THIS WEEK IN FILM HISTORY
Featured: Agnes Moorehead born December 6, 1900
Actress Agnes Moorehead was born in Clinton, MA. Agnes may have been best known for playing Samantha's mother, Endora, on the TV series Bewitched.
Did you know she received four Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actress from 1943 to 1965, but never captured the elusive Oscar? Her four nominations were in the films: Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), Johnny Belinda (1948), Mrs. Parkington (1944) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
On Broadway, she appeared in several noted plays, such as All the King's Men and Candlelight. She enjoyed success with Don Juan in Hell, touring nationally, the first time (1951-1952) with Charles Laughton and Cedric Hardwicke, the second time (receiving fewer critical plaudits) with Ricardo Montalban and Paul Henreid in 1973. She also starred with Joseph Cotten in Prescription Murder (1962), which, while not a great critical success was much liked by audiences and introduced a famous detective named Lieutenant Columbo. From 1954, she also toured the U.S. and Europe with her own a one-woman show, entitled The Fabulous Redhead. Agnes performed numerous times on television before landing the role of Endora on Bewitched (1964). One particularly interesting part came her way through the director Douglas Heyes, who remembered her from Sorry, Wrong Number, and cast her in the starring - and indeed, only role in The Twilight Zone: The Invaders (1961) episode, The Invaders. As the lonely old woman confronted by tiny alien invaders in her remote farmhouse, Agnes never utters a single word, cleverly acting her scenes as a pantomime of unspoken terror.
TRIVIA
She was one of the cast members of the ill-fated film The Conqueror (1956), which was filmed in 1954 in the Nevada desert close by to where the government was doing nuclear testing. In later years, those tests were suspected to have caused the cancer deaths of several of the films stars including John Wayne, Dick Powell, Susan Hayward and Pedro Armendáriz.
Posted: December 08, 2015
Movie Released on February 17, 1989 Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is released nationwide.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was released nationwide. It is about two seemingly clueless teens who struggle to prepare a historical presentation with the help of a time machine.
The film was written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon and directed by Stephen Herek. It stars Keanu Reeves as Ted "Theodore" Logan, Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esquire, and George Carlin as Rufus. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure received reviews which were mostly positive upon release and was commercially successful. It is now considered a cult classic.
The film was shot in 1987 in the Phoenix, Arizona, metropolitan area, mostly in and around Scottsdale's Coronado High School. Coronado's auditorium was torn down during 2005-07 renovations, but its unique roof and intricate exterior mosaic, seen in an opening scene when Bill and Ted leave school in a red Mustang, was saved and moved, piece by piece, to the new auditorium. The interior shots of the auditorium were filmed inside the East High School auditorium, which was in Phoenix on 48th Street just north of Van Buren. East High School was demolished in 2002 as part of a redevelopment project. The production also shot a sequence on the Western Street on the back lot of Southwestern Studio in Carefree, Arizona.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure grossed $40.4 million domestically on a budget of about $10 million. The Washington Post gave the film a negative review, finding the script written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon as "made only the sketchiest attempts to draw their historical characters. They exist as foils and nothing else, and the gags that are hung on them are far from first-rate", and that if director "Stephen Herek, has any talent for comedy, it's not visible here. More than anything, the picture looks paltry and undernourished." Variety wrote about each historical figure that Bill & Ted meet, stating that "Each encounter is so brief and utterly cliched that history has little chance to contribute anything to this pic’s two dimensions." Vincent Canby of The New York Times referred to the film as a "painfully inept comedy" and that the "one dimly interesting thing about Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is the way the two teen-age heroes communicate in superlatives. We are about to fail most egregiously, says Ted to Bill, or maybe it's Bill to Ted. They are also fond of odd words, such as bodacious."
Posted: February 17, 2016
Oscar nominees announced February 18, 1929 The Birth of Oscar®
The first Academy Awards recipients were announced on February 18, 1929. The ceremony was a banquet at the Roosevelt Hotel's Blossom Room with 270 attendees held a few months later. The next year the Academy kept the results secret but gave an advance list to newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. This continued until 1940 when the Los Angeles Times published the winners in its evening edition - readily available to arriving guests. That prompted the sealed-envelope system in use today. By the second year, enthusiasm for the Awards was such that a Los Angeles radio station produced a live broadcast.
Outstanding Picture
WINNER - Lucien Hubbard for Paramount Pictures – Wingsdouble-dagger
Howard Hughes for The Caddo Company – The Racket
William Fox for Fox Film Corporation – Seventh Heaven
Unique and Artistic Production
WINNER - William Fox for Fox Film Corporation – Sunrise: A Song of Two Humansdouble-dagger
Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack for Paramount Pictures – Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
Irving Thalberg for MGM – The Crowd
Best Director, Comedy Picture
WINNER - Lewis Milestone – Two Arabian Knightsdouble-dagger
Ted Wilde – Speedy
Best Director, Dramatic Picture
WINNER - Frank Borzage – Seventh Heavendouble-dagger
Herbert Brenon – Sorrell and Son
King Vidor – The Crowd
Best Actor in a Leading Role
WINNER - Emil Jannings – The Last Command and The Way of All Fleshdouble-dagger
Richard Barthelmess – The Noose and The Patent Leather Kid
Best Actress in a Leading Role
WINNER - Janet Gaynor – Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humansdouble-dagger
Louise Dresser – A Ship Comes In
Gloria Swanson – Sadie Thompson
Best Writing, Original Story
WINNER - Underworld – Ben Hechtdouble-dagger
The Last Command – Lajos Bíró
Best Writing, Adapted Story
WINNER - Seventh Heaven – Benjamin Glazerdouble-dagger
Glorious Betsy – Anthony Coldeway
The Jazz Singer – Alfred A. Cohn
Best Cinematography
WINNER - Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans – Charles Rosher and Karl Strussdouble-dagger
The Devil Dancer – George Barnes
The Magic Flame – George Barnes
Sadie Thompson – George Barnes
Best Art Direction
WINNER - The Dove and Tempest – William Cameron Menziesdouble-dagger
Seventh Heaven – Harry Oliver
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans – Rochus Gliese
Best Engineering Effects
WINNER - Wings – Roy Pomeroydouble-dagger
(No specific film) – Ralph Hammeras
(No specific film) – Nugent Slaughter
Best Writing, Title Writing
WINNER - (No specific film) – – Joseph Farnhamdouble-dagger
(No specific film) – – George Marion, Jr.
The Private Life of Helen of Troy – Gerald Duffy
Posted: February 18, 2016
Movie Released on February 19, 1942 Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn join forces in their first feature film together.
Woman of the Year (1942) is an American romantic comedy-drama film starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, written by Ring Lardner, Jr., Michael Kanin and John Lee Mahin, directed by George Stevens and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
The film's plot is ostensibly about the relationship between Tess Harding, an international affairs correspondent, chosen "Woman of the Year," and Sam Craig, a sports writer, who meet, marry, and encounter problems as a result of her unflinching commitment to her work. Tess and Sam work on the same newspaper and don't like each other very much. At least the first time, because they eventually fall in love and get married. But Tess is a very active woman and one of the most famous feminists in the country; she is even elected as "the woman of the year." Being busy all the time, she forgets how to really be a woman and Sam begins to feel neglected.
Woman of the Year was the first of nine films Hepburn and Tracy made together. They met for the first time on the shoot. In the 1993 documentary Katharine Hepburn: All About Me, Hepburn herself says she was wearing high heels at the first meeting with Tracy and producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and said "I'm afraid I'm a bit tall for you, Mr. Tracy". Mankiewicz then responded, "Don't worry, Kate, he'll cut you down to size." It was during the filming of Woman of the Year that Hepburn and Tracy became romantically involved – a relationship that lasted until Tracy's death in 1967.
The film was originally shot with a different ending, but it proved unpopular at test screenings. The decision was made to change it, and the final fifteen minutes of the film were re-written and shot. The original ending of the film saw Sam go missing (after he had left the child at the orphanage) while he was meant to be writing an article about an upcoming boxing match. Tess decides to take over for him, and visits the gym to learn about the fight. Sam is found in a language school trying to learn French and Spanish, to "be important", and is shocked when he sees the article. He goes to the fight where he meets Tess. She insists that she did it to be a "good wife," and says she will change and do everything expected of her. He says that he doesn't want either extreme; he just wants her to be "Tess Harding Craig" (the same as in the released ending.)
Ring Lardner, Jr. describes in Archive of America Television oral history interviews (2000) that changes made to the ending of the film were against the wishes of Katharine Hepburn, while both screenwriters were on vacation in New York. These changes were made by Louis B. Mayer, producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz and director George Stevens. "She had to get her comeuppance for being too strong in a man's world so they wrote a scene where she tried to fix breakfast ... and gets everything wrong", said Lardner. The screenwriters were given some room to rewrite the new ending on returning from New York, and in the same interview Lardner recalls "some of the worst lines we rewrote, but we couldn't fix it, we couldn't change it fundamentally".
The film earned $1,935,000 in the US and Canada and $773,000 elsewhere during its initial release, making MGM a profit of $753,000.
Posted: February 19, 2016
Movie Released on February 20, 1952 "The African Queen" starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, opened in theaters nationwide.
The African Queen is a 1951 adventure film adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. The film was directed by John Huston and produced by Sam Spiegel and John Woolf. The screenplay was adapted by James Agee, John Huston, John Collier and Peter Viertel. It was photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff and had a music score by Allan Gray. The film stars Humphrey Bogart (who won the Academy Award for Best Actor – his only Oscar), and Katharine Hepburn with Robert Morley, Peter Bull, Walter Gotell, Richard Marner and Theodore Bikel.
Plot Summary:
September 1914, news reaches the colony German Eastern Africa that Germany is at war, so Reverend Samuel Sayer became a hostile foreigner. German imperial troops burn down his mission; he is beaten and dies of fever. His well-educated, snobbish sister Rose Sayer buries him and leaves by the only available transport, the dilapidated river steamboat 'African Queen' of grumpy Charlie Allnut. As if a long difficult journey without any comfort weren't bad enough for such odd companions, she is determined to find a way to do their bit for the British war effort (and avenge her brother) and aims high, as God is obviously on their side: construct their own equipment, a torpedo and the converted steamboat, to take out a huge German warship, the Louisa, which is hard to find on the giant lake and first of all to reach, in fact as daunting an expedition as anyone attempted since the late adventurous explorer John Speakes, but she presses till Charlie accepts to steam up the Ulana, about to brave a German fort, raging rapids, very bloodthirsty parasites and the endlessly branching stream which seems to go nowhere but impenetrable swamps... Despite fierce rows and moral antagonism between a bossy devout abstentionist and a free-spirited libertine drunk loner, the two grow closer to each-other as their quest drags on.
The African Queen was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1994, with the Library of Congress deeming it "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Posted: February 20, 2016
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