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There are certain movie stars who have "It" the second they walk in front of a camera. It might not happen for them immediately, but all casting directors and filmmakers had to do was watch a minute or two of Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard, or Paul Newman to know that they'd be topping marquees and posters for decades to come. For Gen X-ers, the same could be said of Denzel Washington, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, and Halle Berry. For Millennials and Zoomers, you've got Michael B. Jordan, Florence Pugh, Glen Powell, and Sydney Sweeney.

Some future movie stars don't pop like this. They need seasoning and, most importantly, the right role to demonstrate that they're capable of carrying a movie. I don't think anyone envisioned Gene Hackman as a leading man until they saw him whoop it up as Buck Barrow in "Bonnie and Clyde," nor was Renée Zellweger...

Everyone's got to start somewhere, and that somewhere ain't necessarily got to be pretty. Take Tom Cruise, for example. He made his film acting debut in Franco Zeffirelli's teen romance "Endless Love," an avalanche of ick notable for its Diana Ross/Lionel Richie theme song and notorious for the scene where Shirley Knight's bohemian mother watches approvingly from the top of a staircase as her 15-year-old daughter (Brooke Shields) has firelit sex with her 17-year-old boyfriend (Martin Hewitt). Somehow, Cruise survived this association with one of the most atrociously awful movies of the 1980s to become one of the world's biggest movie stars.

On the less scandalous end of the spectrum, Paul Newman's first movie was the biblical epic "The Silver Chalice," for which he received mostly lousy reviews. Jessica Lange was ridiculed for conjuring the ghost of Carole Lombard to play a daffy starlet in the 1976 remake of "King Kong.

Hollywood has always been a boy's club. Worse than that, it's been a haven of sexual abuse. The town has buildings and theaters named after the likes of Columbia Pictures co-founder Harry Cohn and 20th Century Fox co-founder Daryl F. Zanuck, both of whom were notorious for coercing (or attempting to coerce) female stars into sex in exchange for work. For all of the breathtakingly gifted women who made it through Hollywood's sexist gauntlet to become movie stars, you can't help but wonder how many singular talents got destroyed by the town's monstrous gatekeepers.

Because talent truly didn't matter to these ghouls. They just wanted, in their view, a dazzling dame who could light up the screen with their looks and sign a contract nowhere near commensurate with their value to the studio. Some of the women in their employ could stand up to them. Joan Crawford once shut Cohn down by saying,...

This essay is excerpted from Hollywood High: a Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies, by Bruce Handy, out May 20 from Avid Reader Press.

Leap Day, 1940. The city: Los Angeles. The place: the Ambassador Hotel’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, where Hollywood’s biggest names were gathered for the 12th annual Academy Awards ceremony. Among the stars smiling for the cameras: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamar, and emcee Bob Hope.

Professional jealousy was not the evening’s theme, not officially. So surely no one resented the fact that by one important measure — the measure — the answer to the question: Who is the biggest star in the room? was . . . .

None of the above.

Just a month earlier, the nation’s theater owners had conducted their annual poll and named not Gable, not Davis, not Stewart, but the young,...

The Museum of Modern Art is spring cleaning its archives for a special ode to Old Hollywood. The exhibit “Face Value: Celebrity Press Photography,” which will open June 28, 2025 and be on display through June 21, 2026, features the best studio shots of iconic stars such as Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Elizabeth Taylor, Harry Belafonte, and more.

This is the first major exhibition of Hollywood studio portraiture to be showcased from the Museum Department of Film’s film stills archive since 1993. “Face Value” will feature over 200 works from 1921 to 1996, with studio photography of Joan Crawford, Louis Armstrong, Carole Lombard, Louise Brooks, Mia Farrow, Dennis Hopper, Lena Horne, Buster Keaton, Anna May Wong, W. C. Fields, Hattie McDaniel, Lupe Velez, Mae West, Bela Lugosi, Carmen Miranda, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross, Spencer Tracy, and Oprah Winfrey, in addition to the aforementioned stars. Historical figures such as Jackie Robinson, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,...

Our time on this planet is agonizingly brief, which, among other bummers, means that we'll leave loads of great movies unwatched. Ultimately, you've got to prioritize which filmmakers and types of films matter the most to you, while, and this is crucial, making sure you block out time to screen movies that are well out of your wheelhouse. Dive into the wilds of experimental cinema. Explore the many modes of African filmmaking. Acquaint yourself with Italian neorealism. The broader your horizons, the better you understand the lives and struggles of people in places you may never personally visit. As Roger Ebert once noted, movies are "empathy machines." Also, you might just find a new favorite filmmaker along the way (like I did with Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun via The Criterion Channel).

You should always be craving new experiences, but, let's face it, sometimes... Okay, a lot of the time you...

Quick Links Adriana Caselotti Was the Original Disney Princess Disney Received Push Back From Peggy Lee for Her Work on Lady and the Tramp Disney’s Live-Action Snow White Will Give Audiences a New Take On a Classic Princess

Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is well-known as a revolutionary film of its time. It was the first full-length animated feature film and was predicted to be a box office bomb by many naysayers in the industry at the time. As proved through the use of revolutionary synchronized sound in the animated Mickey Mouse short "Steamboat Willie," Walt Disney was unafraid to apply new techniques to his creative projects. And when he chose the fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as the subject of his follow-up endeavor, even his own animators were skeptical. Still, the project moved forward.

The next difficult task for Walt would be to...

Ozon and a stellar cast serve up an entertaining, if shallow caper that shades a little too close to #MeToo

François Ozon has directed plenty of complex, demanding and serious dramas: Everything Went Fine, Summer of 85 and By the Grace of God, along with adaptations of Fassbinder. But he also has a sweet tooth for breezy, silly, crowd-pleasing theatrical comedies like this one. Watching it is like being force-fed a large box of chocolates; moreish, though. There is certainly an amazing blue-chip cast of French movie-acting royalty, including Isabelle Huppert, Fabrice Luchini and André Dussollier.

The Crime Is Mine is adapted from a 1934 French stage comedy called Mon Crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil which has already spawned two different madcap Hollywood versions in the 30s and 40s, respectively starring Carole Lombard and Betty Hutton. Nadia Tereszkiewicz plays Madeleine, an impecunious would-be stage star, engaged to wealthy young...

Known as the Queen of Screwball Comedy, Carole Lombard was one of the biggest stars during the early days of Hollywood's Golden Age, gaining prominence for classic screwball comedies such as Twentieth Century, My Man Godfrey, and To Be or Not to Be. Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Lombard started in B-list dramas but eventually found her niche and immense success in comedy, becoming a pillar of the screwball and romantic comedy genres.

Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

Any kid who ever dreamed of striding the boards, meticulously prepping for their glamorous on-camera close-up, or adorning the walls of teenagers all over the world as the most fetching heartthrob on the planet, did not entertain for a second that steady work as less-than-studly screen presence like M Emmet Walsh could be its own gloriously gruff reward. If you were born with a face that looked like it went 12 rounds with Sonny Liston before exiting the birth canal, or walked in heels like they were a pair of Carhartts, you're probably destined to be a working stiff like the rest of us for the remainder of your life.

And there is dignity in this. There is meaning. And not to get your hopes up too high, but if you can strut across the stage like you were born to it, hold the gaze of a camera, or fire off one-liners with buffoonish aplomb,...

Jennifer Lopez might have begun her career on TV, but now she is one of the most recognized actresses and singers around the world. Apart from revolutionizing Latin Pop and the Pop genre in the music industry, Lopez is also a pretty talented actress.

Credits: Jennifer Lopez via ABC News

However, there was once a time when Lopez was offered only ‘maid’ roles, which made her fight her way through to the top. Soon, her determination bore fruit, when she was considered too pretty to be cast alongside Matthew McConaughey in her first romantic comedy, The Wedding Planner.

Jennifer Lopez was Considered Too Pretty to be in The Wedding Planner Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lopez in a still from The Wedding Planner | Credits: Columbia Pictures

When Jennifer Lopez was cast in the 2001 film, The Wedding Planner, she had already made quite a name for herself. Her debut album and other...

For jewelry aficionados, phrases like “Zip necklace” and “mystery-set stones” should instantly evoke thoughts of one heritage-steeped house: Van Cleef & Arpels. These are just two of the iconic design elements from the legendary brand that opened its first boutique on Paris’s Place Vendôme in 1906. Now a new book takes a comprehensive look at its high-wattage designs, created during the years when everyone from Hollywood icons Carole Lombard and Marlene Dietrich to Wallis Simpson, a.k.a. the Duchess of Windsor, ranked high among the house’s most ardent fans and devoted collectors.

The Van Cleef & Arpels Collection (1906-1953) is an impressive coffee-table book that explores the dazzling designs that emerged from the jeweler in the first half of the 20th century. Almost 700 jewelry and watch images are included alongside 200 archival documents, from 1920s timepieces and bracelets infused with Art Deco styling to early advertisements and mid-century jewels that...

When IndieWire recently ranked the 25 best films of Alfred Hitchcock, it was probably no surprise to anyone that “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” the director’s sole attempt at a light romantic comedy, didn’t make the cut. Even Hitchcock himself tended to underrate the film, as when he told interviewer François Truffaut that “since I didn’t really understand the type of people who were portrayed in the film, all I did was photograph the scenes as written.” From a filmmaker who regularly dismissed movies he considered uncinematic as mere “photographs of people talking,” this was the ultimate self-directed insult.

Yet even a casual reappraisal of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” newly available in an exquisite Blu-ray special edition from Warner Archive, undermines Hitchcock’s claims about his own movie. While it would be a bridge too far to declare the film a masterpiece on a par with “Psycho” or “Rear Window,...

Julien’s Auctions, the Beverly Hills-based company that specializes in movie memorabilia, drew sharp criticism on Friday for listing a fragment for sale from the plane crash that killed actress Carole Lombard in 1942.

The item is offered as part of the “Danger, Disaster and Disco” lot, which runs from June 12-14 and is cosponsored by Turner Classic Movies. The starting bid is $250, with the piece of wreckage valued at between $1,000 and $2,000.

Film historian Olympia Kiriakou tweeted, “It’s quite despicable that @JuliensAuctions is selling a piece of mangled plane debris from the crash that killed Carole Lombard.”

Her tweet was shared by X user Frank Wells, who wrote, “I’m trying to figure what kind of ghoul would want this in their home, certainly not an actual Carole Lombard fan. And do what with it? Display? Trot it out at parties? ‘Hey, check this out….'”

One X user called the auction “horrible and macabre,...

The preview opening of the new exhibit Meet the Stars: 100 Years of MGM Studios and the Golden Age of Hollywood on Thursday night was a crowded, buzzing affair. Held at the Hollywood Heritage Museum in the historic Lasky DeMille Barn across from the Hollywood Bowl, the event showcased the items of over 20 movie collectors. Memorabilia hunters, dressed in fedoras and flirty ’40s dresses, gabbed about their latest finds with others who have a similar passion.

The highlight of the night was when the crowd sang “Happy Birthday” to former MGM child star Cora Sue Collins (who played a little Greta Garbo in 1933’s Queen Christina), the last surviving MGM contract player from the 1930s. Sitting at a tableau that recreated a party thrown for her by MGM in 1935, Collins elegantly thanked everyone for their well wishes. Actor George Chakiris was also in attendance, and he posed next to a costume...

The Hollywood Roosevelt is offering a look at its newly redesigned penthouse suites.

The iconic hotel recently announced that the two rooms had undergone a reimaging thanks to Los Angeles-based interior designer Kevin Klein through his firm Kevin Klein Design. Both penthouses were named after famous residents of years past.

The first — the Gable and Lombard penthouse — is named after Hollywood icons Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, who resided in the hotel in the 1930s. Gable, still considered one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and Lombard, a screwball comedy staple, were a true Hollywood power couple of their time. The couple spent just three years married before Lombard was killed in a 1942 plane crash at the age of 33.

The second suite — the Johnny Grant apartment — is named after the host and television personality, who was a permanent resident of the hotel in the 1990s.

Klein and his team worked to...

Did you know that Alfred Hitchcock made a film starring Shirley MacLaine and John Forsythe? Did you know he made a broad comedy? Did you know he shot an entire film in Craftsbury, Vermont?! Well, I guess the last one isn't so shocking. And "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", Hitchcock's Carole Lombard-starring screwball comedy from 1941, is quite well-known and liked.

But I'm not talking about "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." I'm talking about the other comedy made by the master of suspense. 1955's "The Trouble With Harry" represented several firsts for Hitchcock -- his first dark comedy, the first film he made after obtaining American citizenship (he had been living and working in the country for 16 years by that point), and the first film he made after commencing production on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." That series quickly became popular with audiences and was cemented in short order as an American institution,...

Quick, silly and lent weight only by the costume department’s copious wigs and furs, “The Crime Is Mine” finds tireless French auteur François Ozon in the playful period pastiche mode of “Potiche” and “8 Women.” It’s a film less about any frenetic onscreen shenanigans as it is about its own mood board of sartorial and cinematic reference points — Jean Renoir, Billy Wilder, some vintage Chanel — and as such it slips down as fizzily and forgettably as a bottle of off-brand sparkling wine. This story of an aspiring stage star standing trial for a top impresario’s murder (and making the most of her moment in the tabloid flashbulbs) may be based on a nearly 90-year-old play, but for those versed more in Hollywood and Broadway than in French theater, Ozon’s adaptation resembles a kind of diva fanfic: What if Roxie Hart went up against Norma Desmond, except in rollicking 1930s Paris?...

The 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany were about more than sports. The world was still mired in the Great Depression, and faced the prospect of a second world war as fascism flourished throughout Europe. As such, there couldn't have been a worse time for Berlin to host the games. They gave Hitler a global platform to espouse his white supremacist views, and he vigorously exploited the opportunity by putting on an Aryan spectacle that made him look like the god emperor of the greatest (and whitest) country on Earth.

And so it was important for the free-ish world to trounce Hitler's athletes whenever possible. When we look back on the games now, the first figure that comes to mind is African-American track-and-field prodigy Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals as Hitler fumed from his box in his imposing, 100,000-seat Olympiastadion. But there were other triumphs, one of the most notable being the U.

James Brolin on Wednesday clarified he was mistakenly referring to the 1973 film “The Way We Were” in an interview with Bill Maher in which he said his wife, Barbra Streisand, was working on redoing the ending.

“The Way We Were” is, in fact, being re-released Oct. 17 on Blu-ray for its 50th anniversary, not “Funny Girl.”

Brolin released a statement of clarification to TheWrap.

“To My Wife Barbra and all her fans,” the statement said. “Drinking tequila with Bill Maher on his ‘Club Random’ podcast recently, I mistakenly mentioned the wrong film. I meant to say my wife was working on ‘The Way We Were.‘ Apologies for all the confusion … Jim Brolin.”

Original story is below:

“Funny Girl,” the smash hit that cemented Barbra Streisand’s place in Hollywood at the ripe age of 26, ended with her protagonist, Fanny Brice, separating from her husband after he was released from prison.

Fifty-five years later,...

There wasn't a funnier or sharper show in the mid-1980s than "Moonlighting." Created by Glenn Gordon Caron, the hour-long ABC series starred Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis as Maddie Hayes and David Addison, perpetually squabbling partners in the Blue Moon Detective Agency. It was an odd duck. Caron and the cast took big, genre-hopping swings; one episode might be a musical, the next might be written in iambic pentameter, and another could be a homage to big-screen boxing melodramas. It was arguably the ballsiest network series prior to the 1990 premiere of "Twin Peaks."

And somehow, in the middle of the Reagan era, "Moonlighting" became a Nielsen ratings behemoth.

American television viewers weren't exactly clamoring for an amiably off-kilter riff on "The Thin Man" and 1930s - '40s screwball comedies at the time, but once they saw Shepherd and Willis bantering with Hepburn-Grant ease, they were sold. "Moonlighting" roared...

He is best remembered as the affable dad on the long-running television series “My Three Sons” and for his good-natured characters in a string in Disney films. But Fred MacMurray had a rich and varied career that spanned over half a century.

Frederick Martin MacMurray was born on August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, Il. His father was a concert violinist, and young Fred initially followed his father steps into the music business. He worked as a saxophonist and vocalist to pay his way through college, eventually moving to Los Angeles and joining the California Collegians vocal ensemble. This led him cross-country to Broadway, where he was discovered by a Paramount scout, who brought him back to L.A. and film stardom.

MacMurray is widely considered one of the most underrated actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. He held his own against some of the industry’s most talented actresses, including four...

Bob Hope's "Road to" movies will be featured on August 17 during Turner Classic Movies' Summer Under the Stars tribute. The maestro of the macabre, Vincent Price, will be celebrated on Wednesday, August 23. Humphrey Bogart's To Have and Have Not, The Maltese Falcon, and Key Largo are also scheduled during the TCM primetime lineup.

There’s no place like Summer Under the Stars. For the last 20 years, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has presented its annual tribute dedicated to showcasing a different actor each day in August. At the halfway point of this year's schedule, legendary performer Bob Hope will keep things moving along on Thursday, August 17 with five of his seven famous “Road to” musical comedies. They will play back-to-back beginning at 11:30 a.m. Edt. Hope starred alongside Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in the series from 1940 until 1962.

This year eight newcomers made their way into the 31-day lineup,...

Screwball comedy is a subgenre of romantic comedy that saw its classic period run from the mid-1930s until the mid-1940s. Directors such as Frank Capra, Preston Sturges, and Howard Hawks, along with stars such as Cary Grant, Carole Lombard, William Powell, and Katharine Hepburn, all helped shape the foundation of the genre.

Screwball comedies are distinguishable from stereotypical romantic comedies because screwballs typically spoof notions of love rather than emphasize romantic ideals. Common elements found in screwball comedies are rapid-fire overlapping dialogue, zany slapstick antics, mistaken identities, and a battle of the sexes narrative. Many of cinema's classic screwball comedies rank among Hollywood's funniest films.

Related: 10 Rom-Coms Critics Loved But Audiences Hated

The Awful Truth (1937)

Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth is a screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne as a wealthy couple who decide to divorce but end up trying to sabotage each other's subsequent romantic conquests.

Jessica Lange came by her restlessness naturally. Born on April 20, 1949, to a stay-at-home mom and a traveling salesman father who moved the family all over the state of Minnesota, she quickly became acclimated to the process of re-acclimating. Eventually, the need for stabilization lost its appeal. Three years into studying art and photography at the University of Minnesota, she married Spanish photographer Paco Grande, at which point their shared wanderlust took them all over the United States and Mexico. The pair split upon moving to Paris, where Lange discovered Étienne Decroux and corporeal mime -- which departs from the conventional white-faced japery you're familiar with, and seeks to find abstract poetry in the movement of people and things.

Lange possessed the soul of a poet, but found this form of performance emotionally unrewarding, so she decamped for New York City to study acting with Mira Rostova at Hb Studio. She...

Jennifer Lawrence is hilarious. Sure, she made her name as an actor in dead-serious indie dramas (The Burning Plain, Winter’s Bone), franchise tent poles (The Hunger Games trilogy, those X-Men 2.0 blockbusters), the kind of nerve-shredding films that fall somewhere between horror and thriller (House at the End of the Street, Passengers), and whatever category you care to slot Mother! into. Filmmaker David O. Russell figured out early on that Lawrence was a perfect fit for his skewed, neurotic dramedies, and it’s impossible to think that Silver Linings Playbook and...

Ted McGinley, Julia Montgomery, Robert Carradine in Revenge Of The Nerds. Image: 20th Century Fox In No Hard Feelings, Jennifer Lawrence plays Maddie, a floundering 32-year-old so down on her luck she’s willing to make a deal with the parents of a sheltered 19-year-old to “date” him in exchange...

Jennifer Lawrence and Andrew Barth Feldman in No Hard FeelingsPhoto: Macall Polay/Sony Pictures Entertainment

In No Hard Feelings, Jennifer Lawrence plays Maddie, a floundering 32-year-old so down on her luck she’s willing to make a deal with the parents of a sheltered 19-year-old to “date” him in exchange...

Here’s the thing: you can argue for another Indiana Jones film as the archaeologist’s greatest adventure, but then Raiders comes along and outshines it with a light that reduces all who disrespect it to dust. Raiders is a perfect film: if it had flaws they’d be like the scar on Harrison Ford’s chin: a flourish to set off the perfection of the rest. If Raiders had a flaw (see Note 2), it would be like the deliberate mistake that master Persian carpet weavers introduce to their intricate patterns so that they don’t challenge God himself. And if this film teaches us anything, it’s that challenging God is not a good idea. The other are (mostly) astonishingly great because they’re a lot like Raiders. Raiders is astonishingly great because it is a perfect film.

First and foremost, that’s down to Steven Spielberg, which explains...

Many L.A. neighborhoods regularly welcome new hotels, but Santa Monica not so often. Until earlier this year, Ocean Avenue hadn’t seen a fresh property open in 11 years. But the debut of The Georgian in April seems to have kicked off a new chapter for the classic coastal city, which in recent months has also been blessed with two major hotel transformations and, later this year, will see another brand-new luxury bolthole added to its beloved seafront strip.

And there’s all the more reason to plan a trip or staycation in order to sample the area’s latest foodie favorites such as Coucou (218 Main St.), a convivial Cali-French mashup bistro in a former art gallery just over the border in Venice, and Isla (2424 Main St.), serving wood-fired seafood and potent cocktails. Also hot: Bar Monette (109 Santa Monica Blvd.), the hood’s latest source for perfectly blistered pizza thanks to chef Sean MacDonald.

When Twa Flight 3, a twin-engine DC-3 concluding its cross-country route from Indiana to Burbank, California, slammed into Potosi Mountain just outside of Las Vegas in the early evening of January 16, 1942, the movies lost its greatest screwball comedienne.

Carole Lombard was 33 years old, and had just weathered a run of tepidly received dramas to reclaim her stature as one of Hollywood's most dependably hilarious performers via Alfred Hitchcock's "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." She was about to receive another round of critical acclaim for her turn as the Polish theater diva Maria Tura in Ernst Lubitsch's masterful "To Be or Not to Be." She was married to Rhett Butler himself, Clark Gable, and had committed herself to the war effort (she'd been in her home state of Indiana to host a war bond rally). Lombard was as beloved and consequential an actor as there was in the industry, and, just like that,...

Rachel McAdams had been anointed Hollywood's latest "It Girl" when she was tapped to grace the cover of Vanity Fair's 2006 Oscar issue alongside Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson. She was coming off a string of critical and commercial successes in "Mean Girls," "The Notebook," "Red Eye" and "The Family Stone," and appeared to be on the cusp of superstardom. But when McAdams learned, upon arriving at the Tom Ford photoshoot, that she was expected to pose nude, she walked, promptly fired her publicist (who'd failed to inform her of the shoot's parameters), and pressed the pause button on her film career.

Prior to the #MeToo revolution, firing up double rockets at the exploitative Hollywood movie star machine was considered career suicide. This was how women got smeared with the "difficult" label. McAdams, however, persevered and has established herself as one of the most brilliantly unpredictable actors of her generation. She's...

Carole Cook, “Sixteen Candles” actress, Broadway star and longtime collaborator and friend of Lucille Ball, has died. She was 98. Cook’s rep, Robert Malcolm, confirmed the sad news to Et on Wednesday, revealing that Cook died three days shy of her 99th birthday.

“She was one of my favourites. She passed away from heart failure today. She was in the hospital. She came home last week. Her birthday would have been Saturday. She would have been 99. She died peacefully, and her husband was there,” Malcolm shared.

“She was a wonderfully gifted and outrageous woman. She could say the dirtiest things and you would never be offended,” he added. “She was a lovely, lovely person. She was an incredibly talented woman and loved what she did.”

Cook came to Hollywood in 1959 from Texas, getting her start on an episode of Ball’s “Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse”. Born Mildred Frances Cook, Ball convinced...

Carole Cook, a one-time protégé of Lucille Ball who starred in the CBS sitcom The Lucy Show and the hit film Sixteen Candles, has died. She was 98. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the veteran actress passed away on Wednesday, January 11, due to heart failure, just three days before her 99th birthday. Born Mildred Frances Cook on January 14, 1924, in Abilene, Texas, her on-screen career began after Ball encouraged her to come to Hollywood in the late 1950s. Ball also convinced Cook to change her first name from Mildred to Carole, honoring her favorite actress, Carole Lombard. Cook appeared in an episode of Ball’s Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse before going on to work opposite the comedienne on The Lucy Show from 1963 to 1968, playing Lucy Carmichael’s friend Thelma Green. She also appeared in five episodes of Here’s Lucy from 1969-74. In addition to her work with Ball, Cook had parts in several other classic television series,...

The famed star of stage and screen, Carole Cook, has died of heart failure at the age of 98. Born Mildred Francis Cook, the actor was given the stage name Carole by her longtime friend and mentor Lucille Ball and it stuck for her entire 60-year career.

Starting in the late 1950s, Cook was a staple on television, appearing on shows like "U.S. Marshalls," "The Lucy Show," "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," "McMillan & Wife," "Maude," "Baretta," "Charlie's Angels," "Kojak," "The Love Boat," "Murder, She Wrote," "Grey's Anatomy," and "Dynasty," to name but a small sampling of her credits list.

She was almost as prolific on the stage as she was on television, appearing in a ton of big-name shows. She notably was the second actor to fill in for the role of Dolly Levi in "Hello, Dolly!" after Carol Channing and appeared in shows on and off Broadway...

Carole Cook, a veteran stage and screen actor who was a protégé of Lucille Ball, has died in Beverly Hills, Calif., of heart failure. She was 98.

Cook was known for her guest roles on “The Lucy Show” from 1963-68 and “Here’s Lucy” from 1969-74. She began her acting career in 1959 when Ball requested she appear in an episode of “Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse” titled, “The Desilu Revue.”

In films, Cook was known for her role as Molly Ringwald’s Grandma Helen in the 1984 John Hughes rom-com, “Sixteen Candles.” She also appeared in “The Incredible Mr. Limpet,” “Palm Springs Weekend,” “American Gigolo,” “The Gauntlet,” “Grandview, U.S.A.,” “Summer Lovers” and “A Very Sordid Wedding.”

In addition to her television work with Ball, Cook guest starred on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” “U.S. Marshal,” “Daniel Boone,” “My World and Welcome to It,” “That Girl,” “Baretta,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Charlie’s Angels,...

Carole Cook, a protege of Lucille Ball who would become a familiar face through appearances on Ball’s TV shows, movies like The Incredible Mr. Limpet and Sixteen Candles and stage musicals 42nd Street and Romantic Comedy, died today of heart failure in Beverly Hills, California, just three days before her 99th birthday.

Her death was announced by husband Tom Troupe.

Born Mildred Frances Cook in Abilene, Texas, Cook made her Broadway debut as a replacement in 1954’s Threepenny Opera. After moving to Los Angeles, she became a favorite of Ball’s, who suggested the name spelling of Carole in honor of movie star Carole Lombard. “Like her, you have the same healthy disrespect for all things in general,” Ball told Cook.

Cook would subsequently make guest appearances on Ball’s sitcoms The Lucy Show and Here’s Lucy. The two remained life-long friends, with Ball serving as matron-of-honor at Cook’s 1964 wedding to Troupe.

Carole Cook, who used a career boost from Lucille Ball to build a career that included three turns on Broadway and roles in Sixteen Candles and The Incredible Mr. Limpet, has died. She was 98.

Cook died of heart failure on Wednesday, three days shy of her birthday, in Beverly Hills, her husband, actor Tom Troupe, announced.

On television, Cook showed up as the ex-wife of Walter Findlay (Bill Macy) on Maude, as the bar owner of the cop hangout Stella’s on Kojak, as madam Cora Van Husen on Dynasty and as Donna La Mar, the girlfriend of Charlie Cagney (Dick O’Neill), on Cagney & Lacey.

The fun-loving Texan came to Hollywood at Ball’s behest and appeared on a 1959 episode of the comedienne’s Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse. Ball convinced her to change her first name from Mildred to Carole in honor of the actress she most admired, Carole Lombard.

Cook...

Oscar-winning Eddie Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything”) has been testing out his darker side of late. The baby-faced 40-year-old British actor has made a name for playing nice, often complex guys. But last year, he turned that persona on its ear in London’s West End playing the smarmy and decadent Emcee in the revival of the musical “Cabaret.” He won the prestigious Olivier Award for his performance.

And now he’s giving a killer of a performance as a serial murderer in Netflix’s fact-based thriller “The Good Nurse.” Redmayne’s hospital nurse Charlie is friendly and sweet with a great bedside manner. But beneath this caring visage lurks a vicious mind who killed at least 400 patients at various hospitals over the years.

Doing a 180 from his usual fare, recalls Robert Montgomery’s shift with 1937’s “Night Must Fall.” Best known these days as the father of Elizabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched” fame,...

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What the Chateau Marmont has been to the Sunset Strip — a hotel-slash-playground of the famous and frisky — the Georgian hotel once was to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Known for its handsome turquoise blue Art Deco exterior, it’s been a local landmark since it opened in 1933 and was a favorite haunt of Hollywood stars including Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle and Clark Gable, who, while married, is said to have met up with Carole Lombard there. Mobsters such as Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone also frequented The Georgian, which was home to a speakeasy during Prohibition.

Now, The Georgian, located at 1415 Ocean Avenue, is set to relaunch after a chic renovation that promises to restore much of its Art Deco grandeur. Purchased in 2020 by Blvd Hospitality (the developer behind downtown Los Angeles’ Ace Hotel) in partnership with Esi Ventures, the 84-room, eight-story hotel...

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It was the summer of 1973 and Meryl Streep, fresh off her first year of drama school, had a job cleaning urinals in New Haven, Connecticut.

“True story,” she recalled from an Austin podium Saturday night in opening a tribute that was less about bathrooms and more about an acting hero. “I heard that a friend of mine that I knew in college got cast in a big movie and it was the first person that I ever knew that had been cast in a movie. Michael Moriarty was a beautiful young actor. So, all my friends after work, we went to the movie theater to see him.”

The film was the John D. Hancock-directed Bang the Drum Slowly about the friendship between a pitcher (Moriarty) and catcher as they cope with the latter’s terminal illness through the course of a baseball season.

The world was at war 80 years ago. The United States was grieving over the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 by the Japanese military and the defeat of our forces that month at Wake Island. And then the beloved Carole Lombard, her mother, servicemen and the crew perished in a plane crash west of Las Vegas on January 16, 1942. She was returning to Hollywood after raising 2 million in a war bond drive in Indianapolis.

How would Hollywood and audiences respond to World War II? They certainly didn’t shy away from the war. If you look at the top 10 films of the year, there are some escapist films but also movies dealing with the global conflict.

In fact, the No. 1 film of the year William Wyler’s “Mrs. Miniver” broke records at Radio City Music Hall in New York playing 10 weeks. Production began on the stirring, sentimental drama about a British...

Actress Diane Kruger ("The 355") poses for "Women's Health" magazine, photographed by Caleb & Gladys:

"With modeling, you pose," said the Carole Lombard lookalike. "You want to look your best all the time.    "With acting, you have to be aware of the camera. The more you show your imperfections, the better you're going to be.

"And I get offered a 'World War II' movie at least once a week just because I speak German.

"But I don't want to let my life as a woman pass me by. There's a time to work, there's a time to be young and crazy, and there should be a time to enjoy motherhood.

"What counts in Hollywood is box office. It doesn't really matter what people think of you as an actor..."

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The screwball comedy has a unique place in Hollywood history: When times were tough, audiences sought escapism. What was less interesting to audiences during the Great Depression was celebrations of wealth and extravagance, as the purse strings were tighter than ever before. Enter the screwball, comedies that regularly delighted audiences by transporting them with ridiculous and often nonsensical scenarios featuring the brightest stars of the day. Performers like Carole Lombard, Gene Kelly, Claudette Colbert, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunn, and Gary Cooper regularly lit up the screen. The genre exploded in the 1930s, and while there's no consensus as to the first screwball, "Twentieth Century" and "It...

The post The 15 Best Screwball Comedies Of All Time appeared first on /Film.

To lose ourselves in a world of winks and wisecracks from quick-witted showgirls, ditzy heiresses and fast-talking career women may seem like a borderline irresponsible choice in These Troubled Times. But the blast of pure pleasure that is the Berlin Film Festival’s 27-movie tribute to Mae West, Rosalind Russell and Carole Lombard is an act of cinematic self-care with a precedent. The “No Angels” Retrospective, which co-ordinator Annika Haupts says was conceived as “mood-lightening” counter-programming during Germany’s first corona lockdown, comprises comedies that were themselves developed during America’s Great Depression. Spanning 1932 to 1943, there are ordained classics like “My Man Godfrey,” “His Girl Friday,” “Twentieth Century,” “To Be or Not to Be” and “The Women.” But there’s also a trove of less well-known treasures, united by irreverence and leading ladies whose charisma transforms the contrivances of Hayes Code-era Hollywood into escapism so effervescent it froths the blues away.

In the two dozen years since Paul Thomas Anderson first became an Oscar nominee, he has received seven more bids across four categories, the two most recent of which came in 2018 for “Phantom Thread” (Best Picture; Best Director). He has also directed nine nominated performances that span three of the four acting categories; to date, no Anderson film has ever figured in a Best Actress lineup. But now, Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”) could make history as the first to do so.

Haim, whose performance in “Licorice Pizza” marks her film debut, ranks ninth in our Best Actress odds but that should change based on her surprise BAFTA bid. Those running ahead of her are four women snubbed by the BAFTAs — Olivia Colman (“The Lost Daughter”), Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”), Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”) — plus Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”), Penélope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers...

To cite Monica Vitti as an icon, following her death in Rome this week at 90, is somehow unsatisfying. She could never be summed up as something so inert — she was far too vividly alive. If her sensuality has been called “chilly,” it nonetheless animated every frame she stood in or fast-tapped through in high heels. If the landscapes her greatest creative partner Michelangelo Antonioni directed her across were at times sprawling or forbidding, she always held the eye, whether with a look or a highly kinetic outburst.

To a young film buff crammed into a swaybacked seat at a Manhattan arthouse, beholding her for the first time was to risk a schoolboy crush. She’s been called “Impossibly lovely” on this site, and that’s true enough — impossible, and yet there she is onscreen. The sturdy lips forming a blossom of a mouth, the eyes that seem focused just a...

Star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films in the 1960s who later turned to light comedies

Although she was often described, perhaps with a touch of irony, as the “muse of incommunicability” for her dramatic roles in several of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, Monica Vitti, who has died aged 90, always aspired to be a comic actor. In 1962, she had an offer to do a film for Agnès Varda, but turned it down; as she explained in an interview, “I want to remain loyal to Michelangelo, who has promised to make me the Carole Lombard of the second half of the century.” Though Vitti certainly had comparable looks and verve, and did eventually succeed in becoming a popular comedic star, she will probably remain in most film buffs’ minds as Giuliana, the complicated young blond woman in Antonioni’s Il Deserto Rosso, his first colour feature.

Giuliana was perhaps Vitti’s most credible and identifiable characterisation.

For almost 100 years, the motion picture academy has honored the best in film, but many times the winners aren’t always the best remembered, or the films that go on to become classics. At the 14th ceremony, “How Green Was My Valley” famously won Best Picture over “Citizen Kane,” now considered by most filmmakers, historians and cinephiles as the greatest movie ever made – and even those who disagree acknowledge its profound influence on the industry. Additionally, there were quite a few now-classic films and performances that either didn’t win, or were snubbed altogether. Let’s flashback 80 years ago to the 1942 Oscars ceremony.

SEE15 biggest Oscar Best Picture upsets, ranked

Hosted by Bob Hope, the ceremony took place on February 26, less than three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and a month after beloved actress Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash – while returning home after selling war bonds.