#American Musical and Dramatic Academy

[spinelthethespian]

Had my AMDA Audition today! Was terrifying af but the people there are SO damn nice and made the experience 100% easier and much more stress-free🫶🏻

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Audio: Tiphanie Doucet Shares a Synth Pop cover of Julien Doré

New Audio: Tiphanie Doucet Shares a Synth Pop cover of Julien Doré @TiphanieDoucet @jdoreofficiel @HeyGroover @romainpalmieri @DorianPerron

Tiphanie Doucet is a French-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who currently splits her time between New York and Los Angeles. Doucet can trace her love of performing to her childhood: She was a child actor, who appeared on French TV. After earning a merit scholarship, the French-born, Los Angeles-based artist, relocated to New York, where she studied acting and musical theater at…

[scotianostra]

The Scottish actor David McCallum was born on 19th September 1933.

Born as David Keith McCallum, Jr in Maryhill, Glasgow, the second of two sons of Dorothy Dorman, a cellist, and orchestral violinist David McCallum Sr. When he was three, his family moved to London for his father to play as concertmaster in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in the Second World War, he was evacuated back to Scotland, where he lived with his mother at Gartocharn by Loch Lomond.

McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boys’ independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe.In 1946 he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted, joining the 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force.In March 1954 he was promoted to Lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.

David McCallum’s acting career has spanned six decades; however, these days he is best known for his starring role on the police procedural NCIS as medical examiner as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. I first really remember McCallum for his role in another US show, The Invisible Man which ran for 13 episodes in the 70’s. McCallum by then was a veteran of many TV and Film roles, starting in the 50’s including Our Mutual Friend and The Eustace Diamonds, in the 60’s he was in several ITV Playhouse shows before moving across the Atlantic to take roles in The Outer Limits and his big break as Illya Kuryakin in several incantations of The Man from Uncle.

His most notable films were The Greatest Story Ever Told as Judas Iscariot and of course Ashley-Pitt ‘Dispersal’ in The Great Escape.

As well as the aforementioned Invisible Man in the 70’s he took time to pop back over to our shores to star in two quality series, as Flt. Lt. Simon Carter in Colditz and Alan Breck Stewart in an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson’s, Kidnapped.

The 80’s saw him team up with the lovely Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel and several guest roles in the likes of The A Team, Hart to Hart and Murder, She Wrote as well as a one off reprise of Illya in the TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair.

The 90’s saw David in Cluedo and Trainer on our TV screens over here and American science-fiction series VR-5 in the states..

During the last 20 years or so he has been in the kids TV show, Ben 10: Omniverse as the voice of Professor Paradox and of course Donald Horatio “Ducky” Mallard in a remarkable  436 episodes of the popular NCIS.

David has been married twice. He married his first wife Jill Ireland in 1957. They met on the set of the movie Hell Drivers. Together, they had two sons and a daughter, Paul, Jason and Valentine, with Jason being the only one who was adopted. In 1963, David introduced Jill to his co-star on The Great Escape, Charles Bronson, and she left David and married Charles in 1968. In 1967,

David McCallum passed away aged 90 on September 23rd last year, he is survived by his wife of 56 years, Katherine McCallum, his sons Paul McCallum, Valentine McCallum and Peter McCallum, his daughter Sophie McCallum and his eight grandchildren. NCIS paid tribute to him in an episode called The Stories We Leave Behind when the tagents find comfort in working on one of his unfinished cases. The episode features clips from several old shows.

[justforbooks]

Donald Sutherland

Commanding and versatile actor known for his roles in MAS*H, Don’t Look Now and The Hunger Games

Donald Sutherland, who has died aged 88, brought his disturbing and unconventional presence to bear in scores of films after his breakthrough role of Hawkeye Pierce, the army surgeon in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970), one of the key American films of its period. It marked Sutherland out as an iconoclastic figure of the 60s generation, but he matured into an actor who made a speciality of portraying taciturn, self-doubting characters. This was best illustrated in his portrayal of the tormented parent of a drowned girl, seeking solace in a wintry Venice, in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973), and of the weak, nervous, concerned father of a guilt-ridden teenage boy (Timothy Hutton) in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People (1980).

Although Sutherland appeared in the statutory number of stinkers that are many a film actor’s lot, he was always watchable. His career resembled a man walking a tightrope between undemanding parts in potboilers and those in which he was able to take risks, such as the title role in Federico Fellini’s Casanova (1976).

Curiously, it was Sutherland’s ears that first got him noticed, in Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967). During the shoot, according to Sutherland, “Clint Walker sticks up his hand and says, ‘Mr Aldrich, as a representative of the Native American people, I don’t think it’s appropriate to do this stupid scene where I have to pretend to be a general.’ Aldrich turns and points to me and says, ‘You with the big ears. You do it’ … It changed my life.” In other words, it led to M*A*S*H and stardom.

Sutherland and his M*A*S*H co-star Elliott Gould tried to get Altman fired from the film because they did not think the director knew what he was doing due to his unorthodox methods. In the early days, Sutherland was known to have confrontations with his directors. “What I was trying to do all the time was to impose my thinking,” he remarked some years later. “Now I contribute. I offer. I don’t put my foot down.”

Sutherland, who was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, was a sickly child who battled rheumatic fever, hepatitis and polio. He spent most of his teenage years in Nova Scotia where his father, Frederick, ran a local gas, electricity and bus company; his mother, Dorothy (nee McNichol), was a maths teacher. He attended Bridgewater high school, then graduated from Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, with a double major in engineering and drama. As a result of a highly praised performance in a college production of James Thurber’s and Elliott Nugent’s The Male Animal, he dropped the idea of becoming an engineer and decided to pursue acting.

With this in mind, he left Canada for the UK in 1957 to study at Lamda (the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), where he was considered too tall and ungainly to get anywhere. However, he gained a year’s work as a stage actor with the Perth repertory company, and appeared in TV series such as The Saint and The Avengers. He was Fortinbras in a 1964 BBC production of Hamlet, shot at Elsinore castle and starring Christopher Plummer. He also appeared at the Criterion theatre in the West End in The Gimmick in 1962.

In 1959 he married Lois Hardwick; they divorced in 1966. Then he married the film producer Shirley Douglas, with whom he had twins, Kiefer and Rachel; they divorced in 1971. Kiefer, who grew up to become a celebrated actor, was named after the producer-writer Warren Kiefer, who put Sutherland in an Italian-made Gothic horror film, The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Christopher Lee played a necrophile count, while Sutherland doubled as a dim-witted police sergeant and, in drag and heavy makeup, as a witch.

In an earlier era, the gawky Sutherland might not have achieved the stardom that followed the anarchic M*A*S*H, but Hollywood at the time was open for stars with unconventional looks, and Sutherland was much in demand for eccentric roles throughout the 70s.

He was impressive as a moviemaker with “director’s block” in Paul Mazursky’s messy but interesting Alex in Wonderland (1970), which contains a prescient dream sequence in which his titular character meets Fellini. In the same year, Sutherland played a Catholic priest and the object of Geneviève Bujold’s erotic gaze in Act of the Heart; he was the appropriately named Sergeant Oddball, an anachronistic hippy tank commander, in the second world war action-comedy Kelly’s Heroes; and he and Gene Wilder were two pairs of twins in 18th-century France in the broad comedy Start the Revolution Without Me.

Sutherland was at his most laconic, sometimes verging on the soporific, in the title role of Alan J Pakula’s Klute (1971), as a voyeuristic ex-policeman investigating the disappearance of a friend and getting deeply involved with a prostitute, played by Jane Fonda.

Sutherland and Fonda were teamed up again as a couple of misfits in the caper comedy Steelyard Blues (1973). It initially had a limited distribution due mainly to their participation together in the anti-Vietnam war troop show FTA (Fuck the Army), which Sutherland co-directed, co-scripted and co-produced.

Sutherland always made his political views known, although they surfaced only occasionally in his films. In among the many mainstream comedies and thrillers was Roeg’s supernatural drama Don’t Look Now, in which Sutherland and Julie Christie are superb as a couple grieving their dead daughter. Despite the dark subject matter, the film was notable for containing “one of the sexiest love scenes in film history”, according to Scott Tobias in the Guardian, the frank depiction of their love-making coming “like a desert flower poking through concrete”. The actor so admired Roeg that he named another son after him, one of his three sons with the French-Canadian actor Francine Racette, whom he married in 1972.

John Schlesinger’s rambling version of The Day of the Locust (1975) saw Sutherland as a sexually repressed character – called Homer Simpson – who tramples a woman to death in an act of uncontrolled rage. Perhaps Bernardo Bertolucci had that in mind when he cast Sutherland in 1900 (Novecento, 1976), in which he is a broadly caricatured fascist thug who shows his sadism by smashing a cat’s head against a post and bashing a young boy’s brains out. “And I turned down Deliverance and Straw Dogs because of the violence!” Sutherland recalled.

In Fellini’s Casanova, the second of his two bizarre Italian excursions in 1976, Sutherland coldly calculates seduction under his heavily made-up features. The performance, as remarkably stylised as it is, still reveals the suffering soul within the sex machine.

In 1978 he appeared in Claude Chabrol’s Blood Relatives, a made-in-Canada murder mystery with Sutherland playing a Montreal cop investigating the murder of a young woman. More commercial was The Eagle Has Landed (1976), with Sutherland, attempting an Irish accent, as an IRA member supporting the Germans during the second world war, and as a chilling Nazi in Eye of the Needle (1981). Meanwhile, he was the hero of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), who resists the insidious alien menace until the film’s devastating final shot.

In 1981 Sutherland returned to the stage, as Humbert Humbert in a highly anticipated version of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, adapted by Edward Albee. It turned out to be a huge flop, running only 12 performances on Broadway. Both Sutherland and Albee played the blame game. “The second act is flawed,” Sutherland said. “Albee was supposed to have rethought it, but he never did.” Albee told reporters that he had scuttled some of his best scenes because they were “too difficult” for Sutherland because “he hasn’t been on stage for 17 years”.

Continuing his film career, Sutherland played a complex and sadistic British officer in Hugh Hudson’s Revolution (1985), and in A Dry White Season (1989) he took the role of an Afrikaner schoolteacher beginning to understand the brutal realities of apartheid. In Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), he held the screen with an extended monologue as he spilled the conspiracy beans to Kevin Costner’s district attorney hero Jim Garrison.

After having made contact with young audiences in the 70s with offbeat appearances in gross-out pictures The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), the latter as a pot-smoking professor, he was cast as an unconvincing bearded stranger in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).

On a more adult level were Six Degrees of Separation (1993), in which he played an unfulfilled art dealer; A Time to Kill (1996), as an alcoholic, disbarred lawyer (alongside Kiefer); Without Limits (1998), as an enthusiastic athletics coach; and Space Cowboys (2000), as an elderly pilot. By this time, he was gradually moving into grey-haired character roles, one of the best being his amiable Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (2005).

The Jane Austen novel was also featured in the television series Great Books (1993-2000), to which Sutherland lent his soothing voice as narrator. Other series in which he shone as quasi baddies were Commander in Chief (2005) – as the sexist Republican speaker of the house opposed to the new president (Geena Davis) – and Dirty Sexy Money (2007-09), in which he played a powerful patriarch of a wealthy family.

Sutherland continued to be active well into his 80s, his long grey hair and beard signifying sagacity, whether as a contract killer in The Mechanic, a Roman hero in The Eagle, a nutty retired poetry professor in Man on the Train (all 2011), or a quirky bounty hunter in the western Dawn Rider (2012), bringing more depth to the characters than they deserved. As President Coriolanus Snow, the autocratic ruler of the dystopian country of Panem in The Hunger Games (2012), Sutherland was discovered by a new generation; he went on to reprise the role in three further films in that franchise, beginning with The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013).

He played artists in two art-world thrillers by Italian directors: in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Deception, AKA The Best Offer (2013), he was a would-be painter helping to execute multimillion-dollar scams, while in Giuseppe Capotondi’s The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019) he was on the other side of the heist as a reclusive genius targeted by a wealthy and unscrupulous dealer (Mick Jagger).

Aside from James Gray’s science-fiction drama Ad Astra (also 2019), in which he co-starred with Brad Pitt, Sutherland’s best late work was all for television. In Danny Boyle’s mini-series Trust (2018), which covered the same real-life events as Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, he played J Paul Getty, the oil tycoon whose grandson is kidnapped; while in The Undoing (2020), he was the father of a psychologist (Nicole Kidman), reluctantly putting up bail when her husband (Hugh Grant) is arrested for murder.

For the latter role Sutherland was in the running for a Golden Globe, having already received an honorary Oscar in 2017.

He is survived by Francine and his children, Kiefer, Rachel, Rossif, Angus and Roeg, and by four grandchildren.

🔔 Donald McNichol Sutherland, actor; born 17 July 1935; died 20 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[pineapplefulfillseveryneed]

The Revenge Of Two Hands One Mouth - O2 Academy Bristol (November 27, 2013) by Adam Gasson

After 11 years of not finding a single photo from this show, I found these yesterday! I can not begin to express what this means to me, I nearly cried and I couldn't sleep last night. I was still a rather new fan and this was my first time going to a show in the UK, the first show I went to see with a friend, and my first time meeting that friend, too. And these above photos are SO GOOD! Not much was preserved from this show at all, there was no recording allowed (no charcoal drawings either), and to my knowledge not even the full setlist for this specific show was preserved anywhere. So better late than never, but here's what I remember (with some help from these photos!) and the things I've puzzled back together:

If there was opening music or an opening act, i don't recall, but Russell entered the stage alone. It was dramatic and impactful, and it went quiet as he gave an intense stare into the audience and did a drawn out "ahhh" into the microphone. After a little moment of quiet, it turned out the microphone had been connected to a sequencer which now started repeating "ah ah ah ah ah ah". Suspense, excitement. Russell added: "Hold, hold, hold, hold". (...I was definitely freaking out.) While that started looping on top of the ah ah ah sequence, he made stop signs with his hand as we all listened. A few repeats passed. "I'm getting mixed signals, mixed signals - mixed, mixed, mixed signals".

^ the only seconds of this show I recorded as I didn't yet know it wasn't allowed - security signed at me and I put the camera away. It was fine. (Here's a recording of it made during the US tour later that year - recording seemed to be less frowned upon at that point.)

I don't recall when Ron entered the stage at this show, whether it was during the song or after, but what a way to open! And what an amazing song choice!

The performance that left the biggest impression on me at this show though was Nicotina. It was a choice I didn't see coming, but also the way Russell sang it! Falsetto heaven. (Sadly not a single video is to be found of Nicotina from this tour. But for your falsetto heaven needs, I hope you can find a video of Here In Heaven that they also performed on this tour, because that will also kill you.)

As everyone here probably knows I am quite big on Bergman, which at the time was heavily promoted during the tours, and, the excerpts they played on this tour were different from what they played during Two Hands One Mouth! They played "I Am Ingmar Bergman", The Studio Commissary (my favourite song on Bergman), Limo Driver (but sang by Russell, and HOW!) and "Oh My God". (Here's a video of it from one of the American shows. It's extremely good. People who've been around for a while have seen me lose it over this video many times.)

The most unexpected song choice was probably Katherine Hepburn. Me and my friend had been joking for absolute months that we were going to see Sparks and they'd play Katherine Hepburn (as if that would ever happen, we were obsessed with that song though!). And here we were, and they were playing Katherine Hepburn right in front of our eyes. (What is reality.)

Falling In Love With Myself Again had me losing it over the organ sounds, always a fan of Ron on organ, and I LOVE that song. Russell sang a line in my direction (I died), and he managed to throw another line at me during Those Mysteries ...I died a few times that night. As you might expect. That was kind of the whole THOM/TROTHOM experience anyway. Lots of dying. But the variety of dying where you end up in heaven. (You're at a Sparks show after all.)

They wrote a song especially for this tour, which was not released but only ever played live: Revenge Of Two Hands One Mouth. What a thing to experience! A very dark song, but wonderful. (REVENGE! REVENGE REVENGE!)

At the end of the show Ron took a photo of Russell with the audience. I don't really remember that happening, but the photo exists and it really was not a thing they did often back then. We had been a good audience :)

Here's all the songs that were probably played that night in random order:

Your Call's Very Important To Us. Please Hold., B.C., Good Morning, Here In Heaven, Academy Award Performance, Those Mysteries, Falling In Love With Myself Again, Big Boy, Nicotina, Popularity, This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us, excerpts from The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman, Tryouts For The Human Race, Katherine Hepburn, Revenge Of Two Hands One Mouth. They likely also played The Number One Song in Heaven, When Do I Get To Sing 'My Way' and Suburban Homeboy. (I see mentions of How Are You Getting Home? and How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall? in setlists for this tour as well, which they very well might have played but I very sadly have zero memory of ever hearing those songs live.)

This tour had a real air of mystery, possibly even more so than Two Hands One Mouth, as the lack of existing footage definitely adds to it. But luckily some of it *is* out there, and I am so grateful for these photos :) On top of the songs I especially mentioned above, I would also advise people to look for recordings of Tryouts For The Human Race and Popularity from this tour, because the arrangements are probably not going to be the way you expect them to be. And as you might expect: B.C. is stunning live. (I could start a whole rant about Good Morning and Suburban Homeboy live but I think I sufficiently screamed about both in my personal notes on THOM the year prior.) Final note: I know Russell had some sort of dance move for Big Boy because me and another friend couldn't stop talking about it for months. I don't remember what he did, but both THOM and TROTHOM were wonderful for Russell dances <3

[glennk56]

William Hootkins in the 1970s.

William Hootkins was born in Texas in 1948. He was active in theater in High School and at Princeton University and interested in becoming a professional actor after graduating. His his friend John Lithgow recommended he move to England to continue his acting education, probably because he knew he'd get greater opportunities. So he moved to England in the 1970s and trained at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He continued mainly in theater and took film roles when he could. His first film role was a small role as a henchman in the British R rated film, Big Zapper in 1973.

Big Zapper, 1973. Small role and Hootkins would've been 24-25 years old during filming.

Anthology series Plays for Britain. Hootkins gets a small role in the episode The Paradise Run in 1976.

An anthology Documentary series, Horizon, which featured film adaptations of real-life events. Hootkins had a greater role in this 1976 offering Billion Dollar Bubble which starred James Woods about Insurance Company fraud in the early years of computers.

Still in his 20s, Hootkins got a small role in a major American film directed by Robert Aldrich and the opportunity to share a scene with Charles Durning, Twilight's Last Gleaming in 1977.

Also in 1977, Hootkins played Porkins in a small role in the 1977 blockbuster Star Wars. Small role but big enough to get his own action figure.

And again in 1977, Hootkins worked with Director Ken Russell in Valentino in a high energy scene of a drunken, egotistical silent film star. The movie was a bomb mainly because it wasn't the biopic of Rudolph Valentino that people expected. Russell took too much license in the life of Valentino to tell a more interesting story. I think what was known of the real lives of stars back then was greatly what the studio wanted to present to the public. So I think Russell was justified.

1977 was an especially good year for William Hootkins. The above photos are from a US-UK collaboration of a teleplay version of Come Back, Little Sheba starring Laurence Olivier and Joanne Woodward. Hootkins is in one scene only. Also in 1977, Hootkins appeared in episodes of British TV series, Van der Volk, Yanks Go Home, Plum's Plots and Plans and Documentary Series, The Lively Arts.

In 1978. Hootkins appeared in Part 1 of Clouds of Glory, a 2-part series of the lives of Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel T Coleridge. Hootkins appeared with David Warner.

Late 1978, now William Hootkins is 30 years old and no denying the hair loss. He appears in all 3 episodes of the British miniseries The Lost Boys, about Peter Pan writer J. M. Barrie starring Ian Holm, presenting Barrie as homosexual and a pedophile (at least only in his mind). Hootkins plays Barrie's American friend, Broadway and London Theater Producer Charles Frohman.

Hootkins appeared in one episode of British 13-part miniseries Lillie, the story of Lillie Langtry in 1978.

In 1979, Hootkins appeared in Hanover Street as Beef with Harrison Ford.

Also in 1979, he played a very small role in a remake of The Lady Vanishes with Cybill Shepherd and Angela Lansbury.

[film-classics]

Rosalind Russell - The Miracle Woman

Catherine Rosalind Russell (born in Waterbury, Connecticut on June 4, 1907) was an American actress known for playing sassy, wisecracking women in 1930s and '40s comedies. Despite going through postpartum depression, the deaths of her siblings, breast cancer, and rheumatoid arthritis, she thrived as a charismatic actress on film and the stage, earning the nickname "The Miracle Woman.”

Raised in a strict Irish-American, Catholic family. She attended  Rosemont College and Marymount College, before graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, unbeknownst to her parents who believed she was studying to be a speech teacher.

Against parental objections, she began her career as a fashion model and took acting jobs in upstate New York, Connecticut, and Boston before eventually appearing in Broadway.

In 1933, Russell went to Los Angeles, where she was hired as a contract player for Universal Studios but did not appear in a movie. Unhappy at Universal, she moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she broke through in the classic screwball comedy His Girl Friday (1940), directed by Howard Hawks.

She took a break after giving birth from her career, but made a comeback with RKO Pictures and then with Columbia Pictures. She continued to appear in critically acclaimed movies and Broadway shows through the mid-1960s, including the title role of the long-running stage comedy Auntie Mame (based on a Patrick Dennis novel) as well as the 1958 film version.

After years of battling breast cancer and even getting a double mastectomy, she died at her home in Beverly Hills, California at 69 years of age. Months after her death, she was honored by her acting colleagues with the “Interlude With Rosalind Russell” at the Shubert Theater in Broadway.

Legacy:

Nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and Auntie Mame (1958)

Won all five of her Golden Globe Award for Best Actress nominations: Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), Auntie Mame (1958), A Majority of One (1961), and Gypsy (1962)

Won the 1953 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for Wonderful Town and was nominated for the 1957 for Best Actress in a Play for Auntie Mame

Nominated for the 1959 BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress

Won the Golden Apple Award in 1942 for Most Cooperative Actress

Awarded the Look Magazine Award for Film Achievement Award in 1947

Covered Time magazine in 1953

Was the namesake of the Rosalind Russell State Theater in her hometown in 1955

Wrote the story for the film The Unguarded Moment (1956) and adapted the novel, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, into the screenplay for Mrs. Pollifax-Spy in 1971, under the pen name C.A. McKnight

Won the Golden Laurel for Top Female Comedy Performance for Auntie Mame (1958) and was nominated five more times

Presented with a medallion by the National Conference of Christians and Jews in 1962

Honored for her distinguished service by the UCLA in 1964

Named the Woman of the Year by Hasty Pudding Theatricals, a student society at Harvard University, in 1964

Is the recipient of the Floyd B. Odlum Award by the Arthritis Foundation in 1971

Appointed by Congress to serve on the National Commission on Arthritis and Related Musculoskeletal Diseases during the 1970s

Received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1972

Appeared in John Springer's "Legendary Ladies" series at The Town Hall in 1973

Awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1973 by the Academy for her extensive charity work

Presented her with the National Artist Award in 1974 by the American National Theater and Academy

Awarded the Life Achievement Award in 1975 by the Screen Actors Guild Awards

Hosted by First Lady Betty Ford at the White House in 1976

Honored with the Rosalind Russell Week in 1977 by Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley

Co-authored her autobiography, Life Is a Banquet, in 1977

Is the namesake of the Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis  at the University of California, San Francisco, created by a Congress grant in 1979

Inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 2005

Ranked #28 on Premiere magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time in 2006 for His Girl Friday (1940)

Honored as Turner Classic Movies Star of the Month for July 2008

Inducted in the Online Film and Television Association Film Hall of Fame in 2014

Was the subject of a 2016 exhibit at the Mattatuck Museum in her hometown

Honored by the Berlin Film Festival‘s 27-movie tribute in 2022

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the 1700 block of Vine Street for motion picture

[mthguy]

Four of the finest actors working today.

Matt Bomer (born October 11, 1977) is an American actor. He is the recipient of accolades such as a Golden Globe Award and a Critics' Choice Television Award, in addition to a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award. (Magic Mike, Boys in the Band, The Normal Heart, Maestro, Fellow Travelers.)

Andrew Scott (born October 21, 1976) is an Irish actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades, including a BAFTA Television Award and two Laurence Olivier Awards, along with nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. (1917, Fleabag, All of Us Strangers, Vanya, Ripley.)

Jonathan Bailey (born April 25, 1988) is an English actor. Known for his comedic, dramatic, and musical roles on stage and screen, he is the recipient of a Laurence Olivier Award and a Critics' Choice Television Award, as well a Screen Actors Guild Award nominee. (Broadchurch, Company, Bridgerton, Fellow Travelers, the upcoming film version of Wicked-Parts I and II.)

Paul Mescal (born February 2, 1996) is an Irish actor. He studied acting at The Lir Academy and subsequently performed in plays in Dublin theatres, has received a BAFTA TV Award and a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award. (Normal People, A Streetcar Named Desire, All of Us Strangers, the upcoming film version of Merrily We Roll Along.)

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Such sad news to hear today. An amazing, and enigmatic actor someone who deserved to be called a star.💫

British actor Tom Wilkinson, best known for his role in The Full Monty, has died aged 75 💔Wilkinson, who became an OBE for services to drama in 2005, was born in Leeds - Yorkshire in 1948 and grew up in Canada and Cornwall before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in the 1970s.

In 1994, he appeared as Pecksniff in the BBC's adaptation of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit. He is pictured alongside Maggie Steed.

Across an illustrious career spanning nearly 50 years, Wilkinson won a host of acting awards, as well as two Oscar nominations. He won a BAFTA for 'The Full Monty,' and he also appeared in 'Shakespeare in Love,' 'In the Bedroom,' 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' and 'Batman Begins', He won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as Benjamin Franklin in the 'John Adams' miniseries. A versatile actor won acclaim through decades of work in television and film and onstage. Recently he was reunited with his The Full Monty co-stars, Carlyle and Mark Addy, in a Disney+ series of the same name.

Who remembers this classic!

The original 1997 comedy about an unlikely group of male strippers in Sheffield won an Oscar for Best Original Musical or comedy score and was nominated for three others, including best picture and best director.

Wilkinson’s best roles. Here are his finest films, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis was an officer of the British Army and one of the leading British generals in the American War of Independence.

Wilkinson played a British officer in The Patriot, a US film about the Revolutionary War co-starring Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger and Jason Isaacs. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.

From The Full Monty to Michael Clayton: was a lawyer - Arthur Edens - in Michael Clayton film 🎥 co-starring George Clooney. Tom Wilkinson was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role for In The Bedroom in 2001, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Michael Clayton in 2007.

Wilkinson was winning acclaim again as a high-powered lawyer who has a breakdown in Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton.” He was nominated for another Academy Award for his performance in that film.

In ‘Denial’, Confronting a Holocaust Revisionist in Court. Denial is a drama about a historian’s pursuit through the UK justice system by a Holocaust denier. It stars Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall, Andrew Scott, Jack Lowden, Caren Pistorius and Alex Jennings.

On television, he played Benjamin Franklin in “John Adams,” James A. Baker in “Recount,” for which he was Emmy-nominated and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. in “The Kennedys.”

In Ava DuVernay's 2014 historical drama Selma, Wilkinson portrayed President Lyndon B Johnson. The film tells of the protest marches held in Alabama in 1965 over voting rights for African Americans.

RIP Tom Wilkinson 💔 1948-2023

[postitforward]

Hello to all, and to all, heya 🙋

Why wait until January 1st to get body and soul into better health? Here at Flex Friday, we’ve got just the thing…

With the new year just around the corner, it’s time to get your body feeling fresh and rejuvenated for the year ahead. Here at FF, right here on Tumblr Live, we are taking the pain out of exercise and making it joyful for mind, body, and spirit. 🏃 Because when your body feels good, your mind will do, too. And this week, it’s all about: Full Body Stretch! We are here to tone and to lengthen your body into better health and wellbeing with fun sequences aimed at warming up your muscles and your mood. And it’s not for athletes or sculptures: this is a class for every body! All you need for flex Friday is some feel-good, and ready move. No pressure, no competition, all fun. 🏋️

All fun, you say? We’ve got just the person: in 5, 6, 7, 8… work! Say hello again, to Ana Clarke! We think you may have met…

It’s a party every time with an Ana class! She brings infectious, playful, and undeniable energy in buckets! One thing is for sure, and she will get you athletic from the first minute the class begins! She is a graduate of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, and whose hero is her mom; who raised her and her two older siblings all on her own. Ana’s got the certificates to prove it, too: National Personal Training Association Certification (NPTA), Associates Degree in Dance (Dean College), Certificate in Dance Theater (AMDA), EFTI (Equinox Fitness Training Institution). You’re in very good hands, that’s for sure. She is here to help you feeling your very best you, and have some fun, too.

The good people at @obé Fitness provide fitness classes and workouts that are fun, energetic, and great for cardio, strength, yoga, and more. Not least of all: dancing! It doesn’t cost a penny, and it’s right here on Tumblr Live. 

🏋️ WATCH LIVE: Full Body Stretch with Ana from obé Fitness at 10am EST🕺

#holidayblueswithtumblr

[randomestfandoms-ocs]

Ten facts Jeremy?

Banned from the kitchen bc he keeps setting shit on fire and doesn't know how he does it

Loves to skateboard, part time stoner, mario kart champion probably of ohio

Undiagnosed ADHD king (and anxiety)

Favourite childhood memories include Jesse playing mostly classic rock records for him while Johanna and Chad would fight and, when Jesse got his license, Jesse driving him to Dairy Queen (and still playing classic rock in the car) to keep him away from the fights

His favourite comfort food is stouffers Mac & Cheese (specifically/only that brand) because it's what Jesse used to make for him every day, sometimes twice a day, in New York until he learned how to cook a few things – his other favourite food is pasta with garlic bread

Surprisingly good at math, especially algebra, he finds it very fun and is really good with memorizing equations

Jeremy's broadway debut is as Romeo in Newsies, which he does in the summer after s5 (well the summer after 100/New Directions). After university, his first leading role on Broadway is as Jack Kelly in Newsies

Accidentally gets recruited to the Cheerios and eventually becomes Head Cheerio – he still doesn't know how it happened (but it starts with Sue seeing him do a duet of Hot Patootie with Carl in Rocky Horror Glee Show)

In his verse, not only does Jeremy go to school in LA (he wants to be close to Jesse & Roman) but so do Sam, Blaine, and Artie – Artie goes to USC, Sam goes to The California Institute Of The Arts, Jeremy goes to the American Musical Dramatic Academy, and Blaine goes to CalArts with Sam – and they get an apartment together. Since Sam, Blaine, and Artie graduated first, they all spent a year in dorms and then when Jeremy moved out there, they got an apartment

Jeremy's emotional support hoodie was a red hoodie of Finn's that got left at Josh's apartment years ago, has faded to more of a pink, is still too big on Jeremy, and Jeremy will never ever give it back

Bonus – I keep forgetting it but Jeremy (technically Josh but really Jeremy) has three pets: a cat named Phantom that Josh got when he was 5, a pug named Cha Cha adopted when Jeremy was 9-10, and a portuguese waterdog named Corny Collins that they got when he was 13-14 (all here)

[scotianostra]

Happy 90th Birthday Scottish actor David McCallum.

Born as David Keith McCallum, Jr on this day 19933 in Maryhill, Glasgow, the second of two sons of Dorothy Dorman, a cellist, and orchestral violinist David McCallum Sr. When he was three, his family moved to London for his father to play as concertmaster in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in the Second World War, he was evacuated back to Scotland, where he lived with his mother at Gartocharn by Loch Lomond.

McCallum won a scholarship to University College School, a boys' independent school in Hampstead, London, where, encouraged by his parents to prepare for a career in music, he played the oboe.In 1946 he began doing boy voices for the BBC radio repertory company. Also involved in local amateur drama, at age 17, he appeared as Oberon in an open-air production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Play and Pageant Union. He left school at age 18 and was conscripted, joining the 3rd Battalion the Middlesex Regiment, which was seconded to the Royal West African Frontier Force.In March 1954 he was promoted to Lieutenant. After leaving the army he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (also in London), where Joan Collins was a classmate.

David McCallum’s acting career has spanned six decades; however, these days he is best known for his starring role on the police procedural NCIS as medical examiner as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. I first really remember McCallum for his role in another US show, The Invisible Man which ran for 13 episodes in the 70's. McCallum by then was a veteran of many TV and Film roles, starting in the 50's including Our Mutual Friend and The Eustace Diamonds, in the 60's he was in several ITV Playhouse shows before moving across the Atlantic to take roles in The Outer Limits and his big break as Illya Kuryakin in several incantations of The Man from Uncle.

His most notable films were The Greatest Story Ever Told as

Judas Iscariot and of course Ashley-Pitt 'Dispersal' in The Great Escape.

As well as the aforementioned Invisible Man in the 70's he took time to pop back over to our shores to star in two quality series, as Flt. Lt. Simon Carter in Colditz and Alan Breck Stewart in an adaption of Robert Louis Stevenson's, Kidnapped.

The 80's saw him team up with the lovely Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel and several guest roles in the likes of The A Team, Hart to Hart and Murder, She Wrote as well as a one off reprise of Illya in the TV movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair.

The 90's saw David in Cluedo and Trainer on our TV screens over here and American science-fiction series VR-5 in the states..

During the last 20 years or so he has been in the kids TV show, Ben 10: Omniverse as the voice of Professor Paradox and of course Donald Horatio "Ducky" Mallard in over 350 episodes of the popular NCIS.

David has been married twice. He married his first wife Jill Ireland in 1957. They met on the set of the movie Hell Drivers. Together, they had two sons and a daughter, Paul, Jason and Valentine, with Jason being the only one who was adopted. In 1963, David introduced Jill to his co-star on The Great Escape, Charles Bronson, and she left David and married Charles in 1968. In 1967, David married Katherine Carpenter and they have two children together, a son Peter and a daughter, Sophie. He and Katherine currently live in New York.

In NCIS since 2018, Ducky, played by McCallum, has appeared in fewer episodes. avid McCallum explained that appearing in fewer episodes will allow him to see more of his family, which includes his wife, children, six grandsons, and their cat, Nickie. According to IMDB he has chalked up an amazing 457 appearances in the show, morethan anyother character in the series.

[justforbooks]

A lot of adjectives come to mind when one mentions Fred Astaire: debonair, poised, elegant, captivating. And nouns too, especially grace, sophistication and talent. Fred Astaire is regarded by many as the greatest popular music dancer of all time. Astaire is usually remembered for his pairings with Ginger Rogers, who starred in several films with him, including Swing Time (1936).

Light on his feet, Fred Astaire revolutionized the movie musical with his elegant and seemingly effortless dance style. He may have made dancing look easy, but he was a well-known perfectionist, and his work was the product of endless hours of practice.

Astaire started performing as a child, partnering up with his older sister Adele. The two toured the vaudeville circuit before making it to Broadway in 1917. Among their many productions the brother-sister team starred in the 1927 George and Ira Gershwin musical Funny Face. For all his early success, though, career in the movies eluded Astaire. He had done a screen test, but he failed to attract any interest. A studio executive wrote at the time, "Can't sing. Can't act. Slightly balding. Can dance a little."

In 1932, Astaire suffered a career setback. His sister Adele retired from the act to marry a British aristocrat. He floundered a bit professionally without his usual partner, but then decided to go to Hollywood to try once more to break into film.

Finally, Astaire landed a small role in 1933's Dancing Lady with Joan Crawford. The role opened the door to new opportunities, and Astaire signed a contract with RKO Radio Pictures. He was matched up with another Broadway talent, Ginger Rogers, for Flying Down to Rio, also in 1933. Cast as supporting players, their dance number stole the movie. Astaire and Rogers appeared in several more films together, including The Gay Divorcee (1934) and Top Hat (1935). The duo became film's most beloved dance team. Their routines featured a hybrid of styles—borrowing elements from tap, ballroom and even ballet. Katharine Hepburn once described what each of them brought their successful partnership: "Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred sex."

Off-screen, Astaire was known for his relentless pursuit of perfection. He thought nothing of rehearsing a scene for days, and Rogers eventually tired of the grueling schedule. The pair went their separate ways after 1939's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. Years later, they reunited once more for 1949's The Barkleys of Broadway.

After the split with Rogers in 1939, Astaire performed with such leading ladies as Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Judy Garland, Leslie Caron and Audrey Hepburn. Some of his most famous musicals from his later career include Easter Parade with Garland and Funny Face with Hepburn.

As his movie roles tapered off, Astaire worked more in television. He often appeared as himself for special tribute shows. Astaire had a growing interest in dramatic parts, working on such series as Dr. Kildare. He also worked with another legendary dancer, Gene Kelly, on the documentary That's Entertainment, which explored the golden era of the movie musical.

Around this time, Astaire received his only Academy Award nomination for his supporting role in the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno. He also won an Emmy Award for his work on the television special A Family Upside Down in 1978. More accolades soon followed. Astaire received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 1981.

A few years later, Astaire was hospitalized for pneumonia. He died on June 22, 1987, in Los Angeles, California. With his passing, Hollywood had lost one of its greatest talents. Former actor and president Ronald Reagan, upon learning the news, called Astaire "an American legend" and "the ultimate dancer." Rogers said Astaire "was the best partner anyone could ever have."

I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[lboogie1906]

Chris Dickerson (August 25. 1939 - December 23, 2021) born Henri Christophe Dickerson, was the first African American to become Mr. America. He was born the youngest of triples, in Montgomery. After his parents’ divorce, he entered a Quaker boarding school in Ohio, where he gained an interest in the performing arts. This led him to attend Mannes College of Music and while there he took classes at the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts. He decided to take up weight training to improve his physicality for the arts.

He moved to Los Angeles to train with a well-known bodybuilder, Bill Pearl. He entered his first contest in 1965 and placed third. His background in the arts, particularly dance and theater, gave him a level of presentation when posing that set him apart from other bodybuilders in competitions.

In 1970, he placed first in the Amateur Athletic Union Mr. America contest, not just because of his flawless form but because of his poise and personality. In the late 1970s he came out as gay and in 1982, he won the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness Mr. Olympia contest, becoming the first openly gay man to ever win the competition. He was the oldest person to win the award. He continued to enter numerous competitions until his retirement from the sport in 1994.

He continued to engage in various arenas. One of his interests was opera he performed in various productions in the US and Germany. He made TV appearances and went on speaking tours. He was inducted into the IFBB Hall of Fame. He continued to engage in his various interests, from singing the national anthem before bodybuilding competitions to training up incoming bodybuilders, after his inauguration.

He participated in about 50 bodybuilding competitions and remains one of the most successful bodybuilders to ever take part in the sport. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[destinyc1020]

Do you know who is the ultimate nepo baby, Tony Goldwyn, he is literally Hollywood royalty.

He is the son of actress Jennifer Howard and film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Goldwyn's paternal grandparents were mogul Samuel Goldwyn, and actress Frances Howard, who was originally from Nebraska. His maternal grandparents were playwright Sidney Howard and actress Clare Eames. One of his maternal great-great-grandfathers was Maryland Governor and Senator William Thomas Hamilton. Goldwyn attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts (where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree), and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He additionally studied acting at HB Studio in New York City.

Samuel Goldwyn, his grandfather, also known as Samuel Goldfish, was a film producer and pioneer in the American film industry, who produced Hollywood’s first major-motion picture. He was best known for being the founding contributor and executive of several motion picture studios in Hollywood. He was awarded the 1973 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award (1947) and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (1958).

Yup! I know Tony has been the ultimate nepobaby since forever ago lol. 😅 Talk about a powerful name. You know he's/his family related to THE Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio company right?

But he's at least talented, and he doesn't make stupid statements to the media rofl.

[chaplinlegend]

Charlie Chaplin on the set of the 1928 film "The Circus".

Four years earlier, Charlie Chaplin had already confessed that he wanted to make a film about a clown. The realization of this dream was precisely "The Circus". For the new project, Charlie hired a new assistant, Harry Crocker, with whom he discussed the intended project in detail. For the main female role, he hired Merna Kennedy. Charlie began work on the film, as usual, without a clear plan of action or characters. The film was made for a long time, with numerous breaks; in December 1925, the film set was destroyed by a powerful storm, difficulties with technical equipment, as a result of which scenes had to be reshot and recorded; in the autumn of 1926, a large fire broke out on the film set, destroying the tent and most of the accessories. Charlie's private life was not going well. Lita Grey, Charlie's wife at the time, filed for divorce. Charlie, of course, was frustrated and depressed by the mounting problems. The public, plagued by the passion of voyeurism and hungry for sensation, threw itself at Charlie Chaplin, not giving him a moment's peace. Charlie suspended work on the film and left for New York. He returned to the film only after 18 months. It is a credit to the strength of his spirit and faithfulness to his vision that he not only wanted to finish the film, but also treated every detail of his work with the same attention as before. Each of these episodes, included in the film "The Circus", is a true triumph of the art of comedy, a masterpiece showing that the funniest comedies can grow from the most dramatic personal events. "The Circus" has an elegant film form, but Charlie Chaplin never hides behind it and easily carries the entire spectacle on his own. He never shifts responsibility for editing, special effects, props or complementary cast of actors. The purely physical skills (unbelievable tricks at heights, performed of course without the help of substitutes) arouse sincere admiration. Magic is born thanks to the accompanying elegance, precision, sense of moment and detail. The film contains a lot of humor, typical of Charlie Chaplin. You could even say that this work is funnier than its predecessors. In addition, it has a slightly didactic character. The ideally portrayed male pride and the attempt to win a woman's heart are some of the most sincere and true portraits of a man in love. A man who, even for the good of his beloved woman, is ready to give up his own happiness. He teaches to always enjoy life and help others. The tramp leaves, happy, full of hope, and sets off on a new journey. The world premiere of the film took place on January 6, 1928, and the film "The Circus" was a huge cinema success. "The Circus" is also the only film by Charles Chaplin for which he received a Special Award from the American Film Academy, while also being nominated for an Oscar for best role.

In 1969, the creator reintroduced the film to the screen, adding his own music and commentary.