“Thank you for your service.” The words have become a cliché, but Hollywood has tried long and hard to make them matter. The industry has produced countless films about warfare and those who died for their country (whom we remember this week). But it has had a mixed record on presenting characters suffering the after-effects of putting their lives on the line. They may have survived, but lost comrades and innocence. It is their moment, too.
World War II brought the most cinematic treatment, and one of the directors who himself served — William Wyler — later had the guts to depict the challenges soldiers faced when the fighting stopped. Vietnam was likely the most troublesome to depict, it being the one we lost. Right-winger John Wayne was up first, with “The Green Berets,” gung-ho in flavor. It wasn’t until the late ‘70s that a pair of exceptional movies focused less...
World War II brought the most cinematic treatment, and one of the directors who himself served — William Wyler — later had the guts to depict the challenges soldiers faced when the fighting stopped. Vietnam was likely the most troublesome to depict, it being the one we lost. Right-winger John Wayne was up first, with “The Green Berets,” gung-ho in flavor. It wasn’t until the late ‘70s that a pair of exceptional movies focused less...
- 5/27/2024
- by Michele Willens
- The Wrap
Prior to his gig on "Star Trek" in 1966, actor DeForest Kelley spent 20 years traversing the wild and hoary world of episodic television and appearing in supporting roles in little-regarded feature films. His first professional screen acting job was a one-off performance in the one-season 1947 TV series "Public Prosecutor." The series holds the distinction of being the first-ever mainstream televised series to be released on film, instead of being broadcast live, which was standard at the time.
Between that show and "Star Trek," Kelley appeared on over 80 TV shows, often just in single episodes, but sometimes returning for two or three. He also had bit roles in films like "Variety Girl," "The Men," "Taxi," and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," playing Morgan Earp. He was just a hardworking character actor, taking the jobs that were offered him. There is an integrity to that approach.
In 1960, Kelley appeared in an episode of "Alcoa Theater,...
Between that show and "Star Trek," Kelley appeared on over 80 TV shows, often just in single episodes, but sometimes returning for two or three. He also had bit roles in films like "Variety Girl," "The Men," "Taxi," and "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral," playing Morgan Earp. He was just a hardworking character actor, taking the jobs that were offered him. There is an integrity to that approach.
In 1960, Kelley appeared in an episode of "Alcoa Theater,...
- 5/1/2024
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
On what would be his 100th birthday, Marlon Brando remains synonymous not with acting, but great acting — even if this ranked list of all his performances represents what may be the most wildly uneven filmography for any talent of his caliber. But that’s the power of Brando: A handful of his performances are so great and influential they shook up the art of acting forever. Even among his lesser performances, there’s compelling work deserving of rediscovery.
In order to best exemplify what made him such a singular onscreen presence, we ranked all 39 of his films (and one TV appearance), reflecting a spectrum as wide as the man’s broad shoulders. Based on the quality of Brando’s performances rather than the overall films themselves, there are some placements that may surprise you; for example, as great as Brando is in “The Godfather,” it’s still just the fourth-best...
In order to best exemplify what made him such a singular onscreen presence, we ranked all 39 of his films (and one TV appearance), reflecting a spectrum as wide as the man’s broad shoulders. Based on the quality of Brando’s performances rather than the overall films themselves, there are some placements that may surprise you; for example, as great as Brando is in “The Godfather,” it’s still just the fourth-best...
- 4/3/2024
- by Wilson Chapman and Noel Murray
- Indiewire
Everyone remembers their first time. That is the first time they saw Marlon Brando.
For the late Mike Nichols, seeing Brando on Broadway in 1947 in his seminal turn as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams‘ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” was the catalyst that lead to his career in the arts which saw him become a rare Egot winner. The teenage Nichols and his then girlfriend’s mother were given tickets for the second night of the Elia Kazan-directed production. “There had never been anything like it, I know that by now,” Nichols recalled in a 2010 L.A. Times interview. It was, to this day, the only thing onstage that I had ever seen that was 100% real and 100% poetic. Lucy and I weren’t exactly theater buffs, but we couldn’t get up at the intermission. We were just so stunned. Your heart was pounding. It was a major experience.”
Susan L.
For the late Mike Nichols, seeing Brando on Broadway in 1947 in his seminal turn as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams‘ “A Streetcar Named Desire,” was the catalyst that lead to his career in the arts which saw him become a rare Egot winner. The teenage Nichols and his then girlfriend’s mother were given tickets for the second night of the Elia Kazan-directed production. “There had never been anything like it, I know that by now,” Nichols recalled in a 2010 L.A. Times interview. It was, to this day, the only thing onstage that I had ever seen that was 100% real and 100% poetic. Lucy and I weren’t exactly theater buffs, but we couldn’t get up at the intermission. We were just so stunned. Your heart was pounding. It was a major experience.”
Susan L.
- 4/2/2024
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
A new contestant on this week’s The Masked Singer was Clock, and they made it to the next round without any issues or the need to take part in the Smackdown round. Still, the big question on everyone’s mind is … who could it be? Let’s look deeper into the clues.
“The Masked Singer” – What The Clock Performed
This week’s special theme on The Masked Singer focused on Billy Joel songs. The Clock performed his beautiful “Piano Man” medley and moved on to the next round. Still, because of the Joel song that was chosen, fans listened intently to try and figure out if Clock’s voice could offer any clues.
Jenny McCarthy-Walberg stated that Clock carried herself like a “diva” or “queen”. In Clock’s clue package was a Watch & Clock Maker shop where the performer noted she was “timeless”.
She goes on to say that at one time,...
“The Masked Singer” – What The Clock Performed
This week’s special theme on The Masked Singer focused on Billy Joel songs. The Clock performed his beautiful “Piano Man” medley and moved on to the next round. Still, because of the Joel song that was chosen, fans listened intently to try and figure out if Clock’s voice could offer any clues.
Jenny McCarthy-Walberg stated that Clock carried herself like a “diva” or “queen”. In Clock’s clue package was a Watch & Clock Maker shop where the performer noted she was “timeless”.
She goes on to say that at one time,...
- 3/22/2024
- by Dorathy Gass
- Celebrating The Soaps
Italy’s Torino Film Festival will celebrate the centennial of Marlon Brando’s birth with a 24-title retrospective of films featuring the groundbreaking two-time Oscar winner, known for his naturalistic acting style and rebellious streak.
The Brando retro will be “the backbone” of the fest, according to its new artistic director, Italian actor/director Giulio Base. Accordingly, an image of Brando – photographed when he was shooting Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris” – is featured on the poster for the fest’s upcoming 42nd edition, which will run Nov. 22-30.
Torino is Italy’s preeminent event for young directors and indie cinema, and is where Matteo Garrone and Paolo Sorrentino screened their first works. The festival’s lineup will be announced at a later date.
“As an actor, Brando has always been my guiding star and I had been wondering for a while – since way before being appointed at Torino...
The Brando retro will be “the backbone” of the fest, according to its new artistic director, Italian actor/director Giulio Base. Accordingly, an image of Brando – photographed when he was shooting Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris” – is featured on the poster for the fest’s upcoming 42nd edition, which will run Nov. 22-30.
Torino is Italy’s preeminent event for young directors and indie cinema, and is where Matteo Garrone and Paolo Sorrentino screened their first works. The festival’s lineup will be announced at a later date.
“As an actor, Brando has always been my guiding star and I had been wondering for a while – since way before being appointed at Torino...
- 2/27/2024
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Survey says... it's anniversary time. ABC has renewed Celebrity Family Feud for a 10th season, and the network also plans to air some specials to celebrate.
A primetime game show, the Celebrity Family Feud TV series is hosted by comedian Steve Harvey. Just as in the original Family Feud series, families try to guess the most popular answers to surveys of 100 members of a past studio audience. The difference is, in this celebrity version, they’re playing for up to $25,000 for charities. Contestants in season nine include the friends and families of David Burtka, Nikki Glaser, Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris, Sophia Bush Hughes, Gayle King, Bert Kreischer, Marcus Lemonis, Bebe Rexha, and Justin Simien, as well as performers from Cruel Summer, Drag Me To Dinner, The Haunted Mansion, The Wonder Years, The Yellowjackets and the men...
A primetime game show, the Celebrity Family Feud TV series is hosted by comedian Steve Harvey. Just as in the original Family Feud series, families try to guess the most popular answers to surveys of 100 members of a past studio audience. The difference is, in this celebrity version, they’re playing for up to $25,000 for charities. Contestants in season nine include the friends and families of David Burtka, Nikki Glaser, Tiffany Haddish, Neil Patrick Harris, Sophia Bush Hughes, Gayle King, Bert Kreischer, Marcus Lemonis, Bebe Rexha, and Justin Simien, as well as performers from Cruel Summer, Drag Me To Dinner, The Haunted Mansion, The Wonder Years, The Yellowjackets and the men...
- 2/11/2024
- by TVSeriesFinale.com
- TVSeriesFinale.com
The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the six titles that will take part in the latest edition of Berlinale Series. The shows will screen online during the first week of March when the European Film Market runs, and the team are currently discussing plans for presenting some of the shows during the festival’s planned summer event.
The line-up includes Philly D.A., the strand’s first docuseries, which follows the most controversial District Attorney in the U.S. and will arrive from its premiere at Sundance. Deadline recently revealed that Dogwoof has boarded the project, which comes from Oscar-nominated duo Josh Penn and Michael Gottwald.
Latin American TV will be represented for the first time with two titles: Amongst Men (Entre Hombres), an Argentinian HBO production, and The Last Days of Gilda (Os últimos dias de Gilda) from Canal Brazil.
Russell T Davies’ drama set during the AIDS crisis,...
The line-up includes Philly D.A., the strand’s first docuseries, which follows the most controversial District Attorney in the U.S. and will arrive from its premiere at Sundance. Deadline recently revealed that Dogwoof has boarded the project, which comes from Oscar-nominated duo Josh Penn and Michael Gottwald.
Latin American TV will be represented for the first time with two titles: Amongst Men (Entre Hombres), an Argentinian HBO production, and The Last Days of Gilda (Os últimos dias de Gilda) from Canal Brazil.
Russell T Davies’ drama set during the AIDS crisis,...
- 1/26/2021
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
We’re on our way towards the annual WWE event known as Survivor Series. Beginning in 1987, this event takes place each November in WWE and was one of the “Big Four” PPV’s in the company for the longest time. I’m not quite sure it’s considered to be as big as it once was, though, because it no longer feels as unique and interesting as it did for many years.
Early Survivor Series events saw a number of matches in which teams of four would team against each other, elimination style, in order to see which WWE Superstars would survive. Sometimes a whole team would survive, and their opponents would each be defeated until none were left. Sometimes each team would eliminate member of the opposition and only one or two members would survive. It was interesting, intriguing and exciting.
Later in life, Survivor Series kept the Survivor...
Early Survivor Series events saw a number of matches in which teams of four would team against each other, elimination style, in order to see which WWE Superstars would survive. Sometimes a whole team would survive, and their opponents would each be defeated until none were left. Sometimes each team would eliminate member of the opposition and only one or two members would survive. It was interesting, intriguing and exciting.
Later in life, Survivor Series kept the Survivor...
- 10/3/2019
- by Chris Cummings
- Nerdly
Richard Erdman, a film and TV actor who made a long career as an affable sidekick and character actor, has died. He was 93 and no cause of death was given.
An Oklahoma native, Erdman was the consummate secondary player. His venues ranged from the original Twilight Zone, where he played a man with a timepiece that could freeze the world, to Fred Zinneman’s The Men, where he played an easy-going paralyzed veteran who helps Marlon Brando adjust to life as a paraplegic.
Other notable roles by Erdman included his stint as an alcoholic ex-Marine in Cry Danger, and Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17, where he played a barracks chief.
Erdman moved to Los Angeles in 1941, enrolling in Hollywood High School. He was offered a Warner Bros. contract and appeared in Mr. Skeffington and later as Scooper Nolan in Janie (1944). He made 30 films at Warners, including an appearance in The Time of Your Life...
An Oklahoma native, Erdman was the consummate secondary player. His venues ranged from the original Twilight Zone, where he played a man with a timepiece that could freeze the world, to Fred Zinneman’s The Men, where he played an easy-going paralyzed veteran who helps Marlon Brando adjust to life as a paraplegic.
Other notable roles by Erdman included his stint as an alcoholic ex-Marine in Cry Danger, and Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17, where he played a barracks chief.
Erdman moved to Los Angeles in 1941, enrolling in Hollywood High School. He was offered a Warner Bros. contract and appeared in Mr. Skeffington and later as Scooper Nolan in Janie (1944). He made 30 films at Warners, including an appearance in The Time of Your Life...
- 3/17/2019
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Richard Erdman, the mirthful character actor who stood out on the big screen in The Men, Cry Danger and Stalag 17 and then on the sitcom "Community," has died. He was 93.
Erdman, who as a teenager so impressed legendary director Michael Curtiz that he was quickly signed to a contract at Warner Bros., died Saturday, film historian Alan K. Rode reported. No other details were immediately available.
The Oklahoma native also is known for starring as the loutish McNulty, who's given a timepiece that can freeze time, in the memorable 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "A Kind of a Stopwatch."
Erdman excelled ...
Erdman, who as a teenager so impressed legendary director Michael Curtiz that he was quickly signed to a contract at Warner Bros., died Saturday, film historian Alan K. Rode reported. No other details were immediately available.
The Oklahoma native also is known for starring as the loutish McNulty, who's given a timepiece that can freeze time, in the memorable 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "A Kind of a Stopwatch."
Erdman excelled ...
- 3/17/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Richard Erdman, the mirthful character actor who stood out on the big screen in The Men, Cry Danger and Stalag 17 and then on the sitcom Community, has died. He was 93.
Erdman, who as a teenager so impressed legendary director Michael Curtiz that he was quickly signed to a contract at Warner Bros., died Saturday at an assisted living facility in West Hills, California, film historian Alan K. Rode told The Hollywood Reporter. He said Erdman had age-related dementia exacerbated by a recent fall.
The Oklahoma native also is known for starring as the loutish McNulty, who's given a timepiece that can freeze time,...
Erdman, who as a teenager so impressed legendary director Michael Curtiz that he was quickly signed to a contract at Warner Bros., died Saturday at an assisted living facility in West Hills, California, film historian Alan K. Rode told The Hollywood Reporter. He said Erdman had age-related dementia exacerbated by a recent fall.
The Oklahoma native also is known for starring as the loutish McNulty, who's given a timepiece that can freeze time,...
- 3/17/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The Oscar-winning actress of Mrs Miniver fame, was born 100 years ago on this very day in Harlem, where I'm typing this from.
a lesser known distinction: she was Marlon Brando's very first romantic interest in a filmShe didn't consider herself a glamour girl, which could account for the sparcity of glamorous photoshoots compared to other 'it girls'. Wright's screen heyday was short-lived as many careers are when the success is so instantaneous and large. Still, it's hard to knock the girl next door beauty for not being able to live up to her first two years in Hollywood. Her first three movies all brought her Oscar nominations. An Oscar winner by the age of 24 with batting a thousand record there was essentially nowhere to go but down. Still, before the inevitable fade of her career she managed two more all time classics, doing her best acting for Alfred Hitchcock...
a lesser known distinction: she was Marlon Brando's very first romantic interest in a filmShe didn't consider herself a glamour girl, which could account for the sparcity of glamorous photoshoots compared to other 'it girls'. Wright's screen heyday was short-lived as many careers are when the success is so instantaneous and large. Still, it's hard to knock the girl next door beauty for not being able to live up to her first two years in Hollywood. Her first three movies all brought her Oscar nominations. An Oscar winner by the age of 24 with batting a thousand record there was essentially nowhere to go but down. Still, before the inevitable fade of her career she managed two more all time classics, doing her best acting for Alfred Hitchcock...
- 10/27/2018
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
by Nathaniel R
Until we hear further details, everything will be viewed through the lens of our apocalyptic fears about Oscar's new "popular achievement" category. Does The Meg's huge opening weekend mean it'll be up for an Oscar? I mean it has been since Jaws that a giant shark movie was Oscar nominated, so if Oscar wants to remain "relevant" they should totally start recognizing Mutant Shark movies! Elsewhere in box office news, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman opened to great reviews, and much discussion, and is a total must-see "but since it didn't open big, I guess it's not as good as Slender Man and The Men so it doesn't deserve Oscar recognition, right?" he added sarcastically...
Weekend Box Office Estimates
(August 10-12)
W I D E
800+ screens
Platform / Limited
excluding prev. wide
The Meg Three Identical Strangers 1.
Until we hear further details, everything will be viewed through the lens of our apocalyptic fears about Oscar's new "popular achievement" category. Does The Meg's huge opening weekend mean it'll be up for an Oscar? I mean it has been since Jaws that a giant shark movie was Oscar nominated, so if Oscar wants to remain "relevant" they should totally start recognizing Mutant Shark movies! Elsewhere in box office news, Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman opened to great reviews, and much discussion, and is a total must-see "but since it didn't open big, I guess it's not as good as Slender Man and The Men so it doesn't deserve Oscar recognition, right?" he added sarcastically...
Weekend Box Office Estimates
(August 10-12)
W I D E
800+ screens
Platform / Limited
excluding prev. wide
The Meg Three Identical Strangers 1.
- 8/13/2018
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
By Jeremy Carr
The beginning of Nicholas Ray’s The Savage Innocents—by no means the most typical or best film from this iconoclastic director—touts the ethnographic appeal of its Inuit focus. With debatable accuracy, the 1960 international coproduction illuminates, in somewhat superficial fashion, a “race of nomads” called “The Men.” The narrator says we call them Eskimos, individuals who live a life of ostensible simplicity “in the age of the atom bomb.” For a good portion of the movie, this is the basic premise, in terms of theme and (loose) narrative. It is a fictional, cursory study of a small and select segment of this Arctic population. On the outside looking in, there is a fundamental crudity in their behavior, their stilted English dialogue, their purity and naiveté, and the animalistic manners and utterances of main character Inuk (Anthony Quinn). But try as it might to make this all...
The beginning of Nicholas Ray’s The Savage Innocents—by no means the most typical or best film from this iconoclastic director—touts the ethnographic appeal of its Inuit focus. With debatable accuracy, the 1960 international coproduction illuminates, in somewhat superficial fashion, a “race of nomads” called “The Men.” The narrator says we call them Eskimos, individuals who live a life of ostensible simplicity “in the age of the atom bomb.” For a good portion of the movie, this is the basic premise, in terms of theme and (loose) narrative. It is a fictional, cursory study of a small and select segment of this Arctic population. On the outside looking in, there is a fundamental crudity in their behavior, their stilted English dialogue, their purity and naiveté, and the animalistic manners and utterances of main character Inuk (Anthony Quinn). But try as it might to make this all...
- 12/31/2017
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Robert Aldrich's Autumn Leaves (1956) is playing October 22 - November 21, 2017 on Mubi in the United Kingdom. Autumn Leaves is the story of what happens to a Robert Aldrich hero after the Robert Aldrich movie ends. Vicious, cynical, and borderline nihilistic, Aldrich’s movies churned idealistic characters through crucibles of violence and disillusionment. He adored stories of marginalized nobodies forced to face impossible odds: murderers-turned-World War Two commandos in The Dirty Dozen (1967); desperate Chiricahua Apache raiders in Ulzana’s Raid (1972); a football team of prison inmates in The Longest Yard (1974); escaped military prisoners in Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977). For these men—and they were usually men—death was one of the kindest fates possible. Existential meaninglessness, the pointlessness of moral causes, the uselessness of idealism: these were the fates they truly feared. And for Aldrich, these were the just rewards...
- 10/24/2017
- MUBI
Another release of the Kramer-Foreman-Zinnemann classic gives Savant another chance to make his argument that this supposedly 'liberal' movie is too confused to be anything but political quicksand -- if anything, its statement is bitterly hawkish. High Noon Blu-ray Olive Signature 1952 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 85 min. / Street Date September 20, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 39.95 Starring Gary Cooper, Thomas Mitchell, Grace Kelly, Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr, Harry Morgan, Otto Kruger, Lee Van Cleef. Cinematography Floyd Crosby Production Designer Rudolph Sternad Film Editor Elmo Williams Original Music Dimitri Tiomkin Written by Carl Foreman Produced by Stanley Kramer Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
This is my fourth time out with a review of High Noon, starting fourteen years ago with a pretty miserable Artisan DVD, then a Lionsgate 'ultimate edition,' followed by Olive Film's first, quite good Blu-ray. Olive now revisits the 1952 classic as...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
This is my fourth time out with a review of High Noon, starting fourteen years ago with a pretty miserable Artisan DVD, then a Lionsgate 'ultimate edition,' followed by Olive Film's first, quite good Blu-ray. Olive now revisits the 1952 classic as...
- 10/1/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Watching “Everything Is Copy” (HBO), on the life of Nora Ephron, it’s clear that the late writer and filmmaker was willing to use, and to massage, the truth. Of the narrator’s hamster-loving first husband, in her 1983 novel “Heartburn,” Ephron’s own ex-, Dan Greenberg, says the strange trait is an invention; of 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally…” the screenwriter admits that Meg Ryan’s cheerful, high-strung co-lead is based “more or less” on herself. As New Yorker editor David Remnick remarks of Ephron’s inimitable essays, “her voice in print really replicated her voice—almost—in life.”
Indeed, in “Everything Is Copy,” as in the other films nominated for Outstanding Documentary/Nonfiction Special at this year’s Emmys, the subject’s work inhabits this space between the dashes, the “almost” and the “more or less.” It’s where the biographical blurs into the fictional, where fact and craft diverge.
Indeed, in “Everything Is Copy,” as in the other films nominated for Outstanding Documentary/Nonfiction Special at this year’s Emmys, the subject’s work inhabits this space between the dashes, the “almost” and the “more or less.” It’s where the biographical blurs into the fictional, where fact and craft diverge.
- 8/17/2016
- by Matt Brennan
- Indiewire
Which star didn’t bathe for four months? Who became a cabbie? Our guide to actors who take their art to new levels
Marlon Brando may be the most famous Hollywood exponent of method acting, even if the double Oscar-winning star of On the Waterfront and The Godfather always refused to accept the tag. But even Brando’s efforts to prepare for a part – which once involved him living alongside wounded soldiers in a veteran’s hospital for a full month to play an injured second world war lieutenant in his 1950 film debut, The Men – pale into comparison with those of some of his spiritual successors.
Related: Jai Courtney's Suicide Squad prep: magic mushrooms and cigarette burns
Continue reading...
Marlon Brando may be the most famous Hollywood exponent of method acting, even if the double Oscar-winning star of On the Waterfront and The Godfather always refused to accept the tag. But even Brando’s efforts to prepare for a part – which once involved him living alongside wounded soldiers in a veteran’s hospital for a full month to play an injured second world war lieutenant in his 1950 film debut, The Men – pale into comparison with those of some of his spiritual successors.
Related: Jai Courtney's Suicide Squad prep: magic mushrooms and cigarette burns
Continue reading...
- 7/29/2016
- by Ben Child
- The Guardian - Film News
Today, thousands upon thousands of fanboys and fangirls will flock toward Southern California as San Diego Comic-Con kicks off. 39 years ago today, the then-much smaller convention opened for a significant year: The first after the release of Star Wars. Though the con was still focused on comic books at the time and was contained within Sd’s El Cortez Hotel, the 1977 event did feature a “Making of Star Wars” panel. A year prior, Lucasfilm had drummed up a bit of anticipation for the movie at Comic-Con with Mark Hamill in attendance. Other notable July 20 happenings in pop culture history: • 1950: The Men, Marlon Brando’s first film, premiered in New York. • 1965: Bob Dylan’s single “Like a Rolling Stone” was released. • 1969: Broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, proclaiming the event “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
- 7/20/2016
- by Emily Rome
- Hitfix
Long before the lurid "E! True Hollywood Story" series, there was "Sunset Boulevard" -- maybe the darkest, most cynical movie ever made about what Hollywood is really like.
Released 65 years ago this week (on August 10, 1950), director Billy Wilder's classic explored fame from the perspective of those who had it and lost it (like Gloria Swanson and her "waxwork" friends, playing lightly fictionalized versions of themselves) and those who never quite made it, like the struggling young screenwriter (William Holden) and the failed actress-turned-script reader played by Nancy Olson.
Even if you haven't seen "Sunset Boulevard," you may feel like you have, whether because of the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical it spawned, the movies that copied it (particularly "American Beauty," with its narration from beyond the grave), and the countless parodies of Swanson's final "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" scene. In honor of the film's anniversary,...
Released 65 years ago this week (on August 10, 1950), director Billy Wilder's classic explored fame from the perspective of those who had it and lost it (like Gloria Swanson and her "waxwork" friends, playing lightly fictionalized versions of themselves) and those who never quite made it, like the struggling young screenwriter (William Holden) and the failed actress-turned-script reader played by Nancy Olson.
Even if you haven't seen "Sunset Boulevard," you may feel like you have, whether because of the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber musical it spawned, the movies that copied it (particularly "American Beauty," with its narration from beyond the grave), and the countless parodies of Swanson's final "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up" scene. In honor of the film's anniversary,...
- 8/10/2015
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
“I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.” That classic scene from “On The Waterfront” was part and parcel behind Marlon Brando's release into the stratosphere of supercool. Beginning with his stage debut as Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” (which he, of course, reprised in the 1951 film adaptation), his film debut in “The Men,” and a string of larger-than-life roles culminating with his Oscar-winning turn as Terry Malloy in 'Waterfront,' Hollywood was Brando's oyster in the 1950s, and a man became a cultural symbol. Through these roles, and future titanic turns in “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “The Last Tango in Paris,” we know and remember Marlon Brando as one of the greatest screen actors of all time. But what of the man behind the actor? This question fuels Stevan Riley's documentary,...
- 7/28/2015
- by Nikola Grozdanovic
- The Playlist
“I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.” That classic scene from “On The Waterfront” was part and parcel behind Marlon Brando's release into the stratosphere of supercool. Beginning with his stage debut as Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” (which he, of course, reprised in the 1951 film adaptation), his film debut in “The Men,” and a string of larger-than-life roles culminating with his Oscar-winning turn as Terry Malloy in 'Waterfront,' Hollywood was Brando's oyster in the 1950s, and a man became a cultural symbol. Through these roles, and future titanic turns in “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now,” and “The Last Tango in Paris,” we know and remember Marlon Brando as one of the greatest screen actors of all time. But, what of the man behind the actor? This question fuels Stevan Riley's documentary,...
- 3/27/2015
- by Nikola Grozdanovic
- The Playlist
Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...
- 3/15/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Teresa Wright and Matt Damon in 'The Rainmaker' Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright vs. Samuel Goldwyn: Nasty Falling Out.") "I'd rather have luck than brains!" Teresa Wright was quoted as saying in the early 1950s. That's understandable, considering her post-Samuel Goldwyn choice of movie roles, some of which may have seemed promising on paper.[1] Wright was Marlon Brando's first Hollywood leading lady, but that didn't help her to bounce back following the very public spat with her former boss. After all, The Men was released before Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire turned Brando into a major international star. Chances are that good film offers were scarce. After Wright's brief 1950 comeback, for the third time in less than a decade she would be gone from the big screen for more than a year.
- 3/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Teresa Wright-Samuel Goldwyn association comes to a nasty end (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock Heroine in His Favorite Film.") Whether or not because she was aware that Enchantment wasn't going to be the hit she needed – or perhaps some other disagreement with Samuel Goldwyn or personal issue with husband Niven Busch – Teresa Wright, claiming illness, refused to go to New York City to promote the film. (Top image: Teresa Wright in a publicity shot for The Men.) Goldwyn had previously announced that Wright, whose contract still had another four and half years to run, was to star in a film version of J.D. Salinger's 1948 short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." Instead, he unceremoniously – and quite publicly – fired her.[1] The Goldwyn organization issued a statement, explaining that besides refusing the assignment to travel to New York to help generate pre-opening publicity for Enchantment,...
- 3/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
In The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne plays Stephen Hawking, the brilliant British cosmologist stricken with Lou Gehrig’s disease, the motor-neurone disease that robbed him of his ability to speak on his own. The film follows Hawking from his academic days at Cambridge, where he met his first wife, Jane (Felicity Jones), through his history-making research that became increasing arduous as he became a prisoner of his own body. Since the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September, Redmayne—best known for the role of the dashing Marius in Les Miserables—has rightfully been one of the...
- 11/8/2014
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW.com - PopWatch
Polly Bergen dead at 84: ‘First woman president of the U.S.A.,’ former mistress of Tony Soprano’s father Emmy Award-winning actress Polly Bergen — whose roles ranged from the first U.S.A. woman president in Kisses for My President to the former mistress of both Tony Soprano’s father and John F. Kennedy in the television hit series The Sopranos — died from "natural causes" on September 20, 2014, at her home in Southbury, Connecticut. The 84-year-old Bergen, a heavy smoker for five decades, had been suffering from emphysema and other ailments since the 1990s. "Most people think I was born in a rich Long Island family," she told The Washington Post in 1988, but Polly Bergen was actually born Nellie Paulina Burgin on July 14, 1930, to an impoverished family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her father was an illiterate construction worker while her mother got only as far as the third grade. The family...
- 9/20/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Mathieu Amalric as George Devereux Benicio Del Toro as Jimmy P
I met up with Kent Jones during a snowy day, surrounded by New York Fashion Week at Lincoln Center, to talk about his work on Arnaud Desplechin's Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian. The film stars Benicio Del Toro, Mathieu Amalric, Misty Upham, and Gina McKee. The winding paths of our conversation on post-war silences, psychoanalysis, western landscapes and eastern escapes led us from David Lynch's Straight Story to Clint Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers to Truffaut and Hitchcock, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, Marlon Brando in The Men, across Red River to The Best Years of Our Lives and why the story of a returning World War II veteran has special meaning for him.
When I spoke with Kent in September 2013, he was embarking on his first year as Director of Programming and...
I met up with Kent Jones during a snowy day, surrounded by New York Fashion Week at Lincoln Center, to talk about his work on Arnaud Desplechin's Jimmy P: Psychotherapy Of A Plains Indian. The film stars Benicio Del Toro, Mathieu Amalric, Misty Upham, and Gina McKee. The winding paths of our conversation on post-war silences, psychoanalysis, western landscapes and eastern escapes led us from David Lynch's Straight Story to Clint Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers to Truffaut and Hitchcock, Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, Marlon Brando in The Men, across Red River to The Best Years of Our Lives and why the story of a returning World War II veteran has special meaning for him.
When I spoke with Kent in September 2013, he was embarking on his first year as Director of Programming and...
- 2/14/2014
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 15, 2013
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
Dick Powell in on the hunt for revenge and cash in Cry Danger.
Dick Powell (Murder, My Sweet) and Rhonda Fleming (Out of the Past) star in the 1951 film noir crime drama Cry Danger, which makes its DVD and Blu-ray debut with this Olive Films release.
Powell is Rocky, an innocent man just released from prison who’s on the hunt for both the $100,000 bankroll he allegedly stole and the people who framed him. Then there’s Delong (Richard Erdman, The Men), a disabled Marine veteran who produced the evidence that led to Rocky’s release and who now wants part of the stash in exchange for his help. But Rocky has a different plan,…
Directed by Robert Parrish (The Purple Plain) and featuring the glorious black-and-white cinematographer of Joseph F. Biroc (It’s a Wonderful Life), the film...
Price: DVD $24.95, Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Olive Films
Dick Powell in on the hunt for revenge and cash in Cry Danger.
Dick Powell (Murder, My Sweet) and Rhonda Fleming (Out of the Past) star in the 1951 film noir crime drama Cry Danger, which makes its DVD and Blu-ray debut with this Olive Films release.
Powell is Rocky, an innocent man just released from prison who’s on the hunt for both the $100,000 bankroll he allegedly stole and the people who framed him. Then there’s Delong (Richard Erdman, The Men), a disabled Marine veteran who produced the evidence that led to Rocky’s release and who now wants part of the stash in exchange for his help. But Rocky has a different plan,…
Directed by Robert Parrish (The Purple Plain) and featuring the glorious black-and-white cinematographer of Joseph F. Biroc (It’s a Wonderful Life), the film...
- 8/16/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Method acting is one of those terms that has multiple descriptions, each varying in terms of the commitment, and indeed, insanity required to pull it off. Though all roads point from Stanislavski’s classical method, actors over the last 80-or-so years have adopted it in different ways; if an actor is playing a mentally disabled character, they might spend a few days hanging out with a mentally disabled person, and if they’re playing an historical or real-life figure, then they might do their best to get acquainted with the person’s mannerisms or study their speech patterns.
These are pretty basic tenets of performance, but actors who immerse themselves fully in the Method do something entirely different; they disappear beneath the character, such that short of their (sometimes) recognisable face, we cannot discern the actor underneath. It’s a frightening – and often frighteningly impressive – practise, one which many actors...
These are pretty basic tenets of performance, but actors who immerse themselves fully in the Method do something entirely different; they disappear beneath the character, such that short of their (sometimes) recognisable face, we cannot discern the actor underneath. It’s a frightening – and often frighteningly impressive – practise, one which many actors...
- 1/22/2013
- by Shaun Munro
- Obsessed with Film
As he has before, Edgar Chaput has inspired me with one of his pieces, this one – part of Sos’s recent Bond Fest — concerning the loopy 1967 Casino Royale. As I commented on Edgar’s piece, I didn’t disagree that Royale was a royal mess after having passed through the hands of one director after another (and one screenwriter after another as well). Mess though it was, however, I found it – as I wrote – a “fascinating mess.” Maybe that’s just a holdover from seeing it as a 12-year-old when so much about the movie seemed so dizzyingly novel at the time: it’s casual sexuality, bawdy humor, wink-to-the-audience jokes, hallucinogenic visuals, Burt Bacharach’s poptastic score. In a way, the fact that the movie didn’t make much sense and caromed from one directorial style to another only added to the sensory overload it unloaded on a pre-adolescent.
What...
What...
- 11/24/2012
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
Fred Zinnemann began his career during the studio era, but kept on going, however sporadically, long after most of his contemporaries had retired. Even so, today his name means little to most moviegoers and critics alike. But why? Quite possibly because, like William Wyler, Zinnemann covered just about every film genre there is. His relatively small oeuvre — 21 narrative feature films — encompasses the following: Western (High Noon, The Sundowners [sort of]), romance (From Here to Eternity), socially conscious drama (The Search, The Men, A Hatful of Rain), historical drama (A Man for All Seasons), adventure (The Seventh Cross, Five Days One Summer), religion (The Nun's Story), thriller (The Day of the Jackal), crime (Eyes in the Night, Kid Glove Killer, Act of Violence), war (Behold a Pale Horse), comedy (My Brother Talks to Horses), melodrama (Little Big Jim) psychological drama (Teresa, The Member of the Wedding), musical (Oklahoma), pseudo-"historical" drama (Julia, whose...
- 2/26/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
You'd think a movie starring Marlon Brando at the height of his young-firebrand sex appeal, written by Nobel laureate John Steinbeck, and directed by the great Elia Kazan, would be better remembered today. Yet "Viva Zapata!", released exactly 60 years ago (on Feburary 7, 1952), is all but regarded as a footnote in the careers of Brando, Steinbeck, and Kazan. That's a shame, since it's at once a terrifically exciting action film, a heroic biopic, and a penetrating political study. Of course, even then, it was an odd one -- a movie about legendary figures in Mexican history portrayed by an almost Mexican-free cast; a movie about a pro-peasant revolutionary hero made at a time of anti-Communist hysteria in Hollywood. That it got made at all was remarkable, given the battles over censorship and casting, not to mention the battles between Brando and co-star Anthony Quinn, whose bitter tension often erupted into elaborate pranks and practical jokes.
- 2/7/2012
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
Zana Marjanovic, Ermin Sijamija, In the Land of Blood and Honey
Some Serbians may be furious at Angelina Jolie and her first directorial effort, the Bosnian War drama In the Land of Blood and Honey, but the Producers Guild of America feels differently. Jolie's socially conscious film has been named the recipient of this year's Stanley Kramer Award given to "a motion picture, producer or other individual, whose achievement or contribution illuminates provocative social issues in an accessible and elevating fashion." In In the Land of Blood and Honey, a Bosnian woman is held captive — and used as a sex slave — at a Serbian prison camp while her former lover is fighting on the side of the Serbs.
As per PGA co-presidents Hawk Koch and Mark Gordon, quoted in a press release, In the Land of Blood and Honey "is an extraordinary film that portrays a complex love story set...
Some Serbians may be furious at Angelina Jolie and her first directorial effort, the Bosnian War drama In the Land of Blood and Honey, but the Producers Guild of America feels differently. Jolie's socially conscious film has been named the recipient of this year's Stanley Kramer Award given to "a motion picture, producer or other individual, whose achievement or contribution illuminates provocative social issues in an accessible and elevating fashion." In In the Land of Blood and Honey, a Bosnian woman is held captive — and used as a sex slave — at a Serbian prison camp while her former lover is fighting on the side of the Serbs.
As per PGA co-presidents Hawk Koch and Mark Gordon, quoted in a press release, In the Land of Blood and Honey "is an extraordinary film that portrays a complex love story set...
- 12/14/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The restorative powers of cinema enjoyed a starring role at the Wellcome Trust's celebration of 75 years of medicine on screen
Last weekend, the Wellcome Trust celebrated 75 years of medicine on screen by transforming the Truman Brewery into a 1980s hospital, complete with a therapy on film ward. Here, visitors were offered consultations with a "doctor" who prescribed a healthy dose of film to cure your malaise. I've long suspected the only effective treatment for the common cold is repeated doses of romcom to be applied on the sofa, but can film really make us feel better?
I perch on a blue plastic chair and thumb a genuine 80s copy of Smash Hits while waiting for the doctor. The walls are lined with ads expounding the dangers of smoking while pregnant (low birth rate) and of smoking before kissing (reduced likelihood of repeat kissing). Medical assessment form completed, I'm taken through to the ward.
Last weekend, the Wellcome Trust celebrated 75 years of medicine on screen by transforming the Truman Brewery into a 1980s hospital, complete with a therapy on film ward. Here, visitors were offered consultations with a "doctor" who prescribed a healthy dose of film to cure your malaise. I've long suspected the only effective treatment for the common cold is repeated doses of romcom to be applied on the sofa, but can film really make us feel better?
I perch on a blue plastic chair and thumb a genuine 80s copy of Smash Hits while waiting for the doctor. The walls are lined with ads expounding the dangers of smoking while pregnant (low birth rate) and of smoking before kissing (reduced likelihood of repeat kissing). Medical assessment form completed, I'm taken through to the ward.
- 9/21/2011
- by Ruth Jamieson
- The Guardian - Film News
I felt a special pang of nostalgic melancholy when I learned, on Thursday, that Maria Schneider had died of cancer. She was only 58, but what highlighted the sadness of her passing is that there’s one role that, for a lot of us, will define her forever, and in that one role she incarnated the spirit and beauty and giggly bloom of youth. Yes, she was good in a few other movies (notably The Passenger), but to me she will always be Jeanne, the baby-cheeked Parisian dumpling of Last Tango in Paris (1972), who descends into a torrid three-day tryst/dance...
- 2/5/2011
- by Owen Gleiberman
- EW - Inside Movies
I felt a special pang of nostalgic melancholy when I learned, on Thursday, that Maria Schneider had died of cancer. She was only 58, but what highlighted the sadness of her passing is that there’s one role that, for a lot of us, will define her forever, and in that one role she incarnated the spirit and beauty and giggly bloom of youth. Yes, she was good in a few other movies (notably The Passenger), but to me she will always be Jeanne, the baby-cheeked Parisian dumpling of Last Tango in Paris (1972), who descends into a torrid three-day tryst/dance...
- 2/5/2011
- by Owen Gleiberman
- EW - Inside Movies
By 1950, Marlon Brando was already considered the greatest American actor alive. Not bad for a 26-year-old. His raw, Method intensity and brute, larger-than-life presence on the New York stage were the stuff of legend. Naturally, Hollywood beckoned. So Brando turned his back on the theater and headed out west to see if he could parlay his rep as the toast of Broadway into movie stardom, packing his bags to see if his genius would translate to the silver screen.
But before going on to star in timeless classics like 1951′s A Streetcar Named Desire, 1954′s On the Waterfront, and 1972′s The Godfather,...
But before going on to star in timeless classics like 1951′s A Streetcar Named Desire, 1954′s On the Waterfront, and 1972′s The Godfather,...
- 7/20/2010
- by Chris Nashawaty
- EW.com - PopWatch
(Actor Richard Erdman, left)
by Jon Zelazny
The craft of acting in the 20th century breaks neatly into two distinct phases: before Marlon Brando and after Marlon Brando. He first conquered Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947. Three years later—and sixty years ago—he made his first movie.
The Men (1950) is a grim drama set in a Va paraplegic ward. Brando is the bitter new arrival; Jack Webb and Richard Erdman play the patients who become his best buddies.
A native of Enid, Oklahoma, Erdman spent his teenage years in vaudeville, and began his Hollywood career in 1944. He most recently appeared on the NBC series "Community."
Richard Erdman: Brando and I went out to Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys, where all the war paraplegics were still being treated, and we stayed there a few days, learning how to use wheelchairs, and how to get in and...
by Jon Zelazny
The craft of acting in the 20th century breaks neatly into two distinct phases: before Marlon Brando and after Marlon Brando. He first conquered Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947. Three years later—and sixty years ago—he made his first movie.
The Men (1950) is a grim drama set in a Va paraplegic ward. Brando is the bitter new arrival; Jack Webb and Richard Erdman play the patients who become his best buddies.
A native of Enid, Oklahoma, Erdman spent his teenage years in vaudeville, and began his Hollywood career in 1944. He most recently appeared on the NBC series "Community."
Richard Erdman: Brando and I went out to Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys, where all the war paraplegics were still being treated, and we stayed there a few days, learning how to use wheelchairs, and how to get in and...
- 3/23/2010
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Actress Teresa Wright, who was the only performer to receive Oscar nominations for her first three films, died Sunday in New Haven, CT of a heart attack; she was 86. Initially a stage actress, Wright was discovered by Samuel Goldwyn in the Broadway hit Life with Father, and the studio head immediately cast her opposite Bette Davis in the 1941 film adaptation of The Little Foxes. The screen newcomer more than held her own among the impressive cast and her demure ingénue looks belied a steely center that gave her performance a fierce emotional strength, and she received her first Academy Award nomination for the film. The next year, Wright became the second actress to receive Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the same year, for her roles as the wife of Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees (opposite Gary Cooper) and as a young bride in the World War II drama Mrs. Miniver; she won a Supporting Actress Oscar for the latter film. Wright also starred in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Shadow of a Doubt, for which she received top billing (the film was also reportedly Hitchcock's personal favorite), and the Oscar-winning film The Best Years of Our Lives. As the 40s came to a close, Wright famously clashed with Sam Goldwyn over her image and the promotion of her films. Resisting the glamorous, pin-up image the studio wanted to thrust upon her and eschewing most promotion for her films, the independent-minded Wright was fired by Goldwyn in 1948, and her fame never again reached the heights of her early film career. Undaunted, Wright continued to act both onstage and onscreen, appearing opposite Marlon Brando in The Men (his first film) and in a number of character roles through the 80s and 90s, including her last film role in The Rainmaker; she also had an extensive Broadway career, appearing with George C. Scott in a 1975 revival of Death of a Salesman. Wright was married to screenwriter and novelist Niven Busch, whom she divorced in 1952, and then to playwright Robert Anderson, whom she also divorced. She is survived by a son, daughter, and two grandchildren. --Prepared by IMDb staff...
- 3/8/2005
- WENN
Marlon Brando, the legendary actor whose performances in A Streetcar Named Desire, The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris made him one of the most important screen actors of all time and whose larger-than-life persona offscreen dominated his later years, died Thursday at an undisclosed location in Los Angeles; he was 80. According to Brando's attorney, David J. Seeley, the cause of the actor's death was being withheld because the actor was "a very private man." (A later report from Reuters stated that a UCLA Medical Center spokesperson said the actor died there at 6:30pm on Thursday of lung failure.) The most famous proponent of Method acting and considered by many to be America's finest actor, Brando paved the way for a new style of acting in the 40s and 50s, first working on Broadway, where he created his first signature role as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. He made his screen debut in 1950's The Men, which was followed by his Oscar-nominated re-creation of Kowalski in Elia Kazan's film of A Streetcar Named Desire. Riding his sudden superstardom, roles in Viva Zapata, Julius Caesar, The Wild One and On the Waterfront followed, the latter of which won him his first Oscar. Once he became a true icon in the late 50s and 60s, he branched into directing (1961's One Eyed Jacks) and a troubled, bloated adaptation of Mutiny on the Bounty, where his need for perfection (and infatuation with the south Pacific) put the movie over budget and over schedule.
That film marked the beginning of a string of failures in the 60s, and by the early 70s the actor's star seemed to have faded. However, it was a little gangster film in 1972 called The Godfather that catapulted Brando back into the spotlight, and his phenomenal turn as mob boss Vito Corleone earned him a second Oscar . which he notoriously refused, sending an actress dressed in Native American garb to the Academy Award ceremony to reject the award with a diatribe against the wrongs done to Native Americans by the U.S. He courted even more controversy with Bernardo Bertolucci's X-rated Last Tango in Paris (though he grabbed another Oscar nomination), and appeared in both Hollywood projects (Superman, for which he received a record salary at the time) and award-winning films (appearing as Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's troubled masterpiece Apocalypse Now) through the 70s. Sporadic film appearances marked the end of his career, including The Freshman, A Dry White Season and Don Juan De Marco, and his later years were dominated by scandal when his son, Christian Brando, shot and killed the lover of his half sister, Cheyenne, at the family's home in 1990; Christian was jailed and Cheyenne committed suicide five years later. Legal fees reportedly drained the actor's fortune, and the scandal contributed to the stories of Brando's bizarre offscreen antics. He lived in seclusion for the past few years, and most recently was the target of yet more rumors to be published in an unauthorized biography (one of many). Details about funeral arrangements were not immediately forthcoming. --Prepared by IMDb staff...
That film marked the beginning of a string of failures in the 60s, and by the early 70s the actor's star seemed to have faded. However, it was a little gangster film in 1972 called The Godfather that catapulted Brando back into the spotlight, and his phenomenal turn as mob boss Vito Corleone earned him a second Oscar . which he notoriously refused, sending an actress dressed in Native American garb to the Academy Award ceremony to reject the award with a diatribe against the wrongs done to Native Americans by the U.S. He courted even more controversy with Bernardo Bertolucci's X-rated Last Tango in Paris (though he grabbed another Oscar nomination), and appeared in both Hollywood projects (Superman, for which he received a record salary at the time) and award-winning films (appearing as Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's troubled masterpiece Apocalypse Now) through the 70s. Sporadic film appearances marked the end of his career, including The Freshman, A Dry White Season and Don Juan De Marco, and his later years were dominated by scandal when his son, Christian Brando, shot and killed the lover of his half sister, Cheyenne, at the family's home in 1990; Christian was jailed and Cheyenne committed suicide five years later. Legal fees reportedly drained the actor's fortune, and the scandal contributed to the stories of Brando's bizarre offscreen antics. He lived in seclusion for the past few years, and most recently was the target of yet more rumors to be published in an unauthorized biography (one of many). Details about funeral arrangements were not immediately forthcoming. --Prepared by IMDb staff...
- 7/2/2004
- IMDb News
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