Gone With or Without fanfare

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JackFavell
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by JackFavell »

Thanks so much Sue Sue!
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JackFavell
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by JackFavell »

Thanks for the wonderful writeup on Juanita Moore, Sue Sue. I looked for a definitive article in the news on this talented and gracious actress, but couldn't find anything that placed her importance in movie history. I guess we'll have to rely on our friends here at the SSO to do that for us. Here is the article from the LA Times, which came closest to describing her impact.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mo ... z2pF79LsN7
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moira finnie
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by moira finnie »

Sadly, in addition to noting the passing of Juanita Moore and James Avery, a longtime figure from the ranks of accomplished character actors, Joseph Ruskin, has passed away at the age of 89. Ruskin, whose mask-like face and magnetic presence on screen was more familiar to viewers than his name, played memorable roles on such programs as The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Star Trek (with a sharp resemblance to Ming the Merciless from Buck Rogers days!) as well as the recent Alias. He brought an expressive grace to his largely menacing movie roles in The Magnificent Seven, Robin and the Seven Hoods, and Prizzi's Honor, though in real life he was an active member of Equity and SAG for years, working to assist his fellow actors. Recently, an outstanding episode of Naked City broadcast on Me-tv featured Ruskin in a remarkably pointed portrayal of a hit man at the end of his career, prompting me to remember his name.

More about this actor, who appeared on stage in a role as recently as 2013, can be seen by clicking on the image below (you know the unforgettable face, don't you?):

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JackFavell
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by JackFavell »

Oh dear. Looks like we've started off with 3 more. How very sad. This accomplished actor, as you said, gracefully terrorized so many heroes and heroines in my youth. It takes a great talent to play supporting characters, his villains had a dash that even the most energetic leading men lacked. Rest in peace. :cry:
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by Western Guy »

Joseph Ruskin also gave a memorable performance where he was heard but not seen: As The Horla - the sinister spirit that plagues magistrate Vincent Price in DIARY OF A MADMAN.
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by Lzcutter »

The Hollywood Reporter has a lovely tribute to Juanita Moore:

Juanita Moore, a groundbreaking actress and an Academy Award nominee for her role as Lana Turner's character's black friend in the classic weeper Imitation of Life, has died.

Actor Kirk Kelleykahn, her grandson, said that Moore collapsed and died Wednesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 99, according to Kelleykahn. Accounts of her age have differed over the years.

Moore was only the fifth black performer to be nominated for an Oscar, receiving the nod for the glossy Douglas Sirk film that became a big hit and later gained a cult following. The 1959 tearjerker, based on a Fannie Hurst novel and a remake of a 1934 film, tells the story of a struggling white actress' rise to stardom, her friendship with a black woman and how they team up to raise their daughters as single mothers.

It brought supporting actress nominations for both Moore and Susan Kohner, who played Moore's daughter as a young adult attempting to pass for a white woman. Kohner's own background is Czech and Mexican. By the end, Turner's character is a star and her friend is essentially a servant. The death of Moore's character sets up the sentimental ending.

Kohner -- who heard of Moore's death through Sam Staggs, author of 2009's Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of Imitation of Life -- had high praise for her friend and co-star, with whom she said she spoke regularly.

"I did keep in touch with her over the years and I would speak to her every year on her birthday, so I last spoke to her Oct. 19," Kohner tells The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday afternoon. "I had promised to visit her this time when I came out to visit my family, and I guess the timing was just off.
"We were very fond of each other," she continues. "We sort of completed each other's performances. I think she completed mine and I completed hers. It was a lovely experience for me. She was a very, very good actress and a lovely human being and had a wonderful sense of humor."

In a 1967 Los Angeles Times interview, Moore spoke of her Oscar recognition. "The Oscar prestige was fine, but I worked more before I was nominated," Moore said at the time. "Casting directors think an Oscar nominee is suddenly in another category. They couldn't possibly ask you to do one or two days' work. You wouldn't accept it. And I'm sure I would."

Moore also had an active career in the theater, starting in the early 1950s at Los Angeles' Ebony Showcase Theatre, a leading black-run theater. She also was a member of the celebrated Cambridge Players, with other performers including Esther Rolle and Helen Martin.

Her grandson is currently president and CEO of the Cambridge group.

She appeared on Broadway in 1965 in James Baldwin's play The Amen Corner and in London in a production of Raisin in the Sun.

"The creative arts put a person on another level," she told the Los Angeles Times. "That's why we need to bring our youngsters into the theater."
Her first film appearance was as a nurse in the 1949 film Pinky. As with other black actresses, many of Moore's early roles were those of a maid. She told the Times that "real parts, not just in-and-out jobs," were opening up for black performers.

Among Moore's other films were The Girl Can't Help It, The Singing Nun, Paternity and The Kid. Her TV credits include The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Adam-12, Judging Amy and ER.

For more: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/i ... ies-668167
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pvitari
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by pvitari »

RIP Phil Everly, whose voice would make the angels jealous. ;(

I adore the Everly Brothers -- the most beautiful harmony singing ever (just my opinion). I was lucky enough to see them twice in concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1984, and they sang together as beautifully as ever, though time and experience had given their voices more weight. This time when they sang "Love Hurts," you could feel it from their gut. It wasn't just teenage angst anymore.

http://news.yahoo.com/phil-everly-rock- ... NNRTMzOF8x

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ChiO
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

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For more memories of Phil and Don together, go here.

His death reminded me of a radio interview with Graham Nash around 1981. The interviewer went on and on about how Nash contributed such a unique and distinctive sound to The Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash (& Young). Nash's response:

I didn't do anything new. I've spent my whole career just trying to imitate Phil Everly.
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by Nick »

A belated RIP to Barbara Lawrence who died already back in November 2013. She was 83 years old and appeared in films like Margie, A Letter to Three Wives and Two Tickets to Broadway.
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by Vecchiolarry »

Hi,

Paula - you are not the only one to praise and appreciate the 'beautiful harmony' of the Everly Brothers - our opinions match 100%.....

I am old enough to remember them in the late 50's and much preferred them to Elvis Presley and Tommy Sands.
At the time, I was "mooning and spooning" over a girl named Cathy and all my friends called me "Cathy's Clown"!!!

The words and concepts of harmony, melody and rhythm don't seem to mean anything in todays music; but the Everly Brothers had them in spades.

A big jolt to my person is that he was in my age range - gives pause to think...

R.I.P. Phil Everly

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Rita Hayworth
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by Rita Hayworth »

Phil Everly ... what an amazing voice he was ... just incredible and one of my favorite singers too.
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

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Producer Saul Zaentz, known for his Oscar winning movies and his feud with singer John Fogerty (Zanz Kan't Danz) has died.

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Saul Zaentz, who parlayed a successful career in the music business into a Oscar-winning second act as an independent movie producer, died Friday at his home in the San Francisco area from complications of Alzheimer's. He was 92.

His nephew Paul Zaentz, a fellow producer, confirmed the news. "He was an extraordinary man," Paul Zaentz, who worked with his uncle for 37 years, said. "He had a lot of guts, a lot of integrity."

After presenting such major acts as Creedence Clearwater Revival on his Fantasy Records label, Zaentz moved into producing and shared three Academy Awards for best picture -- for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Amadeus (1984) and The English Patient (1996).

Zaentz then received the Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1997 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his “consistently high quality of motion picture production.”

Incredibly, two of his best picture Oscars were his first two films: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus. His third film was the internationally acclaimed The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), nominated for a pair of Academy Awards.

He teamed with fledgling producer Michael Douglas on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The Jack Nicholson-starrer based on Ken Kesey’s novel earned Zaentz his first Academy Award, which he shared with Douglas. The film took home the top five Oscars, a rare achievement.

Befitting his music-industry background, his second best picture was music-based. Amadeus was based on the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the jealousy his talent inspired. That film hauled in eight Oscars, including one for F. Murray Abraham as the envious Antonio Salieri.

His third best picture winner, The English Patient, based on an unpublished novel that Zaentz acquired, won nine Oscars -- director Anthony Minghella and actress Juliette Binoche were among those honored -- and received BAFTA's best film award as well.

He produced an animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1978), directed by Ralph Bakshi, as well as Payday (1972), Three Warriors (1978) and At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991) and executive produced The Mosquito Coast (1986), directed by Peter Weir.

More recently, Zaentz produced Goya's Ghosts (2006), directed by Milos Forman, his man on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus. Forman earned Oscars on those films as well.

Zaentz received the Producers Guild of America's Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award in 1997 for The English Patient and received the PGA's Vision Award for the film. Most auspiciously, the guild presented Zaentz with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1994.

He also accepted BAFTA's Academy Fellowship in 2003 for his career achievements.

In 1980, Zaentz created the Saul Zaentz Film Center in Berkeley, Calif., an editing and sound-mixing facility. It housed the Saul Zaentz Co., Fantasy Studios, Concord Music Group and the Berkeley Digital Film Institute as well as other production companies.

Not averse to litigation, including suing studios over profits sharing, Zaentz was involved in acrimonious litigation with Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty over song rights. Zaentz's contention was with two songs on Fogerty's 1985 Centerfield album for Warner Bros. Records. Zaentz argued that the song “Zanz Kant Danz” was a slur on him. He filed suit, and Fogerty responded by changing the first word to "Vanz."

Zaentz filed a second lawsuit, contending that Fogerty used the same chorus for “The Old Man Down the Road” as “Run Through the Jungle,” which Fogerty had recorded while on Zaentz's Fantasy Records label. Fogerty ultimately prevailed after surreal courtroom testimony that, essentially, absolved him of plagiarizing himself.

“The way I view Saul Zaentz and his henchmen, shall I say -- well, that probably gives it away,” Fogerty said in a New York Times interview in 2005. “I still view them in the same light. If I was walking down the street and those rattlesnakes were walking towards me, I would give them a wide berth.”

For more read on: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/l ... ies-668470
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"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."

"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese

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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

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Actress Alicia Rhett, best known for her role as Ashley Wilkes' sister, India, in Gone With the Wind has died.

From the Birmingham News:

The oldest surviving cast member of "Gone with the Wind" has died in South Carolina. She was 98.

Alicia Rhett played India Wilkes in the 1939 film starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.

Kimberly Farfone Borts is spokeswoman for the Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community in Charleston, South Carolina. She told The Associated Press that Rhett died about 5 p.m. Friday at Gadsden, where she had lived since August 2002.

In the movie, India Wilkes is a sister of Ashley Wilkes, with whom Scarlett O'Hara is deeply in love before Ashley marries his cousin and Scarlett becomes involved with Rhett Butler.

The news release says Alicia Rhett was born Feb. 1, 1915, in Savannah, Georgia.

Farfone said Rhett also was a portrait painter who sketched her fellow actors on the set.

http://obits.al.com/obituaries/alabama/ ... =168891198
Lynn in Lake Balboa

"Film is history. With every foot of film lost, we lose a link to our culture, to the world around us, to each other and to ourselves."

"For me, John Wayne has only become more impressive over time." Marty Scorsese

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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

Post by RedRiver »

When I was little more than a toddler, I heard the Everlys' music on the radio almost constantly. 55 years later, we still hear it. Long an admirer, it's hard to think I gave them too little credit. But from today's obituaries, I gather they were more instrumental in the development of rock and roll than even I was aware. As someone said on Twitter, "Bye-bye, Phil!"
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Re: Gone With or Without fanfare

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