Posted in Actors, Actresses, Hollywood, The thirties, tagged Bette Davis, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Cary Grant, Dolores Del Rio, Hollywood homes, Mary Pickford on March 30, 2015| 2 Comments »
Posted in Actors, Actresses, Article, Movies, The forties, tagged Dorothy Lamour, Rainbow Island on December 19, 2014| 2 Comments »
Rainbow Island – screen play by Walter DeLeon and Arthur Phillips; based on a story by Seena Owen; music and lyrics by Burton Lane and Ted Koeller; directed by Ralph Murphy for Paramount. At Loew’s Criterion.
Lona . . . . . Dorothy Lamour
Toby Smith . . . . . Eddie Bracken
Pete Jenkins . . . . . Gil Lamb
Ken Masters . . . . . Barry Sullivan
Doctor Curtis . . . . . Forrest Orr
Queen Okalana . . . . . Anne Revere
High Priest Kahuna . . . . . Reed Hadley
Alcoa . . . . . Marc Lawrence
Executioner . . . . . Adia Kuznetzoff
Miki . . . . . Olgan San Juan
Moana . . . . . Elena Verdugo
The same mad formula for comedy which heretofore has been used to great advantage by Paramount in its memorable “Road to —” films is given a fair going-over in the latest of that studio’s musical shows, a gaudy item called “Rainbow Island,” which came to Loew’s Criterion yesterday. Only this time a new pair of comics, Eddie Bracken and Gil Lamb, are filling the zany roles formerly apportioned to Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and Barry Sullivan is an adjunct who makes romance with the invariable Dorothy Lamour. But the same sort of nonsense is in order, the same sort of florid burlesque. If only the script were better and Bracken and Lamb were Crosby and Hope—.
Well, everything can’t be expected. And there is certainly enough moonshine here to dazzle the risibilities of the average seeker of escape. For Bracken and Lamb are funny fellows (who only pale by comparison) and Miss Lamour — back 
to saronging — gets the most out of what she has. Likewise, for visual entertainment, there are other characters, also in sarongs, who do a great deal with their resources to adorn the back—and foreground.
The present excursion finds three sailors—the Messrs. Bracken, Lamb and Sullivan—cast away on a South Pacific island found only on the charts at Paramount. Here the suspicious natives discover that the Bracken phiz bears a truly amazing resemblance to the high man on their totem pole, and they enthrone Mr. Bracken, temporarily, as the materialization of their god. Unfortunately, this deity is supposed to possess none of the appetites of man, and the lives of Mr. Bracken and his fellows depend upon his proof of godly abstinence. What with the islands’ abundance of food and other tempting things—well, you can see the dilemma and also the line of the film.
Mr. Bracken makes a very balmy comic, and when he is on the screen there is constant cause for amusement, if only to look at him. His qualms in the face of 
native menace, his dubious displays of pomp and his general all-around dopiness are masterful scoops of burlesque. A scene in which Mr. Bracken, as the god, gives paternal advice to a maiden on how to please a husband is truly side-splitting stuff.
Mr. Lamb is also amusing, but in a less sheepish way. Indeed, his butts of angular clowning are occasionally too blunt to be enjoyed. Mr. Sullivan fits into the picture as a romantic second-lead should, and Miss Lamour moans one song, “Beloved,” and generally keeps out of the main road. There is a good bit of wiggle-dancing and other Technicolored side-shows in this film. But it is mainly the job of Mr. Bracken that makes it worth going to see.
Also on the bill at the Criterion is “Target Japan,” a two-reel Navy film, which explains—with battle scenes—the general strategy of our Pacific war through Guam. It is an eminently timely picture, although it fails to reveal anything about the war which the average news reader does not already comprehend.
Movie review by Bosley Crowther – The New York Times, October 26, 1944
Posted in Actors, Television, tagged A Man Of Action, Peter Wyngarde, Tabak on September 15, 2014| 4 Comments »
And he was very popular in Norway in the late sixties because of a TV series I haven’t got a snowballs chance in hell remembering what was called – Ted
Image found at Flashbak
Posted in Actors, Actresses, Movies, tagged Cool ladies, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, The African Queen on August 11, 2014| 10 Comments »
… taking five and a smoke during the filming of “The African Queen” one of my all time favourite movies. Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in the same movie, what more can you ask for – By the way, man, what a cool lady – Ted
I stand corrected! And thanks to the three of you, Terry, Mary & DQ Slotlins who stood for the correction. The lady on the picture is of course Lauren Bacall (another of my absolute favourites, by the way).
The text where I found the image said it was too, but it also said she was taking a rest during the filming of “The African Queen”. I took a chance guessing that the blogger had got the name wrong not the movie, totally forgetting that Bacall was married to Bogart. At least some of the text was right, Lauren Bacall is also a very cool lady 😉 – Ted
Here they are all three taking a break during the filming: 
More Bacall images HERE on my Google+/Picasa albums
Posted in Actors, Article, Movies, Television, tagged American actors, James Garner on July 21, 2014| 3 Comments »
There are actors who become stars because they strike awe — because they’re imposing, powerful, monumental. And then there was James Garner.
Garner, who died Saturday night of natural causes at age 86, was no toothpick of a man — he was a former high school football and basketball player who kept his rugged, weathered good looks long into life. But the characters he became famous for, especially TV’s Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, won you over with their minds. They got through trouble with cleverness, charm and subtle wit. Garner wasn’t the kind of star who won love because he seemed so elevated above you: he made you love him by showing you that he was on your level — had in fact 
spent some time down in the dirt, brushed off the dust, and moved on with a rascally smile.
The handsome Garner was a natural for westerns and war pictures and adventure movies. But the characters that proved the best fit for his natural, easygoing charm were anything but typical screen stars. He came of age as an actor in the heyday of the TV western, not by playing an upstanding lawman but as the wily, disarming card shark Bret Maverick in the action-comedy Maverick, a gambler and ladies’ man who had the fastest mind in the West.
Garner’s most famous role, as Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files in 1974, was the perfect meeting of Garner’s talents and the spirit of the age. Like Bret Maverick, Rockford was a screen-hero archetype who became all the bigger for being cut down to size: a private detective who’d spent time in jail on a bad rap, always one step ahead of the bill collectors and one good night’s sleep shy of his peak. He was not a pressed suit; he was a rumpled jacket that could use a dry cleaning. And that was what made him wear so comfortably.
In the end, charm and humor wear more comfortably than rage and drama. Audiences love that kind of character. Fate loves that kind of character. If you need a quick thumbnail philosophy for living, it would not be a terrible one to simply remember to ask yourself, whenever you face adversity, “What would Jim Rockford do?” For posing that question, and giving it such an entertaining answer, thank you James Garner, and RIP.
Text from TIME
Posted in Actors, Movies, People, tagged Ian Fleming, James Bond, Sean Connery on July 19, 2014| 4 Comments »
I can just as well admit it at once, I’m a James bond buff. I got all Fleming’s books both in worn paperbacks from my younger days and nice bookshelf hard cores, and I’ve read them all several times. And like with most real Bond buffs, there is only one James Bond for me; Sean Connery. Apart from Daniel Craig the rest of them are a bunch of sissies. My absolute favourite Bond Movie is Thunderball and my heart soars when I read here that that movie is still the top grossing of all Bond movies. The reason it is my favourite is that it is the Bond movie that has a story line closest to the the original book – Ted
In context
The Walter PPK was not James Bond’s weapon of choice as it says on the illustration. He was forced to start using that because M found Bond’s weapon of choice, a Beretta 32 cal. with a skeleton grip lacking in stopping power.Watching the movies is not enough, read the books 😉
Image found at my Swedish friend Rincewind’s blog Erotixx
Posted in Actors, Actresses, Article, Entertainment, The fifties, tagged 1958, Dirk Bogarde, Drury Lane theatre, Ingrid Bergman, John Strachey, Julie Andrews, My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison, Terence Rattigan on April 29, 2012| 1 Comment »
The Broadway musical My Fair Lady has opened for its first night in London, to a rapturous reception. The event, at the Drury Lane theatre, was star-studded: Ingrid Bergman, Dirk Bogarde, Terence Rattigan and John Strachey were among those who arrived at the theatre to be greeted with cheers and applause by a crowd of several hundred lining the street.
The show has also attracted the attention of ticket touts for the first time in the West End. Black-market tickets were selling for as much as £5 – almost five times their original prices. There were several incidents between police and touts before the show, and two men were later arrested and charged.
I’m happier in the part in London
Rex Harrison
The show kept much of its original Broadway cast, with Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins, and Julie Andrews playing Eliza Doolittle. From the moment the curtain went up to reveal the opening scene, at St Paul’s Church outside Covent Garden, the applause was thunderous.
Mr Harrison, who has played Professor Higgins for the last two years in New York, admitted he was nervous before his first performance in front of a London audience. But, he said, he was glad to be back in London. "I’m happier in the part in London," he said, "for I am home, and Drury Lane is a glorious theatre to work in."
Sold out
The excitement surrounding the transfer of the musical to London has been intense. Advance ticket sales are estimated at over £350,000, and the first month is already sold out – with more expensive seats sold out until the end of the year.
The London show is expected to match its Broadway version in breaking records: the New York show has earned $7.3m (£2.5m) in its two-year run, overtaking South Pacific to become the second-highest grossing Broadway musical. Only Oklahoma, which has made $9m (£3.2m), is more popular. The actors are now waiting nervously for the first reviews. But whatever the critics think, the show’s popularity is already assured.
In Context
The reviews of the first night of My Fair Lady were unanimous in declaring the London version of the musical a triumph.The show went on to break all box-office records, in London and New York. The Broadway musical’s total takings exceeded the then all-time highest figure of $10m (£3.4m), while in London it ran for just over five and a half years, with 2281 performances, and earned a record £3.5m. By the time it closed, in October 1963, almost four and a half million people had seen it.
Four years later, Warner Brothers bought the film rights for another record sum of £2m. The film was released in 1964: it also starred Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins, with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle. It was nominated for 12 Oscars, winning eight, and remains a classic to this day.
Article from BBC home’s “On This day”
