Anthony Franciosa
Actor Anthony Franciosa died of a massive stroke this past Friday, Jan. 20, at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 77.
Franciosa’s film career began late — but auspiciously — in 1957. The 32-year-old actor (born in New York City on Oct. 28, 1925) had key roles in Robert Wise’s This Could Be the Night, George Cukor’s Wild Is the Wind, Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd, and Fred Zinnemann’s A Hatful of Rain, in which he recreated his well-regarded Broadway role.
For his somewhat mechanical performance — stage mannerisms were much in evidence — Franciosa received his one and only best actor Academy Award nomination.
Yet, major stardom proved elusive. Although he was [...]
by Andre Soares | January 22, 2006
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Tags: A Hatful of Rain, A Period of Adjustment, Anthony Franciosa, Classic Movies, Fred Zinnemann, Rita Hayworth, Shelley Winters, The Long Hot Summer, The Story onf Page one, Wild Is the Wind
Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters, winner of two best supporting actress Academy Awards, died of heart failure at the Rehabilitation Centre of Beverly Hills on Jan. 14. In October, she had been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack. She was 85.
Besides her two Oscars — for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965) — Winters received two other nominations: in 1951 as best actress for A Place in the Sun (top, with Montgomery Clift) and a supporting nod in 1972 for her underwater prowess in The Poseidon Adventure (right). (Sylvia Syms played Winters’ role in the 2005 made-for-TV remake.)
Née Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Mo., on Aug. 18, 1920 (some sources claim 1922), to an amateur [...]
by Andre Soares | January 14, 2006
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Tags: A Place in the Sun, Anthony Franciosa, Classic Movies, Farley Granger, George Stevens, Montgomery Clift, Next Stop Greenwich Village, Shelley Winters, The Poseidon Adventure, Vittorio Gassman
A HATFUL OF RAIN – Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray
A Hatful of Rain (1957)
Direction: Fred Zinnemann
Screenplay: Michael V. Gazzo, Alfred Hayes, Carl Foreman (originally uncredited); from Gazzo’s play
Cast: Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray, Anthony Franciosa, Lloyd Nolan, Henry Silva
Based on a play by Michael V. Gazzo, A Hatful of Rain is an interesting attempt at injecting "adult" subject matters — in this case, the evils of drug addiction — into Hollywood movies. "Interesting," however, does not mean either successful or compelling.
Despite real, unromantic New York locations and Joseph MacDonald’s beautifully realistic black-and-white camera work, this Fred Zinnemann-directed melodrama feels anachronistically stagy because of the overall artificiality of the dialogue and the hammy theatricality of the performances — with Eva Marie Saint as the sole naturalistic exception.
Somewhat revolutionary [...]
by Andre Soares | October 24, 2004
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Tags: A Hatful of Rain, Anthony Franciosa, Classic Movies, Don Murray, Eva Marie Saint, Film Reviews, Fred Zinnemann, Lloyd Nolan, Michael V. Gazzo, Oscar 1957, Oscar Movies
