Movie Crafts

Dan O’Herlihy. A one-of-a-kind Best Actor Oscar nominee during Hollywood’s studio era (for Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1954), Irish-born performer Dan O’Herlihy enjoyed a film and television career spanning half a century. Although not as well remembered as most of his Academy Award-nominated contemporaries, Dan…

Ruth Warrick in the 1940s. In show business for nearly seven decades, Ruth Warrick is best remembered for two disparate roles: Charles Foster Kane’s genteel wife in Orson Welles’ 1941 classic Citizen Kane and snobby bitch Phoebe Tyler (Wallingford) in the daytime soap All My…

Virginia Mayo. The honey-blonde – at times red-haired – heroine of Technicolor fare like Wonder Man, The Flame and the Arrow, and Painting the Clouds with Sunshine, Virginia Mayo was at her best as black-and-white antiheroines in dramas like The Best Years of Our Lives…

Frank and Ava with Rico Simonini as Frank Sinatra and Emily Elicia Low as Ava Gardner: Explosive real-life relationship between the two temperamental Hollywood stars is the focus of Michael Oblowitz’s indie drama. In a brief q&a, Frank and Ava co-screenwriter and Frank Sinatra portrayer…

Actress Sandra Dee was a hugely popular – and curious – cross between wholesome teen Deanna Durbin and tormented teen James Dean, going to school, catching waves, falling in love, and/or becoming pregnant out of wedlock in several movies of the late 1950s and early…

Actress Carol Lynley ca. 1980. The 1970s were a problematic decade for Hollywood film actresses; still, it’s hard to understand why Carol Lynley’s post-The Poseidon Adventure films consisted almost invariably of low-to-micro-budget, largely ignored fare. The few highlights in the 45-year film career of actress…

Carol Lynley movies: In her heyday, the Blue Denim, Bunny Lake Is Missing, and The Poseidon Adventure actress was often cast as dreamy girl-next-door types willing and able to tear down the walls of social conventions. Two Carol Lynley movies are being presented on TCM:…

Ann Sothern: actress enjoyed belated (second) career peak. In the late 1940s, Sothern was featured in a cluster of A productions, among them the MGM musicals Words and Music and Nancy Goes to Rio, and 20th Century Fox’s double Oscar-winning drama A Letter to Three…

Ann Sothern ca. early 1940s. Although never a superstar, MGM contract actress Ann Sothern was billed above the title in comedies, dramas, and musicals during the 1940s and early 1950s – along the way, getting to sing the classic Oscar-winning ballad “The Last I Saw…

Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa: as former nightclub dancer Maria Vargas, Gardner discovers that the life of a noblewoman is not what it’s cracked up to be. Eleven years later, Swinging Londoner Julie Christie would learn the same lesson in John Schlesinger’s Darling. Ava…

Jimmy Stewart. ‘Jimmy’ Stewart: Unlikely Hollywood star enjoyed decades-long career in a variety of genres The personification of all-American aw-shucksiness – of the sort you find only in bad movies and bad literature – James Stewart, fondly remembered by some as “Jimmy Stewart,” was one…

Lena Horne. Lena Horne movies: Velvety-voiced singer generally relegated to specialty numbers during heyday of the Hollywood musical Had things been different, it’s anybody’s guess whether or not three-time Grammy winner Lena Horne, Turner Classic Movies’ “Summer Under the Stars” performer of the day (Aug.…