My final 100th birthday tribute of 2011 goes to director Jules Dassin, an American writer-director whose career actually improved after he was blacklisted in Hollywood and then reinvented himself in Europe.  Dassin, who died at 96 in 2008 and who would have turned 100 on December 18, had quite an eclectic career, with his first directing [...]

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Oscar-winning Broderick Crawford died at 74 in 1986 and would have turned 100 on December 9th.  Though he is best remembered for All the King’s Men (1949), for which he got his Best Actor Oscar, Crawford also conquered Broadway, where he got his big break as Lennie in the 1937 production of Of Mice and Men, [...]

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Yesterday, December 4th, marked the 90th birthday of Deanna Durbin, the beloved teen soprano who reigned at Universal Studios from 1936-1948 and has been retired for 63 years.  She married French producer-director Charles David in 1950 and has lived in France for six decades.  (David passed away in 1999.)  Though she left the screen at [...]

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