Anna Sten was hailed as a successor to Greta Garbo. It did not happen but she was a good actress and her Hollywood films are worth checking out. She was born in the Ukraine in 1908. She made some German silent films and made a smoth transition to sound with 1931’s “Trapeze” and “The Brothers Karamazov” which were seen by the U.S. producer Samuel Goldwyn. He brought Ms Sten to Hollywood where she made 1934 “We Live Again” with Fredric March and “The Wedding Night” opposite Gary Cooper.When the movies did not prove successful at the box office, Goldwyn cancelled her contract. She continued to make films throught the 1940’s but often in supporting roles. Her husband was a very successful American producer Eugene Frenke. Anna Sten died in New York in 1993 at the age of 84.
Her “Independent” obituary:
GARBO] DIETRICH] STEN] It doesn’t have the same ring to it, but if their pre-Hollywood work is considered, Anna Sten leaves the others at the starting gate (Garbo with admittedly only two films). In Hollywood it was a different matter. Imported on the strength of the success of the other two, Sten was reasonably expected to outshine both: but she became the outstanding, the most publicised of all those who didn’t make it. ‘Goldwyn’s folly’ she was called, after he had spent over dollars 5m on failing to make her a star.
She became famous in her native Soviet Union in the lead of Boris Barnet’s near-perfect comedy The Girl with the Hatbox (1927), as a naive country girl being either misunderstood or wooed by some of Moscow’s most colourful young men. One of these was the great screen villain Vladimir Fogel, and she ran foul of him again in the grim The Yellow Ticket (1928), directed by Fedor Ozep, whom she married. Again she was the girl from the steppes, Fogel the wealthy bourgeois Muscovite whose children she was looking after, and her refusal to play footsy finds her eventually working the streets.
Of her half-dozen Russian films, this became the most renowned throughout Europe, and Ozep took her to Germany to play Grushenka in his version of Dostoevsky, Der Morder Dimitri Karamasoff (1931). It may still be the best screen transcription of that writer, with Fritz Kortner on magnificent form as Dimitri, and Sten as the trollop who causes his downfall. This was one of the screen’s cliche roles, but Sten, part Marilyn Monroe, part Nancy Carroll, seemed never to have seen any previous screen vamp – let alone studied them.
Word from Europe was that Sten could out-Garbo Garbo, so Goldwyn was mindful to have her under contract. It was not perhaps a mistake on his part to publicise Sten as the new Garbo, since such was the fate of most of the other (female) European imports – though few of these remained residents of LA for long. It was an error to announce that her grooming would be in the hands of Dietrich’s mentor Josef von Sternberg, when neither he nor the equally autocratic Goldwyn ever took kindly to any ideas but his own. It was also foolish to spend two whole years with a constant barrage of publicity emerging about ‘tests’, plus the amounts being spent to turn Sten into a Hollywood ‘personality’, and on the search to find the vehicle to launch her.
It went without saying that puritan America was titillated by this formula: Old Europe plus beauty equals sin and temptation, and it was Zola’s whore, Nana, who became Sten’s first transatlantic incarnation – though not without a record number of tribulations. The first version, directed by George Fitzmaurice, was scrapped, and it was entirely remade by Dorothy Arzner. Goldwyn booked Radio City Music Hall for two almost unprecedented weeks (King Kong was another matter) – this was 1934 – and the suspense engendered among moviegoers, which meant just about everybody, was ended: it wasn’t that Sten wasn’t any good, but that she wasn’t very good. Acting in English, she was just another arch and accented seductress; and Zola’s great original had become merely another pot-bouille of the sins available to those who frequented the boulevards.
Goldwyn quickly rallied, returning Sten to Russia for a version of Tolstoy’s Resurrection, now entitled We Live Again (1934), directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Fredric March played the Prince who lives an idyll with his peasant sweetheart and has his way with her, later, after learning the ways of the Imperial court. He repents after she has lost the baby and slipped far, far along the primrose path. This adaptation made Tolstoy irredeemably coy and was avoided by cinemagoers who had already had two chances to see Hollywood versions of this tale during the previous seven years.
Goldwyn tried again, and again with a notable director, King Vidor, The Wedding Night (1935). Sten became a Polish Connecticut peasant girl who attracts the discontented city writer Gary Cooper
Three Russian Girls, poster, from top, left, Anna Sten, Mimi Forsythe, Kathy Frye; right inset, Kent Smith, Anna Sten, 1943. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
When The Wedding Night became one of the few Cooper films to lose money Goldwyn was forced, finally, to see the writing on the wall. In letting Sten go he was relieved, at least, of the constant battles with her and her second husband, Eugene Frenke, over the publicity. Frenke took her to Britain for A Woman Alone (1936), which Ozep directed. Little was heard of it and less of Sten, till Hollywood’s enthusiasm for Russia’s war effort brought a few offers in films extolling the same. A handful of other movies followed, and in the Fifties she attempted to revive her career by studying at the Actors’ Studio. This led to the tour of Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, as Jenny, following its first presentation in New York, when Louis Armstrong’s record of ‘Mac the Knife’ did no harm at all. Sten found greater success with a new career – as a painter, exhibiting several times in New York.
She was one of cinema’s great enigmas. Most of the movies and people whom Goldwyn believed in are among the most disposable artefacts of Hollywood’s past. The exceptions – Cooper, Ronald Colman, William Wyler – worked with him under duress, for high salaries or/and brooking no interference. To read about Sten and Goldwyn or see the films she made for him is to be reminded of the inanities of an era long gone: but those of her dozen European films that I have seen might have been made yesterday.
The avove “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Ella Logan was born in 1913 in Glasgow. She made her West End debut in 1930 with the play “Darling I Love You”. In the mid 1930’s she emigrated to the U.S. and in Hollywood she made “Flying Hostess” in 1936, “52nd Street” and “The Goldwyn Follies” in 1938. During World War Two she entertained the troops in Europe and Africa. In 1947 she had a hufe success o Broadway as Sharon in “Finian’s Rainbow”. It was her final Broaway show. In the 1950’s she starred on television and inconcert and supper clubs. She died in 1969 at the age of 56. Her niece is the actress/singer Annie Ross.
Article in “The Scotsman”:
THE singer and entertainer Georgina Allan made her stage debut as a toddler, when she performed songs made famous by Sir Harry Lauder in music halls across Scotland. Briefly known as “Daisy Mars” and, by her late teens, as “Ella Logan”, this daughter of a spirit salesman and a warehouse worker was singing with London’s top dance bands, broadcasting on the BBC, and starring in West End revues. In the early 1930s she toured Europe – once apparently singing for a Cologne audience that included Hitler and several senior Nazis – before moving to the US where she is believed to have married for the first time. There she recorded with jazz greats including Benny Goodman. By the late 1930s, her exuberant swing recordings of traditional Scottish songs earned her the names “The Swinging Scots Lassie” and “The Loch Lomond Lass” when she topped the bill in nightclub revues. From 1935, she was based in Hollywood. Just before she left New York, her sister Mary Dalziel Short (May) (190169), and her family visited from Glasgow. May Allan and her husband, Jack Short, had a music hall act as The Logan Family, featuring their five children, including James Short (actor and comedian Jimmy Logan, 19282001) and Annabelle Short (the jazz singer Annie Ross, born 1930).
Article on Ella Logan on “Masterworks Broadway” website can be accessed here.
They believed that Annabelle could be the next Shirley Temple, and left the five-year-old in her aunt’s care in Hollywood, where Ella Logan was trying to forge a movie career. Between 1936 and 1938 she had minor roles in five films: Flying Hostess (1936), Top of the Town (1937), Woman Chases Man (1937), 52nd Street (1937) and The Goldwyn Follies (1938), in which she introduced two of George Gershwin’s last songs. In 1941, Ella Logan married the screenwriter and producer Fred Finkelhoffe, a marriage that raised her status in Hollywood society. After the Second World War, during which she entertained American forces in Italy and in Britain, she enjoyed her greatest triumph playing Sharon, a part written specially for her, in the original 1947 Broadway production of the musical Finian’s Rainbow.
Divorced in 1954, she was subsequently romantically linked to several well-known bachelors, including former New York City mayor William O’Dwyer. During the 1950s she worked occasionally on television. In 1955, she returned to Scotland for a high-profile run at the Glasgow Empire and, the following year, she visited Glasgow to perform in jazz legend Louis Armstrong’s show
Ann Blyth was one of the ugly ducklings of show business. As a teenage star she was one of the least attractive of that unprepossessing species. Then she suddenly emerged as one of the screen’s better soubrettes, shed of the affectation that had marked her earlier work and now very pretty. Then, just as she looked like taking her place among the top stars, she disappeared”. – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972)
Ann Blyth seemed to have two distinct careers. In the 1940’s she was brilliant as Velma he spiteful spoilt daughter of Joan Crawford in 1945’s “Mildred Pierce”. She was nominated for an Academy Award. In the 1950’s she was under contract to MGM and made some of their big budget movies where she sang wonderfully and was very nice. It would have been terrific if she was allowed to show more for her lemon acid and vinegar as she matured. Her MGM musicals included “The Great Caruso” with Mario Lanza in 1950, “Rose Marie” with Howard Keel and “Kismet”” with Keel and Vic Damone. Her greatest box office success was “The Student Prince” where Mario Lanza lurked inside the body of Edmund Purdom and belted out Sigmund Romberg’s glorious songs. Ann Blyth retired from major movie making at the end of the 50’s to devote time to her family of five children.
Her IMDB entry:
The dark, petulant beauty of this petite American film and musical star worked to her advantage, especially in her early dramatic career. Ann Marie Blyth was born of Irish stock to Harry and Nan Blyth on August 16, 1928, in Mt. Kisco, New York. Her parents split while she was young and she, her mother and sister moved to New York City, where the girls attended various Catholic schools. Already determined at an early age to perform, Ann attended Manhattan’s Professional Children’s School and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap dramas, while in elementary school. A member of New York’s Children’s Opera Company, the young girl made an important Broadway debut as Paul Lukas‘ and Mady Christians‘ daughter in the classic Lillian Hellman WWII drama “Watch on the Rhine” (1941), billed as Anne (with an extra “e”). She stayed with the show for two years.
While touring with the play in Los Angeles, the teenager was noticed by director Henry Koster at Universal and given a screen test. Signed on as Ann (without the “e”) Blyth, the pretty, photographic colleen displayed her warbling talent in her debut film Chip Off the Old Block (1944), a swing-era teen musical starring Universal song-and-dance favorites Donald O’Connor and Peggy Ryan. She followed it pleasantly enough with other “B” tunefests such as The Merry Monahans (1944) and Babes on Swing Street (1944). It wasn’t until Warner Bros. borrowed her to make self-sacrificing mother Joan Crawford‘s life pure hell as malicious, spiteful daughter Veda in the classic, Oscar-winning wallowMildred Pierce (1945) that she really clicked with viewers and set up her dramatic career. With murder on her young character’s mind, Hollywood stood up and took notice of this fresh-faced talent.
Although Ann lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year to another Anne (Anne Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film Danger Signal (1945). During filming, Ann suffered a broken back in a sledding accident while briefly vacationing in Lake Arrowhead and had to be replaced in the role. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Force (1947).
Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes (1941) in which Ann played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with much-older movie star Robert Montgomery in Once More, My Darling (1949).
At full-throttle as a star in the early 1950s, Ann transitioned easily among glossy operettas, wide-eyed comedies and all-out melodramas, some of which tended to be overbaked and, thereby, overplayed. When not dishing out the high dramatics of an adopted girl searching for her birth mother in Our Very Own (1950) or a wrongly-convicted murderess in Thunder on the Hill (1951), she was introducing classic standards as wife to Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) or playing pert and perky in such light confections as Katie Did It (1951). A well-embraced romantic leading lady, she made her last film for Universal playing a Russian countess courted by Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms (1952).
MGM eventually optioned her for its musical outings, having borrowed her a couple of times previously. She became a chief operatic rival to Kathryn Grayson at the studio during that time. Grayson, however, fared much better than Ann, who was given rather stilted vehicles.
Catching Howard Keel‘s roving eye while costumed to the nines in the underwhelmingRose Marie (1954) and his daughter in Kismet (1955), she also gussied up other stiff proceedings like The Student Prince (1954) and The King’s Thief (1955) will attest. Unfortunately, Ann came to MGM at the tail end of the Golden Age of musicals and probably suffered for it. She was dropped by the studio in 1956.
She reunited with old Universal co-star Donald O’Connor in The Buster Keaton Story(1957), but both were oddly cast with Ann playing a totally fictional love interest to O’Connor’s Keaton. Ann ended her career on a high note, however, playing the tragic title role in the The Helen Morgan Story (1957) opposite a gorgeously smirking Paul Newman. Ann has a field day as the piano-sitting, kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life was destined for celluloid. Disappointing for Ann personally, no doubt, was that her singing voice had to be dubbed (albeit superbly) by the highly emotive, non-operatic songstress Gogi Grant.
Through with films, Ann’s later concentration (besides family life) was the musical stage, with dramatic TV guest appearances thrown in now and then. Over the years a number of classic songs have been tailored to suit Ann’s glorious lyric soprano both in concert form and on the civic light opera/summer stock stages. “The Sound of Music”, “The King and I”, “Carnival”, “Bittersweet”, “South Pacific”, “Show Boat” and “A Little Night Music” are but a few of her stage credits. During this time Ann appeared as the typical American housewife for Hostess in its Twinkie, cupcake and fruit pie commercials, a job that lasted well over a decade.
She made the last of her sporadic TV guest appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) andMurder, She Wrote (1984) in the mid-’80s. Married since 1953 to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of late Irish tenor Dennis Day, she is the mother of five. Ann continues to be seen occasionally at social functions and conventions.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Ryan O’Neal was born in 1941 in Los Angeles. He first came to prominence with the television series “Empire” with Richard Egan and Terry Moore in 1962. Two years later he was internationally known for his performance as Rodney Harrington in the popular tlevision series “Peyton Place” with Dorothy Malone and Mia Farrow. The success of the show opened the door to big budget movies and he starred in 1970’s biggest hit “Love Story” with Ali McGraw. Over the next decade he starred in some major films including “Wha’s Up Doc”, “Paper Moon”, “Nickelodean”, “Barry Lyndon” and “A Bridge too Far”. His website here.
He had the face of a fairy-tale lead, the kind that would have fit agreeably in an earlier Hollywood era but felt comfortingly alluring in the moment. Ryan O’Neal was a boxer in his youth — announcing his father had died on Friday, his son Patrick O’Neal pointed fans toward YouTube footage of O’Neal fighting Joe Frazier on national TV, with Muhammad Ali doing commentary. But when he migrated to acting, it suited him, and by 1964 he had become a star thanks to the ABC prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place.”
No wonder: O’Neal’s youthful looks, blond and round-cheeked and just a little brainy, remind you of the guy who sat next to you in A.P. bio and who would lend you a pen, or his lunch, if you needed it. It seemed, emphatically, to be the face of a good guy, the kind you definitely wanted to bring home to your parents. When O’Neal tested for the role of Oliver in “Love Story,” Ali MacGraw persuaded her husband, Robert Evans, the executive in charge at Paramount, to cast him.
As the boyish Harvard hockey player in love with Jenny, the whip-smart Radcliffe student, O’Neal was entrancing, and the pair had instant chemistry. “She had to go home to him at night, but I had her during the day,” O’Neal told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview many decades later. Their meet-cute in the movie, if you want to call it that, was sexy in a cerebral way, the pair sparring over a library checkout counter, then over coffee, where Jenny informs him that she asked him out because “I like your body.”
The movie, released in 1970, was a resounding success, in part because the sharp wit of its beginning gives way to star-crossed melancholy by the end, with Jenny dying of a terminal disease and Oliver stricken with grief, repeating a phrase from his lost sweetheart: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” It proved irresistible to audiences, and its success was, in part, what allowed Evans to make movies like “The Godfather” at Paramount later in the decade.
O’Neal would take that mix of innocence and wit, comfort and humor into his next movie and beyond. It turns out he could do screwball comedy, too. The meet-cute in Peter Bogdanovich’s “What’s Up, Doc?” featured O’Neal as Dr. Howard Bannister, a musicologist in dark-rimmed glasses, stumbling by accident into an erudite conversation about rocks with the chaotic Judy Maxwell, played by Barbra Streisand. He patronizes her, assuming she doesn’t know a thing about rocks, but his look of surprise at Judy’s proclamation that “I relate primarily to micas, quartz, feldspar” breaks across his face less as wounded ego than as genuine pleasure. By the time he’s fallen backward, landing on his rear as a cascade of nearby stuffed animals falls on his head, we’re in love, too.
O’Neal’s life and career were long and storied and not without controversies, among them his difficult relationship with his daughter, Tatum O’Neal, who made her big-screen debut at 9 alongside her father in Bogdanovich’s “Paper Moon.” But one look at his Instagram account offers evidence that he believed his love story of a lifetime was with Farrah Fawcett.
Fawcett and O’Neal had their own strange sort of meet-cute. Fawcett’s husband, Lee Majors, introduced her to O’Neal in 1979, and the pair were soon romantically involved, though Majors and Fawcett didn’t divorce until 1982. O’Neal had also been married twice, to Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young, fathering three children, and had a fourth with Fawcett.
He and Fawcett stayed entwined for nearly 20 years. (She left in 1997, when she found him in bed with another woman.) They were reunited again from 2001, when O’Neal learned he had cancer, until Fawcett’s death in 2009. Not exactly a classic fairy tale. It was a rocky partnership, with both Tatum and Fawcett making accusations of physical abuse and fraught relationships with several of his children. But when Fawcett died of cancer — like Jenny in “Love Story” — it was hard to miss the parallels. Here was the star of “Love Story,” living the tragedy that had made him a star in the first place. Melodrama becomes reality.
The famous line from “Love Story” — that “love means never having to say you’re sorry” — plays well in a swoony tear-jerker, but doesn’t hold up so well in the light of day. Love does mean saying you’re sorry, over and over again, wisdom O’Neal eventually learned, at least on some level. Earlier this year, his daughter spoke of trying to reconcile with her father, with whom she subsequently reconnected, posting a picture of themon Instagram on April 21, his 82nd birthday, with the caption “Happy birthday dad I love you.”
“What’s Up, Doc?” concludes with Judy repeating the line about never saying you’re sorry, a little joke within the joke. And Howard, with O’Neal’s easy smile, smitten with her, proclaims, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard
Tippi Hedren will forever be associated with two of Alfred Hitchcock’s classics, “The Birds” with Rod Taylor and Suzanne Pleshette in 1963 and “Marnie” with Sean Connery the following year. Prior to this, she made been a ttop flight model appearing in many magazines. She has continued her career while at the same time becoming a very famous animal rights activist and has rescued many animals especiallly lions. She is the mother of actress Melanie Griffith. Article on Tippi Hedren in “MailOnline” here.
TCM Overview:
One of the quintessential cool blondes of Hollywood cinema in the 1960s, Tippi Hedren was the discovery of British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and rose from relative obscurity to international fame on the strength of her lead roles in the “The Birds” (1963) and “Marine” (1964).
Groomed by the Master of Suspense to be the next Grace Kelly, Hedren came to resent Hitchcockâ¿¿s controlling influence on her life and quarreled with him openly, resulting in a professional rift that did initial damage to her long-term career.
After the end of her Universal contract in the early Seventies, Hedren traveled the world as a free agent and while on location for a film in Africa, became invested in the plight of exotic animals
. Founding a wildlife preserve in Southern California in 1978, the maturing actress rarely turned down paying work in low budget films or on television, channeling her salary into her habitat project and lobbying during her down time for legislative reforms to benefit the living conditions of exotic animals in captivity. The mother of actress Melanie Griffith, Hedren overcame early professional disappointments to weather a diverse and purposeful career lasting more than half a century, continuing to work exhaustively into her ninth decade and enduring as an iconic example of classical beauty backed by a progressive social conscience.
The above TCMOverview can also be accessed online here.
Jill Esmond was born in Wandsworth, London in 1908. Her mother was the character actress Eva Moore. In 1928 she featured in the play” Bird in the Hand” where she met Laurence Oliver.She made her fim debut in 1931 in Alfred Hitvhvovk’s “The Skin Game”. Initially she was more famous than Laurence Oliver. On Broadway she starred with Oliver , Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawerence in “Private Lives” and “The Green Bay Tree” in 1933. In Hollywood she made “Thirteen Women”. She tunred down the role in “A Bill of Divorcement” which went then to Katharine Hepburn. After her divorce from Oliver, she continued to act on film but in smaller character roles like “Journey for Margaret” in 1941 and “A Man Called Peter” in 1955. Jill Esmond died in 1990 at the age 0f 82.
TCM Overview:
Elegant, sophisticated British lead and supporting actress who fluctuated between stage and screen on both sides of the Atlantic. First wife of Laurence Olivier (1930-40), with whom she went to Hollywood for a screen test in 1931; both secured contracts with RKO, but Esmond was judged the more desirable film property and made several Hollywood films, often playing socialites, before returning to the London stage with Olivier in the early 1930s. She became a supporting player during the 1940s. Mother of Olivier’s first son, (Simon) Tarquin Olivier.
IMDB Minibiography:
An accomplished British actress with an air of reserve and elegance, Jill Esmond was born into show business. She was the daughter of actor H.V. Esmond and actress Eva Moore, both of whom were acclaimed stage performers. She spent time in boarding school when they were on the road performing. In her mid teens, she decided to follow in their footsteps. She reconsidered her decision when her father suddenly died in 1922, but decided to follow through. Her big break in 1927, when she won great praise for her performance in the play “Outward Bound.”
Her life changed forever in 1928, when she starred in the play “Bird in the Hand,” and she caught the eye of a highly talented but then little-known actor named Laurence Olivier. He quickly became smitten with her. At first she didn’t feel any attraction towards him, although she was impressed with his talent. In the play, she won greater acclaim and was cast to play the role on Broadway. To her surprise, Olivier followed her there made a point of being around her whenever he could. Gradually, her high regard for him became love, and after some hesitation, she accepted his marriage proposal, and they were married in 1930. Although it’s not remembered now, at the time, Esmond was better known and her career more established than Olivier’s.
My Pal Wolf, poster, poster art, rear l-r: Jill Esmond, Sharyn Moffett, foreground l-r: Sharyn Moffett, Grey Shadow, 1944. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)F.p. 1, poster, (aka DOESN’T ANSWER), from left: Conrad Veidt, Jill Esmond, 1933. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Shortly after-wards, she began to get film offers, which she accepted although Olivier was scornful of the film industry. Her first major role was in The Skin Game (1931), a film about a feud between two wealthy families which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Again, she received favorable notice, and followed up with memorable performances inState’s Attorney (1932) and Thirteen Women (1932). However, in the mid-1930s, Olivier’s career began to take off. He won rave reviews for his performances in the plays “Private Lives” in 1933 (which Esmond co-starred in) and “Romeo and Juliet” in 1935.
As a result, Esmond began to cut back on her work, particularly after she became a mother in 1936. In 1937, her husband won even more acclaim in the classic film Fire Over England (1937), but in doing so, he had an affair with his co-star, actress Vivien Leigh. Rumors began to spread after the pair co-starred in That Hamilton Woman (1941). Esmond was shocked when she found out, as their marriage had appeared to be a happy one, and she initially refused his request for a divorce. However, in 1940, feeling betrayed and humiliated, she filed for divorce on grounds of adultery and named Leigh in the complaint. They split up, and Esmond sought solace in renewing her career, although she was now hopelessly overshadowed by her former husband and his new wife. She turned in well-received performances, particularly in the classic films Random Harvest (1942) and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944).
As the 1940s came to a close, her film appearances became less frequent, and motherhood and family life took up more of her time. Her final film appearance was in A Man Called Peter (1955). She did win a recurring role in the TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955), playing Eleanor of Aquitaine. By 1960 she stopped performing and went into private life. That same year, history repeated itself as Vivien Leigh divorced Olivier, who had left her to marry Joan Plowright, but Esmond never made any public statements. Her last public appearance was in a 1982 interview about her famous late ex-husband. In it, she revealed how hurt she was by how Olivier became famous with her help, but then abandoned her for a more famous actress. Other than that, she stayed out of the limelight until her death at the age of 82.
Laurence Oliver was born in 1907 in Dorking, Surrey. He acted with the Old Vic and made his film debut in 1930 with “Too Many Crooks”. In 1931 he spent a brief time in Hollywood where he made “Westward Passage” among others. By 1933 he was back pursuing his career in Britain. He venture back to Hollywood in 1938 to make “Wuthering Heights”, “Rebecca”, “Lady Hamilton and “Pride and Prejudice”. During World War Two he returned to Britain to enlist. His career soared to new heights with his “Hamlet” and he had a very prolific career on stage and screen both in Britain and the U.S. until shortly before his death in 1989.
TCM Overview:
He was by wide consensus the greatest actor of the 20th century. In an age when the “legitimate” theater held firm to primacy over motion pictures, and classical theater over modern, Laurence Olivier crossed seamlessly between both, even bridging the gap between popular culture and the Shakespearean and classic drama canon of which he was master. His official, glamorized coupling with multiple Oscar-winner Vivien Leigh – “the King and Queen of the theater,” as contemporary Sir John Gielgud once dubbed them – proved far darker than the fairy tale advertised to the public, even as countless rumors swirled around his eclectic extracurricular relationships. His legacy as the definitive Heathcliff and Hamlet, his acclaim even a generation later as the vengeful cuckold in “Sleuth” (1972) and a ruthless Nazi doctor in “Marathon Man” (1976), would see him earn 14 Oscar nominations, three statues, five Emmys out of nine nominations, two British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards out of 10 nominations – only a few indicators of his titanic impact on his craft and indeed on Western culture.
He was born Laurence Kerr Olivier on May 22, 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England, the third child of Agnes and Rev. Gerard Olivier – she a warm and doting woman, he an austere and stolid High Anglican minister. Gerard soon moved the family to the bleaker urban scape of London to minister its Dickensian slums, though his considerable inheritance afforded “Larry” a series of parochial schools, including All Saints Church’s “choir school,” which began refining his penchant for the arts, and saw him play Brutus in “Julius Caesar” at age 10. He would be devastated two years later when his mother died of a brain tumor. In 1922, the school company staged its version of “The Taming of the Shrew” at a Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare birthday festival, with Olivier drawing mainstream raves for his shrewish Katharina (in true Shakespearean drag). He next attended St. Edward’s in Oxford, continued to display thespian talent and, upon graduation, his father advised he pursue a theatrical career.
2654222 Poster for \’The Beggar’s Opera\’ film, starring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath the Highwayman, 1953 (colour litho) by British School, (20th century); Private Collection; (add.info.: Laurence Olivier (22 May 1907 – 11 July 1989), English actor of stage and screen.); Peter Newark Pictures; British, it is possible that some works by this artist may be protected by third party rights in some territories.
At 17, he won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama, but soon began a two-year stint with the Birmingham Repertory Company. There, he met fellow thespians Peggy Ashcroft, Ralph Richardson and Jill Esmond, with whom he became enamored. They would all graduate to London’s West End theater district. Soon Olivier became a hot commodity, as evidenced by his lead in a garish, overambitious stage production of the French Foreign Legion adventure “Beau Geste.” In 1929, he crossed the Atlantic to make his Broadway debut in “Murder on the Second Floor,” reuniting with Esmond, who, upon his arrival, immediately agreed to his marriage proposal. They would marry in 1930. Also that year, Olivier scored a role in a new play, “Private Lives,” by playwright Noel Coward, who, by various accounts, either successfully or unsuccessfully proffered a sexual dalliance with Olivier, at any rate inaugurating a lifelong friendship. Esmond joined the play’s cast for an early 1931 Broadway run, which caught the attention of American film studios.
They lured the couple to Los Angeles, but Olivier’s three initial movies for RKO – he liked only “Westward Passage” (1932) – did little to set the box office afire. The couple returned to the U.K., where they made their only movie together, “No Funny Business” (1933). MGM would lure him back to Los Angeles, with a one-off project opposite Greta Garbo, but the studio’s grand dame intimidated and took an instant dislike to the newcomer so MGM fired him. Humiliated, Olivier returned to London and the stage with a string of hits, becoming a producer for the first time with the play “Golden Arrow,” co-starring his young Irish discovery Greer Garson, and in a 1935 staging of “Romeo and Juliet” with Gielgud that would run an unheard-of six months. Olivier and Gielgud would take on the unique task of alternating on the Romeo and Mercutio parts. Olivier wowed critics, eschewing the formal, lyrical approach to the Bard by playing Romeo with naturalistic, hormonal verve, which may have spilled over to a physical relationship with his Juliet, Peggy Ashcroft. But at this same time, he became a singular attraction to a young actress who had made it to the West End herself under the name Vivien Leigh.
Leigh, already married and a mother, famously pronounced she would one day marry Olivier, and Olivier himself later claimed that after seeing her breakthrough play “Mask of Virtue,” he experienced “an attraction of the most perturbing nature I have ever encountered.” They starred together in film producer Alexander Korda’s “Fire Over England” (1936), with Olivier playing an agent of Queen Elizabeth on a mission to Spain and Leigh portraying one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting and his lover, which, as their fervent on-screen embraces betrayed, they had become in real life. Leigh aspired to Olivier’s mastery of classic theater. As the relationship intensified, she eventually picked up his famous fluency in unfettered blue language. Olivier’s persistent religious guilt complicated things, as did Esmond’s recent pregnancy, soon to bear a son, Tarquin – though she remained publicly amicable with both of them. In 1937, Olivier joined the venerable Old Vic theater as a featured star, beginning the year in its production of “Hamlet,” even as he managed to arrange the first tandem projects for himself and his lover: a staging of “Hamlet at Denmark’s Elsinore Castle in the summer, and a film, “Twenty-One Days” (1940), with the two playing lovers on the lam after he accidentally kills her estranged husband. Neither liked the latter, shelving it for three years, but at the end of the production, as news spread of Hollywood’s adaptation of the blockbuster novel Gone With the Wind, she famously prophesied she would play its protagonist, Scarlett O’Hara. Leigh and Olivier soon fessed up to and separated from their respective partners and, after his rare comedic turn with Merle Oberon and Ralph Richardson in “The Divorce of Lady X” (1938), he and Leigh headed to Hollywood – she to fulfill her prophecy and he to finally break through the film barrier as a romantic heartthrob.
It would be Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” (1939), adapted for film by indie producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler, that made Olivier a household name across the Atlantic. He played Heathcliff, one-time stable boy spurned for his low breeding by his first love, Cathy (Merle Oberon), who returns years later as a successful, brooding man with his heart hard and set on revenge against his lost love and anyone who had mistreated him in the past. He would credit director William Wyler with teaching him the toned-down nuances of screen versus stage acting, turning in his first Oscar-nominated performance. At the same time, Leigh won Best Actress as Scarlett O’Hara for her work in “Gone with the Wind.” In 1940, their respective spouses agreed to divorce and to the delight of fans, Leigh and Olivier wed. Olivier would rack up two more hits: “Pride and Prejudice,” reuniting him with protégée Greer Garson in the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s witty Victorian parlor romance; and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” which had him as a sullen aristocrat with a new wife (Joan Fontaine) driven to dredge up the mysterious fate of his first spouse while confined to his gothic mansion. Olivier’s disquieted, simmering performance drew yet another Oscar nomination.
Olivier and Leigh returned to Britain to do another tandem picture for Korda, “That Hamilton Woman” (1941), which cast her as an unhappily married socialite and him as the British naval hero Horatio Nelson, which chronicled their illicit romance which became the great scandal of its time. Commissioned by the British government, he next mounted his most ambitious production, a Technicolor version of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” (1944). He produced, directed and starred in the critically acclaimed film, and his delivery of the famed St. Crispin’s Day speech became a rallying cry for the country’s ongoing war effort. The film’s 1946 U.S. release would earn him Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Picture, and though he won neither, his top-to-bottom helming of the project would earn him an honorary Academy Award in 1947. Also that year, King George VI knighted Olivier, making the couple “Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier.”
Despite the fairy tale mystique surrounding the legendary couple, all was not well in their household. Leigh increasingly suffered violent tantrums that she would not remember afterward, and to make matters worse, during production of “Caesar and Cleopatra” (1945) she suffered a miscarriage. Tuberculosis compounded her physical and mental health issues; she grew distant and jealous of Olivier’s successes and paranoid about his affairs, both imagined and real, at one point telling him matter-of-factly she was no longer in love with him. Seeking respite, Olivier strayed with any number of rumored partners even as he enabled her own long-term affair with actor Peter Finch, whom he hired for the Old Vic company after its 1948 tour of Australia. That year, he made history with his big-budget Shakespearean film adaptation of “Hamlet” (1948), in which he became the first director to direct himself to a Best Actor Oscar.
The Oliviers continued their stage collaborations; notably he directed her in the 1949 West End production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He settled into a kind of caregiver role for his manic-depressive, bipolar wife, arranging a project of his own, the Wyler-helmed illicit-love tragedy “Carrie” (1952), to travel with her while she made “Streetcar” (1952) in Hollywood. Her co-star Marlon Brando later wrote he eschewed a tryst with Leigh out of respect for Olivier, but oddly, David Niven claimed in his autobiography that he witnessed Brando kissing Olivierat the couple’s mansion. (Though long a subject of rumor and controversy, Olivier’s third wife, Joan Plowright, would acknowledge his libertinism and bisexuality in a 2006 radio interview). Leigh was back with Finch in Ceylon in 1953 for the film “Elephant Walk” (1952) when she suffered a full-blown break, causing her to be hospitalized and be given a lifelong regimen of electroshock therapy, which would render her even more alien to Olivier.
He earned another Oscar nomination for his villainous “Richard III” (1955), and followed it up with a Marilyn Monroe mismatched-pair fantasy, “The Prince and the Showgirl” (1957), which he also directed. Meanwhile, he had commissioned West End enfant terrible John Osborne to write him a drama that could contemporize his own image. Osborne produced “The Entertainer,” which had Olivier as an unpleasant, archaic song-and-dance man still working Britain’s crumbling dance-halls, metaphorical of an Imperial society in decay. He began a relationship with his onstage daughter, Joan Plowright. She would star with him in the 1960 film adaptation, which would earn Olivier yet another Best Actor Oscar nomination. He and Leigh would divorce that year, leading to Olivier and Plowright marrying in 1961. With the dissolution of the Old Vic company in 1962, he would soon oversee another regeneration called the National Theatre Company, with Olivier serving as its first director. Under his tenure, it would nurture a new generation of talent, including Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, Alan Bates and Anthony Hopkins. The National’s production of “Othello” would become the 1965 film, for which Olivier and his three co-stars would all win Oscar nominations.
Olivier continued to be selective with film in the 1960s. His leading roles became less frequent but affecting, as with “Term of Trial” (1962), in which he gave a heartbreaking performance as a high school teacher whose life is turned upside down when a spurned student accuses him of seducing her; and his understatedly cool detective in “Bunny Lake is Missing” (1965). Olivier had also begun taking film-stealing supporting roles, in which he often played villains. He played Johnny Burgoyne, the dashing nemesis of the colonials Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster in George Bernard Shaw’s Revolutionary War drama “The Devil’s Disciple,” (1959); thwarted Douglas again as the scheming, draconian general Crassus in Stanley Kubrick’s epic “Spartacus” (1960); an Islamic would-be messiah in “Khartoum” (1966); a Soviet premier in “Shoes of the Fisherman” (1968); and, later, as the nefarious Dr. Moriarty in the revisionist Sherlock Holmes adventure “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” (1976).
The late 1960s would begin a series of health crises for Olivier, starting with treatment of prostate cancer, but he would nevertheless be prolific in bringing the stage to mass media in the 1970s. He oversaw the translation of the National’s productions of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” (co-starring Plowright) into a theatrical film and Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1973) into a TV-movie for broadcast on ITV in the U.K. and ABC in the U.S, earning him an Emmy. However, he relinquished helm of the theater soon thereafter amid some contention with its board, just a few years before the company moved into the new Olivier Theater. In 1974, he barely survived the onset of the muscle disease dermatopolymyositis, but returned the next year with the TV-movie “Love Among the Ruins” (ABC, 1975), playing a barrister charged with defending a woman he fell in love with years ago, both now in their twilight years. Both he and Katherine Hepburn won Best Actor Emmys for a “special” broadcast. He would also bring Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and William Inge’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” to NBC in 1976 and 1977, respectively.
Laurence Oliver
His selective, age-adjusted cinematic outings brought continued accolades, notably three more Oscar nominations for his manipulative cuckolded husband in the cat-and-mouse thriller “Sleuth;” ice-blooded Nazi dentist, famously torturing Dustin Hoffman via check-up in “Marathon Man” (1976); and as a dry, unflappable Nazi hunter in “The Boys from Brazil” (1978). He received a second honorary Oscar the following year for his body of work. He also stood out as an old pickpocket shepherding the two smitten adolescents in Venice in “A Little Romance” (1979) and as the vampire hunter Van Helsing in the 1979 remake of “Dracula.” His work as Neil Diamond’s orthodox Jewish father in the remake of “The Jazz Singer” (1980), however, was viewed as overwrought and mawkish. He won another BAFTA Best Actor nomination for “A Voyage Round My Father” (1983) opposite Alan Bates, and won yet another Emmy that year for his turn as “King Lear” (ABC). Worried about his estate, he peppered his later years’ work with glorified cameos – some in projects he knew to be awful, as with “Inchon” (1981) and “Clash of the Titans” (1981), but others in higher-quality fare like “The Bounty” (1985). In 1984, the top awards for British theatrical awards were renamed the Laurence Olivier Awards. His infirmities became evident during the March 1985 Academy Awards telecast, when he capped the evening presenting the Best Picture Oscar, but inadvertently sidestepped the tradition of running down the nominees first and simply stated the winner, “Amadeus.” He appeared in the “Entertainer”-reminiscent Granada TV series “Lost Empires” (PBS, 1987) about the decline of U.K. vaudeville, for which he earned his last Emmy nomination, then made a final cameo as an old soldier in Derek Jarman’s stylistic “War Requiem” (1989). He died on July 11, 1989, at his home in Steyning, West Sussex. His burial at Westminster would rival British state funerals, televised nationally throughout the U.K.
Elissa Landi was born in 1904 in Venice in Italy. She was raised in Austria and educated in England. In the 1920’s she appeared in many Euopean productions. In 1931 she went to Hollywood. She had a few years of big budget films such as “The Sign of the Cross” in 1931 and in 1934 “The Count of Monte Cristo” opposite Robert Donat in his only Hollywood film. She retired from films in 1943. Elissa Landi died in New York in 1948 aged only 43.
Elissa Landi was born in Venice, Italy, on December 6, 1904. From childhood she was fascinated with the stage. As many little girls did at the time, Elissa wanted nothing more than to be a big star on the great stages of Europe. Her acting career started out at local theater companies, eventually leading her to the hallowed stages of London, where she made her debut in “The Storm.” The play lasted for five months and she received rave reviews for her performances. That in turn led to meaty leads in “Lavendar Ladies” and other plays. European film producers took notice of the photogenic beauty and Elissa starred in eight movies over the next two years. Her first film was the German-made Synd (1928). Her career didn’t impress critics, though, until she played Anthea Dane in The Price of Things (1930). Elissa felt that she would make more headway in the U.S., so she arrived in New York in 1931 to star in the stage version of “A Farewell to Arms.” Although the play made no huge impression, Hollywood sat up and took notice, and she soon appeared in Body and Soul (1931) opposite Charles Farrell. However, it wasn’t until Cecil B. DeMille‘s biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932) that many moviegoers got their first glimpse of Elissa, and they were enthralled, even though she was among such heavyweight stars as Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Charles Laughton and Vivian Tobin. Completed in less than eight weeks, the film was a smash hit. After A Passport to Hell (1932) and Devil’s Lottery (1932), Elissa scored again in The Warrior’s Husband (1933), a film about the intrigues and intricacies of the old Roman Empire that starred Marjorie Rambeau and Ernest Truex. In 1934 Elissa co-starred withRobert Donat in the classic The Count of Monte Cristo (1934). The next year saw Elissa in an odd bit of casting as Lisa Robbia in Enter Madame! (1935) with Cary Grant, the era’s greatest leading man. Elissa was required to sing for this part, which she had difficulty doing (her voice was eventually dubbed by a professional singer) and also required her to throw temper tantrums, something else she found difficult to do and for which a double also was eventually used, all to no avail, as the film was a critical and financial flop. After a mediocre role in Mad Holiday (1936), Elissa had a better part as the tormented Selma Landis in the hit After the Thin Man (1936), the second film in the series. She appeared in only three movies after that, the last being the low-budget Corregidor (1943) for bottom-of-the-barrel Producers Releasing Corporation. When that picture was completed, Elissa left films behind and concentrated on writing, producing six novels and books of poetry. Elissa succumbed to cancer on October 21, 1948. She was just 43 years old.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson
Entry by Denny Jackson on IMDB:
The above entry can also be accessed on IMDB online here.
Dolph Lundgren was born in 1957 in Stockholm in Sweden. He came to fame with the popularity of action heroes who were muscleed and fit and adept at martial arts. Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Arnold Schwarzenegger were all very popular at the same time. Lundgren has a degress in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney. He made his film debut in the James Bond thriller “A View to a Kill” in 1985. His other films include “Rocky Four”, “Showdown in Little Toyko” and more recently “The Expendables”.
Men’s Health Interview:
Critics have never
been kind to Dolph Lundgren. They’ve call him “grinning and glistening” when they’re trying to be nice, and “expressive as wood” when they’re not. “Watching (Lundgren) think hard is a painful experience,” noted aWashington Post review of 1989’s Red Scorpion. “May well be the only man in the universe who can make Mr. (Jean-Claude) Van Damme look like an actor,” a New York Times critic wrote of Lundgren in 1992’s Universal Soldier. Film academic Christine Holmlund, summing up Lundgren’s career in the 2004 book Action and Adventure Cinema, wrote “Lundgren is limited by his size and dead pan delivery: though often compared to Arnold (Schwarzenegger), he has less range.”
For someone who’s had such a difficult time convincing critics of his merit, he’s one of the few action stars who gets respect (and real fear) from his audience. In 2009, three armed and masked burglars broke into Lundgren’s home in Marbella, Spain, tied up his wife, and went about ransacking the place. But then one of them noticed a Lundgren family photo in the bedroom and recognized the action star. He alerted his cohorts, and they made the unanimous decision to flee the crime scene immediately. Apparently they were less concerned with Lundgren’s wooden acting than his ability to break their collective faces. Perhaps they were afraid of ending up like Apollo Creed, who Lundgren famously “killed” in the 1985 filmRocky IV.
To be fair, it’s not completely irrational to be terrified by Lundgren. As Roger Moore, who worked with Lundgren in the James Bond film View To a Kill, once said “Dolph is larger than Denmark.” That’s hyperbole, but just slightly. Lundgren, a native of Stockholm, Sweden, stands at a golem-like 6 foot 5 inches and weighs in at around 250 pounds of pure neck-snapping muscle. Oh, and he also has a black belt in Kyokushin kaikan karate. While filming Rocky IV, he punched Sylvester Stallone so hard that he sent Sly to intensive care for nine days. If that’s not intimidating enough, he’s also smart. Lundgren has a masters in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney, and speaks five languages (Swedish, English, German, French and Japanese). He also dated musician Grace Jones during the 1980s, hung out at the infamous den of disco iniquity Studio 54, and lived in New York City when it was fun and dangerous.
Lundgren’s life has admittedly sometimes been more interesting than his movies. But in recent years, Lundgren has been on the verge of something like a comeback. He was the most two-dimensional part of 2010’s all-star action epic The Expendables, and he returns for the sequel, The Expendables 2, this Friday, August 17. It may not be thought-provoking cinema, but Lundgren’s performance should keep his house safe from burglars for at least another year.
I called Lundgren as he was waiting in LAX to board a flight to Madrid, as part of his world Expendables 2 media tour. He was soft-spoken, humble, and quick to laugh, particularly at himself. In other words, the exact opposite of every movie character he’s ever played.
Men’s Health:Expendables 2 has a lot of stars, and presumably a lot of egos. Did everybody get along?
Dolph Lundgren: Oh yeah. There was just a core group that worked together on most of the movie. It was Sly (Stallone) and me and Jason (Statham) and Terry (Crews) and Randy (Couture) and the Chinese guy, Jet Li. We were the ones working all the time. When guys like Bruce (Willis) and Arnold (Schwarzenegger) came in, it was just for a week or two. But everybody was excited to be part of a team and in a big movie. Some of these guys, like Chuck Norris, haven’t done a film in like seven years. So nobody came with big egos.
MH: Just big entourages?
DL: A few guys had that. They’d show up with a lot of people, especially Arnold and Chuck. Bodyguards and entourages, all that stuff.
MH: I understand the former Governator having bodyguards. But what does Chuck Norris need bodyguards for? I thought he could kill a guy with his pinkie.
DL:(Laughs.) I don’t know about that. Having bodyguards is just part of being famous, I think.
MH: How many bodyguards do you have?
DL: None.
MH: Because you don’t need them, or you could crack somebody’s spine just by staring at them?
DL:(Laughs.) I’m not that good.
MH: Among action stars, is there cheating?
DL: Cheating how?
MH: Like steroids. I talked to Charlie Sheen and he said he used steroids while he was making Major League. And that was a baseball movie.
DL:(Laughs.) That’s funny. Charlie took steroids? That’s probably the mildest form of drug he ever took. No, I like Charlie. I like him a lot. He’s a nice guy. But him saying he took steroids, that’s like me claiming I took aspirin. Anyway, what’s your question?
MH: Are steroids common in action movies? Part of the job requires having big, rippling, cinematic muscles. It must be tempting for some of these stars.
DL: Oh sure. It never was for me, because I was already a big guy when I started making movies. I didn’t need to be any bigger. So steroids didn’t make any sense. But if you’re a regular-sized actor and you’re in a movie where you’re supposed to be some pumped-up guy who takes his shirt off, yeah, steroids make sense.
MH: You’ve seen it?
DL: Well, I… (long pause.) I haven’t witnessed the injections personally. But I recognize when it’s happening. You know which guys are doing steroids and which ones aren’t.
MH: You can tell just by looking?
DL: Oh yeah. It’s pretty obvious. You can see the difference. There’s a soft roundness to steroid muscles that you don’t get when you’re lifting weights or doing martial arts or things like that. I don’t judge anybody. Everybody has their own life and people do what they want. It’s like smoking pot. If you experiment with it, it doesn’t mean you’re the devil, and it doesn’t mean you’ve ruined your body. It just means you tried it.
“Men;s Health” interview can also be accessed online here.
