Sundance: Rita Moreno in the Spotlight

By Abe Friedtanzer 

In a week where we’ve lost both Cicely Tyson and Cloris Leachman, it feels like the right time to celebrate trailblazing actresses who are still earning awards love well into their eighties and nineties. On tap at Sundance in the U.S. Documentary Competition section is Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It. This exploration of her life and the profound influence she has had on so many is a rich, endearing journey that constitutes a truly delightful and energizing look at a remarkable actress who just last week earned her fourth consecutive Critics Choice nomination at the age of eighty-nine.

This film should work equally well for those intimately familiar with much of Moreno’s resumé as well as those who know her only from her signature film role that won her an Oscar, 1961’s West Side Story, or from the great TV work she’s still doing on the recently-wrapped One Day at a Time...

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West Side Story... is forever.

by Nathaniel R

Rita Moreno, still sensational at 88 years young.It occurred to us last week while looking at photos from Steven Spielberg's 2020 remake of West Side Story that a huge swath of the original cast members from the 1961 Best Picture winner are still with us today. It's not just the legendary trailblazer Rita Moreno though she's the liveliest of the bunch despite being the oldest at a spritely 88. 

So after the jump all the surviving cast members!

We honor their contributions to an indelible piece of film history even though there are a great many of them that didn't say in movies thereafter. Anyway, thiis is us doing our small part to suggest and hope that they get a bit of attention when the new iteration of the greatest musical ever written arrives. Invite them to the December premiere at least, Spielberg, won'tcha?

Here they are...

Character names in white = the actor is still with us today

THE JETS

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Photos from 2020's West Side Story

by Murtada Elfadl

Vanity Fair has the exclusive first photos from Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story. They are certainly colorful, in more ways than one, if your main concern about this remake was the usual grayish color palette of Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski.

Authenticity in casting is what differentiates this version, according to Spielberg.

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Beauty Break: The Celebrity Portraiture of Phil Stern

by Nathaniel R

Happy Phil Stern Centennial! "who?" you say? Phil Stern, you philistines! He's one of the great Hollywood photographers. He lived a very long life, dying just 5 years ago at 95 years young but his work was largely before our time. We grew up with Herb Ritts and Annie Liebovitz as the biggest names in celebrity photoshoots but as long as Movie Stars have existed there have been artists behind the camera helping to mythologize them. Stern was one of those idolmakers taking several amazing photos of James Dean, Charlton Heston, Liz Taylor and many other important celebrities from the 20th century. Though celebrity portraits and candids weren't his only claim to fame having also been a war photographer. 

After the jump 14 other images from Stern's vast portfolio that we adore...

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Happy 91st to Nancy Olson, the last surviving cast member of "Sunset Blvd."

by Nathaniel R

It seems like we've been losing lots of Classic Hollywood people in the past year so we wanted to wish Nancy Olson of Sunset Blvd a very happy and healthy 91st birthday today. She's the last surviving member of that stone cold classic which netted her an Oscar nomination when she was just 22. Olson was such a success in Sunset Blvd that she went on to be paired with co-star William Holden in a few more pictures. Olson has long since retired, her last significant acting gig being in the shortlived primetime soap opera "Paper Dolls" in the 1980s. 

Olson's birthday, paired with Olivia de Havilland's incredible 103rd birthday earlier this month (wow) got us thinking about who is still with us from all time classics pre-1960s because there aren't a lot of them *sniffle*.  So after the jump, a quick perusal of some gigantic classics and the (credited) cast members who are still around to be endlessly grilled about them...

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