Category Archives: Mini-Portraits
Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn in WWII Reveals Entirely New Facets of Her Life, Including Her Work as a Resistance Fighter
Ah, there’s the Audrey we love—light and breezy, cycling around the set of Sabrina in capri pants and a ponytail. But a scant eight years earlier, an Audrey we’ll grow to love even more was cycling through the darkened streets of her Nazi-occupied city, entrusted with urgent missives of the Dutch Resistance printed on sheets …
Katharine Hepburn’s Brownies: Nuttier Than a Screwball Comedy!
Katharine Hepburn. Even when she insulted you, something good came out of it. Back in the 1970s, Kate befriended a young Manhattan neighbor at the urgent request of her father. It seems the girl was threatening to drop out of Bryn Mawr, Kate’s alma mater, and her frantic dad wrote to Kate—whom he’d seen but …
Audrey at 90: The Salute to Audrey Hepburn Blogathon Has Arrived!
Happy Birthday, Audrey Hepburn! This extraordinary woman was born 90 years ago today, and to celebrate, we’re launching Audrey at 90: The Salute to Audrey Hepburn Blogathon! A heartfelt thank-you to all the writers helping us explore so many aspects of her amazing life. And we’re so honored to welcome a very special guest —Audrey’s …
The Un-Chilly Elegance of Frieda Inescort
“I’m so aristocratic on stage it’s a wonder I don’t come out blue when I take a bath.” Probably best known as the hopelessly haughty Caroline Bingley in Pride and Prejudice—who seemed to smell cabbage whenever Elizabeth Bennet stepped into the room—Frieda Inescort took a wry view of her typecasting. But there was so much …
Reel Infatuation: Rod Taylor in SUNDAY IN NEW YORK
Ladies! Traveling around New York, you’re likely to run into all kinds of guys. Take, for instance, the manspreader: Not even Dame Helen Mirren was safe from him. And The Nicest Man in America™ actually was him. Then there’s Oscar Shapeley, who’s certain your emphatic rejections are just a playful way of heightening the romantic tension before …
BRIEF ENCOUNTER: The Rain, the Sane, And Mainly Lots of Pain
When I was invited to join a celebration of rainy movie scenes, the first one that came to mind wasn’t something like this… or this… or this. You see, I’m Irish. So of course I thought of this doomed, guilt-ridden duo. The scene in Brief Encounter where Laura (Celia Johnson) tears through the wet streets after getting …
Remembering Billy Chapin, Who Saw Us Through THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
More than half a century after shielding his little sister through the most monstrous night of their lives, John Harper left the world on her birthday. Billy Chapin—who, as John, all but carried The Night of the Hunter on his slight shoulders—died on December 2, the day Sally Jane Bruce, who played Pearl, turned 68. From the …
TINTYPE TUESDAY: The Ever-Elegant Boris Karloff—And His Secret Ingredient for Guacamole
Welcome to another edition of TINTYPE TUESDAY! Regular readers may recall just how very un-monstrous Boris Karloff was offscreen, visiting children’s hospitals to play Santa Claus and read bedtime stories—and even charming the little girl who played Maria in Frankenstein while bolted into full makeup. But can we talk for a minute about how insanely elegant he …
Auntie Joan (Crawford) Explains It All for You!
Don’t say nothin’ bad about my Joanie. Not long ago, in need of a tonic on a stifling summer day, I reread the closest thing we have to her autobiography, the wildly entertaining Joan Crawford: My Way of Life. On the cover, firmly gripping her pair of poodles, she looks like a terrified hostage trying …
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