A Rita Hayworth lovefest

by Cláudio Alves

Born Margarita Carmen Cansino, Rita Hayworth was one of Old Hollywood's brightest and most glamourous stars. As it often happens with such legends of the silver screen, her life was an unhappy one, full of tales of abuse and five failed marriages, crippling insecurity, alcoholism and Alzheimers. Perhaps more hauntingly, her biographers agree that Hayworth despised her existence as a movie star and as a pin-up icon, longing to escape the movie business in her heyday. In Hayworth's later years, she would even come to express disdain towards some of her more famous movies like the iconic Gilda. Still, those same pictures, as well as other classics, made her an immortal legend.

To explore the filmography of Rita Hayworth is to confront the cruel incongruences of her biography, how the movies sculpted her into something bigger than life and made her suffer for it too…

Click to read more ...

Barbara Stanwyck: Comedy Goddess

by Cláudio Alves 

Despite being one of Old Hollywood's most electrifying actresses, Barbara Stanwyck feels somewhat forgotten (apart from cinephiles) when compared to her contemporaries like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford or Ingrid Bergman. The one role that arguable does keep her immortal with the mainstream is the devilish Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, the noir to end all noirs starring the greatest femme fatale of them all. Still, to believe that Stanwick was essentially a noir vixen is unfair to her grand legacy. More than many actresses of her time, she rejoiced in hopping from genre to genre, unencumbered by exclusive contracts to studios that might want to pin her down to one type of role. 

Because of that, she was able to experiment with the extremes of Pre-Code libertinism (Baby Doll), weepy melodrama (Stella Dallas), historical epics (Titanic), tragic romances (There's Always Tomorrow) and even camp classics (Walk on the Wild Side). Her tonal flexibility was unparalleled as she was able to mold her trademark toughness and sexual confidence into almost any role conceivable. She was much more than just the venomous Mrs. Dietrichson, even though that is one of her greatest achievements. I'd go so far as to say that she was one of the great comediennes of her era, on par with Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard, and Jean Arthur. Just take look at her second Oscar nomination…

Click to read more ...

Kirk Douglas (1916-2020)

by Nathaniel R

By now you've heard that one of the last* true superstars of Classic Hollywood has left the Earth. Three-time Oscar nominee Kirk Douglas, best known to modern audiences as "Spartacus" and the father of Oscar winner Michael Douglas has passed away at the age of...103 (!). We've written about his films before for his centennial (you know how we like centennials here at TFE) so if you're interested we have pieces on Spartacus, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Lust for Life, and multiple pieces on The Bad and the Beautiful.

*This leaves only Sidney Poitier and several female stars -- De Havilland, Novak, Johns, Saint, Lansbury, Moreno --  standing from Hollywood's Golden Age which is roughly considered to be the very late 1920s through the early 1960s stretching from the chaotic advent of sound through the tumultous time frame when "New Hollywood" took over. "Oldest living screen actors" post here.

Jennifer Jones, the early years and 'years at the top'

HAPPY JENNIFER JONES CENTENNIAL!

 Paolo wasn't kidding when he said that the Centennial of Jennifer Jones (that's today!) would be a challenge. Though we usually have some buy-in for centennials literally no one else on Team TFE volunteered for this one so it'll be short. But I'll do one or two pictures. i'm annoyed that I can't do Duel in the Sun (1946), which I've never seen, but I can't find it to stream. Actually easy availability is how I came up with your choices. So vote and tell me which of these films you most want to discuss:

free polls

But before we get there, and overview of her career.

And the eternal question: How long can any given star can stay at 'the top' from Old Hollywood to the right now...

Click to read more ...

Tab Hunter (1931-2018)

by Nathaniel R

Tab at the beach in the early '50sApologies that we didn't say our goodbyes to one of Hollywood's best hunks, Tab Hunter, in a timelier fashion.

Tab's real name was Arthur Kelm but back in the studio days almost everyone got a catchier name to boost their celebrity appeal... and you can't really beat Tab Hunter for a memorable name, can you? (Sometimes we wonder why actors don't do that now. Benedict Cumberbatch as a stage name and so many actors use their real names even if their real name is  long and hyphenated and hard to imagine on a marquee!).

Though born in New York his sun-kissed blonde beauty was a perfect fit for sunny California and Hollywood and he rose through the ranks quickly in films. Despite a few well regarded performances peppered throughout his career he was never considered a particularly strong actor and his fame diminished with time. Until recently but we'll get to that in a minute.

Tab Hunter and Dorothy Malone in "Battle Cry" from 1955, the year that made him a big star.

Yours truly first learned of him in the 1980s due to young me's obsession with Natalie Wood (my first actressexual fixation). The studio though they'd make a terrific onscreen couple and threw them together for back-to-back pictures in 1956 -- Burning Hills and The Girl He Left Behind -- because each had had big hits the year before. Teenage Natalie, already a star, was hot off of her first Oscar nomination for Rebel Without a Cause, ample proof that her child-star status would transfer well to adult stardom. Tab had had two huge hits in 1955 (Battle Cry and The Sea Chase). While his films didn't endure like Natalie's (with the arguable exception of Damn Yankees!), Warner Bros was passionate about his bankability...

Click to read more ...