This Sunday, August 5th, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe.  (She was only 36.)  It was in 1953 when everything changed for Marilyn, when she made the no-turning-back leap from attention-getting starlet (most notably in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, both from 1950) to full-blown movie star.  She accomplished this [...]

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Exactly one week after the death of Ernest Borgnine, we’ve lost another 95-year-old Oscar winner:  Celeste Holm, who passed away on July 15th.  In her mid-twenties, Holm had already claimed theatrical immortality when she created the role of Ado Annie in the landmark original Broadway production of Oklahoma! (1943).  She made her Hollywood debut in [...]

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The July 8th death of Ernest Borgnine (at 95) got me thinking primarily about one Borgnine movie.  Not one of his early classics in which he plays a supporting role, such as From Here to Eternity (1953), Johnny Guitar (1954), or Bad Day at Black Rock (1955).  Not Marty (1955), for which he won his Best Actor [...]

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It couldn’t sound much worse, an 1856 period piece starring John Wayne titled The Barbarian and the Geisha.  Add to this the fact that the film was critically dismissed and a rare box-office loser for Wayne.  There was also the hardly unexpected clash, both personally and professionally, between Wayne and director John Huston.  Then, after the studio (Fox) re-edited [...]

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