Saturday, November 22, 2008

Geraldine Page (November 22, 1924 – June 13, 1987)




Geraldine Sue Page (November 22, 1924June 13, 1987) was an American actress. Although starring in at least two dozen feature films, she is primarily known for her celebrated work in the American theater.


Page was born in Kirksville, Missouri. She attended the Goodman Theatre Dramatic School in Chicago and studied acting with Uta Hagen in New York. She began appearing in stock at the age of seventeen.


Page was a trained method actor and worked closely with Lee Strasberg.


Page gave celebrated performances in films as well as her work on Broadway. Her film debut was in Out of the Night (1947). Her role in Hondo, garnered her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In all, despite her relatively small filmography, Page received eight Academy Award nominations. She finally won the Oscar in 1986 for a wonderful performance in The Trip to Bountiful, which was based on a play by Horton Foote. Had she not won for Trip to Bountiful, she would have held the record for most nominations without a single win. When she won (F. Murray Abraham, upon opening the envelope, exclaimed "I consider this woman the greatest actress in the English language"), she received a standing ovation from the audience. She was surprised by her win (she openly talked about being a seven-time Oscar loser), and took a while to get to the stage to accept the award because she had taken off her shoes while sitting in the audience. She had not expected to win, and her feet were sore.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Madonna and Guy strike deal...



For richer: Madonna seen at a charity gala in New York last night as it emerged she and guy Ritchie have agreed a divorce settlement.
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:10 PM on 20th November 2008

Madonna and Guy Ritchie have reached agreement on their divorce - with the British film director refusing to take a penny of the pop star’s cash, it has emerged.
An announcement could come by the end of the month, a source close to the negotiations tells London's Evening Standard.

Another report, in The Times, claimed that notice of a decree nisi would be posted in the Registry of the Family Division in London within twenty-four hours.

Madonna, who attended a charity gala in New York last night looking much younger than her fifty years , will walk away from the eight-year marriage with her fortune, estimated at £300m, intact.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

LANA TURNER~The Bad and The Beautiful







One time "Sweater Girl" Lana Turner led a tempestuous life filled as much with torment and heartache as it was with glamour and romance.



She Will Be Preserved In Memory As She Was On celluloid: a platinum archetype of the silky-voiced siren, a luminous sex goddess whose looks could melt a monk's resolve. The Sweater Girl, they called her. In fact, Lana Turner spent four decades making 54 films, playing every variety of girl-good, bad, sometimes heartless, but never less than glamorous. Even off screen, she looked every inch the movie diva. "She never appeared in public," recalls Van Johnson, her costar in 1945's Weekend at the Waldorf, "unless she was beautifully coiffed and dressed exquisitely."
And yet "she never played The Star," says Hope Lange, who was a 19-year-old ingénue when she met Turner, then 36, on the set of 1957's Peyton Place. "She had no sense of self-importance. There wasn't an ounce of condescension to her." Despite her indelible portrayal of the icy adulteress in 1946 The Postman Always Rings Twice, "she was the opposite of her hard-boiled image," Says Terri Garr, who in 1980 worked with Turner on her last film, the never-released Witches' Brew. "She was very sweet; a gracious, genteel, lovely woman."
And surprisingly shy. Publicist John Springer recalls how, just before Turner was scheduled to reminisce about her career in front of an audience at New York City's Town Hall in 1975, "we literally had to push her onstage. At first she was trembling and barely able to speak, but the audience absolutely adored her. By the end, "adds Springer, "she was as bright and funny as could be."
Her life, however, was filled with sadness and pain. She had seven failed marriages, three miscarriages, two abortions and a suicide attempt. More vividly remembered than any of her movies perhaps, is the great scandal in which she played a leading role. In 1958, the actress's 14 year old daughter, Cheryl, fatally stabbed Turner's gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, in Turner's Beverly Hills home.
Lana somehow managed to survive it all. What finished her finally, was throat cancer; a heavy smoker, she died on June 29 at aged 74 in her two bedroom condo in L.A. with her maid of forty-four years Carmen Cruz by her side. Eve since her diagnosis in 1992, Turner had lived reclusively, leaving her high-rise only for her radiation treatments. Until the end, she kept up her facials and manicures and insisted that a hairdresser come twice a week. But there had been few public sightings. As one recent biographer quotes her, "I want my fans to remember me as I was."
But who was that, really? She was born Julia Jean Turner on February 8, 1921 in the mining town of Wallace Idaho, the daughter of Mildred Frances Cowan, who at 15 had eloped with 24 year-old John Virgil, a gambler and bootlegger. When Julia was 9, Virgil was murdered after a big win in a crap game. "The shock I suffered then may be a valid excuse for me now," she said many years later. "It may explain things I myself do not understood."
In 1935, when Julia was 14, she and her mother moved to L.A. (Mildred's respiratory problems mandated the shift to a drier climate.) A year later, Julia, then a student at Hollywood High School, decided to cut classes one day and dashed across the street to grab a coke at the Top Hat Cafe-not Schwab's Drugstore, as Hollywood legend has it. She was spotted by Billy Wilkerson, the influential publisher of the Hollywood Reporter. Wilkerson introduced her to Zeppo Marx (of Marx Brothers fame), who was running his own casting agency. Zeppo, in turn, sent her to director Mervyn LeRoy, who had been looking for a special girl-someone with box sex appeal and innocence, he said- to cast in a thriller called They Won't Forget. No one who saw it did.
The sight of the voluptuous 15-year-old in a tight skirt and clingy knits drew so many wolf whistles at a screening that an embarrassed Turner and her mortified mother slunk outside to a waiting taxi. (Turner was proud, however, of her new screen name-Lana-which according to her 1982 autobiography, she dreamed up herself after rejecting LeRoy's choices: Leonore or Lurlene.)
While some critics belittled Turner's talent, all agreed on one thing. "In any posture," said TIME, "Lana suggests she looking up from a pillow."
For a woman who made a living promising carnal bliss, "sex was never important to me," she wrote in her memoirs. The preliminaries though, were another matter. From her earliest days as a $100-per-week MGM contract player, she was known as Hollywood's Nightclub Queen and partied until dawn with escorts including Robert Stack and Fernando Lamas at Ciro's and the Trocadero. Mickey Rooney, who had starred with Turner in 1938's Love Finds Andy Hardy, claimed her as conquest. Later, armies of men of men would shower her with lavish gifts. But the man she called "the great love of her life" was Tyrone Power, who romanced her in the late 1940's. However they never wed.
Other suitors did become husbands. Turner tied the knot 7 times in 29 years. Her first marriage, to bandleader Artie Shaw in 1940, lasted less than six months. In 1942 she wed Stephan Crane, a gambler turned restaurateur-only to learn five months later, that he was not yet divorced from his first wife. He and Turner wed legally in 1943, five months before their only child, Cheryl Christina Crane was born. A year later though, Lana sued for divorce. In 1948, balding, overweight multimillionaire Henry J. (Bob) Topping finally won her over when he plopped a 15-carat engagement ring in her martini. But his alcoholism and philandering became too much to bear: She slashed her wrist in 1951 after suing him for divorce. Husband number 4, onetime Tarzan Lex Barker, sexually abused 10-year-old Cheryl. When Turner found out about it in 1957, she gave him 20 minutes to clear out. (In 1973, when Barker dropped dead of a heart attack on a Manhattan street, she dryly inquired, "What took him so long?") In her 1982 memoir, she reflected, "Somewhere there was a pattern, something in me that made me choose takers over and over again."
But none of Lana's romances was a bigger train wreck than her fling with Johnny Stompanato, a minor hood and crony of gangster Mickey Cohen. On Good Friday, April 4, 1958, Cheryl overheard Stompanato threatening to kill her mother during a domestic dispute. The girl grabbed an eight-inch kitchen knife and flung open the door to Turner's room. "I thought she hit him in the stomach," Lana later testified. "They came together and then they parted. I never saw the blade." His kidney and aorta punctured, Stompanato choked, gurgled and died. For days, gawkers cruised past Turner's lavish Beverly Hills Home. District Attorney William B. McKesson declined to charge Cheryl for the crime, noting that she had never had a true home "either with her mother or father." Although Lana retained legal custody, a court ordered Cheryl to live with her grandmother Mildred. But Cheryl continued to have emotional problems, and at 17 she began a 10-month stay at a mental hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. Now a successful business woman, Cheryl reconciled with her mother in 1981. "Our old strained relationship began to turn into one of friendship and understanding," Cheryl wrote in her 1988 memoir, Detour: A Hollywood Story.
Ironically, Lana's biggest hit, Ross Hunter's Imitation of Life (1959), tells the story of an actress who sacrifices her daughter's affection for her career. The movie made more money for Universal than any previous film in the studio's history.
But that and Madame X in 1966 were among Turner's last career high points. In the 70's she toured briefly with several stage productions, played haughty Jacqueline Perrault in the CBS prime time serial Falcon Crest and even touted a chain of Lana Turner Mini spas.
In 1983 she officially retired and lived quietly for the next nine years. Then in1992, word began to circulate that she was undergoing radiation treatments for throat cancer that had spread to her jaw and her lungs. True to form, on her birthday two years ago she told friends-in a hoarse whisper-that she was "completely recovered." It was a final fitting performance from the redoubtable star. For Lana Turner in the words of her former manager, Taylor Pero, lived by only three precepts: Image before truth, facade rather than fact, and pride over all."

Zeta-Jones goes blonde as Lana Turner! (rumored)


Catherine Zeta-Jones will soon find out if blondes have more fun when she takes on the role of Hollywood bombshell Lana Turner.
The 38-year-old star has been cast as Turner in the upcoming movie Stompanato, about the actress' stormy relationship with Los Angeles underworld figure Johnny Stompanato, who was stabbed and killed by Turner's 14-year-old daughter.
Zeta-Jones has played brunettes throughout her career, and admits it was a little weird to see herself as a blonde.
While the script is still in development, Zeta-Jones said she was looking forward to discussing the role with her father-in-law, Kirk Douglas, who starred with Turner in the 1952 film The Bad and The Beautiful.


Stompanato (2010)

Writers:Sebastian Gutierrez (writer)David Webb Peoples (writer)Release Date:2010 (USA)
Genre:Crime Drama
Plot:Lana Turner and Johnny were sweethearts--until the day in 1958 when the screen queen's daughter, Cheryl, stabbed the hot-tempered gangland figure before he could make an exit from her mom's Beverly Hills bedroom.
Cast

Catherine Zeta-Jones
As Lana Turner (rumored)

Monday, November 17, 2008

Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985)



Rock Hudson (November 17, 1925 – October 2, 1985) was an American film and television actor, recognised as a romantic leading man during the 1960s and 1970s. Hudson was voted Star of the Year, Favorite Leading Man, and similar titles by numerous movie magazines and was unquestionably one of the most popular and well-known movie stars of the time. He completed nearly 70 motion pictures and starred in several television productions during a career that spanned over four decades. Hudson was also one of the first major Hollywood celebrities to die from an AIDS related illness.

While Hudson's career was blooming, he was struggling to keep his personal life out of the headlines. Throughout his career, he epitomized wholesome manliness, and in 1955, after several male lovers, he married his agent's secretary Phyllis Gates. The news was made known by all the major gossip magazines. One magazine story, headlined "When Day Is Done, Heaven Is Waiting," quoted Hudson as saying, "When I count my blessings, my marriage tops the list." The union lasted three years. Gates filed for divorce in April 1958, charging mental cruelty. Hudson did not contest the divorce, and Gates received an alimony of US$250 a week for 10 years.

In Gates' 1987 autobiography My Husband, Rock Hudson, the book she wrote with veteran Hollywood chronicler Bob Thomas, Gates insists she dated Hudson for several months and lived with him for two months before his surprise marriage proposal. She claims to have married Hudson out of love and not, as it was later purported, to stave off a major exposure of Hudson's sexual orientation. However, after her death from lung cancer in January 2006, some informants reportedly stated that she was actually a lesbian who married Hudson for his money, knowing from the beginning of their relationship that he was gay.She never remarried.

According to the 1986 biography, Rock Hudson: His Story, by Hudson and Sara Davidson, Rock was good friends with American novelist Armistead Maupin and a few of Hudson's lovers were: Jack Coates (born 1944); Hollywood publicist Tom Clark (1933 - 1995), who also later published a memoir about Hudson, Rock Hudson: Friend of Mine; and Marc Christian, who later won a suit against the Hudson estate.

The book, The Thin Thirty, by Shannon Ragland, chronicles Hudson's involvement in a 1962 sex scandal at the University of Kentucky involving the football team. Ragland writes that Jim Barnett, a local low-level promoter, engaged in prostitution with members of the team, and that Hudson was one of Barnett's customers.

A popular urban legend states that Hudson married Jim Nabors in the 1970s. While Hudson was closeted at the time, the two never had anything beyond a friendship. The legend was originated with a group of "middle-aged homosexuals who live in Huntington Beach", as Hudson put it, sending out joke invitations to "the marriage of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors". Despite the obvious impossibility of such an event, the "Rock-Pyle Wedding" was taken seriously by some. As a result of the false rumor, Nabors and Hudson never spoke to each other again.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Get a Load of Rob Marshall's 'Nine'!


By: Brad Brevet Friday, November 7, 2008

The first photo from the set of Rob Marshall's musical Nine has just arrived and it is impressive! The picture you see above is just the center piece to the atmopsheric and smoky jazz vibe given off by the complete full-size image which you can see right here.
Nine stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, and Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson and Stacy "Fergie" Ferguson. The film is based on the Tony Award Winning Broadway musical and inspired by Fellini's classic film 8 1/2 telling the story of Guido (Day-Lewis) a film director stuck in neutral as he tries to make a film while haunted by the demands of all the women in his life, including a wife, mistress and even his deceased mother.
The film is being shot in England at Shepperton Studios, and in Italy on location and at Cinecitta Studios in Rome and is set for a limited release on September 9, 2009.



Jim Bailey Is Judy Garland - Live In Concert



Herbst Theatre - San FranciscoSaturday, December 20, 2008 at 8:00 PMWorld-renowned artist, Jim Bailey, live in concertaccompanied by a full orchestra, performs his highly acclaimed tribute to the world's greatest entertainer-Judy Garland.Celebrating 40 years in a career that has taken him from Carnegie Hall to the London Palladium to over 80 television and film appearances, Mr Bailey continues to enthrall audiences with his stunning visual and vocal mastery.Accompanied by a full orchestra, Jim will perform the most well known songs from the Garland repertoire, including "The Trolley Song", "Swanee", "Old Man River","The Man That Got Away", to name just a few, plus special selections to commemorate the holiday season.This appearance celebrates the 40th year anniversary of when, in 1968, Jim Bailey, at the beginning of his career, was joined on a Los Angeles stage by Garland herself and sang "Bye Bye Blackbird" as a duet. This was the beginning of a close friendship which endured until Garland's death a year later.The London Times noted "He defies disbelief".The Boston Globe stated "He is an inspiration; the next best thing to Garland herself"."One of the most astonishing acts to ever tread the boards..."

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Jim Bailey Is Judy Garland - Live In Concert
Saturday 12/20/20088:00 pm
Herbst TheatreSan Francisco, CA

Monday, November 10, 2008

Me and Rita ~ Patrick O Sanchez

Patrick & Tony meet the divine Rita Moreno!
Patrick as Liberace!



HI Kids,
Last night I saw Rita Moreno's cabaret show and it was fabulous. She looks great sounds great and is great. Here is a picture she took with my partner Tony and I. I also added some Halloween pics of me as Liberace.
~ Patrick O Sanchez

Friday, November 7, 2008

RITA MORENO~San Francisco's Premiere Night Club "Little Tributes" Rrazz Room Debut! Through Sunday, November 23 ONLY!


For those of you think RITA MORENO is ageless, the lady herself begs to differ, as she freely admits to being about to turn 77 next month. Nonetheless, anyone who catches her 90-minute act at the RRAZZ ROOM will still find it hard to believe.

MUSIC REVIEW: Moreno"stellar Rrazz showcase, by David Wiegand, Chonicle Staff Writer in SFGate...Nov 7, 2008.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

SALLY FIELD TURNS 62...we really like her!




Sally Margaret Field (born November 6, 1946) is an American two-time Academy Award-winning actress. She is also a three-time Emmy Award winner and two-time Golden Globe Award winner who became a household name at age 20 as Sister Bertrille in the 1960s sitcom The Flying Nun. She has won two Oscars, for Norma Rae in 1979, and for Places in the Heart in 1984.
More recently, Field stars as Nora Holden Walker on the ABC hit drama Brothers & Sisters, as the Walker family matriarch.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Oprah Winfrey and other big stars join the Obama celebrations.


VIVIEN LEIGH (November ~5~ 1913 ~ July~8~ 1967.




Vivien Leigh, Lady Olivier (5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967), was an English actress. She won two Academy Awards for playing "southern belles": Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End.
She was a prolific stage performer, frequently in collaboration with her husband, Laurence Olivier, who directed her in several of her roles. During her thirty-year stage career, she played parts that ranged from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth.
Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that it sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress, but ill health proved to be her greatest obstacle. Affected by bipolar disorder for most of her adult life, she gained a reputation for being a difficult person to work with, and her career went through periods of decline. She was further weakened by recurrent bouts of chronic tuberculosis, with which she was first diagnosed in the mid-1940s. She and Olivier divorced in 1960, and Leigh worked sporadically in film and theatre until her death from tuberculosis, in 1967.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Obama Wins Presidency ~ The 44th President of The Unided States


WASHINGTON (Nov. 4) - Barack Obama was elected the nation's first black president Tuesday night in a historic triumph that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself.
The 47-year-old Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his victory by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hardfought battleground states — Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Iowa.

Jane Fonda Returns To Broadway After 46 Years!


3 November 2008 5:29 PM, PST From wenn.com See recent WENN news
Jane Fonda will return to Broadway for the first time in 46 years when she takes on a starring role in Moises Kaufman's 33 Variations.
The movie great will play a modern-day musicologist attempting to unravel the mysteries of composer Beethoven's inspirations.
Fonda says, "I can't wait to get back on stage... in this role that I understand so well."
And thrilled Kaufman adds, "I am delighted to be working with one of America's greatest actresses, a performer of such insight, intellect and heart."
Fonda's last appearance on Broadway was in the 1963 drama Strange Interlude.
The play will open in New York this winter.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Our NADINE Raves "TINA TURNER " In Concert last night...



Hi ALL
Just woke up, got in very late last night we went to see TINA. All I can say is number 1 I am still having trouble hearing but it was worth it and my God Tina is one of THE best performers I have EVER seen in my life. I enjoyed it so much, the sets were AMazing with fire and flames and fireworks and she did 9 costume changes including Tina dressing as she did in Mad Maxx, her voice is incredible and she has to have the best damned legs of anyone I have ever seen. WE were very close to her, her skin is amazing, she bounces around that stage like a 20 year old and it was just marvelous to hear her do all her hits. The crowd never sat they were wild and at one point Tina was on something that resembled a ladder on a hook and ladder truck, it came out over the audience and the concert was about 3 1/2 hours with a 30 minute intermission. I am SO glad I went. I had never seen her live before and it is something I will never forget. For 68 she is INCREDIBLE. there was so much demand for her that they added an additional night on Sat night. Way to go Tina.
If you have the chance to see her RUN don't walk, at 68 this could be her very last tour. I walked out of there last night SO incredibly happy to have been in that audience, the love for her, she had a 7 minute standing ovation when she came out. Her opening was incredible, she was on a pedestal high up in the air and stood there for 7 minutes while the audience never sat and she had to quiet down to finally begin. I have never seen anything like it.
Nadine.
Nadine