Sarah Siddons - The most famous tragedienne of the 18th century

From The Vintage News:

Sarah Siddons was an actress born in Wales and was the most famous tragedienne of the 18th century, most notably for her role as Lady Macbeth, the wife of the play’s protagonist in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

Sarah Siddons was a star. A charismatic character that enchanted everybody on and off stage. Unfortunately, her private life wasn’t as bright as her social life and acting career. In 1773, when she was only 18, Sarah married the actor, William Siddons.

They had seven children together, but Sarah outlived five of them, while her marriage ended up in an informal separation. Sarah died in 1831, at the age of 75, and was interred there in Saint Mary’s Cemetery at Paddington Green.

read more here @ The Vintage News

Chinese Actress Liu Xiaoqing on Playing Empress Wu

Liu Xiaoqing as Empress Wu Zetain

In the pantheon of great Chinese actresses, few names come as revered as Liu. The star of more than 60 films and TV shows, Madame Liu, as she likes to be called, has a résumé that includes four marriages, once being China’s richest woman and a jail term for tax evasion. Now 61 years young, she is keen to discuss her latest role over dinner at Beijing’s Four Seasons Hotel. It's a role she has already played four times over.

“The tale of Empress Wu is like jade,” she tells TIME, dressed in a black tee bearing the slogan ”Little Cutie” over a green military-style shirt. “We’re on a treasure hunt for this most precious of treasures, unraveling the mysteries of that period and person.”

That person is Wu Zetian, the only woman to have ever ruled China, and that period is the Tang Dynasty (AD618 to 906). Liu is due to reprise the role in a 14-part series entitled Empress, due to hit American screens late next year.

Empress Wu is legendary in China for using her wit, intelligence and cunning to eclipse all rivals and rise from her position as Emperor Taizong’s favorite concubine to the very apex of court life. She also had scores of lovers, ruled through 72 prime ministers, and is believed to have killed her own daughter. “Only after I acted as Empress Wu did people start thinking positive things about her,” says Liu.

read more here

@ Time

@ Broadway World

@ Variety

@ Women & Hollywood Blog

Interview: Irene Bedard

From Indian Country Today Media Network:

Since portraying Mary Crow Dog in the Television production of Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee, depicting the Wounded Knee Standoff, Golden-Globe winning Alaska Native actress has appeared in a vast segment of Hollywood’s finest productions. From her beloved character Suzy Song in Smoke Signals to her voice work in Disney’s Pocahontas, Bedard has proven that a Native actress can make it to the big screen and then some.

In July of 2012, Bedard co-starred in Colonial Williamsburg’s production of “The Beloved Woman,” with actor Wes Studi. During a rehearsal break, she took a few moments to speak with ICTMN about working with Studi, working as a Native actress and what’s to come in the future.

Marilyn by Lois Banner

MARILYN: The Passion and the Paradox - Hers was a life lived fully and ambitiously, and cut short tragically; this much we all know is true. But beyond the public persona that Norma Jeane Mortenson put forth, do we really know all that much about the reality behind Marilyn Monroe’s storied thirty-six years on this earth? 

Upon the fiftieth anniversary of Monroe’s death, feminist and historian Lois W. Banner presents us with a new, all-encompassing study of the star’s tumultuous life and mystery-sodden death.  Through her lens, we see a very different Marilyn Monroe—not merely a blond bombshell nor a fragile victim—but someone she reveals as a radical, an intellectual, someone with a deep interest in spirituality, and one of the most important women of the 20^th century.  

Lois Banner was a founder of the field of women's history and cofounder of the Berkshire Conference in Women's History, the major academic event in the field. She is the author of ten books, including her acclaimed American Beauty and most recently MM–Personal, which reproduces and discusses items from Marilyn's personal archives. In addition to her books on Monroe, Banner is a major collector of her artifacts. She is also a professor of history and gender studies at USC and lives in Southern California.

Lois Banner on youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hag9eb8GTVg

The Blue Angel

Having seen glimpses of the original German movie, I was overjoyed when SBS in Australia put forward this documentary: "The Blue Angel: Birth of A Legend".

"The Blue Angel is based on Professor Unrat (literally Professor Garbage), a 1905 novel by German novelist Heinrich Mann [1871-1950]. The novel was adapted for the movie, titled 'Der blaue Engel', by German screenwriters Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Vollmöller, and Robert Liebmann, along with Austrian-American film-maker Josef von Sternberg (who also directed the movie). Both the novel and the movie were banned in Nazi Germany in 1933 as being 'contrary to the German spirit.' (Source: Blue Angel FAQ @ IMDb)

See also: 

* The Blue Angel from wikipedia

* The Blue Angel from IMDb

* Marlene Dietrich from wikipedia

Movie: The Women

This movie - The Women - made in 1939 has to be one of my all time favourite films.  Its cast features women only - not man in sight - only the reference to any male.  The premise of the story is one of divorce amongst the rich Manhattan set when one of our heroines discovers her husband's infidelity via a manicurist in the department store.  And off we journey on the divorce train bound for Reno.

The cast is stellar - some of the most wonderful actresses of the period - Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Marjorie Main (she of Ma Kettle fame), Rosalind Russell - to name a few.  

Here is a little snippet from the IMDb website:

"Wealthy Mary Haines is unaware her husband is having an affair with shopgirl Crystal Allen. Sylvia Fowler and Edith Potter discover this from a manicurist and arrange for Mary to hear the gossip. On the train taking her to a Reno divorce Mary meets the Countess and Miriam (in an affair with Fowler's husband). While they are at Lucy's dude ranch, Fowler arrives for her own divorce and the Countess meets fifth husband-to-be Buck. Back in New York, Mary's ex is now unhappily married to Crystal who is already in an affair with Buck. When Sylvia lets this story slip at a country club dinner, Crystal brags of her plans for a still wealthier marriage, only to find the Countess is the source of all Buck's money. Crystal must return to the perfume counter and Mary runs back to her husband."

Now - there was a remake - in 2008 - with Meg Ryan - which in my humble opinion was a complete train wreck as re-makes go.  There was no way that this 1930s storyline was ever going to transpose into the modern day world of the 2000s.  Eva Mendez sizzles with va-va-va-voom as the husband-stealing shopgirl - and hers is the only decent performance from what purports to being a top-notch female cast.

So I strongly recommend getting your hands on a copy of this original movie and enjoy it for what it is - a wonderful story with extraordinary characters!

See also the wikipedia site for "The Women"

Thirty Performances That Remade Women's History

From Paste Magazine:

Paste is celebrating with a look back at two decades worth of films and 30 talented female leads whose roles re-told and re-wrote key moments in history. The performances are not ranked (they appear chronologically) and the list is in no way all-encompassing, although we have tried to include a bit of everything and everyone—no actress appears more than once (we’ll make a separate list for Meryl Streep later).

As we’re sticking to biopics and female-centered period pieces, many great performances by many brilliant actresses do not appear, and it must be said that performances by women in comedies, thrillers, and other genres have also worked to re-make history. Similarly, many women who have played alongside male leads have been left out (like Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line or Laura Linney in Kinsey) but surely will—and do—appear on other lists. It also pained us to leave out Alanis Morissette’s unforgettable cameo as “God” in Dogma, probably the greatest, most accurately cast role ever.

Rogues Gallery of Restoration Actresses

From the Guardian:

The emergence of the actress on the Restoration stage was revolutionary. As every pupil of Shakespeare knows, it was men in drag who took the ladies' parts before. Imagine the frisson, then, when Nell Gwyn first showed herself aged 14 to a packed house at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, in 1664. This unprecedented female exhibition provoked salacious frenzy, which theatre companies hoped to harness to their profit.

The showcasing of beauties in "breeches roles" exploded ideas of decorum. Actresses welcomed the chance to demonstrate the virtuosity demanded by parts such as Viola and Rosalind. But the display of their shapely legs was condemned as an exercise in "brazenness" which confirmed the shameless immodesty and sexual availability of the actress. That both theatre-land and prostitution had their metropolis in Covent Garden was not lost on the press. From the first, the "actress" of popular imagination was a shimmering mixture of whore, coquette, talent and celebrity.

A new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons, investigates the concept of the "actress" in all its troubling contradictions. The artists include Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hoppner, Lawrence, Zoffany and Gillray.

The exhibition is the brainchild of Gill Perry. When she was writing her book Spectacular Flirtations: Viewing the Actress in Eighteenth Century Art and Culture, she realised that the NPG had an exceptional collection of early actress portraits – "And not only that they are in Covent Garden," she says.

When modern critics rate a female performance on whether it's theatrical Viagra or doubt that a woman is thin enough to play Juliet, they invoke a long and dishonourable tradition. "Modern actors should see the first actresses as trailblazers, fighting prejudice and innuendo," Perry concludes. Certainly women today might take comfort that so many of their forebears managed to seize the public relations initiative and shape the culture that so objectified them.

Diane Cilento

From the Telegraph:

Diane Cilento, the actress, who died on Thursday aged 78, appeared in films, television shows and stage productions, but was perhaps best known as the first wife of the actor Sean Connery.

Her heyday came in the late 1950s and 1960s, with her most memorable film part being that of Molly Seagrim, the lewd gamekeeper’s wench in Tony Richardson’s 1963 production of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.

Throughout her life, one Australian newspaper noted in 2006, Diane Cilento was sustained by a mix of rebelliousness, humour, independence and spirituality. Her try-anything-once approach included an early job modelling sports clothes in a Brisbane shop, playing bit parts in films and on television, and riding an elephant in a circus. “I wore the traditional fishnet stockings, incredibly high heels, a bum-revealing little green flared skirt, a pillbox hat and gloves that were shocking pink and sequinned,’’ she recalled of the circus gig.

In 2001 she was awarded the Australian Centenary Medal for “distinguished service to the arts, especially theatre”.

Farewell Cha Cha

From Christian Post:

Annette Charles, best known for her role as Cha Cha DiGregorio in “Grease,” has died at the age of 63. Her death comes just two months after “Grease” star Jeff Conaway died of an overdose at the age of 60.

Charles’s character Cha Cha was girlfriend of the T-Birds rival gang The Scorpions. Conaway’s character Kenickie was second in command to leader of the T-Birds Danny Zuko, played by John Travolta.

In a move to spark jealousy, Conaway’s character Kenicki takes Charles’s character Cha Cha to Rydell High’s school dance. Charles most memorable scene, however, was her sultry dance with co-star Travolta.

In addition to her role in “Grease,” Charles appeared on various television shows throughout the 1970’s and 80’s, including “The Mod Squad”, “Bonanza”, “Magnum P.I.”, “Baranby Jones”, “The Incredible Hulk”, and "The Bionic Woman.”

Farewell to the First Bond Girl - Linda Christian

From BBC News:

Actress Linda Christian, a 1940s Hollywood starlet who went on to become the first Bond girl, has died aged 87.

She died last Friday in Palm Desert, California, after suffering from colon cancer, her daughter said.

Christian starred as Vesper Lynd, the love interest of James Bond in the first TV adaptation of Ian Fleming's debut novel, Casino Royale, in 1954.

The actress's curvaceousness led Life magazine to nickname her the "anatomic bomb."

Elizabeth Taylor - Legend Lost

From The Hype News:

The star of "Cleopatra" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles surrounded

by family after a long battle with congestive heart failure that sent her to the hospital six weeks ago.

In a career spanning seven decades, Taylor first gained fame in 1944's "National Velvet" at age 12 and was nominated for five Oscars. She won the best actress award for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) with actor Richard Burton, whom she would marry twice.

Taylor's eight marriages, health problems, prescription drug addiction and ballooning weight often overshadowed her career, but she overcame adversity and used her fame to advocate for causes such as AIDS education and research.

Her death triggered an outpouring of tributes from Hollywood luminaries like Barbra Streisand, recording stars such as Elton John and politicians including former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Farewell to Hollywood Legend Jane Russell

From BBC News:

Former Hollywood actress and sex symbol Jane Russell has died at the age of 89.

The brunette was discovered by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who cast her in his 1943 Western The Outlaw.

Some of her most memorable films include the The Paleface (1948) with Bob Hope, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) with Marilyn Monroe.

She died on Monday at her home in California of a respiratory-related illness, her daughter-in-law confirmed.

Hideko Takamine - Gone But Not Forgotten

From The Age:

OVER the course of nearly 200 films, Hideko Takamine, developed from an endearing child star into an actress who powerfully represented the Japanese woman's search for identity and autonomy in the years after World War II. She has died in Tokyo of lung cancer, aged 86.

Takamine, who often seemed to be gallantly fighting back tears with her famously gentle smile, was widely regarded by Japanese and foreign critics as one of the three great actresses of the classical Japanese cinema.

Her two peers were the aristocratic Kinuyo Tanaka, who worked extensively with the director Kenji Mizoguchi and Setsuko Hara, whose portrayals of modern middle-class women were associated with the films of Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story).

Takamine was most notably the muse of Mikio Naruse, who, although not as well known a director in the west as Mizoguchi and Ozu, is frequently ranked as equally important in Japanese film history. For Naruse, Takamine often played women from rural or lower-middle-class backgrounds who were forced to make their own way in the world, often saddled with weak or unfaithful men.

No More Tears

From the Miami Herald:

Today, her four-bedroom Plantation home is the headquarters of No More Tears, a nonprofit Ali founded in 2006 to help immigrant women in South Florida escape domestic abuse.

The women (46 so far) hail from distant lands -- India, Russia, Guyana -- and nearby countries including Cuba and the Bahamas. They come from many faiths, and often arrive in South Florida via arranged marriages. They're cleaning women. Homemakers. Teachers.

Ali, 34, finds them apartments and rounds up donated furnishings. She lines up jobs or training, registers their kids in school and baby-sits when needed. All the while, she inches the women toward independence.

``It is like they are being held captive. They don't have a say,'' she says. ``It's ridiculous that this is happening in the United States. We have to learn about it and do something about it.''

Patricia Neal

From BBC News:

Oscar-winning US actress Patricia Neal has died aged of 84 from lung cancer.

Neal won an Academy Award for her role in the 1963 film Hud, but gave up acting two years later at the age of 39 after suffering a series of strokes.

But she returned to the screen after rehabilitation to earn a further Oscar and several Emmy nominations.

The star, who was born in Tennessee, was married to author Roald Dahl for 30 years and is the grandmother of model and TV presenter Sophie Dahl.

Obit: Cecile Aubry

From the New York Times:

Cécile Aubry, a French actress who had a short but glamorous film career and who later became a writer, creating a children’s television series, died Monday in Dourdan, outside of Paris. She was 81.

Her film career was short-lived, however: she made a half-dozen more movies in Europe, the last in 1960, and when she retired she reportedly said she’d been interested in making movies only for the opportunity to travel. She had married into a powerful Moroccan family in what some sources say was a secret marriage; her husband, Si Brahim El Glaoui, was a son of the pasha of Marrakesh.

Schwarzenegger Appoints Davis To Key Role

From Imperial Valley News:

Governor Schwarzenegger announces appointment of Geena Davis to the California Commission on the Status of Women. Actress Geena Davis, 54, of Los Angeles, has been appointed to the Commission on the Status of Women. She is an actor and has had roles in “Tootsie,” “The Fly,” “Beetlejuice,” “Earth Girls are Easy,” “Angie,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight” and “Stuart Little.” Davis received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1989 for her role in “The Accidental Tourist” and the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series - Drama in 2006 for “Commander in Chief.” She was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for her role in “Thelma and Louise” and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her role in “A League of Their Own.”

Davis is a member of Mensa International, founder of Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and its programming arm See Jane, which engages film and television creators to dramatically increase the percentages of female characters and reduce gender stereotyping in media made for children 11 and under. She is a partner with United Nations Development Fund for Women in an effort to change the way media represents women and girls, to encourage media to present and investigate issues of grave importance to women and to use a “gender” lens when reporting. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Davis is a Democrat.

Designing Women: Dixie Carter

From the Washington Post:

Dixie Carter, 70, a stage and television actress who helped expand the possibilities of American and Southern femininity as a star of the long-running TV sitcom "Designing Women," died April 10.

Dixie Virginia Carter was born May 25, 1939, in McLemoresville, Tenn., and it was not long thereafter that she began to dream of an operatic career.

Her most famous role was as wisecracking Southerner Julia Sugarbaker in "Designing Women," a CBS sitcom that chronicled the work and personal lives of four women in an Atlanta interior design firm.

Miss Carter died at a hospital in Houston. She had cancer.

Flora Robson

The other night I watched "Fire over England" - which is essentially the story of the lead up to the Spanish Armada episode in English History.

Well ..... I said essentially. There was quite a bit of "artistic licence" in the whole movie. However, I still loved it.

Particularly Flora Robson - what an exceptional actress! Her Elizabeth I was, I must say, brilliant. And again, her role as the Empress of Russia in "Catherine the Great" was also notable.


Anyway, for those not familiar with this remarkable woman, here are a few web-links for you:

• Flora Robson - wikipedia
• Flora Robson - biography
• Flora Robson - facebook
• Flora Robson - IMDB
• Flora Robson - filmography