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Dabney Coleman, the popular comic actor from 9 to 5, Tootsie and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman whose many redeeming qualities including a knack for portraying characters who had none, has died. He was 92.

Coleman died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, his daughter, singer Quincy Coleman, told The Hollywood Reporter.

“My father crafted his time here on Earth with a curious mind, a generous heart and a soul on fire with passion, desire and humor that tickled the funny bone of humanity,” she said. “As he lived, he moved through this final act of his life with elegance, excellence and mastery.

“A teacher, a hero and a king, Dabney Coleman is a gift and blessing in life and in death as his spirit will shine through his work, his loved ones and his legacy … eternally.”

The Emmy-winning actor also portrayed an irascible talk show host in upstate New York on NBC’s Buffalo Bill,...

Jerry Herman’s musical “Hello, Dolly!” dominated the 18th Tony Awards which took place at the New York Hilton on May 24, 1964. “Hello, Dolly!” entered the ceremony with 11 nominations and walked out with ten awards including best musical, best actress for Carol Channing, original score for Herman and for Gower Champion’s choreography and direction.

Other musicals in contention for multiple awards that year were “High Spirits,” based on Noel Coward’s classic comedy “Blithe Spirit,” “Funny Girl,” which transformed Barbra Streisand into a Broadway superstar, and “110 in the Shade,” based on the straight play “The Rainmaker.”

Bert Lahr, best known as the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” won lead actor in a musical for “Foxy,” based on Ben Jonson’s “Volpone.” The musical was not a hit closed after 72 performances. Also nominated in the category was Bob Fosse for a short-lived revival of Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey.

Noreen Nash, a starlet of the 1940s and ’50s who appeared in such notable films as The Southerner, Giant and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, has died. She was 99.

Nash died Tuesday of natural causes at her home in Beverly Hills, her oldest son, Lee Siegel Jr., told The Hollywood Reporter.

Nash worked on about two dozen features during her two-decade career, including several “B” pictures like Phantom From Space (1953), where she portrayed an abducted scientist in a movie shot at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

The blue-eyed, dark-haired Nash also starred as the wife of an owner of a Palm Springs tennis club on the CBS summer replacement series The Charles Farrell Show — it stood in for I Love Lucy in 1956 — and appeared on episodes of Hopalong Cassidy, The Abbott and Costello Show, My Little Margie, Dragnet and 77 Sunset Strip.

Nash played the...

There’s always somebody new in the rat race trenches whose motto is ‘how to make friends and deceive people.’ Howard Duff’s photographer uses his camera to extort money from criminals while polishing his image as a grabber of Pulitzer-worthy news photos. But how long can he maintain his charade with mobsters Brian Donlevy and Lawrence Tierney, and how soon will his kissing partners Peggy Dow and Anne Vernon see through his lies? This efficient noir was the first feature directing job from the prolific Joe Pevney.

Shakedown

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1950 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 80 min. / Street Date March 29, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Howard Duff, Brian Donlevy, Peggy Dow, Lawrence Tierney, Bruce Bennett, Anne Vernon, Peter Virgo, Charles Sherlock, Rock Hudson, Roy Engel, Gregg Martell, Joseph Pevney.

Cinematography: Irving Glassberg

Art Director: Robert Clatworthy, Bernard Herzbrun

Film Editor: Milton Carruth

Music director: Joseph Gershenson

Screenplay by Alfred Lewis Levitt,...

Ah romance! A handsome stranger takes a room in your house, lets you feed him and doesn’t pay the rent — of course he’s the perfect man of your dreams. Excellent WB players Faye Emerson and Zachary Scott enliven an odd mix of moods in a tale of a murderous Bluebeard- boyfriend. Director Robert Florey’s thriller is half stylish spook show, and half romantic sitcom. With Dick Erdman, Rosemary DeCamp and perky Mona Freeman as the little sister who needs to be told, ‘Don’t you do what your big sister done.’

Danger Signal

DVD-r

The Warner Archive Collection

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 78 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Faye Emerson, Zachary Scott, Dick Erdman, Rosemary DeCamp, Bruce Bennett, Mona Freeman, John Ridgely, Mary Servoss, Joyce Compton, Virginia Sale, Robert Arthur.

Cinematography: James Wong Howe

Film Editor: Frank Magee

Original Music: Adolph Deutsch

Written by Adele Comandini,...

On the day a U.S. appeals court lifted an injunction that blocked a Mississippi “religious freedom” law – i.e., giving Christian extremists the right to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender people, etc. – not to mention the publication of a Republican-backed health care bill targeting the poor, the sick, the elderly, and those with “pre-existing conditions” – which would include HIV-infected people, a large chunk of whom are gay and bisexual men, so the wealthy in the U.S. can get a massive tax cut, Turner Classic Movies' 2017 Gay Pride or Lgbt Month celebration continues (into tomorrow morning, Thursday & Friday, June 22–23) with the presentation of movies by or featuring an eclectic – though seemingly all male – group: Montgomery Clift, Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Dirk Bogarde, John Schlesinger, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Arthur Laurents, and Jerome Robbins. After all, one assumes that, rumors or no, the presence of Mercedes McCambridge in one...

Canadian-born actress Alexis Smith (born 1921) would have turned 96 years old today, June 8. Turner Classic Movies is celebrating her birthday by presenting nine of her movies, mostly during her time as a Warner Bros. contract player. In addition to Michael Curtiz's box office hit Night and Day, a highly fictionalized Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a heterosexual version of the famed gay composer. Night and Day is being shown as part of TCM's Gay Pride Month celebration. Alexis Smith died on June 9, 1993, the day after she turned 72. After her film career petered out in the 1950s, she went on to receive acclaim on the Broadway stage, making sporadic film appearances all the way to the year of her death. Smith's last film appearance was in a minor supporting role in Martin Scorsese's overly genteel period drama The Age of Innocence (1993), starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder.

The 1945 cinematic adaptation of Mildred Pierce, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring, of course, Joan Crawford, is a very different beast to the 2011 HBO mini-series starring Kate Winslet. In all honestly it is not as good, but more significantly it is very different in terms of costume. Interestingly enough the mini-series, which is evidently a period piece, is closer in terms of historical accuracy than the near contemporary set Crawford version. This is not the be all and end all, because while Winslet’s Pierce may feel more real in terms of costume and setting, Crawford’s is arguably more fun. If for no other reason than to exemplify how the importance of star wattage took over everything back then regardless of what was contained in the script. Make no mistake, the story may be centred on Mildred Pierce but the movie is one hundred percent centred on Joan Crawford.

“Cain, Curtiz, And Crawford”

By Raymond Benson

Mildred Pierce is one curious piece of cinema. As film critics Molly Haskell and Robert Polito point out in their fascinating conversation that is a supplement on this beautifully-presented Blu-ray release from The Criterion Collection, Pierce is a movie that almost doesn’t know what it wants to be. In many ways it is a woman’s picture, that is, a melodrama, but it’s disguised inside a manufactured film noir.

This reasoning is sound, for in spite of novelist James M. Cain being known for terrific pulp crime fiction (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice), his 1941 novel Mildred Pierce is not a crime story, unless you want to say that a young woman having an affair with her stepfather is “criminal.” The book is indeed hardboiled and pulpy, but there is no murder in it.

On the other hand, Michael Curtiz...

Stars: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Butterfly McQueen | Written by Ranald MacDougall, Catherine Turney | Directed by Michael Curtiz

The shadow of Casablanca will always loom over Michael Curtiz’s bumper filmography, but time has been nearly as kind to Mildred Pierce, an adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1941 novel. A Joan Crawford vehicle made in 1945, the movie is a solid and relevant story that was remade recently for television by Todd Haynes for HBO – albeit minus the murder subplot, which wasn’t in the original text.

Crawford plays Mildred Pierce-Beragon, a woman hauled in by the police following the shooting of her husband, Monte (a slithery Zachary Scott). Mildred is the prime suspect, but then the film flicks to flashback as she starts telling the story of her rises and falls, and we begin to learn of the machinations that ended in murder.

We meet the younger Mildred,...

Mildred Pierce

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 860

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 111 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date , 2017 /

Starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Bruce Bennett, Lee Patrick, Moroni Olsen, Veda Ann Borg, Jo Ann Marlowe, Butterfly McQueen.

Cinematography: Ernest Haller

Art Direction: Anton Grot

Film Editor: David Weisbart

Original Music: Max Steiner

Written by: Ranald MacDougall from the novel by James M. Cain

Produced by: Jerry Wald, Jack L. Warner

Directed by Michael Curtiz

James M. Cain’s 1941 novel Mildred Pierce offers a venal and self-destructive view of America not with a story of respectable bourgeois society, not the criminal underworld. A de-classed, suburb-dwelling nobody fights her way onto the social register by using men and by hard work… and then watches as her obsessive goals blow up in her face In Cain’s worldview it’s every woman for herself. He drags in an odd personal theme,...

Today’s top casting notices could have you rocking a pair of pumps or indulging in some tasty bites. Get all the details below! “Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert” The Zachary Scott Theatre Center of Austin, Texas, is injecting a dose of fabulous into its fall programming with the drag-tastic Australian musical “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” Featuring some of the top disco diva hits of yesteryear, the irreverent jukebox musical is casting all roles, including its leading trio of drag queens, Bernadette, Mitzi, and Felicia. This production under director Abe Reybold is scheduled to rehearse and run Aug. 20–Oct. 20 and pays $400 per week for union actors (wages for nonunion actors is not yet determined), plus travel, transportation, and housing for out-of-town talent. “Lawrence Of Suburbia” This comedic television pilot from writer-director Michael DuChene is the story of Lawrence Weber, a “wayward stoner who becomes a prophet of God after...

As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.

After a decade of the Dust Bowl destroying crops while rich land owners exploited every little farmer there was, making a film that naively bought into the American dream would seem foolish for any filmmaker. But Jean Renoir could only see hope in the plains, having fled his home to exchange the dreams of Fascism for the dreams of celluloid. While Renoir struggled in Hollywood during the war period, his break came as he went north to Millerton Lake to make The Southerner in 1945. The resulting film follows doe-eyed Zachary Scott, exuding his common-day presence, as Sam Tucker. Tucker, gullible for the promises that hard work means a better life, moves his family from a proto-Days of Heaven cotton-picking existence to a farm of one’s own,...

Looking to discover a top-quality film that honors lasting values? Jean Renoir gives Zachary Scott and Betty Field as Texas sharecroppers trying to survive a rough first year. It's beautifully written by Hugo Butler, with given realistic, earthy touches not found in Hollywood pix. And the transfer is a new UCLA restoration. With two impressive short subjects in equal good quality. The Southerner Blu-ray Kino Classics 1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 92 min. / Street Date February 9, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Betty Field, Beulah Bondi, Carol Naish, Norman Lloyd, Zachary Scott, Percy Kilbride, Charles Kemper, Blanche Yurka, Estelle Taylor, Paul Harvey, Noreen Nash, Nestor Paiva, Almira Sessions. Cinematography Lucien Andriot Film Editor Gregg C. Tallas Production Designer Eugène Lourié Assistant Director Robert Aldrich Original Music Werner Janssen Written by Hugo Butler, Jean Renoir from a novel by George Sessions Perry Produced by Robert Hakim, David L. Loew Directed by Jean Renoir...

Joan Crawford in 'Mildred Pierce.' 'Mildred Pierce' review: Very entertaining soap opera Time has a way of making some films seem grander than they really are. A good example is Mildred Pierce, the 1945 black-and-white melodrama directed by Casablanca's Michael Curtiz, and that won star Joan Crawford a Best Actress Oscar. Mildred Pierce is in no way, shape, or form great art, even though it's certainly not a bad film. In fact, as a soap opera it's quite entertaining – no, make that very entertaining; and entertainment is a quality that can stand on its own. (The problem in recent decades is that cinema has become nothing but entertainment.) In the case of Mildred Pierce, the entertainment is formulaic and rather predictable – but in an enjoyable, campy sort of way. Unbridled Hollywood melodrama Now, what makes Mildred Pierce a melodrama is something known as the Dumbest Possible Action – Dpa for short.

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...

As the stylist-turned-designer becomes a sort of VIP of the fashion industry -- think Rachel Zoe, L'Wren Scott and Jeanne Yang -- one veteran wardrobe ace is adding yet another hyphen to her resume. Gillean McLeod, a stylist who has also become a designer, recently stepped in front of the camera as a model -- at age 57. Exclusive: Stylist Tanya Gill Launching Fashion Website McLeod's moonlighting as a model began casually, with the editorial and commercial photographer Zachary Scott, with whom McLeod regularly works, casting her as a shrink in an image for the New York Times Sunday Magazine. After

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‘Whiplash’: Sundance Film Festival Awards’ rare double winner (photo: Miles Teller in ‘Whiplash’) Directed by Damien Chazelle — and acquired for domestic distribution by Sony Pictures Classics — Whiplash won the 2014 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award. The story of a young, ambitious 19-year-old drummer (played by 26-year-old Miles Teller) under the tutelage of a ruthless teacher (J.K. Simmons), Whiplash also features Melissa Benoist, Paul Reiser, Austin Stowell, Nate Lang, Chris Mulkey, and Damon Gupton. Whiplash‘s double Sundance Film Festival win is quite rare. Previous such instances in Sundance’s three-decade history include Tony Bui’s Three Seasons in 1999, Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s Quinceañera in 2006, Lee Daniels’ Precious in 2009, and Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station last year. Of these, Precious is — somewhat surprisingly — the only Sundance double winner to have succeeded both at the domestic box office and during awards season,...

Ann Blyth movies: TCM schedule on August 16, 2013 (photo: ‘Our Very Own’ stars Ann Blyth and Farley Granger) See previous post: "Ann Blyth Today: Light Singing and Heavy Drama on TCM." 3:00 Am One Minute To Zero (1952). Director: Tay Garnett. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ann Blyth, William Talman. Bw-106 mins. 5:00 Am All The Brothers Were Valiant (1953). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth. C-95 mins. 6:45 Am The King’S Thief (1955). Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Cast: Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, David Niven. C-79 mins. Letterbox Format. 8:15 Am Rose Marie (1954). Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas. C-104 mins. Letterbox Format. 10:00 Am The Great Caruso (1951). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Mario Lanza, Ann Blyth, Dorothy Kirsten, Jarmila Novotna, Richard Hageman, Carl Benton Reid, Eduard Franz, Ludwig Donath, Alan Napier, Pál Jávor, Carl Milletaire, Shepard Menken, Vincent Renno, Nestor Paiva, Peter Price, Mario Siletti, Angela Clarke,...

Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...

Paul Henreid: From Eleanor Parker to ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ (photo: Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker in ‘Between Two Worlds’) Paul Henreid returns this evening, as Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013. In Of Human Bondage (1946), he stars in the old Leslie Howard role: a clubfooted medical student who falls for a ruthless waitress (Eleanor Parker, in the old Bette Davis role). Next on TCM, Henreid and Eleanor Parker are reunited in Between Two Worlds (1944), in which passengers aboard an ocean liner wonder where they are and where the hell (or heaven or purgatory) they’re going. Hollywood Canteen (1944) is a near-plotless, all-star showcase for Warner Bros.’ talent, a World War II morale-boosting follow-up to that studio’s Thank Your Lucky Stars, released the previous year. Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and Pirates of Tripoli (1955) are B pirate movies. The former is an uninspired affair,...

Eleanor Parker Now on TCM Palms Springs area resident Eleanor Parker, who turns 91 next June 26, is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of June. One of the best actresses of Hollywood’s studio era, Parker isn’t nearly as well-remembered today as she should be despite three Best Actress Academy Award nominations (Caged, 1950; Detective Story, 1951; Interrupted Melody, 1955), a number of box-office and/or critical hits, and a key role in one of the biggest blockbusters of all time (The Sound of Music). Hopefully, the 34 Eleanor Parker movies TCM will be showing each Monday this month — beginning tonight — will help to introduce the actress to a broader 21st-century audience. Eleanor Parker movies "When I am spotted somewhere it means that my characterizations haven’t covered up Eleanor Parker the person. I prefer it the other way around," Parker once said. In fact, the title of Doug McClelland’s 1989 Eleanor Parker bio,...

Joan Fontaine in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion Joan Fontaine, who turned 94 last October 22, shines on Turner Classic Movies' tonight. TCM will be showing five Fontaine movies: Jane Eyre (1944), The Constant Nymph (1943), Born to Be Bad (1950), Suspicion (1941), and Ivanhoe (1952). I've yet to check out The Constant Nymph, which had been unavailable for decades until TCM presented it a few months ago. In the film, 26-year-old Fontaine plays a 14-year-old infatuated with a composer (Charles Boyer) married to her older cousin (Alexis Smith). Edmund Goulding directed. Enough members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences must have found Fontaine quite believable as a lovestruck teen, for The Constant Nymph earned her her third (and final) Best Actress nomination. Jane Eyre has been made and remade about a zillion times in the last century or so. Fontaine's version, directed by Robert Stevenson (later of Mary Poppins fame) and co-starring Orson Welles as Rochester,...

With thoughts from Tom Weaver on the producer of Devil Doll.

Prolific author and legendary film buff Tom Weaver has been a friend of Tfh since before we existed, and his essential series of book-length interviews with horror/sci fi filmmakers, writers and actors has mirrored what we try to do here at the site, which is disseminate information and opinions on the movies we all love.

Tom’s latest book examines the career of Devil Doll producer Richard Gordon, friend of both Karloff and Lugosi, one of the first fans-turned-pro and whose long career has finally ended. Richard was 85.[More about The Horror Hits of Richard Gordon here.]

Here’s Tom:

As Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog once pointed out, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas (etc.) are called the first people to have grown up movie nuts and then become moviemakers themselves, but Years before them came Alex and Richard Gordon, who loved movies as kids in England, belonged to fan clubs,...

Ann Blyth on TCM: Kismet, Rose Marie, Our Very Own 8:00 Pm Mildred Pierce (1945). A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society. Dir: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden, Bruce Bennett. Bw-111 mins. 10:00 Pm Kismet (1955). In this Arabian Nights musical, the "king of the beggars" infiltrates high society when his daughter is wooed by a handsome prince. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. Cast: Howard Keel, Ann Blyth, Dolores Gray. C-113 mins. Letterbox Format. 12:00 Am All The Brothers Were Valiant (1953). Brothers on a whaling schooner become romantic rivals. Dir: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth. C-95 mins. 2:00 Am Our Very Own (1950). The discovery that she's adopted shakes a young girl's sense of security. Dir: Dave Miller. Cast: Ann Blyth, Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Jane Wyatt. Bw-93 mins. 4:00 Am Rose Marie...

Ronald Reagan, Knute Rockne: All American Kay Francis, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow: Packard Campus Movies Thursday, September 1 (7:30 p.m.) The Wanderers (Orion, 1979) Set against the urban jungle of 1963 New York's gangland subculture, this coming of age teenage movie is set around the Italian gang the Wanderers. Directed by Philip Kaufman. With Ken Wahl, John Friedrich and Karen Allen. Action drama. Rated R. Color, 117 min. Thursday, September 8 (7:30 p.m.) Mildred Pierce (Warner Bros., 1945) A housewife-turned-waitress finds success in business but loses control of her ungrateful teenaged daughter. Directed by Michael Curtiz. With Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott and Ann Blyth. Drama. Black & White, 111 min. Selected for the National Film Registry in 1996. Friday, September 9 (7:30 p.m.) Pre-code Drama Double Feature Jewel Robbery (Warner Bros., 1932) A wealthy, married woman becomes captivated by a debonair jewel thief. Directed by William Dieterle. With Kay Francis and William Powell. Comedy,...

Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Forsaking All Others Joan Crawford on TCM: Mildred Pierce, Flamingo Road, When Ladies Meet Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Forsaking All Others (1934) A woman pursues the wrong man for almost twenty years. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke. Cast: Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable. Bw-83 mins. 7:30 Am I Live My Life (1935) A flighty society girl tries to make a go of her marriage to an archaeologist. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke. Cast: Joan Crawford, Brian Aherne, Frank Morgan. Bw-97 mins. 9:15 Am Love On The Run (1936) Rival newsmen get mixed up with a runaway heiress and a ring of spies. Dir: W. S. Van Dyke. Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone. Bw-80 mins. 10:45 Am When Ladies Meet (1941) A female novelist doesn't realize her new friend is the wife whose husband she's trying to steal. Dir: Robert Z. Leonard.

Film director whose work included the wartime masterpiece Western Approaches

The director Pat Jackson, who has died aged 95, was best known for the semi-documentary war film Western Approaches (1944). This neglected classic – a feature-length portrait of the Battle of the Atlantic – was shot under the auspices of the Ministry of Information's Crown Film Unit and predominantly filmed at sea under hazardous conditions. The shoot's logistical nightmares were compounded by the vast size of the Technicolor camera. Jackson himself devised the story of the imminent convergence of a German U-boat and an English ship which is on the way to save a group of comrades in a lifeboat.

Jackson was in his late 20s when he shot Western Approaches with the outstanding cameraman Jack Cardiff and a cast of amateur actors. It was a remarkable achievement that remained unsurpassed throughout the writer-director's lengthy career. The film was well received in Britain and...

An elegant life of Robert Redford gets to the heart of an enigmatic, Gatsbyesque charmer who dreamed of freedom, honesty and social fulfilment

Actor, director, producer, conservationist, political activist and patron of independent cinema, Robert Redford has lived a formidably energetic life while continuing to look like the diffident, tousle-haired all-American boy next door. He'll be 75 on 18 August, and his latest film as director, The Conspirator, a study of the fallout from the assassination of President Lincoln, is as ambitious and serious as anything he's done.

The Irish writer Michael Feeney Callan has known this enigmatic, Gatsbyesque charmer for 14 years, interviewed him at length, spoken to some 300 witnesses and had access to his diaries and notebooks. Callan is thus in the best possible position to answer a key question that's been sung on family occasions by Redford's children these past few years to a tune by Andrew Lloyd Webber:...

When you're in the same room as Portugal. The Man, you notice the climate. You sense the Alaskan landscape from which the band hails. You smell the rain of Portland Oregon, where the group now resides, and where they recorded their latest LP, "American Ghetto" in 2010. And you feel warm for them in their sweaters, with the heat of the lights and the electric energy of all their fans. Portugal. The Man, it may be cold in Alaska, but you can wear short sleeves here.

At their show at the IFC Crossroads House yesterday, the band tried out some of their latest prog pop rock numbers, in anticipation of the release of their upcoming album, due out in May. Like so many other artists who were shaped in remote locations, Portugal. The Man's compositions are reflective of the landscapes of their youth, embodying both the enlightenment of isolation and the...

Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott, Joan Crawford in Michael Curtiz's Mildred Pierce Mildred Pierce Review Part I Mildred Pierce was adapted from a novel of the same name by James M. Cain, who wrote Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. The adaptation was credited to Ranald MacDougall, though Catherine Turney (Of Human Bondage, A Stolen Life) and novelist William Faulkner were two among several uncredited writers who contributed to the project. Given what I’ve read of Faulkner’s melodramas, it’s no surprise this was right up his alley. Mildred Pierce also has a fine soap-operatic score by Max Steiner, with just enough gravy in the right places to make the silliness entertain. The cinematography by Ernest Haller (who won an Oscar for Gone with the Wind), and the editing by David Weisbart are solid if prosaic. The lack of a real "vision" in classic Hollywood films...

Ann Blyth is pictured in the photo above with Academy director of special projects Randy Haberkamp during a chat following a screening of Michael Curtiz’s film noir classic Mildred Pierce. Starring Blyth, Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, and Bruce Bennett, Mildred Pierce was shown as the part of the "Oscar Noir" series at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on Monday, June 14, 2010. Blyth starred or was featured in about three dozen movies from 1944 to 1957. She was cast opposite numerous major Hollywood stars, among them Charles Boyer in A Woman’s Vengeance (1947), Burt Lancaster in Brute Force (1947), Fredric March in Another Part of the Forest (1948), William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948), Claudette Colbert in Thunder on the Hill (1950), Mario Lanza in The Great [...]...

Screenwriter Callie Khouri, who won an Oscar for the Ridley Scott-directed road movie Thelma & Louise, featuring Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, and Brad Pitt, is shown in the photo above before a screening of Michael Curtiz’s classic film noir Mildred Pierce. Starring Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth (who was present at the screening), Zachary Scott, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, and Bruce Bennett, Mildred Pierce was shown as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ "Oscar Noir" series at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on Monday, June 14. Mildred Pierce earned Joan Crawford her only Best Actress Oscar. Photo: Todd Wawrychuk / ©A.M.P.A.S. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Mildred Pierce Mildred Pierce, Michael Curtiz’s film noir/family melodrama, earned Joan Crawford her only — and thoroughly deserved — Academy Award. The Oscar-nominated 1945 classic, which also features Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott, Jack Carson, Eve Arden, and Bruce Bennett, will be the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Oscar Noir: 1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood’s Dark Side” on Monday, June 14, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Mildred Pierce will be introduced by screenwriter Callie Khouri of Thelma & Louise and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya [...]...

Actress and model Ruth Ford has died at her home in New York at the age of 98.

A former member of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre troupe, Ford was a regular leading light on Broadway throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

She won rave reviews for role in plays like No Exit, Dinner at Eight and Requiem for a Nun, in which she co-starred with her husband, Zachary Scott.

Her longtime home in the Dakota building was a gathering spot for her many artist and writer friends, including Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Edward Albee, according to the New York Times.

Born in Mississippi, she arrived in New York in the 1930s and found work as a model for photographers Cecil Beaton and Man Ray.

In 1938, Ford joined Welles’ Mercury Theatre group and made her Broadway debut the same year in Shoemaker’s Holiday.

She moved to Hollywood in 1941 and went on to appear in films like Wilson, The Woman Who Came Back and Murder on the Waterfront.

Already spawned into a feature film, James M. Cain's 1941 novel "Mildred Pierce" is going to be adapted into a miniseries as well. Oscar-winning actress Kate Winslet has been attached to star as the titular character, Mildred Pierce, a middle-class mother of two who attempts to maintain her and her family's social position during the Great Depression.

Set to be in the writing credit and behind the lens is Todd Haynes, the director and scriptwriter of Bob Dylan's biopic "I'm Not There". There has been no network yet that has secured the broadcasting right but sources told Variety that HBO is the front runner in the race.

Four years after its publication, "Mildred Pierce" the novel was made into a movie starring Joan Crawford, Jack Carson and Zachary Scott among others. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress and Best Screenplay. Crawford eventually won hers,...

Next at UCLA’s Festival of Preservation at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood: On Wed., April 15, at 7:30 pm: Efraín Gutiérrez’s Run, Tecato, Run (1979), described as a real-life inspired tale that "depicts a junkie’s efforts to get off heroin in order to reclaim and raise his daughter." Actor-director Gutiérrez is expected to attend the screening. On Fri., April 17, at 7:30 pm: Lester James Peries‘ Gamperaliya (1964), a "seminal" work in Sri Lankan cinema that has been compared to Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy. Gamperaliya tells the story of "a teacher and member of the new rising middle class, who falls in love with the daughter of his village’s leading aristocratic clan. Defensive positions are assumed and the girl’s parents insist upon a marriage to a stuffed shirt of her own class." On Sat., April 18, at 7:30 pm: Director Edgar G. Ulmer’s Ruthless (1948) is described as...