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The Phoenix Theater’s production of “The Seagull” marked Montgomery Clift’s big return to the theater, in 1954, after a decade of making movies in Hollywood. Unfortunately, the first preview of the Chekhov classic fell flat with the audience, and Arthur Miller was called in to give notes. According to Maureen Stapleton, also in the cast, the playwright was concise. “His first note was ‘I can’t hear you,'” she recalled. “is second note was ‘I can’t hear you,’ his third note was ‘I can’t hear you.'” That quote from Patricia Bosworth’s biography “Montgomery Clift...

Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe - The Nice Guys Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 2 writer and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3 director, Shane Black, sees Farewell, My Lovely, directed by Dick Richards, starring Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling, Arthur Penn's Night Moves with Gene Hackman and Alan J. Pakula's Klute, starring Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, as inspiration for his Nice Guys, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe dressed by Kym Barrett. Crowe finds Stanley Kubrick's The Killing "still works today" and remarks how Quentin Tarantino uses its "fractured timeline" so well. Gosling grew up with Arthur Lubin's Hold That Ghost and Charles Barton's Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein and deems Fred Dekker's The Monster Squad, co-written by Black, worth quoting.

Ryan Gosling: "I grew up on Abbott and Costello movies." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Producer Joel Silver,...

I’m guessing it was 60 years ago. I was a mere tyke; five years old. My sister was eleven. We lived in an apartment on Chicago’s mid-northwest side, and we had a television set. There were “only” five Vhf stations and one of them was educational – a betrayal of my sensibilities. I hated school, even if it was merely kindergarten, and the idea that someone would waste one of those few precious teevee channels on school was simply beyond my ken.

At that time I was only interested in cartoons and in Jack Benny. Yeah, I’ve been a Jack Benny fan since the light from the cathode ray tube first shined in our living room. And I wanted to watch Bugs Bunny. Being six and one-half years older, my sister had more sophisticated taste. She wanted to watch Superman. And, being six and one-half years older, my sister usually got her way.

This year has already seen several extraordinary feature-length documentaries, many of which were pulled from the popular arts. Actually some excellent examples focused on the music world, with Lambert & Stamp and Amy attracting a great deal of acclaim (and quite a bit early Oscar-buzz). This new release delves into another art, the art (and it really is one) of acting, by giving us a peek at a true legend of stage and screen. Often actors become a touchstone, a symbol for the decade in which they garnered their greatest triumphs. In the 1950’s, the two actors who truly exploded onto the scene were James Dean and Marlon Brando. While Dean was a bright, shooting star snuffed out by tragedy after just three films, Brando rode a bumpy rocket, with highs and lows, into the next century. Biographies have filled the bookshelves through the years, but what did he think of his life and work?...

Like the best horror and opera, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" is always stylish and always grim. In the pantheon of essential movies you only need to see once because their impact is so specific and traumatizing, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" is my ultimate recommendation. It's a movie that promises cynicism from the get-go, accumulates snideness and rancor with each step of its harrowing Depression-era dance marathon, and -- without ever straying from its blatant nihilism -- offers up something beautiful: a story as carnivalesque as a Hitchcock thriller but as prescient as "Network." I refuse to tell you much more about it. I guarantee you will not regret watching it, and I promise you will wonder why its message, power, and performances aren't more vaunted. If you're not gasping at Susannah York's Oscar-nominated unraveling, you're shrieking at Gig Young's Oscar-winning lunacy. If Michael Sarrazin's plummy-eyed innocence isn't breaking your heart,...

All the news stories we didn't get to and/or articles we like with a wee slant toward the stage this morning... itching to see a show again.

Guardian on the homophobic charges against the MPAA. That über obnoxious organization has struck again. Pride is the second gay movie this year without sex scenes or nudity to be slapped with an R rating.

/Film The Twilight Saga may well be back after some short films. When I first heard this news I groaned and rolled my eyes but then I read the plan and it's sort of a support young female filmmakers thing so it sounds kind of cool, actually. Pit that Twilight is so obnoxious 

The Playlist ranks all 35 of David Fincher's music videos. I used to be so obsessed with him because of Madonna. It's possible that I already linked this? I don't know. But their rankings are fairly good.

Not long ago on Twitter, Bret Easton Ellis said that Matthew Bomer couldn't possibly play the testosterone-spewing lead role in the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey because he's openly gay. I personally find that statement more incendiary than insightful, but let's move onto a more interesting concern: Who should our gay actors be portraying on the big screen? Here are nine gay thespians who'd be perfect on screen in these real-life roles. Jane Lynch, hold onto your seat.

1. Chris Colfer as Ricky Nelson

There's something about the '50s teen idol that's never been replaced. The combination of innocence and the burgeoning power of new rock 'n roll made for a parent-approved, yet slightly dangerous mix. Chris Colfer can pull off talk-singing like most McKinley High upperclassmen, and therefore he and his wide blue eyes are perfect for the role of snarling sitcom scion Ricky Nelson.

2. Cheyenne Jackson...

By Harvey Chartrand

Frank Langella played an aging writer in Starting Out in the Evening (2007). Who would have figured this for typecasting?

In his superb memoir, Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them (HarperCollins), Langella reveals that he is an incomparable memoirist and storyteller, recalling his encounters with scores of luminaries from the world of entertainment in a career spanning half a century. All of these luminaries are deceased and the cast of characters is listed “by order of disappearance”. Just as well, as many of the revelations are quite shocking.

Langella must be the most sociable and congenial actor on the planet, as the busyness of his social and professional lives and the breadth and depth of his friendships, romantic liaisons and acquaintances are very impressive indeed. He met Marilyn Monroe in 1953. She stepped out of a limousine and said “hi” to the adolescent from Bayonne,...

whoa. no link roundups in forever. time to catch up on movie news and/or must see web droppings

Yahoo Movies Fine Thelma Adams piece on Prometheus' "foreign object" sequence. [shudder]

24 Frames Noomi Rapace and Sigourney Weavers' Alien franchise screen tests

IndieWire six life saving tips for cinematographers from the great Darius Khondji (Se7en, Evita, Midnight in Paris, and more...)

Empire Penelope Cruz will star in her fifth Pedro Almodóvar movie Fleeting Lovers (title may change) which starts shooting this summer. Yay! Double Yay! All About My Mother star Cecilia Roth is also in the cast.

YouTube if there's anything I hate about YouTube it's the ability to name your videos "official". But this "Official" Les Miserable trailer starring (gulp) Katie Holmes is kind of a good prank... I mean Nightmare!

In Contention production designer J Michael Riva (Django Unchained, The Color Purple) has passed away at 63.

Awards Daily Singin' in the Rain...

Confession: I don't read enough. Worse, I don't read well. I'm always anxious about getting to good sections or flipping past unnecessary text, and I lose the fun of reading, uh, for fun. That's why I've come up with a quick summer reading list that I think the AfterElton demographic will love specifically. These five books have come out within the past year, they're all well-reviewed, and they're all as titllating and flavorful as an average Matt Bomer photo shoot. I say we give these tomes a whirl.

I've chosen non-fiction, entertainment biz selections only. We're all still compulsively into that stuff, right? I sure am.

1. Diane Keaton, Then Again

Description: The Oscar-winning actress writes candidly about her inspiring mother, her self-consciousness, her harrowing battle with bulimia, and famous paramours including Woody Allen and Warren Beatty.

Why We Care: Among celebrities, Diane Keaton's always been one of the more private stars,...

Publicity still from Lifetime's Liz and Dick

Are you seeing what I'm seeing? That's Lindsay Lohan looking almost scarily like Elizabeth Taylor in a promotional photo for the Lifetime movie Liz & Dick, a biopic of the romance between Taylor and Richard Burton. It's such a wicked resemblance that I say we celebrate with a little present-to-past dream casting of our own. Ahead, we match up current Hollywood stars with their lookalikes from the past. I left out obvious picks like George Clooney/Cary Grant and most other resemblances I covered here.

Ryan Gosling as Errol Flynn

Jude Law portrayed notorious playboy Flynn in The Aviator, but I think Gosling's turn as the sinister star would be much more interesting. It'd combine the enigma of his work in Drive and a twisted spin on his charismatic turn in The Notebook.

Katherine Heigl as Ellen Burstyn

Is your mind blown? If Hollywood...

William Powell, Myrna Loy Myrna Loy Q&A Pt.1: Typecasting, Favorite Movies Myrna Loy claims that before Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland took Warner Bros. to court, she fought her own studio — in Loy's case MGM. What was that about? And did Loy's stance impact her film career in any way? Loy went on strike against MGM in 1935, partly because she had been miscast in a film called Escapade [Loy was replaced by newcomer Luise Rainer], and partly because she wanted more vacation time and more money after hitting pay dirt as Nora Charles. She did win more money and more time off, but MGM continued to under-utilize her talents and to stick with safe bets in casting her. Myrna Loy the Activist. How was she an activist? How did she become involved in social/political activism? And how did that affect her film career? World War II was a turning point for her. She...

"There have been lots of books that tell the history of the movies, but so far almost no films," Mark Cousins told indieWIRE's Peter Knegt last September. We should qualify that statement, of course. As Nick Pinkerton notes in the Voice, there have been documentaries on the history of cinema, though some might filter that history "through the director's particular prejudices or national heritage (Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinéma, finally released on DVD last December; Oshima's 100 Years of Japanese Cinema; A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies). Or it might mean sticking to one facet of the timeline, as in historian Kevin Brownlow's extraordinary work on the medium's adolescence, Hollywood."

That point made, back to Cousins: "You can sit in a room to write a book about movies, but to tell the story of how a flickering Victorian novelty became a global art form on film, you have to travel the world,...

HollywoodNews.com: Jane Fonda‘s biographer, Patricia Bosworth, was saluted last night by Broadway producer Judy Gordon on the Upper East Side. Patti’s book, “Jane Fonda: The Public Life of a Private Woman,” is a New York Times bestseller, the latest of Bosworth’s many terrific tomes (do read her much acclaimed bios of Montgomery Clift, Diane Arbus, and of her own father, the lawyer for the Hollywood Ten).

Gordon’s A list guests included famed actor Michael Murphy, Kathryn Altman (widow of famed director Robert Altman), author Stephen Schlesinger and his legendary mom Alexandra, former French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck, Olympic champ and sports analyst Dick Button, writer David Black, famed director (and yes, the father) Robert Downey Sr., legendary Broadway and “Saturday Night Live” choreographer Pat Birch, producer Dennis Grimaldi, and writer-producer Maria Cooper Janis (who also happens to be the lovely daughter of Gary Cooper). After the party,...

At age 74, Jane Fonda still beams with a dogged courage that has fueled her cinematic, political, and entrepreneurial endeavors. Biographer Patricia Bosworth would know firsthand, having met the two-time Oscar winner during their thespian days with Lee Strasberg in New York City's Actors Studio. For four decades Bosworth has studied the shapeshifting Fonda, and when it came time in the early 2000s to write her biography, Fonda agreed to interview with the woman who had, by that time, written tomes about Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.

In the 1950s I had enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh to be a journalism major. I remember being rushed by the fraternities and being surprised that at one fraternity house they had on a pornographic movie. Being a teenager, I should have understood why, but I really didn't. I had some misgivings about going into journalism. I imagined that someday an editor might tell me to ask someone who had lost a loved one how they felt. I see that all the time on the news now. Not for me.Other than my appearance as Don the Janitor Boy in the grammar school graduation play "Getting Gracie Graduated," I had never acted, nor had I thought of being an actor. Then one day I saw Montgomery Clift in the movie "A Place in the Sun." He made acting look so easy, and he got Elizabeth Taylor for his girlfriend.

Paramount Pictures has recently optioned a book by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger called Furious Love, which tells the story of the famous romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The studio is going to develop the film as a directing vehicle for Martin Scorcese.

Deadline reports that this film won’t be a biopic. “It focuses on a torrid and tempestuous romance that is the stuff of Hollywood legend” To be honest, I don’t know much about the romance between these two other than it happened. It was obviously before my time, and I don’t really follow this kind of stuff.

I have never been a big fan of Scorcese’s work outside of his recent films Aviator and The Departed. I think this is an awesome love story that needs to be told and makes for a great real life drama as these two surpass “Bradjelina...

Paramount Pictures has recently optioned a book by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger called Furious Love, which tells the story of the famous romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The studio is going to develop the film as a directing vehicle for Martin Scorsese.

According to Deadline this film won’t be a biopic. “It focuses on a torrid and tempestuous romance that is the stuff of Hollywood legend” To be honest I don’t know much about the romance between these two other than it happened. It was obviously before my time, and I don’t really follow this kind of stuff.

I do love Scorsese’s work though, and judging from the description of the book, this could end up being a great and interesting romantic drama. What do you all think?

Here’s a full description of the book from which the film will be based:...

Paramount Pictures will develop and adapt the romance story between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The story is based off author Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger’s novel called “Furious Love.” According to Deadline, the adapted film is acquired as a directing vehicle for Martin Scorsese. The film will be produced by Julie Yorn, Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff of Krasnoff Foster Productions and Scorsese with Paramount Pictures’ Sikelia production company. The producers already established a rights agreement with Burton’s estate and a pledge of cooperation from his widow, Sally Hay Burton. The filmmakers are reaching out to Taylor’s estate for the same cooperation. Burton and Taylor were married from 1964 to 1974 and remarried after a divorce from 1975 to 1976. The two actors met on the set of “Cleopatra,” in which Burton replaced actor Stephen Boyd as Marc Anthony. Their on-and-off screen relationships became a worldwide scandal to the point...

James Franco seems pretty insistent on getting into directing, with film adaptations of literary classics Blood Meridian and As I Lay Dying sure to push his skills to their limit, and he’s optioned yet another book for a future job. Variety lets us know that the actor has taken on the rights for Zeroville, which was written by Steve Erickson and serves as a dark parody of the New Hollywood movement.

It focuses on Ike “Vikar” Jerome, who has just moved to Hollywood in 1969. With tattoos of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor on his head, his journey “ends in both tragedy and discovery.” The book features many New Hollywood icons, such as Robert De Niro, Brian De Palma, John Milius and Paul Schrader, with the ghost of Clift even showing up.

I haven’t read the novel upon which this’ll be based, but the concept sounds pretty terrific,...

James Franco has optioned the film rights to Steve Erickson's 2007 novel, "Zeroville," reports Variety . He will develop the project under his Rabbit Bandini Productions and may direct, but there are no plans for him to star. The book is described as follows: Zeroville begins in 1969 on Hollywood Boulevard, when a Greyhound bus drops off a film-obsessed ex-seminarian with images of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift tattooed on his head. Vikar Jerome steps into the vortex of a cultural transformation: rock 'n' roll, sex, drugs, and.far more important to him.the decline of the movie studios and the rise of the independent director. Jerome will become a film editor of astonishing vision. Then through encounters with former starlets, burglars, political guerillas,...

Now that the procession of Elizabeth Taylor tributes is finally over, the real fanaticism can begin! I'm staining my corneas with purple Crayola Washables, pounding shots of White Diamonds straight from the tube, and slurring, "Tell mama all" to my saliva-drenched Montgomery Clift poster. I'm also revisiting one of Elizabeth Taylor's most senselessly elegant movies, the 1963 "drama" The V.I.P.s. It's about attractive people who are horny at the airport. I've already taken off!

On the set of Giant, not recognising her, I asked her on a date. She turned me down, but with a grace and humour I never forgot

When people say, "She's got everything", I've got one answer – I haven't had tomorrow.

– Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor may have been "the most beautiful woman in the world" but the great thing is that she didn't always look it. During the filming of Giant, my duty as a Hollywood agent was to hang around Warner Brothers to pick off dissatisfied clients from rival agents and keep an ear open for money-making gossip. In the picture's lunch break for studio workers, who were setting up interiors and closeups, I got my taco and beans from the on-lot catering coach and at a plank table sat opposite a quite ordinarily attractive, freckle-faced woman, her hair in a bandanna, who I assumed was a makeup person...

Taylor was always bigger than her movies and even towards the end of her life, proved that age could not wither her

The Cleopatra costume will, surely, dominate the news reports but with all respect to the Egyptian queen, Liz was bigger than that.

Elizabeth Taylor evokes more images than the number of husbands she had. She was the breathtakingly beautiful child who – unlike her near contemporary, Judy Garland – seemed to slip into adulthood unscarred by her precocious professional success; the sultry dramatic actress; the compulsive bride, who went through husbands like fashion trends; the scarlet woman who broke up America's sweethearts, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds; the female half of what can very legitimately be described as the greatest love affair of the 20th century; the most beautiful woman in the world; front-page stalwart of the National Enquirer; star of some of the best movies of her era; star...

Associated Press Elizabeth Taylor in “BUtterfield 8.”

Elizabeth Taylor had exceptional beauty, and lesser actresses might have coasted on those looks, gravitating towards sweet, uncomplicated roles. But after a child-star phase, Taylor grew up to be a powerhouse of an actress, nailing nuanced, fractured women and cementing her place in Hollywood history.

Here’s a Liz Taylor film primer:

1. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” 1958. As the seductive Maggie, Taylor played up a simmering vulnerability that teetered between resentment and...

Still reeling from our loss of a legend. October, 2009: “How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood” Other posts you might likeMarch 23, 2011 -- Unpublished Pics of Montgomery Clift...

Elton John and Michael Caine lead Hollywood tributes to eight-times married Oscar winner, 79 Hollywood is mourning Elizabeth Taylor, arguably the last great female star of the studio system, who has died at the age of 79.

"We have just lost a Hollywood giant. More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being," said Sir Elton John, who last month accepted an award on the ailing star's behalf from an HIV/Aids charity – a cause Taylor had championed since the death of her friend Rock Hudson.

Taylor's publicist, Sally Morrison, said the actor died peacefully in Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles. She was taken to hospital six weeks ago with congestive heart failure, "a condition with which she had struggled for many years. Though she had recently suffered a number of complications, her condition had stabilised and it was hoped that she would be able to return home. Sadly, this was not to be", said Morrison.

Elizabeth Taylor, the Hollywood legend who was as famous for her long movie career as she was for her notorious eight trips down the aisle, passed away this morning in Los Angeles at age 79. The late actress made headlines over the years for her health scares, humanitarian work and, of course, her marriages but for most of us it was her time on screen that will be her real legacy.

Just nine years old when she first appeared on film, in There's One Born Every Minute, it was her role in National Velvet at age 12 that made her a movie star. Unlike many child stars of the past, Taylor managed a fairly smooth transition from youthful parts to more mature roles, thanks in part to key supporting roles in films like Little Women and Father of the Bride. By the time Taylor hit her twenties, she was starring opposite some...

Life magazine has released a series of never-before-published images of Elizabeth Taylor, who appeared on the magazine's cover a record 14 times, starting when she was just 15-years old.

Several stunning images of the Hollywood icon never made it to print, so Life.com is now featuring an unpublished gallery of photos of Elizabeth Taylor from the magazine's archives.

Here are just a few!

Elizabeth and good friend, Montgomery Clift

Elizabeth, at her first wedding to Conrad Hilton

Elizabeth,...

Superstar to superstar. To Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor was "a functioning voluptuary … a courageous survivor, a helluva actress and someone I am extremely proud to know." Even in the sanitized 1958 MGM version of Tennessee Williams's potent drama in which they costarred, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - with the sultry Newman as the drunkard ex-athlete Brick and an indelible Taylor as his neglected wife, Maggie the Cat - the two sent audiences' pulses racing. But they were more than simply sex symbols. Both proved themselves Academy Award-level actors and world-class humanitarians. Now, sadly, they are both gone. Newman...

Robert A. here (of Distant Relatives). When Nathaniel asked us to pick a Tennessee Williams based film and write about it, my first instinct was the pick something I’d seen again and again and thus could write with authority. Unfortunately all of those films were quickly scooped up and I thought, why not take the opportunity to explore one I’d always wanted to see but hadn’t gotten around to. Why did I want to see Suddenly, Last Summer?

Well...

Of course, Tennessee Williams films are often saturated in dripping sexuality.

Cue the crotchety old man in me saying “In my day, when films couldn’t show two people hopping in the sack, they were sexier.” But in the case of Williams, it’s true. Consider shirtless desperate Marlon Brando shouting out for his lover in Streetcar or Eli Wallach seducing Carrol Baker in Baby Doll. This wasn...

Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez as a couple is not a far-fetched idea. But Hollywood loves to construct faux romances to help careers and sometimes hide sexuality (Rock Hudson and Doris Day, Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Salem), but teen heartthrob Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, who've been downplaying rumors of a real romance, are playing up the Pda (public displays of affection) quotient: kissing and cuddling on a yacht in St. Lucia. The May-December romance (Bieber is two years younger than Gomez) has all the tabloids wagging that there might be fire where the smoke is. "We just like to hang out. They shouldn't be stopping us from going out to dinner and things like...

With British drama Cuckoo out now in cinemas, we caught up with its producer and writer-director, Tony and Richard Bracewell, to chat about it…

Brothers Tony and Richard Bracewell area formidable team. Richard, with his background in TV work, is the writer-director, while ex-pr man Tony has the production firmly under control. Together, they produced the cult movie The Gigolos, their first feature from 2006. Cuckoo is an atmospheric psychological thriller with riveting performances by Laura Fraser and Richard E. Grant.

We caught up with Tony and Richard to talk about the making of the latest film, marketing, and working with Richard E. Grant...

Your film has been ready for some time, but it has only just come out. I watched it for the first time a few months ago – why did you start showing it so early on?

Tony: It’s all about finding the right slot for the film to come out.

It has been reported that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angelina Jolie are in contention to star as Elizabeth Taylor in a mooted biopic based on Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger’s book Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century.

Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell, and Clive Owen have been mentioned by ETonline as candidates to play Richard Burton, with Mike Nichols named as an interested potential director.

Of the possible Burton contenders, only Crowe strikes me as having both the appropriate sort of craggy physicality and acting chops to create a believable Burton, and Angelina Jolie has the chops but possesses an entirely different kind of beauty (I could see her as Ava Gardner should anyone ever venture to film that actress’ rather sad and tortured life). Zeta-Jones is closer physically to Taylor but I remain unconvinced about her abilities to transform into and flesh out an icon like Taylor.

Four-time Academy Award winner screenwriter-director-producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz will be saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with a special 50th anniversary screening of a recently restored print of Suddenly, Last Summer, starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor (above, and right, with Mankiewicz), and Montgomery Clift. The screening will take place on Thursday, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The evening will also celebrate the recent gift of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz Papers to the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Turner Classic Movies host and The Young Turks co-creator Ben Mankiewicz, Joseph L.’s great nephew and grandson of Citizen Kane co-screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, will host the salute, which will include a panel discussion with Mankiewicz’s family and friends prior to the screening. I’ve seen the majority of the 20 or so feature films directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

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By Herbert Shadrak

Let’s face it. Many Hollywood biographies are cut-and-paste jobs, recycling (if not actually cribbing) material from other sources – yellowing issues of Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, vintage tabloids or previously published biographies – and retelling the same old anecdotes. Happily, The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre is no such hack job. It is one of the finest biographies of an actor ever written, on a par with Patricia Bosworth’s Montgomery Clift and Charles Winecoff’s Split Image: The Life of Anthony Perkins. However, the time it took to research and write the Lorre tome may well be unprecedented. Author Stephen D. Youngkin started working on The Lost One in the early 1970s and the book was finally published in 2005, so there are many first-hand accounts by Lorre’s friends and colleagues (most of whom have died over...