Debbie Reynolds (1932-2016), aged 84. A day after the passing of her daughter Carrie, it is sad indeed to hear that Debbie has died too. I shed a tear for the passing of this irrepressible Hollywood legend, who was screen-tested after being crowned Miss Burbank 1948.
She entertained us throughout our 1950s and '60s with items as choice as SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (when she was just 19), THE TENDER TRAP with Sinatra, TAMMY, IT STARTED WITH A KISS, HOW THE WEST WAS WON, THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN, the oddball GOODBYE CHARLIE, DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE etc. and, er, THE SINGING NUN! She held her own against Bette Davis in THE CATERED AFFAIR in 1956, a nice dramatic role. Then she found a whole new career as a sassy grandma gay-icon, particularly as Grace's mother in WILL & GRACE and films like MOTHER and IN AND OUT., and practically unrecognisable as Liberace's mother in BEHIND THE CANDELABRA Then there was her work preserving Hollywood history and costumes, and she kept busy. She was fab too in the camp horror flick WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN?, acting up a storm with Shelley Winters, in 71. (review at Debbie label). She was a wicked mimic too, as per her impression of Streisand at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXtXzmdLq0E RIP to a game gal.
Carrie Fisher (1956-2016), aged 60.. Carrie Fisher was Hollywood royalty, her parents being Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Carrie was a teen in SHAMPOO in 1975 and then of course immortalised as the plucky Princess Leia with that hairstyle in the first STAR WARS films, and she returned to the latest one last year, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS. She actually clocked up 90 acting credits, and was also that acerbic, funny writer, who wrote POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE and that campfest THESE OLD BROADS for her mother, Taylor, McLaine and Collins. Her colorful private life included a brief marriage to Paul Simon. She was her usual witty self on television here only a few weeks ago.
Add in Jeanne Moreau of all people, wearing those enormous ear-rings, intoning Oscar Wilde's "Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves" and Querelle submitting to her brutal husband, who likes getting off with those sailor boys. It was all too much at the time, how would it fare now? It was actually released after Fassbinder's death in 1982. 
A FOX memory - between 1976 and 1979 I was working at Dillons University Bookshop (now Waterstones) in London's University quarter, not in the bookshop but in an office upstairs, working with a German woman, Monica, who became a friend (we both loved Dietrich and Romy Schneider); one day she was expecting a guest for lunch and asked me to talk to him until she came back from a meeting. In walked this guy whom I recognised as Peter Chatel, the actor from FOX AND HIS FRIENDS, he sat on the edge of my desk and we talked about that until Monica returned, Chatel died aged 42 in 1986, another Aids casualty, 
Oddly enough the story directed by Howard Hawks works least of all and is rather bizarre - but Fox stalwarts Henry Hathaway, Jean Negulseco, Henrys Koster and King direct the other episodes: cop Dale Robertson having to arrest old school pal Richard Widmark (guying his tough guy image) is a lively diversion; poor newly weds Jeanne Crain and Farley Granger trying to afford Christmas presents is nicely touching; and sisters Anne Baxter and Jean Peters play in an amusing anecdote with Gregory Ratoff.
His first wife was the marvellous Billie Whitelaw, another favourite of ours. 
AA Gill (1954-2016), aged 62. AA (Adrian) advised us only 3 weeks ago that he had cancer, and now it has taken him 3 weeks later. We have always liked his witty, trenchant TV reviews for "The Sunday Times" where he was also restaurant critic, with all those witty, erudite reviews in that dazzling prose. He was also the scourge of the television producers ("Tristams") and wrote moving reports from world crisis spots,like Syria or Darfur. AA will be much missed, The "Sunday Times" editor said he was the soul of the paper. He was also author of several books, including one on The Ivy restaurant. Today's paper features his last writing on his cancer diagnosis and treatment. We should all be so strong facing life's challenges, 
There's also Lana Turner, Greer Garson, Susan Hayward (very helpful to the novice actor on WITH A SONG IN MY HEART, left), Ida Lupino, Jennifer Jones, Claire Trevor, Betty Grable, Ann Sheridan, Joan Blondell, Lucille Ball, Linda Darnell and Gene Tierney, the impossible Betty Hutton, as well as characters like Thelma Ritter, Maureen Stapleton and Eve Arden. Wagner knows too how difficult it was for actresses to maintain long careers ...
He was a 20th Century Fox boy and Natalie was a Warner Bros girl, so he got to know Jack Warner well too - and is hilarious about the abuse Warner heaped on Judy Garland (who would have been so ideal for GYPSY in 62 with Natalie), and he also recounts Vittorio De Sica's hilariously rude comment on Raquel Welch who was driving them mad with her delays on THE BIGGEST BUNDLE OF THEM ALL .... Star gossip does not get much better. As he says: "Movies and TV go on forever - only the delivery system changes ...".
Here's a delicious doozy for a dull winter afternoon. Bette Davis as MADAME SIN, a 1972 release, originally meant as a pilot for a tv series, but released in cinemas here in Europe. Another unintentional comic Trash Classic! 
The budget ran to a helicopter and renting a castle in Scotland - Robert Wagner, a friend of Bette's, co-stars and co-produces, some British stalwarts are lined up: Denholm Elliot, Gordon Jackson, Dudley Sutton, Roy Kinnear ... what, no Harry Andrews? but it all looks rather cheap and second rate capturing that seedy London of the early 70s. 
Bette though has a whale of a time chomping out her lines in that Eurasian get up - is she channelling Ona Munson as Madam Gin Sling in THE SHANGHAI GESTURE or maybe Gale Sondergaard in her own THE LETTER, or even Death (in that black cape) in THE SEVENTH SEAL? She needed to do something to liven it up, Wagner looks good here in his early 40s, and there is an unexpected ending. Director David Greene did some interesting 60s films but is on auto-pilot here. Perhaps for Bette addicts only?
ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE - Not really French, this long unseen rarity is a pleasure to see it again now. It is of course a western reworking by Claude Lelouch of his 1966 mega-hit UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - as this is another man and another woman in a different time and place. Its a handsome pleasant hazy re-creation of the old west (well apart from the rape and murder of vet James Caan's wife, Jennifer Warren...). It begins in revolutionary Paris as photographer Francis Huster and wife Genevieve Bujold decide to move to the new world and travel by ship to America, then they are on a covered wagon and attacked by redskins and finally decide to settle and open their photography business. Caan also arrives in town, having sold his ranch, and deposits his baby with the underwritten part of the school-teacher - a too-little seen Susan Tyrell. 
Then cue the influences of Lelouch's original: some years later they visit their children at the school, she misses her stagecoach drive home, the teacher asks him to give her a drive, they slowly open up to each other, he asks to meet her husband and then we get the flashback about how he was killed .... instead of motor cars and racing tracks there are stagecoaches and horse races - and the ending is perfect as he rides on horseback to join her and the children [having brought his wife's killers to justice] as the camera pulls back to leave them as figures in a landscape with a neat voiceover as it fades to a sepia photograph in a photo-album. It turns out it is the story about the grandmother of the man we see at the start ... 
