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Toni Vaz — a trailblazing stunt performer, actress and activist, who also founded the NAACP Image Awards — has died at 101.

She died Oct. 4 in Woodland Hills, according to a spokesperson for Vaz, at the Motion Picture & Television Fund assisted living facility, where she was a longtime resident.

In addition to her acting roles and stuntwork that had her doubling for such stars as Cicely Tyson, she founded the NAACP Image Awards to honor her peers and encourage studios and producers to hire and honor a wider range of talent. The first Image Awards ceremony was held on Aug. 13, 1967 in the Beverly Hills Hotel’s International Ballroom.

However, she was not credited with founding the awards until 2021, when she was honored at the awards’ 52nd ceremony. “Black-ish” star Anthony Anderson introduced her. You can watch a clip of the moment below:

Born to parents from Barbados who had immigrated to the U.

Toni Vaz, an actor-turned-pioneering stunt performer who went on to found the NAACP Image Awards, had died. She was 101. A spokesperson told Deadline that Vaz died October 4 at the Motion Picture Fund campus in Woodland Hills but did not provide other details.

Growing up in New York City, Vaz’s Barbados-native mother wouldn’t let her watch movies. But when she came of age, Vaz headed to Hollywood. She was cast as an extra in the 1959 feature Tarzan the Ape Man, doing a scene opposite MGM’s Leo the Lion. She later had small roles in Anna Lucasta and 1966’s The Singing Nun, which led to a new career in stunt work — a first for a Black woman.

Vaz performed stunts for such groundbreaking actors as Cecily Tyson — standing in for the star on Mission: Impossible — Eartha Kitt and Juanita Moore. Soon she was traveling the world performing all kinds...

It’s the summer of “Blaxploitation, Baby!,” the latest festival hosted by Film Forum.

The indie theater announced the upcoming festival which will take place August 16 through August 22. The program celebrates the early ‘70s genre of Black cinema, and features films wth iconic movie stars Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, Ron O’Neal, Tamara Dobson, Jim Brown, Vonetta McGee, Fred Williamson, Isaac Hayes, and more.

“Blaxploitation, Baby!” is dedicated to author and pioneering film historian Donald Bogle, who collaborated on Film Forum’s first Blaxploitation festival in 1995. Bogle credited Melvin Van Peebles’ filmography for helping to establish the genre. “Blaxploitation, Baby!” additionally ranges from works from directors such as Ossie Davis, Gordon Parks, and Gordon Parks Jr.

As well as the screenings, the festival will include the sales of critic and historian Odie Henderson’s “Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation” and Donald Bogle’s acclaimed TCM book “Hollywood Black” at concessions.

When Bernard Hill died recently, I wrote about the unique feeling accompanying the real-life death of an actor when that actor has been especially associated with a dramatic death scene onscreen. That feeling is only magnified when it’s been a very long time since the actor performed the demise in question. Juanita Moore, with her character’s funeral in 1959’s “Imitation of Life” being the grandest of any in the movies, only dying in real life in 2013 is an example.

One of the most extreme of these has just occurred, a death that also represents the severing of another critical link to Old Hollywood. Darryl Hickman died this past Wednesday, May 22, at the age of 92. He was a child actor in “The Prisoner of Zenda” and John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” who, upon exiting his teenage years, decided he wanted to become a monk. He entered a...

There’s a special tug at the heartstrings that follows the death of an actor who’s been closely associated with a death scene, as is the case with Bernard Hill, who died May 5 at the age of 79.

The death of Juanita Moore in 2013 at the age of 98 came 54 years after maybe the ultimate movie deathbed scene — not to mention funeral, with a horse-drawn hearse and Mahalia Jackson eulogizing her in song — in Douglas Sirk’s “Imitation of Life.” And when Carl Weathers died earlier this year, it came nearly four decades after his best-known character, Apollo Creed, had died in “Rocky IV,” prompting the entire “Creed” franchise to spring up in his wake, with him conspicuously, obviously, absent.

Much praise and remembrance has been given since Hill’s passing to his role as Captain E.J. Smith in James Cameron’s “Titanic.” But Bernard Hill’s death scene as Theoden...

What’s so inspiring and energizing about Steven Spielberg is that he isn’t just one of the greatest filmmakers ever, he’s an eclectic cinephile who talks about his favorite films with the boyish enthusiasm of a fan.

So he was a natural fit, alongside Martin Scorsese and Paul Thomas Anderson, for the advisory panel that came together in June to support Turner Classic Movies. As part of that role, he’s recorded his first “Spielberg’s Picks” video, a recommendations list of his personal faves from the September 2023 TCM lineup. Watch the video above, an IndieWire exclusive, for not just his choices, but his incisive comments.

For his debut picks, he chose Vincente Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944), Douglas Sirk’s “Imitation of Life” (1959), Gordon Douglas’s “Them!” (1954), Minnelli’s “The Bad and the Beautiful” (1952), and Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man” (1957). Scorsese and Anderson’s own picks are forthcoming,...

John Legend is writing the score to a stage adaptation of the 1959 film Imitation of Life.

The musical, which is in development and aiming for Broadway, features a book by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Sweat, Ruined) and direction by Liesl Tommy, who directed Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed on Broadway. The production held a private industry reading at the end of April.

Universal Theatrical Group and Get Lifted Film Co, a production company led by Legend, as well as producer Mike Jackson and Friends at Work CEO Ty Stiklorius, are producing the musical.

Imitation of Life, which originated as a 1933 novel written by Fannie Hurst, follows Delilah Johnston, a Black woman and mother living in Atlantic City in the 1920s with her daughter Peola, who passes as white. Johnston forms a friendship and business partnership with Bea Pullman, a white woman who is a widow, and must navigate the...

A stage musical adaptation of the Fannie Hurst novel Imitation of Life and its film versions is under development at Universal Theatrical Group, with Lynn Nottage writing the book and John Legend handling the music and lyrics. Liesl Tommy is attached to direct.

Following a private industry reading that took place April 24-28 in New York City, Universal Theatrical Group — the live theater division of Universal Pictures — announced the further development of the project today.

Liesl Tommy

Imitation of Life will be produced for the stage by Universal Theatrical Group and Get Lifted Film Co. The musical is being developed for Broadway.

The novel originally was published in 1933, with Universal Pictures producing two film adaptations — the first directed by John Stahl in 1934 and starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers, and the second in 1959, with stars Lana Turner and Juanita Moore directed by Douglas Sirk. The 1934 film was Oscar-nominated, and the...

The Imitation of Life star was pigeonholed and undervalued by Hollywood but years later, she is finally receiving the recognition she deserves

“I went through a hell of a lot, you know? Being Black and all. And beautiful!” Interviewed on the TV at the age of 92, Juanita Moore may have been laughing but she was telling a painful truth about her career in Hollywood. Despite being Oscar-nominated for a truly great performance in one of Hollywood’s most powerful melodramas, her career was a struggle: for recognition, for roles worthy of her talents, and her own fight for better opportunities for her Black peers in the entertainment industry.

A new documentary, which premiered this weekend in Los Angeles and will be screening until 10 November, tells the life story of this remarkable actor. It also tells the story of racism in 20th-century Hollywood: as seen through the eyes of a woman of remarkable talent and integrity.

The Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angele is a tourist attraction all its own, with new actors, directors, and musicians receiving stars every year. This year’s crop of recipients spans all facets of media, honoring those whose time for recognition has come.

In an announcement made by chair of the Chamber’s Walk of Fame selection committee, Ellen K, directors Jon Favreau and John Waters, as well as actress Mindy Kaling, Uma Thurman, and Paul Walker will all receive stars this year. Others set to have star ceremonies include Vince Vaughn, Martin Lawrence, and Bill Pullman. Walker won’t be the only star to receive a posthumous Star, as “Imitation of Life” actress Juanita Moore will also receive one after a lengthy campaign by her nephew.

“The panel thoughtfully selected these talented individuals, and we can’t wait to celebrate them as they become part of Hollywood’s...

Actor Paul Walker and singer Jenni Rivera will be posthumously honored with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said Friday.

The news was revealed in a statement that announced next year’s two dozen honorees. The selectees were chosen from among hundreds of nominations and ratified by the chamber on Wednesday. Being named doesn’t automatically mean a star will be granted. Honorees have two years to take action on accepting the award, which carries a fee.

“The Selection Panel, made up of fellow Walk of Famers, hand-picks a group of honorees each year that represent various genres of the entertainment world,” chairwoman and Walk of Fame star recipient Ellen K said in a statement, “The panel thoughtfully selected these talented individuals, and we can’t wait to celebrate them as they become part of Hollywood’s history with the unveiling of their...

Uma Thurman, Lenny Kravitz, Mindy Kaling and the Jonas Brothers are among those receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023.

Ludacris, Bill Pullman, Thurman, Vince Vaughn and John Waters will receive stars in the motion pictures category, along with posthumous stars for Juanita Moore and Walker. In the television category, stars will be given to Jon Favreau, Kaling, Martin Lawrence, Ralph Macchio, Garrett Morris and Ellen Pompeo. The music and recording category will see the Jonas Brothers receive a collective star, alongside a posthumous star for Jenni Rivera and stars for Marc Anthony, Irving Azoff, Sheila E, Lenny Kravitz, Blake Shelton and Charlie Wilson. Lang Lang, Melba Moore, and the a cappella group Pentatonix will receive stars in the live theatre and live performance category.

The selections were announced by radio host Ellen K, the chair of the Chamber’s Walk of Fame selection panel, on Friday.

Singers Beyonce and Zendaya are said to be in talks to star in a remake of the movie ‘Imitation of Life’. The drama film was first released in 1934, based on Fannie Hurst’s 1933 novel of the same name, and then remade in 1959, starring Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin and Sandra Dee, reports […]...

Racial passing occurs when a member of one racial group is either believed to be or accepted as a member of another. In the U.S., it generally means someone who is Black or of multi-racial heritage, “passing” as a White person. It’s the subject of Rebecca Hall’s well-received directorial debut “Passing,” currently streaming on Netflix. Hall, who is the daughter of the late director Peter Hall and opera singer Maria Ewing is of Dutch, Native American, African American and Scottish heritage. She adapted Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel about two African American friends: one (Tessa Thompson) is married to a prominent doctor and the other (Ruth Negga) has passed for white for years and is married to a wealthy racist (Alexander Skarsgard). Hall was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize dramatic at Sundance; “Passing” currently is nominated for five Gotham Awards including Best Picture and Breakthrough Director.

Racial...

by Brent Calderwood

Juanita Moore lived to be 99 but she's immortal via her Oscar-nominated classic

In case you were wondering, today marks the 2021 due date to submit nominations for the Hollywood Walk of Fame. More importantly, it also marks the third year in a row that Juanita Moore has been nominated. Each year the selection committee chooses about 20 winners from among 200 or so nominees, and for the past two years, Moore has been passed over, despite her Oscar-nominated performance in 1959’s Imitation of Life, and despite the annual efforts of her nephew Arnett Moore. Here’s hoping that this will finally be Juanita Moore’s year.

In 1959, Juanita Moore earned nearly unanimous praise for her star turn in Imitation of Life. Moore plays Annie Johnson, the Black mother of a light-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane, who is assumed by her classmates to be white...

The Film Experience will visit a few Lana Turner films this week. Here's Nick Taylor...

Happy 100th birthday, Lana Turner! Here we are on her centennial to talk about her role as Lora Meredith in Douglas Sirk’s 1959 remake of Imitation of Life, one of her most famous films and easily among the most enduring American melodramas ever made. Imitation’s themes of race and womanhood in America, its sumptuous design, and Oscar-nominated turns from Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner have all rightly received their fair share of attention, yet I have to ask... do most folks like Turner in this?

Maybe my perception that she’s disliked comes from a class in undergrad where my professor didn’t like anything about Turner, from her acting style to the era of beauty she represents. Sirk’s own comments on directing her certainly don’t help...

This CinemaScope musical remake of 1939’s The Women is highly watchable, especially in this flawless digital remaster. The actresses that bare their claws, compete for husbands and just plain cat-fight are a choice batch, with favorites from the ’50s the ’40s the ’30s — plus a few wildflowers that bloomed cinematically for only a few years (Dolores Gray) and one that somehow managed immortality (Joan Collins). It’s highly watchable despite, or maybe because of, its criminally outdated recipe for marital bliss. Did women really go for this fantasy — did anybody ever really live like this?

The Opposite Sex

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date October 27, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen, Jeff Richards, Agnes Moorehead, Charlotte Greenwood, Joan Blondell, Sam Levene, Alice Pearce, Barbara Jo Allen, Sandy Descher, Carolyn Jones, Jerry Antes, Harry James, Art Mooney,...

Though his actual first name was Howard, and he signed his books “James Harvey,” in the 20-plus years of our friendship I always knew him as Jim. In our household, my wife, daughter and I also had a nickname for him, “The Owl,” because of the night hours he kept. I am a morning person, and sometimes the difference created tension between us, if, say, we were having dinner after a film and it was going on 10:30 and I could barely keep my eyes open. I would stand up to signal I was done and ready to leave while he was still nursing his espresso, just getting started, and he would get a wounded look in his eyes and let me know he thought I was being rude. It’s true, I can be abrupt, and he was the opposite, apt to make a more gradual, mannerly leave-taking. We were both great walkers,...

Coming to Film Forum in New York City is “Black Women,” a 70-film screening series that spotlights 81 years – 1920 to 2001 – of trailblazing African American actresses in American movies.

Scheduled to run from January 17 to February 13, the series is curated by film historian and professor Donald Bogle, author of six books concerning blacks in film and television, including the groundbreaking “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films” (1973).

“Last year, Bruce Goldstein, the repertory programmer at Film Forum, asked me if there was something I was interested in doing, and this was a topic that I had been thinking about, because I recently updated my book on the subject, ‘Brown Sugar,’ which dealt with African American women in entertainment from the early years of the late 19th century to the present,” said Bogle. “That’s really the way it came about, and it just developed from there.

Nearly two decades after he helped bring back the movie musical with Best Picture Oscar winner “Chicago,” director Rob Marshall has made Hollywood history again. By casting 19-year-old singer Halle Bailey as Ariel in his upcoming remake of the 1989 animated film “The Little Mermaid,” he’s about to give the big-screen its first black live-action Disney princess.

What took Hollywood’s casting agents so long to appreciate what’s always been right in front of them? We’ve seen one animated black Disney princess before, but Tiana in 2009’s “The Princess and the Frog” came only after other princesses of color — Chinese Mulan, Native American Pocahontas, and “Aladdin” Arabic heroine Jasmine — made their debuts.

Although black women have been a vital part of the American fabric since the first Independence Day, they continue to be far too under-represented and misrepresented on screen. For years, they were relegated to thankless maid and mammy roles,...

The 10th annual TCM Classic Film Festival is finally in the books, yet another fabulous, frustrating and altogether marvelous gathering in the heart of Hollywood to designed to revel in the history of movies and encourage the continued appreciation of the value of understanding where the movies have come from, how they’ve come to the place they are, and even a moment or two to consider possible futures, both for the path on which the movies find themselves and for the future of the festival itself. As always, I have filed my report on this year’s activities—movies watched, schedules contemplated, favorite people visited—for Slant magazine’s blog The House Next Door—and if I came off in that report a little crankier than usual, that dissatisfaction is borne from love for what Tcmff does so well every year and concern for some of the more commerce-oriented...

Douglas Sirk at Universal-International is a two-part overview by Blake Lucas. Part 1 can be found here. Mubi's series, In the Realm of Melodrama: A Douglas Sirk Retrospective, is showing April 2 - June 20, 2018 in the United Kingdom and many other countries.Is a great director like Douglas Sirk apart from the world he is in, a subversive artist in social critique as well as in his engagement with studio aesthetics and intentions? In truth, that argument is both superficial in its view of filmmaking and patronizing toward audiences. The idea that anyone would actually set out to make a complacent film comfortably validating everything about its present world really doesn’t even make sense. Who would be engaged by seeing it, for one thing? I was around in the 1950s, and whatever repressions or suppressions there were, I can assure that people had plenty of tension, melancholy, alienation and even despair living with them,...

What? Doctors aren’t perfect? And some practicing doctors are incompetent? Stanley Kramer’s All-Star medical soap opera takes two unlikely students (Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra) through med school and confronts them with a number of pat dramatic complications. But the movie belongs to top-billed Olivia de Havilland, who lends a touch of class to the entire iffy enterprise.

Not as a Stranger

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1955 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 135 min. / Street Date January 9, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, Myron McCormick, Lon Chaney Jr., Jesse White, Harry Morgan, Lee Marvin, Virginia Christine, Whit Bissell, Jack Raine, Mae Clarke, John Dierkes, King Donovan, Franklyn Farnum, Paul Guilfoile, Nancy Kulp, Harry Lauter, Juanita Moore, Jerry Paris, Stafford Repp, Carl Switzer, Will Wright.

Cinematography: Franz Planer

Film Editor: Fred Knutson

Original Music: George Antheil

Written by Edna and Edward Anhalt,...

The European filmmaker directed a series of deceptively complex melodramas in the 1950s.“This is the dialectic — there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art” — Douglas Sirk

Douglas Sirk was born in Germany in 1900, and began his career in the early 1920s working in theater. In 1922, he directed his first production — an adaptation of Hermann Bossdorf’s Stationmaster Death, and from then on he became one of the most respected theater directors in Weimar Germany. Then, in 1934, he took a job as a film director at Ufa, the biggest studio in Germany at the time.

In 1941, Sirk left Germany and began working as a director in Hollywood. His early films, such as the WWII drama Hitler’s Madman (1942) have largely been forgotten. These early films varied in genre — he directed war films (Mystery Submarine), historical dramas (A Scandal in Paris), film...

Nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be.

When the poster for American Graffiti (1973) asked the question “Where were you in ’62?” it was marketing a trend, spiked by the increasing popularity of the theatrical musical Grease, for audiences of a certain age to look backward to a time when life wasn’t ostensibly so complicated, when your life was still out there waiting to be lived, to a time when America hadn’t yet “lost its innocence.” The demarcation point for that alleged loss is often assigned to the upheaval of grief and national confusion experienced in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, so it was no accident that the setting for American Graffiti’s night of cruising, romancing and soul-searching was placed a little over a year before that cataclysmic event. The interesting thing about Graffiti was the aggressiveness with which that...

There's a new member of the American Girl squad. The company's latest "BeForever" doll, Melody Ellison, was released late last week, and she's bringing with her a new era for young readers to explore. Adding Melody to American Girl's lineup is a big move: She's only the third African-American doll in American Girl history, following Civil War-set Addy, one of the original dolls, and 1850s New Orleans-set Cecile, who is no longer available. But Melody brings with her a different aspect of history to explore: She's the first black doll whose story is set in the 20th century. Melody lives in Detroit,...

There's a new member of the American Girl squad. The company's latest "BeForever" doll, Melody Ellison, was released late last week, and she's bringing with her a new era for young readers to explore. Adding Melody to American Girl's lineup is a big move: She's only the third African-American doll in American Girl history, following Civil War-set Addy, one of the original dolls, and 1850s New Orleans-set Cecile, who is no longer available. But Melody brings with her a different aspect of history to explore: She's the first black doll whose story is set in the 20th century. Melody lives in Detroit,...

Strangely enough, Pam Grier’s last Blaxploitation feature, 1975’s Sheba, Baby, would be the title to introduce her to a much wider audience thanks to its PG rating. Though undoubtedly adult in theme, it’s a kittenish exercise compared to the violence, gratuitous sex, and shameless taken-for-granted racist and misogynistic antics of earlier efforts. Its classification as the final chapter of Grier’s Blaxploitation days is also sort of a misnomer, since this refers to the last time she’d don her famous persona as an action star in pursuit of a more serious career, heading into Drum (a sequel to the infamous Mandingo), starring opposite Richard Pryor in Greased Lightning, and even a Ray Bradbury adaptation in Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983). But 1975 was one of several sterling years for Grier, headlining three films, though none of them would eventually reach the same iconicity as the prior year’s...

Lupita Tovar, the Mexican actress who starred in the 1931 Spanish-language version of Dracula that was shot concurrently with the famed Bela Lugosi version, has died. She was 106. Tovar died Saturday, her niece, actress Lucy Tovar, said on Facebook. Several Mexican news outlets reported that she died in Los Angeles. Lupita Tovar’s daughter is Susan Kohner, who earned an Oscar nomination for portraying the young woman who rejects her black mother (Juanita Moore) and tries to pass herself off as white in the 1959 Douglas Sirk melodrama Imitation of Life. Other survivors include her grandchildren Chris Weitz and

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Since 1989, the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has been accomplishing the important task of preserving films that “represent important cultural, artistic and historic achievements in filmmaking.” From films way back in 1897 all the way up to 2004, they’ve now reached 675 films that celebrate our heritage and encapsulate our film history.

Today they’ve unveiled their 2015 list, which includes classics such as Douglas Sirk‘s melodrama Imitation of Life, Hal Ashby‘s Being There, and John Frankenheimer‘s Seconds. Perhaps the most popular picks, The Shawshank Redemption, Ghostbusters, Top Gun, and L.A. Confidential were also added. Check out the full list below.

Being There (1979)

Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer’s persona,...

Though it’s a famously compromised vision, to be sure, director John Cassavetes’ third film, A Child is Waiting, represents an important cinematic juncture. Meant to highlight society’s cruelty exacted upon handicapped children via behind-the-scenes details of a new cutting edge school run by an objective physician, the film’s noble ambitions were unfortunately marred by creative forces in disagreement.

After the fallout of his experiences with studio filmmaking, Cassavetes wouldn’t return until 1968 with the landmark Faces, and thus begin building a filmography earning him the moniker ‘father of independent cinema.’ And yet, there’s a scarred, dignified beauty about this troubled motion picture, perhaps as easily identifiable as the warring schools of thought amongst its main protagonists in the film.

A box office failure, it received a cool critical reception, disowned by its director after he was fired in post-production by producer Stanley Kramer. It’s unavoidable...

“You pink-ass corrupt honky judge, take your little wet noodle outta here and if you see a man anywhere send him in because I do need a Man!”

Foxy Brown screens at the Missouri History Museum Sunday, October 11th at 5:00pm as part of the St. Louis Black Film Festival ‘s A Salute To Classic Black Actresses. Admission is $5

For a complete rundown of all of the A Salute To Classic Black Actresses screenings, go Here

St. Louis Black Film Festival presents A Salute To Classic Black Actresses. The 3-day film fest takes place at Missouri History Museum (5700 Lindell Blvd, St. Louis, Mo 63112) October 9th through the 11th and will feature the films of black stars Cicely Tyson, Ruby Dee, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Eartha Kitt, Diahann Carroll and Juanita Moore.

Aarp members may attend each movie showing free of charge (One free entry per membership card...

Film was a particularly difficult industry for black actresses to break into. Hattie McDaniel was the first black actress to ever win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1939, for playing Mammy in Gone With The Wind, opening the door for more black women to appear in prominent roles in film. Specifically for screenings in the 1940s South, where a black actress couldn’t play anything but a servant on screen, beautiful women like Lena Horne were given roles that were expendable, able to easily be cut out of films without affecting the plot. Eventually, movies would reflect the real-life improvements in race relations, leading to Halle Berry becoming the first black woman to win a Best Actress Oscar in 2001. The St. Louis Classic Black Film Festival is proud to present a new film festival celebrating the roles and careers of eight pioneering black actresses in a variety of films spanning four decades.

Debbie Reynolds ca. early 1950s. Debbie Reynolds movies: Oscar nominee for 'The Unsinkable Molly Brown,' sweetness and light in phony 'The Singing Nun' Debbie Reynolds is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 23, '15. An MGM contract player from 1950 to 1959, Reynolds' movies can be seen just about every week on TCM. The only premiere on Debbie Reynolds Day is Jerry Paris' lively marital comedy How Sweet It Is (1968), costarring James Garner. This evening, TCM is showing Divorce American Style, The Catered Affair, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and The Singing Nun. 'Divorce American Style,' 'The Catered Affair' Directed by the recently deceased Bud Yorkin, Divorce American Style (1967) is notable for its cast – Reynolds, Dick Van Dyke, Jean Simmons, Jason Robards, Van Johnson, Lee Grant – and for the fact that it earned Norman Lear (screenplay) and Robert Kaufman (story) a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nomination.

Rex Ingram in 'The Thief of Bagdad' 1940 with tiny Sabu. Actor Rex Ingram movies on TCM: Early black film performer in 'Cabin in the Sky,' 'Anna Lucasta' It's somewhat unusual for two well-known film celebrities, whether past or present, to share the same name.* One such rarity is – or rather, are – the two movie people known as Rex Ingram;† one an Irish-born white director, the other an Illinois-born black actor. Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” continues today, Aug. 11, '15, with a day dedicated to the latter. Right now, TCM is showing Cabin in the Sky (1943), an all-black musical adaptation of the Faust tale that is notable as the first full-fledged feature film directed by another Illinois-born movie person, Vincente Minnelli. Also worth mentioning, the movie marked Lena Horne's first important appearance in a mainstream motion picture.§ A financial disappointment on the...

The St. Louis Classic Black Film Festival is seeking funds to pay for rental of theater space and for licensing of the classic movies that will be shown at their upcoming Salute to Classic Black Actresses which will be held in St. Louis September 3-6 2015. The 4-day film fest will feature the films of black stars Cicely Tyson, Ruby Dee, Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Pam Grier, Eartha Kitt, Diahann Carroll and Juanita Moore. The group is seeking funds to pay for rental of theater space and for licensing of the classic movies that will be shown and have set up a GoFundMe page which can be found Here

http://www.gofundme.com/9s4vv6mmg

The St. Louis Classic Black Film Festival was initially established as a vehicle for exposing Black cinema. The annual St. Louis Black Film Festival was green-lighted after recognition that though St. Louis is the largest city in Missouri,...

Imitation of Life

Written by William Hurlbut

Directed by John M. Stahl

USA, 1934

Written by Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott

Directed by Douglas Sirk

USA, 1959

The debate about the necessity and worth of continual remakes rages on every year. Will the new version be as good as the original? Or even better? Should it have even been made to begin with? While we do seem to hear more about this recently, the concept of a remark is, of course, nothing new. Examples go back to the very dawn of cinema. What makes a remake particularly worthwhile, however, is when the films involved are dissimilar in certain aspects yet notably congruent in other areas: just enough to keep the basic premise or theme consistent, but varied enough to keep it up to date and original in one way or another. If both versions have their merits, a considerate comparison and contrast...

Fifty-six years after it opened, Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (playing Film Forum in a new restoration) remains the apotheosis of Hollywood melodrama — as Sirk's final film, it could hardly be anything else — and the toughest-minded, most irresolvable movie ever made about race in this country. For all its reputation as a relentless tearjerker, this story of Annie (the peerless Juanita Moore), a black maid trying to hold on to a light-skinned daughter determined to pass as white, is characterized by Sirk's deeply ironic control. That's most apparent in Sirk's handling of Lana Turner as Lora, Annie's boss, the generous stage star who is nonetheless oblivious that the opportunities she takes for granted aren't available to everyone. Annie ex...

Available for the first time on Blu-ray or DVD and remastered in high definition is forgotten film noir Witness to Murder, a 1954 Barbara Stanwyck potboiler also starring George Sanders and Gary Merrill. As written by Chester Erskine (The Egg and I, 1947), the film feels like plenty of other narratives, though its frustrating contrivance of hysteria as dramatic tension places it squarely within a particular male dominated paradigm. In particular, the film feels eerily reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, which actually opened a month after this Roy Rowland directed venture, doomed to be overshadowed and quickly forgotten. But, magnificently photographed by John Alton, it’s a shadowy and angular motion picture, enjoyable for its considerable melodrama as a portrait of misinformed and misogynistic gender politics.

Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck) witnesses a young woman being murdered in the apartment complex adjacent to her own. She calls the police to report what she sees.

Jane Fonda: From ‘Vietnam Traitor’ to AFI Award and Screen Legend status (photo: Jason Bateman and Jane Fonda in ‘This Is Where I Leave You’) (See previous post: “Jane Fonda Movies: Anti-Establishment Heroine.”) Turner Classic Movies will also be showing the 2014 AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony honoring Jane Fonda, the former “Vietnam Traitor” and Barbarella-style sex kitten who has become a living American screen legend (and healthy-living guru). Believe it or not, Fonda, who still looks disarmingly great, will be turning 77 years old next December 21; she’s actually older than her father Henry Fonda was while playing Katharine Hepburn’s ailing husband in Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond. (Henry Fonda died at age 77 in August 1982.) Jane Fonda movies in 2014 and 2015 Following a 15-year absence (mostly during the time she was married to media mogul Ted Turner), Jane Fonda resumed her film acting career in 2005, playing Jennifer Lopez...

Reviewed by Kevin Scott, MoreHorror.com

Abby (1974)

Director: William Girdler

Writers: William Girdler and Gordon Cornell Layne

Cast: William Marshall (Bishop Garnet Williams), Terry Carter (Rev. Emmett Williams), Austin Stoker (Det. Cass Potter), Carol Speed (Abby Williams), Juanita Moore (Miranda “Momma” Potter)

I pride myself on being a Blaxploitation fan, but I may have missed one of the high points in the genre. A good friend of mine and a trusted resource for solid film recommendations told me about this one. When I elaborate a little further about the cast and the plot, I almost need to turn in my Blaxploitation fan card. It’s almost unpardonable.

“Abby” came out in 1974. It’s a story of possession that debuted a year after another possession story that maybe you heard of. It actually was taken out of circulation for several years because Warner Brothers sued American International Pictures for directly ripping off “The Exorcist”. Maybe,...

12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Frozen, Blue Jasmine's Cate Blanchett, 12 Years' Lupita Nyong'o and Dallas Buyers Club's Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto were among the big winners during the star-studded telecast of the 86th Academy Awards, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Read on for the recap...

12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Frozen, Blue Jasmine's Cate Blanchett, 12 Years' Lupita Nyong'o and Dallas Buyers Club's Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto were among the big winners during the star-studded telecast of the 86th Academy Awards, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres live from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, while there was no statuette love for big contenders The Wolf of Wall Street, Nebraska, American Hustle or Captain Phillips. Read on for the recap...

Click Here for the complete list of winners.

The Best Picture

12 Years a Slave, the true story of Solomon Northrup's arduous journey from free man to slave and back again, was named...

From the worlds of TV, film, music and books; from the legendary stars to the somewhat unsung, behind-the-scenes forces — here is an ongoing look at the celebrities who died in 2014. May they rest in peace, and may we continue to remember them and enjoy the artistic work, and creations, they left behind. Shirley Temple Black Sid Caesar Phillip Seymour Hoffman Russell Johnson Dave Madden Juanita Moore Arthur Rankin Jr. Pete Seeger Ralph Waite

The post Celebrity Deaths 2014 appeared first on Channel Guide Magazine.

Shirley Temple dead at 85: Was one of the biggest domestic box office draws of the ’30s (photo: Shirley Temple in the late ’40s) Shirley Temple, one of the biggest box office draws of the 1930s in the United States, died Monday night, February 10, 2014, at her home in Woodside, near San Francisco. The cause of death wasn’t made public. Shirley Temple (born in Santa Monica on April 23, 1928) was 85. Shirley Temple became a star in 1934, following the release of Paramount’s Alexander Hall-directed comedy-tearjerker Little Miss Marker, in which Temple had the title role as a little girl who, left in the care of bookies, almost loses her childlike ways before coming around to regenerate Adolphe Menjou and his gang. That same year, Temple became a Fox contract player, and is credited with saving the studio — 20th Century Fox from 1935 on — from bankruptcy. Whether or not that’s true is a different story,...

Maximilian Schell movie director (photo: Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell) (See previous post: “Maximilian Schell Dies: Best Actor Oscar Winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg.’”) Maximilian Schell’s first film as a director was the 1970 (dubbed) German-language release First Love / Erste Liebe, adapted from Igor Turgenev’s novella, and starring Englishman John Moulder-Brown, Frenchwoman Dominique Sanda, and Schell in this tale about a doomed love affair in Czarist Russia. Italian Valentina Cortese and British Marius Goring provided support. Directed by a former Best Actor Oscar winner, First Love, a movie that could just as easily have been dubbed into Swedish or Swahili (or English), ended up nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Three years later, nominated in that same category was Schell’s second feature film as a director, The Pedestrian / Der Fußgänger, in which a car accident forces a German businessman to delve deep into his past.

‘Gone with the Wind’ actress Alicia Rhett dead at 98; was oldest surviving credited Gwtw cast member Gone with the Wind actress Alicia Rhett, the oldest surviving credited cast member of the 1939 Oscar-winning blockbuster, died on January 3, 2014, at the Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community in Charleston, South Carolina, where Rhett had been living since August 2002. Alicia Rhett, born on February 1, 1915, in Savannah, Georgia, was 98. (Photo: Alicia Rhett as India Wilkes in Gone with the Wind.) In Gone with the Wind, the David O. Selznick production made in conjunction with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM head Louis B. Mayer was Selznick’s father-in-law), the stage-trained Alicia Rhett played India Wilkes, the embittered sister of Ashley Wilkes, whom Scarlett O’Hara loves — though Ashley eventually marries Melanie Hamilton (Rhett had auditioned for the role), while Scarlett ends up with Rhett Butler. Based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller, Gone with the Wind was (mostly) directed by Victor Fleming...

Oscar-nominated actor who brought sensitivity and warmth to her most famous role in Imitation of Life

From its earliest days, Hollywood, which has always lagged behind wider social advances, limited the roles of black actors to stock, wide-eyed cowards, simpletons or servants, often referred to as "uncles" and "mammies". Juanita Moore, who has died aged 99, suffered from this limitation by having to play maids throughout most of her long career. However, Moore could have echoed what Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Academy Award, once said: "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

Where McDaniel as Mammy, Scarlett O'Hara's lovable, sassy servant in Gone With the Wind (1939) was the apotheosis of the black maid, Moore's Oscar-nominated portrayal of Annie Johnson, housekeeper to the glamorous Broadway star Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) in Douglas Sirk...

It feels like Oscar's upcoming "In Memorium" segment this year is going to be extra exhaustingly sad. One of the tiny reasons among many larger ones that I wish they hadn't moved the Honorary Oscar to another event is that the eldest artists of the cinema shouldn't only be viewed through the prism of final goodbyes, you know? This past week we lost two more actresses, both of whom might feel right at home when they hear heavenly choirs.

Juanita Moore and Lana Turner and their screen daughters in "Imitation of Life"

When I think of Juanita Moore (1922-2014) and her classic Oscar-nominated performance in the Douglas Sirk melodrama Imitation of Life (1959), I nearly always think of a scene she isn't even in! My mind always rushes to her character's own funeral. 

Is there a sung funereal performance more moving than Mahalia Jackson's "Trouble of the World"?

Trouble of...

Juanita Moore, whose performance in “Imitation of Life” made her only the fifth African-American Academy Award nominee, died Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Moore was 99, although accounts of her age are subject to some dispute. She reportedly collapsed in her Los Angeles home and died of natural causes. Moore had conflicted feelings about the recognition she received for her role as a housekeeper raising a daughter who tries to pass as a white woman in 1959′s “Imitation.” “The Oscar prestige was fine, but I worked more before I was nominated,” Moore once told the Los Angeles Times. “Casting directors think an.

The actor who was Oscar-nominated for her role alongside Lana Turner in Douglas Sirk's 1959 melodrama has died at home

Juanita Moore, the Oscar-nominated star of Imitation of Life, has died at the age of 99. The actor, who played alongside Lana Turner in Douglas Sirk's 1959 race drama, died at home, according to her grandson, actor Kirk Kelleykahn.

In Imitation of Life, Moore played a black single mother who befriends Turner's character, a widow whose dreams of becoming a Broadway star are complicated by her responsibility for her own young child. Susan Kohner, who played Moore's daughter Sarah Jane as a teenager in the film, told The Hollywood Reporter that Moore was "a lovely human being with a wonderful sense of humour".

Both Kohner and Moore were nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar in 1959. Moore was only the fifth black woman to be nominated for the award. She lost out to Shelley Winters,...