Category Archives: Mini-Portraits
The TCM Film Festival: Shirley MacLaine’s Terms of Endearment—and Otherwise
There are worse ways to spend a weekend than following Shirley MacLaine around Hollywood. The 81-year-old Oscar winner, whose career stretches back to the end of the Golden Age, was a featured guest at the recent TCM Classic Film Festival. But when she settled into Grauman’s Chinese Theatre with Leonard Maltin to talk about The Apartment, her microphone began …
The George Sanders Touch: Even More Fabulous When He Sings
Need a little warmth to soothe you through those chilly nights? Wrap yourself in The George Sanders Touch….. Songs for the Lovely Lady. He had me at the over-long ellipses… And you needn’t be content just to gaze at the cover of this hard-to-find album, where a slightly sleepy George, who always wakes up in a dinner jacket, slyly …
Remembering Buster Keaton, with Love and Gratitude
Squonk. Squonk. Squonk. The walk to school from my house was five blocks long, and my crepe-soled shoes squeaked more slowly with each passing street. Squonk. Squonk. Stop. Squonk. Stop again. Root around in my bookbag. Maybe I forgot something. Maybe I should go home. When I was in the third grade, I developed a duodenal …
A Sad Coincidence in an Awful Week
I wanted to take a minute to share with you something you may not have known. Back in 1962, Anita Ekberg and Rod Taylor were briefly engaged. And today she left us, just three days after he did—and on what would have been his 85th birthday. Here’s a little article from Florida’s Ocala Star-Banner, back on …
For Rod Taylor, with Love
Beyond heartbroken. You should never find out that someone you love is gone by scrolling through your Twitter feed. That’s how I found out that Rod Taylor had died today. I’ve been in love with him since I was a girl. He was the approachable terrific, gorgeous guy. The one you’d have a dizzyingly wonderful time …
A Soldier Lovingly Remembers Marlene Dietrich
She sizzled onscreen with the hottest leading men in Hollywood—Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Charles Boyer, Robert Donat, James Stewart, Ronald Colman—but Marlene Dietrich’s most memorable co-star may have been a balding, jowly, irascible middle-aged man. While entertaining the troops during World War II, she ventured within a mile of the German front lines on the arm of …
Sister Celluloid 
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