Sunday in New York + 4 more Jane Fonda flicks

A feast of Fonda, lately - Jane that is. I just got SUNDAY IN NEW YORK, and my pal Jerry passed 4 of hers onto me recently.   Then, KLUTE was on again over the weekend, so we had another look at that too - its a key '70s movie for me, as per my other reports on it here - Fonda label.

I saw SUNDAY IN NEW YORK at the time, on its general release here in the UK in 1964, when I was 18, and more or less forgot it. But seeing it again now, 50 years later, its a bright, shiny artifact of the early 60s and is one of the better comedies revolving around sex of that time - COME SEPTEMBER, SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL and of course the Rock and Doris comedies. It has extensive New York shooting, and an engaging quartet of players, plus An Apartment To Die For - one of those Apartments We Love, which I will have to return to soon.

Its a sparkling comedy from a Norman Krasna stage play (cue lots of doors opening and people arriving unexpectedly) and its amusing to see what was considered daring on screen 50 years ago. Peter Teskesbury keeps it moving nicely and New York circa 1963 looks great in Metrocolor, yup its another great New York movie, like BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S  — we get to see the city just before the decline that caused filmmakers of the late 1960s and 1970s (cue KLUTE!) to use the city as a symbol of urban crime rather than a terrific place for falling in love. There is also a nice jazz score by Peter Nero (who also makes a cameo appearance in a nightclub scene). 

Jane is the 23 year old virgin who refuses to put out for her fiance, and is visiting her airline pilot brother (Cliff Robertson) who swears to her that he does not sleep with girls and respects them, while a running joke has he and girlfriend Jo Morrow (super here) being continually frustrated while trying to get together. Enter amiable nice guy Rod Taylor whom Jane gets attached to - literally - on a bus. Further complications follow when they are both undressed back at Cliff's place when her fiance Robert Culp walks in and thinks Rod is her brother - then her real brother arrives!  Needless to say it is nicely worked out, and we just love that bachelor apartment with its brick walls, sunken kitchen, and the spiral stairs up to the bedroom area, which can be shuttered off at night. Urban bliss indeed.  Mel Torme sings the engaging theme tune and its classy work all round, capturing that early '60s Manhattan single lifestyle - almost an update on Rock and Doris in PILLOW TALK!  Its the perfect Valentine Day treat. 

Rod was fresh from THE BIRDS and THE VIPs, Jane had done THE CHAPMAN REPORT and WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, those two Trash Classics we love from 1962 and would go on to do more films of Broadway plays like BAREFOOT IN THE PARK and ANY WEDNESDAY, as well as her French films LES FELINS and the Vadim's like LA RONDE, and as well as the heavy stuff like THE CHASE and HURRY SUNDOWN, before her hits BARBARELLA, THEY SHOOT HORSE DONT THEY? and back to KLUTE and JULIA. We never really liked much of her work after that and she has of course re-invented herself several times since and is now a very glamorous late Seventies ...

Now, back to her first film: TALL STORY in 1960, where she is directed by father Henry's pal Joshua Logan, and co-starred with Tony Perkins - very tall and gangly here as the ace basketball player and Jane as the girl who is determined to bag him. Its a so-so comedy, rather boring in parts, with too much of the older professors. 

The most amusing scene has Jane following Tony into the mens' changing room and seeeing naked Van Williams emerging from the shower... It also features young Gary Lockwood and maybe Robert Redford in one shot.

I did not like PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT that much either, Tennessee Williams' first comedy from 1962, which makes for a raucous comedy as we follow newly-weds Fonda and Jim Hutton en route to their honeymoon, as they visit another couple Tony Franciosa and Lois Nettleton  who are having problems of their own.  It all gets very tiresome before too long, or maybe I was just not in the mood for it. 

Ditto with Godard's TOUT VA BIEN, a 1972 political tract which sees Fonda (just after KLUTE) and Yves Montand as a couple in Paris, journalists dealing with a factory strike and the capitalist society we live in. It highlighted everything I dislike about Godard films and I just found what I saw of it unbearably tedious. I do want to re-visit Godard's CONTEMPT though, with Bardot in 1963 - which if I remember right is a fascinating treatise on making movies. 

Nice though to finally see THE GAME IS OVER (LA CUREE) again, after all this time. This Roger Vadim piece of exotic erotica dates from 1966 and is a delicious Trash Classic as Jane enbarks on a doomed love affair with her stepson, Peter McEnery. Husband is mercurial Michel Piccoli, and Jane suffers but wears marvellous costumes for each scene, particularly for her mad scene at the climax!. We like McEnery (the first HAMLET I saw on stage, in 1967). It it all delirious nonsense played out in opulent sets which are a scream. 

After all those Janes, we now want to go back to some more Romy Schneider and Catherine Deneuve ... 

Costume drama heaven with Tom and Lady Caroline

What bliss over this bad weather to watch that 1963 hit TOM JONES again, and also to see a rare screening of the 1972 LADY CAROLINE LAMB on television. I have dvds of both, but nice to see them getting an airing. 

TOM JONES of course is utter bliss, a perfect costume version of the huge Fielding novel, but also capturing that early 1960s spirit too, as Tony Richardson's inventive direction deconstructs and re-creates the novel, using all those split cuts, razor sharp editing, characters talking to the camera and so on. Albert Finney is perfect here, and has great scenes with Susannah York delightful as Sophie Western, Diane Cilento, Joyce Redman (that food scene at the inn!) , and Joan Greenwood as the very demanding Lady Bellaston: "Sir, I know not of country matters, but in town it is considered impolite to keep a lady waiting". Indeed! Tom and Lady Bellaston meet at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (below), where as Micheal McLiammoir's fruity narration puts it people go "to do and to be undone".

Then there is the divine casting of Dame Edith Evans and Hugh Griffith at that country estate, where Dame Edith is appalled at the rude country manners, and has short patience with the highwayman holding up her coach with his "Stand and deliver", to which she retorts: "What, sir, I am no travelling midwife"!, Rosalind Knight as Mrs Fitzpatrick, another randy lady, and Peter Bull and young David Warner as Tom's rivals. Young Lynn Redgrave pops up too. Its a constant delight and deserved all the Oscars and applause, and it of course set up Richardson and Woodfall Films to make their less successful films, like those two with Jeanne Moreau: THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR and MADEMOISELLE. 

I have written about LADY CAROLINE LAMB here before - see Sarah Miles label. But I wrote this yesterday on a friend's review of it on Facebook:

Glad you liked it - I looked at it again last night - its marvellously done and maybe the last of the great British costume dramas (well, there's Lester's ROYAL FLASH in 1975). I have always liked Miss Miles (she seems retired now - her last credit, guesting in a Miss Marple was over a decade ago, but I saw her last year with her THE SERVANT co-stars at a special screening for the blu-ray launch of the Losey classic, and she looked fine then, of course as Bolt's widow - they married twice - she probably doesnt need to work now). But I digress (and namedrop), as usual - she also did 2 other iconic 60s movies : Antonioni's BLOW-UP and I WAS HAPPY HERE. Bolt indeed assembles a great cast - 

Leighton has another superb role (after Losey's THE GO-BETWEEN the previous year), Olivier (back with Miles after TERM OF TRIAL), Richardson, Mills etc all shone, and Jon Finch was the man of the moment (starring for Polanski and Hitchcock too then)., handsome sets and score by Richard Rodney Bennett - and Chamberlain an effective Byron. Leighton gets the last word and its perfect! The scene with Caroline as the blackamoor servant to Byron is fun, as Lady Caroline goes over the top and becomes "notorious"; she was surely an early drama queen as her histrionics and capacity for making scenes becomes rather tedious. 

Showpeople: 1956: Royalty, MM, BB, Anita & Joan is not pleased ! + Belinda and the Rank girls.

What a glamorous night, at the 1956 Royal Film Performance, all in 90 seconds (below): this was the one Marilyn Monroe attended - I didn't know Brigitte Bardot and the recently departed Anita Ekberg were there as well, did the girls get to chat?. as - a decade later - Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve and Ursula Andress did at the 1966 Royal Perf, as per my previous posts on that ... Showpeople label. 

Ekberg (next to Joan Crawford, below) was with her husband, the attractive British actor Anthony Steele. Bardot had not yet exploded on the scene with AND GOD CREATED WOMAN, this would have been about the time she appeared in Dirk's DOCTOR AT SEA. Sylvia Syms (in her MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER phase!) and Vic Mature were there and er, Norman Wisdom and John Gregson. The line-up is in alphabetical order, that should sort out any diva tantrums - so its Bardot, Ian Carmichael, Crawford, Ekberg,  Gregson - with Mature and Monroe further down the line ...

Joan Crawford was less than complimentary on the girls for being late and not attending rehearsals:
"If you want my opinion, far too many actresses today are little more than tramps and tarts. The Queen is a lady and expects to meet other ladies. Most of today's actresses can't even act politely. Arlene Dahl, Marilyn Monroe, and Anita Ekberg didn't even show up for rehearsals. And Monroe's hairdresser was still doing her hair while Her Majesty was on her way up the staircase. And when Monroe finally got there, she still didn't know how to curtsey. I felt so ashamed."
Below: more '50s glamour: some of the Rank Organisation girls at maybe another 1956 Royal Film event: Belinda Lee, Maureen Swanson, Shirley Eaton, Mary Ure and June Thorburn.
The James Bond golden girl Shirley Eaton is the only one still here, in her late 70s. Belinda was killed in a car accident in 1961 aged 25, and June Thorburn (tom thumb) in a airplane crash, aged 36 in 1967, Swanson married into the English nobility and died in 2011, Ure died in mysterious circumstances after the opening night of a play she was appearing in, in 1975, aged 42. Thanks to that fabulous site Poseidon's Underworld for the photograph. 

Pity these newsreels were not in colour, see the 1957 and 1966 Royal Film Performances and the London 1955 A STAR IS BORN premiere at Showpeople label.

Showpeople: when legends meet ....

An occasional series - see Showpeople label. This looks like its the early '70s, about the time Bacall was doing APPLAUSE.

Paris, 11 January 2015

We try to stay above politics and current events here at The Projector, as we focus on trivial things like movies and music and books and magazines and good old fashioned glamour, as well as Trash delights and lots of People We Like and Showpeople. Today though, as for last several days, we have been focused on the events in Paris,  as now millions take to the streets to show their unity- another game-changer in the ongoing new world situations we try to deal with, as we did back in London in 2005. Je suis Charlie indeed. Terrible things happening in other parts of the world, as in Nigeria, do not seem to attract the same attention .... or photo-opportunities. 

Yet more RIPs

Anita Ekberg (1931-2015), aged 83, the former Miss Sweden was born in Malmo and was in Hollywood by the 1950s. I grew to like Anita a lot (as per posts on her here, Anita label), for me she was the most sensational of the 50s glamazons, no wonder she had beaus like Ty Power and Gary Cooper and Sinatra ..... 

I have a Bob Hope comedy she did, still to watch: PARIS HOLIDAY, and I love her late 50s period when she was totally stunning, as in ZARAK, INTERPOL, BACK FROM ETERNITY and SCREAMING MIMI, and that oddball western VALERIE, in 1957 with her husband Anthony Steele.
Then of course the two Fellini's and lesser films .... and sizzlers like that KILLER NUN!

For me, she is up there with Loren, La Lollo, Silvana Mangano, Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale. They just don't make them like that any more. Watching her with Martin & Lewis you see her sense of humour, she is bemused by her own voluptiousness and how it affects men.

Expect lots of that Trevi fountain scene on the news bulletins. 

Anita wows them in ZARAK: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxpTYwHOt48

In a 1980 interview she is quoted: "I have no regrets. I have loved, cried, been mad with happiness. I have won and I have lost".

Francosco Rosi. (1922-2015), aged 92. Veteran Italian director and writer of political films like SALVATORE GIULIANO (1962), HANDS OVER THE CITY, 1963. THE MATTEI AFFAIR, THE MOMENT OF TRUTH about bull-fighting, LUCKY LUCIANO, CHRIST STOPPED AT EBOLI, ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES, the 1984 CARMEN, CHRONICE OF A DEATH FORETOLD  and the charming, oddball fairy tale C'ERA UNA VOLTA (MORE THAN A MIRACLE) in 1967, with Loren at her zenith. He also scripted Visconti's BELLISSIMA for Magnani. His films dealt with power , poverty, corruption - his commitment to social issues made him heir to the Italian neo-realists of the postwar years, and perhaps with Fellini, Antonioni and Visconti he was one of the last of the giants of the Italian cinema, while not been as internationally famous. 

Those 2000s movies .....

We have covered every decade here at The Projector, as per the labels - from the 1920s (Silents) through the 30s. 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. Its obvious the main decades for me, coinciding with my early movie-going are the Fiftes and Sixties and that great decade the Seventies too. The new century is covered in my 2000s label, but what were the movies of that new decade and century that I really liked?

Well, there's Wong Kar Wai's deliriously romantic IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE in 2000 (above), Todd Haynes' FAR FROM HEAVEN in 2002 with its wonderful recreation of 1950s Douglas Sirk melodramas, Ang Lee's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN in 2005 and Malick's THE NEW WORLD, Paul Greengrass's compelling UNITED 93 in 2006, Quentin's INGLORIOUS BASTERDS in 2009, 2010's Apiachapong Weerasethakul's UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES, Haneke's AMOUR (which I have written about quite a bit here. French label) in 2012, Mike Leigh's ANOTHER YEAR also in 2010, 2009's I AM LOVE, and more recently THE GREAT BEAUTY, 12 YEARS A SLAVE, Marty's WOLF OF WALL STREET, plus DALLAS BUYERS CLUB and INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, 

I must around to posting reviews of some of these, and there were also DRIVE and ONLY GOD FORGIVES, EASTERN PROMISES, Pedro's audacious THE SKIN I LIVE IN and BAD EDUCATION, Ozon's and Deneuve's delicious POTICHE, Oliver Stone's ambitious ALEXANDER, the screaming BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, the mesmerising BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR and HBO's THE NORMAL HEART is that heartbreaking record of the '80s Aids era .... all of these and more are reviewed at the 2000s label. This season's feast of riches of course include the recently reviewed GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL, IMITATION GAME, GONE GIRL and PADDINGTON! with lots more to see and review. 

but  what seems less important now? 

Well, Tom Ford's 2009 A SINGLE MAN for a start, which now looks like a fashionista's wet dream about Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult, totally mis-represents Isherwood's marvellous short novel which is a modern gay classic about middle aged people, which Ford turns into an extended commercial for perfect interiors and crisp white shirts. FAR FROM HEAVEN's Julianne Moore was also in the Ford - but a total contrast to what Isherwood had imagined ...

RIP continued ....

The new year kicks off with:

Rod Taylor (1930-2015), aged 84. Rod was a Person We Like, as per my post on him last year - see label. I always liked seeing Rod, an amiable, charming guy - like James Garner who departed last year. For me Rod centres Hitch's THE BIRDS making that flirting banter with Melanie Daniels believable - nice to hear he and Tippi Hedren remained good friends. He was certainly lucky to go from a forgotten swashbuckler (SEVEN SEAS TO CALAIS where he wore the doublets with ease) to being summoned to Bodega Bay for a film that is always on show somewhere (and a perennial favourite here at The Projector). I was trying to get a copy of his 1960 peplum COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN recently, but the supplier couldn't provide it ....  (PS: It is now on You Tube).

 

Its a fascinating career for an Australian: in Hollywood in the mid-50s, with small parts in GIANT and RAINTREE COUNTY, Debbie's beau in THE WEDDING BREAKFAST and the young husband in SEPARATE TABLES, then the perennial TIME MACHINE and stealing THE VIPs from the bigger names, along with Maggie Smith. YOUNG CASSIDY is a particular favourite, with Maggie Smith again, plus Julie Christie and Edith Evans. FATE IS THE HUNTER and 36 HOURS are fascinating thrillers; and also his romcoms like ASK ANY GIRL in 1959, SUNDAY IN NEW YORK in 1963 and those two lesser Doris Day films. He also did some rather good actioners like THE MERCENARIES and NOBODY

RUNS FOREVER. 

I puzzled a movie buff friend recently (the kind of buff who only sees 'important' films) by asking: Which actor has worked for John Ford, Hitchcock, Antonioni and Tarantino - he was stunned to hear it was that "lightweight" Rod Taylor. 
Rod was also in Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT and popped up as Churchill in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. We also saw him a few times on shows like MURDER SHE WROTE. 84 years is a good run and I am sure he enjoyed it all. RIP indeed. 

As my friend Daryl says: Certainly, a solid career, with a number of memorable films, and an actor who could go from George Pal to Hitchcock to John Ford to Antonioni to Tarantino. And i must say that, with THE V.I.P.S and YOUNG CASSIDY, he was one of the best partners that Maggie Smith ever had!  Right; YOUNG CASSIDY.

Gerry Fisher (1926-2014), aged 88. Ace cinematographer and director of photography on quite a lot of movies I like. He worked several times with Joseph Losey, on ACCIDENT, DON GIOVANNI, SECRET CEREMONY, THE GO-BETWEEN, A DOLL'S HOUSE and Losey's French films MR KLEIN and ROUTES TO THE SOUTH, plus THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN'; Lumet's THE SEA GULL, Richardson's HAMLET, BUTLEY, thrillers JUGGERNAUT and BRANNIGAN, Wilder's FEDORA, and HIGHLANDER among many others.

Lance Percival (1933-2015, aged 81. Lance with that funny face, seems rather a forgotten figure lately but like the recently gone Jeremy Lloyd (RIP below), was also an essential 1960s face, and part of the David Frost set on those satire shows and he also popped up in so many films, including a moment on THE VIPs, TV shows like SHOESTRING, some CARRY-ONs, and Beatles documentaries. 

Return to Tiffanys with Pal Joey

Apartments we love - hey, thats an idea for a post: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S

Lazy afternoon on sofa, nursing a cold, with a divine double bill on television - well, it saves digging out the dvds. I can watch BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S any time and PAL JOEY was fairly new to me, not having seen it in years. Here's what I did on TIFFANY'S a year or two back ....

I can never resist another look at BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S whenever it screens, and so it was again yesterday. One can look at it for so many reasons: Audrey, the wit, romance, Capote, Blake Edwards' sure direction, its a great New York Movie etc. This time I focused on the cat -
who gets quite a bit to do in it. I wonder what this cat who lived 50 years ago made of it? He (or she) is put out in the rain, thrown around, and sits and observes. It is a great feline performance.
Who can resist that climax when Cat miows and Holly picks him up and Cat is crushed between them as they kiss in the rain and the heavenly choir soars - did two people ever look better in the rain? - they must have used glycerine or suchlike. .... 
TIFFANY'S remains one of the imperishable hits of 1961 along with THE MISFITS, TWO WOMEN, ONE EYED JACKS, COME SEPTEMBER ... That ending though: in Capote's novella Holly does go off to South America, and the gay (we understand) narrator keeps looking for the cat, and finds him one afternoon, sitting happily in the window of someone else's apartment. That is perfect too but the movie went for the softer option. Its still an iconic early '60s classic ... then there is Patricia Neal's "stylish girl" waving her chequebook and coming on like a vampiric dragon lady ... Audrey oddly reminds me a lot of Kay Kendall in her early zany scenes, waking up, getting ready to go out etc. Kendall had died 2 years previously in 1959, and she and her sister were showgirls in revues in early '50s London, as was Audrey, and I understand they all knew each other.

1957's PAL JOEY is also a sanitised version of the John O'Hara original - it was a terrific stage musical in London in the 80s with Sian Phillips dynamic in the Hayworth role and those Rodgers & Hart songs. This is 1957 though but at least Sinatra looks at his peak here as the heel with that hat and the coat slung over his shoulder. Rita Hayworth is delicious as Mrs Simpson the ex-showgirl/rich bitch who bankrolls Joey's nightclub but on her terms, while Kim Novak, nearing her zenith (as she would do next year 1958 with VERTIGO and BELL BOOK AND CANDLE) gives her showgirl a sad quality that is just right,

 and then there is that adorable pooch. San Francisco is the back-drop, Barbara Nicols is a brassy showgirl and the numbers include Kim miming "My Funny Valentine", Rita also mimes the zingy "Zip" and "Bewitched /Bothered and Bewildered" while showering - dig that ritzy shower ! Then Frank sings "The Lady Is A Tramp" and we are watching another iconic moment. Musicals veteran Charles Walters keeps it moving nicely. 1957 was a great year for musicals: THE PAJAMA GAME, LES GIRLS, SILK STOCKINGS and this .... we like them a lot.  Lots of ritzy clothes too - Kim looks edible in that lavender dress, and those gloves ! ..... while Rita sizzles in some Jean Louis creations.

Respect: Aretha

What a fascinating unputdownable read RESPECT - The Life of Aretha Franklin  - by David Ritz is. I just finished its 500 pages this morning. As an Aretha fan from back in the '60s when she was a sensation on Atlantic Records, and then discovering her gems on Columbia, and then on to her disco era with Arista in the 80s - its all here, and cements Aretha - warts and all - at the centre of American music and show business. My late best friend Stan, an Aretha fanatic, would have loved this. 

Aretha - the diva's diva - comes across in all her complexity and Ritz certainly knows his subject and her background in gospel, and before they passed, interviewed both her sisters Erma and Carolyn, and brothers Cecil and Vaughn, as well as other close family relations and friends, like James Cleveland, and Etta James and others. Aretha of course was the child prodigy raised in gospel at her famous preacher father's church in Detroit. She was famous at 12 years old as a gospel singer and it was a given she would be making hit records. Columbia didn't quite now what to do with her, but she had some great records there before singing to Atlantic in 1967. The book is not a whitewash, but shows how complex and difficult Aretha could be to her own family (wanting her sisters to stay as her backup singers and not have musical careers of their own) and to those working for her or booking her concerts, as well as her fallings out with various producers like Jerry Wexler, Luther Vandross, Curtis Mayfield and others.

The book is not only a great record of Aretha's career and highs and lows, as well as her personal life (being a mother at 12) and her men, but also a great record of American soul music, taking in as it does Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Ray Charles and more. Ritz was there and saw and knew them all, including several meetings with Lady Soul herself. As the blurb says: "Ritz's intimate and elegant voice steps from behind the veil of the ghostwriter to tell a tale of genius, dysfunction, and blind ambition, describing a world of triumph and tragedy of new mythic proportions. A great read and a really heroic work of biography - honest, loving, no-holds-barred". It is a tale of American triumph as well as tragedy. It also covers that interesting time in the '80s when the record companies were awash with money, as the compact disc took over from vinyl and the fans had to purchase all their favourite records again in the new format ....

The good news is that Aretha is back in her early 70s, with that recent album of Diva covers, a mixed bag. Thankfully I got to see her twice, in her peak years, in concert in London ((Odeon, Hammersmith) in 1968 (left) and when she went afro in 1970 (right), before she stopped flying - which meant she was ignoring those international markets - Europe, Asia, Latin America - where she could have earned fortunes. She continued through the decades, singing at the inaugurations of Presidents Clinton and Obama, and she is still going. 
I may have flirted with other divas like Nancy Wilson, Peggy Lee, Nina Simone, Donna Summer, Grace Jones, Annie Lennox, Dionne Warwick, Cleo Laine, but Aretha is and will always be part of my triumvirate: her, Barbra and Joni Mitchell. Oh, and Joan Armatrading ... My friend Mike in San Francisco has been raving about Aretha's version of "Nessun Dorma" - one I must investigate and add to the collection (I have now ordered it on a CD single, plus a few albums that passed me by: SPARKLE, A WOMAN FALLING OUT OF LOVE, the expanded AMAZING GRACE, etc).. More Aretha at label ...

Tom and Pattie ...

Here's a terrific photo from a 1963 fashion shoot with rising young actor Tom Courtenay, for one of those glossy fash mags like VOGUE or the stylish London magazine TOWN -  I used to like that one when I was 16. But who is the girl? No, it is not Julie Christie but teenage Pattie Boyd, who was on film herself the next year in A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, where she met George Harrison ... Tom's BILLY LIAR had probably just opened - its a perfect early '60 shot, which I had not seen before, so thanks to Colin for sending it. No idea who the photographer was. 

Looking at Dr No ...

Those first three Bond films DR NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER were amusing again over the holidays as yet once again they are dusted off and shown on television, it seems we never tire of them. These first three though are endessly fascinating - I got rather tired of the Bonds with the next one and didn't bother with most of them, though THE SPY WHO LOVED ME was fitfully amusing at the time, and the Grace Jones one, but Bond was rather passe until Daniel Craig came along in 2006 .....

One always finds a new amusing quote to enjoy in these, as here in DR NO when Bond first meets Honey Ryder collecting shells on the beach: She says: "Are you looking for shells too?" and he casually replies "No, I am just looking" .... as we too gaze at the stupendous Ursula:

A Star Is Born, London style ...

Here is an interesting oddity - a 14 minute newsreel on the 1954 London premiere of A STAR IS BORN.

We are familiar with the footage of the American premieres in New York and L.A. when all the stars of the time turned out - these are among the extras on the restored dvd. But this London premiere footage is quite intriguing too - as narrated by and featuring Dickie Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim. Theres also Diana Dors, Janette Scott and her mother Thora Hird, and at about 8.00 minute mark, divine Kay Kendall. Jack Hawkins, John Gregson, Finlay Currie Kenneth More and more are also in attendance, as is Laurence Olivier greeting the guests on behalf of the Variety Club, I half expected Dirk Bogarde to turn up as well, being such a Garland fan. We see the preparations for the screening - how movies were shown then! There is also some black and white footage from the film, a Projector favourite here, and there is the old Warner cinema too which I knew so well. 

A treat indeed.

This was a pleasant surprise the other day, when I met my IMDB pal Jerry for our usual afternoon of drinks, chat, and swopping dvds. He gave me this rare 1959 booklet (in Portugueuse!) on Belinda Lee, one of our favourites here, as per my other blogs on her. 

Belinda died in a horrific car accident in 1961, aged 25, but was then established as a peplum favourite with movies like MESSALINA, APHRODITE, as well as English films for the Rank Organisation like DANGEROUS EXILE and MIRACLE IN SOHO and NOR THE MOON BY NIGHT. I liked those as a kid. 

Before her untimely end the very attractive Lee was turning into a good actress, playing opposite Marcello Mastroianni (GHOSTS OF ROME), and was one of the girls in the French new wave LE DRAGUEURS and in the 1960 Italian drama THE LONG NIGHT OF '43, all reviewed at Lee label.

We had similar style magazines in England titled Fan's Star Library, pocket sized and about 64 pages, published in 1958. I got them every month when I was about 12, titles on Grace Kelly, Marilyn, Elvis in the army, James Dean, Ava Gardner, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, and on pop stars like Pat Boone, Frankie Vaughan, even Perry Como! Thankfully I still have my Dirk Bogarde and Sophia Loren ones - collector's items now; and of course I got to meet Dirk and Sophia when I grew up !