An Urban Legend in More Ways Than One

After an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club in Biloxi, Mississippi, Actress Jayne Mansfield, her attorney Sam Brody, and their driver, Ronnie Harrison, along with the actress’s children Miklós, Zoltan, and Mariska, headed in Stevens’ 1966 Buick Electra 225 to New Orleans, where Mansfield was to appear in an early morning television interview. On June 29, 1967, at approximately 2:25 a.m., on U.S. Highway 90, the car, which was reportedly going 80 miles per hour, crashed into the rear of a tractor-trailer that had slowed down because of a truck spraying mosquito fogger. The children survived with minor injuries, but the adults were killed instantly.

Rumors that Mansfield was dacapitated have been proven untrue, though she did suffer severe head trauma. This urabn legend was possibly spawned by the appearance in police photographs of what resembles a blonde wig tangled in the car’s smashed windshield. It is believed that this was either a wig that Mansfield was wearing at the time, or was her actual hair and scalp and that she was scalped in the crash.

Classic Women in Cinema: CAROLE LOMBARD

CAROLE LOMBARD: 1908-1942

Dancing With the Stars

Fred Astaire died June 22 1987 at the age of 88 from complications of pneumonia. Born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, Astaire was a Hollywood legend as well as a Broadway stage dancer, choeographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of seventy-six years, during which he made thirty-one musical films.

He was rated as one of greatest dancers of the 20th century, and he is generally acknowledged to have been the most influential dancer in the history of filmed and televised musicals. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.

#9 ~ The Family Stone

This movie came out with a lot of hype last year. Remember? It was an Oscar sure thing for Diane Keaton? Well, it didn’t quite live up to an Oscar contender, but it is a hell of a good movie. I’d go as far to say it was a hell of a GREAT movie.

The plot was well put together and the cast was absolutely one of the best I’ve seen in quite a while. I know this will knock me out of getting any points in the gay community, but I have never been a fan of Sarah Jessica Parker. But I changed my mind after watching this film. She was supurb. As for Ms. Keaton? What can I say but…WOW! Diane Keaton is one of my favorites and she didn’t let me down. She reminded me a lot of my High School friend’s mother in this film, minus all the cursing of course. I could defintely relate to her charecter. Hell I was able to relate to all the charecters. I am also finding a new appreciation for Claire Danes, as this is the second of my favorite movies of 2005 that she stars in.

This is truly a real look at family, with all it’s heartache, laughter and acceptance. B+

Classic Men in Cinema: JOHN BARRYMORE

JOHN BARRYMORE: 1882-1942

Meet Me In St. Louis…at the Altar

On June 15, 1945, 23-year-old Hollywood Star, Judy Garland marries Famous Hollywood Director, Vincente Minnelli, her second husband, his first marriage. The couple had one daughter, actress and singer Liza Minnelli.

Garland was born Frances Gumm in 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Her parents ran a movie theater, and at age three Frances joined her two older sisters in a vaudeville act that ran before the movie. Her mother later took them on the vaudeville circuit, and although the girls weren’t especially well received, Frances drew the attention of MGM’s production head, Louis B. Mayer. He signed her when she was 13 years old. Two years later, she made the first of her nine films with Mickey Rooney. Garland truly became a star in 1939 with The Wizard of Oz, in which she played Dorothy, a role originally intended for Shirley Temple. She also delighted audiences in other musicals, including Strike Up the Band (1941), For Me and My Gal (1942), and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).

In 1941, at age 19, Garland married band leader David Rose, but the marriage broke up in 1945, and Garland then married director Minnelli, who had directed her in Meet Me in St. Louis.Minnelli was born in Chicago in 1903 and, like Garland, entered show business while a toddler, performing in a family act. He dropped out of school at 16 and became a costume designer and stage manager for the live acts that preceded films show at a Chicago theater chain, then moved to New York, eventually becoming art director at Radio City Music Hall. He began directing Broadway musicals in 1935, and MGM hired him as a film director in 1940.
After their marriage, Garland and Minnelli also worked together on The Clock (1945) and The Pirate (1948). Their daughter, Liza, was born in 1946, and the marriage lasted until 1951. Vincente Minnelli went on to direct Oscar-winning films that included An American in Paris (1951), Band Wagon (1953), and Gigi. He also directed Father of the Bride (1950).

After the marriage, Garland’s career declined. She had used amphetamines and sleeping pills since adolescence, and her dependence on drugs and alcohol undermined her career and led to several nervous breakdowns and suicide attempts. Her third husband, Sid Luft, managed her comeback in the early 1950s, booking her in triumphant live engagements in London and New York. She won a nomination for the Best Actress Oscar for A Star Is Born (1954), but her downward spiral resumed in the 1960s, and she died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1968.

#10 ~ SHOPGIRL

Shopgirl is one of those rare movies that make you laugh and cry at the same time. You know it’s going to be a good story when you see who is writing it. That is if you like Steve Martin, which I do. He wrote the screenplay which was based on his novella.

Right away I knew I was going to like this movie. Claire Danes is not one of my favorite actresses, but in the first few moments of this film, her charecter, Mirabelle Buttersfield stole my heart. Mirabelle is just a simple everyday girl trying to get by, being faced with people every day that look down upon her. They purchase gloves that cost as much as her salary and more. But she does what she has to do. Not seeming intersted in much of anything but her art, just taking one day at a time.

Then in walks Jeremy Kraft, played by Jason Schwartzman (son of Talia Shire), a ungainly but sincere and enduring young man. She begins to feel things for him, and then Ray Porter comes to her store to purchase a pair of gloves. An older, mature handsome, successful Ray Porter played by Steve Martin has everything but someone to share his life with. He decides Mirabelle is that someone. The gloves he purchases from the store wind up at her door. Immediately I’m thinking stalker, crazy pervert guy but that is where the story begins.

The soundtrack to this film is also very enjoyable and does not distract from the story or the performances but complements both.

The movie, somewhat predictable is well acted and put together. The story is interesting enough and maintains interest, but at times does become a little slow. Overall I loved the movie and have added it to my DVD collection. B-

Classic Women in Cinema; GLORIA SWANSON

GLORIA SWANSON: 1897-1983

10 Favs of 2005

Over the next few weeks I will be posting my favorite 10 films of the past year, 2005. In no way am I claiming that these are the best movies of the year, but to me they were.

What makes a favorite you ask?

There has to be a good plot/storyline. Without that why make the movie? As most know that read my blog I prefer drama and comedy over thrillers, sci fi and action flicks, but occasionally those do perk my interest.

Another thing that makes a movie a favorite for me is the acting. There are many good actors out there, and sometimes in one movie they can be amazing and stink in their next outing. So you can not always judge a movie by who is starring in it. Exception to that is Jack Nicholson.

Another prerequisite for a movie to become a favorite to me is the filming, the cinematography. How it looks on screen. If the cinematography works with the plot and the theme of the movie. You can have a good story and great actors, but if the director don’t know what he is doing with the camera, then I’ll usually turn it off.

Those are some of the things that make a movie speak to me, so with that said, lets see what I thought were the best of 2005.

Who Married a Psycho?

Bernard Schwartz, better known as Tony Curtis and Jeanette Helen Morrison, who later became Janet Leigh were married June 4, 1951. His first marriage, her third. The couple married in 1951 when Leigh was already an established star while Curtis was a bohemian new arrival in Hollywood.

For a while it was hailed as the town’s happiest marriage. ‘We are going to be a family,’ Janet confided in her diary in 1956.

Their daughter Kelly was born shortly after, followed two years later by Jamie Lee.By the time Alfred Hitchcock sent her the novel Psycho – which formed the basis of the script – she and Curtis were Hollywood’s most star-dusted couple and had made six movies together.

But due to Curtis’s philandering with Hollywood starlets and his drug abuse, Leigh and Curtis divorced. Their 11-year marriage finally ended when Leigh found a stash of marijuana and told her husband to get rid of it because of the children.

Within 24 hours of the divorce, she had married her fourth and final husband, stockbroker Bob Brandt, while Curtis moved on to his second bride, a German actress half his age.