Fav Films

l admit it ~ I'm a cinephile

[trainstationgoodbye]

Well, anything might happen, the train could jump off the track. If it should happen that I don’t see you again… It’s been very nice knowing you. (insp.)

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Make Way For Tomorrow (1937), Now Voyager (1942), My Reputation (1946), Brief Encounter (1945), Penny Serenade (1941), Knight Without Armour (1937), Paris Blues (1961), Summertime (1955)

[deforest]

METROPOLIS (1927) dir. Fritz Lang

[black-0rpheus]

“We all need discipline. You said yourself they’re like children. Without discipline, we should all behave like children“ Black Narcissus (1947) dir.  Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

[florencemachines]

Costume appreciation series: To Catch a Thief (1955) dir Alfred Hitchcock

Costume Design by Edith Head

[heaveninawildflower]

Illustrations by Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935)  taken from ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Published 1905 by Scribner.

The Library of Congress.

archive.org

[dosesofgrace]

Princess Grace of Monaco and Queen Elizabeth II in the same picture!

Ascot Opening, 1966

I’ve been looking for such a photograph for ages! One of my dreams has come true tonight!

My eternal gratitude to Ruby (Fab-Ingrid), who very generously shared this gem with me! ♥

[eliza2854]

🎄👼🏻🎄

Cary Grant became a Papa at 62 years of age. He recorded this *Rarely heard Christmas Lullaby in 1967 after his only child, Jennifer, was born in 1966.

Enjoy!

[sparklejamesysparkle]

“When I’m good I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better!”  -Mae West Born in Brooklyn in 1893, Mae West was bitten by the acting bug as a child and started working professionally in Vaudeville while in her teens, appearing in musical revues and briefly dabbling for a time as a drag king (daring for the period). A ground-breaking actress and writer who pushed the boundaries of the era she came up in, Mae went on to become an early advocate for women’s rights and a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, and arguably one of the very first gay icons of film. Briefly married to an actor named Frank Wallace in 1911, Mae left him after only a few weeks; though she never saw him again, she kept the marriage a secret until the press found out and she finally filed for divorce in 1945. She never married again, and commented: “Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet!” During the “roaring twenties”, Mae went on to write, produce, direct, and star in the play Sex in New York in 1926, resulting in the theater getting raided by the vice squad and Mae serving a week behind bars on a morals charge (tame by today’s standards, the play ruffled feathers because it dealt frankly and humorously with human sexuality, forbidden at the time). “It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any,” West later commented about her risqué image. “Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office.” She followed up by staging a play entitled The Drag in 1927 in New Jersey and Connecticut, but was prevented from opening the production on Broadway when the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice banned it due to its honest depiction of homosexuality and cross-dressing. After the success of her play Diamond Lil in 1928, West was enticed by Paramount Pictures to come to Hollywood, signing a long-term contract with the studio in 1932 at the age of 39. Though she had to tone down some of her bawdy humor in her movies, she found ways to get past film censors and get her point across to audiences through the use of clever double-entendres and body language, becoming a sex symbol in middle-age (a status that she easily maintained throughout the rest of her long life and career). “I speak two languages, Body and English,” she explained. “It isn’t what I do, but how I do it. It isn’t what I say, but how I say it, and how I look when I do it and say it.” West died in 1980 at the age of 87, and she wrote and starred in her last movie Sextette two years before her passing, appearing alongside Tony Curtis, George Hamilton, Timothy Dalton, Ringo Starr, and Alice Cooper in the sex farce. “Personality is the most important thing to an actress’s success,” she remarked about her enduring popularity later in life. “It’s the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.” Mae’s personality continues to shine brightly, entrancing audiences and making people laugh, her daring “joie de vivre” and cheeky take on sensitive subject matters immortalized forever on celluloid.

[oh-sewing-circle]

“ ’The Lady Eve changed both of our lives,’ Edith Head would remember. ‘It was Barbara’s first high-fashion picture and her biggest transition in costuming. Barbara was quite trim and had a better shape than most of the other actresses around. She possessed what some designers considered to be a figure ‘problem’ —a long waist and a comparatively low rear end. By widening the waistbands in front of her gowns and narrowing them slightly in the back, I could still put her in straight skirts, something other designers were afriad to do, because they thought she might look too heavy in the seat. I just took advantage of her long waist to create the illusion that her derriere was just as perfectly placed as any other star’s.’ Head was born Edith Claire Posener, in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles. She was married to a sales executive, Charles Head, and, because she was a Catholic, stayed married when she and Stanwyck met on the set of Internes Can’t Take Money in 1937.

She dressed Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford, and her pacifying manners with tempermental stars and directors and her quiet authority made them insist on her being rehired on their next pictures. Her biggest professional regret was not designing for Greta Garbo. She divorced Charles Head in 1938 and married art director Wiard Boppo “Bill” Ihnen. She called him her “best friend,” and the two of them led separate lives except in their Coldwater Canyon home, where they gardened and collected art together. The marriage lasted thirty-nine years until his death, at ninety-one.

Like Stanwyck, Edith was secretive and dreaded any talk about sexuality, her own or anyone else’s. Her lesbianism was widely known, but she kept her distance from the many actresses she dressed with the exception of Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, who were frequent guests at Edith’s and Bill’s rambling hacienda. Said author Paul Rosenfield, 'Edith was a terribly closeted, discreet lesbian who had little use for most women as individuals or associates.’ “

-From The Sewing Circle: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women by Axel Madsen

[connerys]

Eva Marie Saint’s wardrobe for the film was originally entirely chosen by MGM. Hitchcock disliked MGM’s selections and the actress and director went to Bergdorf Goodman in New York to select what she would wear.

[flixls]

Christmas shopping rush at Macy’s, 1948. By Nina Leen. 

[sweetoothgirl]

STRAWBERRY TUXEDO CAKE

[gracepatri]

For @graciemonaco

Have a nice day!

[eliza2854]

Elizabeth Taylor with her third child by third husband Mike Todd. The baby was/is called Liza (her full name is Elizabeth Frances Todd). She was born in August, 1957 after her parents had we'd in February, 1957.

Liza lives on a farm on the a 55 acre farm around Hudson NY and is a sculptress. She is a divorced mother of two.

[eliza2854]

#NewsFlash ... Re: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)

Did you know that this shot of Marion (Janet Leigh) removing her black bra before her shower was removed by the U.S.A. censors, while the scene remained intact in the U.K.

[eliza2854]

"A Woman Under the Influence" (1974) starring (and written and directed by) John Cassavetes & Gena Rowland's & Peter Falk

The story follows a woman (Gena Rowlands) whose unusual behavior leads to conflict with her blue-collar husband (Peter Falk) and family.

Lacking studio financing, Cassavetes mortgaged his house and borrowed from family and friends, one of whom was Peter Falk, who liked the screenplay so much he invested $500,000 in the project.

It received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and Best Director.

[eliza2854]

Remembering

Joseph Cotten as Uncle Charlie in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943). Hitchcock said this is his favorite Hitchcock film.

CONSIDER:

One has to wonder why Uncle Charlie has such hostility to "silly" middle-aged women??

And how the heck could he & his sister be so different?? (She's kind & loving)

WATCH:

Watch the ring & Hitchcock's beloved *stairs* shots. And the use of Shadows and Light.

[eliza2854]

Dutch actress Johanna Ter Steege in test photo for Stanley Kubrick's *Unmade* THE ARYAN PAPERS.

Stanley Kubrick didn't make his *Holocaust* film because he found out Steven Spielberg was making SCHINDLERS LIST & didn't want the competition of two movies on same subject.

What could have been ... ???