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During the 1953 world premiere of Samuel Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece, Waiting for Godot, at Paris’ Théâtre de Babylone, the curtain came down about 40 minutes into the first act as audience members whistled and hooted derisively. While the critics were accepting of the play, it presold few tickets for the American debut tour three years later in Washington and Philadelphia, prompting a move to Miami’s Coconut Grove Playhouse for a two-week run starring Bert Lahr and Tom Ewell. Promoted as “the laugh sensation of two continents,” it was greeted by vacationers with bafflement and described as a play where nothing happens. The reaction was so predictable that cabbies waited outside the theater for early exiters. Not surprisingly, the New York engagement was canceled.

“Nothing happens, that’s the thing. It’ll be interesting to see, when we put this up in front of an audience for the first time, how they respond.

Marilyn Monroe‘s star burned brightly and briefly before her untimely death in 1962 at age 36. Yet she managed to enter the pop culture lexicon with just a handful of films, becoming Hollywood’s most memorable sex symbol. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1926, Monroe started off as a model before moving into acting with a series of bit parts, most notably in “All About Eve” and “The Asphalt Jungle,” both released in 1950. She became a leading lady with a trio of 1953 titles: the noir “Niagara,” the musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and the romantic comedy “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

She became iconic thanks to Billy Wilder‘s “The Seven Year Itch” (1955), in which she played a young woman tantalizing her married neighbor (Tom Ewell). Her image was forever burned into our memories thanks to...

Roxanne Rosedale, the glamorous model and actress who assisted host Bud Collyer on the 1950s game show Beat the Clock and appeared in the Marilyn Monroe-starring The Seven Year Itch, has died. She was 95.

Known professionally as Roxanne, she died May 2 in an assisted care facility in her birthplace of Minneapolis, her daughter Ann Roddy told The Hollywood Reporter.

Roxanne became a hugely popular TV star after she joined CBS’ Beat the Clock, from Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, in 1950. She would introduce the contestants — who were tasked with completing complicated, outrageous stunts in an allotted time — snapped photos with a Sylvania camera and posed alongside the winners’ prizes. (Watch an episode here.)

While on the show, she made the covers of such magazines as Life, Look and (with Collyer) TV Guide and even had a doll named for her. The blue-eyed Roxanne Dolls featured a Beat the Clock...

James Sanders with Matt Ducharme (of Woods Bagot) at the Rizzoli book launch in New York of Renewing The Dream: The Mobility Revolution And The Future Of Los Angeles Photo: Anne Katrin Titze

In the second instalment with architect, author, filmmaker James Sanders (co-writer with Ric Burns on the PBS series New York: A Documentary Film), we discuss the Billy Wilder connection to producer Jeremy Thomas and Jonathan Coe’s Mr. Wilder And Me; Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch and The Apartment (co-written with I.A.L. Diamond and starring Jack Lemmon); Woody Allen’s Manhattan, Mariel Hemingway, and apartment sounds; Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and the stoop; the office building and Jean Negulesco’s The Best of Everything; Daniel Mann’s Butterfield 8 and and the canopy; Blake Edwards’s Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and how certain stories can...

From being born Norma Jean on the east side of Los Angeles to dying as Marilyn Monroe alone in her bedroom at Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, the screen siren lived a lot of life. But she was also much more than the studio pin-up Hollywood pegged her to be. Andrew Dominik’s “Blonde” doesn’t exactly make the case for her radiance and wit so much as it suggests she was an actress who was relentlessly exploited by her peers, by her partners, and by her audience.

We at IndieWire all have wildly varied takes on “Blonde,” whether as a “miserable portrait that only further tarnishes the star” to a hijacking of Marilyn Monroe’s legacy to make an “anti-choice statement.” But one point we can all agree on: Monroe was both a star and a serious actress, and we want to make the case for 10 of her finest...

The Girl Can’t Help It

Blu ray

Criterion

1957 / 2.35:1 / 98 Min.

Starring Jayne Mansfield, Tom Ewell, Edmond O’Brien

Written by Frank Tashlin

Directed by Frank Tashlin

In 1957 it was commonplace for burlesque comedians to share the bill with a musical act or two, but in New York’s theater district one of those revues stood out from the rest—it opened on February 8th at The Roxy, a magnificent theater dubbed “The Cathedral of the Motion Picture.” But that cathedral had never held a service like Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It—for 98 minutes the congregation was cajoled, regaled, and set free by a parade of clownish mobsters, gyrating showgirls and hyperventilating rockers raising the roof in 4 track stereo—the only thing missing was 3D—and who needed that with Jayne Mansfield center screen and busting out all over. William Castle introduced the gimmicky Emergo for House on Haunted Hill...

Whether it be conveying humor, heartbreak, heavy drama or a lofty song, Marilyn Monroe’s talent went far beyond her beauty.

The Asphalt Jungle

In her first important role, Monroe plays a young mistress who supplies her sugar daddy a fake alibi in this John Huston-directed film noir. TV director Michael Lehmann later went on to say, “Mm playing a bimbo so much better than anybody can these days.”

All About Eve

Monroe was a relative un-known when her agent went to get her the role in this classic Bette Davis film. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote of Monroe’s performance, “It has been observed that no matter how a scene was lighted, Monroe had the quality of drawing all the light to herself. In her brief scenes here, surrounded by actors much more experienced, she is all we can look at.”

Don’t Bother to Knock

This psychological...

In Billy Wilder’s 1955 film The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe pauses above a subway grate to ask co-star Tom Ewell, “Do you feel the breeze from the subway?” The gust of wind that came next delivered one of the most recognizable images of 20th-century cinema as Monroe’s ivory halter-top dress blew up, rising past her waist.

A 26-foot, 30,000-pound statue inspired by that moment — called Forever Marilyn and created by John Seward Johnson II — is now the subject of furor in the city of Palm Springs that will spill over into a local courtroom on Friday.

A ...

In Billy Wilder’s 1955 film The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe pauses above a subway grate to ask co-star Tom Ewell, “Do you feel the breeze from the subway?” The gust of wind that came next delivered one of the most recognizable images of 20th-century cinema as Monroe’s ivory halter-top dress blew up, rising past her waist.

A 26-foot, 30,000-pound statue inspired by that moment — called Forever Marilyn and created by John Seward Johnson II — is now the subject of furor in the city of Palm Springs that will spill over into a local courtroom on Friday.

A ...

Marilyn Monroe would’ve celebrated her 93rd birthday on June 1, 2019. Her star burned brightly and briefly before her untimely death in 1962 at age 36. Yet she managed to enter the pop culture lexicon with just a handful of films, becoming Hollywood’s most memorable sex symbol. In honor of her birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of her greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Born in 1926, Monroe started off as a model before moving into acting with a series of bit parts, most notably in “All About Eve” and “The Asphalt Jungle,” both released in 1950. She became a leading lady with a trio of 1953 titles: the noir “Niagara,” the musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and the romantic comedy “How to Marry a Millionaire.”

SEE25 best couples in film history – Romantic movies in time for Valentine’s Day [Photos]

She became iconic thanks to Billy Wilder‘s “The Seven Year Itch” (1955), in...

MGM wasn’t the most current studio in 1957, as can be seen by this throwback to another era, a semi-screwball romantic comedy with big stars and directed in high style by Vincente Minnelli. Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall party like it’s 1939, and with the musical-comedy help of the irrepressible Dolores Gray, almost pull it off.

Designing Woman

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 117 min. / Street Date June 19, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, Dolores Gray, Sam Levene, Tom Helmore, Mickey Shaughnessy, Jesse White, Chuck Connors, Alvy Moore.

Cinematography: John Alton

Film Editor: Adrienne Fazan

Art Direction: E. Preston Ames, William A. Horning

Original Music: André Previn

Written by George Wells

Produced by Dore Schary, George Wells

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

1957 was definitely the end of an era at MGM. With next to nobody on the payroll, it could no longer claim to possess All the Stars in Heaven.

The actress is mostly remembered for her good looks, but what about her impressive performances?

In Richard Dyer’s book Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, he writes that Marilyn Monroe was “the most visible star”: an actress whose life was put on display, and remains so over 50 years after her death. She is one of the most iconic Hollywood stars of all time, her face instantly recognizable to even those who have never seen any of her movies. She is a symbol of beauty, glamor, cinema, femininity, blondness, sexuality, and tragedy. While the world speculates about her personal life — who was she romantically involved with? How did she die? What was she really like? — her career as an actress is overshadowed by her fame.

While she may not have been the greatest actress of all time, she certainly had her fair share of talent and intelligence, and always worked incredibly hard to bring her...

All sing the praises of Frank Borzage, a gentle director fully committed to the idea of romance in an imperfect world. Sally Eilers and James Dunn make a go of marriage, despite their personal flaws and difficulties with communication. It’s hard to believe that films of this vintage portray behaviors as sensitive as this.

Bad Girl

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 90 min. / Street Date December 13, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring James Dunn, Sally Eilers, Minna Gombell, Sarah Padden, William Pawley, Billy Watson.

Cinematography Chester A. Lyons

Film Editor Margaret Clancey

Written by Viña Delmar, Brian Marlow, Edwin J. Burke

Directed by Frank Borzage

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Directors don’t come any more romantic than Frank Borzage. It is said that he was one of several Fox directors, including John Ford, who were heavily influenced by F.W. Murnau, whose Sunrise was a massive hit in...

The recent box office success of The Boss firmly establishes Melissa McCarthy as the current queen of movie comedies (Amy Schumer could be a new contender after an impressive debut last Summer with Trainwreck), but let us think back about those other funny ladies of filmdom. So while we’re enjoying the female reboot/re-imagining of Ghostbusters and those Bad Moms, here’s a top ten list that will hopefully inspire lots of laughter and cause you to search out some classic comedies. It’s tough to narrow them down to ten, but we’ll do our best, beginning with… 10. Eve Arden The droll Ms. Arden represents the comic sidekicks who will attempt to puncture the pomposity of the leading ladies with a well-placed wisecrack (see also the great Thelma Ritter in Rear Window). Her career began in the early 1930’s with great bit roles in Stage Door and Dancing Lady.

We’ve reached the near mid-point of this Definitive List; 20 down, 30 to go. As we move forward, the story of “boy meets girl” becomes more complicated, as plenty of stumbling blocks stand in the way: lack of experience, insecurity, unsupportive parents, and, as in most cases, ego. So, when we watch all these films, what do we learn? Hundreds of romantic comedies end happily, but none end in the same way. Perhaps there’s a method to the madness, but the more we tread through these highlights, the more it’s clear that to make an impact, you have to change the game or perfect the existing one.

#30. Bull Durham (1988)

Baseball movies had worn out their welcome a bit in the mid-80s and audiences weren’t clamoring for a romantic comedy based around the national pastime. Enter writer/director Ron Shelton, who decided to write a film based on...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

Sixty-one years ago today, this iconic image was born: Marilyn Monroe, laughing as the skirt of her white cocktail dress is blown up by the air from a subway vent. Monroe had her famous skirt moment on the set of “The Seven Year Itch” for a scene with Tom Ewell filmed on Sept. 15, 1954. Her husband, baseball player Joe Dimaggio, was reportedly infuriated by the scene, and the couple divorced shortly afterward. The iconic photo of the “flying skirt” moment was taken by Monroe's friend Sam Shaw. Other notable Sept. 15 happenings in pop culture history: • 1949: “The Lone Ranger” premiered on ABC. • 1956: Elvis Presley started a five-week run at No.1 on the U.S. charts with “Don't Be Cruel.” • 1961: A band from Hawthorne, Calif. called The Pendletones had their first recording session at Hite Morgan’s studio in Los Angeles. The band later changed their name to The Beach Boys.

Katharine Hepburn movies. Katharine Hepburn movies: Woman in drag, in love, in danger In case you're suffering from insomnia, you might want to spend your night and early morning watching Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" series. Four-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Katharine Hepburn is TCM's star today, Aug. 7, '15. (See TCM's Katharine Hepburn movie schedule further below.) Whether you find Hepburn's voice as melodious as a singing nightingale or as grating as nails on a chalkboard, you may want to check out the 1933 version of Little Women. Directed by George Cukor, this cozy – and more than a bit schmaltzy – version of Louisa May Alcott's novel was a major box office success, helping to solidify Hepburn's Hollywood stardom the year after her film debut opposite John Barrymore and David Manners in Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement. They don't make 'em like they used to Also, the 1933 Little Women...

Kiss Me, Stupid

Written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond

Directed by Billy Wilder

USA, 1964

How good was Billy Wilder? So good that this film, Kiss Me, Stupid—largely entertaining, frequently witty, beautifully shot, and with at least two noteworthy performances—probably wouldn’t figure in most lists of his top 10 movies. Yet it is a good Billy Wilder film, if not a great one.

Starting in Las Vegas, we are introduced to Dino, a womanizer, a drunk, an accomplished singer, and a clever jokester. Dean Martin, in a bit of curiously inspired and rather daring casting, plays the rapscallion; not surprisingly, he does so very well. On his way to Los Angeles, he stops in Climax, Nevada (with all the sexual innuendo built into this film, the town’s name almost seems the least obvious). There he encounters Orville (Ray Walston), a nebbish piano teacher and amateur songwriter who...

It’s hard not to empathize with this troubled teen and his equally mercurial mother, but the writer-director undercuts his characters by wallowing in classist squalor

The artist shows us the world and demands that we face its injustices and explore our own role in perpetuating them. The brat, meanwhile, sulks in his room and grumbles, “The world sucks, man.”

Writer-director Xavier Dolan wears both hats in his latest film, “Mommy,” which wavers between gritty, poignant drama and a wallow in how much it sucks to be poor and to wear unattractive clothes. (It’s the same kind of classist...

Episode 26 of 52: In which Tracy and Hepburn's best comedy shows that love, life, and law are a circus.

How are we already halfway through this series? How are we already halfway through this year? 2014 is going by faster than KHep’s dialog in Morning Glory. (See what I did there?) We’ve already covered one debut, an Oscar win, a masterpiece, a massive failure, an equally massive comeback, cinema chemistry history, racist history, communist history, and some odd miscellany, and we haven’t even gotten to the bulk of Kate’s Oscar nominations yet. Plus, in yet another moment of perfect symmetry, the 26th film is the pinnacle Tracy/Hepburn collaboration and a major milestone in Kate's career: Adam's Rib.

A woebegone wife attempts to shoot her husband when she finds him in the arms of his mistress. It’s the stuff that Law & Order episodes are made of.

We’ve reached the near mid-point of this Definitive List; 20 down, 30 to go. As we move forward, the story of “boy meets girl” becomes more complicated, as plenty of stumbling blocks stand in the way: lack of experience, insecurity, unsupportive parents, and, as in most cases, ego. So, when we watch all these films, what do we learn? Hundreds of romantic comedies end happily, but none end in the same way. Perhaps there’s a method to the madness, but the more we tread through these highlights, the more it’s clear that to make an impact, you have to change the game or perfect the existing one.

#30. Bull Durham (1988)

Baseball movies had worn out their welcome a bit in the mid-80s and audiences weren’t clamoring for a romantic comedy based around the national pastime. Enter writer/director Ron Shelton, who decided to write a film based on...

These days you can watch any movie you desire online. Yet there's still one thing the magical wonders of instant streaming haven't solved for indecisive movie-lovers: what the heck to watch! Moviefone is here to recommend the best streaming movies from Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant and new digital releases from iTunes and Vudu each week in Moviefone's Digital Download.

This week's Digital Download picks range from a psycho killer mannequin shop owner and a seductive new neighbor, to a Chinese meth lord and the has-been cast of a sci-fi TV show. Check out our suggestions below, and happy streaming!

Comedy: 'Galaxy Quest' (1999)

This space parody stars Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, and Alan Rickman as burnt-out actors from a cancelled cult sc-fi show. But when aliens in distress pick up signals of the show's reruns and believe it to be real, the actors have to do their best to play real heroes.

Billy Wilder movies, Johnny Carson interviews tonight on TCM Billy Wilder is Turner Classic Movies’ Director of the Evening tonight, July 8, 2013. But before Wilder Evening begins, TCM will be presenting a series of brief interviews from The Tonight Show, back in the old Johnny Carson days — or rather, nights. The Carson interviewees this evening are Doris Day, Charlton Heston, Tony Curtis, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin. (See also: Doris Day today.) (Photo: Billy Wilder.) As for Billy Wilder, TCM will be showing the following: Some Like It Hot (1959), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Spirit of St. Louis (1958), and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Of course, all of those have been shown before and are widely available. Some Like It Hot vs. The Major and the Minor: Subversive and subversiver Some Like It Hot is perhaps Billy Wilder’s best-known film. This broad comedy featuring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis...

Los Angeles — There is the well-honed Marilyn Monroe screen persona – the breathy, girlish voice, the glamorous curves and the flirty sex appeal – and then there are the films that allowed her to stretch, or at least allowed her to try. A devout Method actress, Monroe took her craft seriously, dug deep in search of motivation and worked harder than her effortless screen presence would suggest. For a while, that is, until her demons took over.

On the 50th anniversary of her death, here's a look at five of her most memorable film performances, the ones that stand out over her prolific but sadly short career:

_ "Some Like It Hot" (1959): This was the first title that came to mind when I began pondering this list. Maybe because it's the best film she was ever in – the Billy Wilder classic is listed as the greatest comedy ever by the American Film Institute – but also,...

Given her enduring appeal fifty years after her death, it can easily be argued that Marilyn Monroe was the signature pop culture icon of the 20th Century and her allure is lasting well into the next century. Last year, I read Max Allan Collins’ take on Marilyn’s death before watching Michelle Williams portray her in My Week with Marilyn. Her career has become the spine for the NBC series Smash. Her image is found in commercials, artwork, music videos, calendars, and on and on. While her appeal and persona don’t grab me, I respect her impact on America and the world.

Out this week form 20th Century Home Entertainment, in time for the morbid memorial, is the seven-disc Blu-ray set Forever Marilyn. Included in the set are the recently released Blu-ray editions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), River of No Return (1954), There’s No...

Marking the 50th anniversary of the Hollywood legend’s passing, the Forever Marilyn Collection is a four disc set showcasing some of the most treasured cinematic moments of Marilyn Monroe’s career with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, The Seven Year Itch, and Some Like It Hot.

From some of Monroe’s earlier films playing the iconic sex symbol that she was known for, to the film where she broke out of her limitations and began showing a stronger talent that she fought to be recognised, this collection really captures the beauty of a star who will forever be remembered.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Directed by Howard Hawks, the collection opens with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes which follows best friends Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw (Monroe and Jane Russell) as two showgirls who set a course for love on board a luxury liner sailing to France. Pursued by a...

As the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death approaches, Lois Banner argues in this extract from her new book that the star – complex and powerful – had many qualities associated with the women's movement

In one of the most famous photos of the 20th century, Marilyn Monroe stands on a subway grate, trying to hold her skirt down as a gust of wind blows it up, exposing her underpants. The photo was taken in New York on 15 September, 1954, in a photoshoot during the filming of The Seven Year Itch.

Marilyn is a vision in white, suggesting innocence and purity. Yet she exudes sexuality and transcends it; poses for the male gaze and confronts it. The photoshoot was a publicity stunt, one of the greatest in the history of film. Its time and location were published in New York newspapers; it attracted a crowd of 100 male photographers and 1,500 male spectators, even...

"I want to thank three persons,” said Michel Hazanavicius, accepting the 2012 Best Picture Oscar for “The Artist.” “I want to thank Billy Wilder, I want to thank Billy Wilder and I want to thank Billy Wilder.” He wasn’t the first director to namecheck Wilder in an acceptance speech. In 1994, Fernando Trueba, accepting the Foreign Language Film Oscar for "Belle Epoque" quipped, "I would like to believe in God in order to thank him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder... so, thank you Mr. Wilder." Wilder reportedly called the next day "Fernando? It's God."

So just what exactly was it that inspired these men to expend some of the most valuable seconds of speechifying airtime they'll ever know, to tip their hats to Wilder? And can we bottle it?

Born in a region of Austria/Hungary that is now part of Poland, Wilder's story feels like an archetype of...

The short answer, via Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain? Under the law that existed until 1978 . . . Works from 1955 A taste of the long answer: Think of the movies from 1955 that would have become available this year. You could have shared clips online with your friends. You could have shown the full films in your local theater. You could have spliced and remixed and made documentaries about them. Instead, here are a few of the movies that we won’t see in the public domain for another 39 years: • The Seven Year Itch, directed by Billy Wilder; starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell • Lady and the Tramp, Walt Disney Productions’ classic animation • Mister Roberts, directed by John Ford; starring Henry Fonda, James Cagney, and Jack Lemmon • Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly • The thriller The Night of the Hunter, directed...

Marilyn Monroe aka Norma Jeane Dougherty in 1946 Marilyn Monroe pictures taken during her first photo shoot — when she was still known as Norma Jeane Dougherty — will be auctioned following a Florida bankruptcy judge's ruling a few days ago. Proceeds from the selling of Monroe's images and their copyrights will help to settle the debts of photographer Joseph Jasgur. Julien's Auctions will handle the proceedings in their "Icons & Idols" auction, to be held December 2-4 in Beverly Hills. According to Julien's Auctions chief Darren Julien, the Marilyn Monroe photos have been locked up for more than two decades as a result of court battles. Julien added that Jasgur was hired by the Blue Book modeling agency to shoot Norma Jeane, then 19 years old, about a year or two (depending on the source) before her film debut. It's unclear how much the images and copyrights will fetch. (Note: In a signed release for the photos,...

Anne Francis on TCM: Forbidden Planet, Brainstorm, A Lion Is In The Streets Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Summer Holiday (1948) Musical remake of Ah, Wilderness!, about a small-town boy's struggles with growing up. Dir: Rouben Mamoulian. Cast: Mickey Rooney, Gloria DeHaven, Walter Huston, Frank Morgan, Jackie Jenkins, Marilyn Maxwell, Agnes Moorehead. C-93 mins. 7:45 Am So Young So Bad (1950) A crusading psychiatrist tries to help troubled reform school girls. Dir: Bernard Vorhaus. Cast: Paul Henreid, Catherine McLeod, Cecil Clovelly, Anne Jackson, Rita Moreno. Bw-91 mins. 9:30 Am Battle Cry (1955) A group of Marines eagerly await deployment during World War II. Dir: Raoul Walsh. Cast: Van Heflin, Aldo Ray, Mona Freeman, Dorothy Malone, Nancy Olson, Tab Hunter, James Whitmore, Raymond Massey, William Campbell. C-148 mins, Letterbox Format. 12:00 Pm Bad Day At Black Rock (1955) A one-armed veteran uncovers small-town secrets when he tries to visit an Asian-American war hero's family.

Statue of the late star posing over a drafty subway vent causes outrage in Chicago

The big story

It's the big Marilyn. And the big fuss a 26ft-statue of the Hollywood icon has caused in Chicago, where a monolithic Monroe - stuck with her skirt blown up in the famous pose from The Seven Year Itch - towers over the city's Pioneer Court, allowing leerers and jeerers alike to cop a giant's eyeful.

Labelled Forever Marilyn by 80-year-old New Jersey sculptor Steward Johnson, the statue has been described as "sexist" and "creepy" by critics, among them film writer Richard Roeper: "Men (and women) licking Marilyn's leg, gawking up her skirt, pointing at her giant panties as they leer and laugh," huffed the Chicago Sun-Times columnist, which sorta cooled the ankles of those who had been merrily papping the blonde bombshell's giant errrrr ... smalls.

Still, you suspect this Marilyn would...

Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe, the "Subway Dress," The Seven Year Itch Does $910k for Judy Garland's Adrian-designed Dorothy dress in The Wizard of Oz sound like a lot to you? Then what about the record-breaking $4.6 million paid for the "subway dress" Marilyn Monroe wore in Billy Wilder's 1955 comedy classic The Seven Year Itch? Or the $3.7m paid for the Ascot dress and hat designed by Cecil Beaton that Audrey Hepburn's Eliza Doolittle wore in George Cukor's Best Picture Oscar winner My Fair Lady? Countries, people, and animals the world over are hurting for money and all that money can buy, but today [...]...

Sex if funny… and sometimes just plain goofy! What better way to mix the two with a good ol’ fashioned sex comedy. That is exactly what they do in the new Warner Bros. movie Hall Pass. And since we here at Wamg appreciate a well done sex comedy, we bring you

Top Ten Sex Comedies Honorable Mention: The Sure Thing

In 1985 actor turned director Rob Reiner chose to make his second feature film (after the “mockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap) a more conventional narrative comedy. Specifically the teen sex comedy, but with a twist. He would combine this with a “love on the open road” theme ala It Happened One Night. This forms the structure of The Sure Thing. ‘ Gib’ (John Cusack) hears from his California based buddy Lance (Anthony Edwards) that his blond neighbor is a “sure thing”. Embarking on this cross-country trek West, Gib acquires the up-tight Alison...

Timothy Hutton, Peter Sarsgaard, Liam Neeson as Dr. Alfred Kinsey, Chris O'Donnell in Bill Condon's Kinsey Kinsey Review: Part I Also like the controversial heroes of previous biopics, Dustin Hoffman's Lenny Bruce in Lenny and Montgomery Clift's Dr. Sigmund Freud in Freud, Kinsey is ostracized because he dares tell the uncomfortable truth to a hypocritical society that wants none of it. But unlike Hoffman's abrasive stand-up comedian or Clift's detached psychoanalyst, Condon's Alfred Kinsey is an eccentric but wholly likable fellow. And therein lies Kinsey's biggest flaw. Since this is a (mostly) American movie, one can accept hunky Liam Neeson playing the hound-faced Alfred Kinsey, a carbon copy of actor Tom Ewell (the quasi-errant husband in the Marilyn Monroe comedy The Seven Year Itch). However, I found it difficult to accept a sex-obsessed hero who is hardly ever shown enjoying the pleasures of sex. Even if...

Actor often seen in unsympathetic roles

Although she rarely had a leading role, the actor Neva Patterson, who has died aged 90, made the most of the parts she was given. She had a great line in cold, uptight, probably sexually repressed women. In the romantic comedy An Affair to Remember (1957), she played an heiress, Lois Clark, waiting on the dock in New York for a playboy (Cary Grant) to arrive from Europe to marry her. But she had not reckoned that he might have fallen for another woman (Deborah Kerr) on board. Although her character is spoilt and controlling, Patterson elicited some sympathy as Lois gradually realises that she is losing her fiance.

To a degree, Patterson was typecast in the movies. In the delightful comedy The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), she is Judy Holliday's prim secretary, with her hair in a bun and dressed in a severe suit. Holliday...

In the new film "Breaking Upwards," struggling twentysomething couple Daryl and Zoe decide to address their relationship problems by planning and then executing their own breakup. Daryl is played by director/producer/editor/co-writer Daryl Wein, Zoe is played by producer/co-writer Zoe Lister-Jones, and the breakup in the film is based on the one the two went through in real life. In his director's statement, Wein says that the duo "thought it would make it more interesting to explore the nature of performance by casting ourselves in the roles. To be in the story, as opposed to having a fictional couple play us, gives the film a true sense of authenticity."

Actors act, and people who hate each other off-screen can spark with electricity on it and vice versa. But there is something innately fascinating, and extremely voyeuristic, about movies in which people who are or who were intimate...

Movies and fashion blend beautifully together. The recent fashion show featuring the latest collection by Dolce and Gabbana was inspired by the film Baarìa - La porta del vento, an upcoming Sicilian-Italian comedy film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was the opening film of the 66th Venice International Film Festival in September 2009. It is also the Italian entry for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In this series, we're listing down some very old and very new films that celebrate fashion at its finest! First on our list of 10 is The Great Gatsby:

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Directed by Jack Clayton from the screenplay of Francis Ford-Coppola, The Great Gatsby (1974) tells about Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, who finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle,...

Movies and fashion blend beautifully together. The recent fashion show featuring the latest collection by Dolce and Gabbana was inspired by the film Baarìa - La porta del vento, an upcoming Sicilian-Italian comedy film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was the opening film of the 66th Venice International Film Festival in September 2009. It is also the Italian entry for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In this series, we're listing down some very old and very new films that celebrate fashion at its finest! First on our list of 10 is The Great Gatsby:

- - -

Directed by Jack Clayton from the screenplay of Francis Ford-Coppola, The Great Gatsby (1974) tells about Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, who finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle,...

Movies and fashion blend beautifully together. The recent fashion show featuring the latest collection by Dolce and Gabbana was inspired by the film Baarìa - La porta del vento, an upcoming Sicilian-Italian comedy film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was the opening film of the 66th Venice International Film Festival in September 2009. It is also the Italian entry for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In this series, we're listing down some very old and very new films that celebrate fashion at its finest! First on our list of 10 is The Great Gatsby:

- - -

Directed by Jack Clayton from the screenplay of Francis Ford-Coppola, The Great Gatsby (1974) tells about Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, who finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle,...

Movies and fashion blend beautifully together. The recent fashion show featuring the latest collection by Dolce and Gabbana was inspired by the film Baarìa - La porta del vento, an upcoming Sicilian-Italian comedy film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was the opening film of the 66th Venice International Film Festival in September 2009. It is also the Italian entry for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In this series, we're listing down some very old and very new films that celebrate fashion at its finest! First on our list of 10 is The Great Gatsby:

- - -

Directed by Jack Clayton from the screenplay of Francis Ford-Coppola, The Great Gatsby (1974) tells about Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, who finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle,...

Movies and fashion blend beautifully together. The recent fashion show featuring the latest collection by Dolce and Gabbana was inspired by the film Baarìa - La porta del vento, an upcoming Sicilian-Italian comedy film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. It was the opening film of the 66th Venice International Film Festival in September 2009. It is also the Italian entry for the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In this series, we're listing down some very old and very new films that celebrate fashion at its finest! First on our list of 10 is The Great Gatsby:

- - -

Directed by Jack Clayton from the screenplay of Francis Ford-Coppola, The Great Gatsby (1974) tells about Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, who finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle,...

It's 9:58, and anticipation builds to a frenzied pitch inside trousers and panties all across this once-great land. Will tonight’s Mad Men feature the return of Lord Fuck-a-Duck, Madison Avenue’s greatest love machine--the man in the roguish turtleneck who can undress any upright or prone woman with his wicked incisors? Or will Duck and Peggy be furloughed so that she can relax her blank stare for a week and enjoy the liberty the rest of us take for granted in being able to blink? Here’s Pete at his desk dipping into an issue of Ebony, researching new markets and harboring impure thoughts about Leslie Uggams. It’s August, and everyone on Mad Men is wearing the sexy damp sheen of Tennessee Williams country, where humidity and tumidity meet and mate. Ah, Pete, finding himself adrift as a “summer bachelor,” a now mostly extinct species. In those sole-breadwinner...

Documentary photographer George Zimbel was in the right place at the right time the night a subway vent and a white dress conspired to immortalize Marilyn Monroe’s considerable physical charms. By Dean Brierly. Marilyn in classic mode in Zimbel's photo titled "The Flower" (Photo copyright George Zimbel. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission) When Marilyn Monroe stood atop a New York City subway grating—her white dress billowing above her waist as co-star Tom Ewell looked on with lecherous intent in director Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch—she was already established as the era’s most potent sex symbol. But the film, and the subway imagery in particular, forever enshrined her as the screen’s quintessential love goddess.The scene was originally filmed during the early morning hours of September 15, 1954, at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street. Heavily publicized beforehand, it attracted a thousand or...

Fox 2000 and Forest Whitaker's Spirit Dance Entertainment are teaming to remake the 1956 comedy The Girl Can't Help It, which starred Tom Ewell and Jayne Mansfield. The music-driven original followed the story of a talent agent (Ewell) who is hired by a mobster (Edmond O'Brien) to turn his musically challenged girlfriend (Mansfield) into a big star. Fats Domino, Little Richard, Julie London and the Platters turned in performances in the film as well.