News for today's 2018

Summer Under the Stars: Unfaithfully Rex

11:07 PM Tukiyooo 0

<br /> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWOOcrw_Eg1aQCBmMEfFH8qs_JHgKpHzM3HdaKzLN6HTpFUFmILnbvy8bGYlX2-VgmWR0QBvTbCLT03S0Sch6hyphenhyphenXXY3_itJiYfVGjXl5IwZQJpOyUKrke6VVXDDYouZ3kG2vmpksDddRg/s1600/unfaithfully-yours.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWOOcrw_Eg1aQCBmMEfFH8qs_JHgKpHzM3HdaKzLN6HTpFUFmILnbvy8bGYlX2-VgmWR0QBvTbCLT03S0Sch6hyphenhyphenXXY3_itJiYfVGjXl5IwZQJpOyUKrke6VVXDDYouZ3kG2vmpksDddRg/s1600/unfaithfully-yours.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When Rex Harrison came to Hollywood in 1945 to make a movie, he was 37 years old, had already been on the stage in England for 22 years and had been making films there since 1930. Orson Welles later claimed it was on his recommendation that Harrison was given his first American role, a part that Welles himself turned down, that of the King in the 1946 production of <i>Anna and the King of Siam</i>. Welles told his friend, director Henry Jaglom, over one of their now famous lunches, “I suggested him. Rex made pictures that only played in England, teacup comedies and things. No one in Hollywood knew who he was.” Welles had refused the role, he said, because he didn’t want to work with Irene Dunne, who had already been cast as Anna. And so, Rex Harrison made his American film debut.</span></span><br /><br /><a name='more'></a></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvTd5V-4uc3NW4g7buI5JCzhZy9rcRELdI24nahbkezkwRxK2GMsFnS7BSRWfwkFHifFDIaV9xdqwKUOsdpiAIiA8eT6a7Wewi2jpcIcJMHKzr0xK64S93ekFiwX8_UKUiedMPNNVZlMM/s1600/anna-and-the-king-of-siam.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvTd5V-4uc3NW4g7buI5JCzhZy9rcRELdI24nahbkezkwRxK2GMsFnS7BSRWfwkFHifFDIaV9xdqwKUOsdpiAIiA8eT6a7Wewi2jpcIcJMHKzr0xK64S93ekFiwX8_UKUiedMPNNVZlMM/s320/anna-and-the-king-of-siam.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Anna and the King of Siam</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">At the time he arrived in Hollywood, Harrison was married to his second wife, German actress Lilli Palmer. She also began making movies in the U.S. and started by co-starring with Gary Cooper in Fritz Lang’s <i>Cloak and Dagger</i>in 1946. Both Mr. and Mrs. Harrison starred in 1947 classics - for Rex, the first and best of his three films for Joseph L. Mankiewicz, <i>The Ghost and Mrs. Muir</i>, with Gene Tierney; for Lilli, Robert Rosen’s <i>Body and Soul</i>, opposite John Garfield. Rex also starred in <i>The Foxes of Harrow</i> in 1947; Lilli would star in <i>My Girl Tisa</i> in 1948. Then came the scandal that ruined Harrison’s personal reputation and may or may not have brought him the nickname “Sexy Rexy.”</span></span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_5nmAgHJNcBLaFSszcfbSL8U31Y_olDLlblmZw10huHFkAQHWLo8KJe-pBJKahO98AZLre43DqwbsUsD3xIy-rFt_XdNKPnIb2E5AV8eHSyPMjFvq6nevjnweXMxhcoPsyVYGrfd25nk/s1600/Lilli+Palmer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_5nmAgHJNcBLaFSszcfbSL8U31Y_olDLlblmZw10huHFkAQHWLo8KJe-pBJKahO98AZLre43DqwbsUsD3xIy-rFt_XdNKPnIb2E5AV8eHSyPMjFvq6nevjnweXMxhcoPsyVYGrfd25nk/s320/Lilli+Palmer.jpg" width="296" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Lilli Palmer</span></td></tr></tbody></table>Rex Harrison, it seems, was a ladies’ man. By 1947, he had become involved in a romance with actress Carole Landis. The affair was no secret in Hollywood and was apparently made public by columnist/radio commentator Walter Winchell. On the night of July 4, 1948, after Harrison spent the evening with her at her home, Landis consumed a lethal dose of barbiturates. Ruled a suicide, her death was naturally surrounded by a storm of hearsay and speculation. The rumor mill had it that Landis was despondent because Harrison refused to leave Lilli Palmer and/or because he was soon to depart for New York to star on Broadway in <i>Anne of the Thousand Days</i>. There was even some conjecture that Harrison had murdered the woman and staged the scene to look like suicide.</span></span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMY0TWOq_t-bLKZDaXMsGghstYZGazLX3_kjd-I-owzDVNDtLRBA2fjnoxZs7k_p9OIn3GF4xL3LVh5VIiJwwdyg1ZMvfKILmkvD-4P3wgYXyT_ClbLpf8XukhooQTwHhQTXqVGFLHPw/s1600/Carole_Landis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKMY0TWOq_t-bLKZDaXMsGghstYZGazLX3_kjd-I-owzDVNDtLRBA2fjnoxZs7k_p9OIn3GF4xL3LVh5VIiJwwdyg1ZMvfKILmkvD-4P3wgYXyT_ClbLpf8XukhooQTwHhQTXqVGFLHPw/s320/Carole_Landis.jpg" width="252" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Carole Landis</span></td></tr></tbody></table>A few months before Landis’ death, Harrison had completed production on a film for legendary writer/director Preston Sturges. It would be the one-time wunderkind’s final cinematic gem, a darkest-black comedy titled – perhaps unfortunately – <i>Unfaithfully Yours </i>(1948). The lurid and lingering Landis tragedy would have an impact on the fate of the film. In an attempt to distance it from the scandal, the film’s release date was held up for several months. Additionally, publicity was dialed back - and the marketing campaign changed drastically. It was labeled a murder mystery, it was touted as “six kinds of picture all rolled into one” – confusing and misleading the movie-going public.</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Preston Sturges had written a Broadway hit in 1929 and trekked to Hollywood following the play’s adaptation to the screen. He penned several films for Paramount, including <i>Easy Living </i>(1937) and <i>Remember the Night </i>(1940). In 1940 he asked for and was given a chance to direct as well as write. The result was his political sendup, <i>The Great McGinty</i>, a break-out hit that brought Sturges an Oscar for his original screenplay. A string of sly and exhilarating classics written and directed by Preston Sturges followed, namely: <i>The Lady Eve </i>(1941), <i>Sullivan’s Travels </i>(1941), <i>The Palm Beach Story </i>(1942), <i>Hail the Conquering Hero </i>(1944) and <i>The Miracle at Morgan’s Creek </i>(1944). But Paramount had begun to view its genius-in-residence as next-to-impossible to deal with, and relations between the studio and the man soured. When his split from Paramount finally came, Sturges went into partnership with Howard Hughes on California Pictures Corporation for three disastrous years. Sturges and Hughes parted ways in 1947 and the writer/director soon went to work for Darryl F. Zanuck at 20<sup>th</sup> Century Fox. Zanuck was interested in a story Sturges had written years earlier titled <i>Matrix</i>. In the end, <i>Matrix </i>was dropped for lack of interest and a treatment of another early Sturges story - he called it <i>The Symphony Story</i> - was picked up instead and retitled…</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibjOmLYlFIt9swMPpDFCTLH0xjQjRasi47jOyLZWEG0uZlJU7ABxWPqVSEX98Y_v68EpyZtg4C40uTUfGLHiebSnv5ES039xhb3qHTwM7_Owz6MwbNgZIWQ92DFSrTcFZ5mczWHjAJxkQ/s1600/sturgespreston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibjOmLYlFIt9swMPpDFCTLH0xjQjRasi47jOyLZWEG0uZlJU7ABxWPqVSEX98Y_v68EpyZtg4C40uTUfGLHiebSnv5ES039xhb3qHTwM7_Owz6MwbNgZIWQ92DFSrTcFZ5mczWHjAJxkQ/s320/sturgespreston.jpg" width="281" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Preston Sturges</span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Unfaithfully Yours</i> bears most trademark Sturges elements – it moves at a dizzying pace, overflows with clever dialogue, is peopled with assorted (and well-cast) eccentrics and its plot completely confounds audience expectations. But in this case Sturges ventured into especially dark farce…</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The film opens with the return to New York of Sir Alfred de Carter (Harrison), a well-known symphony conductor, who has been in London. He is warmly welcomed by his beautiful young and doting wife, Daphne (Linda Darnell). But soon the mischief begins. It seems that before leaving New York, Sir Alfred had asked his rich but dull brother in law (Rudy Vallee) to keep an eye on Daphne while he was away. The brother in law misinterpreted the request and took it upon himself to hire a private detective to monitor her. And now he has come to deliver the detective’s report. Sir Alfred, initially shocked and outraged at the misunderstanding, eventually manages to read the report and works himself into a frenzy of jealousy and suspicion. While conducting a concert after quarreling with his wife, Sir Alfred begins to fantasize about how to handle what he believes is her infidelity. As he conducts three orchestral pieces, he vividly imagines three different possible scenarios – each played out onscreen. The first fantasy involves murder and a frame-up, in the second Sir Alfred is noble and obliging, in the third he falls victim to his own bravado. When the concert finally comes to an end, Sir Alfred sets out to make one of his fantasies real.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-IYFC9k7u_2X-_vjCOCxZ0GRbWKh9TJIkqVVInMXz-LfkWqQ5br7tKpeZRJraZqt_9G9mUgNPFkLc7X8MnqveT8QN5q9Je-yuresrpaheQqAfioqxnhzLqZNSJThNtZqgRxjhlR5lKcU/s1600/unfaithfully-yours2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-IYFC9k7u_2X-_vjCOCxZ0GRbWKh9TJIkqVVInMXz-LfkWqQ5br7tKpeZRJraZqt_9G9mUgNPFkLc7X8MnqveT8QN5q9Je-yuresrpaheQqAfioqxnhzLqZNSJThNtZqgRxjhlR5lKcU/s400/unfaithfully-yours2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Unfaithfully Yours </span></i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">- fantasy or reality?</span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Although Sturges wasn’t entirely happy with the film’s final cut (which came courtesy of Mr. Zanuck), he was pleased with the performances – Rex Harrison executes a superb turn as the temperamental artist/bungling schemer. Sturges was also particularly fond of the fantasy segments. He wrote that he tried to construct the three scenarios envisioned by the conductor “as if written and directed by Sir Alfred, who is neither a writer nor a director.” In his fantasies, the conductor imagines his own behavior “vividly” while the other characters are “marionettelike.” Sturges believed this would be “the natural result of Sir Alfred’s ability to have them say and do <i>exactly </i>what he wants them to say and do.”</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The film’s themes are dark and, perhaps, for the audience of its time, too much so for “six kinds of picture all rolled into one." Its timing in proximity to the leading man's notorious Hollywood scandal was extremely unlucky. For whatever reason or combination of reasons, <i>Unfaithfully Yours </i>was not a success. In his autobiographical notes Sturges reflected, “<i>Unfaithfully Yours</i> received much critical acclaim and lost a fortune.” That the film failed to find an audience contributed to the steep decline of his increasingly precarious career. He would write and direct only one more Hollywood film (<i>The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend</i> in 1949) and it was a resounding flop.</span></span><br /><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0zHjwUYa4nh3RjiM65yGYM49ckWAk1mVpi7MiucZgPFm9rtW1yZb_1hqqE7OaeYMcGzRRZsbI29H1ROixsrQE4Wxfxx2MIxT03GQPofAGwvA514oBXjI9R9pkwgOiM62PSgFy1NTPHco/s1600/My_Fair_Lady.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0zHjwUYa4nh3RjiM65yGYM49ckWAk1mVpi7MiucZgPFm9rtW1yZb_1hqqE7OaeYMcGzRRZsbI29H1ROixsrQE4Wxfxx2MIxT03GQPofAGwvA514oBXjI9R9pkwgOiM62PSgFy1NTPHco/s320/My_Fair_Lady.jpg" width="257" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>My Fair Lady</i>, with Audrey Hepburn</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Rex Harrison continued to work steadily and successfully on stage, film – and TV – for the rest of his life. He gained worldwide stardom with his performance in George Cukor’s 1964 film adaptation of <i>My Fair Lady</i>, a long-running Broadway hit in which Harrison originated the role of Henry Higgins and for which he won a Tony Award. For transferring his Henry Higgins from stage to screen, he duly took home an Oscar for Best Actor. Knighted in 1989 at age 81, Sir Rex would, as the producer of <i>The Circle</i>, Harrison’s final Broadway play, put it, very nearly die “with his boots on;” his last stage appearance preceded his death, in 1990 of pancreatic cancer, by only six months.<i> </i>Harrison’s long Hollywood career had brought him two Oscar nominations and one win; his even longer career on Broadway brought him five Tony nominations and three awards as well as a special Drama Desk Award in 1985. He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for film and one for television.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqPqs9gJBHiAA8Fd0hEkUSeRlB5RoaRX9upAfVsokljn8YipMVTGgPzlL7K2nTaprjGl5ePLyKwUBQK9DZ9DOKKNt6BvL-kQiyiBwswPJ-7Uc7erkP2TSjPzPQIDF-tVVGtEdecLp4WyQ/s1600/Kay_Kendall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqPqs9gJBHiAA8Fd0hEkUSeRlB5RoaRX9upAfVsokljn8YipMVTGgPzlL7K2nTaprjGl5ePLyKwUBQK9DZ9DOKKNt6BvL-kQiyiBwswPJ-7Uc7erkP2TSjPzPQIDF-tVVGtEdecLp4WyQ/s320/Kay_Kendall.jpg" width="236" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Kay Kendall</span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Rex Harrison would also continue to be inconstant in his private life. Sandy Sturges, Preston’s widow, recalled walking in New York with her husband and Harrison in the early 1950s. Suddenly and unexpectedly Rex walked away and left them – he’d spied a lovely young thing on the street and simply followed her. His interest in women, Mrs. Sturges recalled, was “not subtle at all.” Harrison’s marriage to Lilli Palmer continued until 1957, when the two divorced so that he could marry his lover, actress Kay Kendall, who was dying of leukemia. He married Welsh-born, Oscar-nominated, Tony-winning actress Rachel Roberts in 1962. That marriage ended in divorce many years later and, it is said, she reacted by drinking ever more heavily and by finally taking her own life. Harrison was married to the ex-Mrs. Richard Harris, Welsh actress/socialite Elizabeth Rees-Williams, for a time, and his 6<sup>th</sup> and final wife was Mercia Tinker, to whom he remained married until the end of his life.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-RSHo6S3xnWs8ezJYb-tROmCrDvpCAG4KqawK7iTrh_cUzenYmjV9waXc19X0LEmGxxpsEmzuO1yVDZostDADZEXu5OQoFPwrNugj0lpmn-GCTd7sKmqkl3Mj90MqRvLAjQydLJ4k5Q/s1600/rachel_rex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-RSHo6S3xnWs8ezJYb-tROmCrDvpCAG4KqawK7iTrh_cUzenYmjV9waXc19X0LEmGxxpsEmzuO1yVDZostDADZEXu5OQoFPwrNugj0lpmn-GCTd7sKmqkl3Mj90MqRvLAjQydLJ4k5Q/s320/rachel_rex.jpg" width="295" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Rachel Roberts and Rex Harrison</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Harrison has garnered much praise for his work on stage and screen, but not much admiration for his conduct out of the limelight. One of his biographers, Nicholas Wapshott (<i>Rex Harrison</i>, 1991) met the actor while doing research for a biography on British director Carol Reed. Wapshott considered Harrison a “technical genius” capable of “effortless delivery of difficult prose.” He noted that the actor didn’t make much visible effort, “he was inescapably Rex in everything - but his understanding of the text meant that he hit every note the first time.” On the other hand, the author found Harrison, in person, “a cad of the first order,” and at first hesitated to take on the biography of a man whose “black-hole egotism meant he could not appreciate the worth of others, particularly other men, and his attitude to his string of wives…and lovers was often hard and heartless.” Wapshott blamed Harrison’s involvement in the Carole Landis scandal for the fact that <i>Unfaithfully Yours </i>“languished for years.” </span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkPHecQmazP4h_wsXN-HHN1FhYoqq_nTtNhY24FJufSP7N6jzQ7nGS_hQCg495i50hatfsh2cAu7wwx7JEOlI3xl4zxXz2eC4thvsha2BWsNapGPCpqEMexK7HPlMuAE5D8saBsX4pTM/s1600/arent_we_all.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQkPHecQmazP4h_wsXN-HHN1FhYoqq_nTtNhY24FJufSP7N6jzQ7nGS_hQCg495i50hatfsh2cAu7wwx7JEOlI3xl4zxXz2eC4thvsha2BWsNapGPCpqEMexK7HPlMuAE5D8saBsX4pTM/s320/arent_we_all.jpg" width="309" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Rex Harrison and Claudette Colbert in <i>Aren't We All</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Tony-winning, Oscar-nominated actor Frank Langella admired Rex Harrison’s work extravagantly; “He was my idol. I thought him the most accomplished, technically perfect, and totally believable English actor of his time.” Langella managed to meet Harrison twice. Their first meeting occurred in the early ‘70s at a cocktail reception in the older actor’s honor. Langella encountered his idol in the foyer where he was removing his hat and coat. The young actor put out his hand and began to extend a greeting when Harrison flung both his coat and his wife’s over Langella’s arm, as if he was a servant, and made his entrance into the party. The two met again in 1984 when a friend of Langella’s was appearing in <i>Aren’t We All</i> on Broadway with Harrison and Claudette Colbert. Forgoing dinner with his friend and Miss Colbert (who utterly charmed him) in order to try once more to pay his respects to Harrison, Langella found him in his dressing room and finally delivered his heartfelt homage. The old actor heard him out and dismissed him with, “Thank you. Very kind. I’m afraid I can’t ask you to sit down.” Langella was not amused and would remember that his good friend, Harrison’s 5<sup>th</sup> wife, Elizabeth, told him of Rex, “He was the only man I ever knew who would send back the wine at his own dinner table.”</span></span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KeE1U9zW4sdQmVrnqOSY2sLWslv_kCSZ1z67RQoSfilrWkYhOCyN0Rswwzw8vIhbIwj6YWUYNmSSUDjTovYDhleMV8NBET_WasjTq0QJlx5dRuxpF_UCZ6dRIL2cEES-DQqfsuR2dxE/s1600/rex_preston.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4KeE1U9zW4sdQmVrnqOSY2sLWslv_kCSZ1z67RQoSfilrWkYhOCyN0Rswwzw8vIhbIwj6YWUYNmSSUDjTovYDhleMV8NBET_WasjTq0QJlx5dRuxpF_UCZ6dRIL2cEES-DQqfsuR2dxE/s1600/rex_preston.jpeg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Rex Harrison and Preston Sturges on the set</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">British film critic and historian David Thomson‘s view of Harrison the actor is fairly restrained, seeing in most of his screen roles the personification of the stereotypically empty-headed aristocrat. However, Thomson allows that <i>Unfaithfully Yours </i>is “one of the few films that made use of his grating charm.”</span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Harrison is in top form in Sturges’ black-humored classic, adapting with surprising ease to the writer/director’s penchant for slapstick. <i>Unfaithfully Yours</i> airs on Saturday, August 31, at 3:00pm Eastern/noon Pacific, part of TCM’s 2013 <i>Summer Under the Stars</i> tribute to Rex Harrison.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>This is my entry for the <b>2013 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon</b></i> <i>now in progress and hosted by Jill Blake of<span style="color: red;"><a href="http://sittinonabackyardfence.com/"><span style="color: red;">http://sittinonabackyardfence.com/</span></a></span> and Michael Nazarewycz of</i><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://scribehardonfilm.wordpress.com/"><i><span style="color: red;"> http://scribehardonfilm.wordpress.com/</span></i></a></span><i>. Visit their sites for more information and links to participating blogs.</i></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u>Notes</u>:<i> </i></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>My Lunches with Orson </i>by Henry Jaglom and Peter Biskind (Metropolitan Books, 2013)<i> </i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges</i> adapted by Sandy Sturges (Simon & Schuster, 1990)<i> </i></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The New York Sun</i>, “Unfaithfully Yours, Rex” by Nicholas Wapshott, March 8, 2008<i> </i></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Dropped Names, a Memoir</i> by Frank Langella (Harper, 2012)<i> </i></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The New Biographical Dictionary of Film</i> by David Thomson (Knopf, 2010)</span></span></div>

When Rex Harrison came to Hollywood in 1945 to make a movie, he was 37 years old, had already been on the stage in England for 22 years and...

August 12: A Day - and Night - Under the Stars with Catherine Deneuve

1:53 PM Tukiyooo 0

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQden2jdAJo-5XOyB4uEUESNX7fH2iMOPHFfRazkTaSpCLp9exdFhJ5kKxNs_xATVeX6MCuCpaeYgYiGobalskweVWCC7o4repOzSNDNtwsqG5reME2llb3BSNzPKdYN03Z33K1kb2e9M/s1600/catherine_stunning.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQden2jdAJo-5XOyB4uEUESNX7fH2iMOPHFfRazkTaSpCLp9exdFhJ5kKxNs_xATVeX6MCuCpaeYgYiGobalskweVWCC7o4repOzSNDNtwsqG5reME2llb3BSNzPKdYN03Z33K1kb2e9M/s400/catherine_stunning.jpg" width="336" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>This is my first entry for the <b>2013 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon</b></i> <i>now in progress and hosted by Jill Blake of</i><i><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://sittinonabackyardfence.com/"><span style="color: red;"> http://sittinonabackyardfence.com/</span></a></span></i><i> an</i><i>d Michael Nazarewycz of</i><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://scribehardonfilm.wordpress.com/"><span style="color: red;"><i> </i><i>http://scribehardonfilm.wordpress.com</i></span></a></span><i>. Visit their sites for more information on the month-long blogathon and links to participating blogs.</i></span></div><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In June 1965 the American magazine, <i>Look</i>, carried a feature entitled, "The Sister Stars of France" celebrating, with pages of pictures and a little hyperbolic prose, the Dorleac sisters of Paris. The piece commended their family which, "after only three generations in the theater, has given France not one, but two, gifted girls." The Dorleac sisters were <a href="http://eves-reel-life.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-birthday-tribute-to-francoise-dorleac.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Francoise</span></a>, then 23, and Catherine, about to turn 22, who took her mother's maiden name, Deneuve, to avoid being confused with her sister. The "soignee" Francoise was described as "mistily delicious" in one of her recent films, <i>That Man from Rio </i>(1964), and "sweet" Catherine was pronounced "the crushable girl in a crushing world" in one of hers, <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg </i>(1964). Just two years later, in June 1967, Francoise perished in a car crash. By then, Catherine had added a twist or two to her pristine screen persona.</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjtUWkc-zPyMIr3tPxW_oJTmWXIMls84TJjknqyisFjZ11M6_S6maxIFr2JlUsup-60qDpPnPv4cnRmxMyBnTWnLAg9NL5bTu7oS-plRpA_aRyWdWOOk24c7v77VweFV4E-HJtozAzH0/s1600/Umbrellas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWjtUWkc-zPyMIr3tPxW_oJTmWXIMls84TJjknqyisFjZ11M6_S6maxIFr2JlUsup-60qDpPnPv4cnRmxMyBnTWnLAg9NL5bTu7oS-plRpA_aRyWdWOOk24c7v77VweFV4E-HJtozAzH0/s320/Umbrellas.jpg" width="264" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg </i>airs on TCM on August 12 at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The <i>Look </i>article had mentioned that Catherine's next picture was to be <i>Repulsion</i>. That film, directed by Roman Polanski and released in the U.S. in October 1965, showcased Catherine as a withdrawn young woman who goes violently psychotic while staying alone in her vacationing sister's London apartment. In 1967, she would make two noteworthy films. <i>The Young Girls of Rochefort</i>,<i> </i></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">a lollipop-colored musical, co-starred Catherine and her sister, Francoise, as a pair of dreamy twins longing to leave their seaside town for Paris; it</span> was directed by <a href="http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/director.php?director_id=13" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Jacques Demy</span></a> (<i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i>). In her second feature of that year, Luis Bunuel's surreal and erotic <i>Belle de Jour</i>, the film with which she is most often identified, Catherine portrayed a refined young Parisian wife with a few psychosexual kinks.</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNtVa9emfS02mFQLN4yLXjJPC0-DmAAURAJMm2eiDd87gWglZZ3n2uUpOGm7V02R45rc6skeNTTkEt_6eSTxA5Q1aLXWIbfbfr0hD0TwXW7nHFDxExGRr2Rvpqh409R0evFUeMUbnF26A/s1600/Belle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNtVa9emfS02mFQLN4yLXjJPC0-DmAAURAJMm2eiDd87gWglZZ3n2uUpOGm7V02R45rc6skeNTTkEt_6eSTxA5Q1aLXWIbfbfr0hD0TwXW7nHFDxExGRr2Rvpqh409R0evFUeMUbnF26A/s400/Belle.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Belle de Jour</span></i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> airs on TCM August 13 at 2:15am Eastern/August 12 at 11:15pm Pacific</span><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The <i>Belle de Jour </i>shoot was demanding. Catherine later recalled that she'd felt exposed in every way and that more of her had been shown, physically, than she had originally been led to expect. She was deeply unhappy on the set and, she remembered, "there were moments when I felt totally used." Francoise was still alive at that time and provided crucial moral support. The sisters were able to talk about her challenges on <i>Belle de Jour</i>, Catherine later said, "in the way you only can when you're personally close and do the same kind of work."  It might seem surprising that Catherine agreed to work with Bunuel once more when he sought her two years later for his Freudian reverie, <i>Tristana</i> (1970). But she had been impressed with the script and thought it important for her to work with Bunuel again - especially in his native Spain. In the end, she would count <i>Tristana</i> among her favorites of her own films.</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4egl0jQY40U66zu1ltC4Kh7GpI7nKo1w1bz6qqRCenMvu0PZgLeuXRA-OU_YPT5D2ipSAgTyQF725K1O7OPWXkIwi1LBx7VcwAkbvXOHy2ZFSUSpOoT11rpSlkaiA6Bl4frWsQMGsRrg/s1600/Mississippi2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4egl0jQY40U66zu1ltC4Kh7GpI7nKo1w1bz6qqRCenMvu0PZgLeuXRA-OU_YPT5D2ipSAgTyQF725K1O7OPWXkIwi1LBx7VcwAkbvXOHy2ZFSUSpOoT11rpSlkaiA6Bl4frWsQMGsRrg/s400/Mississippi2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Mississippi Mermaid</span></i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">(co-starringJean-Paul Belmondo, shown above)</span><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">airs on TCM August 12 at 9:45am Eastern/6:45 am Pacific</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In the late 1960s <a href="http://www.francoistruffaut.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Francois Truffaut</span></a> sent Catherine a lengthy note urging her to "say yes to Hitchcock."  During a trip to the U.S. in the fall of 1968, Catherine had met Hitchcock for lunch at the Plaza. It's likely they discussed his plans to make a film of <i>The Short Night </i>based on a novel of the same name as well as a non-fiction account by a double agent. Hitchcock owned the rights to both books and had traveled to Finland, where the story was set, in August 1968 to scout locations. Among those he hoped would star in the film were Sean Connery and Catherine Deneuve.<i> </i>She received a script from Hitchcock but the project was eventually abandoned when his health failed. Catherine lamented not having the chance to work with him but, thanks to Truffaut, she would have her moment as a Hitchcockian blonde.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In the same note in which he urged Catherine to work with Hitchcock, Truffaut also mentioned the project he and she were about to embark upon, <i>Mississippi Mermaid </i>(1969), the first of their two film collaborations. <i>Mississippi Mermaid </i>was also the last in a series known as Truffaut's "Hitchcock Cycle," the group of films he completed during the time he conducted and published his series of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock. Based on a Cornell Woolrich (<i>Rear Window</i>)<i> </i>novel, <i>Mississippi Mermaid</i>'s storyline centers on a wealthy Reunion Island plantation owner (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and the arrival of his mail order bride (Deneuve) - who looks nothing like the picture she sent before she sailed to meet and marry him.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBrbXSc4hqpAIHsnyqSjVzWu6eunRQe_S2NAQ5FLOd7c74L63YCutq7DQUifV-_IBFkiwlGnCT3yHnC1c2fWkyHic3rNlCMNpAyd6rwtFC2cxsfYR6rq55ihovxcYE5AL69IHESKYF-n0/s1600/mississippi-mermaid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBrbXSc4hqpAIHsnyqSjVzWu6eunRQe_S2NAQ5FLOd7c74L63YCutq7DQUifV-_IBFkiwlGnCT3yHnC1c2fWkyHic3rNlCMNpAyd6rwtFC2cxsfYR6rq55ihovxcYE5AL69IHESKYF-n0/s400/mississippi-mermaid.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">another French twist...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Catherine's wardrobe on </span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mississippi Mermaid</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> was created by one of the great fashion designers of the 20th century, <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2009/01/ysl_auction200901" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Yves Saint Laurent</span></a>. He designed costumes for her on many films, beginning with </span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Belle de Jour</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> and including Jean-Pierre Melville</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">'s</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> last film, </span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Un Flic</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> (1972), and Tony Scott's first feature, </span><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The Hunger</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> (1983). The actress and the designer developed a close, lasting friendship; she wore his designs off screen as well as on and became his inspiration and muse.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWktPIb8kgaKPWg6Eeyyus63wZhIibAzsEN44QRzhDk5nXLIRCr7SPk9DDRlcqv6q0laC5KdQXm6kKwSJelLDRCw2gMf-jRkBud71cpGx-9zp7lNUYgdU3IIPMiK8p1plq0igbPkkgfog/s1600/The-Hunger-Catherine-Deneuve-veil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWktPIb8kgaKPWg6Eeyyus63wZhIibAzsEN44QRzhDk5nXLIRCr7SPk9DDRlcqv6q0laC5KdQXm6kKwSJelLDRCw2gMf-jRkBud71cpGx-9zp7lNUYgdU3IIPMiK8p1plq0igbPkkgfog/s1600/The-Hunger-Catherine-Deneuve-veil.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><i>The Hunger </i></span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">airs August 13 at 4:15am Eastern/1:15am Pacific on TCM</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With a body of work spanning 50 years and including more than 100 mostly European films, Catherine Deneuve has portrayed a wide range of characters on screen, expanding her repertoire (from sweet and innocent to beautiful and aloof to strong and independent) as her career progressed. She came, almost accidentally, to film acting through her sister and was initially admired primarily (and profusely) for her serene and impeccable porcelain beauty. Soon enough she was recognized for the depth and sensitivity of her work and, as her reputation flourished, she was able to pick and choose her roles - with several being developed expressly for her. In 1998, Catherine was interviewed on NPR's <i>Fresh Air</i>. She was intrigued by a quote the host read to her, the words of film critic David Thomson: "Deneuve is a fantastic actress, her beauty is a receptacle for any imagination, perhaps the greatest cool blonde, forever hinting at intimations of depravity." She was pleased, laughed lightly and remarked, with modesty, "I would like to meet the person he's talking about."</span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyn3TNdnbMnUfPQ_tFaRYxxMw-FFTbT3a0xU0FaFKmrQ9hv1pCFyjUDYL3NAqcMmJsuRqO8apEVzv1OKWPZNVWofzmrpGQBK5aBsCHHlK24AK6anicRCLx5yEw10GTHpClQT7h_iAslhc/s1600/Cannes_2005.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyn3TNdnbMnUfPQ_tFaRYxxMw-FFTbT3a0xU0FaFKmrQ9hv1pCFyjUDYL3NAqcMmJsuRqO8apEVzv1OKWPZNVWofzmrpGQBK5aBsCHHlK24AK6anicRCLx5yEw10GTHpClQT7h_iAslhc/s320/Cannes_2005.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Catherine was awarded a Golden Palm at Cannes in 2005</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Catherine Deneuve, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in <i>Indochine </i>(1992); she was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Actress for her performance in <i>Belle de Jour</i>; she was a winner, with her co-stars, of the Berlin International Film Festival's Silver Bear award for <i>8 Women </i>(2002); she won two of France's Cesar awards for Best Actress - for<i> The Last Metro </i>(1980) and <i>Indochine</i>; and won the Volpi Cup prize for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her performance in <i><a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/place-vendome-2000" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Place Vendome</span></a> </i>(1998). In addition, she has been honored with a multitude of special and lifetime achievement awards.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">TCM's Summer Under the Stars tribute to Catherine Deneuve is much deserved - and also well timed; o</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">n October 22, she will turn 70.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>TCM's Summer Under the Stars, August 12: Catherine Deneuve</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">(all times Eastern/Pacific)</span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></div></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span> <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">6:00am/3:00am - <i><b>Le Petit Poucet</b> </i>(2001), A fantasy/fairytale directed by Olivier Dahan</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">7:45am/4:45am - <i><b>Repulsion</b> </i>(1965), </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">directed by Roman Polanski and </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">succinctly described by producer Robert Evans as </span>a "<i>really</i> offbeat" thriller, it won the Berlin International Film Festival's Silver Bear honors as well as a directorial award for Polanski; in English</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">9:45am/6:45am - <b><i>Mississippi Mermaid</i></b> (1969), Francois Truffaut's Hitchcock-influenced mystery/thriller, with Jean-Paul Belmondo</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">12:00pm/9:00am - <i><b>Un Flic</b> </i>(1972), cool and dark neo-noir directed by a master, Jean-Pierre Melville (<i>Bob le Flambeur</i>, <i>Le Samourai</i>), with <a href="http://www.alaindelon.ch/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Alain Delon</span></a> and Richard Crenna</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">2:00pm/11:00am - <i><b>Le Sauvage</b> </i>(1975), Jean-Paul Rappeneau's madcap romp, with Yves Montand, Tony Roberts and Dana Wynter</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">4:00pm/1:00pm - <i><b>The Last Metro</b> </i>(1980), a wartime drama set in Nazi occupied Paris, directed by Francois Truffaut, with Gerard Depardieu; Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of 12 Cesar awards</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">6:15pm/3:15pm - <i><b>I'm Going Home</b> </i>(2001), directed by Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira; an exploration of mortality and the fourth film Oliveira made after the age of 90, with Michel Piccoli and John Malkovich; nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes  </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">8:00pm/5:00pm - <i><b>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</b> </i>(1964), all dialogue is sung in this innovative musical directed by Jacques Demy; winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes; nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Foreign Language Film; Grammy-nominated for its score</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">10:00pm/7:00pm - <i><b>Tristana</b> </i>(1970), Luis Bunuel's sadomasochistic dream, with Fernando Rey and Franco Nero; Oscar-nominated for Best Foreign Language Film</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">12:00am/9:00pm - </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><b>Ma Saison Preferee</b> </i>(1993), Andre Techine's emotional, character-driven family drama features Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil as a conflicted brother and sister; with Chiara Mastroianni (Catherine's daughter with Marcello Mastroianni); nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span> </span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">2:15am/11:15pm - <i><b>Belle de Jour</b> </i>(1967), one of Luis Bunuel's late-career masterpieces - about a bourgeois young wife with a secret life</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">, with Michel Piccoli</span>; winner of the Golden Lion and Pasinetti Award at the Venice Film Festival</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">4:15am/1:15am - <i><b>The Hunger</b> </i>(1983), an ultra-stylish, dark and erotic vampire tale directed by Tony Scott, with David Bowie and Susan Sarandon; Scott's feature debut - his next film was the blockbuster, <i>Top Gun</i> (1986); in English</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span> <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Xlt7SDnx9qwqpvFnhhdAKsNEePV6IF60i1AM4LhhSY51wExjBIgKJJ1iloXSsM6a_9EtauF3SRKWEEIUuLhpqHk_m5AvjOWoVaX8__Bnv9cAfprkwDeRqM9s8_Q4FUu06eA2VvMkj_8/s1600/Un_Flic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Xlt7SDnx9qwqpvFnhhdAKsNEePV6IF60i1AM4LhhSY51wExjBIgKJJ1iloXSsM6a_9EtauF3SRKWEEIUuLhpqHk_m5AvjOWoVaX8__Bnv9cAfprkwDeRqM9s8_Q4FUu06eA2VvMkj_8/s400/Un_Flic.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Un Flic </span></i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">airs on TCM August 12 at noon Eastern/9am Pacific</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span> <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u>Notes</u>:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Look</i> magazine, June 1, 1965</span> </i></span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Fresh Air on Stage and Screen, with Terry Gross </i>(WHYY Inc., 2000)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The Guardian</i>, Sept. 21, 2005; interview with Geoff Andrew at BFI/Southbank </span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve </i>by Catherine Deneuve (Pegasus Books, 2007)</span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span></div>

Catherine Deneuve Summer Under the Stars TCM The Lady Eve (author) August 12: A Day - and Night - Under the Stars with Catherine Deneuve

This is my first entry for the 2013 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon now in progress and hosted by Jill Blake of http://sittinonabacky...

Remembering Tyrone Power

11:56 AM Tukiyooo 0

<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXweJjlXonNW2cECl-HluuZ1cWhcWDlRu8f3boo41LW-mwSkr514Qt6h7tTAY5bQlALuu23iEMJi8EHNBOShDTUfNBmIyQpd-kxOgunrxn7twg2ElwKQX_c5anMnE2R9twKragVGxoDb0/s1600/tyrone-power-by-le-art-works+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXweJjlXonNW2cECl-HluuZ1cWhcWDlRu8f3boo41LW-mwSkr514Qt6h7tTAY5bQlALuu23iEMJi8EHNBOShDTUfNBmIyQpd-kxOgunrxn7twg2ElwKQX_c5anMnE2R9twKragVGxoDb0/s400/tyrone-power-by-le-art-works+2.jpg" width="333" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br /><span style="font-size: small;">“There he was, dark-looking with black hair and eyebrows, and no man had a right to be that handsome.” So aviator Bob Buck remembered first meeting Tyrone Power. Buck, enlisted by his boss Howard Hughes, the owner of TWA, to pilot Power on a tour of South America, Africa and Europe, would spend three months with the actor and a small retinue on a trip that was set to begin in September 1947. The group would travel in Power’s plane, <i>The Geek</i>, named after a character in his latest film, <i>Nightmare Alley</i>.  At the time, at age 33, Tyrone Power was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, an adored “matinee idol,” but his straightforward, unassuming manner instantly disarmed the skeptical Buck.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><a name='more'></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1rbMbKxsFoBHTx0efNQ_2WL10CCkOIgVbFXQUm1sDoheqRDpDI6Qeh9WerUhx8DBBkcqRWRVFawhhprfL09FEBw6eurvC_56KFHI5xR13_ZxfU9ppDyKBjOSqcKwA5_7qgLotZA9Y4U/s1600/Tyrone+Power+father+and+son.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1rbMbKxsFoBHTx0efNQ_2WL10CCkOIgVbFXQUm1sDoheqRDpDI6Qeh9WerUhx8DBBkcqRWRVFawhhprfL09FEBw6eurvC_56KFHI5xR13_ZxfU9ppDyKBjOSqcKwA5_7qgLotZA9Y4U/s200/Tyrone+Power+father+and+son.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyrone Power, father and son</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: right;"></div><span style="font-size: small;">Born in Cincinnati in 1914, Tyrone Power descended from a long line of performing artists. His father, born Frederick Tyrone Power in England and billed as Tyrone Power, was a Shakespearean actor and <i>his</i>father was concert pianist Harold Power, son of celebrated Irish actor Tyrone Power. Tyrone Edmund Power was born May 5, 1914 to his 45-year-old father and his second wife, Emma (known as Patia Power). Young Tyrone and his sister, Anne, were the esteemed actor’s only children. Power, Sr., and <span style="font-size: small;">Patia</span>, who had shared the stage with him from time to time, divorced in 1920. The actor soon remarried and continued his stage and movie career while his ex-wife cared for the children and worked as a voice and drama coach.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It was at age 17 when he was just out of high school that the younger Tyrone Power was able to spend some months with his father. Encouraged by his parents, he had begun acting early in life and that summer of 1931 his father took him to Chicago where he was appearing in a production of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>. Young Tyrone was given a small part in the play. The two later returned to Hollywood where the elder Power began work on a film. Several weeks into production he suffered a massive heart attack at the Hollywood Athletic Club and there he died in the arms of his son.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_4Csuj9X0TO0hKio7tE5h1wcCtYK04w7Y1QeFWfgpcc9NH2uKO1eRkqp0ue3DljtehJ00FoxOZieG00K6-0AP3d2Nug24IdoFt5akmd9H8B-RRCnbGTFZHmX4dcV1NfwbntlhVDd8SA/s1600/st+joan+on+stage+in+youth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik_4Csuj9X0TO0hKio7tE5h1wcCtYK04w7Y1QeFWfgpcc9NH2uKO1eRkqp0ue3DljtehJ00FoxOZieG00K6-0AP3d2Nug24IdoFt5akmd9H8B-RRCnbGTFZHmX4dcV1NfwbntlhVDd8SA/s320/st+joan+on+stage+in+youth.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyrone Power on stage in <i>St. Joan</i>, 1936</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;">By 1935, Tyrone Power, Jr., as he was then known, had made his way to Broadway and been taken under the wing of stage icon Katharine Cornell. He had a small role in <i>Flowers in the Forest</i> (1935), a play the actress produced, and <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>(1935 – 1936), in which Cornell and Maurice Evans starred. When he appeared in a supporting role in <i>St. Joan</i> (1936), starring Cornell, Power was approached by talent scouts from 20<sup>th</sup> Century Fox and offered a screen test; Katharine Cornell told the young actor he was ready for Hollywood. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">She was right. Power’s brief appearance in his first film for Fox, <i>Girls' Dormitory </i>(1936) prompted a deluge of fan letters. Legend has it that powerful Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper stayed to watch a second showing of the film just to check the credits for the name of the handsome young actor she’d spied in a brief role toward the end of the film.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It was with his third outing for Fox in 1936 that Tyrone Power became a star. Child actor Freddie Bartholomew, who played protagonist Jonathan Blake as a youth, was top-billed in <i>Lloyd's of London</i>. Fourth-billed Tyrone Power, who had far more screen time than anyone in the film, portrayed Blake as an adult. Only 22 at the time, but handsome, charismatic and self-possessed, Pow<span style="font-size: small;">er</span> walked away with the film. He would share top billing on his next assignment, <i>In Old Chicago</i> (1937), with Alice Faye and Don Ameche. Following the film’s great popular success, Fox would re-team him with Faye and Ameche in <i>Alexander’s Ragtime Band </i>(1938). Later in 1938, on loan to MGM, he appeared opposite Norma Shearer in the costume melodrama <i>Marie Antoinette</i>. Tyrone Power was now a firmly established leading man.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmep3whm1fqqlKGQBgXghjpyE_2u5f_tF1uZd1Xh0XFoOMLBq0nP4QbBLLYJdTGFDiPjSWbBUbB4IQFz3Un5MW1ujAv1OB12KPR34sJtXR_cOVYMMF8yIWkfKwE93zKeQMfj3PLbthaY/s1600/marie+antoinette+on+the+set.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmep3whm1fqqlKGQBgXghjpyE_2u5f_tF1uZd1Xh0XFoOMLBq0nP4QbBLLYJdTGFDiPjSWbBUbB4IQFz3Un5MW1ujAv1OB12KPR34sJtXR_cOVYMMF8yIWkfKwE93zKeQMfj3PLbthaY/s400/marie+antoinette+on+the+set.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyrone Power on the set of <i>Marie Antoinette </i>(1938) with Norma Shearer</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1939 would prove to be a watershed year for the 25 year old actor. He would portray the outlaw <i>Jesse James</i>in one of only two Technicolor pictures Fox produced that year, and he would star in the studio’s spectacular <i>The Rains Came</i>. Nominated for six Academy Awards, it would win, in that year of the <i>Gone with the Wind</i> sweep, only one, for Best Effects, Special Effects. Power’s leading lady Myrna Loy remembered him as one of the nicest human beings she’d ever known. She would recall much later, “I’m sorry to report that we weren’t lovers, but close to it. I loved him, but he was married to that damn Frenchwoman.” That Frenchwoman was Annabella, the actress Power met a year earlier on <i>Suez </i>(1938) and married in 1939. Also in 1939, in an annual nationwide newspaper poll, Tyrone Power was voted “King of Hollywood.” </span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXOJaZ967e9p4hgWrLy19cmMUZmzi_LrZ1vbiFbL1P8VArqwjYnVTzeZUr7-lEVchcDp_xghFNu0BOlpySBt1onsiuk8NM_P2bPaxUdQkfd84VLcJCuFLZGQvSzGz29DEh1govRGmu4y8/s1600/1939+King+of+Hollywood+with+J+MacDonald+Queen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXOJaZ967e9p4hgWrLy19cmMUZmzi_LrZ1vbiFbL1P8VArqwjYnVTzeZUr7-lEVchcDp_xghFNu0BOlpySBt1onsiuk8NM_P2bPaxUdQkfd84VLcJCuFLZGQvSzGz29DEh1govRGmu4y8/s320/1939+King+of+Hollywood+with+J+MacDonald+Queen.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyrone Power, 1939's "King of Hollywood," with Ed Sullivan and "Queen" Jeanette MacDonald</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Power next appeared as what has to have been one of the most attractive criminals in Hollywood history in <i>Johnny Apollo </i>(1940) opposite Dorothy Lamour. His first swashbuckler would follow, <i>The Mark of Zorro </i>(1940). Among his best known films, it features one of his most memorable performances. Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone had reputations as two of the best fencers in film and they would dramatically cross swords in <i>The Mark of Zorro</i>:</span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tQlcSzNsTPg" width="420"></iframe> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Dec. 2012 update: sadly, this <span style="font-size: x-small;">(c<span style="font-size: x-small;">olorized)</span> YouTube clip was recently blocked</span></span></div><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Before joining the U.S. Marines and departing for World War II, Power would star in one of his favorites, the vivid Technicolor <i>Blood and Sand </i>(1941). Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, it is the story of a brilliant bullfighter undone by temptation and jealousy. Power was apparently entranced by co-star Rita Hayworth, one of his two leading ladies (the other was Linda Darnell), and his stand-in reportedly noticed that the actor could not take his eyes from her throughout filming.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuzbQco9Akv9TdQSGrf1xExN0HwEtfMeKOLrA0GiSKbd9FGZFFO6XTQlgQrTTZn5aladvdnWvBuPGHiZnwnKIaD8kP-FMkiWY86ou-Q-4hf3GT8pa2mdpLDTkjEkz-yFz0xDuVvgMFtZI/s1600/Blood+and+Sand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuzbQco9Akv9TdQSGrf1xExN0HwEtfMeKOLrA0GiSKbd9FGZFFO6XTQlgQrTTZn5aladvdnWvBuPGHiZnwnKIaD8kP-FMkiWY86ou-Q-4hf3GT8pa2mdpLDTkjEkz-yFz0xDuVvgMFtZI/s320/Blood+and+Sand.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rita Hayworth and Tyrone Power in <i>Blood and Sand </i>(1941)</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Also prior to entering the service, Power completed<i>A Yank in the R.A.F. </i>(1941), a war-time romance that paired him with Fox’s other superstar, Betty Grable. He also <span style="font-size: small;">appeared in</span> <i>The Black Swan </i>(1942), a Technicolor swashbuckler in which Maureen O’Hara, as an aristocratic young beauty, plays hard-to-get with Power’s character, a dashing reformed pirate. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNVtLCIpQkuWHCUYKPR6S2irPE_YXJjSXAwpg0dXhOXXjuTjCXm85akUOJLkYUWbMGtpkydSpOFKt8g01f-Ck_H9FGo2kxntJtr6FYMqbIgJOCZeYm7rBehtG6vU8F0cGIlBGqLSSYCvw/s1600/tp+usmc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNVtLCIpQkuWHCUYKPR6S2irPE_YXJjSXAwpg0dXhOXXjuTjCXm85akUOJLkYUWbMGtpkydSpOFKt8g01f-Ck_H9FGo2kxntJtr6FYMqbIgJOCZeYm7rBehtG6vU8F0cGIlBGqLSSYCvw/s320/tp+usmc.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyrone Power, U.S. Marine Corps</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"></div><span style="font-size: small;">Tyrone Power was about to turn 28 when he joined the USMC. He had developed an interest in flying through director Henry King and flew in the Pacific during the war, carrying supplies into Iwo Jima and flying the injured out, often under heavy enemy fire. When he returned to Hollywood just a few years later, he seemed to have aged. Though still very handsome, he appeared weary.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Power returned to the screen in the Edmund Goulding-directed production of Somerset Maugham’s <i>The Razor’s Edge</i> in 1946. Myrna Loy later remarked on the spiritual quality she saw in Power’s eyes. As Larry Darrell, a war veteran on a quest for enlighten<span style="font-size: small;">ment and meaning</span> in <i>The Razor’s Edge</i>, she believed he was perfectly cast, “That was Ty,” she said. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpDyhZkJC2Mk4k1NhhiKUEcfZl3OQg9ERzRYd6wYN8TuGF2XSM44jVW3VQUw290BVaLo-Y6omTvrva0AA2ty3Iu9E0W_qgcIgEXFQjgSkjghGooqbwNi8mBtO_eTfNoNsrefHoaxsOA0/s1600/Nightmare+Alley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSpDyhZkJC2Mk4k1NhhiKUEcfZl3OQg9ERzRYd6wYN8TuGF2XSM44jVW3VQUw290BVaLo-Y6omTvrva0AA2ty3Iu9E0W_qgcIgEXFQjgSkjghGooqbwNi8mBtO_eTfNoNsrefHoaxsOA0/s320/Nightmare+Alley.jpg" width="308" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Nightmare Alley </i>(1947)</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"></div><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Nightmare Alley </i>(1947) was a film Power battled with Fox chief Darryl Zanuck to make. Zanuck, protective of Power as a valuable studio asset, feared that casting him as a dark character in a downbeat film would damage his box office appeal. But Power was frustrated with the endless string of heroes he invariably played and longed to break type. As sleazy carnival huckster Stan Carlisle, Power is fascinating - and convincing<span style="font-size: small;">.</span> But Zanuck had no confidence in the film and it was given little promotion. Though it quickly faded from view it developed a solid reputation and following over the years. <i>Captain from Castile </i>(1947), Power’s first post-war swashbuckler, would not be his last. At the time the picture was filming in Mexico, he was in the midst of a high-profile romance with Lana Turner. She flew south of the border to be with him on Christmas 1946 and would remember their New Year’s Eve together as the happiest night of her life. Her daughter Cheryl Crane recalled that one of her own earliest memories was of sitting on Power’s lap in the family den. “I was only about three years old, but I remember his face.” Lana would forever refer to Power as the love of her life and recall, “No man except possibly Tyrone Power took the time to find out that I was a human being, not just a pretty, shapely little thing.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Tp3b051HUwzEq1dBFZV0cbqF5ZcAEReT131dbviwziAhIhj3yylvwChHweYfRqnJVH01Cejs5gV76WjEtilex_yqHxJuZfm5aOsCS1nPfU-F2nDfiFvwwydLXhSiR_94wB1ec55R_PE/s1600/Lana+and+Ty.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Tp3b051HUwzEq1dBFZV0cbqF5ZcAEReT131dbviwziAhIhj3yylvwChHweYfRqnJVH01Cejs5gV76WjEtilex_yqHxJuZfm5aOsCS1nPfU-F2nDfiFvwwydLXhSiR_94wB1ec55R_PE/s320/Lana+and+Ty.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1946: Lana Turner and Tyrone Power in Mexico</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;">It was while involved with Lana and following the completion of his first three post-war films that Power readied for his trip across the Atlantic with pilot Bob Buck and crew. As the group prepared to depart on September 1, 1947, Turner took Buck aside and told him, “I love that guy, be sure you bring him back to me.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><span style="font-size: small;">Though Buck was originally drafted to pilot <i>The Geek</i>, Power confided early on that he would like to do most of the flying himself. Buck quickly learned that the actor “flew like an old pro” and relaxed into backing him up as co-pilot. Wherever <i>The Geek </i>landed, they were mobbed and sometimes pursued. Even landing in a jungle in Liberia and greeted by only two natives, one of the two pointed to Tyrone Power and said, “I know him.” When they arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, Power’s group was welcomed by a crowd so large and enthusiastic that their driver commented, “they didn’t do this for the king and queen.” According to Buck, Power believed that people weren’t reacting to him but to the characters he played and their own romantic fantasies. Buck felt this perspective “kept his head size normal.”<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>Buck formed a life-long friendship with Power and saw in him an all-American guy and natural athlete who could also talk religion, philosophy, art and literature. He had a photographic memory – which Buck witnessed first-hand when he watched the actor scan a script and then discuss it in great detail. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Once <i>The Geek</i> made its way to Europe, the group spent some time in Rome. It was there that Power encountered Linda Christian, a young starlet he would marry the following year. They would have two daughters before divorcing in the mid-‘50s.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg09KfzQcfkv6FLCtyriH_odROKe9WdQ76Fhi4Tbr_Lrdxhd1fyvh67JFTJ2bTQXj9AxS-EVW0IVIOBzwn3Zu8HYWh3u2CdLJufDtbSDahrHLxIed0otwomBrrAFhKZrfxDPtAo_Zx1mtA/s1600/dark+is+light+enough+1955.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg09KfzQcfkv6FLCtyriH_odROKe9WdQ76Fhi4Tbr_Lrdxhd1fyvh67JFTJ2bTQXj9AxS-EVW0IVIOBzwn3Zu8HYWh3u2CdLJufDtbSDahrHLxIed0otwomBrrAFhKZrfxDPtAo_Zx1mtA/s320/dark+is+light+enough+1955.jpg" width="235" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Dark is Light Enough</i> on Broadway, 1955</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;">Back in Hollywood, Power’s career would continue with a mix of swashbucklers, adventures, light fare and big budget A-films.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In 1951 Power went on the London stage for a six month engagement of a Joshua Logan-directed production of <i>Mr. Roberts</i>. It was a sold-out run and <i>Variety </i>characterized his performance in the title role as a “warm, colorful and meaningful interpretation.” He toured the U.S. very successfully in <i>John Brown’s Body</i> and took it to Broadway in 1953 with Raymond Massey and Judith Anderson. He returned to Broadway in 1955 with <i>The Dark is Light Enough</i>, starring with Katharine Cornell (a young Christopher Plummer would win a Theatre World Award for his supporting performance in the play). Power’s final Broadway appearance came in <i>Back to Methuselah </i>in 1958 with Faye Emerson.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">His last finished film would be Billy Wilder’s <i>Witness for the Prosecution</i> (1957) with Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich. In it, Power,<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>cast against type as an accused killer, delivers one of his most acclaimed performances. Billy Wilder reported that co-star Marlene Dietrich developed an enormous crush on Power during filming and remarked, “Everybody had a crush on Ty…it was impossible to be impervious to that kind of charm.”</span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC7HZEoayTYkpTBXHBdSKU-Y49nyDar4Mr-FramzdInVCPdg7N4TQ98Ab78mM3w0lEWNpfC_P88cbZrDgPPiZ8F1dVte5YyIK25kNBIa57Cv-VPTqyVSTrw7KOcfbmgwZUa0VrQITHOIM/s1600/witness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC7HZEoayTYkpTBXHBdSKU-Y49nyDar4Mr-FramzdInVCPdg7N4TQ98Ab78mM3w0lEWNpfC_P88cbZrDgPPiZ8F1dVte5YyIK25kNBIa57Cv-VPTqyVSTrw7KOcfbmgwZUa0VrQITHOIM/s320/witness.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, <i>Witness for the Prosecution </i>(1957)</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In 1958, 44-year-old Tyrone Power married 26-year-old Debbie Minardos. They traveled to Spain in September where he was to film the King Vidor epic <i>Solomon and Sheba. </i>On November 15, Power collapsed on the set during an arduous swordfight scene with George Sanders and suffered a massive heart attack; he died on the way to the hospital. It had been ice-cold on the set that day and <span style="font-size: small;">he was a heavy smoker.</span> Power’s wife gave birth to their son, Tyrone Power IV, in January 1959. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“His voice was beautiful to listen to, deep, clear and strong,” Bob Buck wrote; his dark, long-lashed eyes radiated warmth and a soulful quality. He performed with sensitivity and conviction and he brought to the screen a certain nobility and tempered reserve. He was Fox’s top leading man for more than 15 years and though his late career had its ups and downs, his last films were some of his greatest successes. He has been called “illegally handsome” and perhaps his looks, coupled with a powerful onscreen <span style="font-size: small;">charisma, </span>blinded both studio and audience to his <span style="font-size: small;">actual talent and </span>capacity to be something more than a leading man.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Today, August 25, Turner Classic Movies honors Tyrone Power with a full 24 hours of his films as part of its annual <i>Summer Under the Stars </i>celebration in August. </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://eves-reel-life.blogspot.com/p/tyrone-power-on-tcm-summer-under-stars.html" style="color: #cc0000;" target="_blank">Click here</a> for the schedule of films. </span> <a href="http://scribehardonfilm.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/2012-tcm-suts-blogathon-day-25-tyrone-power/" style="color: #cc0000;" target="_blank">Click here</a> for more on Michael and Jill’s <i>Summer Under the Stars </i>blogathon.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nBRm_lySskPivZT6Ppo09JBTYurHAkwmg7I9oxj3k5Idw5OicWSFfS9BfQBNv5yZ_vbsNN2Rmk7PHdYwPoG6hykP7pL6ojGkpPJbUmPH0AuLJ_MEDEJhcNCLTlrLMQX9IrJqHcBCcSo/s1600/TP+by+Trevor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3nBRm_lySskPivZT6Ppo09JBTYurHAkwmg7I9oxj3k5Idw5OicWSFfS9BfQBNv5yZ_vbsNN2Rmk7PHdYwPoG6hykP7pL6ojGkpPJbUmPH0AuLJ_MEDEJhcNCLTlrLMQX9IrJqHcBCcSo/s400/TP+by+Trevor.jpg" width="311" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait of Tyrone Power by Claire Trevor, 1958</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><u>Notes</u>:</b></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>North Star Over My Shoulder: A Flying Life</i> by Bob Buck, Simon & Schuster (2002)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Being and Becoming</i>by Myrna Loy and James Kotsilibas-Davis, Alfred A. Knopf (1987)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder</i> by Ed Sikov, Hyperion (1998)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Lana: the Memories, the Myths, the Movies</i> by Cheryl Crane, Running Press (2008)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Website: <a href="http://www.tyrone-power.com/" style="color: #cc0000;">www.tyrone-power.com</a></span></div>

Summer Under the Stars TCM The Lady Eve (author) Tyrone Power Remembering Tyrone Power

“There he was, dark-looking with black hair and eyebrows, and no man had a right to be that handsome.” So aviator Bob Buck remembered first ...

Marilyn Monroe: Out of a Dream

1:10 AM Tukiyooo 0

<div style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUl9XriX9DxisG86jxNHfm4FcHJAjvFQB429C_vHDUJxxdKYRtVemOGiHsyfm-eXttfwFATFsGu5ysRonKy4vh7PCY2VmIfhlLSAiDfqZCAnpDBhjy2kBPbV35eY4Fnr8d-JA6SlYTzTXr/s1600/MM+by+Cardiff+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="375" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUl9XriX9DxisG86jxNHfm4FcHJAjvFQB429C_vHDUJxxdKYRtVemOGiHsyfm-eXttfwFATFsGu5ysRonKy4vh7PCY2VmIfhlLSAiDfqZCAnpDBhjy2kBPbV35eY4Fnr8d-JA6SlYTzTXr/s400/MM+by+Cardiff+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">photo by Jack Cardiff</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">One chilly winter morning in 1953, a 15-year-old boy took a bus from his home in New Jersey to New York City in search of adventure. His conception of the city then was of Times Square and he roamed the neighborhood until daylight began to fade. As he made his way to the Port Authority Terminal and his bus trip home, he noticed a long black limousine driving slowly toward him. The limo came to a stop and its driver jumped out and opened the back door at the curb. As he did, he motioned the boy to stay where he was so his passenger would have a clear path across the sidewalk. Nearly 60 years later, the man who had been that boy remembered,"...a white-gloved hand reached out for help and it was given. Then came a face of dizzying beauty..." She was blonde and she wore a long gown that appeared to be made of "tiny white pearls seemingly flung at her in wild abandon and clinging to every pore. Around her neck, over her wrists and on her ears were brightly sparkling diamonds." The boy's heart was already pounding when, as she turned, the woman noticed him, smiled and whispered, "Hi."</span><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Z71LHpcSOn4d7F07C7z_wbfH3ZOfuo8y8ytMEyZn0jy3e-U_APLtEVteF6Sgg5J50oPRy_XUnGyk-tz3AjOsJQAY0Riq5MPgWNRRZSH5C-NzsLHWVeJbwph-ZIptoleiAbJeISAoD2r1/s1600/Marilyn+by+Avedon+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Z71LHpcSOn4d7F07C7z_wbfH3ZOfuo8y8ytMEyZn0jy3e-U_APLtEVteF6Sgg5J50oPRy_XUnGyk-tz3AjOsJQAY0Riq5MPgWNRRZSH5C-NzsLHWVeJbwph-ZIptoleiAbJeISAoD2r1/s320/Marilyn+by+Avedon+4.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">photo by Richard Avedon</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The bedazzled boy, Frank Langella, who grew up to be an Oscar-nominated, three-time Tony-winning actor, was stunned. He had serendipitously encountered Marilyn Monroe, "the girl" who enraptured the world that year in <i>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes</i> and <i>How to Marry a Millionaire </i>and would soon create pandemonium with <i>The Seven Year Itch</i>. Years later Richard Avedon, one of many famed photographers for whom the actress posed, would comment, "There was no such person as Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created like an author creates a character."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The vision that materialized before wide-eyed young Frank Langella on a New York street was the painstaking creation of the former Norma Jeane Baker, but the realization of this fantasy creature had required inspiration and encouragement from others. Not too unlike an orphan on a quest in a folk tale, she rose from humble origins, faced great obstacles and setbacks and, with the aid of others along with her own hard work and desire, transformed her life.</span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3v1ToxOvx7d9qlTCuCjXhm6SuhyphenhyphenmQegIlimTe2gWrlN__7l_fD-k4oLurmphAy_me7QKRfmbiNBq6fwKZgw-wZtC02OvC-s28rEDrIr5BqNT47rRorEORp1B2TtB5EUqLZCjDemDmdVql/s1600/Marilyn+at+age+9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3v1ToxOvx7d9qlTCuCjXhm6SuhyphenhyphenmQegIlimTe2gWrlN__7l_fD-k4oLurmphAy_me7QKRfmbiNBq6fwKZgw-wZtC02OvC-s28rEDrIr5BqNT47rRorEORp1B2TtB5EUqLZCjDemDmdVql/s320/Marilyn+at+age+9.jpg" width="246" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Norma Jeane Baker, age nine</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In 1935, Grace McKee, a friend and co-worker of Gladys Baker at a Hollywood editing lab, became her unstable friend's court-appointed guardian and the legal guardian of the woman's nine-year-old daughter, Norma Jeane. A childless peroxide blonde with "stage mother" instincts, McKee filled the little girl's imagination with lavish fancies of one day becoming a bombshell movie star like the one with whom she herself was obsessed - Jean Harlow. When Grace married "Doc" Goddard, Norma Jeane was, for a time, sent to live in the red-brick mansion that served as the Los Angeles Orphans Home. Grace would take the girl out to lunch and a movie most Saturdays and regularly had the child's hair styled at a beauty parlor. Norma Jeane would be returned to the orphanage with her hair freshly curled and be-ribboned and, on occasion, wearing makeup Grace had applied to her very young face. The guardian coached the girl on her smile and paraded her in front of friends crowing "isn't she pretty?" and bragged that the child was going to grow up to be beautiful and famous. It would be little more than a decade after becoming Norma Jeane Baker's guardian that Grace Goddard would, because her charge was not yet 21, sign the girl's first contract with 20th Century Fox.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When Johnny Hyde, a powerful William Morris agent on the West Coast, met 22-year-old Marilyn Monroe on New Year's Eve 1949, she was a starlet adrift in the wilderness of the "party circuit" looking for a break. At one time known as producer "Joe Schenk's girl," she had been under contract to Fox for a year, from 1946 to 1947, and with Columbia Pictures for just six months in 1948. It was during her stint at Fox that she had adopted her screen name with the help of Ben Lyon, the studio's casting director. "Monroe" was her mother's family name; Lyon suggested "Marilyn." He had known and loved Broadway star <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126833333" style="color: #cc0000;" target="_blank">Marilyn Miller</a> before his marriage to Bebe Daniels, and Norma Jeane Baker reminded him of the talented and lovely blonde, blue-eyed actress who had died young.</span><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhO1ZmpAkZv7VpB8DpHviHCQRnwSqiPelYBUh36-okLnmWqvAUyAmksa0igpspJECpfMTSPCUhLnrg3cK3hQp9a1QfPbjwwPmPmFi4qMYFm_F13Rz2aTQfM7aRLOF1Ng3aYoej_ng72ukD/s1600/Marilyn+in+1950+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhO1ZmpAkZv7VpB8DpHviHCQRnwSqiPelYBUh36-okLnmWqvAUyAmksa0igpspJECpfMTSPCUhLnrg3cK3hQp9a1QfPbjwwPmPmFi4qMYFm_F13Rz2aTQfM7aRLOF1Ng3aYoej_ng72ukD/s320/Marilyn+in+1950+2.jpg" width="234" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marilyn Monroe in 1950</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For Johnny Hyde, meeting Marilyn Monroe led to an enchantment that brought an end to his marriage and the beginning of his tireless promotion of her career. He saw a singular quality in the sensuous blonde and worked to make things happen quickly for her. By the time of his sudden death in 1950, Hyde had negotiated parts for her in John Huston's <i>The Asphalt Jungle </i>(1950) and Joseph Mankiewicz's <i>All About Eve </i>(1950). Her success in these roles led to a new, more generous contract with Fox, an agreement that was secured by Hyde.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Howard Hawks had been unimpressed with the starlet when he first met her in 1948. But after seeing her in <i>The Asphalt Jungle</i>, he realized she had something. And when she was cast in a supporting role in one of his films, <i>Monkey Business </i>(1952), he took a closer look at her potential. Hawks became convinced that Fox chief Darryl Zanuck was misreading Marilyn's appeal, too often casting her in the wrong sort of films. He told Zanuck, "You're making realism with a very unreal girl. She's a completely storybook character..." and urged him to produce <i>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes</i>, a studio property, and cast her in it; furthermore, he agreed to direct.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In 1949 <i>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes </i>had made Carol Channing a Broadway sensation; in 1953, the screen adaptation had an even more powerful impact on the career of Marilyn Monroe. With the film's tremendous success, Marilyn left behind forever her years as a struggling cheesecake model/rising newcomer and emerged a bona fide superstar. She proved to have a talent for comedy and a fine sense of timing and, with Howard Hawks creating the ideal vehicle for her and overseeing an elegant Technicolor upgrade of her look and style, she embodied to scintillating perfection a funny, sexy, sweet and unique confection that produced fireworks on the screen.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In <i>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes</i>, Marilyn Monroe and top-billed co-star Jane Russell are well-matched as a pair of gorgeous gal-pal showgirls on the loose on the high seas and in Paris. Delectably dizzy/witty blonde Lorelei and droll, down-to-earth brunette Dorothy cut loose in clever comic scenes and dynamic musical routines. Both perform renditions of the centerpiece number, "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend." Marilyn's version became legendary.</span><b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></b><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y2bGerBiZQ8" width="420"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fox strikes again! This video clip has been blocked</span></span>.</div><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Fox's next assignment for its new star was not as solid a film as her last, but it was even more popular. <i>How to Marry a Millionaire </i>(1953) teamed Marilyn with not just one but two other glittery leading ladies - Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. Another glamor-fest, the story follows three models who rent a ritzy penthouse in Manhattan for a year in hopes of luring and marrying wealthy suitors before their lease expires. Bacall's is the central storyline and hers is the commonsense character; Grable and Marilyn are both ditzy-but-dear dumb blonde types. Marilyn, of course, is the knockout in the trio and, next to her, Betty Grable seems a decade out-of-date. <i>How to Marry a Millionaire </i>was the #5 box office hit of 1953, with <i>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes </i>close behind at #6. As for Marilyn Monroe, she was on top.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjleWBrBKTUsAgThPj4XUKceKKfN6KD94YF-VquJHLqjS31MZQK5ZH9AQOM3oDKQjiZaMHmF_qQG6K3cRpGYHVXS7TUI9IIUZ5u5kX3p6GBw1ZhCUoxx1vTxoWuLCz2EJKwYTJutzq1cDJz/s1600/Marilyn+in+Travilla+HtMaM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjleWBrBKTUsAgThPj4XUKceKKfN6KD94YF-VquJHLqjS31MZQK5ZH9AQOM3oDKQjiZaMHmF_qQG6K3cRpGYHVXS7TUI9IIUZ5u5kX3p6GBw1ZhCUoxx1vTxoWuLCz2EJKwYTJutzq1cDJz/s200/Marilyn+in+Travilla+HtMaM.jpg" width="156" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Marilyn in a classic Travilla gown<i></i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">By the time Darryl Zanuck conspired with Billy Wilder to adapt the Broadway adultery romp, <i>The Seven Year Itch</i>,<i> </i>to the screen for Marilyn in 1955, there was no longer any need to pair her with another actress or even an established leading man to bolster the film's box office appeal. Though it is minor Wilder, <i>The Seven Year Itch </i>is the film that certified Marilyn as a phenomenon. On Broadway, George Axelrod's play centered on the brief affair of a married man with his gorgeous neighbor while his family is away on vacation. Even though Hollywood's Production Code demanded that there be no adultery in the adultery comedy, the onscreen presence of Marilyn Monroe was enough to tantalize and satisfy a worldwide audience. The studio's enticing publicity campaign - it was all about Marilyn in a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2011-06-20-marilyn-monroe-dress-auction_n.htm" style="color: #cc0000;" target="_blank">billowy white dress</a> - created a furor.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For a while the sensitive but wily star was able to navigate  Hollywood's treacherous rapids. She  managed to use the scandal of nude calendar photos to her advantage;  she explained away the revelation that she was not, technically, an  orphan; and she weathered the outcry stirred by the public remarks of Joan Crawford who implied she was lewd and vulgar. But Marilyn could never cope with her performance anxiety.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Billy Wilder, ever outspoken and eminently quotable, quipped about his tribulations in working with Marilyn, "I had no problems with Monroe. It was Monroe who had problems with Monroe."</span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQWWTkOrRBxJXo6xDg45clzEQN29qrhtcCY8aODunwxBR3rnuYo8EXDsHw6QxdJQAoewcewJAovtFpT_1Ys604e_49EKg9a-6VHsBpov77FU7uvB3aJmH4VdxxAEf9tK09jzEh2FEvXCIj/s1600/Marilyn+sans+makeup+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQWWTkOrRBxJXo6xDg45clzEQN29qrhtcCY8aODunwxBR3rnuYo8EXDsHw6QxdJQAoewcewJAovtFpT_1Ys604e_49EKg9a-6VHsBpov77FU7uvB3aJmH4VdxxAEf9tK09jzEh2FEvXCIj/s320/Marilyn+sans+makeup+2.jpg" width="286" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marilyn <i>sans</i> makeup</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Fritz Lang, who had directed her in <i>Clash by Night </i>(1952), remembered that she was "...scared as hell to come to the studio, always late, couldn't remember her lines..." And Howard Hawks noted, "The more important she became, the more frightened she became." Whitey Snyder, Marilyn's makeup artist from her Fox screen test to her funeral, thought her anxiety was connected to her appearance. He said that though she knew every makeup trick there was and used them to marvelous effect, "...it was all an illusion: in person, out of makeup, she was very pretty but in a plain way, and she knew it." It was more than that, though. Marilyn Monroe wasn't simply at the mercy of a fantastical physical image that required scrupulous upkeep. Her ever-shifting entourage included more than hair, makeup and massage professionals, she was also closely attended by personal confidants, studio advisors, talent agents, attorneys, psychotherapists, trophy husbands - and drama coaches.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Determined to be more than a pretty onscreen face with a voluptuous body, she took acting seriously. Teacher Natasha Lytess, employed by Fox at Marilyn's insistence, coached her even as the actress performed in front of the camera. Howard Hawks balked at this and successfully barred Lytess from the set of <i>Gentlemen Prefer Blondes</i>. Billy Wilder referred to her as "that creature Lytess" but put up with her on <i>The Seven Year Itch</i>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">By the mid-'50s, Marilyn was studying with "method" guru Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York. Julie Newmar, a member of the Studio at the time, remembered her performance of a scene from <i>Anna Christie</i> with Maureen Stapleton. She recalled that Marilyn's hand actually shook as she lifted a drink from the bar. In her view, Marilyn reflected precisely the essence of Strasberg's teachings - she had <i>become </i>Anna Christie. Of Lee Strasberg, Newmar mused that he favored three kinds of artists, "the highly gifted; the injured, tortured souls; and the beauty queens. He adored Marilyn." Soon Lytess was replaced as Marilyn's personal acting coach by Paula Strasberg, Lee's wife.</span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim_g26QKnkIcGsPgafHeu1xuLOAE6rO4AahyphenhyphenX6SbdMlM10QCHt92ElXBlVJvessDe-KZfucuR-c_sZ4VydO9bZKuvROyzQq0RTlVCcDh8gIYu_L-kyirlEVKtqtoeg5y-TnLbEZGX53VVl/s1600/marlon+and+marilyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim_g26QKnkIcGsPgafHeu1xuLOAE6rO4AahyphenhyphenX6SbdMlM10QCHt92ElXBlVJvessDe-KZfucuR-c_sZ4VydO9bZKuvROyzQq0RTlVCcDh8gIYu_L-kyirlEVKtqtoeg5y-TnLbEZGX53VVl/s400/marlon+and+marilyn.jpg" width="302" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...with Brando promoting a 1955 Actors Studio benefit </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Billy Wilder happily agreed to tackle another project with Marilyn in 1959; her natural luminosity was "something extra, something special" that he believed </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">no one else could bring to the film. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">He would struggle mightily with her on the comedy masterpiece <i>Some Like it Hot </i>and was critical of the effect method acting seemed to have had on her. Before she took up Strasberg's approach, he said, Marilyn came before the camera as if she were about to walk a tightrope over a pit. After adopting "the method" it seemed to him that she focused her full concentration on only the pit...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Over the years, perhaps in an attempt to deal with her terror of "the pit" and other personal woes, Marilyn became dependent on drugs - pills that lifted her up or calmed her down or put her to sleep - and alcohol. Her reputation for being unreliable and difficult grew to epic proportions. Those who worked on her later films reported that she sometimes appeared on the set as if in a daze and, during the filming of <i>Some Like it Hot</i>, screenwriter Izzy Diamond recalled that she sipped liquor from a thermos that ostensibly contained coffee.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kElKxgf2t0Owzpw9Au1ruoRdNTMRNE2qBRzcwdv44PELwFAREQBlDvjNyYtcCJ-zR7urWnGNTTKTyhkSmqwjLTw4WyP-d62M04SxExYW4wNqSfqhQSLUeXZkkqQfBUQxkfj1FTHIA0Z2/s1600/Marilyn+by+geo+barris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7kElKxgf2t0Owzpw9Au1ruoRdNTMRNE2qBRzcwdv44PELwFAREQBlDvjNyYtcCJ-zR7urWnGNTTKTyhkSmqwjLTw4WyP-d62M04SxExYW4wNqSfqhQSLUeXZkkqQfBUQxkfj1FTHIA0Z2/s320/Marilyn+by+geo+barris.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">photo by George Barris</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;">When Marilyn returned to Hollywood in 1960 after years of making her home in New York, she sought the care of Freudian analyst Ralph Greenson. The doctor, who treated her until her death, diagnosed her as "a borderline paranoid addictive personality." Norma Jeane Baker had endured a confusing and chaotic childhood, passed from home to home among friends and family - to an orphanage and back - until she was handed off in marriage at just 16.  Young Marilyn Monroe was also passed around - among the powerful men of Hollywood - during her years as an aspiring starlet. From a psychological standpoint, then, it's no surprise that her relationships were intense and volatile, her identity unstable, her emotions erratic and her actions impulsive. Greenson, who viewed her as a perennial orphan, discarded traditional therapeutic methods and took up a highly unorthodox approach in treating her. In a misguided attempt to "save" her, he welcomed Marilyn into his home and family and took on the role of "father" as well as therapist. He had set for himself an impossible task.</span><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiktWVTLVUR8lSJSTGgJVsU7zfoZk3JVUczEM84GWgxoa2uY4TKhD0oEcKfOQhicz-uv5vcA8rlAQppAJKXrta_OX_Q2g_7GGfGoj1ZAuVPvuwdGGviAMPfDfiPu8MKHPX8JEwZjWVfcfoI/s1600/MM+SGtG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiktWVTLVUR8lSJSTGgJVsU7zfoZk3JVUczEM84GWgxoa2uY4TKhD0oEcKfOQhicz-uv5vcA8rlAQppAJKXrta_OX_Q2g_7GGfGoj1ZAuVPvuwdGGviAMPfDfiPu8MKHPX8JEwZjWVfcfoI/s320/MM+SGtG.jpg" width="199" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Something's Got to Give </i>(1962)</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Even at the peak of her popularity, Marilyn was considered risqué, a sex symbol, and was not taken seriously. Her film roles changed little over time and became, for her, a deadly repetition – the artless, often giddy showgirl, or ex-showgirl. Cherie in <i>Bus Stop </i>(1956), Elsie in <i>The Prince and the Showgirl </i>(1957), Sugar in <i>Some Like it Hot</i>,<i> </i>Amanda in <i>Let’s Make Love </i>(1960) and even Roslyn in <i>The Misfits</i> (1961) are variations on a type the actress wanted to break. With her final, unfinished film, George Cukor’s <i>Something’s Got to Give</i>, she was cast in a role that might have helped her broaden the "Marilyn Monroe" persona; Ellen Wagstaff Arden was beautiful but she was also married and the mother of two small children. Had she been able to finish the film, Marilyn might have gone on to romantic comedy roles <i>a la</i> Doris Day or Shirley MacLaine. It’s also possible she could have moved into mature dramatic roles as Ava Gardner, Lee Remick and others did. But this was not to be. Life as a cultural metaphor and brand-name commodity may simply have been too much for a woman already consumed by an array of insecurities. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">50 years ago Marilyn Monroe stepped out of the dream and into eternity. Her extravagant fulfillment of a childhood guardian’s fuzzy fantasies had taken her on a journey both harrowing and exhilarating, but her life would come to no fairytale ending. Only with death would come transcendence, and the mythical being she so carefully fashioned and brought to vibrant life lives on, unforgettable and bewitching.</span></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMd-0vYMqgVD9vKY0lSmts5kvGFIVl6tlP3tszTIc_jIa_DkhzkHOiafw1031zcuqyq4_yFEKW-ZmAL6gH57KU70VKdNkZEwPosqLlTCHOGbYWCzryhRNNgRRnw3z9TZQRmxCoPJHqV6p0/s1600/Marilyn+in+black+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMd-0vYMqgVD9vKY0lSmts5kvGFIVl6tlP3tszTIc_jIa_DkhzkHOiafw1031zcuqyq4_yFEKW-ZmAL6gH57KU70VKdNkZEwPosqLlTCHOGbYWCzryhRNNgRRnw3z9TZQRmxCoPJHqV6p0/s400/Marilyn+in+black+2.jpg" width="396" /></a></td></tr><tr style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">photo by Bert Stern</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>T</b><b>his post is my contribution to the  Summer Under the Stars blogathon hosted by Jill of Sittin' on a Backyard  Fence and Michael of ScribeHard on Film.</b></span><b> <a href="http://scribehardonfilm.wordpress.com/tag/2012-tcm-summer-under-the-stars-blogathon/" style="color: #cc0000;" target="_blank">Click here</a> <span style="color: #0b5394;">to learn more...</span></b></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b> </b></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> ~</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>Notes</u>:</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Marilyn Monroe: The Biography </i>by Donald Spoto, Harper Collins (1993)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Marilyn Monroe</i> by Barbara Leaming, Crown (1998)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>On Sunset Blvd.: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder </i>by Ed Sikov, Hyperion (1998)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Marilyn Monroe: Metamorphosis </i>by David Wills and Stephen Schmidt, It Books (2011)</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Dropped Names </i>by Frank Langella, Harper (2012) </span></div></div>

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