THE GODDESS – Kim Stanley – d: John Cromwell

The Goddess (1958)
Direction: John Cromwell
Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky
Cast: Kim Stanley, Lloyd Bridges, Steven Hill, Betty Lou Holland, Joan Copeland, Gerald Hiken, Patty Duke
 

Kim Stanley in The Goddess
 

Paddy Chayefsky evokes a cynical Tennessee Williams in his screenplay for The Goddess, a Hollywood cautionary tale directed by veteran John Cromwell. Episodic in progression — the film is broken into three pulpy chapters — The Goddess serves as a spotlight for a daring Kim Stanley performance, playing within the middle-brow arena of melodrama even as it stages dark comedy and acute commentary.
In The Goddess, Stanley is Emily Ann Faulkner, a broken woman from rural hickdom who has been abandoned by her irresponsible mother. (The child is portrayed by [...]

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial

Four-time Academy Award winner screenwriter-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz will be saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special 50th anniversary screening of a recently restored print of Suddenly, Last Summer, starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor (above, and right, with Mankiewicz), and Montgomery Clift. The screening will take place on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will also celebrate the recent gift of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz Papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Turner Classic Movies host and The Young Turks co-creator Ben Mankiewicz, Joseph L.’s great nephew and grandson of Citizen Kane co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, will host [...]

Keith Andes

Film and stage actor Keith Andes died at his home in Santa Clarita, a community northeast of Los Angeles, on November 11. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office ruled the death a suicide by asphyxiation. Andes had been suffering from bladder cancer and other ailments. He was 85.
Born John Charles Andes on July 12, 1920, in Ocean City, New Jersey, Andes was brought to Hollywood by 20th Century-Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. The mogul had seen him perform as an understudy in the Broadway production of the homefront melodrama Winged Victory.
Besides appearing in a small part in the 1944 film version directed by George Cukor, Andes had mostly supporting roles in about 20 other films, including The Farmer’s Daughter [...]

Arthur Miller

Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Thelma Ritter in The Misfits

On February 10, Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Arthur Miller died of congestive heart failure at his Roxbury home. He was 89
Miller was best known for his play about the unachievable "American Dream," Death of a Salesman, which, under the direction of Elia Kazan, opened on Broadway to rave reviews in 1949.
Two years later, Death of a Salesman was filmed by László Benedek with Fredric March as the All-American loser Willy Loman and Kevin McCarthy as his defiant son. Both March and McCarthy were nominated for Academy Awards, and so was Mildred Dunnock as Loman’s wife.
Miller also made headlines the world over when he married Marilyn Monroe in 1956. They were divorced five [...]

Best Films – 1955

The guilty pleasure of all guilty pleasures. An unabashedly sentimental story about East meets West, a bland performance by leading man William Holden (Sunset Boulevard, Network), an awful (and awfully long) title. That’s 20th Century Fox’s Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. Yet, the film does offer gorgeous locations (Hong Kong and surrounding areas), superb color cinematography (Leon Shamroy), a rousing, romantic score (Alfred Newman), several good directorial touches (Henry King), and a beautifully modulated performance by leading lady Jennifer Jones (The Song of Bernadette, Carrie). A huge hit at the time of its release, Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing is the type of movie that will either make you sick or touch you profoundly. Come to think of it, chances [...]