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Marlon Brando, Marlene Dietrich, Sophia Loren Home Movies

Alfred Hitchcock, wife Alma Reville, daughter Patricia Hitchcock, and dog at home ca. 1941

Paulette Goddard, Betty Grable, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, and Natalie Wood’s rarely seen home movies will be screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ presentation of “Hollywood Home Movies II: Treasures from the Academy Film Archive” on Saturday, October 17, at 7 p.m. at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. This event is sold out, but standby tickets may become available.
The Academy Film Archive houses a wide variety of amateur movies — whether featuring the stars’ families and friends, or behind-the-scenes activities on their sets. "Hollywood Home Movies II" will feature a number of excerpts, [...]

Karl Malden

Karl Malden, Tyrone Power in Diplomatic Courier (1952)

Karl Malden, who won a best supporting actor Oscar for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951, died "of natural causes" at his Brentwood home earlier today. He was 97.
In addition to his film work — which includes dozens of features from 1940 to the late 1980s — Malden starred opposite Michael Douglas in the popular 1970s television cop series The Streets of San Francisco, and was a spokesman for American Express. Additionally, he served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1989-92.
The son of Central European immigrants, the Chicago-born (March 22, 1912) Malden began his film career in a small role in the 1940 [...]

A Tribute to Dick Smith: The Godfather of Special Makeup Effects

The Godfather: Dick Smith and Al Pacino (top); Smith, Marlon Brando, and Phil Rhodes (bottom)

"A Tribute to Dick Smith: The Godfather of Special Makeup Effects" will be presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday, June 17, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Six-time Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker will host the evening, which will be attended by Dick Smith himself and will feature a panel discussion including writer-director Guillermo del Toro, actor Hal Holbrook, and makeup artists Greg Cannom, Kazuhiro Tsuji and Andrew Clement, among others.
The evening will highlight Smith’s long career, which began in 1945 when he became NBC’s first [...]

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 [...]

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Tribute: SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER

Joseph L. Mankiewicz Centennial – Part I
And if Guys and Dolls (1955) was a bore — just about everyone in this film musical is miscast, from Brando to Mankiewicz himself — the director recovered his touch with the adult (and bizarre) Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), a psychotic psychological drama adapted by Gore Vidal and (officially) Tennessee Williams from Williams’s own play. (Williams later said he had nothing to do with the film version.)
The story follows a young woman (Elizabeth Taylor) who is sent to a psychiatric hospital after she suffers a nervous breakdown following some horrific traumatic experience. Things can get quite heady — bad pun intended — when you mix traditional Southern [...]

Edmund Purdom

Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom in The Student Prince

Edmund Purdom, best known for his roles in two 1954 productions, the musical The Student Prince and the period epic The Egyptian, died in Rome on Jan. 1. He was 84.
Despite his two big mid-1950s hits, the super-handsome, English-born Purdom never quite made it to the top. Perhaps the reason for his lack of success in Hollywood had to do with the fact that Purdom left his wife for minor actress Linda Christian, with whom he moved to Italy not too long after they appeared together in another 1954 film, the MGM musical Athena. (Christian was at the time married to Tyrone Power; they divorced in [...]

Christopher Plummer Interview at TCM

Christopher Plummer, whose autobiography In Spite of Myself has just come out, was interviewed by Jeff Stafford for the Turner Classic Movies website. Below is a brief snippet:
TCM: With you being such a classically trained actor, I was curious about your opinion of "The Method" and Marlon Brando’s impact on the theatre world with A Streetcar Named Desire.
CP: Listen, to me "The Method" is usually totally misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that you have to mumble and not be heard. It means that you use it when you’re in deep trouble, when you can’t bring your imagination to work then you try and have a sense memory of your own that can help and [...]

Elia Kazan’s Oscar Nominated Actors

Elia Kazan
24 Acting Nominations
(s) supporting category
(*) Academy Award winner
Elia Kazan: Top Oscar Directors for Actors
 
1945
James Dunn (s) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn*
(Additionally, Peggy Ann Garner won a special "juvenile" Oscar for her 1945 performances, including A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
 
1947

Gregory Peck Gentleman’s Agreement
Dorothy McGuire Gentleman’s Agreement
Celeste Holm (s) Gentleman’s Agreement *
Anne Revere (s) Gentleman’s Agreement
 
1949

Lily white Fox star Jeanne Crain was nominated for an Oscar for trying (and failing) to pass for a light-skinned "black" (read: mixed ancestry) girl trying to pass for a lily white girl. Fellow nominee Ethel Waters comforts Crain: "You cayn’t act, but you’re darned purty." (Actually, Crain could be excellent. Check out Henry King’s nostalgic Margie.)

Jeanne Crain Pinky (co-directed with John Ford)
Ethel Barrymore [...]

Elia Kazan: Top Oscar Directors for Actors

Elia Kazan is best remembered today for two things: His association with Marlon Brando during the first half of the 1950s, and the fact that he claimed to be unrepentant about naming names, and ruining careers and lives during the Red-baiting hysteria of the post-World War II years.
Kazan’s 19 feature films are wildly uneven — for every great A Streetcar Named Desire there is a dreadful America, America, plus everything in between. Yet, probably because of his Broadway training, Kazan was definitely an outstanding actors’ director.
Tough-guy Brando, irritating mannerisms and all, remains the best-remembered Kazan star, even though the director coaxed superb performances from a wide range of players, ranging from child actress Peggy Ann Garner, who [...]

Best Films – 1951

Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire
FILM
Ace in the Hole / The Big Carnival
d: Billy Wilder; scr: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman
The African Queen
d: John Huston; scr: James Agee
L’Auberge rouge / The Red Inn
d: Claude Autant-Lara; scr: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
The Day the Earth Stood Still
d: Robert Wise; scr: Edmund H. North
The Man in the White Suit
d: Alexander Mackendrick; scr: Roger Macdougall, John Dighton, Alexander Mackendrick
Miracolo a Milano / Miracle in Milan
d: Vittorio De Sica; scr: Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Mario Chiari, Adolfo Franci
People Will Talk
d, scr: Joseph [...]

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