Frank Sinatra on TCM

Bobby-soxer-turned-blue-haired-matron idol Frank Sinatra will have his "Summer Under the Stars" day on Friday, Aug. 28.
Turner Classic Movies will show twelve of the actor-singer films, the best of which is On the Town, a zesty musical about three sailors and their three girls (four, if you include Alice Pearce) spending a day together in New York City. The three guys — Sinatra, Gene Kelly, and Jules Munshin (above) — are all likable and fine, but it’s the female quartet that does it for me: in addition to Pearce, there’s Vera-Ellen, Betty Garrett, and Ann Miller. In my view, those women are the ones who should have been the superstars of Hollywood musicals of the ’40s and ’50s. Anyhow, Kelly [...]

Nina Foch

Nina Foch, best remembered as an acting teacher and for her role as Gene Kelly’s "sponsor" in the Oscar-winning MGM musical An American in Paris (1951), died of complications of long-term myelodysplasia, a blood disorder, on Friday, Dec. 5, at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Foch was 84.
According to the Los Angeles Times obit, Foch became ill Thursday while teaching "Directing the Actor" at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she had been teaching for 40 years. Among her former students are Randal Kleiser, Amy Heckerling, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz.
She was born Nina Consuelo Maud Fock in Leiden, The Netherlands, on April 20, 1924 — her father was Dutch composer-conductor Dirk Fock; her mother was American [...]