Chivalry! Vows of loyalty and honor! Combat action that will impress today’s Marvel fans! The violet eyes and super-damsel figure of Elizabeth Taylor! MGM’s made-in-Merrie Olde England tale of Knights and knaves and forbidden love is yet another suits-of-armor sword-basher about ransoming King Richard from those European Union swine across the channel. Everything clicks, from Miklos Rozsa’s most stirring anthem to the righteous justice of the finale. And it’s restored from 3-strip Technicolor. Robert Taylor is terrific as the stalwart Ivanhoe, the kind of no-funny-business hero they ain’t makin’ anymore.
Ivanhoe
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1952 /Color / 1:37 Academy / 106 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date December 14, 2021 / 21.99
Starring: Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Emlyn Williams, Robert Douglas, Finlay Currie, Felix Aylmer, Guy Rolfe.
Cinematography: Freddie Young
Art Director: Alfred Junge
Film Editor: Frank Clarke
Original Music: Miklos Rozsa
Written by Aeneas MacKenzie, Marguerite Roberts,...
Ivanhoe
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1952 /Color / 1:37 Academy / 106 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date December 14, 2021 / 21.99
Starring: Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Emlyn Williams, Robert Douglas, Finlay Currie, Felix Aylmer, Guy Rolfe.
Cinematography: Freddie Young
Art Director: Alfred Junge
Film Editor: Frank Clarke
Original Music: Miklos Rozsa
Written by Aeneas MacKenzie, Marguerite Roberts,...
- 12/7/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“I tend to the bodily needs of these people, not the spiritual ones. Now, come along back to bed.”
Sharon Tate in Eye Of The Devil (1966) will be available on Blu-ray October 26th from Warner Archive
A forbidding French chateau and its surrounding vineyards are the setting for Gothic thrills in this haunting excursion into the occult. Deborah Kerr and David Niven, costarring for the first time since Separate Tables, lead an exceptional cast in a chiller reminiscent of the later The Wicker Man (1973), in which an innocent outsider to an enclosed world peels back layers of mystery to reveal a shocking truth. Vineyard owner Marquis Philippe de Montfaucon (David Niven) is called back to his castle Bellenac because of another dry season. He asks his wife and children to remain in Paris, but they still come after him. His wife Catherine de Montfaucon (Deborah Kerr) soon discovers that her...
Sharon Tate in Eye Of The Devil (1966) will be available on Blu-ray October 26th from Warner Archive
A forbidding French chateau and its surrounding vineyards are the setting for Gothic thrills in this haunting excursion into the occult. Deborah Kerr and David Niven, costarring for the first time since Separate Tables, lead an exceptional cast in a chiller reminiscent of the later The Wicker Man (1973), in which an innocent outsider to an enclosed world peels back layers of mystery to reveal a shocking truth. Vineyard owner Marquis Philippe de Montfaucon (David Niven) is called back to his castle Bellenac because of another dry season. He asks his wife and children to remain in Paris, but they still come after him. His wife Catherine de Montfaucon (Deborah Kerr) soon discovers that her...
- 9/29/2021
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***There are some films where, lacking access to one's own personal cinematheque, one has to speculate. For example, some of Fox's fifties films, shot in CinemaScope as all movies at that studio had to be, have never been made available in widescreen formats. Richard Fleischer was one the directors who adapted zestfully to that format, so it's a crying shame that Crack in the Mirror (1960) seems to exist only in blurry, 4:3 TV recordings. His other Orson Welles film, Compulsion (1959), is a cracker.Anatole Litvak's...
- 8/20/2020
- MUBI
Joseph Losey’s fortunes as an expatriate director took an upswing with this efficient, nervous and somewhat overcooked thriller with a daunting ticking-bomb deadline story gimmick — alcoholic wreck Michael Redgrave has only twenty hours to save his son from execution for murder. Losey racks up the tension, but he doesn’t give a hoot for Ben Barzman’s whodunnit scripting. Just the same, it’s good to see the director finally gaining traction — from this point forward most every Losey picture received serious international attention.
Time Without Pity
Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 89 min. / Street Date October 28, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK (Region Free) / £15.99
Starring: Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, Ann Todd, Peter Cushing, Alec McCowen, Lois Maxwell, Richard Wordsworth, Joan Plowright.
Cinematography: Freddie Francis
Film Editor: Alan Osbiston
Original Music: Tristram Cary
Written by Ben Barzman from a play by Emlyn Williams
Produced by John Arnold, Leon Clore,...
Time Without Pity
Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 89 min. / Street Date October 28, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK (Region Free) / £15.99
Starring: Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, Ann Todd, Peter Cushing, Alec McCowen, Lois Maxwell, Richard Wordsworth, Joan Plowright.
Cinematography: Freddie Francis
Film Editor: Alan Osbiston
Original Music: Tristram Cary
Written by Ben Barzman from a play by Emlyn Williams
Produced by John Arnold, Leon Clore,...
- 10/15/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Stars: Leslie Caron, Anthony Booth, Avis Bunnage, Patricia Phoenix, Verity Edmett, Tom Bell, Cicely Courtneidge, Emlyn Williams, Jennifer White, Brock Peters, Gerry Duggan, Mark Eden | Written and Directed by Bryan Forbes
When watching a British film from the sixties, the realistic discussion of such things as growing up as a single parent, or considering abortion wasn’t something you’d expect to see in a film set in London. The L-Shaped Room though is one of the few that took a look at society, family, and love and didn’t hide from the awkward truths.
Jane Fosset (Leslie Caron) is an unmarried and pregnant French woman who finds a small seedy London boarding house with a room available. Struggling with the idea of having an abortion, at first the last thing she needs is to make friends with the misfits who live there. Slowly getting to know them though she soon becomes one of them,...
When watching a British film from the sixties, the realistic discussion of such things as growing up as a single parent, or considering abortion wasn’t something you’d expect to see in a film set in London. The L-Shaped Room though is one of the few that took a look at society, family, and love and didn’t hide from the awkward truths.
Jane Fosset (Leslie Caron) is an unmarried and pregnant French woman who finds a small seedy London boarding house with a room available. Struggling with the idea of having an abortion, at first the last thing she needs is to make friends with the misfits who live there. Slowly getting to know them though she soon becomes one of them,...
- 12/21/2017
- by Paul Metcalf
- Nerdly
By Tim Greaves
Not the most beloved entry in Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic oeuvre – by either audiences in general or the director himself – 1939's Jamaica Inn (based on a Daphne du Maurier novel first published three years earlier) is nevertheless a serviceable enough piece of drama, which perhaps finds its most ideal place nowadays as an undemanding rainy Sunday afternoon programmer.
Following the death of her mother, Mary Yellen (Maureen O'Hara) travels from Ireland to England intending to take up residence with her relatives at their Cornish hostelry the Jamaica Inn. After an unexpected detour, which on face value proves beneficial when she makes the acquaintance of local squire and magistrate Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton), Mary arrives at her destination to find her browbeaten Aunt Patience (Maria Ney) living in fear of a tyrannical husband, the brutish Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks). It also transpires that the Inn is the...
Not the most beloved entry in Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic oeuvre – by either audiences in general or the director himself – 1939's Jamaica Inn (based on a Daphne du Maurier novel first published three years earlier) is nevertheless a serviceable enough piece of drama, which perhaps finds its most ideal place nowadays as an undemanding rainy Sunday afternoon programmer.
Following the death of her mother, Mary Yellen (Maureen O'Hara) travels from Ireland to England intending to take up residence with her relatives at their Cornish hostelry the Jamaica Inn. After an unexpected detour, which on face value proves beneficial when she makes the acquaintance of local squire and magistrate Sir Humphrey Pengallan (Charles Laughton), Mary arrives at her destination to find her browbeaten Aunt Patience (Maria Ney) living in fear of a tyrannical husband, the brutish Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks). It also transpires that the Inn is the...
- 1/18/2017
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...
- 11/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ron Moody in Mel Brooks' 'The Twelve Chairs.' The 'Doctor Who' that never was. Ron Moody: 'Doctor Who' was biggest professional regret (See previous post: "Ron Moody: From Charles Dickens to Walt Disney – But No Harry Potter.") Ron Moody was featured in about 50 television productions, both in the U.K. and the U.S., from the late 1950s to 2012. These included guest roles in the series The Avengers, Gunsmoke, Starsky and Hutch, Hart to Hart, and Murder She Wrote, in addition to leads in the short-lived U.S. sitcom Nobody's Perfect (1980), starring Moody as a Scotland Yard detective transferred to the San Francisco Police Department, and in the British fantasy Into the Labyrinth (1981), with Moody as the noble sorcerer Rothgo. Throughout the decades, he could also be spotted in several TV movies, among them:[1] David Copperfield (1969). As Uriah Heep in this disappointing all-star showcase distributed theatrically in some countries.
- 6/19/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
This is a tale of chance encounters.1) René Clair is in London, making The Ghost Goes West (1935). Something of a flaneur, he has strolled down to the East End, and his noctivagation leads him to a Limehouse pub which strikes him with an intense but mysterious feeling of déjà vu."Of course!" he suddenly thinks. "D.W. Griffith: Broken Blossoms!" The pub is the very image of Griffith's Hollywood recreation of Victorian London from his 1919 film.And there, at the bar, sits D.W. Griffith himself. Clair approaches this mirage and learns that Griffith is in London to direct a remake of Broken Blossoms at Twickenham Studios. Drink is taken.2) All this comes from screenwriter Rodney Ackland's bittersweet memoir of his work in British cinema, The Celluloid Mistress, co-written with Elspeth Grant. He further explains that his idolisation of Griffith prompted him to volunteer his services in any capacity as...
- 4/16/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Episode 44 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn bids farewell to her lifelong friend and director, George Cukor.
Who’s up for another catfight? Way back near the beginning of this series, I manufactured a rivalry between young Kate Hepburn and Miss Bette Davis, both sporting ear-splitting accents in two movies from 1934. This time, I don’t have to fake a competition. Katharine Hepburn’s 1979 TV movie happens to be a remake of a 1945 Bette Davis film.
The Corn Is Green (based on the play by by Emlyn Williams) is the story of Miss Moffat, who gets off her tuffet to teach the Welsh miners to read. The role of a strong-willed woman who changes the lives of her impoverished pupils would be catnip for either of our great actresses, so it’s no surprise that Bette and Kate both played Miss Moffat 34 years apart. What is surprising is how different...
Who’s up for another catfight? Way back near the beginning of this series, I manufactured a rivalry between young Kate Hepburn and Miss Bette Davis, both sporting ear-splitting accents in two movies from 1934. This time, I don’t have to fake a competition. Katharine Hepburn’s 1979 TV movie happens to be a remake of a 1945 Bette Davis film.
The Corn Is Green (based on the play by by Emlyn Williams) is the story of Miss Moffat, who gets off her tuffet to teach the Welsh miners to read. The role of a strong-willed woman who changes the lives of her impoverished pupils would be catnip for either of our great actresses, so it’s no surprise that Bette and Kate both played Miss Moffat 34 years apart. What is surprising is how different...
- 10/29/2014
- by Anne Marie
- FilmExperience
Joan Lorring, 1945 Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee, dead at 88: One of the earliest surviving Academy Award nominees in the acting categories, Lorring was best known for holding her own against Bette Davis in ‘The Corn Is Green’ (photo: Joan Lorring in ‘Three Strangers’) Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee Joan Lorring, who stole the 1945 film version of The Corn Is Green from none other than Warner Bros. reigning queen Bette Davis, died Friday, May 30, 2014, in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow. So far, online obits haven’t mentioned the cause of death. Lorring, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, was 88. Directed by Irving Rapper, who had also handled one of Bette Davis’ biggest hits, the 1942 sudsy soap opera Now, Voyager, Warners’ The Corn Is Green was a decent if uninspired film version of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 hit play about an English schoolteacher,...
- 6/1/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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...
- 8/6/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Charlton Heston movies: ‘A Man for All Seasons’ remake, ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ (photo: Charlton Heston as Ben-Hur) (See previous post: “Charlton Heston: Moses Minus Staff Plus Chariot Equals Ben-Hur.”) I’ve yet to watch Irving Rapper’s melo Bad for Each Other (1954), co-starring the sultry Lizabeth Scott — always a good enough reason to check out any movie, regardless of plot or leading man. A major curiosity is the 1988 made-for-tv version of A Man for All Seasons, with Charlton Heston in the Oscar-winning Paul Scofield role (Sir Thomas More) and on Fred Zinnemann’s director’s chair. Vanessa Redgrave, who plays Thomas More’s wife in the TV movie (Wendy Hiller in the original) had a cameo as Anne Boleyn in the 1966 film. According to the IMDb, Robert Bolt, who wrote the Oscar-winning 1966 movie (and the original play), is credited for the 1988 version’s screenplay as well. Also of note,...
- 8/5/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Welsh-born actor and Richard Burton's first wife, she moved to the Us after their split and co-founded a famous New York disco
Sybil Christopher, who has died aged 83, was the injured party in Hollywood's most famous on- and off-screen romance, that between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor during the making of Joe Mankiewicz's blockbuster epic Cleopatra (1963). Sybil Williams, as she was born, was the girl from the Welsh valleys whom Burton had married in 1949. Theirs was a tenacious and loving relationship that survived the actor's affairs with Claire Bloom and Susan Strasberg, among many others, and his hell-raising exploits.
Having ditched her own career as an actor to follow his star – and raise their two daughters – she always remained discreetly quiet about the marriage, filing for divorce in 1963 on the grounds of "abandonment and cruel and inhumane treatment". Moving to New York, she made a new career for herself on a tide of goodwill.
Sybil Christopher, who has died aged 83, was the injured party in Hollywood's most famous on- and off-screen romance, that between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor during the making of Joe Mankiewicz's blockbuster epic Cleopatra (1963). Sybil Williams, as she was born, was the girl from the Welsh valleys whom Burton had married in 1949. Theirs was a tenacious and loving relationship that survived the actor's affairs with Claire Bloom and Susan Strasberg, among many others, and his hell-raising exploits.
Having ditched her own career as an actor to follow his star – and raise their two daughters – she always remained discreetly quiet about the marriage, filing for divorce in 1963 on the grounds of "abandonment and cruel and inhumane treatment". Moving to New York, she made a new career for herself on a tide of goodwill.
- 3/11/2013
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
(Emlyn Williams, 1949, StudioCanal, U)
In 1986 the Welsh-language Coming Up Roses, directed by Stephen Bayly, an American resident in the principality, was the only British movie in the official programme at Cannes, and thought the harbinger of a major revival of Welsh cinema. It wasn't to be. But Wales has a cinematic tradition, and in his invaluable Wales & Cinema: The First Hundred Years, David Berry calls the little-known The Last Days of Dolwyn "one of the most distinctive postwar contributions to the cinema of Wales" and regrets that playwright Emlyn Williams, its writer-director and star, "was not inveigled into directing again". Set in 1892, it's a powerful, poetic, elegiac melodrama about the destruction of a tight-knit community when a Welsh valley is drowned to provide water for Liverpool. Williams plays the vicious agent of capitalism, an aggrieved, anglicised Welshman who persuades the impoverished local aristocrat and her leaseholders to sell out their heritage.
In 1986 the Welsh-language Coming Up Roses, directed by Stephen Bayly, an American resident in the principality, was the only British movie in the official programme at Cannes, and thought the harbinger of a major revival of Welsh cinema. It wasn't to be. But Wales has a cinematic tradition, and in his invaluable Wales & Cinema: The First Hundred Years, David Berry calls the little-known The Last Days of Dolwyn "one of the most distinctive postwar contributions to the cinema of Wales" and regrets that playwright Emlyn Williams, its writer-director and star, "was not inveigled into directing again". Set in 1892, it's a powerful, poetic, elegiac melodrama about the destruction of a tight-knit community when a Welsh valley is drowned to provide water for Liverpool. Williams plays the vicious agent of capitalism, an aggrieved, anglicised Welshman who persuades the impoverished local aristocrat and her leaseholders to sell out their heritage.
- 2/24/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★☆☆ Rereleased on DVD this week alongside Gilbert Gunn's 1953 effort Valley of Song, The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) is a refreshingly regional British drama from directors Russell Lloyd and Emlyn Williams. Set amidst the titular mid-Welsh community of Dolwyn in the days leading up to a cataclysmic flood that submerges the village, the film revolves around an ongoing dispute over land ownership. With significant similarities to later working class dramas, including Bill Forsyth's north-of-the-border tale Local Hero (1983), Lloyd and Williams' near-forgotten work has undoubtedly played a part in shaping non-English national identity on-screen.
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- 2/19/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Tags: Pretty Little LiarsPretty Little Liars recapsShay MitchellLindsey ShawLucy HaleAshley BensonTroian BellisarioWAPIMDb
Previously on Pretty Little Liars: After her official release from Radley Institute for Criminal Masterminds, Mona Vanderwaal put to use that sack of good-girl cardigans she'd been storing in her lair for a rainy day and set about reforming her image. Step 1: Spring cleaning ("Rid locker of all spare body parts not used in last six months.") Step 2: It Gets Better video ("Sad beagle eyes, tears, middle school, etc.") Step 3: Blow up a teacher ("Blow up a teacher.") The Liars discovered that Lost Woods Harold was working at Rosewood High as a janitor/hoarder of A stuff, so they concocted an elaborate office-raiding plan that included running half of a half-marathon and hacking into Fort Fields' forcefield via iPhone. For their efforts, they received confirmation that Byron Montgomery is, indeed, a monster, and also...
Previously on Pretty Little Liars: After her official release from Radley Institute for Criminal Masterminds, Mona Vanderwaal put to use that sack of good-girl cardigans she'd been storing in her lair for a rainy day and set about reforming her image. Step 1: Spring cleaning ("Rid locker of all spare body parts not used in last six months.") Step 2: It Gets Better video ("Sad beagle eyes, tears, middle school, etc.") Step 3: Blow up a teacher ("Blow up a teacher.") The Liars discovered that Lost Woods Harold was working at Rosewood High as a janitor/hoarder of A stuff, so they concocted an elaborate office-raiding plan that included running half of a half-marathon and hacking into Fort Fields' forcefield via iPhone. For their efforts, they received confirmation that Byron Montgomery is, indeed, a monster, and also...
- 1/17/2013
- by stuntdouble
- AfterEllen.com
More long hidden horrors are now available as part of Warner's made-to-order Archive Collection. Oh, the classic terrors that await you, dearest reader! Dig it!
Head on over to the Warner Archives and order yours today!
The Awakening
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Charlton Heston, Susannah York, Jill Townsend, Stephanie Zimbalist
Synopsis
Mention Bram Stoker’s name, and literature and movie buffs will conjure up Count Dracula. But there was more blood in Stoker’s pen. He also wrote The Jewel of the Seven Stars, later filmed with chilling effect as The Awakening, grippingly directed by Mike Newell (Dance with a Stranger, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and sensuously shot on Egyptian locations by veteran cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Charlton Heston stars as an Egyptologist with a passion that will trigger several mysterious deaths. He’s obsessed with a sorceress whose return has been prophesied – and whose tomb he opened...
Head on over to the Warner Archives and order yours today!
The Awakening
Director: Mike Newell
Cast: Charlton Heston, Susannah York, Jill Townsend, Stephanie Zimbalist
Synopsis
Mention Bram Stoker’s name, and literature and movie buffs will conjure up Count Dracula. But there was more blood in Stoker’s pen. He also wrote The Jewel of the Seven Stars, later filmed with chilling effect as The Awakening, grippingly directed by Mike Newell (Dance with a Stranger, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and sensuously shot on Egyptian locations by veteran cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Charlton Heston stars as an Egyptologist with a passion that will trigger several mysterious deaths. He’s obsessed with a sorceress whose return has been prophesied – and whose tomb he opened...
- 5/15/2012
- by Uncle Creepy
- DreadCentral.com
Bette Davis on TCM: The Old Maid, Now, Voyager, The Working Man Bette Davis has a cameo in John Paul Jones (1959), which happens to be an insufferable bore despite the presence of Robert Stack in the title role, and she plays second banana to Spencer Tracy in the run-of-the-Warners-mill prison drama 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), but she is at the center of The Corn Is Green (1945) as Miss Lily Moffat, a teacher in a poor Welsh mining town. Now, Voyager's Irving Rapper directed this film adaptation of Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical play — and it shows. Davis is a little too stiff in Ethel Barrymore's Broadway role, John Dall fails to convey his character's emotional turmoil, the dialogue has a theatrical lilt to it, and for the most part the potentially compelling drama feels stilted. Had William Wyler directed The Corn Is Green, it would have been a fantastic movie.
- 8/3/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
American actor known for his role as Danno in the television series Hawaii Five-o
One actor in his time plays many parts, so it is a mixed blessing for a performer to be forever associated with one role and one catchphrase. James MacArthur, who has died aged 72, was instantly identified with Detective Danny "Danno" Williams in the long-running television series Hawaii Five-o (1968-79), in which he was habitually told "Book 'em, Danno" by his superior officer, Detective Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord), after villains had been captured.
From the outset, MacArthur could not escape being reminded that he was the son of celebrated parents. His mother, Helen Hayes, always flagged as "the first lady of the theatre", had a long career on stage, in television and films, winning two Oscars 40 years apart, and his father, Charles MacArthur, co-wrote and co-directed several films with Ben Hecht, one of which, The Scoundrel (1935), won a screenplay Oscar,...
One actor in his time plays many parts, so it is a mixed blessing for a performer to be forever associated with one role and one catchphrase. James MacArthur, who has died aged 72, was instantly identified with Detective Danny "Danno" Williams in the long-running television series Hawaii Five-o (1968-79), in which he was habitually told "Book 'em, Danno" by his superior officer, Detective Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord), after villains had been captured.
From the outset, MacArthur could not escape being reminded that he was the son of celebrated parents. His mother, Helen Hayes, always flagged as "the first lady of the theatre", had a long career on stage, in television and films, winning two Oscars 40 years apart, and his father, Charles MacArthur, co-wrote and co-directed several films with Ben Hecht, one of which, The Scoundrel (1935), won a screenplay Oscar,...
- 10/31/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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