7 posts tagged “favorite actresses”
Back in the days of High School, I met a classmate who shared the same great love of Classic Movies as I did, and we spent many a night enjoying the works of all those great actors and actresses of the “Golden” era of film! Jimmy Stewart and Jean Arthur, Bogie and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, we watched ‘em all!
Now, this gal was a HUGE fan of Laurence Olivier, and had a whole cupboard full of various beta tapes (Beta! WOW, does THAT sound nostalgic!) of Sir Laurence’s vast career, and she took the time to re-introduce me to an actor that I’d only known from movies where he played a Nazi (Szell in Marathon Man) and Nazi-Hunter (in The Boys From Brazil), fine films to be sure, but hardly representative of his great body of work! Ahahahaha!
Well, over the weeks, we saw quite a few of Olivier’s films including Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, and (a fave of both of ours) Hitchcock's Rebecca, but the one film that stood out, just absolutely won me over and had me laughing and giddy throughout the whole film was the United Artists movie The Divorce of Lady X starring Sir Laurence and an UNBELIEVABLY ADORABLE Merle Oberon as fated lovers who are hindered by cases of mistaken identity!
Olivier is Everard Logan, a divorce lawyer who gets fogged in at a glitzy hotel. A fancy costume ball is winding down as he checks in, and several ball-attendants are needing lodgings to weather out the storm, and shrewd attendee Leslie Steele (Merle Oberon) targets Logan as a man she can playfully manipulate into sharing a room together- and that’s exactly what she does!
Though the night is a completely innocent affair, Leslie’s cheerful and candid manners have severely affected Logan, and he finds he’s falling in love with her! But before he can act upon his impulses, she leaves, without him even getting her name!
The next day he is visited in his office by an old friend who wants to divorce his wife on the grounds that she’s spent the night in a hotel with some mysterious gentleman. It’s the same hotel LOGAN was at the night before, and after a brief interview, becomes convinced that the lady he spent the night with was none other than this man’s WIFE!
Lots of laughs as the mischievous Leslie gets wind of his misdiagnosis and decides to continue the charade, pretending to be the soon-to-be-divorced mystery woman, as Logan falls deeper and deeper in love with her!!
Though I’ve managed to pick up quite a few of those classic movies we watched on DVD over the years, there are still a lot of them that haven’t been given the digital treatment yet, and it was with great excitement that I was able to obtain a copy of Divorce of Lady X from online store MOVIES UNLIMITED, a place that I remembered ordering VHS copies of some of my Garbo movies from oh so many years ago!
Well, I just finished watching it again, and I’m here to assure you people: The magic is STILL there! I fell in love with it all over again; the show is still so funny and fresh! I’ve always stated that Divorce of Lady X was a very favorite film of mine that everyone should see, and my opinion is forged anew! You MUST see this film!
PS: Though I’ve mentioned it three or four times already, I cannot overstate how adorable Oberon is in this film!!! Every scene she is in just makes you feel good! And Pretty? MAN! I read somewhere that Oberon is part Sri-Lankan, and that would certainly explain the almost exotic features she has. Man, is this woman gorgeous! And when she smiles, you just feel so…happy!
What would an article about Catwoman be without mentioning the actress who’s been more identified with her Batman villianess depiction than anyone? I’m referring to none other than Wong Foo’s cherished customer, the lovely Julie Newmar!
As kids, me and my friends REALLY loved that Batman TV show with Adam West and Burt Ward, and I remember the children in the neighborhood playing "Superfriends” instead of “Cowboys ‘n’ Indians” after watching the airing every week, but as we got older, we started to realize how silly the TV show was (re: camp) as we started reading the actual comics.
But then, a funny thing happened. When we were in High School, they started airing the BATMAN TV show again … and Oh my God, this time, I GOT IT! Once I was able to separate the TV show from the comic, I realized that the show was this incredibly witty and quick paced series, and I began enjoying it all over again!
Of course, one of the MAJOR differences between watching the show as a 7 year old kid and a high schooler was… You guessed it, JULIE NEWMAR! HOLY TOLEDO, I couldn’t believe how incredible HOT she was! In that skin- tight suit that totally showed off those wonderful curves of hers, it already was a sight for the eyes, but throw in that throaty voice and that sassy attitude, and you had a combination that can NEVER be bested!
I’m sorry, but that’s my stance. NO other actress can EVER COME CLOSE to capturing what Catwoman was all about better than the former Miss Newmeyer! And that goes for all the Meriwethers, Kitts, Berrys and Pffiefers!
I remember one classic ending to one of those Batman episodes: Batman is trying to talk Catwoman into giving up a life a crime. She sassilly suggests that they get married and leave together:
“I can reform- honestly, I can!” she begs.
“What about Robin?” wonders Batman.
After pondering the problem for a second, Catwoman brightens up and cheerfully suggests:
“Oh, I’ve GOT it- We’ll KILL HIM!”
...to which a shocked Batman wearily gives up: “I see you’re not really ready to assume a life within society!”
Catwoman realizes it cannot be, and very dramatically throws herself off the roof, supposedly falling to her death. Batman sadly pulls out a bat-shaped Handkerchief and wipes his tears away! Ahahahaha!
The Batman TV show is one of the few 60's-era series that to this day haven't gotten the DVD treatment, so until that happy day, I'm content to watch and re-watch my precious VHS tapes of the show, enjoying the five or six story arcs that featured the delectable Miss Stupefying Jones in all her glory!
For those insomniacs out there like me, sometimes there’d be a temporary reprieve after all regular programming was done, in the form of “Nite-Owl Theater”…. this was basically the TV station broadcasting old Black and White films in the wee hours of the morning, usually between 12:30 to 2:00 in the morning, and I just loved it!
There is something sort of magical about watching old movies late at night , wrapped up in a blanket, where you feel you’re the only person awake in the world. The movies really come to life, and you almost feel transported to that earlier time. Those days of watching those late night movies still bring back fond memories!
By chance one night I happened to catch a random movie from 1933 starring the incredible Greta Garbo called Queen Christina. Talk about beginners luck, as I was to find later that many regard Queen Christina as one of Garbo’s finest and regularly recommend it to beginning Garbo enthusiasts!
I don’t know, my general image of Greta Garbo was of your usual pin-up platinum blonde…Garbo was just about anything BUT average! Exotic and Moody, from the very first time I laid eyes on her and heard that mesmerizing, husky voice, I knew she was truly something special!
Greta plays a Queen who escapes the crushing responsibilities of royalty to hide out dressed as a boy in a small town tavern. There she meets a man on his way to meet the Queen, who hasn’t the slightest inkling that she’s right there in front of him! One thing leads to another, and they fall in love…but when she assumes her responsibilities once more, they find it is harder that they think to continue the doomed romance.
Well, I just flat out loved this movie, (In fact, to this day, it is still one of my very VERY favorite movies of all time!) and I needed to see more, more, more! Fortunately, there was this wonderful Video Rental store in town that specialized in the classic films, and it was through here that I saw almost all of Greta’s major movies and a few lesser ones, too! From Grand Hotel through Susan Lenox, even my very first silent movies Flesh and the Devil and The Temptress, if Garbo was in it, I rented it! In time, I even managed to special order the Laserdisc of Queen Christina, which was, for years, the only copy I had of this beloved movie.
When MGM finally released a selection of Greta’s movies in a Deluxe DVD Box Set, I was thrilled to finally get Queen Christina on DVD , as well as other favorites Ninotchka, Mata Hari and Anna Christie, none of which had ever been given a DVD treatment before!
I’m hoping that they get around to releasing a second Box Set because I’m still waiting for a few of my other favorites to get a DVD release at all: As You Desire Me, The Painted Veil(was Love in the Time of Cholera a remake of this one?), and the controversial Two-Faced Woman! The latter movie was almost universally panned and ended up being Garbo’s last movie of her career, but, heck, I LOVED IT! She’s SOOOO much fun in this one, and YES, looking gorgeous as usual!
I’m gonna keep my fingers crossed for these treasures!!!
The first time I saw American Graffiti must have been around 1978 on the telly, which would have made me about 12 years old, and I have to tell you, Debbie was everything a 12 year old kid could fantasize about: Super Cute, Loud, Naughty, Sassy, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, willing to give the unpopular loser (Terry the Toad, as played by Charlie Martin Smith) the time of day! Why, she was an…an…ANGEL! Ahahahaha!
So yeah, I was pretty infatuated with Candy Clark! I remember this one time, a kid brought to class the AMERICAN GRAFFITI novelized paperback that was the movie tie-in book, one of those books that had a bunch of pages with black and white pictures in the middle, you know the ones I mean. Anyway, I desperately wanted to see if there were any pictures of Debbie in that paperback, but that stupid kid refused to let me see it, because he was more interested in running around the class showing all the girls the picture from the movie of some guy mooning his butt out a moving car! Grrr…
I’ll tell you a funny coincidence… I was SO infatuated with Candy Clark: I remember a neighbor had a copy of HUSTLER laying around with a cute blonde on the cover, and the first thing my mind said was “WOW! that girl looks like…DEBBIE!” I remember wondering if it WAS Candy Clark! After all, this was the year when the scandal of Angie “Police Woman” Dickinson nude shots were all the buzz, so WHY NOT pics of Candy Clark?
Well, it wasn’t Candy Clark, and I would have forgotten all about it, but in an interesting turn of events,I was to come across the cover again when the model on the HUSTLER cover was revealed to be none other than Dale Bozzio, she of MISSING PERSONS fame! I remember when they showed the cover of the magazine, I immediately recognized it, exclaiming, “Hey! Dale was that model I thought looked like Candy Clark!” (It’s the December 1982 issue, if you care to look it up) Funny thing though, looking at the cover NOW, she doesn’t look much like Debbie, after all! HAHAHA!
I remember a year or so after I’d fallen in love with Candy Clark, they released a sequel to American Graffiti called MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI (how original!), and I really had to BEG my friends to come down with me to see the movie, because I desperately needed to see it!! One of the main reasons I wanted to see this, of course, was because Candy Clark was one of the cast members from the original movie that would be reprising her role.
Well, I’d like to say that It was great and I was blown away, but the fact of the matter was, I hadn’t realized that the Debbie character was wearing a fluffy blonde WIG in the first movie, and no such wig was found atop the head of Candy Clark in the second one! GASP! Why, I didn’t even RECOGNIZE Candy when she first appeared…it was only after watching the scene that I figured it out, and folks, I mean to tell you…I WAS CRUSHED! I mean, Candy was still PRETTY and all, but it just wasn't my 6th Grade dream girl on that screen!
Oh Well. And, to be honest, it wasn’t just her- the movie was supposed to reflect the late sixties hippie-culture, peace, Vietnam War, etc, and well, it just didn’t have that magic the first one had.
Oh well…I still had the original movie to keep me company!
Years later, the American Graffiti Movie came out on Laserdisc(!),and I was able to enjoy the movie without having to either rent it or wait for it to appear on TV, and once again, I was instantly taken back to my Debbie-obsessed days! THEN, even MORE years later, when the Collector’s Edition DVD came out, I watched it, and yep, fell in love AGAIN!
I may pass on ever needing to see “More” American Graffiti again, but the original will always remain one of my very favorite movies of all time, and you can be sure that each time I re-watch it, I will have Candy Clark on the brain, as well!
Visit Candy at her myspace page, a haven for Debbie-obsessed fans like me!
Although Mike Nichols’ The Graduate is one of my favorite movies of all time, this was NOT the movie in which gorgeous actress Katharine Ross stole my heart (though she IS incredibly pretty here).. and it wasn’t her OTHER blockbuster hit movie, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid that did it for me, either! (though I’d certainly pack her on MY bicycle anywhere she’d like to go…)
No, strange as it may seem, the movie that I first fell for lovely Ms. Ross was in the 1978 horror movie, THE LEGACY!
Yes, that sinister movie where Roger Daltrey, lead vocallist for The Who. dies by choking on a chcken bone!
For some reason, this movie was on TV an awful lot, and each time it was on, I watched it for the pretty “Natalie Wood-ish”actress with the heavy fake eyelashes, whom I later found out was named Katherine Ross!
The movie was about a group of people summoned (by choice or fate) to a grand (if mysterious) mansion, where the supposed inheritors slowly start dropping off, one by one… I remember this great scene where Katherine and her beau Sam Elliot kept trying to leave the place, but no matter which road they took, it ended up back at the Mansion! Creepy! Ah, weren’t the 70’s a great time for Horror Movies?
Eventually I got around to watching her other movies like the aforementioned Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Graduate, and her OTHER famous Horror movie, THE STEPFORD WIVES, all featuring Katharine at her best: tough yet vulnerable at the same time!
In recent years, Katherine ‘s been keeping busy with TV projects and she even recently appeared in the cult classic movie “Donnie Darko"! Come to think of it, with The Legacy, Stepford Wives, Donnie Darko (and hey, even The Swarm), Katharine's really established herself in the horror market, hasn't she!
Oh, Elaine Robinson, Won't you please come home?
There isn’t a single thing I can add about having a crush on Liesl Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music that hasn’t already been uttered by countless generations of guys ever since the movie debuted in 1965!
But for the record: 1. I saw Sound Of Music. 2. I set eyes on the oldest daughter Liesl, played by Charmian Carr.
3. Developed Crush. 4. Wheee!
In fact, out of all the wonderful songs featured in the Rodgers & Hammerstein soundtrack, my favorite just has to be “Edelweiss”, simply because I always waited for that scene where she sang it along with her father, playing his guitar.
Funny thing, growing up I would hear “The Sound Of Music” and “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” regularly sung on TV variety shows , regarded as the broadway classics they are, and I remember a local pastor named Allan Fisher singing Climb Ev'ry Mountain on a just-before-sign-off show called Making Life Simple! In elementary school, we even sang songs like “Do Me Ri” and “My Favorite Things” during assemblies, but despite this total American immersion in the soundtrack, until I saw The Sound Of Music (and fell in love with Liesl) for myself, I never noticed Edelweiss!
Once I was watching Sound Of Music with a friend, and I offhandedly mentioned how much of a crush I had on Charmian Carr when I was younger. "I guess I was into that 60's teenager look", I theorized. She looked at Liesl on the screen and asked, "Yeah, but, how OLD do you think Liesl IS here? She ain't any "16 going on 17", THAT'S for sure! She looks more like 23!" Which was a pretty good point, but that didn't diminish my love of Liesl one bit!
Plus It didn't matter- we were both big Sound of Music fans, and I remember her even stopping by my workplace straight from her Ukelele Lesson once because she'd just learned to play "Edelwiess"! So we had a little singalong, and I have to say a hawaiian flavored Edelweiss is a strange thing to hear indeed! Ahahaha!
Years later, when me and my friend Car were talking about favorite songs from The Sound Of Music, I said “Well, the song that’s MY fave isn’t a common one!” She said, “Well, what IS it?” and when I told her “Edelweiss”, she dismissively cried “EDELWEISS?! That’s so OBVIOUS! EVERYBODY’S favorite song is that one!”
I said that I begged to differ, with songs like Sound of Music, Climb Ev’ry Mountain, Do-Re-Mi and My Favorite Things out there, I’d hardly say that Edelweiss was EVERYONE’S favorite song, but she stood her ground on that one!
Anyway…
When The Sound of Music got the “Special Edition” treatment on DVD back in 2000, there was a terrific addition for us Liesl fans! Included in the bonus section was a little-seen documentary short called Salzburg Sight and Sound, which was basically a 36 minute little featurette they shot during the taping of The Sound Of Music of Charmian Carr wandering around the beautiful city of Salzburg!
She narrates the short, and besides taking in the beautiful scenery, we get glimpses of the cast behind the scenes as they work on the movie, we even get to see Charmian getting lessons with her vocal coach! Ah, what a great bonus!
Life after Sound of Music, Charmian Carr became an interior designer for upper-class home-owners, ans she said that one of her clients was Michael Jackson! In fact, she said that he hired her to do his house, simply because he loved her so much as Liesl!
Well, If I had
1. MONEY for an Interior Designer and
2. A HOUSE in WHICH to redesign,
I’D hire her, too!
A few years back when SONY Pictures had just gotten around to releasing the first season of I DREAM OF JEANNIE on DVD, I was proclaiming my love for the sitcom’s FIFTH season as my favorite (out of the show’s five seasons, original post here.), because in the last season, Jeannie and Tony were engaged, and Jeannie’s character changed from being his genie whom no one saw, to Tony’s WIFE whom everyone knew ( though still secretly a Genie, a la Bewitched).
This meant that Jeannie spent most of the time in “real” clothes, and each episode featured gorgeous Barbara Eden in the Sexiest Sixties outfits and the shortest skirts you ever laid eyes on! It was Heaven!
Well, it’s been quite a wait for me, but HALLELUJAH the day has finally come, and “I DREAM OF JEANNIE –THE COMPLETE FIFTH AND FINAL SEASON” has FINALLY been released! I just got my copy from Amazon.com yesterday, and have been watching each episode back to back, in a frenzied marathon, and I must say: IT WAS WELL WORTH THE WAIT!
Oh my Gosh, Barbara Eden looks just luscious here- every episode features her in several different outfits, and I’m always on the edge of my seat waiting to see what she’ll be wearing in the next scene! I was delirious with joy, as you may have guessed by the amount of video captures I’ve taken! And to see these episodes in DVD quality is really the icing on the cake!
Anyway…
PS- It’s still a shock to see the “Sony Pictures” logo and theme after the ending credits…
I’m SOOOO used to the old “Screen Gems” theme appearing after the song!
It's kinda sad, in a way...Though it was kinda creepy as a kid, I miss that tag!
