Gone With or Without fanfare

[RedRiver]

Cine-Musante!

[CineMaven]

[CineMaven]

( click on foto for details )

PAUL WALKER - I know, he's not a classic era film star, and perhaps not even one of today's top-tier finer actors, but he was good. He is easy on the eyes and made his claim to fame in those "Fast and Furious" high speed car chase movies. It was really incredulous news to hear of his death in a car crash yesterday. He was 40.

[sandykaypax]

I was shocked to read of Walker's passing this morning, too.

Sandy K

[Lzcutter]

According to reports he was a passenger in the car. It was driven by a friend of his who was the president of one of his companies. He was in Valencia on behalf of his charity that was doing a toys for tots event.

I saw my first *Fast and Furious* movie (the one set in South America, prior to the one that came out this year) earlier this spring. He had great screen chemistry especially with Vin Diesel.

Very sad news.

[Nick]

Oh no, not Eleanor Parker. Such a talented actress and so beautiful.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/09/actress ... ies_at_91/

[Sue Sue Applegate]

So sorry to hear about Jane Kean and Tony Musante. And Eleanor Parker!

Lovely photo of you two, Theresa! Thanks for sharing with us!

[feaito]

I can't believe the lovely Eleanor Parker has died; I am still shocked.....

[CineMaven]

This is sad news:



I've come to realize what a fine and diverse actress she was. Thank you TCM for featuring her as one of your Stars of the Month.

[JackFavell]

Rest in Peace, beautiful angel.

[Rita Hayworth]

Eleanor Parker Beautiful


I have four images of her and two of them already posted by CineMaven and Jack Favell here on this thread. I just wanted to share this color image that I'm very proud of owning. My favorite image of her. Lovely.

[moira finnie]

I cannot say that I am truly sad for Eleanor Parker's passing at age 91 reportedly surrounded by those who loved her best. To those of us who only knew her through her films, her beauty was piqued by a personal blend of intelligence and talent, and she gave us several lasting portrayals of unique tenderness and power, as well as occasional playfulness. Here is her obituary from The Hollywood Reporter:

Eleanor Parker, who somehow remained a Hollywood mystery woman despite a dazzling array of work that included three best actress Oscar nominations in the 1950s, has died. She was 91.

Parker died Monday at a medical facility near her home in Palm Springs of complications from pneumonia, her friend told the Associated Press.

Parker earned her Oscar noms during a remarkable six-year span. She played a naive 19-year-old who transforms into a hardened convict in Caged (1950); starred as Kirk Douglas’ wife with a secret in William Wyler’s film noir Detective Story (1951); and portrayed real-life Australian opera star and polio victim Marjorie Lawrence in Interrupted Melody (1955) opposite Glenn Ford.

During a career that spanned more than half a century, the Ohio native also starred as the smothering wife of recovering heroin addict Frank Sinatra in Otto Preminger’s tense The Man With the Golden Arm (1955); as a woman with three distinct personalities in the drama Lizzie (1957); and as the jealous baroness Elsa Schraeder in Robert Wise’s classic musical The Sound of Music (1965).

Screenwriter William Ludwig, who shared an Oscar for his work on Interrupted Melody, wrote in a 1986 biography about Parker that moviegoers “didn’t go to her films to see Miss Parker being Miss Parker in a different dress or locale. You went to see that person she created on film.”

That ability for the real-life person to disappear onscreen led author Doug McClelland to title the biography Eleanor Parker: Woman of a Thousand Faces.

“I don’t always recognize myself when I see my own [still] pictures,” Parker said in the book. “Even to me, they look like Ingrid Bergman, Pat Neal, Myrna Loy, Joan Fontaine and Eleanor Powell at various times. I never look like me. Frankly, I think all this is wonderful. What woman doesn’t like a little mystery about herself?”

Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio. Her father was a math teacher. At age 15, she attended the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, earning her keep “by [ushering] and waiting on tables. They finally let me appear in one play, a bit in What a Life!,” she told The New York Times.

Parker worked in Cleveland to gain professional stage experience in summer stock and continued to pursue her career at the Pasadena Playhouse. On her 18th birthday, she signed a contract with Warner Bros.

“I knew I’d get in pictures,” she told Movie Show magazine in 1946. “I wasn’t even afraid of all the tough luck stories I’d heard about other girls who had gone to Hollywood but hadn’t conquered. I knew that if I trained myself properly, I’d be ready for the break when it came.”

Although her first role in a film — a bit part in Raoul Walsh’s They Died With Their Boots On (1941) — was cut from its final version, Parker went on to gain national recognition as the top-billed woman in such films as Pride of the Marines (1945) as John Garfield’s sweetheart, in Of Human Bondage opposite Paul Henreid and in an adaptation of the Broadway comedy The Voice of the Turtle (1947) with Ronald Reagan. Nine years before she played a three-way personality in Lizzie, she starred as identical first cousins in The Woman in White (1948).

In 1950, Caged earned her the best actress award at the Venice International Film Festival, and she was named Mother of the Year by the Society of American Florists. More importantly, she completed her contract at Warner Bros., which had suspended her many times when she refused roles she felt were unsuitable.

After starring in Valentino (1951) at Columbia and Detective Story at Paramount, Parker signed with MGM, which allowed her to make one film a year elsewhere, and began at the studio by becoming a redhead for the swashbuckling Scaramouche (1952) opposite Stewart Granger. For the demanding Interrupted Melody, she secluded herself in a mountain cabin in Lake Arrowhead, Calif., and listened to opera records day and night, learning 22 arias.

Her film resume also included The King and Four Queens (1956) with Clark Gable; a remake of The Seventh Sin (1957); a reteaming with Sinatra for Frank Capra’s A Hole in the Head (1959); Return to Peyton Place (1961) in the role originated by Lana Turner; the comedy Panic Button (1964); and as a Hollywood talent scout in The Oscar (1966).

Wise, who had directed Parker in Three Secrets (1950), came back to Parker for the pivotal Sound of Music role as the aristocratic baroness in the eventual Oscar winner for best picture that starred Julie Andrews.

“She fit the bill perfectly,” the producer-director once said. “We engaged her and she was wonderful in the part, a sort of light ‘heavy’ who was also ultimately quite touching. I have great admiration for Eleanor Parker, an artist of first rank.”

(Laura Benanti played Elsa in the recent live NBC version of The Sound of Music.)

Parker also worked in television, and received an Emmy nomination in 1963 for her portrayal of a woman whose fear of men drive her to drink and hallucinate in an episode of The Eleventh Hour. She played a Hollywood studio chief’s secretary on NBC’s Bracken’s World and landed a Golden Globe nom but quit the show in 1970 after the first of the drama’s two seasons.

Parker later appeared on such series as Hawaii Five-O, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Murder, She Wrote. Her last credit came on the 1991 telefilm Dead on the Money.

Parker was married four times — to Fred Losee (1943-44), producer Bert E. Friedlob (1946-53), artist Paul Clemens (1954-65) and Chicago theater executive Raymond Hirsch (1966 to his death in 2001).

Mike Barnes contributed to this report.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Moira, when someone lives to 91, and has had a life filled with work and passion, it always seems like much more of a reason to celebrate a blessing.
When it's my time, I hope everyone has a big fiesta with mariachis and margaritas, and a perpetual font of queso, plates of strawberries and chocolate, and carrot cake with cream cheese icing...

[Rita Hayworth]

TCM REMEMBERS ELEANOR PARKER (1922-2013) - 12/17

From Turner Classic Movies Web Page

A good case can be made for Eleanor Parker as the screen's "least-heralded great actress," as co-star Dana Andrews once dubbed her. A ravishing beauty with a patrician air and a distinctive, throaty voice, Parker might have become the sort of glamorous star personality who amasses a following by essentially playing herself in film after film. Ironically, she may be missing from the pantheon of best-remembered movie stars because she chose instead to create a gallery of characters so unlike one another that biographer Doug McClelland titled his 1989 book Eleanor Parker: Woman of a Thousand Faces. Commenting on her chameleon-like quality, Parker herself once said, "When I am spotted somewhere it means that my characterizations haven't covered up Eleanor Parker the person. I prefer it the other way around."

Today, despite her impressive range, frequent brilliance and three Academy Award nominations as Best Actress, Parker unjustly does not share the name recognition of studio colleagues Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland at Warner Bros. and, later, Greer Garson and Deborah Kerr at MGM. Still, Parker gave them all a run for their money, whether in gritty black-and-white Warner dramas or MGM exercises in Technicolor glamour.

Born in Cedarville, Ohio, on June 26, 1922, Eleanor Jean Parker had aspirations to become an actress from early childhood. After minor stage experience including a stint at the Pasadena Playhouse, she was signed by Warners and made her first major film appearance in Busses Roar (1942), a taut "B" thriller. Her position was soon solidified with glowing performances as the love interest in two "A"-list World War II dramas, The Very Thought of You (1944) and Pride of the Marines (1945). She reprised Bette Davis' star-making role as the sluttish Cockney waitress Mildred in Of Human Bondage (1946), which drew unfavorable comparisons at the time but may now be seen as a valid and equally powerful interpretation. Parker again demonstrated her versatility with a suitably kittenish performance in the wartime comedy The Voice of the Turtle (1947), aka One for the Book. Her high point at Warners came in Caged (1950), for which she won her first Oscar® nomination with a harrowing performance as a naive young woman transformed into a hardened convict by a prison term.

Parker's second nomination came for Paramount's Detective Story (1951), in which she delivers another hard-hitting, deglamorized performance as the anguished wife of a sanctimonious police detective (Kirk Douglas). Switching to MGM, she began her new studio contract with the classic swashbuckler Scaramouche (1952), moving memorably into tempestuous mode as the fiery red-haired leading lady of a commedia dell-arte troupe. As one of the few co-stars who could bring animation to the stoic countenance of Robert Taylor, Parker proved his perfect partner in three MGM films: the real-life drama Above and Beyond (1953), the Egyptian adventure Valley of the Kings (1954) and the backwoods farce Many Rivers to Cross (1955). Parker reached her MGM peak in Interrupted Melody (1955), a dramatic biography of Marjorie Lawrence, the Australian opera star who fought her way to a comeback after being felled by polio. Superbly miming the voice of Eileen Farrell in the operatic sequences, Parker delivered a performance termed "electrifying" by the New York Times and won her third Oscar® nomination.

Other highlights of Parker's film career, which spanned four decades, include The Woman in White (1948), The Naked Jungle (1954), The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), Lizzie (1957), Home From the Hill (1960) and, in a small but charmingly played role, The Sound of Music (1965). Her last theatrical film was Sunburn (1979).

by Roger Fristoe

[RedRiver]

There will be a bright star shining on us this Christmas!