Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 61 of 128

Burt Lancaster

Burt Lancaster was an intriguing actor who gave many tremendous performances although he sometimes, to my mind, marred some movies with his overuse of his grin. He was born in New York in 1913. He began his show business career as a circus acrobat and used his athletic prowess in many of his movies. He had a starring role opposite Ava Gardner in his first movie “The Killers” in 1947. He has had many cinema highlights including “The Flame and the Arrow”, “The Professionals”, “The Leopard”, “Airport” and “Atlantic City”. He died in 1994 at the age of 80.

TCM overview:

Fame came to Burt Lancaster with his first film role, as the doomed Swede in Universal’s “The Killers” (1946), but the former circus acrobat knew better than to leave his career in other hands. After less than two years in Hollywood, Lancaster formed his own production company and took the lead in such popular successes as the Technicolor swashbucklers “The Flame and the Arrow” (1950) and “The Crimson Pirate” (1952) and the noble failure “Sweet Smell of Success” (1959), later called one the greatest films of all time. The athletic, savvy but passionate Lancaster remained a box office draw for 20 years, winning a 1961 Academy Award for playing the corrupt evangelist “Elmer Gantry” (1960), but his power to pull in moviegoers waned with the death of the studio system and his own disinterest in acting the Hollywood hero. Lancaster took chances in such challenging films as “The Swimmer” (1968), “Castle Keep” (1969) and “Ulzana’s Raid” (1972) while his best work through the next decade was often in European features like “1900” (1976) and “Atlantic City” (1980), which netted him an Oscar nomination. In his later years, the actor was better known to younger Americans from TV spots for MCI, the ACLU, and AIDS research, and for his final film role in the hit “Field of Dreams” (1989). Five years after his death in 1994, the American Film Institute pointed a new generation of film fans Burt Lancaster’s way when they conferred upon him the posthumous designation of living legend. Burton Stephen Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in the largely immigrant community of East Harlem in New York City. Lancaster’s father, a second generation Irish-American and postal clerk at Manhattan’s General Post Office, had won song and dance competitions in his youth based on the strength of his rich tenor voice and his mastery of several musical instruments. His mother, the former Elizabeth “Lizzie” Roberts, had had three children before him and one after his birth, who died in infancy. Lancaster’s given name was in tribute to the surgeon who delivered him. Growing up in an Irish-Protestant household, he learned the ideals of honesty and charity but developed a yearning for adventure while exploring the streets of Manhattan. Early work came with a paper route and a job shining shoes outside of Macy’s Department Store. A preteen Lancaster was knocked down by automobiles no less than eight times and once broke his nose falling from a fire escape. During the Depression, he performed in plays at the Union Settlement House in East Harlem and worked as a basketball coach. An incident in which Lancaster was stabbed accidentally by a friend led to a near fatal staph infection and a year’s confinement in bed. A star basketball player at DeWitt Clinton High School, Lancaster continued to New York University on an athletic scholarship. He quit NYU in 1932 to join the one-ring Kay Brothers Circus. After a single season, Lancaster moved to the Russell Brothers Circus and, later, with his marriage to acrobat June Ernst, to the three-ring Barnett Brothers Circus. Lancaster finished out the 1935 summer season working at Luna Park in Coney Island before going on government relief. Applying for a job with the Works Progress Administration, he performed in WPA-sponsored circuses. After an injury to his hand and the dissolution of his first marriage, Lancaster worked as a lingerie salesman in Chicago and singing waiter in New Jersey before joining the U.S. Army’s Twenty-First Special Service Division during World War II. As part of the Army Service Forces, Lancaster put on shows for shell-shocked soldiers fresh from the frontlines, relying on his talents as a gymnast and vaudevillian to entertain the troops and his facility as a scrounger to retrieve props and costumes from bombed out buildings in Rome. Back in the United States post-war, Lancaster pursued an acting career with some diffidence. He made his Broadway debut as Burton Lancaster in Harry Brown’s wartime drama “A Sound of Hunting,” the source for Edward Dmytryk’s 1952 film “Eight Iron Men.” Though the production closed after 12 performances, Lancaster caught the eye of Hollywood agent Harold Hecht. Hecht provided Lancaster with an introduction to producer Hal Wallis, who paved the way for the actor’s debut as the doomed Swede in Robert Siodmak’s noir classic “The Killers” (1946) at Universal. Siodmak and cinematographer Elwood Bredell employed stark chiaroscuro lighting to offset Lancaster’s angular face and chiseled physique, creating an instant Hollywood star, along with his co-star Ava Gardner. Reviews of the day referred to Lancaster as a “brawny Apollo” and a “brute with the eyes of an angel.” He celebrated his success by inhabiting plush new digs in Malibu’s Pacific Palisades, into which he would move his family and his second wife, Norma Anderson, with whom he had already conceived one child. Lancaster’s film roles through the next few years traded on his tough guy image in such films as Jules Dassin’s “Brute Force” (1947), Byron Haskin’s “I Walk Alone” (1948) and Robert Siodmak’s “Criss Cross” (1949). He varied the image slightly, playing Barbara Stanwyck’s weakling husband in Anatole Litvak’s “Sorry, Wrong Number” (1948) and Edward G. Robinson’s conscience-bound son in Irving Reis’ “All My Sons” (1948), a personal project for which he took a $50,000 salary cut. With agent Hecht, Lancaster formed his own production company. Hecht-Lancaster enjoyed its first popular success with the swashbuckler “The Flame and the Arrow” (1950), directed by Jacques Tourneur. This and subsequent films, such as Michael Curtiz’ “Jim Thorpe: All American” (1951) and Robert Siodmak’s “The Crimson Pirate” (1952), allowed the actor to showcase his natural athleticism, while straight dramas such as Daniel Mann’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” (1952) and Fred Zinnemann’s “From Here to Eternity” (1953), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, encouraged him to stretch and mature as a performer. Pushing into middle age, Lancaster enjoyed a string of star turns in such high-profile productions as Robert Aldrich’s “Vera Cruz” (1954) opposite Gary Cooper, Daniel Mann’s “The Rose Tattoo” (1955) with Italian actress Anna Magnani, and as the title character in Joseph Anthony’s “The Rainmaker” (1956), co-starring Katharine Hepburn. Lancaster tried his hand at directing a feature with “The Kentuckian” (1955) and financed with Hecht and producer James Hill the Academy Award-winning “Marty” (1955), starring Ernest Borgnine. A pet project was the Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), a scalding expose of the New York publicity industry with Lancaster playing a thinly-veiled caricature of gossip columnist Walter Winchell. Shot on location in Manhattan by James Wong Howe and briskly directed by Alexander Mackendrick, the film was a box office disappointment whose failure wounded Lancaster deeply. More successful that year was John Sturges’ “The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1959), in which Lancaster played frontier lawman Wyatt Earp to Kirk Douglas’ hair-trigger Doc Holliday. Lancaster won an Academy Award for his portrayal of corrupt evangelist “Elmer Gantry” (1960) but the milestone also marked the downward arc of his tenure as a Hollywood leading man. Nonetheless, the actor received another Oscar nod for playing Robert Franklin Stroud, a criminal recidivist known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz” (1962), and traveled to Italy to work for Luchino Visconti in “The Leopard” (1963), opposite Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. A crowd pleaser for Lancaster was “The Professionals” (1966), a rousing Western co-starring Lee Marvin, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan. More pet projects included John Frankenheimer’s “The Train” (1964), Frank Perry’s “The Swimmer” (1968), and Sydney Pollack’s “Castle Keep” (1969). Uninterested in playing heroes or characters with whom he was in agreement politically, Lancaster seemed to relish thwarting audience expectations. Going through the motions in Arthur Hiller’s cash cow “Airport” (1970), Lancaster was more in his element in a string of revisionist Westerns, among them Robert Aldrich’s grim Vietnam parable “Ulzana’s Raid” (1972). He directed a second film, the murder mystery “The Midnight Man” (1974), and traveled to the Middle East to appear as “Moses, the Lawgiver” (1976), with his own son Bill contributing a cameo as the young Moses. Better late-life roles for Lancaster were as Robert De Niro’s autocratic grandfather in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “1900” (1976) and as a military advisor in the Vietnam War drama “Go Tell the Spartans” (1979), directed by Ted Post. Now firmly in elder statesman mode, the actor scored sterling notices for his roles as an aging gangland flunky in Louis Malle’s “Atlantic City” (1980) – which earned him his fourth and final Academy Award nomination – as an elderly outlaw in Lamont Johnson’s distaff Western “Cattle Annie and Little Britches” (1981), and as an astronomy-obsessed Texas oilman in Bill Forsythe’s wry comedy “Local Hero” (1983). Near the end of his life, Lancaster capped his career by reteaming with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas for Brian De Palma’s “Tough Guys” (1986), playing the dying patriarch of a sprawling but dysfunctional Long Island family in Daniel Petrie’s “Rocket Gibraltar” (1988) and appearing in the small but memorable role of an aging baseball rookie who remembers his glory days with the Chicago White Sox in the Kevin Costner classic “Field of Dreams” (1989). The production marked Lancaster’s last feature film appearance and one of his most successful. In his final years, Lancaster was a tireless spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the People for the American Way, liberal political organizations either targeted for derision by then-President George H. W. Bush as un-American or founded to counter the demographic swing in the United States toward conservatism. Lancaster also appeared in print ads supporting aid for AIDS and TV spots that urged consumers to be wary of the bold claims of the large pharmaceutical companies. Though he projected the image of ageless vitality well into his seventies, Lancaster was plagued by heart troubles, requiring quadruple bypass. In 1990, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Burt Lancaster died of a heart attack on Oct. 21, 1994, at his home in Century City, CA, just weeks before his 81st birthday. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked the actor at 19th on its list of “50 Male Movie Legends.” By Richard Harland Smith

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

James Caan is regarded as one of the leading actors of film in the 1970’s. He was born in the Bronx, New York in 1970, His first major film role was in 1964 when he played a punk in the Olivia De Havilland movie “Lady In A Cage”. Stardom came with his role as the brain damaged football player in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People” in 1968. Coppola cast him as one of the Corlone brothers in the iconic “The Godfather” in 1971 with Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Caan and Pacino’s career really took off and throughout the 1970’s both enjoyed major stardom. Caan’s films at this time included “Rollerball”, “A Bridge Too Far” and “Come A Horseman”. Caan though turned down some major box office hits such as “Blade Runner”, “Kramer V’s Kramer” and “Apocalypse Now”. He stopped acting on fim between 1982 and 1987 and then resumed his career in a more low key fashion in such films as “The Way of the Gun”, “The Yards” and “This Is My Father”.

TCM overview:

Despite an up-and-down career that was mired by excess and irrational behavior, actor James Caan was a gifted performer who was as capable of pulling heart strings as he was of breaking someone’s kneecaps. Caan emerged from the cauldron of New York City’s thriving acting scene in the 1950s to become a noted player on the stage and on television. Though he graduated to films soon after his salad days in New York after swearing off television for the next several years, he had his first big breakthrough on the small screen, playing dying football player Brian Piccolo in “Brian’s Song” (ABC, 1971). His performance in what was considered to be one of the best television movies ever made earned Caan considerable acclaim, as well as an Emmy Award nomination. But the following year put Caan on the map permanently, with his energetic portrayal of the hot-headed Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather” (1972), a role with which he was forever identified – most notably in the numerous mobster roles he played in the ensuing decades. While he had several bright spots as a leading man throughout the years, including as a television regular on “Las Vegas” (NBC, 2003-08) and as the victim of an obsessive fan in the disturbing film, “Misery” (1990), Caan settled into a niche as character actor more often than not, performing some variation of the mobster role that made him famous.

Born on March 26, 1939 in The Bronx, NY, Caan was raised in Sunnyside, Queens one of three children by his father, Arthur, a butcher and his mother, Sophie. Both his parents were Jewish immigrants from Germany who fled the Nazis before the war. He attended P.S. 150 – Christopher Street School in Brooklyn, where he caused untold amounts of trouble and was eventually kicked out, though whether or not dropping a fellow student out of a window on a bet contributed to his departure remained unclear. Caan eventually made his way to the Rhodes Preparatory School, where he continued raising hell while stuffing the ballot box to become president of the student body, as well as playing several sports, including baseball, basketball and football. After graduating a year before his fellow classmates, Caan attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. He majored in economics and continued playing football, but soon found himself homesick. Caan soon transferred to Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, which is where he discovered acting.

With the prospect of entering the meat delivery business with his father as his one career option, he began taking acting seriously, studying with such esteemed coaches as Wyn Handman at the American Place Theatre and Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. After spending several years honing his craft in the classroom, he had one of his first parts in “La Ronde,” Arthur Schnitzler’s examination of early 20th century class division and sexual mores. He made the jump to the small screen with episodes of various popular television shows, including “Naked City” (ABC, 1958-1963), “The Untouchables” (ABC, 1959-1963) and the anthology series “Alcoa Premiere” (ABC, 1961-63), which featured a new one-hour drama every week. Following episodes of “Doctor Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66) and “Ben Casey” (ABC, 1961-66), Caan began his film career with an uncredited walk-on as an anonymous soldier in the Billy Wilder comedy “Irma La Douce” (1963). He made his official film debut in the campy thriller “Lady in a Cage” (1964), playing a ruthless thug who terrorizes a wealthy widow (Olivia de Havilland).

Within just a few years after making his screen debut, Caan landed his first leading role, starring in Howard Hawk’s tense race car drama, “Red Line 7000” (1965). He followed with a supporting turn as a young gunslinger opposite John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in Hawks’ gritty, but redemptive Western, “El Dorado” (1967). Now determined to carve a career in film, Caan starred in the psychological thriller, “Games” (1967), which he followed with a turn as an American astronaut who journeys to the moon only to discover the Russians beat the United States to the punch in the early Robert Altman feature, “Countdown” (1968). After starring in forgettable movies like “Journey to Shiloh” (1968) and “Perlas Ng Silangan” (1969), Caan was a brain-damaged hitchhiker who encounters a disillusioned housewife (Shirley Knight) trying to escape the trappings of her domestic life in one of Francis Ford Coppola’s first features, “The Rain People” (1969).

Continuing along in features, he starred as the titular former high school basketball player in the failed adaptation of John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run” (1970). In the long-forgotten romantic comedy “T.R. Baskin” (1971), he was the short-time beau of a naïve young woman from the country (Candice Bergen) trying to make it in Chicago. Though he vowed to stay away from television, Caan eventually returned to the small screen for what became his breakout role; playing cancer-stricken professional football player Brian Piccolo in “Brian’s Song” (ABC, 1971). Based on Piccolo’s life and career, Caan delivered a moving performance as the Chicago Bear running back whose brief life was enhanced by his close friendship with football legend Gayle Sayers (Billy Dee Williams). Their mutual respect and admiration helped both through trying times – Piccolo helped Sayers in his struggles with injuries and racism, while Sayers was by Piccolo’s side throughout his fatal illness. Widely hailed as one of the most affecting television movies of all time, “Brian’s Song” was a significant boost for Caan, who earned an Emmy nomination for leading actor.

Caan’s triumph in “Brian’s Song” was mere prelude for his next performance in Coppola’s opening installment of his legendary crime saga, “The Godfather” (1972). Though he originally auditioned to play the cold and calculating Michael Corleone, a role that eventually went to then-unknown Al Pacino, Caan was deemed more suited to play the hot-headed Sonny, the eldest son of crime family head Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and next in line to take over. Sonny’s impetuous nature opens the floodgates to violence when he inadvertently paves the way for a hit on his father, which in turn leads to bloody retaliation while the Don recovers. In one memorable scene among many, he delivers a savage beating on his brother-in-law, Carlo (Gianni Russo), who is caught abusing Sonny’s sister, Connie (Talia Shire). But Sonny’s vengeance ultimately leads to his downfall when Carlo sells him out to a rival family, who take him down in a hail of bullets at a toll both by a gang of Mafia hit men. More than the sum of its parts, “The Godfather” was a huge hit while being hailed as a cinematic masterpiece at the same time. Numerous awards and nominations were bestowed upon the landmark film, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for Caan at the Academy Awards.

Building off his newfound fame derived from playing Sonny Corleone – a role with which he would be forever identified – Caan starred in the loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella, “The Gambler” (1974). Caan played a well-respected literature professor hopelessly addicted to gambling, which gets him into serious trouble with a local bookie (Paul Sorvino). That same year, he co-starred with Alan Arkin in “Freebie and the Bean” (1974) before moving on to play a sailor who falls for Marsha Mason in “Cinderella Liberty” (1975). As Billy Rose, he oozed charm as well as displayed a passable singing voice opposite Barbra Streisand’s reprisal of Fanny Brice in “Funny Lady” (1975), the entertaining, but familiar sequel to “Funny Girl” (1968). But most of his post-“Godfather” turns during the 1970s were either less-than-prestigious or box office duds. His one bright spot was starring in the futuristic sci-fi sports actioner, “Rollerball” (1975), playing a legendary veteran of a brutal sport caught up in a world where violence has been outlawed, resulting in an oppressed population needing an outlet to satisfy their bloodlust. Though not the biggest hit at the time of its release, “Rollerball” became a cult classic for later generations.

From “Rollerball” on throughout the rest of the century, Caan struggled to return to his heyday of the early 1970s. Though he failed for the most part, there were occasional turns where the Caan of old emerged. Meanwhile, he suffered several personal setbacks due in large part to his restless and unruly behavior, problems with substance abuse, and multiple marriages plagued by rumors of abuse. Caan was lost among an all-star ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Michael Caine and Gene Hackman in Richard Attenborough’s epic war film, “A Bridge Too Far” (1977). He gave a solid performance as an easy-going cowboy in the uneven contemporary Western, “Comes a Horseman” (1978), followed by a solid turn opposite Marsha Mason in the film adaptation of Neil Simon’s autobiographical play, “Chapter Two” (1979), which was unable to duplicate its Broadway success. Caan delivered one of his best performances in years with Michael Mann’s feature debut, “Thief” (1981), playing a professional jewel thief who longs for a normal life, but only after he pays off a crime boss (Robert Prosky) with one last job.

That year marked a turning point in Caan’s personal life, when his beloved sister, Barbara, died of cancer. Devastated by her loss, Caan spent the ensuing years trying to recover and even declined to speak of her death decades after. Meanwhile, his career began to spiral, with Caan suffering a box office dud playing the ghost of Sally Field’s lovable, but philandering choreographer husband – modeled on Bob Fosse – in “Kiss Me Goodbye” (1982). Frustrated with the direction his career was taking, Caan unofficially retired from the business and spent the next five years away from filmmaking. Instead, he split the majority of his time between his children and sinking deeper into drug addiction. He also watched his bank account dwindle, thanks to a shady accountant who helped relieve him of some money. But he re-emerged in the latter half of the decade to play a disillusioned Army sergeant who tries to dissuade a young private (D.B. Sweeney) from fighting in Vietnam in Francis Ford Coppola’s mediocre, “Gardens of Stone” (1987). He followed with a turn as a cop who is angry and resentful of an alien race integrated into human society in “Alien Nation” (1988).

As Caan entered the 1990s, the features in which he starred were more hit and miss, with many projects falling on the latter side of the ledger. Though noted for his sympathetic turn as a successful writer held captive by a deranged fan (Kathy Bates) in “Misery” (1990), he failed to win any converts with his song-and-dance routine alongside Bette Midler in “For the Boys” (1991). Caan delivered an inevitable spoof on his gangster image in “Honeymoon in Vegas” (1992), a modest hit that claimed to be nothing more than a slice of madcap entertainment. After starring as a coach of an unruly college football team in “The Program” (1993), Caan won critical plaudits for his turn as the cranky father of a small-time business man (Dennis Quaid) in “Flesh and Bone” (1993). It was around this time that Caan became fodder for the tabloid news. First, he was one of the first stars to be associated with notorious Hollywood madam, Heidi Fleiss. Just a month later, he was questioned for 10 hours by police when he woke up in a friend’s apartment with an aspiring actor, Mark Alan Schwartz, dead on the lawn after falling several stories from the fire escape. Schwartz’s death was later determined to be accidental.

While his marriage to third wife, Ingrid Hajek, was deteriorating, Caan was noted for his longtime friendship to Ronald Lorenzo, a drug trafficker who was sentenced to 11 years hard time in federal prison. In early 1994, he was arrested in North Hollywood on a misdemeanor for allegedly waving a loaded semiautomatic pistol in the face of rapper Derek Lee, a charge that was later dropped due to lack of evidence. Making life even more difficult were accusations of physical abuse, when a woman named Leesa Anne Roland sued Caan for battery, accusing that he beat her in a Century City hotel. The suit was later dismissed. Meanwhile, a year after being linked to Heidi Fleiss, Caan checked into the Exodus Recovery Center in Marina Del Rey, CA to treat his addiction to cocaine. Though tarnished, he continued to work regularly, emerging from the ashes to star alongside his son, Scott, who was making his acting debut in the crime drama, “A Boy Called Hate” (1995). In director Wes Anderson’s own debut, “Bottle Rocket” (1996), Caan played an eccentric con man who enlists three aimless young men (Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson) to perform a daring, but ill-conceived heist.

Though long associated with violent films, Caan was a surprise choice to co-star opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action thriller “Eraser” (1996), which he followed by appearing opposite Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans in the action comedy “Bulletproof” (1996). After a barely noticed turn in the stark Western, “North Star” (1996), Caan returned to television for his first small screen role since “Brian’s Song,” playing famed gumsh Phillip Marlowe in the less-than-stellar adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s unfinished novel, “Poodle Springs” (HBO, 1998). Having appeared to have put his controversial private life behind him, Caan turned out a series of solid journeyman performances, playing a Mafioso in “Mickey Blue Eyes” (1999), a movie stunt man targeted for murder in “In the Shadows” (2000), a mob-tied lawyer in “The Way of the Gun” (2000), and a corrupt New York Transit Authority employee in “The Yards” (2000). After reviving his 1974 gambler for the contrived “Luckytown” (2001), Caan found himself back on television again, playing a former outlaw-turned-prison warden in “Warden of Red Rock” (Showtime, 2001).

Caan returned to the small screen as his career advanced, not only finding more available work, but also more challenging material. He starred as a Navy captain trying to cover up the causes of an explosion aboard the U.S.S. Iowa that killed 47 sailors in the fact-based docudrama, “A Glimpse of Hell” (FX, 2001). In “The Lathe of Heaven” (A&E, 2002), he was a demented psychiatrist who uses a young man’s (Lukas Haas) ability to alter reality with his dreams to remake the world to match his vision of perfection. He next turned in a performance as a small town sheriff investigating the death of his son with the police officer (Johnathon Schaech) who may have killed him in “Blood Crime” (USA Network, 2002). After a career that had now spanned several decades, Caan made his debut as the star of a television series, “Las Vegas” (NBC, 2003-08), playing tough-as-nails casino security chief “Big Ed” Deline, who is also a loving family man despite his past as a director of counter intelligence for the CIA. Though not exactly Emmy material, “Las Vegas” debuted to strong ratings and favorable reviews throughout its run. Caan lasted four years and was replaced by Tom Selleck for the show’s final season.

Caan had a few tricks left in his movie career when he turned in a tough comedic performance as the flummoxed birth father of a man raised by North Pole elves (Will Farrell) in the goofy holiday charmer, “Elf” (2003). In “City of Ghosts” (2003), actor Matt Dillon’s directing debut, he was a shady businessman whose front man and partner (Dillon) comes looking for him in Cambodia. After a small turn as the unnamed Big Man in Lars Van Trier’s “Dogville”(2004), Caan joined his co-stars Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall to reprise their famous roles for the video game, “The Godfather: The Game” (2005). Once free from his obligations to “Las Vegas” in 2007, the actor was able to star in more projects, including a return to the Mafia world for “Wisegal” (Lifetime, 2008), a fact-based crime drama about the rise of a female mobster (Alyssa Milano). He then appeared as the President of the United States in “Get Smart” (2008), the big screen adaptation of the beloved 1960s television series, starring Steve Carell as the awkward government agent Maxwell Smart.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Kim Novak

“For a brief period Kim Novak looked like being one of the cinema’s godesses. At the beginning of 1955 she was virtually unknown. By the end of the following year, she was second only to Marilyn Monroe as the biggest female draw in pictures. You could hardly move without being confronted by pictures of her or articles in the press. (like Grace Kelly a while earlier). ‘Time’ magazine profiled her. Director Richard Quine was only one to analyse her appeal ‘ she had, he said, the proverbial quality of the lady in the parlor and the goddess in the bedroom. Kim has a ladylike quality, but it goes a step further. She had a combination of that with sex appeal and a childlike quality’. She was beautiful, not unlike a Botticelli woman with a haunding quality reminiscent of the young Dietrich. She was the sort of girl that Hollywood dreamed”. – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972)

Kim Novak was one of the loveliest actress in Hollywood movies of the 1950’s. She retired early in the last 1960’s for a life of rural domesticity in Northern California. She gave luminous performances in “Picnic”, “The Eddy DuchinStory” and of course Hitchcock’s master pievce “Vertigo” with James Stewart in 1958, which was just voted the best film ever by an international panel of cinema critics beating out for the first time ever, Orson Welles’s masterpiece of 1941, “Citizen Kane”.

TCM Overview:

A rare combination of icy aloofness and earthy sensuality helped to make actress Kim Novak one of the top box office stars in Hollywood during the 1950s and early 1960s. The former model was originally envisioned as a replacement for Marilyn Monroe by Columbia chief Harry Cohn, but Novak floundered in her early roles, which required her to provide eye candy and little else. Later films like “Picnic” (1955) and “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955) gave her the chance to display her dramatic and even vulnerable sides, but it was Alfred Hitchcock who provided her with an enduring showcase as the object of James Stewart’s affections in “Vertigo” (1958). Sadly, her career began to fade just as it had reached its peak – by the ’60s, she was floundering in lukewarm comedies and melodramas, which precipitated a hiatus from acting at the end of the decade. Novak made occasional returns to film in the 1970s and 1980s; none of which could match the intoxicating spell she cast on moviegoers during her heyday three decades prior. Her absence from the public eye only increased the allure of her legend, and preserved her status as one of postwar Hollywood’s most mysterious and appealing actresses.

Born Marilyn Pauline Novak on Feb. 13, 1933, she was one of two daughters born to her Czech parents in Chicago, IL. She began her career in front of the cameras as a teenaged model for a local department store, eventually touring the country as “Miss Deepfreeze” for a refrigerator company. The job took her to Los Angeles, where she landed an uncredited cameo in the 3-D Jane Russell feature “The French Line” (1954) for RKO. Novak’s shapely figure and cool demeanor caught the eye of Columbia talent director Max Arnow, who brought her to the attention of studio chief Harry Cohn. Novak was signed to a long-term contract and molded as a bombshell in the fashion of Marilyn Monroe, whose popularity was on the wane, thanks to her chronic health and personality issues.

According to Novak, Cohn informed her in decidedly offensive terms that she was to change her name – Kit Marlowe was the original suggestion, but both parties eventually agreed on Kim Novak – and lose weight. She was also required to take acting lessons, for which she was to pay out of her own pocket.

Novak captured the attention of critics and audiences alike with her first role, a femme fatale in the noirish “Pushover” (1953) with Fred MacMurray. Her appeal spiked even further after her turn as a Monroeesque starlet in “Phfft!” (1954), a gentle sex comedy with Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday. She broke from the sexbomb mold with her next picture, a screen adaptation of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Picnic”(1955), which cast her as a small town innocent who runs afoul of William Holden’s broken-down ex-football star. The film earned her a nomination from the BAFTA Film Awards. She continued to prove her dramatic skills as a sympathetic neighbor to Frank Sinatra’s drug addict in “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1956) and opposite Tyrone Power in “The Eddy Duchin Story” (1957). But Columbia viewed Novak as a star rather than an actress, and continued to place her in lightweight material like “The Jeanne Eagles Story” (1957) and the musical “Pal Joey” (1957) in which she tried to out-sex the studio’s aging Love Goddess, Rita Hayworth.

Despite the undermining of her burgeoning talent, the studio helped to place her in the Top 10 box office attractions of the late 1950s. Her popularity was underscored by her regular appearance in the tabloids of the day, which linked her to a variety of leading men, including Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. – a scandal at the time, given he was an African-American – and Cary Grant. One of her suitors, Ramfis Trujillo, whose father was Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, even made her the subject of debate on the floor of the United States Congress after she received the gift of a sports car from him.

After Vera Miles was forced to bow out of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958) due to her pregnancy, the acclaimed suspense director cast Novak in the dual role of the blonde and mysterious Madeleine Elster and her bookish brunette double, Judy Barton; both of whom become obsessions for private detective James Stewart. Hitchcock made excellent use of Novak’s seductive qualities, as well as her own internal conflict over her image and its manipulation by others. The result was one of the director’s finest and most enduring efforts, as well as the best role of Novak’s film career. Sadly, it would also prove to be the last time she would receive such a standout role on screen.

She reunited with Stewart and Lemmon that same year for a film version of the popular play “Bell, Book and Candle” (1958), but the results were flat and Novak’s comedic skills seemed woefully inadequate. Subsequent efforts followed the same downward path; “Strangers When We Meet” (1960) was a sudsy drama about neighborhood affairs, while “The Notorious Landlady” (1962) and “Boys’ Night Out” (1962) emphasized her physical charms over her acting abilities. Novak’s appearances in these mediocre projects were made all the more baffling by the list of films she rejected – among them were “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961), “The Hustler” (1961) and “Days of Wine and Roses” (1962). A 1964 remake of “Of Human Bondage” resulted in critical brickbats, and Billy Wilder’s “Kiss Me, Stupid” (1964) was overwhelmed by the wave of outrage from religious and moral groups over its casual attitude towards sex. The film later earned a cult following among devotees of the director and Novak.

Novak ended her long reign at the box office with “The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders” (1965), an underwhelming adaptation of the Daniel Defoe novel. Like “Kiss Me, Stupid,” it tanked with ticket buyers, though Novak gained a husband in her co-star, English theater actor, Richard Johnson. The couple was married less than a year. She soon turned her back on moviemaking for three years, only to return for another miserable flop, Richard Aldrich’s morbid camp drama “The Legend of Lylah Clare” (1968). Its failure drove her back into retirement, though there were occasional forays into TV-movies like the effective “Satan’s Triangle” (1975). There were sporadic film appearances during the decade as well, though few would consider the British horror anthology “Tales That Witness Madness” (1973) or “The White Buffalo” (1979), which pitted Charles Bronson against a bison the size of a steam liner, as worthwhile additions to Novak’s credits.

Novak began the 1980s with appearances in David Hemmings’ “Just a Gigolo” (1980), which marked the return of Marlene Dietrich to motion pictures, and the Agatha Christie mystery “The Mirror Crack’d,” which cast her and Elizabeth Taylor as – appropriately enough – fading movie queens. From 1986 to 1987, she enjoyed a recurring role on the primetime soap opera “Falcon Crest” (CBS, 1981-1990) as a shady lady on the run from European criminals who poses as the stepdaughter of wealthy industrialist Peter Stavros (Cesar Romero). The show’s producers paid tribute to Novak’s Hollywood legacy by naming her character after her original nom du screen, Kit Marlowe. She also appeared in the pilot for NBC’s revival of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (NBC/USA, 1985-89) opposite John Huston in an unsettling remake of “The Man from the South,” a memorable episode from the original series (CBS/NBC, 1955-1965).

Novak’s final screen appearance came in 1991 with “Liebestraum,” a thriller by Mike Figgis about a young man who discovers unpleasant truths about his family after returning home to visit his estranged mother (Novak). The experience was reportedly a difficult one, due to clashes between Novak and Figgis over how to play the role, and she effectively quashed any further comebacks by retiring to her home in Oregon to raise horses and llamas. Sadly, Novak lost the residence and many valuable mementos in a fire in 2000. The actress was the subject of numerous tributes in the late 1990s and early 2000s; the theatrical revival of a restored version of “Vertigo” sparked interest in her career, while the Berlin Film Festival and Eastman Kodak gave her lifetime achievement awards in 1997 and 2000, respectively. In 2010, fans were saddened to hear the 77-year-old actress had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but were heartened to hear it was caught in its early stages and that the actress was expected to make a full recovery. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

FALCON CREST, Kim Novak, TV GUIDE cover, October 25-31, 1986. TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection Ref:TVGC003 H5320 PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xx TVGC003 H5320

‘Quinlan’s Movie Stars”:

Narrow-faced, black-haired, snake-eyed but handsome American actor. (A former child performer). He was a great success in his first film as a smiling villain and repeated the trick four years later with his portrait of gangster Legs Diamond. Otherwise he perhaps failed to make the most of the changes proffered although he made a series of colourful adventure years on the Continent. Later emerged briefly as a director of independent shockers. Married and divorced from Julie Adams.

TCM Overview:

Handsome lead with dark good looks and sleek black hair who began his career as a child actor on radio and appeared in early live TV dramas in New York. After making his film debut in “Chief Crazy Horse” (1954), Ray Danton gained notice for his portrayal of Lillian Roth’s first love in the soapy biopic “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” (1955). Danton is best remembered for his portrayal of ruthless mobster “Legs” Diamond in both Budd Boetticher’s gangster melodrama, “The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond” (1960), and the 1961 biopic of gangster Dutch Schultz, “Portrait of a Mobster”. That same year he also starred in the title role of “The George Raft Story”.In 1964 Ray Danton moved to Italy, where he starred in numerous low-budget films and turned to directing with “Deathmaster” (1972). He formed his own production company in Barcelona before returning in 1975 to the US, where he become a TV director for Universal. Danton helmed episodes of “Cagney and Lacey”, “Quincy”, “Fame” and “Dallas” and served as supervising producer on “The New Mike Hammer” TV series (1986-87). Danton was at one time married to actress Julie Adams.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

IMDB Entry:

Handsome and smooth natured leading man who often played oily individuals, Ray Danton was born in New York and dramatically trained at Carnegie Tech. First debuted on-screen as a moody Native American in Chief Crazy Horse (1955) and regularly guest-starred in many 1950s TV shows including Playhouse 90 (1956), Wagon Train (1957), and77 Sunset Strip (1958)…often as a gunslinger or a slippery criminal.

Ray Danton found plenty of demand for his talents and appeared in several minor films including The Night Runner (1957), Tarawa Beachhead (1958), during which he met his wife, Julie Adams, and then as a serial rapist in The Beat Generation (1959). However, his most well remembered role was as the vicious prohibition gangster Jack Diamond in the superb The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) also starring a young Warren Oatesand directed by Budd Boetticher. Danton reprised his Legs Diamond role only a year later in the unrelated, and not as enjoyable Portrait of a Mobster (1961).

Cornering the market on playing shady characters, Danton then portrayed troubled actorGeorge Raft in The George Raft Story (1961), but he was back on the side of good in 1962 playing an Allied officer at the invasion of Normandy in The Longest Day (1962). Europe then beckoned for the virile Danton, and like many other young US actors in the early 1960s, he made several films in Italy and Spain between 1964 and 1969 with a mixture of success. Ray Danton returned to the USA in the early 1970s and appeared in several other low budget features; however, he also turned his hand to direction and his first film was the AIP production of Deathmaster (1972) starring Robert Quarry who was riding high on the success of the Count Yorga vampire films. Danton directed another couple of minor horror films before becoming involved in television and directing episodes of some of the most popular TV series of the 1970/80s including Quincy M.E. (1976), The Incredible Hulk (1978), Magnum, P.I. (1980) and Cagney & Lacey (1981).

His final directorial work was on the TV series Vietnam War Story (1987) in 1987. Danton passed away in 1992 from kidney failure aged only 61.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44@hotmail.com

The above Ray Danton IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Charlotte Rampling began her film career in the 1960’s and became a delight of the critics with some key films in the 1970’s and 80’s. Her first film was the Boulting Brothers “Rotten to the Core”. She supported Alan bates, James Mason and Lynn Redgrave in “Georgy Girl”. In 1969 she made”The Damned” in Luchino Visconti” and then later in Hollywood “Farewell My Lovely” opposite Robert Mitchum and “The Verdict” with Paul Newman.

TCM overview:

An alluring presence in features and on television since the 1960s, actress Charlotte Rampling defined sexual freedom and fearlessness over the ensuing decades in such films as “Georgy Girl” (1966), “The Damned” (1969), “Vanishing Point” (1971) and “The Night Porter” (1974). Though her immediate appeal was her physicality, Rampling became a cinematic icon in the 1970s, thanks to a screen presence that was at the same time confident, passionate and reserved. After star turns in “The Verdict” (1982) and “Angel Heart” (1987), her star waned in the late 1980s due to personal turmoil, though she rebounded in the late 1990s as Aunt Maude in “Wings of a Dove” (1997). Rampling went on to impress audiences with performances as Miss Havisham in “Great Expectations” (BBC, 1999), as well as critical darlings “Under the Sand” (2000) and “Swimming Pool” (2003). As she entered her sixties, Rampling’s career was in full bloom, with steely supporting turns in “The Duchess” (2008) and “Never Let Me Go” (2010). The definition of class for many a moviegoer the world over, Rampling’s formidable body of work made her one of the most respected actresses on two continents.

She was born Tessa Charlotte Rampling on Feb. 5, 1946 in the village of Sturmer, in Essex county, England. Her father was Godfrey Rampling, a Royal Army officer and three-time gold medalist in the 400 meter and 4×400 meter relays in the 1932 and 1936 Summer Olympics, while her mother, Anne Isabelle Gurten, was a painter from France. Her childhood was spent in transit, moving throughout the U.K., France and Gibraltar with her father’s reassignments. She was educated in part at the Jeanne d’Arc Academie Pour Jeunes Filles in Versailles, which she later described as a lonely experience due to the language barrier. Happiness was found in a cabaret act she enjoyed with her older sister, Sarah, who died by her own hand in Argentina in 1967 after the premature birth of her daughter. She briefly studied Spanish at a college in Madrid before dropping out in 1963 to travel with a cabaret troupe. Upon her return to England in 1964, she modeled to support herself while learning the craft of acting at the Royal Court Stage School. At 17, she made her television debut in a commercial for Cadbury’s chocolates; her feature debut came with a bit role of a water skier in Richard Lester’s 1965 film “The Knack And How to Get It.” More supporting roles preceded her breakthrough in “Georgy Girl” (1966) as Lynn Redgrave’s glamorous yet shallow flatmate, who gives up her baby to pursue a hedonistic life. The character’s combination of icy beauty, open sexuality, and disregard for responsibility – which the press dubbed “The Look,” per a comment from her frequent co-star, Dirk Bogarde – would serve as a template for many of her future performances.

Rampling’s smoldering intensity was best served in roles that required her to plumb the depths of the human experience. In Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” (1969), she was the wife of a German company’s vice president, who paid for his opposition to the Nazi regime by being sent to the Dachau concentration camp with her children. Her Anne Boleyn in “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” (1972) also trod a delicate line between seductiveness and sadness as she attempted to bend the will of Henry (Keith Michell) to hers before meeting her fabled end. Her most famous role during this period was in “The Night Porter” (1974), Liliana Cavani’s controversial film about a Holocaust survivor (Rampling) who became immersed in a sado-masochistic relationship with an SS officer (Bogarde) while interned at a camp, only to resume their tortured couplings years after the war. The film was condemned and celebrated with equal fervor during its release, but all parties agreed that Rampling’s performance, which featured her in feverish scenes of morbid fetishism, was the film’s highlight. The picture did much to cement Rampling as the thinking man’s sex symbol, as did a 1973 layout for Playboy shot by Helmut Newton and a widespread rumor that she lived in a ménage-a-trois with her then-husband, publicist Bryan Southcombe, and male model Randall Laurence.

“Night Porter” would prove a difficult film to surpass for any actress, but Rampling wisely sidestepped the problem by focusing on films that satisfied her as an actress, rather than those that simply generated more publicity. She criss-crossed the Atlantic on numerous occasions, playing an alluring femme fatale who ensnared Robert Mitchum’s world-weary Philip Marlowe in “Farewell, My Lovely” (1975), then made her American TV debut as Irene Adler, the ideal woman for Sherlock Holmes (Roger Moore) in the 1976 TV movie “Sherlock Holmes in New York” (NBC). Little needed to be said about films like “Orca” (1977), which pitted Rampling against a killer whale, but these were largely forgotten in the wake of pictures like “Stardust Memories” (1980), writer-director Woody Allen’s bittersweet tribute to his cinematic idols, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, with Rampling cast as a psychologically troubled former lover of Allen’s whose memory of her he simply cannot shake. Rampling also shone in a pivotal role in Sidney Lumet’s “The Verdict” (1982) as lawyer Paul Newman’s lover, whom defense attorney James Mason hired to keep track of him.

In the latter half of the decade and for much of the 1990s, Rampling stepped away from Hollywood product, preferring to – or, perhaps, finding more opportunities in – international films with a decided arthouse bent, including collaborations with Claude Lelouch with “Viva le vie” (1984) and Nagisha Oshima, who cast Rampling as a diplomat’s wife who left her husband for a chimpanzee in “Max mon Amour” (1986). In 1985, she was nominated for a French Cesar as the mistress of a murder victim who seduced inspector Michel Serrault in Jacques Deray’s “On ne meurt que 2 fois.” There were also supporting turns in American features, most notably as a victim of a grisly murder in Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart’ (1987) and the moribund remake of “D.O.A.” (1988).

During this period, Rampling also suffered from depression, which led to a nervous breakdown in the early 1990s. Therapy helped her emerge from this dark period and, quite possibly, made it possible to deal with the very public fallout from tabloid reports that revealed numerous infidelities committed by her second husband, composer Jean Michel Jarre. The dissolution of their marriage came about in 1997, the same year the Oscar-nominated “The Wings of the Dove” (1997) was released; her most widely-seen film in years, she was cast as Helena Bonham Carter’s cautious aunt who was determined her young charge would not follow in the footsteps of her disgraced mother. The worldwide success of “Dove” launched a revival of interest in Rampling, who soon resumed a steady and impressive schedule of quality projects. She was a ravishingly ruined Miss Havisham in the BBC’s 1999 adaptation of “Great Expectations,” then joined Alan Bates and Gerard Butler in Michael Cacoyannis’ 1999 film version of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.”

Her most substantive work during this period, however, came in partnership with French director Francois Ozon. Their first collaboration, 2000’s “Under the Sun,” gave her talent a magnificent showcase as a woman crippled by grief and doubt over her husband’s mysterious disappearance. Critics raved over the complexity of her performance, which explored unsettling depths of denial in its attempt to make sense of the tragedy, and for her work, Rampling received her second Cesar nomination. Her sophomore project with Ozon, 2003’s “Swimming Pool,” was a deeply personal project for the actress, as it allowed her to finally come to terms with her sister’s suicide. Rampling and her father had kept the truth about Sarah’s death from her mother for decades, until her own death in 2001; in the aftermath, Rampling began to develop a better understanding of her sister’s life and actions, and used her as motivation for her performance in “Swimming Pool.” She even used her sister’s name for her character, a mystery author plagued by writer’s block whose retreat to a country house in France is interrupted by a seemingly unhinged young woman (Ludivine Sagnier) who claimed Sarah was her mother. Another critical success, the film brought Rampling a third Cesar and a European Film Award for Best Actress.

As Rampling reached her sixth decade, her career showed no signs of slowing down. A fourth Cesar nod came in 2005 with “Lemming,” a psychological thriller with Rampling as the neurotic dinner guest whose arrival signaled an explosion of ill feelings and violence. More prominent turns followed, including that of Keira Knightley’s chilly royal mother in “The Duchess” (2008), a self-loathing woman who endured a one-night stand with paroled child molester Ciaran Hinds in Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime” (2009), and an instructor at a mysterious boarding school in Mark Romanek’s well-received “Never Let Me Go” (2010). Rampling also made news during this period for launching a lawsuit in 2009 to prevent the publication of a biography, penned by a close friend, that detailed her emotional travails in the wake of her sister’s suicide and the infidelities inflicted upon her by Jarre.

Meanwhile, Rampling starred “Rio Sex Comedy” (2010) opposite Bill Pullman and Fisher Stevens, and joined an ensemble cast for the biblically-themed drama “The Mill and the Cross” (2011). After playing the mother of Kristen Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” (2011), she narrated the animated box office hit, “Cars 2” (2011), before earning critical kudos as the dying matriarch of a family struggling to maintain control over the affairs of those around her in “The Eye of the Storm” (2011), co-starring Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis. From there, Rampling was the superior of a Secret Service agent (Sean Bean) determined to stop a suicide bombing in the taut British thriller “Cleanskin” (2012). She went on to earn critical praise and A SAG award nod for her turn as a mother whose daughter investigates her past as a World War II spy in the made-for-cable movie “Restless” (Sundance Channel, 2012), which was adapted from William Boyd’s award-winning novel.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Val Kilmer is one of the most interesting American actor on film. As he is moving into character parts. his weight gain and maturity brings an extra shade and nuance to his roles. His early movies include “Top Gun” in 1984, “Willow” and as ‘Jim Morrison’ in “The Doors”. He starred with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro ion “Heat”, “Batman Forever”, “Deja Vu” and “Felon

TCM overview:

Once described as Hollywood’s most difficult leading man, actor Val Kilmer accumulated his share of proponents over the years to offset the howls of his surprisingly vocal detractors, few of whom would argue that his best work rivaled Hollywood’s top leading men. Kilmer first made himself known as the chief rival of Tom Cruise in the blockbuster “Top Gun (1986) before delivering an uncanny performance of poet-singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991) and a mesmerizing turn as Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” (1993). Around that time, the public began hearing rumblings of Kilmer’s difficult on-set persona. While playing the Caped Crusader in “Batman Forever” (1995), Kilmer entered into the low-point of his vampish behavior, which led to on-set shoving matches between himself and director Joel Schumacher. Following a strong supporting turn in Michael Mann’s epic crime drama, “Heat” (1995), he had more on-set shenanigans with “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996), which actually marked the beginning of a turning point with his questionable behavior. Kilmer starred in such box office duds like “The Ghost and the Darkness” (1996), “The Saint” (1997) and “At First Sight” (1999) before taking more interesting turns with the crime thriller, “The Salton Sea” (2002). Kilmer had his strongest performance in years as a gay private detective opposite Robert Downey, Jr.’s dimwitted thief in the hilarious “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (2005), which led to a revitalization of his image as one of the most in-demand actors for both major Hollywood movies and independent films.

Born on Dec. 31, 1959 in Los Angeles, Kilmer was raised by his father, Eugene, an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer who made – and lost – a fortune developing a ranch once owned by Roy Rogers, and his mother, Gladys. After attending Chatsworth High School, where he was classmates with Mare Winningham and Kevin Spacey, and the Hollywood Professional School, Kilmer became the youngest student at the time to be allowed entrance into the famed Julliard School. While at Juilliard, he and his classmates wrote and performed “How It All Began,” a play that was eventually produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival with Kilmer in the lead. Meanwhile, he landed parts in “Henry IV, Part I” at the NYSF and “As You Like It” for the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. Kilmer soon made his Broadway debut opposite Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon in “The Slab Boys” (1983). The following year, he made his feature debut with a starring role in “Top Secret!” (1984), a spy parody and all-around Hollywood spoof from the goofy minds of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker which later achieved a cult following.

Also at the time, Kilmer had a supporting role in “One Too Many” (ABC, 1985), a rather stark “ABC Afterschool Special” that cautioned teens against drunk driving. In the comedy “Real Genius” (1985), he played a brilliant science student at a fictional university who teams up with a freshman (Gabe Jarret) to stop a wayward physics professor (William Atherton) from experimenting on unsuspecting students. Graduating from teen comedies to big studio films, Kilmer kick-started his career by costarring opposite Tom Cruise in one of the biggest movies of any decade, “Top Gun” (1986), playing the cocky F-14 pilot and chief antagonist Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, who butts heads with an equally brash Navy pilot, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise), over the coveted Top Gun award. Despite upstaging Cruise with the critics, Kilmer was left behind in the dust professionally, as the other actor rocketed to superstardom. Meanwhile, he stumbled with his next few projects while murmurings that he was a “difficult” actor began to arise. After publishing My Edens After Burns, a collection of poems that included fond remembrances of former companion Michelle Pfeiffer, Kilmer displayed a flair for fantasy heroics as the dwarf-friendly lead in Ron Howard’s “Willow” (1988), a lavish but uninvolving fantasy from producer George Lucas that proved to be a commercial disappointment. While building his career throughout the decade, he also developed a reputation as something of a ladies man, dating a wide range of actress, including Cher – who was many years his senior – and Ellen Barkin.

Kilmer met his future wife Joanne Whalley on the set of “Willow,” and following their marriage in February 1988, the pair co-starred together in “Kill Me Again” (1989), director Tom Dahl’s post-modern noir about a seedy private detective (Kilmer) hired by a woman (Whalley) to fake her own death in order to escape mobsters from whom she had stolen money. Kilmer next earned considerable attention and plaudits for one of the best performances of the year when he carved out an uncanny portrait of tortured singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s metaphysical, but often muddled biopic, “The Doors” (1991). In order to secure the part, Kilmer videotaped himself singing Door songs. Though Stone was initially unimpressed, former Doors producer Paul Rothchild was struck by Kilmer’s ability to mimic Morrison’s voice. Stone cast the actor in the pivotal role, which proved in retrospect to be a wise decision: without Kilmer’s domineering performance, the film may have performed worse than it did, thanks to an uneven portrayal of the singer and weak supporting performances. Meanwhile, Kilmer’s method acting demands – including that everyone call him Jim on set – later prompted Stone to acknowledge that the actor “is passionate about his work; with the wrong approach, you may see a side of him you don’t like.”

Kilmer enjoyed a critical hit as the star of Michael Apted’s “Thunderheart” (1992), an engrossing crime drama in which he played a part-Sioux FBI agent who confronts his heritage while investigating a murder on an Oglala Sioux reservation. Part-Cherokee himself, Kilmer delivered a finely tuned performance noted for its subtle intensity. He put his film career back on commercial track with an acclaimed performance as the tubercular gunslinger, Doc Holliday, stealing the thunder from Kurt Russell’s strong portrayal of Wyatt Earp in the surprise hit Western, “Tombstone” (1993). Even though it proved to be successful both at the box office and with critics, “Tombstone” was marred with onset difficulties, including the firing of original director, Kevin Jarre. Let go after a month of shooting, Jarre later remarked that “[t]here’s a dark side to Val that I don’t feel comfortable talking about.” To back his claim, he relayed an anecdote to Entertainment Weekly about Kilmer taking a locust from an excited stand-in and eating it in front of him before saying, “As you know, I have a reputation for being difficult. But only with stupid people.” Meanwhile, Kilmer lost his father in April 1993, which precipitated a falling-out with his own brother, leading to their estrangement from each other for many years thereafter.

After giving a quirky portrayal of Elvis, complete with a rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel,” in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted “True Romance” (1993), Kilmer starred in “The Real McCoy” (1993), a crime thriller in which Kim Basinger played a burglar just released from prison and forced to pull one last heist to save her son. His on set troubles continued when news surfaced that he lost control during an argument with director Russell Mulcahy over changing his scenes, leading to him firing a prop gun at a car. Following a one-year absence from the screen, Kilmer had a banner 1995 when he was tapped by director Joel Schumacher to succeed the departing Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader in “Batman Forever” (1995). Pitted against notorious scene stealers Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones as the Joker and Two-Face respectively, Kilmer brought more intensity and humor to arguably the best installment of the franchise, a blockbuster earning over $200 million worldwide. But again, stories about Kilmer’s onset behavior emerged, with Schumacher refusing to mince his words when relaying details about a shoving match between the two: “He was rude and inappropriate. He was childish and impossible. I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second. Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me – but it was bliss.” The normally gentile Schumacher later told Premiere magazine, “Val is the most psychologically troubled human being I’ve ever worked with. The tools I used to work with him – tools of communication, of patience and understanding – were the tools I use on my five-year-old godson.”

Both Warner Bros. and Schumacher were happy to see Kilmer leave the Batman franchise in favor of casting George Clooney for “Batman & Robin” (1997). But director Michael Mann, who cast Kilmer in a supporting role for his crime epic, “Heat” (1995), had nothing but praise for the actor. Mann was a lone voice of support from the directors encountering Kilmer in the mid-1990s; John Frankenheimer also had zero tolerance for the actor after taking over the disastrous sci-fi horror thriller “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996) from fired helmer Richard Stanley. Whenever Kilmer sought to contribute his ideas, Frankenheimer snapped and said, “I don’t give a f*ck!” Kilmer also ran afoul of a cameraman, whom he burned with a cigarette while seemingly joking around. Of Kilmer, Frankenheimer was unrelenting in his assessment: “I don’t like Val Kilmer. I don’t like his work ethic, and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.” But of himself, Kilmer said, “Often I have been accused of being difficult, when in fact it’s a difficult character that I’m playing. (Hollywood) confuses the two. I work hard. I don’t know anybody who’s good at their job who doesn’t get into trouble.” Amidst the height of his reputation as a difficult actor, Kilmer was criticized for his performance in Stephen Hopkins’ “The Ghost and the Darkness” (1996), which earned the actor a Razzie award nomination for Worst Supporting Actor.

As if things were not difficult enough, Kilmer split with long-time wife, Joanna Whalley, shortly after the birth of their son, Jack, in 1995. But he soon found himself in the arms of model Cindy Crawford, though that particular relationship failed to last very long. Meanwhile, his penchant for casually slipping into different voices and guises led him to choose the role of Simon Templar, “The Saint” (1997). Though hopes for establishing a franchise were high, the ridiculously implausible story doomed Leslie Charteris’ debonair detective to inhabit yet another sub-par movie. By the time he voiced Moses in DreamWorks’ debut animated feature “The Prince of Egypt” (1998), Kilmer was determined to bury his bad boy image. He played the doting dad to his two children for journalists and ditched Hollywood for Pecos, NM, where he enjoyed fly-fishing and other outdoor activities on his 6,000 acre ranch. Back on screen, he played a blind man romancing Mira Sorvino, whose life is upended when his vision is restored in the mawkish “At First Sight” (1999).

Following a brief, but memorable turn as artist Willem DeKooning in director-star Ed Harris’ “Pollack” (2000), Kilmer made a career misstep when he starred as an astronaut on Mars in the seemingly commercial, but oxygen-deprived sci-fi vehicle, “Red Planet” (2000). He next starred in the meth-fueled neo-noir thriller “The Salton Sea” (2002), in which he played a crystal meth addict who tries to find his wife’s murderer by working with a pair of undercover narcotics cops (Anthony Lapaglia and Doug Hutchison) while trying to save his abused neighbor (Deborah Kara Unger). After a few little seen turns in low-profile projects, Kilmer returned to the limelight with his convincing portrayal of 1970s porn king John Holmes for the true-life crime drama, “Wonderland” (2003), based on the porn actor’s alleged involvement in the bloody drug-related murders on Los Angeles’ Wonderland Avenue in 1981. He next received positive reviews as a maverick government agent trying to recover a politico’s kidnapped daughter (Kristen Bell) in writer-director David Mamet’s crime drama “Spartan” (2004). Kilmer then starred as Moses in a controversial stage version of “The Ten Commandments” (2004), a glossy musical that appeared to many as being a Hollywood parody. The musical was forced to cut back performances for retooling following scathing reviews.

Kilmer reunited with Oliver Stone to co-star in the director’s epic drama, “Alexander” (2004), an ambitious, but ultimately failed look at the rise to power and eventual fall of conqueror Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell). Amidst the lavish excesses of Stone’s production and the endless narration from Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), Kilmer delivered a convincing portrayal of Alexander’s controlling father, King Philip II. Following a brief appearance as an FBI instructor in “Mindhunters” (2005), he was nothing short of brilliant as a homosexual private investigator partnered with none-too-bright petty thief (Robert Downey, Jr.) who is dragged into a murder investigation in “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (2005), written and directed by Shane Black. Undeniably, the comedic chemistry between Kilmer and fellow reformed bad boy Downey, Jr. was infectious both on screen and off. Following a supporting role in the period crime thriller “10th and Wolf” (2006), he took a supporting role as a government agent who has knowledge of why an ATF agent (Denzel Washington) suddenly has strange memories about the future regarding a cataclysmic explosion in “Déjà Vu” (2006).

Over the next few years, Kilmer kept something of a lower profile despite working steadily in small budget films and on television. Following an episode of “Numb3rs” (CBS, 2004-10), he was the voice of KITT in the re-imagining of “Knight Rider” (NBC, 2008), which started as a two-hour television movie and wound up being a short-lived series during the 2008-09 season. Kilmer next had roles in little seen features like the crime thriller “Conspiracy” (2008), the Western “Comanche Moon” (2008) and the prison drama “Felon” (2008). Continuing along with independent film, he co-starred opposite Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009), Werner Herzog’s remake of Abel Ferrera’s crime drama, “Bad Lieutenant” (1992). After a supporting role in “American Cowslip” (2009), an offbeat black comedy about an agoraphobic heroin addict (Ronnie Gene Blevens), he played Dieter von Cunth, sworn enemy to distracted special ops agent, “MacGruber” (2010), played by Will Forte, based on his recurring sketch on “Saturday Night Live” (NBC, 1975- ).

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Sam Elliott, Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer & Bill Paxton

Margaret Sullavan

“Margaret Sullavan’s Hollywood career was not very lucrative but she made some good films. So few of them are seen, however except on the Late Night Movie on TV that her reputation stands less high than it should and seems confined to the people who loved her ‘back when’. She was an enchantress pitched in temperament and magnetism somewhere curiously enough between the two Hepburns.

She was warm and winning, honest and independent, playing with an underlying humour the patient and suffering heroines she was most often given. She spoke lightly and quickly, with inflections that enhanced the old drivel thought up for her.

Her mastery of both comedy and drama was complete. yet in life she suffered from a great lack of self confidence and was consequently one of the most difficult and temperamental of stars. Nor did she care for filming, which did’ntt help matters.” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars” (1970).

Margaret Sullavan has a special place among film buffs. She had a glorious cinema presence which was accompanied by a beautifully modulated speaking voice.

She was born in 1909 in Norfolk, Virginia. She came to Hollywood in 1933 and made her debut in “Only Yesterday”. Her film career was not prolific, only sixteen films. However she glowed in such movies as “Little Man What Now” in 1934, “So Red the Rose” and “Three Comrades”. Her final film was “No Sad Songs for Me” in 1950. Thereafter she concentrated on the stage and died aged 50 in New Haven, Connecticut on 1st January 1960.

TCM overview:

A petite brunette with large eyes dominating her small, attractively angular face, Margaret Sullavan made her stage debut with the University Players (which included James Stewart and Henry Fonda) in Falmouth, MA, and entered films in 1933. With her husky voice and unique, magnetic charm Sullavan was an immediate success, proving herself airy and delightful in comedy (“The Good Fairy” 1935, “The Shop Around the Corner” 1939) and wistful and poignant in drama (“Only Yesterday”, her 1933 debut; “Three Comrades” 1938).

Her unstable temperament and her critical disdain for the Hollywood establishment, however, significantly reduced her screen output, facilitating her many returns to Broadway.

She was married to Henry Fonda, William Wyler and producer-agent Leland Hayward. Sullavan suffered a number of mental health problems (including severe depression brought on partly by increasing deafness in middle age) and died of a drug overdose. A family memoir, “Haywire” (1977), was written by her daughter, Brooke Hayward.

Trisha Noble began her show business career as a singer Patsy Ann Noble in her native Australia. She was born in 1944 in New South Wales. In the 1970’s she moved to California and guest starred in such TV series as “Colombo” and “Baretta”. In 1986 she returned to Australia and continued her career there.

IMDB entry:

Dick Clark, immediately signed her as a regular on his series “Bandstand”.

Around that time, Patsy Ann signed a deal with the HMV record label and issued her debut single “I Love You So Much It Hurts” in November 1960. She released three more singles on HMV, of which “Good Looking Boy” became her biggest hit when it reached #6 in Melbourne and #16 in Sydney. In 1961, she was the winner of the first Logie Award for the Best Female Singer on Australian Television. She followed that with a successful acting debut at the Independent Theatre, Sydney, playing the lead role of Carmel in “The Grotto”. Shortly thereafter, Patsy Ann and her mother left for London to further her career. She launched her British career in 1963 and shared her first BBC radio show withThe Beatles, with whom she also appeared on British television. During this period, she recorded for EMI (England and France) with some chart success and performed at the London Palladium and at the Olympia Theatre in Paris.

By 1965, she had turned to acting, taking the role of Francesca in the British thriller Love Is a Woman (1966). She toured England with Cliff Richard and began to work on English television in dramatic and variety shows. In 1967, she married law student Allan Sharpe. During that year, she changed her stage name from Patsy Ann to Trisha and continued to work in British television and film. In her early 20s, she appeared on an Engelbert Humperdinck musical special and was seen by an American producer, who signed her to star in revue at the Las Vegas Sands Hotel. After a six-month engagement, she moved to Los Angeles and made her home there, making guest appearances on various television series. Trisha returned to Australia briefly in the early 1970s and starred in the stage musical “Sweet Charity”. After seven years of marriage, she and Allan divorced and she threw herself into her work. Upon her return to the United States, she worked extensively in television series, miniseries and feature films.

In 1976, she wed American fashion model Scott MacKenzie and the following year gave birth to their son, Patrick. However, after four years of marriage, the couple divorced in 1980. Despite personal setbacks, Trisha’s acting career continued to thrive as she co-starred with Don Knotts and Tim Conway in The Private Eyes (1980) and she landed the role of Detective Rosie Johnson in the Aaron Spelling / Robert Stack police drama Strike Force (1981). In 1983, her father, Buster, had a heart attack and was not expected to live long. At that point, Trisha made a difficult and life-changing decision. She decided to leave her successful acting career in Hollywood to return home to Australia to be with her family. She enjoyed seven years with her father before his death in July 1990. In 1985, Trisha married pharmaceutical scientist Peter Field and started a mineral-water business, Noble Beverages. Several years later, though, her third marriage ended in divorce and the business fell on hard times. At that point, Trisha decided to sell the business and get back to her first love — show business.

In 1997, a 25-song CD collection of her early 1960s recordings was released: “The Story of Patsy Ann Noble: Hits & Rarities”. In August, she filmed a small role in the CBS miniseries Blonde (2001) and was cast in a secret role in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002). Shortly thereafter, Trisha was cast to co-star with David Campbell in the musical “Shout!” in the role of Thelma O’Keefe, mother of Australian rock ‘n’ roll star, Johnny O’Keefe. The musical opened on January 4, 2001 in Melbourne, Australia, and a cast recording followed in March. To top it all, she was nominated in May for an Australian Entertainment MO Award in the category: Female Musical Theatre Performer of the Year for her role in “Shout!”.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tina Carwile

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

The Times obituary in 2021.

In 1962, when Patsy Ann Noble arrived in a wintry London, she was little known as a singer outside her native Australia. She expected she would face a hard slog if she wanted to make her name as a performer. Instead she soon found herself on tour with Cliff Richard and the Shadows, then one of the biggest bands in the country.

She released several singles, including Sour Grapes and Accidents Will Happen, and then featured on a radio programme with the Beatles, and a television show, Thank Your Lucky Stars, with the Rolling Stones. Appearances followed on such primetime variety programmes as Sunday Night at the London Palladium, Juke Box Jury, Ready, Steady, Go! and The Morecambe & Wise Show — all within her first 18 months in the UK.

Having something of a flair for self-projection, she then decided it was time the world saw that she could also act. “I was raised in a show business family as an all-round performer, not just a pop singer,” she explained. She was soon appearing in all-star revues such as the popular Five Past Eight Show at the Glasgow Alhambra in 1965 and in the 1966 production Night is for Delight, alongside Prunella Scales, Lance Percival and Elisabeth Welch, with sketches written by the likes of Harold Pinter and John Mortimer, at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford.

In the poster of Death is a Woman (called Love is a Woman in the US), Noble recalled Racquel WelchALAMY

She also landed a role on television, playing a different comic character every week on The Dick Emery Show. After that, her ambition undimmed, she decided she wanted to be in the movies. In 1966 she made her acting debut as a sexy villainess in the lacklustre British spy film Death Is a Woman. Posters for the film showed her posing in her bikini in the manner of Raquel Welch.

After marrying Allan Sharpe, a law student, in 1967, she changed her professional name to Trisha Noble and relaunched herself with blonde hair but she continued to be offered the same mix of roles. Her part in Carry on Camping (1969) was cut back but she made an impression as the high priestess of the Vestal Virgins in the opening episodes of the Frankie Howerd comedy series Up Pompeii (1970).

During a visit back to Australia she complained about the British film industry’s attitude towards women. “A lot of wonderful actresses are out of work because they won’t strip,” she said. “I have turned down so many offers because I won’t degrade myself.”

Her change of direction may have paid off artistically, but there was still something missing. “For one full year,” she later said, “I didn’t see the sun at all. It was driving me crazy, waking up every morning and looking out at all that grey. I need sunshine to feel good inside.”

Noble went blonde and renamed herself Trisha in an effort to win better rolesREX FEATURES

While singing in an Engelbert Humperdinck television special, she was spotted by an American producer and invited to star in a revue at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. She went like a shot. “When I first saw LA it was as though I had come home, like I was immediately wrapped in a blanket that was home. It was amazing how I fell in love with it from the first moment I saw it,” she said.

From 1971 she notched up parts in a steady stream of American television shows, notably The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Columbo and The Rockford Files.

Julie Adams obituary in “The Guardian”.

Julie Adams, who has died aged 92, starred opposite some of the screen’s most handsome actors, including Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Glenn Ford and Elvis Presley. Yet her enduring fame rests on the role of the inamorata of the title character of Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

The prehistoric amphibious creature, dubbed the Gill Man, with webbed hands, fish head and a scaly skin, first sees Adams, then billed as Julia, while she is swimming under water. The monster stalks and abducts her, taking her to his lair.

As Kay Lawrence, the only woman in a group of geologists in the Amazon, Adams convincingly conveys her terror of the creature. The trailer for Jack Arnold’s classic horror movie, which was first shown in 3D, describes Adams’s “beauty [as] a lure even to the man-beast from the dawn of time”.

Adams worked for Universal Pictures throughout the 1950s, mostly playing steadfast women, though generally seen only in terms of her relationships with men. Among her best films were distinguished westerns by masters of the genre – Anthony Mann, Raoul Walsh and Budd Boetticher.

In Mann’s superb Bend of the River (1952), Adams is a seductive settler falling in love with the wagon train guide (an embittered James Stewart). For Walsh’s The Lawless Breed (1953), she is a former saloon gal who finds redemption in her marriage to an ex-con (Hudson, a fellow Universal contractee). When soldier Ford is branded a coward in Boetticher’s The Man from the Alamo (1953), Adams is one of the few people who believes in him.

Born Betty May Adams in Waterloo, Iowa, she was the daughter of Esther (nee Beckett) and Ralph Adams, a travelling cotton buyer. Her family moved a great deal; the longest she lived in one place was eight years in Blytheville, Arkansas. After winning a beauty contest there, Adams left home, where her heavy drinking father was becoming abusive, to stay with an aunt in California.

There, she decided to pursue an acting career. It was not long before she was appearing in half-a-dozen shoestring westerns for Lippert Pictures. In 1951, she gained a Universal contract and a change of name, to Julia, and lost her southern accent. At the same time, the studio had her legs insured for $125,000, with the intention of exposing them as much as possible.

Her first leads for the studio were in Bright Victory, as a rich girl trying to adjust to her fiance (Arthur Kennedy) returning blinded from the war; and in a double role of a daughter and her silent movie star mother in the whodunnit Hollywood Story (both 1951). In The Mississippi Gambler (1953), she loses out to Piper Laurie in wooing Tyrone Power.

She more than ably fulfilled her decorative function in a string of solid dramas including Horizons West (1952) and One Desire (1955), both opposite Hudson, and Six Bridges to Cross with Curtis in 1955, where she was first billed as Julie.

Although Adams was much in demand in feature films, she lacked the je ne sais quoi that makes a great film star.

In fact, it was her male co-stars who were the box-office attractions. So when her Universal contract was up in 1957, she was able to transition into a rewarding television career lasting over five decades.

One noteworthy appearance in television history was as the only client of the defence lawyer Perry Mason ever to be convicted in the 60s series. More recently, Adams had a role in Murder, She Wrote, as an estate agent, Eve Simpson, and sometime-helper of amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher, played by Angela Lansbury (1987-93).

Among the roles in the few feature films she made following the end of her Universal contract was the “older” woman who makes a play for rodeo star Presley in Tickle Me (1965), and she was effective as cop John Wayne’s ex-wife in McQ (1974).

Her autobiography, The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections from the Black Lagoon, which she co-wrote with her son Mitchell, was published in 2011.

Adams was first briefly married to the screenwriter Leonard Stern. They divorced in 1953, and in 1955 she married the director and actor Ray Danton, with whom she appeared in The Looters (1955) and Tarawa Beachhead (1958). He died in 1992.

She is survived by their two sons, Steven and Mitchell.

• Julie (Julia, Betty May) Adams, actor, born 17 October 1926; died 3 February 2019