Favorite Actresses of the 50’s ~ Lana Turner ~ #7

Turner’s film career began — so the story goes — when she was discovered sipping soda at the fountain in Schwab’s Drug Store. She was dubbed “The Sweater Girl” after an on screen appearance walking down the street in a tight skirt and sweater in the appropriately titled 1937 film, “They Won’t Forget.” A favorite pin-up girl during World War II, Turner embodied the beautiful blonde, passionate and troubled, with a shadowy past.

In real life, there were many shadows in Turner’s world. Her father was murdered, reputedly for gambling debts, when she was a child. She struggled with alcoholism all her life and had many famous and a few notorious boyfriends, including billionaire Howard Hughes, pretty-boy actor Tyrone Power, and Tarzan star Lex Barker. Turner eventually married seven times.
In 1958 Turner’s only child, Cheryl Crane, stabbed and killed Johnny Stompanato with a kitchen knife. Turner was trying to break off the relationship. The judge ruled justifiable homicide after hearing evidence of the violence and threats made by Stompanato. Despite the unstable environment of the Turner household, Cheryl was reunited with her mother.

Turner’s scandalous personal life played havoc with her professional advancement in the studio-driven image-conscious world of Hollywood. Her glamour girl reputation overshadowed her talent as an actress. Although directors were aware of her ability, the “women’s roles” Turner was so often type-cast in, prevented her from achieving the greatness many thought her capable of.

Turner’s most notable screen successes were as the “Ziegfeld Girl” (1941), gorgeous in feathers and a fan, as the steamy double-dealing housewife in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946), and later in the noir classic, “Madame X” (1966). She was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actress for “Peyton Place” in 1957. My most favorite role of Lana’s was in 1959’s, Ironically titled “Imitation of Life”

Even after her original film glamour faded, Turner continued to act. She had a recurring role in the nighttime TV Soap Opera, “Falcon Crest” from 1981 to 1990. Until illness stopped her, she performed at dinner theaters around the country.

Her daughter, who grew up to write a book about her traumatic childhood and successful adulthood in partnership with her lesbian lover, was close to her mother in the final years. Cheryl was at her mother’s bedside when Lana Turner died.

Fav Actors of the 1950’s ~ Montgomery Clift ~ #7

I had my first glimpse of Montgomery Clift in the film, Suddenly Last Summer. I was hooked. He showed a man full of mystery and vulnerability that I personally could relate to, and I had never seen that in men on the big screen. I soon became a fan of Monty.

His most memorable role was probably that of Rudolph Peterson in Judgment at Nuremberg, but that was not released until the 60’s after an automobile accident had scarred his face and his psyche. My favorite role of Monty’s was in the 1957 film, Raintree County, when he falls in love with the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor character. In 1956, during filming of Raintree County (1957), he ran his Chevrolet into a tree after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s; it was she who saved him from choking by pulling out two teeth lodged in his throat. His smashed face was rebuilt.

Unfortunately, Monty was more like his character in Suddenly Last Summer. Confused, introverted and emotionally unstable. Like many of Elizabeth Taylor’s close friends, Monty struggled with his sexuality and his Hollywood persona and his life ended tragically and too quickly for this great screen star. After many years he reconciled with his estranged father, but he continued bedeviled by dependency on drugs and his unrelenting guilt over his homosexuality. On July 22, 1966, his companion Lorenzo James found him lying nude on top of his bed, dead from what the autopsy called “occlusive coronary artery disease.” His death was called the longest suicide in history by famed acting teacher, Robert Lewis.

Fav Films of the 50’s ~ The Ten Commandments ~ #7

Dubbed as the Greatest Event in Motion Picture History, Cecil B. DeMille’s the Ten Commandments has probably been seen by more people that ever actually read the biblical story. Many of whom base what they know about Moses on the film, and Charlton Heston’s portrayl of the leader of the Exodus.

The Cinematography was spectacular in it’s day, and the parting of the Red Sea was the highlight for me as a kid when the movie would be shown on TV screens every year around the Easter/Passover season.

Nominated for 7 Academy Awards, it won only 1, for Best Effects. Produced at a then-staggering cost of $13 million, the film went on to become Paramount’s biggest-grossing movie to that time. For years it ranked second only to Gone with the Wind (1939) as the most successful film in Hollywood history.

Fav Actors of the 1950’s ~ Henry Fonda ~ #8

Henry Fonda had already gained fame, and fortune in Hollywood by the 1950’s, being one of the staple actors of the 1940’s in films like, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Grapes of Wrath, for which he won his first of two Academy Awards for Best Actor, My Darling Clementine and Fort Apache. He was a huge star in the US as well as in Europe by then.

The 1950’s didn’t slow Fonda down. He continued to star in over 10 more films in the decade of the 50’s including Mr. Roberts, and his Academy Award nominated role in 12 Angry Men. Fonda was named the #6 greatest actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends by the American Film Institute.

Favorite Actress of the 1950’s ~ Eva Marie Saint~#8

In the early 1950’s Eva Marie Saint was known as “the Helen Hayes of television,” as her acting and acclamation was such a high level. She was nominated twice for the Emmy Awards and starred beside, Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra and E. G. Marshall.

But her fame took off in her first big screen role, beating out other stars such as, Grace Kelly, Janice Rule, and Elizabeth Montgomery in Elia Kazan’s 1954, On the Waterfront, which won Best Picture that year at the Oscars and Eva Marie Saint went home with the award for Best Supporting Actresses.

She went on to star in A Hateful Rain in 1957, which garnered her the Best Foreign Actress” from the British Academy of Film and Television. She also starred in Raintree County that same year, starring with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock surprised many by choosing the stately and serious Saint over dozens of other candidates for the femme fatale role in what was to become a suspense classic North by Northwest with Cary Grant and James Mason.

Saint went on to star in numerous films and TV movies and most recently gained a new audience of her portrayal of Martha Kent in Superman Returns.

The Black Dahlia

I finally saw a movie I so wanted to go see last year in theaters, The Black Dahlia. I am so glad I didn’t waste my money. I borrowed the DVD from my daughter and sat down to watch the story of one of the most horrific and mysterious murders in Hollywood.

Elizabeth Short, a young woman from New England, comes to Hollywood with stars in her eyes and dreams in her mind. However she is found dead, her body disected and her once beautiful face destroyed by a murders slice of a knife. The murder of Elizabth Short is still unsolved after 60 years.

The movie, which advertised itself, as the story of the Black Dahlia, the name coined to Elizabeth Short, was very diappointing. Not only did it not really tell anything regarding the Black Dahlia murder, but it didn’t tell any kind of story well. Based on the book of the same name by James Ellory, the Black Dahlia felt like they just threw the Elizabeth Short murder in as a side story. What was even more disappointing was the fact that the real story, the relationship between two cops and a young woman, played by Scarlet Johanssen and the effects of the Black Dahlia murder investigation had upon them, wasn’t even good.

Josh Hartnett, played a role that he was much too young to play and it showed. He looked uncomfortable through the entire movie. Aaron Ekhart, who played his partner, totally over-acted, and was annoying. Scarlett Johanssen, luckily added an air of believeability to the story, and Hillary Swank, who played the dark mysterious link to Elizabeth Short, was as always, flawless. But the work of Scarlett and Hilary could not pull this movie out of the hole it dug for itself.

If you want to watch a great movie based on one of the biggest, unsolved Hollywood murders, the Balck Dahlia is not it. C-

Favorite Movies of the 1950’s ~ #8 ~ Dial M for Murder

Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), a callous playboy who has married well, begins to worry when his wealthy wife, Margot (Grace Kelly), begins an affair with an American writer (Robert Cummings). Sensing a threat to his financial security, Tony plots to murder Margot for her inheritance and proceeds to blackmail a former acquaintance into doing the dirty deed.

Dial M for Murder was one of the first Alfred Hitchcock movies I ever saw. And even though I saw it in the early 1970’s I was was mezmerized by the ability Hitchcock had by turning a simple story and film into a psychological masterpiece. Dial M For Murder also marked the beginning of the director’s collaboration with Grace Kelly (They made four films together including Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), and The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956).

Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow made a weak remake of this film in 1998, entitled A Perfect Murder.

Fav Actors of the 1950’s ~ #9 ~ Yul Brynner

“So let it be written. So let it be done.”

With those words, Yul Brynner became a legend. As a child I had never saw the King and I, but I had seen the Ten Commandments every year and I became enthralled with the story of Moses and Ramses. Yul Brynner was Ramses II to me. He was also one of the first male stars that I became attracted to. Even though his character was evil and scheming, I thought he was what a real man should look like. While everyone else was making over Charlton Heston as Moses, my favorite was Yul Brynner.

He made an immediate impact upon launching his film career in 1956, after acting on stage and modeling in his early 20’s, even once posing nude for the famous photographer George Platt Lynes.

He appeared not only in the Ten Commandments that year but also the film version of the King and I after playing the role on Broadway. He walked away with the Oscar that year for Best Actor. Brynner, only 5′10″, was reportedly concerned about being overshadowed by Charlton Heston’s physical presence in the film The Ten Commandments, and prepared with an intensive weight-lifting program. But more than any other role he would later play he would be best remembered for the King of Siam.

Brynner died on October 10, 1985 at the age of 70 in New York City. The cause of death was lung cancer brought on by smoking. Throughout his life, Brynner was always seen with a cigarette in his hand. In January 1985, nine months before his death, he gave an interview on Good Morning America, expressing his desire to make an anti-smoking commercial. A clip from that interview was made into just such a public service announcement by the American Cancer Society, and released after his death; it includes the warning “Now that I’m gone, I tell you, don’t smoke.”

Favorite Actresses of the 1950’s ~ #9 ~ Thelma Ritter

Thelma Ritter first role in the classic 1947 film, Miracle on 34th Street was not even credited, although her work as a frustrated mother unable to find the toy that Kris Kringle promised her son. She was 45 at the time and although she had made a mark in theater she was on the verge of becoming a star.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz put her in his next film, A Letter to Three Wives. Again her part was not even credited, but Mankiewicz liked what Ritter could do and he cast her as the outspoken, brash maid to Bette Davis’ Margo Channing in All About Eve. She became a household name and also received her first of six Academy Award nominations for Supporting actress. Ritter never won an award, but she would become known as one of the greatest and best known supporting, charecter actresses ever put on film. She even co-hosted the awards show with Bob Hope in 1954.

I became a fan of Thelma the first time I ever saw All About Eve, and continued to seek her films. Each film she palyed with the same commitment and vigor of the first. Her honesty and truth came through with each role. In occasional non-comedic turns, she projected an unglamorous world-weariness, notably in Pickup on South Street (1953).
Some of her best-known roles included Bette Davis’s devoted maid in All About Eve (1950) as Gene Tierney’s maid – mother in law in The Mating Season (1951), James Stewart’s nurse in Rear Window (1954), and as Doris Day’s housekeeper in Pillow Talk (1959). Her turn in John Huston’s The Misfits (1961), where she played opposite Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, also garnered favorable reviews

Shortly after a 1968 performance on The Jerry Lewis Show, Ritter suffered a heart attack which eventually proved fatal. She was 9 days shy of her 67th birthday.

Fav Films of the 50’s – #9 – On the Waterfront

The idea for On the Waterfront began with an expose series written for The New York Sun by reporter Malcolm Johnson. The 24 articles won Johnson a Pulitzer Prize and, reinforced by the April 1948, murder of a New York dock hiring boss.

Elia Kazan directed and won an Oscar for Kazan in directing as well as Best Picture. The movie is dark and moving, as most of Kazan’s films. It also starred Marlon Brando, the newest name to be called a star, and the beautiful Eva Marie Saint. Rod Steiger who had made a name for himself played Marlon’s brother.

A powerful and thought provoking film, it gave us the famous lines…”I coulda been a contenda”