughter of a musical conductor, fair-haired, matronly Brenda de Banzie appeared in around 40 films. As the result of two outstanding performances she became an unexpected star when well into her middle age. Brenda first came to public notice as a sixteen year old chorus girl on the London stage in "Du Barry Was a Lady" in 1942. By that time, she had already been treading the boards in repertory for some seven years. The theatre was, first and foremost, her preferred medium. In the early 1950s, she had an excellent run of top-billed performances at the West End which included "Venus Observed" with Laurence Olivier, and "Murder Mistaken", in which she played a wealthy hotel owner whose husband is plotting to bump her off for her money. For this, she won the coveted Clarence Derwent Award as Best Supporting Actress.
Critical plaudits tempted her to try her luck on screen, so Brenda eventually made her celluloid debut in Anthony Bushell's murder mystery The Long Dark Hall (1951). Her performance -- as a rather vulgar and dowdy boarding house landlady -- drew good notices, including one from Bosley Crowther of The New York Times. In 1954, director David Lean cast Brenda in her defining role as Maggie Hobson, an ambitious spinster, opposite Charles Laughton and John Mills in Hobson's Choice (1954). As it turned out, she pretty much stole every scene from her illustrious co-stars. Rather surprisingly, a BAFTA eluded her. In 1958, Brenda landed the prize role of Phoebe Rice, the bitter, alcoholic wife of a second-rate music hall performer (played superbly by Olivier) in John Osborne's The Entertainer (1960). She recreated her performance for Broadway and for the film version in 1960 and received a Tony Award nomination. Sadly, despite such promise her stock did not improve thereafter and she was relegated for the remainder of her career to matronly character roles. Brenda passed away on the operating table during surgery for a non-malignant brain tumor in March 1981.770 points- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
Irene Papas was born on 3 September 1929 in Chilimodion, Corinth, Greece. She was an actress and director, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Message (1976) and Electra (1962). She was married to José Kohn and Alkis Papas. She died on 14 September 2022 in Chiliomodion, Corinthia, Greece.768 points- Actress
- Writer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Lea Massari was born on 30 June 1933 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. She is an actress and writer, known for L'Avventura (1960), Murmur of the Heart (1971) and Indian Summer (1972). She has been married to Carlo Bianchini since 13 November 1963.768 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Discovered at age 20 by celebrated director Ingmar Bergman, she became part of Bergman's regular stable of performers; in fact, he wrote Summer with Monika (1953) especially for her breakthrough. Extraordinary and versatile as an actress, her roles have ranged from the naive young wife in Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) to the mad visionary in Through a Glass Darkly (1961). Andersson also appeared in Fanny and Alexander (1982), Bergman's last film. After that she has appeared in a number of feature films and TV series in Sweden. Her autobiography was published in 2005.760 points- Some actresses have entered films via the stage while others walked the path of a successful modelling career. Dolores Dorn managed to straddle both, by being a graduate of Chicago's Goodman Art Theatre as well as having been a former place-getter (second and third, respectively, in 1950 and 1951) at the annual Miss Chicago contest. A blonde beauty with a sunny smile, she was also voted 'Miss Photoflash' of 1951 by the Chicago Press Photographers Association.
She was born Dolores Heft in 1933 (some sources mistakenly cite 1934) in Chicago, of mostly Lithuanian descent, the only child of a well-to-do automobile dealer, Edward Heft, and his wife, Alice. She first headlined before the footlights at the Chez Paris nightclub. In 1954, she joined the Schaffner Players repertory comedy troupe as "lead ingénue" on tour through Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. At some point she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout while sipping soda at a drug store. This led to her first (minor) film role in Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) as one of the beast's murder victims, to be followed by a second-billed part in the Randolph Scott western The Bounty Hunter (1954).
Dolores Dorn made her New York stage debut in 1956 in Chekhov's 'Uncle Vanya' at the Fourth Street Theatre. A year later she also played the part of Yelena Andreyevna in the subsequent film version (opposite future husband Franchot Tone who was 29 years her senior). Having attracted the attention of studio execs with an off-Broadway performance in 'Between two Thieves', she was signed by director Samuel Fuller to a Columbia contract.
Her first notable starring role for the studio was in Underworld U.S.A. (1961), for which she was cast as gangster's moll "Cuddles", romantic interest to Cliff Robertson's revenge-seeking ex-convict. She was billed, unlike on Broadway, as simply Dolores Dorn. Her last noteworthy fling at the big screen was in 13 West Street (1962), a fashionable melodrama about teenage delinquency in which she co-starred with Alan Ladd.
During the late 1960s, Dorn focused on stage endeavors around New York and Los Angeles. There were also a few TV guest appearances to follow between 1973 and 1985, but that was pretty much it. However, behind the cameras, she worked as an acting teacher at the American Film Institute (1977), the Lee Strasberg Institute (1983) and as acting coach for the reality television game show Star Search (1983).755 points - Actress
- Soundtrack
Beatrice Kay was born on 21 April 1907 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Underworld U.S.A. (1961), Diamond Horseshoe (1945) and Ginger in the Morning (1974). She died on 8 November 1986 in North Hollywood, California, USA.755 points- Lucyna Winnicka was born on 14 July 1928 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland. She was an actress, known for Night Train (1959), Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) and Knights of the Teutonic Order (1960). She was married to Jerzy Kawalerowicz. She died on 22 January 2013 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.755 points
- Actress
- Soundtrack
London-born Sylvia May Laura Syms hit major film appeal at a relatively young age. Born on January 6, 1934, she was educated at convent schools before receiving dramatic training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her stage debut in a production of "The Apple Cart" in 1954.
A repertory player by the time she was discovered for films by the British star Anna Neagle and her director/husband Herbert Wilcox, the lovely demure blonde started out auspiciously enough in the delinquent film Teenage Bad Girl (1956) in which she played Neagle's troubled daughter. This was followed by a second Neagle/Wilcox collaboration with No Time for Tears (1957).
Excelling whether cast in stark melodrama, spirited adventure or harmless comedy fluff, Syms' film list grew impressive in the late 1950s and early 1960s working alongside the likes of John Mills and Anthony Quayle in Ice Cold in Alex (1958), Curd Jürgens and Orson Welles in Ferry to Hong Kong (1959), Lilli Palmer and Yvonne Mitchell in Conspiracy of Hearts (1960), Laurence Harvey in Expresso Bongo (1959), William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960), and Dirk Bogarde in the landmark gay-themed Victim (1961), playing the unsuspecting wife of Bogarde's closeted male. After nearly a decade's absence, Sylvia returned briefly to the London theatre lights in 1964 to play the title role in "Peter Pan."
Ably portraying innocent love interests throughout the years, she graced a number of pictures without ever nabbing that one role that would truly put her over the top. She was nominated, however, three times for British Film Academy Awards--twice for best actress in Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) and No Trees in the Street (1959) and once for supporting actress in The Tamarind Seed (1974) that starred Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif.
The 1970s saw quite a bit of TV series work and she played British prime minister Margaret Thatcher at one point on both stage and TV. She grew plumper with middle age and found herself immersed in character roles, offering support in such films as Absolute Beginners (1986), Shirley Valentine (1989) and Shining Through (1992).
The stage once again beckoned in the mid-to-late 1980's with touring performances, among many others, in "The Heiress," "The Beaux Stratagem," "The Ideal Husband," "A Doll's House," "Ghosts," "The Vortex," "Hamlet," "Anthony and Cleopatra" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" She portrayed the Queen and Margaret Thatcher in a production of "Ugly Rumours" and was among the cast in a musical presentation of "On the Town" in 2005.
Into the millennium, Sylvia has continued to have remarkable agility. American audiences have recently seen her as the dog-doting "Princess Charlotte" in the light teen comedy What a Girl Wants (2003) with Amanda Bynes and Colin Firth, and treading water as the Shelley Winters character in the TV-remake of The Poseidon Adventure (2005). Other movies have included the role of the Queen Mum in The Queen (2006) starring Oscar-winning Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, as well as featured roles in Is Anybody There? (2008) starring Michael Caine and Booked Out (2012). She also co-starred opposite Peter Bowles in the heart-warming senior character study Together (2018).
Married once and divorced in the 1980s from Alvin Edney, daughter Beatie Edney (aka Beatrice) is a highly prolific actress in her own right, and her son, Benjamin Edney, was briefly an actor while young and appeared with his mother as her son in the western The Desperados (1969). Ms. Syms is sometimes confused with Brooklyn-born jazz/cabaret performer and recording artist Sylvia Syms (1917-1992) (née Sylvia Blagman).753 points- Claudia McNeil was born on 13 August 1917 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She was an actress, known for A Raisin in the Sun (1961), Black Girl (1972) and The DuPont Show of the Month (1957). She was married to Herman McCoy and Henry Smith. She died on 25 November 1993 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.751 points
- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and civil rights activist. She is best known for originating the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun (1961).
She also starred in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), Cat People (1982), Do the Right Thing (1989), and American Gangster (2007).
Her film debut was That Man of Mine (1946).
For her performance as Mahalee Lucas in American Gangster (2007), she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As of 2019, she stands as the second oldest nominee for Best Supporting Actress, behind Gloria Stuart who was 87 when nominated for her role in Titanic for the 70th Academy Awards, 1998.
Dee died on June 11, 2014, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, from natural causes at the age of 91.751 points- Diana Sands was born on 22 August 1934 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Landlord (1970), A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and East Side/West Side (1963). She was married to Lucien Jean Happersberger. She died on 21 September 1973 in New York City, New York, USA.751 points
- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
Piper Laurie was a three-time Oscar nominee, nominated by BAFTA as well as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for best performance by an actress in 'The Hustler' with Paul Newman.
Laurie was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, to Charlotte Sadie (Alperin) and Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer. She had an elder sister. Her family was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent.
Young Rosetta had been studying acting with Benno and Betomi Schnider for three years when she auditioned for Universal Studios, who signed her to a long term contract and was renamed Piper Laurie. She made more than twenty films, appearing opposite such actors as Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson and Tyrone Power.
Disgusted with the lack of serious roles, Laurie finally broke her lucrative Hollywood contract, moved to New York, lived on a budget, worked on live television and theater, and within two years changed her life and her career.
She stopped working for fifteen years after 'The Hustler' to devote her energies to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, feeling acting was less important. When she accepted work again she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for 'Carrie' with Sissy Spacek, and again as Best Supporting Actress in 'Children of a Lesser God' with Marlee Matlin. She won the Golden Globe for her role in the David Lynch cult favorite 'Twin Peaks' and was nominated for an Emmy for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in 'Twin Peaks'.
She was nominated a total of twelve times for the Emmy, including one for the original and celebrated live broadcast of 'The Days of Wine and Roses' with Cliff Robertson, directed by John Frankenheimer, as well as for her comedic performance in 'Frasier'. She won an Emmy for her performance in 'Promise' opposite James Woods and James Garner. She was Harvard's Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, and she also received an SFECA award for her performance as Dolly in the film 'The Grass Harp'.
In 2010, she played an elderly grandma who learns to smoke a bong in the feature film 'Hesher', with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Natalie Portman. Most recently she appeared as Grandma Hershe in White Boy Rick, starring Matthew McConaughey, and as Rose Muller in 'Snapshots', directed by Melanie Mayron. In 2013, she made her musical stage debut in 'A Little Night Music' as Madame Armfeldt.
Laurie performed on Broadway in the Tony-nominated Lincoln Center production of 'Mornings at Seven' directed by Dan Sullivan at the Lyceum Theatre. She also appeared on Broadway in the 20th Anniversary production of 'The Glass Menagerie', in which she played Laura Wingfield, with Maureen Stapleton (only 7 years older) as her mother, Amanda, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
Off-Broadway, she appeared in Molly Kazan's 'Rosemary and the Alligators' and in Larry Kramer's 'The Destiny of Me'. She toured in a one-person play about Zelda Fitzgerald, written by Bill Luce. In 2010 she directed Jim Brochu in his one-man show 'Zero Hour', for which he received the Drama Desk Award for best solo performance on or off Broadway, playing Zero Mostel.
Laurie was divorced from Wall Street Journal's movie critic, Pulitzer Prize-winner Joe Morgenstern. They had a daughter. Laurie's autobiography, Learning to Live Out Loud, was published by Crown in 2011 to rave reviews and is now available as an audio book on audible.com.747 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mary Peach was born on 20 October 1934 in Durban, South Africa. She is an actress, known for Cutthroat Island (1995), Scrooge (1970) and The Projected Man (1966).739 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
As Disney's lively lass Katie O'Gill, she was the freshness of spring. She could inspire you to dance a jig through a field of flowers. Her entrancing green eyes and catchy spirit had that kind of life-affirming effect. Cute, spunky, almond-eyed British actress Janet Munro was deemed to be an actress from day one as the daughter of Scottish stage and variety-hall comedian Alex Munro (1911-1986) (born Alexander Horsburgh). Janet Neilson Horsburgh was born in Blackpool (near Liverpool), Lancashire, England on September 28, 1934. Her entertainer father adopted the name Munro a few years after she was born. His wife, Janet's mother Phyllis, died when Janet was 8 and she was raised by his second wife, Lilias.
Janet first trained as a teenager in repertory theatre in the Lancashire area, and in the late 1950s she found popularity on British TV, even earning the title of "Miss Television of 1958" from a fan magazine. She also dabbled in films and had prominent roles in the breezy comedy Small Hotel (1957), the drama The Young and the Guilty (1959), and the creepy sci-fi/horror The Crawling Eye (1958) [aka The Trollenberg Terror].
Adaptable to both comedy and drama, the little charmer caught the eye of Walt Disney who saw big things for her, and she was signed to a five-picture deal in 1959. She made four. Appealing to a brand new generation of Britishers and Americans as the scrappy, brunette-banged ingénue of several box-office family films, she brightened up the screen with her performances in Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), Third Man on the Mountain (1959), and Swiss Family Robinson (1960).
The Golden Globe winner for "most promising newcomer" eventually outgrew Disney and tried to move ahead by altering her wholesome image with some mature, spicier roles, but audiences didn't respond well to this sudden departure. The idea of an adult Janet Munro playing overly-sexy ladies and seriously downtrodden women did not take and her career quickly faltered. Despite a BAFTA nomination for her role in Walk in the Shadow (1962), she began to see life unraveling both personally and professionally right before her eyes.
Janet's marriages to actors Tony Wright and Ian Hendry fell by the wayside and two miscarriages, plus chronic medical ills, only deepened her suffering. Worse yet, she developed an acute alcohol problem. Semi-retired from acting between 1964 and 1968 while married to Hendry in order to raise her children, she found the going difficult when she tried to return full-time.
Ironically, one of Janet's last screen roles showed her at her dramatic best, a boozing pop star in the British film Sebastian (1968). Four years later Janet died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Reports circulated that she choked to death at a London hotel while drinking tea. The immediate cause of her death was acute myocarditis; the underlying cause was chronic ischemic heart disease. The sun set all too soon on this lovely actress when she was only 38. She was survived by her daughters, Sally and Corrie Hendry.732 points- Barbara Rütting was born Waltraut Irmgard Goltz in Wietstock (Brandenburg), the daughter of teachers. She grew up and went to school in Berlin and Luckenwalde in Brandenburg. After matriculating, she moved to Denmark where she sought employment and worked variously as a maid, as a librarian and as a translator. Following the end of World War II, Barbara returned to Berlin to study drama (abandoning her dream of becoming a medical doctor). In 1952, she made her screen debut in Postlagernd: 'Turteltaube' (1952) (promoted at the time as 'a comedy against fear') followed four years later by appearances on the German and Austrian stage. During this phase of her career, she came to specialise in women wrestling with difficult sociopolitical situations or affairs of the heart. Her roles ranged from naive heroines in Heimat films to self-assured ladies in more demanding fare. The latter included Helmut Käutner's The Last Bridge (1954). Her role as a Serbian student and member of a group of wartime partisans won her critical plaudits and the film itself was described as 'international masterclass' by a reviewer of the Welt publication.
Barbara subsequently starred as the eponymous heroine in the second remake of the perennial Heimat-film classic Die Geierwally (1956) (though not surpassing the definitive 1940 performance by Heidemarie Hatheyer). She co-starred as an aggressive reporter investigating a case of gang rape by a quartet of G.I.'s in Town Without Pity (1961), an American, Swiss, and West German international co-production, headlining Kirk Douglas and E.G. Marshall as opposing councils. Her later filmography encompassed diverse characters in films of widely varying genres and quality: Deadly Decision (1954) (as double agent Irene von Harbeck), Operation Crossbow (1965) (a supporting role, as German aviatrix Hanna Reitsch), River of Evil (1963) (a leading role, as a girl trying to solve the mystery of her father's death in the Amazon jungle), Der Zinker (1963), Das Phantom von Soho (1964) and Again the Ringer (1965) (a trio of Edgar Wallace-based crime thrillers with Rütting as the nominal female lead), plus heroines from the classics and historical figures including Lysistrata, Turandot and Madame Caillaux. On the stage she echoed the latter with roles in plays by Schiller, Ibsen and Strindberg.
Rütting retired from acting in 1984 and devoted her life to philanthropic environmental and animal-related causes (she was a vocal opponent of animal testing by pharmaceutical companies). Beginning in 1970, she pursued a secondary career as an author of novels, books for children and cookbooks and by the following decade made regular contributions to the weekly Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche. She was married and divorced twice, taking the surname of her first husband. Her second spouse was the German journalist, socialist politician and ex-wartime fighter ace Heinrich von Einsiedel.725 points - Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in Austria to a French mother and a German father, young Christine Kaufmann conquered the hearts of post-war German movie audiences in movies like Der schweigende Engel (1954), Ein Herz schlägt für Erika (1956) and, most famously, Rosen-Resli (1954). Discovered at the tender age of six, Christine was soon the breadwinner for her family. This quickly changed when puberty destroyed her blooming career as "the sweet innocent child" in West Germany. Her ambitious mother, by now Christine's manager, relocated to Rome with her. In Italy, her Lolita-like qualities were appreciated and used in movies like The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) in which, at age 13, she played the love-interest of "Mr. Universe" Steve Reeves (then 32). Due to her hard work as a child (between 1952 and 1959 she starred in 18 films!), she was never able to attend school; yet, by the age of 14, young Christine was fluent in German, French, Italian, Spanish and English.
In 1959, Christine headed to London to audition for the role of Karen in Exodus (1960). Director Otto Preminger chose Jill Haworth over Kaufmann but was still so impressed with her that he recommended her for a substantial part in Gottfried Reinhardt's courtroom drama Town Without Pity (1961). The movie, which starred Kirk Douglas, E.G. Marshall and Robert Blake, became an international success and earned Kaufmann a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer. After a string of rather forgettable movies in West Germany, France, and Italy, she flew to Argentina to co-star alongside Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis in Taras Bulba (1962). Curtis, who was already 36, fell immediately for the 16-year-old German starlet, left his wife Janet Leigh and his two daughters and started to live with Christine in both Europe and in Los Angeles. (In the US, they had to keep their relationship on the DL because Christine was still underage and therefore jail bait.) Shortly after her 18th birthday, Curtis and Kaufmann got married in Las Vegas. Kirk Douglas was their best man. One of Curtis' demands was that she would retire from acting after the wedding, and Christine gladly acquiesced to his request; actually she had been dreaming of retiring since her success with Rosen-Resli (1954) which had ended her once-peaceful childhood abruptly. She later claimed that she'd never really been interested in becoming an actress in the first place and was more or less forced into it by her parents: "I was an obedient girl and wanted to make my mother happy, so I simply did what I was being told. Unfortunately, once you are famous, there's no way back, and since I didn't have a formal school education, I could not fulfill my dream of studying archaeology and art history."
Her last movie, a droll comedy titled Wild and Wonderful (1964), was released in June 1964 to mixed reviews. In July, she gave birth to her first daughter, Alexandra Curtis. Christine was 19. Two years later, a second daughter, Allegra Curtis, arrived. Her husband, who already had two daughters with his first wife, had wanted a son and was unable to hide his disappointment. By late 1966, Tony Curtis was pretty much spending his time with other women, while Christine, living the life of a 40-year-old Hollywood matron at the age of 20, was slowly growing up. In 1968, she left Curtis and filed for divorce in Mexico, because she didn't want any of his money. She took her daughters and moved back to Europe.
By the early 1970s, Christine worked steadily in theatre, on TV and occasionally in movies: "I worked with discipline, but without any interest." Art house directors like Werner Schroeter, Percy Adlon, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder cast her in sometimes interesting, but mostly forgettable movies. In 1971, she did another American movie (filmed in Madrid), the tepid, too-artsy-for-its-own-good Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971) with Jason Robards and Herbert Lom, and in 1987 she was offered a wonderfully written part in Bagdad Cafe (1987) with Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder and Jack Palance which became one of the most enchantingly beautiful movies of the decade. But Christine's real passion belonged to the theatre where she acted under maverick directors like Peter Zadek and Michael Bogdanov.
She made a lasting impression on German television with her hilariously witty portrayal of Olga Behrens in Monaco Franze - Der ewige Stenz (1983), written by Patrick Süskind.
In the 1990s, now approaching 50, Christine took up writing, publishing several books on beauty, health, and fame, including three autobiographies. She also became a business woman with her own line of cosmetics which made her a fairly wealthy woman. Generous as she was, she financed (with the help of ex-stepdaughter Jamie Lee Curtis) her grandchildren's education.
After Curtis, Christine Kaufmann re-married three times, all marriages ending in divorce. She lived all over the world, including five years in Morocco. In March 2017, shortly after her 72nd birthday, Christine died of leukemia (like her mother) in Munich. She wanted to be buried next to her mother and grandmother in Vernon, just outside Paris, a wish that was granted by her older brother and her daughters.725 points- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Rita Moreno is one of the very few performers to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, thus becoming an EGOT. She was born Rosita Dolores Alverío in the hospital in Humacao, Puerto Rico on December 11, 1931 (but raised in nearby, smaller Juncos, which had no hospital), to seamstress Rosa María (Marcano) and farmer Francisco José "Paco" Alverío. Her mother moved to New York City in 1937, taking Rita with her while leaving her reportedly unfaithful husband and Rita's younger brother behind. Rita's professional career began before she reached adolescence.
From the age of nine, she performed as a professional dancer in New York night clubs. At age 11, she landed her first movie experience, dubbing Spanish-language versions of US films. Less than a month before her 14th birthday on November 22, 1945, she made her Broadway debut in the play "Skydrift" at the Belasco Theatre, costarring with Arthur Keegan and a young Eli Wallach. Although she would not appear again on Broadway for almost two decades, Rita Moreno, as she was billed in the play, had arrived professionally. In 1950, she was signed by MGM, but the studio dropped her option after just one year.
The cover of the March 1, 1954, edition of "Life Magazine" featured a three-quarters, over-the-left-shoulder profile of the young Puerto Rican actress/entertainer with the provocative title "Rita Moreno: An Actresses' Catalog of Sex and Innocence". It was sexpot time, a stereotype that would plague her throughout the decade. If not cast as a Hispanic pepper pot, she could rely on being cast as another "exotic", such as her appearance on Father Knows Best (1954) as an exchange student from India. Because of a dearth of decent material, Moreno had to play roles in movies that she considered degrading. Among the better pictures she earned featured roles in were the classic Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The King and I (1956).
Director Robert Wise, who was chosen to co-direct West Side Story (1961) (the film version of the smash Broadway musical, a retelling of William Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" with the warring Venetian clans the Montagues and Capulets re-envisioned as Irish/Polish and Puerto Rican adolescent street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks), cast Moreno as "Anita", the Puerto Rican girlfriend of Sharks' leader Bernardo, whose sister Maria is the piece's Juliet.
However, despite her talent, roles commensurate with that talent were not forthcoming in the 1960s. The following decade would prove kinder, possibly because the beautiful Moreno had aged gracefully and could now be seen by filmmakers, TV producers and casting directors as something other than the spitfire/sexpot that Hispanic women were supposed to conform to. Ironically, it was in two vastly diverging roles--that of a $100 hooker in director Mike Nichols' brilliant realization of Jules Feiffer's acerbic look at male sexuality, Carnal Knowledge (1971), and Milly the Helper in the children's TV show The Electric Company (1971)--that signaled a career renaissance.
Moreno won a 1972 Grammy Award for her contribution to "The Electric Company"'s soundtrack album, following it up three years later with a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for "The Ritz" (a role she would reprise in the film version, The Ritz (1976)). She then won Emmy Awards for The Muppet Show (1976) and The Rockford Files (1974).
She has continued to work steadily on screen (both large and small) and on stage, solidifying her reputation as a national treasure, a status that was officially ratified with the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in June 2004.721 points- Mireille Granelli was born in 1936 in Paris, Ile-de-France, France. She is an actress, known for Castle of the Banned Lovers (1956), Mission spéciale à Caracas (1965) and Si le roi savait ça (1958).719 points
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Rita Tushingham was born in Liverpool on March 14, 1942, and did her professional apprenticeship with the Liverpool Playhouse. In 1961, she made her film debut as a teenager in Tony Richardson's adaption of Shelagh Delaney's kitchen sink drama, A Taste of Honey (1961). For her work in that film, she won a BAFTA and the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1963, she followed those up with a Golden Globe Award as most promising newcomer.
In the first half of the Sixties, Tushingham became a symbol of the kitchen sink school of theater, which told stories about working class folk, people who had been ignored previously in class conscious England. It was a decade that saw the rise of a generation of actors born and raised outside Metropolitan London who refused to let go of their accents or adopt posh manners. She became one of the faces of the English New Wave. In 1964, Tushingham starred in Girl with Green Eyes (1964), an adaptation of an Edna O'Brien novel about a young Irish woman's affair with an older man, co-starring Peter Finch and Lynn Redgrave. She next starred as a working class woman married to a biker in Sidney J. Furie's cult classic The Leather Boys (1964), a film released at a time where Marlon Brando's biker opus The Wild One (1953) was still banned in Britain. She originated the role of Nancy in Ann Jellicoe's "The Knack...and How to Get It" at the Royal Court Theatre in 1962. The Royal Court was ground zero for the revolution in the British theater that started there in 1956 with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1959).
She reached her high-water mark in 1965 when she reprised her stage role in the film version of The Knack... and How to Get It (1965) and played Omar Sharif (Yuri) and Julie Christie (Lara)'s love child in Doctor Zhivago (1965). While The Knack... and How to Get It (1965) was a box office hit, Doctor Zhivago (1965) was an international hit, one of cinema's all-time blockbusters. Her fame crested at the time her fellow Liverpudlians, The Beatles were establishing themselves as the biggest thing in post-WWII pop music.
But as the second half of the 60s kicked in, Tushingham's stardom began to wane as that of her "Zhivago" co-star (and on-screen mum) Christie began to skyrocket, making her the face of Swinging London. Tushingham has continued to act for five more decades since the Sixties came to a close, the very definition of a successful career.718 points- Actress
- Soundtrack
Dora Bryan was born on 7 February 1923 in Parbold, Lancashire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for A Taste of Honey (1961), The Fallen Idol (1948) and Last of the Summer Wine (1973). She was married to Bill Lawton. She died on 23 July 2014 in Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK.718 points- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Brooklyn-native actress Ina Balin (née Rosenberg) was born on November 12, 1937, into a Jewish family of entertainers. Her parents were Betty (nee Friedman) and Sam Rosenberg, who divorced when she was 9 years old. Her father was a dancer/singer/comedian who worked the Borscht Belt. He later quit show business to join his family's furrier business. Her mother was a Hungarian-born professional dancer who escaped a troubled family life by marrying at age 15. Sam was her third husband at age 21. They divorced when Ina and her brother, Richard Balin, were still quite young and the children were placed in boarding schools (she at the Montessori Children's Village in Bucks County, Pennsylvania) until their mother married a fourth time to wealthy shoe magnate Harold Balin, who later adopted Betty's two children, who took his surname.
Ina always wanted to be an actress and her mother encouraged her to take ballet lessons while young. Her first big break occurred in NewvYork at age 15 when she appeared on Perry Como's 1950s TV show. She went on to attend New York University majoring in theater and also studied with Actors Studio exponents Lonny Chapman and Curt Conway while gathering additional experience on the summer stock stage. She made an auspicious Broadway debut in a female lead with "Compulsion" in 1957. Two years later, the dark-haired, olive-skinned beauty won a Theatre World Award for her outstanding performance in the Broadway comedy, "A Majority of One", starring Gertrude Berg. Producer Carlo Ponti saw her Broadway performance in "Compulsion" and requested her for a prime role in his film The Black Orchid (1958).
Starring Ponti's wife, Sophia Loren, and Anthony Quinn, Ina received impressive notices as Quinn's sensitive, grown daughter. Considered one of 20th Century Fox's most promising new talents, she received a special "International Star of Tomorrow" Golden Globe for this early work. A major career disappointment occurred when the film version of Compulsion (1959) was made and Ina's ethnic role of "Ruth Goldenberg" was transformed into a non-ethnic part (Ruth Evans) that wound up starring Diane Varsi. Ina was given an unbilled part in the movie. The sting of that studio transgression was somewhat softened when she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for "Best Supporting Actress" for her intensive performance in the Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward soaper, From the Terrace (1960), as Newman's love interest. She found herself typecast by the studio and eventually felt compelled to leave.
A soft, slender, but intent-looking actress who could play various types of ethnicities (Jewish, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, Greek, et al.), she had a lovely, quiet glow but could easily display the fiery temperament of an Anna Magnani when called upon. In the 1960s, however, she was overshadowed by a number of her leading men in their respective showcases. She appeared in many Westerns, often as the girlfriend or love interest of the hero. There was little room for any actor to generate interest upon themselves when playing opposite the likes of an Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis and/or John Wayne. In other situations, her roles were merely decorative, less showy, or proved less integral to the main plot, such as her secondary role as "Martha" in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). While Ina maintained a fine balance of TV roles ranging from the dramatic (Bonanza (1959), Mannix (1967), Quincy M.E. (1976), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964)) to the humorous (The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Get Smart (1965)), the one big acting role which could have set her apart from the others never materialized.
Subsequent pictures such as the cult film The Projectionist (1970) and The Don Is Dead (1973) and her assorted appearances in several TV-movies failed to advance her status in Hollywood. And then her life changed...dramatically. As the first woman to ever participate in a handshake tour of a South Vietnam military hospital in the late 1960s, Ina toured Vietnam with the USO in 1970 and was greatly affected by the entire experience. It also triggered a series of trips back to the war-torn region. As a Board Member of the An Lac orphanage in Saigon, she courageously took part in the full-scale evacuation of nearly 400 orphans in 1975 during the fall of the city to the Communists. She eventually adopted three of the 219 children who managed to be flown out of the country. In 1980, the dramatic rescue was replayed via a TV film in which Balin portrayed herself. The well-received The Children of an Lac (1980) also starred Shirley Jones (as fellow rescuer "Betty Tisdale") and Beulah Quo (as the concerned Vietnamese woman who ran the orphanage).
From this point on, Ina's professional career took a back seat to the raising of her children and her ongoing interest in foreign relief. She appeared throughout the 1980s with a sprinkling of guest shots on TV's Battlestar Galactica (1978), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and As the World Turns (1956), among others. As for film, her last movies (The Comeback Trail (1982), Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter (1986) and That's Adequate (1989)) were unworthy of her talents.
Ina never managed to fulfill her promising, Golden Globe-winning potential for she was diagnosed and eventually succumbed, at the age of 52 from pulmonary hypertension. A single parent, she was survived by her three children.710 points- Phyllis Anne Love was born in Des Moines, Iowa on December 21, 1925. She attended Roosevelt High School in Des Moines along with her close friend, Cloris Leachman. After performing in various local and regional drama productions, Love enrolled in the Actors Studio in New York in 1948. Her movie debut was a bit as a juvenile delinquent in the 1950 movie So Young, So Bad (1950), which starred Paul Henreid and Rita Moreno. Love's best-known film role was as "Mattie Birdwell" in William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956). Love guested in numerous TV programs in the 50s, 60s, and 70s but enjoyed her greatest success on the Broadway stage. She appeared in eight shows and, in 1951, won the New York Charles Derwent Award for Best Featured Actress for her portrayal of "Rosa Delle Rosa" in the original production of "The Rose Tattoo". After retiring from acting in the early 70s, she changed her first name to "Osanna".710 points
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Aline MacMahon was born of Scottish-Irish and Russian-Jewish ancestry on May 3,1899, the daughter of William Marcus MacMahon and Jennie Simon MacMahon. Her father became editor-in-chief of Munsey's Magazine, while her mother pursued a theatrical acting career from middle-age and lived to age107. After the family moved to Brooklyn, Aline was educated at then-prestigious Erasmus Hall High School. She later attended Barnard College where she was graduated in 1920.
MacMahon first appeared onstage in 'The Madras House' at the Neighborhood Playhouse Theater and subsequently made her bow on Broadway in "The Mirage" in 1921. During the 1920s, she had a prolific career on Broadway, first, as a comedienne adept at impersonations (notably, in "The Grand Street Follies" and "Artists and Models"). By 1926, she proved to be equally adept at dramatic roles, making an impact in Eugene O'Neill's "Beyond the Horizon." Noël Coward described her as "astonishing, moving and beautiful", while critic Alexander Woollcott commented on her "extraordinary beauty, vitality and truth" (New York Times, October 14, 1991). Her distinguished career on the stage went on for five and a half decades, highlighted by many critically acclaimed performances in plays like "The Eve of St. Mark" (1942-43), "The Confidential Clerk" (1954), "Pictures in the Hallway" (1956) and "All the Way Home" (1960-61). Her somewhat melancholic, heavy-lidded and thickly eye-browed features inspired sculptor Isamu Noguchi and photographer Cecil Beaton.
MacMahon's film career began on the strength of her wisecracking voice-culture teacher, May Daniels, in the Kaufman and Hart comedy 'Once in a Lifetime', which she had created onstage in Los Angeles in 1931. She reprised her role on screen the following year and was, prior to that, cast in similar roles as feisty secretaries in Five Star Final (1931), (her debut) and The Mouthpiece (1932). Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) afforded her a well-received co-starring role as the hard-boiled "Trixie Lorraine". McMahon managed to escape typecasting with several strong dramatic performances: Edward G. Robinson's sad, cast-off wife in Silver Dollar (1932); the sympathetic self-sacrificing Mrs. Moore of The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933); her co-starring role as Guy Kibbee's long-suffering wife Myra in Babbitt (1934); and kindly spinster aunt Lily Davis in Ah Wilderness! (1935). She effortlessly made the transition from Pre-Code films to Post-Code.
In the 1940s, she began playing lower-billed character parts, but was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as the Chinese mother of Katharine Hepburn's character, Ling Tan, in Dragon Seed (1944). After that, she played a succession of gentle mothers and grandmothers, as, for example, in The Eddie Cantor Story (1953). She was also occasionally employed in meatier outdoor roles in anything from swashbucklers, like The Flame and the Arrow (1950), to westerns, such as her ranch owner in The Man from Laramie (1955). More exotically cast, she portrayed James Darren's Hawaiian mother, Kapiolani Kahana, in Diamond Head (1962). In her last motion picture performance, she re-created her stage role as Aunt Hannah for the Paramount film version of All the Way Home (1963). Based on the novel "A Death in the Family" by James Agee, the picture was a huge success with the critics but performed less well at the box office.
Aside from a handful of guest appearances on television, she retired from the screen after 1964 and died of pneumonia at her Manhattan home at the age of 92 in 1991. She was married to Clarence S. Stern, who predeceased her in 1975.710 points- Carroll Baker was born on May 28, 1931 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the daughter of a traveling salesman, William W. Baker. She attended community college for a year and then worked as a dancer and magician's assistant. After a brief marriage, she had a small part in Easy to Love (1953), did TV commercials, and had a bit part on Broadway. She studied at the Actors Studio and was married to director Jack Garfein (one daughter, Blanche Baker). Warner Brothers, sensing a future Marilyn Monroe, cast her in Giant (1956), Baby Doll (1956) (Oscar nomination for her thumb-sucking role), The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Harlow (1965) (title role). Moving to Italy, she made films there and in England, Germany, Mexico and Spain . After returning to American films, she married Donald Burton in 1982 and resided in Hampstead, London in the 1980s. They remained together until Burton's death from emphysema in their home in Cathedral City, California in 2007.707 points