Actress Joan Taylor, best remembered for two sci-fi / horror B movies of the late 1950s, died March 4 in Santa Monica, in Los Angeles County. Taylor was 82. According to various sources, Taylor was born Rose Marie Emma in Geneva, Illinois, on August 18, 1929. She was the daughter of Austrian vaudeville player Amelia Berky and an Italian-born immigrant who later became a Hollywood prop man. Curiously, last Friday night I watched for the first time the 1957 Columbia release 20 Million Miles to Earth. Though wasted in a non-role in this King Kong rip-off with stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, Taylor looked quite pretty (as an Italian) whether angry at leading man William Hopper (son of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper) or screaming at the ballooning Martian creature. I guess it says something about her screen presence that I was rooting for the Martian Monster to gobble up the film's director (Nathan Juran), writers (Robert Creighton Williams...
- 3/7/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
I was recently afforded the opportunity to talk to Alex Stapleton, the director of the wonderful documentary Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (review here) about the many sides of the “schlock king” Roger Corman. Through a tenuous phone connection (I do have an At&T iPhone and live in New York City, after all), we discussed the process of making this film, how she got roped into doing crew on a Corman movie, Jack Nicholson‘s lounging gear, and doing interviews from the barber’s chair. The Film Stage’s questions are in bold, Alex’s responses follow.
Is there going to be a big premiere out there?
Well we had our kind of fancy premiere at Lacma [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], actually as a part of Film Independent’s series that they were running with Elvis Mitchell. So that was kind of our fancy night. So we will have on the 16th of December,...
Is there going to be a big premiere out there?
Well we had our kind of fancy premiere at Lacma [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], actually as a part of Film Independent’s series that they were running with Elvis Mitchell. So that was kind of our fancy night. So we will have on the 16th of December,...
- 12/15/2011
- by jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)
- The Film Stage
Lots of actors die onscreen, but few perish the way famed character actor Dick Miller did in his film debut, 1955’s The Apache Woman. The neophyte actor-writer began the film playing a Native American, but he was surprised and more than a little amused to discover that he would be doing double duty as the cowboy who eventually kills that character in a big shootout. It was the perfect introduction to the Roger Corman method: Shoot it cheap, shoot it fast, and don’t worry too much about the specifics. Corman’s World establishes its subject as a fascinating ...
- 12/15/2011
- avclub.com
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