#Tarjet Postal

[tinterocreativous]

FELIZ AÑO 2024🥂✨MENSAJE de AÑO NUEVO y Felicitación🥳 vídeo postal🎉TARJET...

[alanzoide]

Happy holidays! por Truus, Bob & Jan too! Por Flickr: Russian postcard. Gelukkig kerstfeest! Frohe Weihnachten! ¡Feliz Navidad! Joyeux Noël! Buon Natale! Sretan Božić! Καλά Χριστούγεννα! Boldog karácsonyt! Gleðileg jól! Nollaig Shona! Priecīgus Ziemassvētkus! Linksmų Kalėdų! Среќен Божиќ God jul! Wesołych Świąt! Feliz Natal! Crăciun fericit! С Рождеством Срећан Божић veselé Vianoce! Vesel božič! God Jul! Nadolig Llawen! Gëzuar Krishtlindjet! Eguberri! Merry Christmas!

[beautifulcentury]

<strong>Hanni Weisse <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/truusbobjantoo/">by Truus, Bob & Jan too!</a></strong> <br /><i>Via Flickr:</i> <br />German postcard. Photochemie, No. K222. Photo Alex Binder, Berlin.

Hanni Weisse (1892-1967) belonged to the great film divas of the early German silent film. She was able to maintain her stardom till the late 1920s.

For more postcards, a bio and clips check out our blog European Film Star Postcards or follow us at Tumblr or Pinterest.

[artdecoblog]

<strong>Hanni Weisse <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/truusbobjantoo/">by Truus, Bob & Jan too!</a></strong> <br /><i>Via Flickr:</i> <br />German postcard. Photochemie, Berlin, No. K.3192. Photo Binder.

Hanni Weisse (1892-1967) belonged to the great film divas of the early German silent film. She was able to maintain her stardom till the late 1920s.

For more postcards, a bio and clips check out our blog European Film Star Postcards or follow us at Tumblr or Pinterest.

[someonedreamsmefan]

Pippi Langstrump (Pippi Langkous, Pippi Longstocking) por Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: Dutch postcard by Semic International, 1971. A Swedish Pippi Langstrump (Pippi Longstocking, or in Dutch Pippi Langkous) television series was created based on the books by Astrid Lindgren in 1968. The first episode was broadcast on Sveriges Radio TV in February 1969. The production was a Swedish-West German co-production and several German actors had roles in the series. As Astrid Lindgren was unhappy with the 1949 adaptation, she wrote the script herself for this version. The series was directed by Olle Hellbom who also directed several other Astrid Lindgren adaptations. Inger Nilsson gave a confident oddball performance as Pippi. The series has been repeated numerous times on European TV stations. The series was re-edited as two dubbed feature films for the cinemas: Pippi L��ngstrump/Pippi Longstocking (1969), Pippi går ombord/Pippi Goes on Board (1969) and Här kommer Pippi Långstrump/Here Comes Pippi Longstocking (1973). Another two feature film spin-offs were also shown in the cinemas: Pippi Långstrump på de sju haven/Pippi in the South Seas (1970) and På rymmen med Pippi Långstrump/Pippi on the Run (1970). They became weekend television staples throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

HOW COULD I FORGET?I WAS THEN 11 AND THERE WERE MY LONGEST HAPPY DAYS

[52ciab-blog]

Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat (1953)

German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 897. Photo: Columbia Film. Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953).

American stage, film, television actress and singer Gloria Grahame (1923-1981) was often cast in Film Noirs as a tarnished beauty with an irresistible sexual allure. She received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress nomination for Crossfire (1947), and would later win the award for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Her best known films are Sudden Fear (1952), Human Desire (1953), The Big Heat (1953), and Oklahoma! (1955), but her film career began to wane soon afterwards.

Gloria Grahame Hallward was born in in Los Angeles, California in 1921 Her father, Reginald Michael Bloxam Hallward, was an architect and author; her mother, Jeanne McDougall, who used the stage name Jean Grahame, was a British stage actress and acting teacher. Her older sister, Joy Hallward became an actress who married John Mitchum, the younger brother of Robert Mitchum. During Gloria’s childhood and adolescence, her mother taught her acting. Grahame attended Hollywood High School before dropping out to pursue acting. She was signed to a contract with MGM Studios under her professional name after Louis B. Mayer saw her performing on Broadway. Grahame made her film debut as a tart-with-a-heart in the sex comedy Blonde Fever (Richard Whorf, 1944) with Philip Dorne, and then scored one of her most widely praised roles as the flirtatious Violet Bick, saved from disgrace by James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946). MGM was not able to develop her potential as a star and her contract was sold to RKO Studios in 1947. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk, 1947), a Film Noir which deals with the theme of anti-Semitism. During this time, she made films for several Hollywood studios. For Columbia Pictures, Grahame starred with Humphrey Bogart in the Film Noir In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950), a performance for which she again gained praise.

In 1952, 29-year-old Gloria Grahame starred in four major Hollywood-prodctions, including a part in the Film Noir Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952), starring Joan Crawford, and a reunion with James Stewart in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1953. Grahame was on the verge of superstardom, when she herself won the Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952), starring Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas. Sadly, following her Oscar victory, the beauty Grahame embodied so artfully on screen never reflected the personal turmoil festering under the surface. Her two marriages had ended in a divorce: one from allegedly abusive actor Stanley Clements (1945-1948), the other from Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray (1948-1952), with whom she had a son, Timothy. In the following years, her image hardened as the mysterious bad girl of Film Noir in The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) and Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954). In a classic, horrifying off-screen scene in The Big Heat, her character, mob moll Debby Marsh is scarred by hot coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin’s character. In 1954, she acted and sang in the adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! (Fred Zinnemann, 1955) as the ‘girl who can’t say no,’ Ado Annie. That same year she married writer-producer Cy Howard. After Oklahoma!, Grahame scaled back her work. There were rumours that she had been difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma!. Two years later, she divorced Howard. In 1960, she married former stepson Tony Ray, son of Nicholas Ray. This led Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to each sue for custody of each’s child by Grahame, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Rumours circulated that Grahame had initially seduced Tony when he was just 13. Along with her tarnished professional reputation, this gossip made her a Hollywood outcast.

In the 1960s, Gloria Grahame dedicated herself to raising her growing family after having two sons with Tony. The stress of the scandal, her waning career and her custody battle with Howard took its toll on Grahame and she had a nervous breakdown. She later underwent electroshock therapy in 1964. After that, she began a slow return to the theatre. She popped up as an occasional guest on TV series, and when she found her way back to the big screen, it was in exploitation films like Blood and Lace (Philip S. Gilbert, 1971) and Mama’s Dirty Girls (John Hayes, 1974). In March 1974, Grahame was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent radiation treatment, changed her diet, stopped smoking and drinking alcohol, and also sought homeopathic remedies. In less than a year the cancer went into remission. Grahame never reclaimed her former glory, but the Oscar itself stood proudly on her mantel, an enduring reminder of her accomplishments. In 1978, she met aspiring actor Peter Turner, while she was in Britain working on a stage production of W. Somerset Maugham’s Rain. Although Turner was nearly three decades her junior, they had a whirlwind romance. She co-starred in the British heist film A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (Ralph Thomas, 1979) starring Richard Jordan, Oliver Tobias, and David Niven. In 1980 followed her last major film, Melvin and Howard, (Jonathan Demme, 1980), in which she played Mary Steenburgen’s mother. The cancer returned in 1980 but Grahame refused to acknowledge her diagnosis or seek radiation treatment. Despite her failing health, Grahame continued working in stage productions in the United States and the United Kingdom. At age 57, Gloria Grahame died in 1981 in a New York hospital from cancer-related complications. Peter Turner wrote about their love story in his memoir, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, which director Paul McGuigan adapted into a 2017 film starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell.

Sources: Joey Nolfi (Entertainment Weekly), Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Posted by Truus, Bob & Jan too! on 2019-11-25 04:15:52

Tagged: , Gloria Grahame , Gloria , Grahame , Hollywood , Movie Star , American , Actress , Vamp , Femme Fatale , Film Noir , Film , Cinema , Kino , Cine , Movie , Movies , Picture , Screen , Filmster , Star , Fifties , Vintage , Postcard , Carte , Postale , Cartolina , Postkarte , Tarjet , Postal , Postkaart , Briefkarte , Briefkaart , Ansichtskarte , Ansichtkaart , Ufa/Film-Foto , Columbia , The Big Heat , 1953

The post Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat (1953) appeared first on Good Info.

[photography-prints]

Feliz Navidad Tarjets Postal Postcard http://ift.tt/2yiwizX. More Designs http://bit.ly/2g4mwV2

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Bebe Daniels by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: French postcard, no. 290. Editions Cinémagazine. Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later a the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films. Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson,, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid. In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures, and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon it's release. Following this she was cast in a number of light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930). Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so that most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals and so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros. she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934). Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London , broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and to television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral hemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'. Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Colleen Moore by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1871/1, 1927-1928. Photo: First National Pictures / Fanamet. American actress Colleen Moore (1899-1988) was a star of the silent screen who appeared in about 100 films beginning in 1917. During the 1920s, she put her stamp on American social history, creating in dozens of films the image of the wide-eyed, insouciant flapper with her bobbed hair and short skirts. Colleen Moore was born Kathleen Morrison in Port Huron, Michigan in 1899 (the date which she insisted was correct in her autobiography Silent Star, was 1902). Her father was an irrigation engineer and his job was good enough to provide the family a middle-class environment. She was educated in parochial schools and studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory. As a child she was fascinated with films and stars such as Marguerite Clark and Mary Pickford and kept a scrapbook of those actresses. By 1917 she was on her way to becoming a star herself. Her uncle, Walter C. Howey, was the editor of the Chicago Tribune and had helped D.W. Griffith make his films The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) more presentable to the censors. Knowing of his niece's acting aspirations, Hovey asked Griffith to help her get a start in the film industry. No sooner had she arrived in Hollywood than she found herself playing in five films that year, The Savage (Rupert Julkian, 1917) being her first. Her first starring role was as Annie in Little Orphant Annie (Colin Campbell, 1918). Colleen was on her way. She also starred in a number of B-films and in Westerns opposite Tom Mix, like The Wilderness Trail (Edward LeSaint, 1919) and The Cyclone (Clifford Smith, 1920). The film that defined Colleen Moore as which defined her as the inventor of the 'flapper' look was Flaming Youth (John Francis Dillon, 1923), in which she played Patricia Fentriss. Her Dutch bob in the film was soon copied by hairdressers across America and her air of an emancipated young woman inspired countless imitations. The year she married the first of her four husbands, Frank McCormick, production head of First National Pictures, later part of Warner Brothers. There followed such films as The Perfect Flapper (John Francis Dillon, 1924), The Desert Flower (Irving Cummings, 1925), Ella Cinders (Alfred E. Green, 1926) and Her Wild Oat (Marshall Neilan, 1927). By 1927 she was the top box-office draw in the US, making $12,500 a week. Her second husband was a New York broker, Albert F. Scott. Moore put her money into the stock market, making very shrewd investments. She took a hiatus from acting between 1929 and 1933, just as sound film was introduced. Her four sound pictures released in 1933 and 1934 were not financial successes. Moore then retired permanently from screen acting. Her final film role was as Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (Robert G. Vignola, 1934). In 1937 she married her third husband, Homer Hargrave, again a stockbroker, and ended her film career. After she retired she wrote two books on investing and she traveled widely, frequently to China. At 83, she married her fourth husband, builder Paul Maginot. In 1988, Colleen Moore died of an undisclosed ailment in Paso Robles, California. She was 88. At the time of her death she was writing a novel, a Hollywood murder mystery centered around a Mae West type. Tragically, approximately half of Moore's films are now considered lost. Of her most celebrated film, Flaming Youth (1923), only one reel survives. Sources: Glenn Fowler (The New York Times), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Jarmila Novotna by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6837/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Walter Firner, Berlin. Czech soprano Jarmila Novotná (1907-1994) was one of the world-renowned opera luminaries of the 20th Century. Her film appearances were unfortunately few and far between. Jarmila Novotná was born in in Prague, Czech Republic in 1907. She studied singing with Emmy Destinn. In 1925, the 17-years-old Novotná made her operatic debut at the Prague Opera House as Marenka in Bedřich Smetana's Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride). Six days later, the lyric soprano sang there as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata. The following year, she made her film debut in the silent film Vyznavaci slunce/The Sun Disciples (Václav Binovec, 1926), starring Luigi Serventi. In 1928 she starred in Verona as Gilda opposite Giacomo Lauri-Volpi in Verdi's Rigoletto and at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples as Adina opposite Tito Schipa in Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore. In 1929 she joined the Kroll Opera in Berlin, where she sang Violetta as well as the title roles of Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. When talking pictures arrived, she headlined in German films like Brand in Der Oper/Fire in the Opera House (Carl Froelich, 1930), with Gustaf Gründgens, Der Bettelstudent/The Beggar Student (Victor Janson, 1931), and the film version of The Bartered Bride, Die Verkaufte Braut (Max Ophüls, 1932). Hal Erickson at AllMovie on Die Verkaufte Braut (1930): “The original libretto, involving the comic misadventures of two mismatched couples, is given a respectable amount of attention, but the film's biggest selling card is the photographic dexterity of Max Ophuls, who never met a camera crane he didn't like. Since filmed opera was seldom big box-office in 1932, Ophuls concentrates on the farcical elements of the story; especially worth noting are comic contributions by Paul Kemp and Otto Wernicke, who seldom let their German film fans down. Curiously, star Jarmila Novotna, whose ‘live’ appearances in The Bartered Bride were much prized by contemporary critics, doesn't come off all that well in this film version.” Other films followed such as Nacht Der Grossen Liebe/Night of the Great Love (Geza von Bolvary, 1933) with Gustav Fröhlich. In January 1933 she created the female lead in Jaromir Weinberger's new operetta Frühlingsstürme (Spring Storms), opposite Richard Tauber at the Theater im Admiralspalast, Berlin. This was the last new operetta produced in the Weimar Republic, and she and Tauber were both soon forced to leave Germany by the new Nazi regime. Jarmila Novotnà returned to Czechoslovakia to star in the film Skrivanci pisen/Lark's Songs (Svatopluk Innemann, 1933). In 1934, she left for Vienna, where she created the title role in Franz Lehár's operetta Giuditta opposite Richard Tauber. Her immense success in that role led to a contract with the Vienna State Opera, where she was named Kammersängerin. She also appeared there with Tauber in The Bartered Bride and Madama Butterfly. In the cinema, she starred in the Austrian operetta film Frasquita (Karel Lamac, 1934) with Heinz Ruhmann, the Austrian romantic thriller Der Kosak und die Nachtigall/The Cossack and the Nightingale (Phil Jutzi, 1935) with Iván Petrovich, and in the French-British operetta film La dernière valse/The Last Waltz (Leo Mittler, 1935), which was made in two language versions. She then left the film industry to concentrate on her stage work with the Viennese State Opera. After the Anschluss of Austria, she had to leave Vienna. In January 1940 she made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Mimí in Puccini's La bohème. From 1940 to 1956, Novotná performed regularly at the Met. In 1946 she returned before the cameras in a straight dramatic role in the Hollywood production The Search (Fred Zinnemann, 1946), starring Montgomery Clift. The Search is a semi-documentary film on the plight of WWII orphans. Novotná played a Czech mother who has lost contact with her young son when they were in Auschwitz and she now travels from one refugee camp to another in search of him. Novotna's then played turn of the century diva Maria Selka in the biopic The Great Caruso (Richard Thorpe, 1951), featuring Mario Lanza. The film traces legendary tenor Enrico Caruso's ascension from adolescent choir singer in Naples to the uppermost ranks of the opera world. Mario Lanza's tenor voice made this film one of the top box-office draws of 1951, and this helped to popularize opera among the general public. On TV she appeared in The Great Waltz (Max Liebman, 1955), which charts the life and times of composer Johann Strauss, Jr. She also played Hans’ mother in the TV musical Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (Sidney Lumet, 1958), starring Tab Hunter. Her last screen appearance was as an interviewee in the documentary Toscanini: The Maestro (Peter Rosen, 1985). At 85, Jarmila Novotná passed away in 1994 in New York. Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Eleanor Parker by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: West German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 258. Photo: Paramount. American actress Eleanor Parker (1922-2013) appeared in some 80 films and television series. She was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for Caged (1950), Detective Story (1951) and Interrupted Melody (1955). Her role in Caged also won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. One of her most memorable roles was that of the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965). Her biographer Doug McClelland called her ‘Woman of a Thousand Faces’, because of her versatility. Eleanor Jean Parker was born in 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio. She was the daughter of Lola (Isett) and Lester Day Parker. Her family moved to East Cleveland, Ohio, where she attended public schools and graduated from Shaw High School. She appeared in a number of school plays. When she was 15 she started to attend the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. After graduation, she moved to California and began appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse. There she was spotted by a Warners Bros talent scout, Irving Kumin. The studio signed her to a long-term contract in June 1941. She was cast that year in They Died with Their Boots On (Raoul Walsh, 1941), but her scenes were cut. Her actual film debut was as Nurse Ryan in the short Soldiers in White (B. Reeves Eason, 1942). She was given some decent roles in B films, Busses Roar (D. Ross Lederman, 1942) and The Mysterious Doctor (Benjamin Stoloff, 1943) opposites John Loder. She also had a small role in one of Warner Brothers' biggest productions for the 1943 season, the pro-Soviet Mission to Moscow (Michael Curtiz, 1943) as Emlen Davies, daughter of the U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R (Walter Huston). On the set, she met her first husband, Navy Lieutenant. Fred L. Losse, but the marriage turned out to be a brief wartime affair. Parker had impressed Warners enough to offer her a strong role in a prestige production, Between Two Worlds (Edward A. Blatt, 1944), playing the suicidal wife of Paul Henreid's character. She played support roles for Crime by Night (William Clemens, 1944) and The Last Ride (D. Ross Lederman, 1944). Then she got the starring role opposite Dennis Morgan in The Very Thought of You (Delmer Daves, 1944). She was considered enough of a ‘name’ to be given a cameo in Hollywood Canteen (Delmer Daves, 1944). Warners gave her the choice role of Mildred Rogers in a new version of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (Edmund Goulding, 1946), but previews were not favourable and the film sat on the shelf for two years before being released. She had her big break when she was cast opposite John Garfield in Pride of the Marines (Delmer Daves, 1945). However, two films with Errol Flynn that followed, the romantic comedy Never Say Goodbye (James V. Kern, 1946) and the drama Escape Me Never (Peter Godfrey, 1947), were box office disappointments. Parker was suspended twice by Warners for refusing parts in films – in Stallion Road (James V. Kern, 1947), where she was replaced by Alexis Smith and Love and Learn (Frederick De Cordova, 1947). She made the comedy Voice of the Turtle (Irving Rapper, 1947) with Ronald Reagan, and the mystery The Woman in White (Peter Godfrey, 1948). She refused to appear in Somewhere in the City (Vincent Sherman, 1950) so Warners suspended her again; Virginia Mayo played the role. Parker then had two years off, during which time she married and had a baby. She turned down a role in The Hasty Heart (Vincent Sherman, 1949) which she wanted to do, but it would have meant going to England and she did not want to leave her baby alone during its first year. Eleanor Parker returned in Chain Lightning (Stuart Heisler, 1950) with Humphrey Bogart. Parker heard about a women-in-prison film Warners were making, Caged (John Cromwell, 1950), and actively lobbied for the role. She got it, won the 1950 Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. She also had a good role in the melodrama Three Secrets (Robert Wise, 1950). In February 1950, Parker left Warner Bros. after having been under contract there for eight years. Parker had understood that she would star in a film called Safe Harbor, but Warner Bros. apparently had no intention of making it. Because of this misunderstanding, her agents negotiated her release. Parker's career outside of Warners started badly with Valentino (Lewis Allen, 1951) playing a fictionalised wife of Rudolph Valentino for producer Edward Small. She tried a comedy at 20th Century Fox with Fred MacMurray, A Millionaire for Christy (George Marshall, 1951). In 1951, Parker signed a contract with Paramount for one film a year, with an option for outside films. This arrangement began brilliantly with Detective Story (William Wyler, 1951) playing Mary McLeod, the woman who doesn't understand the position of her unstable detective husband (Kirk Douglas). Parker was nominated for the Oscar in 1951 for her performance. Parker followed Detective Story with her portrayal of an actress in love with a swashbuckling nobleman (Stewart Granger) in Scaramouche (George Sidney, 1952), a role originally intended for Ava Gardner. Wikipedia: “Parker later claimed that Granger was the only person she didn't get along with during her entire career. However, they had good chemistry and the film was a massive hit. “MGM cast her into Above and Beyond (Melvin Frank, Norman Panama, 1952), a biopic of Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. (Robert Taylor), the pilot of the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was a solid hit. While Parker was making a third film for MGM, Escape from Fort Bravo (John Sturges, 1953), she signed a five-year contract with the studio. She was named as star of a Sidney Sheldon script, My Most Intimate Friend and of One More Time, from a script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin directed by George Cukor, but neither film was made. Back at Paramount, Parker starred with Charlton Heston as a 1900s mail-order bride in The Naked Jungle (Byron Haskin, 1954), produced by George Pal. Parker returned to MGM where she was reunited with Robert Taylor in an Egyptian adventure film, Valley of the Kings (Robert Pirosh, 1954), and a Western, Many Rivers to Cross (Roy Rowland, 1955). MGM gave her one of her best roles as opera singer Marjorie Lawrence struck down by polio in Interrupted Melody (Curtis Bernhardt, 1955). This was a big hit and earned Parker a third Oscar nomination; she later said it was her favourite film. Also in 1955, Parker appeared in the film adaptation of the National Book Award-winner The Man with the Golden Arm (Otto Preminger, 1955), released through United Artists. She played Zosh, the supposedly wheelchair-bound wife of heroin-addicted, would-be jazz drummer Frankie Machine (Frank Sinatra). It was a major commercial and critical success. In 1956, she co-starred with Clark Gable in the Western comedy The King and Four Queens (Raoul Walsh, 1956), also for United Artists. It was then back at MGM for two dramas: Lizzie (Hugo Haas, 1957), in the title role, as a woman with a split personality; and The Seventh Sin (Ronald Neame, 1957), a remake of The Painted Veil in the role originated by Greta Garbo and, once again, intended for Ava Gardner. Both films flopped at the box office and, as a result, Parker's plans to produce her own film, L'Eternelle, about French resistance fighters, did not materialise. Eleanor Parker supported Frank Sinatra in a popular comedy, A Hole in the Head (Frank Capra, 1959). She returned to MGM for Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1960), co-starring with Robert Mitchum, then took over Lana Turner's role of Constance Rossi in Return to Peyton Place (José Ferrer, 1961), the sequel to the hit 1957 film. That was made by 20th Century Fox who also produced Madison Avenue (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1961) with Parker. In 1960, she made her TV debut, and in the following years, she worked increasingly in television, with the occasional film role such as Panic Button (George Sherman, Giuliano Carnimeo, 1964) with Maurice Chevalier and Jayne Mansfield. Parker's best-known screen role is Baroness Elsa Schraeder in the Oscar-winning musical The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965). The Baroness was famously and poignantly unsuccessful in keeping the affections of Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) after he falls in love with Maria (Julie Andrews). In 1966, Parker played an alcoholic widow in the crime drama Warning Shot (Buzz Kulik, 1967), a talent scout who discovers a Hollywood star in The Oscar (Russell Rouse, 1966), and a rich alcoholic in An American Dream (Robert Gist, 1966). However, her film career seemed to go downhill. A Playboy Magazine reviewer derided the cast of The Oscar as "has-beens and never-will-be". From the late 1960s, she focused on television. In 1963, Parker appeared in the medical TV drama about psychiatry The Eleventh Hour in the episode Why Am I Grown So Cold?, for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award. She also appeared in episodes of Breaking Point (1964). And The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1968). In 1969–1970, Parker starred in the television series Bracken's World, for which she was nominated for a 1970 Golden Globe Award. Parker also appeared on stage in the role of Margo Channing in Applause, the Broadway musical version of the film All About Eve. In 1976, she played Maxine in a revival of The Night of the Iguana. Her last film role was in a Farrah Fawcett bomb, Sunburn (Richard C. Sarafian, 1979). Subsequently, she appeared very infrequently on TV, most recently in Dead on the Money (Mark Cullingham, 1991). Eleanor Parker was married four times. Her first husband was Fred Losee (1943-1944). Her second marriage to Bert E. Friedlob (1946-1953) produced three children Susan Eleanor Friedlob (1948), Sharon Anne Friedlob (1950), and Richard Parker Friedlob (1952). Her third marriage was to American portrait painter Paul Clemens, (1954-1965) and the couple had one child, actor Paul Clemens (1958). Her fourth marriage with Raymond N. Hirsch (1966-2001) ended when Hirsch died of oesophagal cancer. She was the grandmother of actor/director Chasen Parker. Eleanor Parker died in 2013 at a medical facility in Palm Springs, California of complications of pneumonia. She was 91. Parker was raised a Protestant and later converted to Judaism, telling the New York Daily News columnist Kay Gardella in August 1969, "I think we're all Jews at heart ... I wanted to convert for a long time." Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb. And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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Polaire by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: French postcard, no. 666. Photo: H. Manuel. Publicity still for the stage play Claudine à Paris (1902) at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens. Sent by mail in 1908. French singer and actress Polaire (1874-1939) had a career in the entertainment industry which stretched from the early 1890s to the mid-1930s, and encompassed the range from music-hall singer to stage and film actress. Her most successful period professionally was from the mid-1890s to the beginning of the First World War. Polaire was a French singer and actress, born Émilie Marie Bouchaud on May 14, 1874 in Agha (Algeria). According to her memoirs she was one of eleven children of whom only four survived – and eventually only two, Émilie and her brother Edmond. When her father died of typhoid her mother temporarily placed the children under the care of Polaire’s grandmother in Algiers. In 1891, at age 17 she came to Paris to join her brother Edmond who performed there in the café-concerts under the name of Dufleuve. She had already sung in cafes in Algiers and continued on this path, eventually becoming a popular music-hall singer and dancer, performing e.g. the French version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay: Tha ma ra boum di hé - her greatest success, already from the start. She became a big name and was e.g. portrayed by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the magazine Le Rire in 1895. Not only her singing and dancing qualities were remarkable, Polaire also distinguished herself by her particular physique, having an exceptional wasp waist, at a time when women tortured themselves with tight corsets to refine their waist. After a first failed attempt to conquer New York as singer, Polaire returned to Paris where she expanded her range with prose theatre as well. She managed to get the role of Claudine in Colette’s play Claudine à Paris, performed at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1902 and again performed in the US in 1910. This time she was a big hit in the US and came back loaded with money. Her obtaining of the part of Claudine was not so easy, Polaire writes in her memoirs, as Willy at the time reclaimed the rights of Colette’s novels, and didn’t consider this music-hall singer as fit for this serious part. But a dashing and headstrong Polaire managed to convince Willy in person that she was Claudine, so she got the part. Claudine à Paris was performed some 120 times in France, with great success. Colette herself was very satisfied about the result. Willy even managed to exploit the success by a whole line of merchandising. Afterwards Polaire would consider him her substitute father. From 1909, Polaire appeared in several film roles. After two films at Pathé frères, Moines et guerriers (Nuns and warriors, Julien Clément) and La tournée des grand-ducs (The Grandduke’s Tour, Léonce Perret 1910) – in the latter she aptly played a dancer - she went to Germany to play a Cuban lady in Zouza (Reinhard Bruck, 1911), in which future film director Richard Oswald was one of her co-stars. Back in France she acted again at Pathé in Le visiteur (The Visitor, Albert Capellani, René Leprince, 1911), but she mostly was active at the Éclair film company between 1911 and 1914, starting with Le poison de l’humanité (The Poison of Humanity, Émile Chautard, Victorin Jasset, 1911). From 1912 to 1914 she did a series of six films with then young and upcoming film director Maurice Tourneur, working for Éclair: Les gaîtés de l'escadron (The Funny Regiment, 1913), based on the novel by Georges Courteline; Le dernier pardon (1913), a comedy written by Gyp; La dame de Monsoreau (1913), after Dumas père; Le Friquet (1914), after Gyp and with Polaire in the title role; Soeurette (The Sparrow, 1914); and the mystery film Monsieur Lecoq (1914), after Émile Gaboriau. Her copartners in these films were often Maurice de Féraudy, Charles Krauss, Henry Roussel and Renée Sylvaire. Le Friquet was restored by the Cinémathèque française in the mid-1990s and shown in international festivals It deals with a poor trapeze worker who loses her lover to a rich, immoral lady and then commits suicide during her trapeze act. It was based on a play Polaire had performed herself in 1904. NB IMDB mixes up things by not making a distinction between Polaire and Pauline Polaire. In the 1920s a younger actress named Giulietta Gozzi (1904-1986), niece of the Italian diva Hesperia (Olga Mambelli), performed under the name of Pauline Polaire in several Italian silent films with the forzuti such as Maciste and Saetta. Polaire became a wealthy lady with a house on the Champs-Elysées and a country house in the Var, Villa Claudine. Well into the 1920s she continued to gamble away huge fortunes. After World War I, Polaire dedicated herself primarily to the stage. During her career, she recorderd many of her songs as Tha ma ra boum di hé (her greatest success, already from the start), La Glu (based on a poem by Jean Richepin), Tchique tchique by Vincent Scotto, the telephone song Allo ! Chéri!, song with her partner Marjal, and she recited Charlotte prays to Our Lady by Jehan Rictus. Polaire died October 11, 1939 at age 65 in Champigny-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne). "Mademoiselle Polaire" is cited by the Guinness Book of Records as co-holder (with the British Ethel Granger) of the thinnest waist of 33 cm. She herself says in her memoirs to have repeatedly circled her waist by a fake collar of the "normal size” of 41 or 42 cm. Polaire posed for various painters such as Antonio de La Gandara, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Leonetto Cappiello, Rupert Carabin and John / Juan Sala. The latter became in 1893 the portraitist of Parisian society. His life-sized portrait of Polaire (1910) was auctioned at Drouot's in Paris on 28 June 2016. Sources: English, French and Dutch Wikipedia, IMDB, deesk.pagesperso-orange.fr/polaire-1900/c_polaire_biograp..., www.dutempsdescerisesauxfeuillesmortes.net/fiches_bio/pol....

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Polaire in Claudine à Paris (1902) by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: French postcard by EM. Photo: H. Manuel. Publicity still for the stage play Claudine à Paris (1902) at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens. French singer and actress Polaire (1874-1939) had a career in the entertainment industry which stretched from the early 1890s to the mid-1930s, and encompassed the range from music-hall singer to stage and film actress. Her most successful period professionally was from the mid-1890s to the beginning of the First World War. Polaire was a French singer and actress, born Émilie Marie Bouchaud on May 14, 1874 in Agha (Algeria). According to her memoirs she was one of eleven children of whom only four survived – and eventually only two, Émilie and her brother Edmond. When her father died of typhoid her mother temporarily placed the children under the care of Polaire’s grandmother in Algiers. In 1891, at age 17 she came to Paris to join her brother Edmond who performed there in the café-concerts under the name of Dufleuve. She had already sung in cafes in Algiers and continued on this path, eventually becoming a popular music-hall singer and dancer, performing e.g. the French version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay: Tha ma ra boum di hé - her greatest success, already from the start. She became a big name and was e.g. portrayed by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the magazine Le Rire in 1895. Not only her singing and dancing qualities were remarkable, Polaire also distinguished herself by her particular physique, having an exceptional wasp waist, at a time when women tortured themselves with tight corsets to refine their waist. After a first failed attempt to conquer New York as singer, Polaire returned to Paris where she expanded her range with prose theatre as well. She managed to get the role of Claudine in Colette’s play Claudine à Paris, performed at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1902 and again performed in the US in 1910. This time she was a big hit in the US and came back loaded with money. Her obtaining of the part of Claudine was not so easy, Polaire writes in her memoirs, as Willy at the time reclaimed the rights of Colette’s novels, and didn’t consider this music-hall singer as fit for this serious part. But a dashing and headstrong Polaire managed to convince Willy in person that she was Claudine, so she got the part. Claudine à Paris was performed some 120 times in France, with great success. Colette herself was very satisfied about the result. Willy even managed to exploit the success by a whole line of merchandising. Afterwards Polaire would consider him her substitute father. From 1909, Polaire appeared in several film roles. After two films at Pathé frères, Moines et guerriers (Nuns and warriors, Julien Clément) and La tournée des grand-ducs (The Grandduke’s Tour, Léonce Perret 1910) – in the latter she aptly played a dancer - she went to Germany to play a Cuban lady in Zouza (Reinhard Bruck, 1911), in which future film director Richard Oswald was one of her co-stars. Back in France she acted again at Pathé in Le visiteur (The Visitor, Albert Capellani, René Leprince, 1911), but she mostly was active at the Éclair film company between 1911 and 1914, starting with Le poison de l’humanité (The Poison of Humanity, Émile Chautard, Victorin Jasset, 1911). From 1912 to 1914 she did a series of six films with then young and upcoming film director Maurice Tourneur, working for Éclair: Les gaîtés de l'escadron (The Funny Regiment, 1913), based on the novel by Georges Courteline; Le dernier pardon (1913), a comedy written by Gyp; La dame de Monsoreau (1913), after Dumas père; Le Friquet (1914), after Gyp and with Polaire in the title role; Soeurette (The Sparrow, 1914); and the mystery film Monsieur Lecoq (1914), after Émile Gaboriau. Her copartners in these films were often Maurice de Féraudy, Charles Krauss, Henry Roussel and Renée Sylvaire. Le Friquet was restored by the Cinémathèque française in the mid-1990s and shown in international festivals It deals with a poor trapeze worker who loses her lover to a rich, immoral lady and then commits suicide during her trapeze act. It was based on a play Polaire had performed herself in 1904. NB IMDB mixes up things by not making a distinction between Polaire and Pauline Polaire. In the 1920s a younger actress named Giulietta Gozzi (1904-1986), niece of the Italian diva Hesperia (Olga Mambelli), performed under the name of Pauline Polaire in several Italian silent films with the forzuti such as Maciste and Saetta. Polaire became a wealthy lady with a house on the Champs-Elysées and a country house in the Var, Villa Claudine. Well into the 1920s she continued to gamble away huge fortunes. After World War I, Polaire dedicated herself primarily to the stage. During her career, she recorderd many of her songs as Tha ma ra boum di hé (her greatest success, already from the start), La Glu (based on a poem by Jean Richepin), Tchique tchique by Vincent Scotto, the telephone song Allo ! Chéri!, song with her partner Marjal, and she recited Charlotte prays to Our Lady by Jehan Rictus. Polaire died October 11, 1939 at age 65 in Champigny-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne). "Mademoiselle Polaire" is cited by the Guinness Book of Records as co-holder (with the British Ethel Granger) of the thinnest waist of 33 cm. She herself says in her memoirs to have repeatedly circled her waist by a fake collar of the "normal size” of 41 or 42 cm. Polaire posed for various painters such as Antonio de La Gandara, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Leonetto Cappiello, Rupert Carabin and John / Juan Sala. The latter became in 1893 the portraitist of Parisian society. His life-sized portrait of Polaire (1910) was auctioned at Drouot's in Paris on 28 June 2016. Sources: English, French and Dutch Wikipedia, IMDB, deesk.pagesperso-orange.fr/polaire-1900/c_polaire_biograp..., www.dutempsdescerisesauxfeuillesmortes.net/fiches_bio/pol....

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Patricia Neal by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: Vintage postcard. Photo: Warner Bros. American actress Patricia Neal (1928-2010) won both an Oscar and a Tony Award. In the first part of her film career, her most impressive roles were in The Fountainhead (1949), opposite Gary Cooper, and the Sci-Fi classic, The Day the Earth stood still (1951). In 1953, she married writer, Roald Dahl and they would have five children in 30 years of marriage. After appearing in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), she won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in Hud (1963) opposite Paul Newman. Patricia Neal was born Patsy Louise Neal in Packard, Kentucky, in 1926. Her father, William Burdette Neal, managed a coal mine and her mother, Eura Mildred Petrey, was the daughter of the town doctor. Patsy grew up, with her two siblings, Pete and Margaret Ann, in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended high school. She was first bit by the acting bug at the age of 10, after attending an evening of monologues at a Methodist church. She subsequently wrote a letter to Santa Claus, telling him, "What I want for Christmas is to study dramatics". She won the Tennessee State Award for dramatic reading while she was in high school. She apprenticed at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, when she was 16 years old, between her junior and senior years in high school. After studying drama for two years at Northwestern University, she headed to New York City. Her first job was as an understudy in the Broadway production of the John Van Druten play 'The Voice of the Turtle' (1947). It was the producer of the play that had her change her name from Patsy Louise to Patricia. After replacing Vivian Vance in the touring company of 'Turtle', she won a role in a play that closed in Boston and then appeared in summer stock. She won the role of the teenage Regina in Lillian Hellman's play, 'Another Part of the Forest' (1946), a prequel to 'The Little Foxes', for which she won a Tony Award in 1947. According to IMDb, she was visited backstage by Tallulah Bankhead - who had played the middle-aged Regina in the original Broadway production of Hellman's 'The Little Foxes' - and told Neal, "Dahling, you were as good as I was - and if I said you were half as good, it would [still] have been a hell of a compliment!" The role made the 20-year-old Neal a star. Subsequently, Neal signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. In the first part of her film career, her most impressive roles were in The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949), opposite the much older Gary Cooper, with whom she had a three-year-long love affair, and in director Robert Wise's Sci-Fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), which she made at 20th Century-Fox. Her affair with the married Cooper led to an abortion and nervous collapse. It quickened her decision to leave Hollywood. She returned to Broadway and achieved the success that eluded her in films, appearing in the revival of Lillian Hellman's play, 'The Children's Hour', in 1952. She met writer Roald Dahl in 1953 at a formal party, and they were married nine months later. The couple would have five children in 30 years of marriage. In 1957, Patricia Neal had one of her finest roles in Elia Kazan's parable about the threat of mass-media demagoguery and home-grown fascism in A Face in the Crowd (1957). Before she appeared in the movie, Neal had taken over the role of Maggie in Tennessee Williams' 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', the Broadway smash that had been directed by Kazan. Returning to the stage, she appeared in the London production of Williams' 'Suddenly, Last Summer' and co-starred with Anne Bancroft in the Broadway production of 'The Miracle Worker'. After appearing opposite Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard in Breakfast at Tiffany's (Blake Edwards, 1961), she had what was arguably her finest role, as Alma the housekeeper, in Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963) opposite Paul Newman. The film was a hit and Neal won the Best Actress Oscar. She co-starred with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas in the war film In Harm's Way (Otto Preminger, 1965). In 1965, she suffered a series of strokes. Variety", the entertainment newspaper, mistakenly reported in their 22 February 1965 headline that Patricia Neal had died from her multiple strokes five days earlier. In truth, she remained in a coma for 21 days. She was filming John Ford's film, 7 Women (1965), and had to be replaced by Anne Bancroft. Neal was pregnant at the time. She underwent a seven-hour operation on her brain and survived, later delivering her fifth child. Her daughter, Lucy Dahl, was born healthy, but in its aftermath, the actress suffered from partial paralysis, and partial blindness, she lost her memory and was unable to speak. She underwent rehabilitation supervised by her husband. He designed her strenuous and intense recovery routines, including swimming, walking, memory games and crossword puzzles. Her experiences led to her becoming a champion in the rehabilitation field. She turned down The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) as she had not recovered fully from her stroke. When she returned to the screen, in The Subject Was Roses (1968), she suffered from memory problems. According to her director, Ulu Grosbard, "The memory element was the uncertain one. But when we started to shoot, she hit her top level. She really rises to the challenge. She has great range, even more now than before". She received an Oscar nomination for her work. Subsequently, new acting roles equal to her talent were sparse. Patricia Neal received three Emmy nominations, the first for originating the role of Olivia Walton in the TV movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (Fielder Cook, 1971), which gave birth to the TV show The Waltons (1972). One of her last films was the comedy Cookie's Fortune (Robert Altman, 1999) with Glenn Close and Julianne Moore. Patricia Neal died in 2010 in Edgarton, Massachusetts from lung cancer. She was 84 years old. She had become a Catholic four months before she died and was buried in the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, where the actress Dolores Hart, her friend since the early 1960s, had become a nun and ultimately prioress. Neal and Dahl's ordeal and ultimate victory over her illness were told in the television film The Patricia Neal Story (Anthony Harvey, Anthony Page, 1981), starring Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde. After he played such a strong and devoted role in her physical and mental recovery from her paralytic illness, Neal divorced her husband, Roald Dahl, in 1983 after discovering his long-term affair with her former close friend, Felicity 'Liccy' Crosland. Dahl and Crosland married shortly after his divorce from Neal became final, and remained wed until Dahl's death. Neal and Dahl had five children: Ophelia Dahl, Lucy Dahl, Theo Dahl, Tessa Dahl, and Olivia Twenty Dahl (1955-1962), who died suddenly from complications of measles encephalitis at the age of seven. The story of Olivia's death and how Neal and Dahl coped with the tragedy was dramatised as a made-for-TV movie, To Olivia (John Hay, 2020). Neal and Dahl had numerous grandchildren. Patricia Neal always refused to reveal the name of her second husband, the man she married after her divorce from Roahl Dahl. Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb. And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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Anna May Wong by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5028/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Manassé, Wien (Vienna). Anna May Wong (1905-1961) will become the first Asian American to be on U.S. currency. She was the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American actress to gain international recognition. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe, where she starred in such classics as Piccadilly (1929). The U.S. Mint will begin shipping coins featuring Anna May Wong on Monday 23 October 2022. Anna May Wong (Chinese: 黃柳霜; pinyin: Huáng Liǔshuāng) was born Wong Liu Tsong (Frosted Yellow Willows) near the Chinatown neighbourhood of Los Angeles in 1905. She was the second of seven children born to Wong Sam Sing, owner of the Sam Kee Laundry in Los Angeles, and his second wife Lee Gon Toy. Wong had a passion for movies. By the age of 11, she had come up with her stage name Anna May Wong, formed by joining both her English and family names. Wong was working at Hollywood's Ville de Paris department store when Metro Pictures needed 300 girl extras to appear in The Red Lantern (Albert Capellani, 1919) starring Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. Without her father's knowledge, a friend of his with movie connections helped Anna May land an uncredited role as an extra carrying a lantern. In 1921 she dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue a full-time acting career. Wong received her first screen credit for Bits of Life (Marshall Neilan, 1921), the first anthology film, in which she played the abused wife of Lon Chaney, playing a Chinaman. At 17, she played her first leading part, Lotus Flower, in The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin, 1922), the first Technicolor production. The story by Hollywood's most famous scenarist at the time, Frances Marion, was loosely based on the opera Madame Butterfly but moved the action from Japan to China. Wong also played a concubine in Drifting (Tod Browning, 1923) and a scheming but eye-catching Mongol slave girl running around with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the super-production The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, 1924). Richard Corliss in Time: “Wong is a luminous presence, fanning her arms in right-angle gestures that seem both Oriental and flapperish. Her best scenes are with Fairbanks, as they connive against each other and radiate contrasting and combined sexiness — a vibrant, erotic star quality.” Wong began cultivating a flapper image and became a fashion icon. in Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon, 1924), shot by her cousin cinematographer James Wong Howe, she played Princess Tiger Lily who shares a long kiss with Betty Bronson as Peter. Peter Pan was the hit of the Christmas season. She appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (Alan Crosland, 1927) at Warner Brothers. Wong starred in The Silk Bouquet/The Dragon Horse (Harry Revier, 1927), one of the first US films to be produced with Chinese backing, provided by San Francisco's Chinese Six Companies. The story was set in China during the Ming Dynasty and featured Asian actors playing Asian roles. Hollywood studios didn't know what to do with Wong. Her ethnicity prevented US filmmakers from seeing her as a leading lady. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles as the naïve and self-sacrificing ‘Butterfly’ and the evil ‘Dragon Lady’, Wong left for Europe in 1928.” In Europe, Anna May Wong became a sensation in the German film Schmutziges Geld/Show Life (Richard Eichberg, 1928) with Heinrich George. The New York Times reported that Wong was "acclaimed not only as an actress of transcendent talent but as a great beauty (...) Berlin critics, who were unanimous in praise of both the star and the production, neglect to mention that Anna May is of American birth. They mention only her Chinese origins." Other film parts were a circus artist on the run from a murder charge in Großstadtschmetterling/City Butterfly (Richard Eichberg, 1929), and a dancer in pre-Revolutionary Russia in Hai-Tang (Richard Eichberg, Jean Kemm, 1930). In Vienna, she played the title role in the stage operetta 'Tschun Tschi' in fluent German. Wong became an inseparable friend of the director, Leni Riefenstahl. According to Wikipedia, her close friendships with several women throughout her life, including Marlene Dietrich, led to rumours of lesbianism which damaged her public reputation. London producer Basil Dean bought the play 'A Circle of Chalk' for Wong to appear in with the young Laurence Olivier, her first stage performance in the UK. Her final silent film, Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929), caused a sensation in the UK. Gilda Gray was the top-billed actress, but Variety commented that Wong "outshines the star", and that "from the moment Miss Wong dances in the kitchen's rear, she steals 'Piccadilly' from Miss Gray." It would be the first of five English films in which she had a starring role, including her first sound film The Flame of Love (Richard Eichberg, Walter Summers, 1930). American studios were looking for fresh European talent. Ironically, Wong caught their eye and she was offered a contract with Paramount Studios in 1930. She was featured in such films as Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931) as the vengeful daughter of Fu Manchu (Warner Oland), and with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932). Wong spent the first half of the 1930s travelling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work. She repeatedly turned to the stage and cabaret for a creative outlet. On Broadway, she starred in the drama 'On the Spot', which ran for 167 performances and which she would later film as Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938). Anna May Wong became more outspoken in her advocacy for Chinese American causes and for better film roles. Because of the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules, she was passed over for the leading female role in The Son-Daughter (Clarence Brown, 1932) in favour of Helen Hayes. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer deemed her ‘too Chinese to play a Chinese’ in the film, and the Hays Office would not have allowed her to perform romantic scenes since the film's male lead, Ramón Novarro, was not Asian. Wong was scheduled to play the role of a mistress to a corrupt Chinese general in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933), but the role went instead to Toshia Mori. Her British film Java Head (Thorold Dickinson, J. Walter Ruben, 1934), was the only film in which Wong kissed the lead male character, her white husband in the film. In 1935 she was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937). Paul Muni, an actor of European descent, was to play O-lan's husband, Wang Lung, and MGM chose German actress Luise Rainer for the leading role. Rainer won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her father and her younger brothers and sister in her family's ancestral village Taishan and studying Chinese culture. To complete her contract with Paramount Pictures, she starred in several B movies, including Daughter of Shanghai (Robert Florey, 1937), Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938), and King of Chinatown (Nick Grinde, 1939) with Akim Tamiroff. These smaller-budgeted films could be bolder than the higher-profile releases, and Wong used this to her advantage to portray successful, professional, Chinese-American characters. Wong's cabaret act, which included songs in Cantonese, French, English, German, Danish, Swedish, and other languages, took her from the U.S. to Europe and Australia through the 1930s and 1940s. She paid less attention to her film career during World War II but devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan. Wong starred in Lady from Chungking (William Nigh, 1942) and Bombs over Burma (Joseph H. Lewis, 1943), both anti-Japanese propaganda made by the poverty row studio Producers Releasing Corporation. She donated her salary for both films to United China Relief. She invested in real estate and owned a number of properties in Hollywood. Anna May Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s with several television appearances as well as her own detective series The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951-1952), the first US television show starring an Asian-American series lead. After the completion of the series, Wong's health began to deteriorate. In late 1953 she suffered an internal haemorrhage, which her brother attributed to the onset of menopause, her continued heavy drinking, and financial worries. In the following years, she did guest spots on television series. In 1960, she returned to film playing housekeeper to Lana Turner in the thriller Portrait in Black (Michael Gordon, 1960). She was scheduled to play the role of Madame Liang in the film production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song (Henry Koster, 1961) when she died of a heart attack at home in Santa Monica in 1961. Anna May Wong was 56. For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical sly ‘Dragon Lady’ and demure ‘Butterfly’ roles that she was often given. Matthew Sweet in The Guardian: “And this is the trouble with Anna May Wong. We disapprove of the stereotypes she fleshed out - the treacherous, tragic daughters of the dragon - but her performances still seduce, for the same reason they did in the 1920s and 30s.” Her life and career were re-evaluated by three new biographies, a meticulous filmography, and a British documentary about her life called Frosted Yellow Willows. Wikipedia: “Through her films, public appearances, and prominent magazine features, she helped to ‘humanize’ Asian Americans to white audiences during a period of overt racism and discrimination. Asian Americans, especially the Chinese, had been viewed as perpetually foreign in U.S. society but Wong's films and public image established her as an Asian-American citizen at a time when laws discriminated against Asian immigration and citizenship.” Anna May Wong never married, but over the years, she was the rumoured mistress of several prominent film men: Marshall Neilan (14 years older, supposedly Wong's lover when she was 15), director Tod Browning (23 years older, when she was 16) and Charles Rosher (Mary Pickford's favourite cinematographer, who was nearly 20 years older, when Wong was 20). But no biographer can say for sure that any of the affairs occurred. Sources: Richard Corliss (Time), Matthew Sweet (The Guardian), Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb. And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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Lee Parry by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4646/2, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balàzs, Berlin. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute. Lee Parry (1901-1977) was a German film actress of the silent and the early sound era, often in films by her husband Richard Eichberg. She appeared in 48 films between 1919 and 1939. Lee Parry was born Mathilde Benz in 1901 in Munich, Germany. She was the daughter of an opera tenor, actor and variety director. When she was sixteen, she moved to Berlin. There she was discovered by director and producer Richard Eichberg. She made her debut in 1919 in the leading role of Sünden der Eltern/Sins of the Parents (Richard Eichberg, 1919). Later Eichberg would become her husband. The following years she starred under his direction in several films for his studio like Nonne und Tänzerin/Nun and Dancer (1919), Hypnose/Hypnosis (1920), and two-parters like Der Tanz auf dem Vulkan/Dance on the Volcano (1920), and Die Fluch der Menschheit/The Curse of Man (1920). In these films she often appeared opposite Violetta Napierska, Robert Scholz and a young Béla Lugosi. These three actors were again her co-stars in Ihre Hoheit die Tänzerin/Her Highness the Dancer (Richard Eichberg, 1922). In the historical epic Monna Vanna (Richard Eichberg, 1922), based on a play by Maurice Maeterlinck, her co-star was Paul Wegener, the legendary star of Der Golem/The Golem (Carl Boese, Paul Wegener, 1920). Werner Krauss, famous for his role as Dr. Caligari, was her partner in Fräulein Raffke/Miss Raffke (Richard Eichberg, 1923). Lee Parry continued working with Richard Eichberg in hits like Die Motorbraut/The Motor Bride (Richard Eichberg, 1925) and Luxusweibchen/Luxury Wife (Erich Schönfelder, 1925) with Hans Albers. Around that time Parry and Eichberg divorced. The following year Lee worked for another studio, Maxim-Film/Ebner and starred in Fedora (Jean Manoussi, 1926) next to Anita Dorris. For this studio she also featured in Wenn das Herz der Jugend spricht/When the heart of Youth Speaks (Fred Sauer, 1926) opposite Albert Bassermann, Die Frau die nicht nein sagen kann/The Woman Who Can't say No (Fred Sauer, 1927) with Hans Albers, and the comedy Die leichte Isabell/Light Isabell (Eddy Busch, Arthur Wellin, 1927) with Gustav Fröhlich. In France she appeared in L'eau du Nil/The water of the Nile (Marcel Vandal, 1928), but at the end of the 1920s her roles became smaller and less frequent. After a hiatus of two years Lee Parry made her first appearance in a sound film in Die lustigen Weiber von Wien/The Merry Wives of Vienna (Géza von Bolváry, 1931) opposite Willi Forst. The following year she featured again in three films: the marital-mix-up farce Ein bißchen Liebe für Dich/A Bit of Love (Max Neufeld, 1932) as the wife of Hermann Thimig, the operetta Johann Strauss, k. u. k. Hofkapellmeister/Viennese Waltz (1932, Conrad Wiene), and another operetta Liebe auf den ersten Ton/Love at First Sight (Carl Froelich, 1932). In 1933 she starred again in three films, Keinen Tag ohne Dich/No Day Without You (Hans Behrendt, 1933), Der große Bluff/The Big Bluff (Georg Jacoby, 1933) and Die Herren vom Maxim/The Gentlemen from Maxim's (Carl Boese, 1933). But after this successful year she would make only two more pictures. After the comedy Das Einmaleins der Liebe/Love's Arithmetic (Carl Hoffmann, 1935) starring Luise Ullrich and Paul Hörbiger she retired. Shortly before WWII she appeared in the French production Adieu Vienne/Farewell Vienna (Jacques Séverac, 1939) with Gustav Fröhlich. It would be her last film. She was also a well-known singer who made many records. Her second marriage was to Siegmund Breslauer, director of the German theater in Buenos Aires, in 1956, She moved to South-America where she made her theater comeback as Manon and performed there on many stages. Lee Parry died in Bad Tölz, Germany, in 1977. Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia, AllMovie, and IMDb. And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.