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Mitzi Gaynor has sadly died.

The beloved actress, who starred in South Pacific and Les Girls, passed away at the age of 93, her management team confirmed to Variety on Thursday (October 17).

She died of natural causes.

“For eight decades she entertained audiences in films, on television and on the stage. She truly enjoyed every moment of her professional career and the great privilege of being an entertainer,” the team wrote in a statement on social media.

“Off stage, she was a vibrant and extraordinary woman, a caring and loyal friend, and a warm, gracious, very funny and altogether glorious human being.”

She starred as Nellie Forbush in the 1958 big-screen adaptation of South Pacific together, performing the famous number “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.”

She also starred with Gene Kelly and Kay Kendall in the George Cukor-directed musical Les Girls.

She made her feature...

Mitzi Gaynor, star of 1950s big-screen musicals including “South Pacific” and “Les Girls” and a series of beloved variety specials in the 1970s, died on Thursday. She was 93.

Gaynor’s management team, Rene Reyes and Shane Rosamonda, confirmed to Variety that she died of natural causes.

“For eight decades she entertained audiences in films, on television and on the stage. She truly enjoyed every moment of her professional career and the great privilege of being an entertainer,” Reyes and Rosamonda wrote in a statement on Gaynor’s X account. “Off stage, she was a vibrant and extraordinary woman, a caring and loyal friend, and a warm, gracious, very funny and altogether glorious human being.”

Gaynor starred as Navy nurse Nellie Forbush in the 1958 big-screen adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” together with Rossano Brazzi as French planter Emile De Becque and John Kerr as Lt. Cable. Gaynor sang...

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Leslie Phillips, the British actor and Casanova of the Carry On movies who turned to serious supporting roles in Out of Africa and Empire of the Sun before voicing The Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter franchise, has died. He was 98.

Phillips died peacefully in his sleep on Monday, agent Jonathan Lloyd told the BBC on Tuesday.

With an eye for the ladies onscreen and off, the sophisticated Phillips appeared in more than 170 roles across screens big and small, portraying policemen, military officials, reverends and judges. But for audiences in the 1950s and ’60s, he was synonymous with the low-budget Carry On and Doctor series (he took over from Dirk Bogarde in the latter).

In the ’80s, he distanced himself from his playboy roles to lend gravitas to Sydney Pollack’s Oscar best picture winner Out of Africa (1985) and to Steven Spielberg’s...

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You don’t have to be obsessed with nostalgia to appreciate the aesthetic of a vintage movie poster — but it definitely helps. Vintage movie posters are multi-functional as far as gift giving goes. They’re perfect for movie lovers, they’re collectible, and they add a bit of character to any room. Whether you’re shopping for a gift for your home or office, or buying a present for someone else, we gathered up a short list of Old Hollywood movie posters to purchase online.

The round up of posters feature Marilyn Monroe, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Ed Begley Sr., and other unforgettable faces from Hollywood’s Golden Age. High quality...

The Secret Service who’ve pledged to give their lives to protect Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have for years been instructed not to use any of the seven bathrooms in the Trump/Kushner home.

Instead, the Secret Service has spent $100,000 in taxpayer money to rent a $3,000-per-month basement studio apartment nearby with a bathroom so that agents can use the toilet.

Why exactly the agents are barred from using one of the 6.5 bathrooms in the six-bedroom home is a matter of dispute. The White House is denying that Jared...

Vincente Minnelli took time out from expensive MGM shows like Gigi to knock off this tale about the London debutante season, a light-comedy Cinderella story without satire or social comment. Young Sandra Dee and John Saxon come off well, but the show belongs to stars Rex Harrison and especially Kay Kendall, whose comedy timing and finesse lift the tame, weightless material.

The Reluctant Debutante

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date May 26, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Rex Harrison, Kay Kendall, John Saxon, Sandra Dee, Angela Lansbury, Peter Myers, Diane Clare, Charles Herbert.

Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg

Film Editor: Adrienne Fazan

Written by William Douglas-Home from his play

Produced by Pandro S. Berman

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Not often mentioned as a highlight of Vincente Minnelli’s career, The Reluctant Debutante is enjoyable now for the comedy playing of Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall. Harrison hadn’t been...

All hail legendary song-and-dance man Gene Kelly on the 106th anniversary of his birth on August 23. In the history of American film, there were unarguably two great male dancers — Fred Astaire and Kelly. Astaire’s style was romantic and sophisticated, with long lines and elegant movement. Kelly’s style was more athletic — a guy’s guy, if you will — with a scrappy style that set him apart from other dancers of his era.

Kelly appeared to be able to do it all. He could dance, sing, and act in his films, ultimately choreographing and directing them as well. In the course of his nearly four decades on film, he starred in such classics as “An American in Paris” and “Anchors Aweigh,” as well as starring and co-directing the great musicals “On the Town” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”

For his work, Kelly earned two Golden Globe nominations — one for Best...

The curtain is falling on the MGM musical, and Gene Kelly’s final song and dance at the studio is for a Paris-set show biz tale about a dancing star and his trio of showgirls. Actually, the comedy and the actresses get more attention than does Kelly. The gimmick is a Rashomon– like clash of conflicting testimony, but we prefer to concentrate on the sexy dancing and Kay Kendall’s hilarious drunk act. Who thought a boozy beauty wailing opera songs would be funny?

Les Girls

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 114 min. / Cole Porter’s Les Girls / Street Date April 17, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.9

Starring: Gene Kelly, Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, Taina Elg, Jacques Bergerac, Leslie Phillips, Henry Daniell, Patrick Macnee.

Cinematography: Robert Surtees

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Costumes: Orry-Kelly

Choreography: Jack Cole

Original Music: Cole Porter, arranged and orchestrated by Alexander Courage, Adolph Deutsch, Skip Martin

Written...

For this week's episode of our cinematography series Hit Me With Your Best Shot we wanted a slight curveball as a way to celebrate the release of the Costume Design documentary Women He's Undressed. It's now available to rent on iTunes or purchase on other digital platforms. (Jose's interview with the director here). The film is about the legendary Orry-Kelly, who designed a truckload of classic Hollywood features and stars, and won three Oscars in the 1950s for An American in Paris, Les Girls  and Some Like It Hot.  So those playing "Best Shot" this week could choose any of those three. I watched Les Girls since it gets the least attention and they even use its image for the documentary's poster (left).

Les Girls  (George Cukor, 1957) is not well remembered today but curiously it reminds us yet again that mainstream Hollywood in the 50s and 60s paid a lot...

Because we're having fun with this little feature we'll continue. On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1881 Ahead of her time Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross. She doesn't get a biopic because Hollywood is only interested in "Great Man" biopics

1916 Happy Centennial to author Harold Robbins who penned 25 best-sellers some of which became famous movies like The Carpetbaggers (1964), the Elvis flick King Creole (1958), and the notorious Pia Zadora Razzie winner The Lonely Lady (1983)

Rope (1949) and Swoon (1992) - two great movies inspired by the Leopold & Loeb case

1924 Chicago college students Leopold & Loeb murder a teenage boy in a "thrill killing." Their crime inspires the story of the gay deviants in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1949), the Cannes Best Actor winning Compulsion (1958) and is recreated in the New Queer Cinema classic Swoon (1992)

1926 Kay Kendall of Les Girls (1957) fame is born

1952 Two time Oscar nominee John Garfield (best...

Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...

In her new book Rachel Cooke re-examines the 1950s through 10 women who pioneered in their careers. In this extract she tells the stories of sisters-in-law Muriel and Betty Box, two prominent women in the British film industry

Until recently, anyone who wanted to see the film To Dorothy a Son had to lock themselves deep in the bowels of the British Film Institute off Tottenham Court Road, London, and watch it on an old Steenbeck editing machine. A little-known comedy from 1954, To Dorothy is no one's idea of a classic. It has an infuriating star in Shelley Winters, a creaky screenplay by Peter Rogers (later the producer of the Carry On series) and a set that looks as if it is on loan from a local amateur dramatics society.

We are in the home of Tony (John Gregson) and his baby-faced wife, Dorothy (Peggy Cummins). Dorothy is heavily pregnant, and confined to bed.

Rex Harrison hat on TCM: ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Anna and the King of Siam’ Rex Harrison is Turner Classic Movies’ final "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 31, 2013. TCM is currently showing George Cukor’s lavish My Fair Lady (1964), an Academy Award-winning musical that has (in my humble opinion) unfairly lost quite a bit of its prestige in the last several decades. Rex Harrison, invariably a major ham whether playing Saladin, the King of Siam, Julius Caesar, the ghost of a dead sea captain, or Richard Burton’s lover, is for once flawlessly cast as Professor Henry Higgins, who on stage transformed Julie Andrews from cockney duckling to diction-master swan and who in the movie version does the same for Audrey Hepburn. Harrison, by the way, was the year’s Best Actor Oscar winner. (See also: "Audrey Hepburn vs. Julie Andrews: Biggest Oscar Snubs.") Following My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison...

Vivacious star of Genevieve and The Railway Children

Though the actor Dinah Sheridan, who has died aged 92, was an "English rose" of the type still firmly in vogue in British theatre and films of the immediate postwar era, she had a vivacity and depth of talent that went further than the label suggested.

The 1953 film that would almost certainly have turned her into an international star – but for an ill-judged second marriage to the head of the company that made it – was Genevieve. Two rival couples taking part in the London to Brighton veteran car rally were the backbone of the film, and Kenneth More as the brasher of the two male drivers and Kay Kendall as his glamorous model girlfriend had the more extrovert roles. But Sheridan was quietly appealing as the woman who would rather stand by the man prepared to lose the race (John Gregson) than win...

Actor was best known for her roles as the mother in The Railway Children and the 1953 comedy Genevieve

The film star Dinah Sheridan, who played the mother in The Railway Children, has died. Sheridan, 92, who also starred in the 1953 film comedy Genevieve, died peacefully at her home in Northwood, Middlesex on Sunday surrounded by her family, said her agent Gareth Owen.

Sheridan, the mother of actor Jenny Hanley and politician Sir Jeremy Hanley, was considered the quintessential English rose because of her elegance and understated beauty.

She was born Dinah Nadyejda Ginsburg in Hampstead, north London, in 1920 to a Russian father and German mother who were photographers to the royal family. Her first stage role came at the age of 12 and she subsequently went on tour as Wendy in Peter Pan which starred Charles Laughton as Captain Hook. Her film break came shortly and she appeared in such films as...

As Contessa Teresa ‘Tracy’ Di Vicenzo in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Diana Rigg embodied a complex and charming, if sadly terminal ‘Bond girl’. Decked in glamorous, era-specific trends by Marjory Cornelius, Rigg’s costumes were subtly symbolic of her tomboyish nature, culminating in a memorably daring wedding ensemble.

Glamour and symbolism were director Peter Hunt’s idea; he intended a return to the more distinguished Bondian elements of dress and production design as established in Goldfinger (1964). Acknowledged for his dapper style on set, Hunt even sent new 007 George Lazenby to his own tailor. Lazenby’s Bond is one of the sharpest attired in the series, principally because he reflects the flourishing youth movement of the time without betraying the character’s traditional Savile Row sensibilities.

Throughout the film, Tracy wears a variety of dramatic outfits ranging from a scalloped dress in sea green silk and sequins with huge...

It is hard to avoid a certain nostalgia while watching Stephen Frears' new film, Tamara Drewe (adapted from the Posy Simmonds graphic novel.) The British film industry hasn't been making this kind of bucolic comedy since the days of Kay Kendall, Kenneth More and Genevieve (1953). Admittedly, there is much more sex in Tamara Drewe than in most of the films made by the Rank Organisation in the 1950s. Tamara (Gemma Arterton) is promiscuous in a way that Phyllis Calvert and Patricia Roc characters in Fifties melodramas never were. However, Frears' characters are types who haven't been much seen on British screens in recent years – middle-class folk who have Aga ovens in their kitchens and listen to Radio 4.