Tag: Hollywood

Natalie Wood birthday party!

Natalie Wood smiles and holds her hands to her face, standing behind her birthday cake during her surprise 21st birthday party, Romanoff’s, Hollywood, photographed by Murray Garrett, 1959! 

I am not the author of this image. More on Facebook.

Check out Maria Callas meeting Marilyn Monroe at JFK’s birthday party right here

Natalie Wood smiles and holds her hands to her face, standing behind her birthday cake during her surprise 21st birthday party, Romanoff’s, Hollywood, photographed by Murray Garrett, 1959.

Tony Curtis with his 1934 Rolls-Royce, shot by Ralph Crane.

Tony Curtis (1925- 2010),one of my favorite American actors, star of Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and Some Like it Hot (1959) among other masterpieces. Curtis lived on a grand scale over the years. He bought an 18-room Hollywood villa in 1966 with four acres and a garage that sheltered the actor’s new Lincoln Continental, a 1934 Rolls-Royce, 1937 Bentley, and 1935 Duesenberg, among his other cars.

He acquired this Rolls Royce Drophead Convertible in 1959. Here are these photos of him in 1961, shot by Ralph Crane for LIFE magazine.

I am not the author of these images. All rights go to Life Magazine.

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook, you know where to click !And check out Humphrey Bogart on the cover of Time here

Ava Gardner portraits by George Hoyningen-Huene.

Baron George Hoyningen-Huene (1900-1968) was a seminal fashion photographer of the 1920s and 30s. He was born in Russia to Baltic German and American parents and spent his working life in France, England and the United States. Here are some of the most impressive shots he took of Ava Gardner in 1956 for MGM. For an even bigger dose of Miss Gardner, like us on Facebook for more shots, here.

NB- don’t miss out on our Norman Parkinson’s gothic portrait of Vivien Leigh here

I am not the author of these images. All rights go to MGM.

 

Meet Saul Bass

A film is never individual work nor should it be reduced to one. Graphic designers who work on movie posters as well as credit sequences are more than mere accessories to great directorial works. Their task is to reduce the idea behind a film into one single image (that of the poster) without betraying it and then, they capture our attention during the credit sequence, as haunting or as comic as it is. Very few people have done this with more innovation than Saul Bass, back in the day when Photoshop was not available and censorship was tight.

“SAUL BASS (1920-1996) was not only one of the great graphic designers of the mid-20th century but the undisputed master of film title design thanks to his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese.

When the reels of film for Otto Preminger’s controversial new drugs movie, The Man with the Golden Arm, arrived at US movie theaters in 1955, a note was stuck on the cans – “Projectionists – pull curtain before titles”. Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to reveal the screen once they’d finished. But Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film.” (http://designmuseum.org/design/saul-bass/)
Bass also designed the credit sequence for Hitchcock’s “Psycho” & “North by Northwest”. Some of his other works are “Casino”, “Goodfellas”, “West Side Story”, “The Seven Year Itch” etc.

Here is a portrait of the artist, undated (and unknown photographer ) & some of his spectacular work on our favorite film posters. No introduction needed.

For another compelling film poster, this time from Poland, check out https://kinoimages.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/kanal-film-poster/

What happens after the Apocalypse ?

A separation needs to be made between disaster scenarios & post Apocalypse. In a lot of Hollywood films, earthquakes, volcanoes, massive floods constitute a disasterpiece which the goverment somehow manages to stop it before everyone dies. This is a disaster scenario. How many times do we really see what goes on after ? After everyone dies and the earth is destroyed? It’s not as frequent as you think. It has been represented & epitomized by zombies because of what zombies represent to the human unconscious, a form of survival after extinction, but other than that, a legitimate depiction of the post-Apocalypse remains rare.

One of the few films which, in my opinion, seriously deal with this is Luc Besson’s first feature film “Le Dernier Combat” (1983), starring Pierre Jovilet, Jean Reno & Jean Bouise. I am not at all Besson’s biggest fan but I admire his representation of our survival as having returned to the most primitive of states with no language (the film has no dialogue) & rock art.
Here are some photos of what I think is Besson’s underrated chef-d’oeuvre. © Luc Besson.

A Gabin-Dietrich affair

In 1939, French actor Jean Gabin began a love affair with German actress Marlene Dietrich. They starred in a film together “Martin Roumagnac”aka “The Room Upstairs” (1946, directed by Georges Lacombe) was not a success and their personal relationship soon ended.

© Here are some photos from their affair. Not a lot of information are available about these images, except that the last one was shot in Los Angeles in 1942. All rights go to the author/photographer.

 

Tribute to authors & screenwriters: Billy Wilder

No list of screenwriters could ever be complete without the one and only Billy Wilder.
Wilder made use of his scripts to transgress Hollywood censorship by depicting taboo topics to the American mainstream, such as cross-dressing in Some Like It Hot and addiction in The Lost Weekend. To his credit are some of the US most classical films and spellbinding noirs, such as Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment(1960).
Hotel del Coronado, where Some Like it Hot was filmed in 1958 and thus became an iconic place, commemorated Billy Wilder with the stamp you see below.

© The American Postal service’s Billy Wilder stamp, featuring the director/screenwriter, Marilyn Monroe & the hotel Coronado in the back.