Dream Lovers

On December 1, 1960, America’s Sweetheart Sandra Dee married American Teen Idol, Bobby Darin. Actress Sandra Dee, at 18 eloped with Bobby Darin (26) to Don Kirshner’s apartment in Elizabeth, New Jersey and were married at 3:00a.m.
Sandra Dee, best known for playing the title role in the teenybopper beach movie Gidget, marries her fellow teen idol singer Bobby Darin. Dee, who began acting as a child, made numerous lighthearted beach movies while under contract with Universal. Dee & Darin were married 7 years and had a son, Dodd born in 1961. The couple divorced in 1967.

 

#2 Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

I know I already had Jack listed for his role in Chinatown, but what didn’t Jack do well in the 70’s. He is (in my opinion) the greatest actor in our generation, or in any generation for that matter.

His portrayal of Randle Patrick McMurphy, a rebellious, brash prisoner/patient set out to destroy the establishment and it’s dictator, Nurse Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, was spectacular, to say the least. Jack walked away with the Oscar for Best Actor after loosing the year before for Chinatown. Louise Fletcher won Best Actress and the movie for Best Picture and Best Director beating out Speilberg’s JAWS and Altman’s Nashville. Since it’s release Cuckoo’s Nest and Jack’s role has went down as one of the greatest films and portrayals in film history.

 

Moves and Changes

After almost two months I am almost finished with my Favorites of the 1970’s. We are down to the last four films, and the top two favorite Actors and Actresses. Over the next few days we will be wrapping up this list, and who knows maybe starting another.

Also if you have noticed I have moved my Oscar Predictions. I have started a new blog, totally based on Oscar movies and performances. Check it out along with my predictions for 2006 over at Regarding Oscar.

Also over at Regarding Oscar, during the month of December we will look at Oscar nominated films and the stars that played in films that deal with Christmas, or that have become Christmas seasonal favorites. So keep us marked as a favorite bookmark and check back daily to see what we have to share.

 

November 29, 1981

Natalie Wood’s two marriages to actor Robert Wagner were publicized and stormy, but they were reconciled at the time of her death. In 1981, at the age of forty-three, Wood drowned while their yacht The Splendor was anchored at Catalina Island. An investigation by the Los Angeles coroner resulted in an official verdict of accidental drowning, although speculation about the circumstances continued.

Wood was on board the yacht with Wagner and actor Christopher Walken, with whom Natalie had currently finished filming her last movie with. There were reports Wagner and Walken had a loud argument and Wood apparently tried to either leave the yacht or to secure a dinghy that was banging against the hull when she accidentally slipped and fell overboard. A woman on shore said she heard cries for help from the water that night, along with voices replying “we’re coming.” Wagner, Walken, and the pilot of the Splendor said they heard nothing. The coroner revealed that Wood was legally intoxicated when she died and there were marks and bruises on her body, which could have been received as a result of her fall.

To this day, mystery and speculation continue to surround her death.

At the time of her death Wood was filming Brainstorm and preparing to make her stage debut in a LA production of Anastasia, opposite Dame Wendy Hiller.

 

Typecasting

Today’s film stars and TV stars fear one thing in the entertainment industry. Typecasting. For those of you that may be unaware of this term, Typecasting is the process by which an actor is strongly identified with a role, several similar roles, or a particular genre.

George Reeves quickly comes to mind, as he had played Superman on TV and became such a big name with that role it was difficult for him to find work doing anything else after that.

Many people when they think of the famous actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr., they right away think of swashbuckler. As many of his his most famous roles were that of swashbucklers.

But this was not always the case.By the age of 18, Fairbanks was appearing on stage with much success, but the lure and excitement of silent films soon took hold and he was making films. By 1918 he had appeared in more than 24 films. Fairbanks became the top moneymaker for the Triangle Film Company, starring in an average of 10 pictures a year for a weekly salary of $2000. He then specialized in comedies–not the slapstick variety, but free-wheeling farces in which he usually played a wealthy young man thirsting for adventure.

Fairbanks was a savvy businessman, and in 1919 he reasoned that he could have more control–and a larger slice of the profits — if he produced as well as starred in his pictures. In 1919, Fairbanks teamed up with fellow stars Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and director D.W. Griffith to launch the United Artists Corporation.

The next year on November 28, 1920 The Mask of Zorro opens, starring Douglas Fairbanks, this was the first time he played a swashbuckling adventurer. After Zorro he became best known for his swashbuckling adventure films, including The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), and The Thief of Baghdad (1924). Unlike many other early stars, Fairbanks successfully made the transition to talkies, but his career faded as he aged. Fairbanks’ last film, the British-made Private Life of Don Juan (1934) unflattering revealed his advanced years and his flagging energy. On December 12, 1939, Fairbanks died in his sleep, not long after he’d announced plans to come out of retirement.

 

#5 Annie Hall

Already making a name for herself in films like, Friends & Lovers, The Godfather, Play it Again Sam and Looking For Mr. Goodbar; Annie Hall propelled Diane Keaton to super stardom.

As Woody Allen’s muse, Diane Keaton became Annie Hall. Actually, Diane’s birth name was Diane Hall, and her nickname was Annie.

This bittersweet, mature romantic comedy was like some great films of the past, such as The Philadelphia Story. It was also somewhat autobiographical, as Woody and Diane did have a relationship during the 1970’s.

The film explored the interaction of past and present, and the rise and fall of one man’s challenging romance with his opposite – an equally-insecure, shy, flighty Midwestern female in an almost Pygmalion like story.

Annie Hall is one, if not the greatest work of Woody Allen and is full of witty one liners. The supporting cast was just as remarkable, which included singer, Paul Simon and the legedary Colleen Dewhurst. Woody Allen would continue to make movies, some even Academy Award caliber, such as Hannah and Her Sisters, but nothing quite matched his Annie Hall.

 

#6 Star Wars

Nominated for ten Academy Awards, and won in six (mostly technical) categories: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Sound, Best Original Score (John Williams), Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, and Best Visual Effects. Its other four nominations were for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness), Best Director, and Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. The film was also awarded with a Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects for the creation of the alien, creature, and robot voices (Benjamin Burtt, Jr.). Star Wars changed the course of movie-making and special effects. It also gave us a new meaning to the word Block-Buster and changed the course of new director/producer George Lucas.

As I watch the original movie today I do kind of chuckle at the poor acting skills of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, but this movie was an epic from the minute it rolled off the screen. Those actors, regardless how horrific and forced their performances were, they will be forever remembered as Luke Skywalker and Princess Lei, the twins of Anikin Skywalker.

What began as a dream for George Lucas, became even more than what he imagined. After the release of Star Wars, he was able to build and create a state-of-the-art special effects factory known as Industrial Light and Magic and to become one of the greatest directors of our generation.

 

#3 Meryl Streep in Kramer vs. Kramer

The performances in Kramer vs. Kramer are what drive the story to great drama. Both Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep won Academy Awards for their portrayals of the dueling Kramer’s. Streep plays a woman who has grown cold and distant from the family she once loved. Like many women, her troubles may lie in that she married too young; or, as she states, the fact that Ben’s love of his work is what dominates his life, not his love for his wife and child. Her assertiveness to leave is a sad fact among many married couples today—they don’t feel like working things out. On the flipside of that coin, Ben seems blinded to Joanna’s needs and feelings. His world revolves around making it to the top of the corporate ladder. Even when Joanna is trying to tell Ben she’s leaving him, his reaction is for her to wait one minute while he finishes up a task brought home from the office.

Streep is very good as Joanna, though she’s off-screen so much that her character almost seems to be even lower than supporting. Some say this Oscar was given due to the fact that she SHOULD have won the year before for her role in Deer Hunter. Regardless as to why, Meryl gave her all, as she always does.

 

#4 Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver

One of the saddest by-products of the Hollywood fame game is the Teenage Burn-Out. Once puberty robs them of their angelic looks and innate cuteness, child stars traditionally have a terrible time keeping their feet on the ladder. In a time when image and box office records mean everything, they’ve not only become another person but also carry the burden of not being able to provide what they once did. Think Macaulay Culkin, or the awful fall of Drew Barrymore. It should have happened to Jodie Foster, too. In fact, many people think it did. Popular wisdom has it that she broke precociously through as a 12-year-old whore in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, enjoyed a brief spell of success then disappeared, only to struggle heroically back with her Oscar-winning performance, ten years later, in The Accused.

But this is far from the truth. Jodie had actually been a Face from the age of 3, starring in TV commercials. Then came many TV and film roles, meaning that, come Taxi Driver she was already a seasoned veteran. After that burst of teen stardom, she chose college over a short-term career, then returned in a series of deliberately chosen “interesting” roles, as she studied techniques on both sides of the camera. And now, due to these efforts, she’s a producer, director, double Oscar-winner AND, as 2002’s hit Panic Room proved, a $10 million-a-picture actress, capable of carrying a Number One movie on her own.

 

#3 Marlon Brando in The Godfather

The Godfather movies today are classics. They were the standard by how all other pictures in the 1970’s should be measured. Marlon Brando was a living legend by the time the Godfather movies were made, but he had become somewhat of an enigma in Hollywood by this time. What he gave as Vito Corleone was almost cinematic perfection and he also gave us probably one of the most famous lines in Cinematic history… “I’ll give him an offer he can’t refuse”When his face came onto the screen in Godfather, you knew immediately this would be an Oscar winning performance. He didn’t disappoint.

However, he did disappoint at the Award ceremony when he was announced that The Godfather, wins the Oscar for best actor in his role as Don Vito Corleone, and refuses to accept his Academy Award.

Brando takes the opportunity to protest cinematic abuse of Native Americans. Spokeswoman Sacheen Littlefeather [a beautiful Apache woman with piercing dark eyes] appeared at the ceremony to read Brando’s statement.