Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift: FROM HERE TO ETERNITY Screening

Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster make love in From Here to Eternity(top); Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra do a little (sorta) lovemaking of their own later on in the film (bottom)

Fred Zinnemann’s 1953 Academy Award-winning drama From Here to Eternity, starring Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, and Frank Sinatra, will be screened by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday, November 18, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The presentation will feature the premiere of a new digital restoration, as well as an onstage discussion with Ernest Borgnine, who has a supporting role in the film.
Adapted by Daniel Taradash from James Jones‘ bestselling [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Best Films – 1953

Jacques Tati in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday
FILM
The Bandwagon
d: Vincente Minnelli; scr: Adolph Green, Betty Comden
The Big Heat
d: Fritz Lang; scr: Sidney Boehm
Blowing Wild
d: Hugo Fregonese; scr: Philip Yordan
Calamity Jane
d: David Butler; scr: James O’Hanlon
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
d: Howard Hawks; scr: Charles Lederer
How to Marry a Millionaire
d: Jean Negulesco; scr: Nunnally Johnson
I Confess
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: George Tabori, William Archibald
Madame De… / The Earrings of Madame De…
d: Max Ophüls; scr: Marcel Achard, Max Ophüls, Annette Wademant
Peter Pan
d: Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske; scr: Ted Sears, Bill Peet, and others
Pickup on South Street
d, scr: Samuel [...]

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 [...]