cinema reflections
Marion Cotillard 'Psycho' shower scene scream. Marion Cotillard naked and screaming in 'Psycho' shower scene A few years ago – more exactly, in Feb./March 2008 – Vanity Fair published a series of images honoring Alfred Hitchcock movies made in Hollywood. (His British oeuvre was completely ignored.) The images weren't from the movies themselves; instead, they were somewhat faithful recreations featuring early 21st century stars, including […]
Top Ten Scream Queens: Barbara Steele, who both emitted screams and elicited same, is in a category of her own. Top Ten Scream Queens Halloween is over until next year, but the equally bewitching Day of the Dead is just around the corner. So, dead or alive, here's my revised and expanded list of cinema's Top Ten Scream Queens. This highly personal Scream Queens compilation […]
Janet Leigh Psycho star Janet Leigh, born Jeanette Helen Morrison on July 6, 1927, in Merced, California, would have turned 85 today. Despite a film and television career spanning more than five decades, Leigh is chiefly remembered for one role: the greedy (and unlucky) real-estate office worker Marion Crane, whose shower is cut short by a big, pointed knife in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. (Image: iconic […]
Janet Leigh The Manchurian Candidate 1962, with Frank Sinatra Janet Leigh The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Janet Leigh would have turned 85 on Friday, July 6. In her honor, Turner Classic Movies is showing eight Janet Leigh movies (see TCM schedule below), including one of her landmark motion pictures: John Frankenheimer's political thriller The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Considered one of the greatest political movies ever made […]
Bye Bye Birdie lobby card (top); Bobby Rydell, Ann-Margret, Bye Bye Birdie (bottom) A digitally restored print of George Sidney's 1963 Elvis Presley-inspired satirical musical Bye Bye Birdie, starring Janet Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Bobby Rydell, Maureen Stapleton, Jesse Pearson, and an explosive Ann-Margret, will have its premiere on Wednesday, April 27, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Samuel […]
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho caused a sensation when it opened in June about fifty years ago. There were a number of reasons for that, one of them being the fact that Psycho was seen by some as a sensational, perverse, “cheap” horror flick like those William Castle, a master at promotional gimmicks, was making in the late '50s, e.g., The Tingler, House on Haunted Hill, Macabre. […]
Wednesday, August 27, highlights on Turner Classic Movies: TCM will be showing several goodies on Tony Curtis Day, including Richard Fleischer's rousing adventure epic The Vikings (1958), in which Curtis plays opposite his then-wife Janet Leigh; the highly enjoyable Blake Edwards comedy Operation Petticoat (1959), with Curtis, his idol Cary Grant, and a bunch of (female) army nurses huddled aboard a pink submarine; and Billy […]
Janet Leigh Janet Leigh, discovered by former MGM star Norma Shearer, was one of the many pretty (and quite talented) actresses who were mostly underused and underappreciated by studio moguls, producers, and directors. During her years as a studio contract player, Leigh was usually stuck in the peaches-and-cream mold even though the actress had the ability to handle both fruitier and meatier roles. Of the […]
Tony Curtis. Tony Curtis on Marilyn Monroe & former wives Janet Leigh + Christine Kaufmann For obvious reasons, we avoid quoting from trash tabloids such as the Daily Mail. I'm making an exception here because that London rag features a write-up of a bizarre interview with 82-year-old Tony Curtis, whose co-stars include Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, and Burt Lancaster, and among whose film credits are […]
Beverly Tyler ca. 1945. An actress in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movies of the mid-1940s, pretty Beverly Tyler never became a star though she did enjoy some popularity as a decorative – and very young (she was about 18 or 19 in the image above) – leading lady and second lead in MGM releases such as The Green Years, The Beginning or the End, and My Brother Talks […]