Diaper changed, he’s ready for his close-up Mr. DeMille
Aug
22
2011
Foraging around the internet for information on Cecil B. DeMille’s great one, I was delighted to learn about Fraser Heston. A guy of my generation, Fraser, at the tender age of three months, made his film debut playing Baby Moses in “The Ten Commandments.” Now, Fraser mostly had to float around the bullrushes waiting for ...
Pillowtalk.2011 release 4
Beyond giving me a life-long hankering for a pink counter top, “Pillow Talk,” the Rock Hudson/Doris Day romantic comedy, is not to my liking. Made in 1959 right when I was hitting little girlhood, I find the film’s fifties innuendo and double-entendres, well, nauseating. My ’50s guy is Jack Cole — hard core, provocative, sexy, ...
Still the swingingest thing: West Side Story’s George Chakiris
A lot of ladies — and quite a few gents including American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Marcelo Gomes and the just-retired Jose Manuel Carreno — gawked as West Side Story star George Chakiris entered the Founder’s Room of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles Music Center. It was the opening night reception following ...
“Je ne suis pas contente de tout,” says Claude Bessy. 1
The film I loved most of the four I saw at the Dance Camera West festival in June was Fabrice Herrault’s beautifully constructed documentary about his former ballet instructor, Claude Bessy, Les lignes d’une Vie (Traces of a Life). Herrault, a dance professor at the Juilliard School and a respected private coach, has made one ...
Debbie Reynolds, costume connoisseur
Photographer/writer Iris Schneider contributes this to arts·meme: “Isn’t there some millionaire out there who can save all this?” The question hung in the air as hundreds of ordinary people, film buffs with their kids, designers and lookie-loos lined up to ogle the astounding array of costumes and props collected over the years by Debbie Reynolds ...
LACMA’s last picture show: Ozu’s “Late Autumn” on July 30 2
Jul
21
2011
There are still several wonderful films between now and then, but for your calendar’s purposes, one date stands out. The final screening of LACMA’s weekend classic film program, begun 41 years ago and overseen by Ian Birnie for the last 15, features Yasujiro Ozu’s “Late Autumn” (1962). That’s on Saturday, July 30, 2011. In his ...
Wicked comedy by Lubitsch at LACMA 1
Jul
16
2011
It was pure pleasure, in the waning days of the LACMA weekend classic film series, as curator Ian Birnie trotted out yet another sublime film pairing, this time a comedy duo: the first film, Preston Sturges’ social commentary/classic, “Sullivan’s Travels,” topped by Ernst Lubitsch’s insane, zany, perfectly scripted, outrageous and brilliant “To Be or Not ...
Party on, Fay McKenzie!
Jul
13
2011
Fay McKenzie, the hard-working child actress of the prior post, now 93 years old, is perhaps best known for her uncredited appearance in the party scene of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” in which she alternately laughs, then cries, into a mirror. McKenzie’s husband, comedy writer Tom Waldman, was a frequent collaborator of Blake Edwards. He wrote ...
Fay McKenzie, child actress … in 1924! 1
Jul
12
2011
Supplementing the Academy’s “Summer of Silents” series, which last night screened the marvelous early Western feature film, “The Covered Wagon” (1923), was programmer Randy Haberkamp’s extremely delightful interview with Fay McKenzie. Born in a trunk in 1918, the still funny and alert actress was the daughter of the actors Robert McKenzie and Eva McKenzie. All ...
Celebrating classic film at LACMA 1
Jul
10
2011
We spun in classic film heaven at LACMA this weekend. The first installment of curator Ian Birnie’s final series — his last picture show — which is devoted to “audience favorites,” offered four stellar international films — one, each, by directors from Germany (Murnau), the U.K. (Powell/Pressburger), again Germany via France (Ophuls) and Italy (Antonioni). ...