La cavalcata ardente (1925)

May 8, 2015, 10:00 pm

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The silent Italian film La cavalcata ardente/The fiery cavalcade (1925) was a highly successful historical melodrama about the conquest of Naples by Garibaldi. The film was a good example of the cooperation of the husband-and-wife-team of writer-director Carmine Gallone and Polish-born film diva Soava Gallone between 1916 and 1927.


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Soava Gallone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by G.B. Falci Editori, Milano. Photo: Soava Gallone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Jeanne Brindeau, Soava Gallone and Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).

A Refined, Delicate Soul

Carmine Gallone had the intelligence to pick films that fully sustained the image of Soava Gallone as a refined, delicate soul, and he limited her performances to no more than two per year.

In La cavalcata ardente Soava plays a beautiful aristocratic girl, who has to hide in a convent. The photography was by Alfredo Donelli and Emilio Guattari. The costumes were designed by French fashion designer Paul Poiret and the sets by Filippo Folchi.

Director Gallone wrote the script himself. The film had its premiere in the Supercinema (now Teatro Nazionale) in Rome in April 1925. In the audience were many of the old veterans of Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteer army dressed in their shirts. The reviewer of the magazine L'epoca praised the combination of the love story and the historical background.


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Westi / S.A.I.C. Publicity still of Raimondo Van Riel as Il Brigante (The Bandit) in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Raimondo Van Riel and Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Raimondo Van Riel and Soava Gallone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Raimondo Van Riel,Soava Gallone and Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Jeanne Brindeau and Soava Gallone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Jeanne Brindeau and Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Soava Gallone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).

Secretly in Love

La cavalcata ardente is a melodrama set against the background of the conquest of Naples by Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteers in 1860.

Soava Gallone plays Grazia di Montechiaro, an aristocratic who is forced into a marriage with the old prince of Santafè (Emilio Ghione). She is secretly in love with a patriot (Gabriel de Gravone).

Masked, the lover leads a cavalry to save the girl during the betrothal party (hence the fiery cavalcade of the title). This leads to the girl hiding in a convent and the lover reaching for the troupes of Garibaldi. He is arrested, however, and the girl can only save his life by accepting marriage with the old prince.

However, she is saved for a second time, as Garibaldi’s troupes just in time reach Naples and the old prince dies in the following battle. At the end the two lovers are finally reunited.


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Westi / S.A.I.C. Publicity still of Emilio Ghione as the Prince of Santafé in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no 312. Photo: Soava Gallone and Emilio Ghione in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Westi / S.A.I.C. Publicity still of Soava Gallone and Emilio Ghione in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Westi / S.A.I.C. Publicity still of Soava Gallone and Emilio Ghione in La cavalcata ardente (1925). Caption: "The death of Santafé."


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no 318. Photo: Soava Gallone and Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo of Soava Gallone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Raimondo Van Riel,Soava Gallone and Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).


Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: Raimondo Van Riel, and Gabriel de Gravone in La cavalcata ardente (1925).

 Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Vittorio Martinelli (Il cinema muto italiano), Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.

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Anouk Aimée

May 9, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Glamorous French film actressAnouk Aimée (1932) has appeared in 70 films since 1947 and worked with many talented directors. She had major international successes in the 1960s with Lola (1961) and Un homme et une femme/A Man and a Woman (1966) in which she defined a new kind of modern heroine.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 484. Photo: Sam Lévin.


Dutch postcard, no. 453. Photo: Cornel Lucas.


German postcard by Film und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1029. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (Harold French, 1952).


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 952. Photo: Sam Lévin.


Mexican card, no. 288.

Romeo and Juliet

Anouk Aimée was born Françoise Nicole Sorya Dreyfus in Paris, France, in 1932. She was the daughter of actors Geneviève Sorya (née Durand) and Henri Murray (born Dreyfus). She was trained in acting and dancing at the Bauer-Therond school.

Aimée began her film career in 1946 at the age of 14. Reportedly she was walking down the rue Colisée in the eighth arrondissement in Paris with her mother, when director Henri Calef stopped her and asked if she would like to be in a film. Her film debut was La maison sous la mer/The House by the Sea (Henri Calef, 1947) starring Viviane Romance.

At first she was simply billed as Anouk, taken from the character she played in Marcel Carné’s unfinished film La Fleur de l’âge/The Flower of the Age (1947).

She played Juliette opposite Serge Reggiani as Romeo in Les amants de Vérone/Lovers of Verona (Andre Cayatte, 1949), an updated adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, specifically written for her by the poet Jacques Prevert. Prévert playfully added the symbolic last name, Aimée (Beloved), that would forever associate her with the affective power of her screen roles. Les amants de Vérone was a worldwide success.

She then worked three times with director Alexandre Astruc, at Le Rideau Cramoisi/The Crimson Curtain (1951), Deux Crimes d'Amour/Two Love Crimes (1953) and Les Mauvaises Rencontres/The Bad Liaisons (1955). She appeared in the British espionage drama Contraband Spain (Lawrence Huntington, 1955) opposite Richard Greene, and starred in the ‘perfect crime’ melodrama Tous Peuvent Me Tuer/Everybody Wants To Kill Me (Henri Decoin, 1956).

In 1958 she portrayed the artist Jeanne Hébuterne in Les Amants de Montparnasse/Montparnasse 19 (1958) about the tragic, troubled life of Italian abstract painter Amedeo Modigliani (Gérard Philipe). She made her Hollywood debut as a French Resistance fighter in The Journey (Anatole Litvak, 1959).


French collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Les amants de Vérone/The Lovers of Verona (André Cayatte, 1949) with Serge Reggiani.


French collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Les amants de Vérone/The Lovers of Verona (André Cayatte, 1949) with Serge Reggiani.


French collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Les amants de Vérone/The Lovers of Verona (André Cayatte, 1949) with Serge Reggiani.


French collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Les amants de Vérone/The Lovers of Verona (André Cayatte, 1949) with Serge Reggiani.

Musical Without Music

Possessed of an aloof, haunting beauty, Anouk Aimée has given her best performances under the direction of such master directors as Federico Fellini and Jacques Demy. She appeared in two major films by Fellini, as a bored socialite in La dolce vita/The Sweet Life (Federico Fellini, 1960) and as Marcello Mastroianni’s long-suffering wife in 8 ½ (1963).

Aimée had a huge success with Jacques Demy's debut film Lola (1961), a musical ‘without music’ set in the port city of Nantes. Aimée stars as the title character, a cabaret singer awaiting the return of her long-absent lover and the father of her child, who went to America seven years ago and promised to return when he became rich.

Another milestone was her work as the sexually ambivalent queen in the bible epic Sodom and Gomorrah (Robert Aldrich, 1962). Aimee reunited with Jacques Demy for The Model Shop (1969), in which Lola is an older French model living in Los Angeles who poses for photographs to pay the bills.

In between these two films, she played Anne Gauthier in the wildly romantic drama Un homme et une femme/A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966), a widow who falls in love with widower Jean-Louis Trintignant. This role brought her more international fame and awards. She won the 1967 Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

She had the chance to establish herself in Hollywood but she refused many roles, including that of Vicki Anderson, the insurance investigator eventually played by Faye Dunaway opposite Steve McQueen in the first The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1968). She did play the title role in Justine (George Cukor, 1969) with Michael York and in The Appointment (Sidney Lumet, 1969) with Omar Sharif, but her American film career went nowhere.


British postcard by Picturegoer Post Card, London, no. W 826. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.


French postcard by Editions du Globe (E.D.U.G.), Paris, no. 702. Photo: Studio Harcourt.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. FK 2195. Photo: Gabriele / Aura / Allianz-Film.


German card by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel. Photo: Aura / Allianz / Gabriele.


German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 116. Photo: Allianz Film.

Icon of Cool

After a break of seven years, Anouk Aimée returned to the cinema in Si C'Etait à Refaire/If It Could Be Done Over Again (Claude Lelouch, 1976) with Catherine Deneuve as two former prison buddies who get on with the business of living.

She was awarded the Award for Best Actress at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival for her performance in Marco Bellocchio's Salto nel vuoto/Leap Into The Void (1979), her co-star Michel Piccoli winning the Best Actor Prize. It was followed by roles in La Tragedia di un Uomo Ridicolo/The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1980) opposite Ugo Tognazzi, and Success is the Best Revenge (Jerzy Skolimowsky, 1984) starring Michael York.

Looking every bit as alluring as she had in 1966, Aimee reprised her most famous role as Anne Gauthier in Un Homme et une Femme: Vingt Ans Déjà/A Man and a Woman: Twenty Years Later (Claude Lelouch, 1986), again opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant.

She also portrayed the worldly-wise designer Simone Lowenthal in Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's comedy about the Parisian fashion scene.

Aimée was married four times. From 1949 till 1950 she was married to Edouard Zimmermann. Her second husband (1951–1954) was the film director Nikos Papatakis, with whom she has a daughter Manuela (1951). Her third marriage was to composer Pierre Barouh (1966-1969). From 1970 to 1978, she was married to the British actor Albert Finney.

Aimée is known as a champion of human rights. In 2002 she supported Lionel Jospin's presidential campaign. That year she was awarded a César d'honneur (a honorary César Award), and the following year she received an honorary Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

As Sandy Flitterman-Lewis writes in the Jewish Women Encyclopedia, Anouk Aimée is still “known for her remarkable presence as an icon of cool, sophisticated beauty in more than seventy films across seven decades. (...) Words like ‘regal,’ ‘intelligent’ and ‘enigmatic’ are frequently associated with her, giving Aimée an aura of disturbing and mysterious beauty that has earned her the status of one of the hundred sexiest stars in film history (in a 1995 poll conducted by Empire Magazine)”.

Now in her seventies, Anouk Aimee is still very active. More recent films in which she appeared, include the comedy Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants/Happily Ever After (Yvan Attal, 2004) with Charlotte Gainsbourg, the political thriller De Particulier à Particulier/Hotel Harabati (Brice Chauvin, 2006), Celle que j'aime/The One I Love (Elie Chouraqui, 2009), the romance Ces amours-là/These Courtship (Claude Lelouch, 2010) and Paris Connections (Harley Cokeliss, 2010), a glittering adaptation of a Jackie Collins novel produced by American supermarket giant Tesco.

Anouk Aimée lives in the Montmartre section of Paris with her daughter Manuela.


Scene from Les amants de Vérone/Lovers of Verona (1949). Source: Miirdza (YouTube).


French trailer of Lola (1961). Source: Fondation Gan pour le Cinéma (YouTube).


Trailer for 8 1/2 (1963). Source: Soundtracks and Trailers (YouTube_.


Scene from Un homme et une femme/A Man and a Woman (1966). Source: Leony1948 (YouTube).


Trailer of Justine (1969). Source: modcinema (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Sandy Flitterman-Lewis (Jewish Women Encyclopedia), AlloCiné (French), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Jean Forest

May 10, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Boy actor Jean Forest (1912-1980) is best remembered for his touching, naturalist and convincing performances in the silent French films by Jacques Feyder: Crainquebille (1922), Visages d'enfants (1923-1925) and Gribiche (1926). He went on to a career in French radio after failing to achieve a film career as an adult.


French postcard by Cinémagazine, no. 238.

Stepmothers

Jean Forest was born in Montmartre, Paris, in 1912.

Jean was picked up from the streets by Belgian film director Jacques Feyder to debute in his urban realist film Crainquebille/Bill (1922). The film, based on a story by Anatole France, reverses the standard orphan plot. Forest plays Souris (Mouse), a homeless boy who saves the old fruit and vegetables vendor Crainquebille (Maurice de Féraudy) from suicide. The latter has been plagued by a misunderstanding with a cop, prison life, loss of clientele and alcohol. The film was a worldwide success, praised for its naturalistic acting and location shooting (at les Halles). John DeBartolo at Silents are Golden calls Crainquebille 'one of the forerunners of French realism' that would dominate the French cinema of the 1930s.

In Feyder's next film, Visages d'enfants/Faces of Children (Jacques Feyder, 1923-1925), Forest plays a boy who is traumatised by the tragic loss of his mother (played by Suzy Vernon) and does not accept his new stepmother and her daughter. When he has gone too far in pestering his stepsister he tries to commit suicide by drowning. His stepmother saves his life in the nick of time, causing Jean to accept her. Again the film marked naturalistic acting and authenticity in the location, the mountain area of the Haut Valois in Switzerland.

Despite some very favourable reviews on its release in 1925, this truly touching and beautiful film was not a great box office success and was all but forgotten by the 1930s. For decades the film was believed to have been lost, but in the 1990s a tinted and toned copy was found at the Netherlands Filmmuseum (now Eye Institute). With extracts belonging to other film archives, the film was reassembled, and in 1994, the film was re-released in its newly restored form.

Forest's third film with Feyder was again a big success, even bigger than Crainquebille: Gribiche/Mother of Mine (1926) with Françoise Rosay. The film, centred around Forest, deals about a boy who consciously accepts to be adopted by a rich American lady, because it will enable his working-class mother to remarry. But he cannot get used to the luxurious but empty milieu (sets by Lazare Meerson) and during the Bastille festivities he escapes to his mother and her new husband.


Suzy Vernon. French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 1028. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for Miche (1932).

Radio

Jean Forest also played in other films. He was the young vagabond Claudinet in Les deux gosses (Louis Mercanton, 1924) based on the classic story by Pierre Decourcelle.

One year later he played young Jack in Jack (Robert Saidreau, 1925) after the famous novel by Alphonse Daudet. Two years later, he played the lead in Les coeurs héroïques (George Pallu, 1927).

In the sound era Forest continued to play in French films, although in just a limited number of films. He played the young Jean Chapelain in Une femme a menti (Charles de Rochefort, 1930), an early French Paramount sound production. He performed the title role in Etienne (Jean Tarride, 1933) with Junie Astor and a young Jean Marais.

Other roles were Lt. Drake in La route impériale/The Imperial Road (Marcel L'Herbier, 1935) with Käthe von Nagy; St. John/Jean in Golgotha/Behold the Man (Julien Duvivier, 1935) with Harry Baur and Jean Gabin; and Jean in Tovaritch (Jacques Deval, German Fried; though uncredited Victor Trivas and Jean Tarride are also mentioned as co-directors, 1935). This was the French version of the much better known American Tovarich (1937) with Charles Boyerand Claudette Colbert.

After 1935, no more film roles of Forest are known, but he pursued a career in radio. In 1951 for instance, he won ex aequo the first prize in Naples with his radio adaptation of Theophile Gauthier's Une larme du diable, and in 1956 his adaptation of the Jack Perret piece L'examen de calcul won the Prix Italian for literary or dramatic programmes in Rimini.


Visage D'Enfants overture. Source: MaestroACoppola (YouTube).

Sources: John DeBartolo (Silents are Golden), French Film Site, Ciné-Ressources (French), DvdToile (French), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

For Visages d'enfants and its restorations, see Wikipedia

Tatiana Pavlova

May 11, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Russian actress Tatiana (or Tatyana) Pavlova (1893-1975) left Moscow after the revolution and found film work in the silent Italian cinema. Later she became an innovating stage director.


Italian postcard, no. 107. Photo: Ercole Massaglia, Torino. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Ambrosio

Tat'jana Pavlova Zeitman (Russian: Татьяна Павловна Павлова) was born in Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine), in 1893.

In 1911, she began her career as a young stage actress. She first worked in the touring company of Pavel Orlenev and later in Moscow theatres. She made her Moscow debut in 1916 in the lead role of Fröken Julie (Miss Julie) by August Strindberg.

Following the revolution, she abandoned Moscow and worked in Paris, Odessa and Constantinople. In 1919 she went to Italy where she participated in silent films of the Ambrosio studio like La catena/The Chain (Alessandro Rosenfeld, Aleksandr Uralsky, 1920) with Russian actor Ossip Runitsch.

It was followed by other films by Rosenfeld and Uralsky, like L'Orchidea fatale/The fatal Orchid (1920) with Ossip Runitsch. In the meanwhile she studied Italian from Cesare Dondini and Carlo Rosaspina.

In 1923 she founded a theatre company with her own money. It debuted at the Teatro Valle in Rome with Sogno d'amore/Mecta Ljubvi/Dream of love by Alexander Kosorotov. She interpreted and directed authors such as Leonid Andreev, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, and Ferenc Molnár, with an originality that gave her credit for having helped to create the stage direction in Italy. In her company were a young Tina Lattanzi together with Vittorio de Sica.

Pavlova also continued to work as a film actress. Her films include Creature della note/Creatures of the notes (Amleto Palermi, 1934) with Isa Pola, and La signora di tutti/Everybody's Woman (Max Ophuls, 1934), starring Isa Miranda.

In 1935 she settled in Rome, having been invited by Silvio D'Amico to direct courses in the newly founded National Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1938 she married the writer and fascist Nino D'Aroma.


Italian postcard. Unknown editor.

Visconti

After the war Tatiana Pavlova increasingly diminished her appearances as an actress. In 1946 he played the role of the mother in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, directed by Luchino Visconti.

Her post-war films include Una lettera all'alba/Letter at Dawn (Giorgio Bianchi, 1948) with Fosco Giachetti, and the Italian-American production Cagliostro/Black Magic (Gregory Ratoff, 1949) starring Orson Welles.

Later she devoted herself mainly to directing operas.

In 1965, she played in three films, including Menage all'italiana/Menage Italian Style (Franco Indovina, 1965) with Ugo Tognazzi, and Io la conoscevo bene/I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1965) with Stefania Sandrelli.

Tatiana Pavlova passed away in 1975 at the age of 81 in the nursing home Villa Letizia of Grottaferrata.


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 878. Photo: Fontana. Pavlova's name is misspelled on the card as Paulovla.

Source: Treccani (Italian), Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.

Kwatta

May 12, 2015, 10:00 pm

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The Belgian-Dutch chocolate factory Kwatta produced several sets of Film Star trading cards during the late 1940s. The black and white and colour cards of Hollywood stars were issued with the Kwatta chocolates.


Charles Boyer. Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 112. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer (M.G.M.). Publicity still for Arch of Triumph (Lewis Milestone, 1948).


Greer Garson. Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 203. Photo: M.G.M.


Ava Gardner. Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 234. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for East Side, West Side (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949).


Deborah Kerr. Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois D'Haine, no. C. 252.


James Mason. Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, no. C. 265. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for East Side, West Side (Mervyn Leroy, 1949).

Suriname - Netherlands - Belgium - US

The Kwatta company was founded in 1883 by P. de Bondt and Joseph Gustaaf van Emden. They produced chocolate in a factory in Breda in the south of the Netherlands with cacao from the Kwatta plantation in Suriname, then a Dutch colony.

At the outbreak in 1907 of the cocoa market crisis the prices rose sharply and a lot of cocoa and chocolate companies closed their doors. Kwatta NV survived this crisis thanks to their packaged chocolate bar.

This Kwatta-bar was so popular among the soldiers that the army was the largest buyer and the Kwatta bar was for sale in all barracks.

In 1913 it became a Dutch-Belgian company when a chocolate factory was opened in Bois-d'Haine, Belgium. Subsidiaries in Germany and France followed.

In 1972 Kwatta became a full Belgian brand and since 2001 the American multinational Heinz owns the brand.


Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 166. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940) with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr.


Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Bois-D'Haine, no. C. 170. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Random Harvest (1942) with Ronald Colman and Greer Garson.


Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 172. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Summer Holiday (Rouben Mamoulian, 1948) with Mickey Rooney and Gloria De Haven.


Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, no. C. 181. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939) with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.


Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, no. C. 182. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Balalaika (Reinhold Schünzel, 1939) with Ilona Massey and Nelson Eddy.

Film star trading cards

“Early film star cards were most commonly issued in tobacco packs though cards also commonly came with candy and gum as well as other items such as bread, cookies and other food products; magazine supplements; even sewing needles in one case!”, writes Cliff Aliperti at his beautiful website Immortal Ephemera.

After the second World War, Kwatta issued several sets of film star trading cards. Some were in black and white, others in colour.

Also the measures differed. The cards of the first series of 96 cards measured about 2,5 x 7,6 cm (1-7/8" X 3-1/16") with the stars name and studio listed at the bottom. Following sets measured 5 x 7 cm (2" x 2-3/4") and finally there were sets of ostcard sized cards of 8 x 13 cm (3-1/4" x 5-1/4"). The latter was the C-series, shown in this post.

At the back side there was information in French and in Dutch, the two languages of Belgium. The cards could be collected in a pocket album named Ciné Stars. On the cover was a lion, which referred to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. And indeed, most stars were under contract with MGM.


Linda Christian. Belgian card by Kwatta. Photo: M.G.M.


Greer Garson. Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 2. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, no. C. 154 Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942) with Hedy Lamarr and John Garfield.


Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 156. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Kismet (William Dieterle, 1944) with Marlene Dietrich and Ronald Colman.


Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 176. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for Arch of Triumph (Lewis Milestone, 1948) with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.

This was the ninth post in a series on film star postcard publishers. Next week: Alterocca. For earlier posts, see the links at right under the caption 'The Publishers'.

Sources: Cliff Aliperti (Immortal Ephemera), Troy Kirk (The Movie Card Website), and Wikipedia (Dutch).

Philippe Noiret

May 13, 2015, 10:00 pm

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French film actor Philippe Noiret (1930-2006) acted in several Hollywood productions, but he is best known for his roles as Alfredo in Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (1988), Major Dellaplane in La vie et rien d'autre/Life and Nothing But (1990) and Pablo Neruda in Il postino/Il Postino: The Postman (1994).


French postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris. Imp. Rivier, no. 961-14-01.

The first film of the Nouvelle Vague

Philippe Noiret was born in Lille, France, in 1930. His parents were Lucy Noiret-Heirman and Pierre Noiret, a clothing company representative. He was an indifferent scholar and attended several prestigious Paris schools, including the Lycée Janson de Sailly. He failed several times to pass his baccalauréat exams, so he decided to study theatre.

Noiret trained at the Centre Dramatique de l'Ouest and toured with the Théâtre National Populaire for seven years, where he met actress Monique Chaumette, whom he married in 1962. During that time he developed a career as a nightclub comedian in a duo act with Jean-Pierre Darras, in which he played Louis XIV in an extravagant wig opposite Darras as the dramatist Jean Racine.

Noiret's screen debut was an uncredited role in Gigi (Jacqueline Audry, 1949) starring Gaby Morlay. Jacqueline Audry cast Noiret again in Olivia/The Pit of Loneliness (1950).

In 1955 he appeared in Agnès Varda’s debut film La Pointe Courte/The Short Point opposite Sylvia Montfort. This was considered to be the first film of the Nouvelle Vague. Sporting a pudding-basin haircut, Noiret played a lovelorn youth in the southern fishing port of Sète. No members of the cast or crew were paid during the production. The budget for the film was low, costing only $14,000. This was roughly one fourth the budget of other Nouvelle Vague films of the era such as Les 400 Coups/The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959) and À Bout de Souffle/Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) .

Noiret was not cast again until 1960 in Zazie dans le métro/Zazie in the Metro (Louis Malle, 1960), based on the novel by Raymond Queneau. Noiret played a female impersonator, who happens to be the uncle of 10-year-old Zazie (Catherine Demongeot). The provincial girl stays in Paris with him for two days, while her mother spends some time with her lover. Zazie manages to evade her uncle's custody, however, and, metro strike notwithstanding, sets out to explore the city on her own.

For his role in Thérèse Desqueyroux (Georges Franju, 1962) as the dull but inoffensive husband poisoned by his wife (Emmanuelle Riva), he won the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival. In the romantic adventure Le Capitaine Fracasse/Captain Fracasse (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1961), he played the second lead to Jean Marais. From then on, he became a regular on the French screen, without being cast in major roles until the romantic comedy La Vie de château/A Matter of Resistance (Jean-Paul Rappeneau, 1966) in which he played the male lead opposite Catherine Deneuve.

Finally, Noiret became a star in France with Alexandre le Bienheureux/Very Happy Alexander (Yves Robert, 1968). Noiret plays a henpecked childless farmer that lives oppressed by his authoritarian and materialistic wife, being the only worker in his farm. When she is killed in a car accident, the charming hedonist decides that the time has come to take it easy, locks himself up in his house with his dog and stays in bed.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 139 69. Photo: Unifrance Film.


French postcard by Photomania / Studio Magazine, Paris, no. PSM 393. Photo: Luc Roux.

Everyman character and controversial

In 1976, Philippe Noiret won his first César Award for his role in Vieux Fusil/The Old Gun (Robert Enrico, 1975) opposite Romy Schneider. His second César came in 1990 for his role in La vie et rien d'autre/Life and Nothing But (Bertrand Tavernier, 1990).

He appeared in several Hollywood-financed films like The Night of the Generals (Anatole Litvak, 1967), the spy thriller Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock, 1969), the drama Justine (George Cukor, Joseph Strick, 1969), the war film Murphy's War (Peter Yates, 1971) starring Peter O'Toole, and the comedy mystery Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (Ted Kotcheff, 1978).

Philippe Noiret was cast primarily as the Everyman character, although he did not hesitate to accept controversial roles, such as in La Grande Bouffe/Blow Out (Marco Ferreri, 1973), a film about suicide by overeating, which caused a scandal at the Cannes Film Festival.

Interesting was also his role as a man leading a quiet life in a Lyons suburb, stunned when he learns that his son is wanted for murder in L'Horloger de Saint-Paul/The Watchmaker of St Paul (Bertrand Tavernier, 1974). It was the first of a dozen films he made with director Bertrand Tavernier. Their second film together was the period piece Que La Fête Commence/Let Joy Reign Supreme (Bertrand Tavernier, 1975) in which the bewigged actor seemed to relish the role of the atheistic Philippe d'Orleans. For Tavernier, he also played a good humoured but ineffectual local constable in French West Africa who becomes a serial murderer in Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981).

In Gli occhiali d'oro/The Gold Rimmed Glasses (Giuliano Montaldo, 1987), he played an elderly and respectable doctor who has a passion for a beautiful young man (Rupert Everett), and in J'embrasse pas/I Don't Kiss (André Téchiné, 1991), he was a melancholy old homosexual obsessed with young men.

A huge success was the Italian drama Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988) in which he played a wonderfully warm-hearted projectionist at a failing provincial cinema, affectionately sharing his love of film with a young enthusiast. Cinema Paradiso won the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the 1989 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Another international success was the Italian film Il postino/Il Postino: The Postman (Michael Radford, 1994) which tells a fictional story in which the real life Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Noiret) forms a relationship with a simple postman (Massimo Troisi) who learns to love poetry.

In 2006, Philippe Noiret died of cancer in Paris, aged 76. By the time of his death, Noiret had more than 100 film roles to his credit. In his obituary for The Guardian, Ronald Bergan wrote: “The tall, bulky build and droopy bloodhound face of Philippe Noiret, who has died aged 76, were significant features on the European cinema landscape for more than half a century.”


Collage by Kay Harpa @ Flickr.


Trailer Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (1988). Source: Ageless Trailers (YouTube).


Trailer Il postino/Il Postino: The Postman (1994). Source: grandepuffo20 (YouTube).

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Daniel Martín

May 14, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Spanish actor Daniel Martín (1935-2009) acted in more than 60 European films, including Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Western Per un pugno di dollari/A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Under the pseudonym Dan Martin, he played Unkas, the son of the chief of the Mohicans, in the Eurowestern Der Letze Mohikaner/The Last Tomahawk (1965), based on The Last of the Mohicans the famous novel by James Fenimore Cooper.


German postcard, no. 1 of 64. Photo by Constantin. Still for Der Letze Mohikaner (1965) with Anthony Steffen.


German postcard, no. 53 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner/The Last Tomahawk (1965). Caption: Trotz des Kampfgetümmels ist Unkas das Vorgehen seines Feindes Magua nicht entgangen. Er kämpft sich frei und nimmt Maguas Spur auf. (Despite the battle tumult, Unkas did not fail to notice the actions of his enemy Magua. He fights his way free and takes Maguas track.)


German postcard, no. 58 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner/The Last Tomahawk (1964). Caption: "Der weise Häuptling hat beide gehört. Er befragt darauf den grossen Manitu. Das Gottesurteil lautet: Ein Zweikampf soll über Leben und Tod entscheiden." (The wise chief has heard both. He asked it the great Manitou. The judgment of the God is: a duel will decide about life and death.)

Excellent Spaghetti Western

Daniel Martin was born José Daniel Martínez Martínez in Cartagena, Spain in 1935. In 1962 he made his film debut in the historical drama La spada del Cid/The Sword of El Cid (Miguel Ilglesias, 1962).

Since this debut Martín played supporting roles and small parts in over 60 films, including many exploitation movies. He also appeared in such interesting productions as the Oscar nominated romance Los Tarantos (Francisco Rovira Beleta, 1963) with Antonio Gades, and the classic Spaghetti Western Per un pugno di dollari/A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964) starring Clint Eastwood.

Other film, he appeared in were the heist caper Las Vegas, 500 millones/They Came to Rob Las Vegas (Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, 1968), the excellent Spaghetti Western Anda muchacho, spara!/At the End of the Rainbow (Aldo Florio, 1971) with Fabio Testi, and the thriller La polizia incrimina la legge assolve/High Crime (Enzo G. Castellari, 1973) with Fernando Rey.


German postcard, no. 56 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner/The Last Tomahawk (1965).


German postcard, no. 4 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner (1965) with Anthony Steffen.


German postcard, no. 36 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner/The Last of the Mohicans (Harald Reinl, 1965) with Karin Dor.

The Last of the Mohicans

Under the pseudonym Dan Martin, Daniel Martín starred in Der Letze Mohikaner/The Last of the Mohicans (Harald Reinl, 1965). This Euro-western was based on the historical novel The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, first published in 1826.

The story takes place in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of the North American colonies. During this war, the French called on allied Native American tribes to fight against the more numerous British colonists.

Daniel Martín played Uncas, the son of the chief of the Mohicans. Uncas rides with his white ally, the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, known as Falkenauge/Hawkeye (Anthony Steffen) through the country. Soon they discover that the Huron and a gang of white bandits have destroyed the tribe of the Mohicans...

After Der Letze Mohikaner Martín also starred as Uncas in the sequel, Uncas, el fin de una raza/Fall of the Mohicans (Mateo Cano, 1965), but this time without Anthony Steffen. In 1970 both actors starred again together in the Western La caza del oro/They Believed He Was No Saint (Juan Bosch, 1972).

In the 1980s and 1990s, Martín was mostly seen in Spanish B-films and on TV. His last film was the crime film A tiro limpio/A clean shot (Jesús Mora, 1996) and his final screen appearance in the TV series Hospital Central (2002) .

Daniel Martín died in 2009 in Zaragoza, Spain, of natural causes. He was 74.


German postcard, no. 29 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner/The Last of the Mohicans (Harald Reinl, 1965) with Karin Dor.


German postcard, no. 47 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner/The Last of the Mohicans (Harald Reinl, 1965) with Karin Dor.


German postcard, no. 62 of 64. Photo: Constantin. Still from Der Lezte Mohikaner/The Last of the Mohicans (1965) with Ricardo Rodríguez.

Sources: Jean-Pascal Constantin (Les Gens du Cinéma - French), IMDb and Wikipedia.

Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren... (1926)

May 15, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren.../I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg (1926) was a German silent comedy directed by Arthur Bergen. It was produced by the Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG (Emelka), one of the few German film studios which was not located in Berlin but in Munich. The young lovers were played by Werner Fuetterer and Dorothea Wieck, both at the start of a promising career.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 61/2, 1926. Photo: Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG (Emelka). Publicity still for Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren/I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg (Arthur Bergen, 1926).

An immediate popular hit

Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren took its title from a German song composed in 1925 by Fred Raymond with lyrics by Fritz Löhner-Beda and Ernst Neubach. The song was an immediate popular hit, and in 1927 Raymond included it in a musical of the same name.

The refrain goes:
"Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren,
In einer lauen Sommernacht.
Ich war verliebt bis über beide Ohren
Und wie ein Röslein hat ihr Mund gelacht.
Und als wir Abschied nahmen vor den Toren
Beim letzten Kuß, da hab ich's klar erkannt:
Daß ich mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren.
Mein Herz, es schlägt am Neckarstrand."

"I lost my heart in Heidelberg
on a warm summer night.
I was in love head over heels
and like a rosebud her lips laughed
And as we bid farewell at the gates
during the last kiss
I knew clearly right there
that I lost my heart in Heidelberg
My heart beats on the beach of Neckar!"


Dorothea Wieck. Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 995. Photo: Emelka.


Werner Fuetterer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1507/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG (Emelka). Publicity still for Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren/I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg (Arthur Bergen, 1926).

Sequel and remake

The film Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren (1926) was directed by Arthur Bergen, and written by German playwright Max Ferner. Arthur Bergen was an Austrian actor-director, active in the film industry since 1915. Max Ferner was the screenplay co-writer for what would later become Alfred Hitchcock's film The Mountain Eagle (1927).

The cast of Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren (1926) included apart from Werner Fuetterer and Dorothea Wieck also Emil Höfer, Gertrud de Lalsky, Mary Parker and Harry Halm. The production company was Emelka or Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG, a Munich based film studio which was active from 1919 till 1932. The company was a direct competitor to UFA, which had started in Berlin in 1917, and quickly absorbed several other film industry companies in the region.

In 1930 investor Wilhelm Kraus and a consortium of banks bought a major shareholding in Emelka, and on 21 September 1932 the group took control of the company and renamed it Bavaria Film AG. In 1938 the Bavaria Film was nationalised but privatised again in 1956. Bavaria is still one of Europe's largest film production companies, with some 30 subsidiaries.

Emelka produced a sequel to Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren (1926), Mein Heidelberg, ich kann Dich nicht vergessen/My Heidelberg, I can't forget you (James Bauer, 1927). Many in the cast returned but instead of Fuetterer and Parker now Hans Adalbert Schlettow and Vivian Gibson joined the cast.

After the Second World War, another film took its title from the song: the West German romantic musical Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren/I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg (Ernst Neubach, 1952).

The film starred Eva Probst and Adrian Hoven as the young lovers and Paul Hörbiger. It premiered in Heidelberg on 29 October 1952. This musical was part of a strong trend towards Heimatfilms set in romanticised Southern Germany, Austria or Switzerland.

The song Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren has become an evergreen and remains the theme song of the city of Heidelberg.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 61/1, 1926. Photo: Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG (Emelka). Publicity still for Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren/I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg (Arthur Bergen, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 61/3, 1926. Photo: Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG (Emelka). Publicity still for Ich hab mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren/I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg (Arthur Bergen, 1926).

Sources: Cuppachino, Wikipedia and IMDb.
Hear the song.

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Julie Christie

May 16, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Smart and sexy Julie Christie (1941) is an icon of the new British cinema. During the Swinging Sixties she became a superstar with such roles as Lara in the worldwide smash hit Doctor Zhivago (1965). Since then she has won the Oscar, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA, and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.


Small Romanian collectors card.


American postcard. Photo: MGM. Photo: publicity stills for Dr. Zhivago (David Lean, 1965) with Geraldine Chaplin, Omar Sharif and Julie Christie.


French postcard by Travelling Editions, Paris, no. CP 52. Caption: Julie Christie in 1967.

The It Girl of the Swinging Sixties

Julie Frances Christie was born in 1941 in Chukua, India, then part of the British Empire. She was the daughter of Frank St. John Christie, a tea planter, and his Welsh wife Rosemary (née Ramsden), who was a painter. Her younger brother, Clive Christie, would become a professor of Southeast Asian studies at Hull University. They grew up on their father's tea plantation in Assam.

At 7, Julie was sent to England for her education. As a teenager at Wycombe Court School, she played the role of the Dauphin in a school production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan. A fascination with the artist's lifestyle led to her enrolling in London's Central School of Speech and Drama training.

Christie made her stage debut as a member of the Frinton Repertory of Essex in 1957. One of her first roles was playing Anne Frank in a London theatrical production of The Diary of Anne Frank. Christie was not fond of the stage, even though it allowed her to travel, including a professional gig in the United States. She made her TV debut as an artificially girl created from the DNA of a deceased science lab assistant in the BBC Sci-fi series A for Andromeda (Michael Hayes, 1961).

Her first film appearance was a bit part in the amusing comedy Crooks Anonymous (Ken Annakin, 1962), which was followed up by a larger ingénue role in the romantic comedy The Fast Lady (Ken Annakin, 1963) with Stanley Baker.

Christie first worked with the man who would kick her career into high gear, director John Schlesinger, when he choose her as a replacement for the actress (Topsy Jane) originally cast in Billy Liar (John Schlesinger, 1963). Christie's turn in the film as the free-wheeling Liz, the supremely confident friend and love interest to Tom Courtenay's full-time dreamer Billy, was a stunner, and she had her first taste of becoming an icon of the new British cinema.

Her screen presence was such that the great John Ford cast her as the young prostitute Daisy Battles in Young Cassidy (Jack Cardiff, John Ford, 1965), a biopic about Irish playwright Sean O'Casey.

She made her breakthrough to super-stardom in Schlesinger's seminal Swinging Sixties film Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965). Schlesinger called on Christie to play the role of the manipulative young actress and jet setter Diana Scott when the casting of Shirley MacLaine fell through. As played by Christie, Diana is an amoral social butterfly who undergoes a metamorphosis from immature sex kitten to jaded socialite. For her complex performance, Christie won raves, including the Best Actress Oscar and the Best Actress BAFTA.

Her image as the It Girl of the Swinging Sixties was further cemented by her appearance in the documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967), which covered the hipster scene in England.


Spanish postcard by Raker, no. 1127. Photo: publicity still for The Fast Lady (1963).


Italian postcard by Rotalcolor, Milano, no. 273.


French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 484. Photo: Atlantic Press.

One of the All-Time Box-Office Champs

Julie Christie followed up Darling (1965) with the role of the tragic Lara Antipova in the two-time Academy Award-winning Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965). Lean’s epic adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel became one of the all-time box-office champs.

Christie was now a superstar who commanded a price of $400,000 per picture. More interested in film as an art form than in consolidating her movie stardom, Christie followed up Doctor Zhivago (1965) with a dual role in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) for Francois Truffaut, a Nouvelle Vague director she admired. The film was, according to Jon C. Hopwood at IMDb, "hurt by the director's lack of English and by friction between Truffaut and Christie's male co-star Oskar Werner, who had replaced the more-appropriate-for-the-role Terence Stamp".

Stamp and Christie had been lovers before she had become famous, and he was unsure he could act with her, due to his own ego problems. On his part, Werner resented the attention the smitten Truffaut gave Christie. Stamp overcame those ego problems to sign on as her co-star in John Schlesinger's adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (John Schlesinger, 1967), which also starred Peter Finch and Alan Bates.

Jon C. Hopwood at IMDb: “It is a film that is far better remembered now than when it was received in 1967. The film and her performance as the Hardy heroine Bathsheba Everdene was lambasted by film critics, many of whom faulted Christie for being too ‘mod’ and thus untrue to one of Hardy's classic tales of fate.”

She then met the man who transformed her life, undermining her pretensions to a career as a film star in their seven-year-long love affair, the American actor Warren Beatty. Living his life was always far more important than being a star for Beatty, who viewed the movie star profession as a 'treadmill leading to more treadmills' and who was wealthy enough after Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) to not have to ever work again. Christie and Beatty had visited a working farm during the production of Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and had been appalled by the industrial exploitation of the animals. Thereafter, animal rights became a very important subject to Christie. They were kindred souls who remain friends four decades after their affair ended in 1974.

Christie's last box-office hit in which she was the top-liner was Petulia (Richard Lester, 1968), a romantic drama about the romance between a staid doctor (George C. Scott) and a flighty but vulnerable socialite (Christie). According to Jon C. Hopwood it is “a film that featured one of co-star George C. Scott's greatest performances, perfectly counter-balanced by Christie's portrayal of an ‘arch-kook’ who was emblematic of the 1960’s. It is one of the major films of the decade, an underrated masterpiece." Despite the presence of Scott and Shirley Knight, Hopwood claims that the film would not work without Julie Christie. "There is frankly no other actress who could have filled the role, bringing that unique presence and the threat of danger that crackled around Christie's electric aura. At this point of her career, she was poised for greatness as a star, greatness as an actress.”


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 554.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 277.

Dazzling Mystery-Horror Film

After meeting Beatty, Julie Christie essentially surrendered any aspirations to screen stardom, or at maintaining herself as a top-drawer working actress. She turned down the lead in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Sydney Pollack, 1969) and Anne of the Thousand Days (Charles Jarrott, 1969), two parts that garnered Oscar nominations for the second choices, Jane Fonda and Geneviève Bujold.

After shooting In Search of Gregory (Peter Wood, 1969), a critical and box office flop, to fulfill her contractual obligations, she spent her time with Beatty in California, renting a beach house at Malibu. She did return to form as the bored upper-class woman who ruins a boy's life by involving him in her sexual duplicities, in The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1970), written by playwright Harold Pinter.

She won her second Oscar nomination for her role as a brothel 'madam' in Robert Altman's Western drama McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) that she made with her lover Beatty. Christie also turned down the role of the Russian Empress in Nicholas and Alexandra (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1971), another film that won the second-choice (Janet Suzman) a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Two years later, she appeared in the dazzling mystery-horror film Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), with its famously erotic love scenes between Christie and Donald Sutherland. Director Nicolas Roeg had been her cinematographer on Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) and Petulia (1968).

In the mid-1970s, her affair with Beatty came to an end, but the two remained close friends and worked together in Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975) and the comedy Heaven Can Wait (Buck Henry, Warren Beatty, 1978). Christie turned down the part of Louise Bryant in Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981), a part written by Beatty with her in mind, as Christie felt an American should play the role. Beatty's then lover, Diane Keaton, played the part and won a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Other interesting roles she turned down were parts in Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972), Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974), Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, 1976), and American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 43 072.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 43 072.

The British Answer to Jane Fonda

Julie Christie moved back to the UK and became 'the British answer to Jane Fonda', campaigning for various social and political causes, including animal rights and nuclear disarmament. She was greatly in demand, but became even more choosy about her roles as her own political awareness increased. Her sporadic film commitments reflected her political consciousness such as the animal rights documentary The Animals Film (Victor Schonfeld, 1981), and the feature The Gold Diggers (Sally Potter, 1983), a feminist reinterpretation of film history.

Roles in The Return of the Soldier (Alan Bridges, 1982) with Alan Bates and Glenda Jackson, and Merchant-Ivory's Heat and Dust (James Ivory, 1983) seemed to herald a return to form, but then she essentially retired.

A career renaissance came in the mid-1990s with her turn as Queen Gertrude in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh, 1996). More rave notices brought her turn as the faded movie star married to handyman Nick Nolte and romanced by a younger man (Jonny Lee Miller) in Afterglow (Alan Rudolph, 1997). She received her third Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, and showed up at the awards as radiant and uniquely beautiful as ever.

Christie lived with left-wing investigative journalist Duncan Campbell (a Manchester Guardian columnist) since 1979, before marrying in 2008. In addition to her film work, she has narrated many books-on-tape. In 1995, she made a triumphant return to the stage in a London revival of Harold Pinter's Old Times, which garnered her superb reviews.

In the decade since Afterglow (1997), she has worked steadily on film in supporting roles. She worked three times with director-screenwriter and actress Sarah Polley: co-starring with Polley in No Such Thing (Hal Hartley, 2001) and the Goya Award-winning La Vida secreta de las palabras/The Secret Life of Words (Isabel Coixet, 2005), and taking the lead in Polley's first feature film as a director, Away from Her (Sarah Polley, 2006).

Christie made a brief appearance in the third Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfonso Cuarón, 2004), playing Madam Rosmerta, the landlady of the Three Broomsticks pub. That same year, she also appeared in two other high-profile films: Wolfgang Petersen's historical epic Troy (2004) and Marc Forster's Finding Neverland (2004), playing Kate Winslet's mother. The latter performance earned Christie a BAFTA nomination as supporting actress in film.

In 2008, Christie narrated Uncontacted Tribes, a short film for the British-based charity Survival International, featuring previously unseen footage of remote and endangered peoples. She has been a long-standing supporter of the charity, and in February 2008, was named as its first 'Ambassador'. She appeared in a segment of the anthology film New York, I Love You (2008), written by Anthony Minghella, directed by Shekhar Kapur and co-starring Shia LaBeouf. She also played in Glorious 39 (Stephen Poliakoff, 2008), about a British family at the start of World War II.

In 2011, Christie played a 'sexy, bohemian' version of the grandmother role in a gothic retelling of Red Riding Hood (Catherine Hardwicke, 2011) with Amanda Seyfried in the title role. Her most recent role was in the political thriller The Company You Keep (Robert Redford, 2012), where she co-starred with Robert Redford.

And we conclude this bio with an observation of Brian McFarlane in The Encyclopedia of British Cinema: “Arguably the most genuinely glamorous, and one of the most intelligent, of all British stars, Julie Christie brought a gust of new, sensual life into British cinema.”

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Trailer for Doctor Zhivago (1965). Source: ccoruja (YouTube).


Trailer of Petulia (1968). Source: the grumpy monk (YouTube).


Trailer Shampoo (1975). Source: Video Detective (YouTube).


Trailer for Away From Her (2006). Source: Lion's Gate (YouTube).

Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Brian McFarlane (Encyclopedia of British Cinema), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Sacha Guitry

May 17, 2015, 10:00 pm

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French actor, dramatist and director Sacha Guitry (1885-1957) was known for his stage performances, often in the more than 120 plays he wrote. Guitry's plays range from historical dramas to contemporary light comedies. From the 1930s to the end of his life, he enthusiastically embraced the cinema, making as many as five films in a single year. After his death, 12,000 people filed past his coffin before his burial in Paris.


French postcard by F.A., no. 9. Photo: H. Manuel.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 84. Photo: Studio Piaz.

His own definitive interpreter

Alexandre-Pierre Georges ‘Sacha’ Guitry was born at Nevsky Prospect no. 12, Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1885. He was the third son of the French actor Lucien Guitry and his wife Marie-Louise-Renée née Delmas de Pont-Jest. The couple had eloped, in the face of family disapproval, and were married at St Martin in the Fields, London, in 1882. They then moved to the Russian capital, where Lucien ran the French theatre company, the Théâtre Michel, from 1882 to 1891.

The marriage was brief. Guitry senior was a persistent adulterer, and his wife instituted divorce proceedings in 1888. Two of their sons died in infancy (one in 1883 and the other in 1887); the other surviving son, Jean became an actor and journalist. The family's Russian nurse habitually shortened Alexandre-Pierre's name to the Russian diminutive ‘Sacha’, by which he was known all his life.

The young Sacha made his stage debut in his father's company at the age of five. When Lucien Guitry returned to Paris he lived in a flat in a prestigious spot, overlooking the Place Vendôme and the Rue de la Paix. The young Sacha lived there, and for his schooling he was first sent to the well-known Lycée Janson de Sailly in the fashionable Sixteenth arrondissement. He did not stay long there, and went to a succession of other schools, both secular and religious, before abandoning formal education at the age of sixteen.

After giving up school Guitry embarked on a career as a playwright with a little musical piece called Le Page (1902), with a score by Ludo Ratz. Eighteen months later he joined his father's company at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. At first he appeared under the stage name ‘Lorcey’, but the pseudonym deceived no-one, as the press immediately announced the debutant's real identity. His first role was in L'Escalier, by Maurice Donnay in November 1904.

He fell out with his father over what the latter saw as Guitry's lack of professionalism. In the aftermath of their quarrel they neither saw nor spoke to one another. A member of Lucien Guitry's company was a young actress, Charlotte Lysès. In 1905 she and Sacha set up home together. For her he wrote his play, Le KWTZ (1905).

He had his first substantial hit with Nono at the Mathurins. When the leading man in Guitry's 1906 play Chez les Zoaques fell ill the author took over, and in the words of a critic, "proved to be his own definitive interpreter". The pattern of his career was set: he remained an actor-author, and later manager, for the rest of his life.


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 3. Photo: Emera.


French postcard by Editions Chantal, no. 505. Photo: Tobis.


French promotion card by Cineas. Photo: Tobis. Publicity still for Le nouveau Testament/Indiscretions (Sacha Guitry, 1936).

Five consecutive hits

For the next five years Sacha Guitry's plays were, at best, moderate successes. But then he had five consecutive hits with Le Veilleur de nuit (1911), Un Beau mariage (1912), Le Prise de Berg-op-Zoom (1912), La Pèlerine écossaise (1912), and Les Deux converts (1914), the last of which was staged by the Comédie Française.

His first film was Ceux de chez nous/Those of our home (Sacha Guitry, 1915), a short patriotic piece illustrating the works of some French artists like Auguste Renoir, Auguste Rodin and Sarah Bernhardt. He wrote and played in the film Un Roman d'amour et d'aventures (René Hervil, Louis Mercanton, 1917), an experience that left him unsatisfied. He was not greatly attracted by the medium of silent film, regarding dialogue as the essence of drama. So, he did not make a full-length film until 1935.

In 1915 he met the young singer Yvonne Printemps, with whom he began an affair that led Charlotte to leave him and obtain a divorce. Guitry started to write leading roles for Printemps in some musical and others straight comedies. Guitry was reconciled with his father in 1918. Lucien appeared in many productions with his son and Printemps, including Mon Père avait raison and Comment on ecrit l'histoire. They played together not only in Paris, but also in the West End of London.

Guitry developed a charming, witty stage persona, often appearing in period-dress light comedies, for instance his 1925 pastiche Mozart, about the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on a visit to Paris. To compose the score he approached André Messager, with whom he had successfully collaborated in 1923 on a show for Printemps, L'amour masqué. Messager was unavailable and recommended the composer Reynaldo Hahn, who accepted the commission.

The resulting production took some liberties with historical accuracy, but it proved highly popular. Printemps, in a breeches role, played and sang the young Mozart, with Guitry as the composer's patron, Baron Grimm. After playing successfully at the Théâtre Edouard VII, the company presented the piece in London Broadway, Boston and Montreal in 1926-1927.

In 1931 Guitry was awarded the Legion of Honour. In 1932 his marriage to Printemps broke up. He took a six-month break from the theatre, returning in April 1933 in Châteaux en Espagne, which co-starred his new protégée, Jacqueline Delubac, whom he married on his fiftieth birthday.

In 1935 he returned in the film studio to direct and act in Pasteur, a biography of the famous scientific. The film, based on a play Guitry wrote in 1919, was a commercial failure, but during the shooting, Guitry fell in love with the process of filmmaking. He followed Pasteur with Bonne chance (Sacha Guitry, 1936), a comedy written directly for the screen.

In 1936 alone, Guitry released no less than four film, including the screen versions of two of his best known plays: Faisons un rêve (written in 1916), and Mon Père avait raison (written in 1919). Le Roman d'un tricheur/The Story of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry, 1936) was adapted from Guitry's only novel, Les Mémoires d'un tricheur, published in 1935. Despite lukewarm reviews, the film was well received by the public and was also successful abroad. It is now considered his most innovative film.

Apart from the four films, Guitry also wrote five plays in 1936. The following year, he played four roles in the partially historical film Les Perles de la couronne/The Pearls of the Crown (Sacha Guitry, Christian-Jacque, 1937) about the history of seven pearls, four of which end up on the crown of England, the other three end up missing. In 1939, Jacqueline Delubac left her ‘workaholic’ husband. Within months of her leaving him he married for a fourth time; his new wife was actress Geneviève de Séréville.


French postcard by Editions E.C., Paris, no. 51. Photo: U.F.P.C.


French postcard by Editions et Publications Cinematographiques (EPC), no. 144. Photo: Alban.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 84.

Accusations of collaborating with the enemy

Sacha Guitry's career was affected by the Nazi occupation of France. He continued to work both on stage and in the cinema under the Nazis. Although this gave him the opportunity to help many of his compatriots it also brought accusations of collaborating with the enemy. He conceived his book and associated film, De 1429 à 1942 ou De Jeanne d'Arc à Philippe Pétain/1429 to 1942, or Joan of Arc to Philippe Pétain (1942) as a tribute to France's past glories, but many saw it as honouring the collaborationist president of Vichy France, Marshal Pétain.

In 1944 Guitry's fourth wife left him. On the liberation of France, Guitry was among the first arrested, by a self-appointed militia. He was interned in a detention camp at Drancy, and suffered ill-effects on his health that necessitated his transfer to a Paris nursing home. He was completely cleared of all accusations of collaboration, but the experience left him disillusioned.

In 1947 Guitry married for the fifth and last time; he was sixty-two and his bride, Lana Marconi, was twenty-eight. He was permitted to resume working in the theatre in 1948, when he returned to the Paris stage with Le Diable boiteux. For the London season in 1953, celebrating the coronation of Elizabeth II, Guitry starred at the Winter Garden in Ecoutez bien, messieurs, a comedy in which he played a voluble Frenchman reduced to baffled silence by an even more voluble Englishwoman, played (in English) by Heather Thatcher. Later in the same year he made his last stage appearance in Paris in Palsambleu.

A huge success in the cinema was the historical drama Si Versailles m'était conté/Royal Affairs in Versailles (Sacha Guitry, 1954) which tells some episodes through portrayal of the personalities who lived in Versailles' castle. In the film appeared a great number of well-known French actors, often in short parts. Guitry also made the ‘sister’ films Napoléon (Sacha Guitry, 1955) with Daniel Gélin as Napoléon as a young man and Raymond Pellegrin as Napoléon in later life, and Si Paris nous était conté/If Paris Were Told to Us (Sacha Guitry, 1956).

He continued to make films until 1957, when he suffered a disabling disease of the nervous system. Sacha Guitry died in Paris at the age of seventy-two. Twelve thousand people filed past his coffin, and he was buried, like his father, in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.


Trailer for Les Perles de la couronne/The Pearls of the Crown (Sacha Guitry, Christian-Jacque, 1937). Source: Retrotrailer (YouTube).


Short scene from Si Versailles m'était conté/Royal Affairs in Versailles (Sacha Guitry, 1954) with Jean Marais and Brigitte Bardot. Source: Filmographie de Brigitte Bardot (YouTube).

Sources: François Leclair (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Teddy Scholten

May 18, 2015, 10:00 pm

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I am a chauvinist, to be honest. At least once a year. Yes, I am a European and I do like - nearly - all European film stars, but at the annual European Song Contest I hope that the Netherlands win. Every time when a jury member from Bosnia and Herzegovina or Malta declares: "Pays-bas... douze points", passionate yells rise from our home. Happily for our neighbours this does not happen too often and the last time 'we' won the event was in 1975 (!) with the band Teach-in and the song Ding-A-Dong. Today's post is about the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1959, Dutch singer Teddy Scholten (1926-2010) .


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 4018. Photo: 't Sticht, Utrecht. Great hat!

A Little Bit

Teddy Scholten was born Dorothea Margaretha van Zwieteren in 1926 in Rijswijk, close to The Hague, the capital of the Netherlands.

She met Henk Scholten, who became her fiancé in 1945. They married two years later. In the 1940s Teddy and Henk performed on stage as the duo Scholten & Van 't Zelfde.

In 1959 she was invited by the Dutch broadcasting company NTS to participate at the National Song Contest. She came, sang and conquered with the song Een beetje (A little bit), composed by Dick Schallies and with a text by Willy van Hemert.

Then, at the Eurovision Song Contest 1959 in Cannes, she became first again. Later, she would sing the song also in French, German and Italian versions. In 1965 as well as in 1966 she presented the Dutch National Song Contest.

During the 1950s and 1960s Teddy and her husband Henk hosted several TV programmes for the Dutch broadcasting company KRO, including the candid camera show Kiekeboe (1963). With her husband, she also recorded several albums, many of them containing songs for children.

Teddy Scholten died in 2010. She was 83. With Henk she had a daughter, René Scholten.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 4000. Photo: 't Sticht, Utrecht.


Teddy and Henk Scholten. Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5124. Photo: Decca Records / Editions Altona, Amsterdam.

The Amazing Conchita Wurst

So tonight the fun starts again with the first semi-final in Vienna, Austria. Tuesday 21 is the second semi-final and Saturday 23 is the big final!

Last year, the amazing Conchita Wurst won for Austria with the song Rise Like a Phoenix, and the Common Linnets came in second for the Netherlands.

This year, forty countries (including Australia!) will participate this in this 60th Eurovision Song contest and Trijntje Oosterhuis (try to say her name loud and proud, if you dare!) will represent the Netherlands tonight with the song Walk along.

We hope Trijntje does as well tonight as Teddy Scholten did in 1959. An the Dutch pronunciation of her name isˈtrɛiɲcə ˈoːstərˌɦœys];


Teddy Scholten at the airport Schiphol after her siege at the Eurovision Song Contest 1959. Source: IISG (Flickr).


Teddy Scholten, winner at the Eurovision Song Contest 1959 with Een beetje. Source: God Kveld Norge and Oslo! (YouTube).


Clip of Trijntje Oosterhuis singing Walk along. Source: Eurovision Song Contest (YouTube).

Sources: nu.nl, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Alterocca

May 19, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Alterocca is one of the eldest Italian postcard publishers. The publishing house introduced the scenic postcard in Italy. Alterocca also published many film star postcards during the 1910s and later it had success with pin-up postcards. This is the last post in a series on postcard publishers


Lina Cavalieri. Italian postcard, no. 1750. Photo: Alterocca, Terni.


Gaby Deslys. Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni, no. 6144.


Ermete Novelli. Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni, no. 513.


Ermete Zacconi. Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni, no. 2379. Photo: G. Rossi. Card dated February 1904.

Booming Business

Virgilio Alterocca (1853-1910) founded the first company for illustrated and photographic cards in Italy in 1897. He had already founded a typographic company in 1877 working for newspapers and producing posters.

Around 1896, thanks to modernising techniques in phototypography from Germany and Switzerland, he was able to make photographic cards a booming business.

Virgilio had many different activities. He worked as a teacher, publisher, politician in the ranks of the local Socialist Party, and was a benefactor.

In fact, his name is connected with the birth of the Professional School of Terni established in 1909, with the assistance of the city and of the most important industries in Terni.

From 1886 to 1892 he was also owner of the Arena Gazzoli, now known to Terni as the cinema Politeama. Thanks to his foresight there is the facility of telephone service in Umbria, which he started in 1887.


Italian postcard by Stabilimenti Alterocca, Terni. This is the cover of a complete series of 8 postcards regarding the 1916 Gloria film production Dagli Appennini alle Ande, based on the homonymous story by Edmondo De Amicis from the volume Cuore (Heart), directed by Umberto Paradisi, and starring Ermanno Roveri as little Marco.


Italian postcard by Stabilimenti Alterocca, Terni, for the film Dagli Appennini alle Ande (Umberto Paradisi, 1916), starring Ermanno Roveri. Caption: He filled a sack with clothes for him, and gave him the address of the cousin.


Italian postcard by Stabilimenti Alterocca, Terni, for the film Dagli Appennini alle Ande (Umberto Paradisi, 1916), starring Ermanno Roveri. Caption: “Well, then,” said the laborer, “keep straight on through there, reading the names of all the streets on the corners; you will end by finding the one you want.”


Italian postcard by Stabilimenti Alterocca, Terni, for the film Dagli Appennini alle Ande (Umberto Paradisi, 1916), starring Ermanno Roveri. Caption: She stretched out to him her fleshless arms, and she burst into a violent laugh.

Passion for typography

The passion for typography Virgilio Alterocca had inherited from his father Ferdinand, owner of a small stationery. He was at the helm of the newspaper L'Annunziatore Umbro Sabino in the period 1883-1888 .

Alterocca's first postcard was dedicated to Cascata delle Marmore. In the following decade he won many international awards fo his work.

His aesthetic is also expressed in the building of the firm, when he commissioned the young architect Cesare Bazzani to build the new factory on the main city street in Liberty style.

In politics, he held the role of Councillor for Education in the town of Terni, in the period between 1902 and 1903. In 1908 he was awarded the title of Cavaliere del Lavoro.

His life came to an end in 1910 in the village of Arrochar, near his hometown, Terni, struck down by a stomach cancer. He was survived by his wife Ezzelina Alterocca, and his children Silvia and Fernando.


Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni, no. A 4060.


Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni, no. 32994.


Terence Hill. Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni.


Bud Spencer. Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni.

This was the tenth and final post in a series on film star postcard publishers. For earlier posts, see the links at right under the caption 'The Publishers'.

Sources: Wikipedia (Italian).

Peggy Hyland

May 20, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Pretty brunette Peggy Hyland (1884–1973) was an English film actress and director, who starred in more than 45 British and American silent films. She remained active in films until 1925.


British postcard in the Lilywhite Photographic series. Photo: William Fox.

The Love of an Actress

Peggy Hyland was born Gladys Lucy Hutchinson in Harborne a suburb of Birmingham, in 1884. She was educated in Britain and at convents in Europe. The first convent she attended was Seroule in Verviers, on the frontier of Belgium.

In 1910, she began to act on stage, according to Wikipedia after consulting a seer who foretold her great success. She toured with legendary stage actor Cyril Maude in the play The Yellow Jacket.

Hyland began her screen career in 1912. Women and British Cinema (WSBC) mentions as her first film the Clarendon production The Love of an Actress (Wilfred Noy, 1914). According to Paul Rothwell-Smith at IMDb, she made her film debut for the Neptune Film Co. in In the Rank (Percy Nash, 1914) starring Gregory Scott.

That year, she also married her first husband, Owen Grant Evan-Thomas. The next year, she starred for G.B. Samuelson Productions in the drama John Halifax, Gentleman (George Pearson, 1915). She played Ursula March opposite Fred Paul in the title role. For Samuelson, she also appeared in Infelice (L.C. MacBean, Fred Paul, 1915) with Fred Paul and Queenie Thomas.

In the following year, she reunited with George Pearson for the romance Sally Bishop (George Pearson, 1916) starring Marjorie Villis and Aurelio (or Aurele) Sidney.

Between 1916 and 1920 she was based in America working for Fox, Vitagraph and Famous Players. For Vitagraph, she co-starred with E.H. Sothern in The Chattel (Fred Thomson, 1916) and appeared as Olette in The Sixteenth Wife (Charles Brabin, 1917). Opposite Antonio Moreno, she played in the drama Her Right to Live (Paul Scardon, 1917) as the head of a of a family of orphaned children destined for the poorhouse.

The Moving Picture World in 1917: “In selecting a cast for Her Right to Live, the five-reel Vitagraph Blue Ribbon Feature written by Paul West, the man in charge has had the courage to give Peggy Hyland the part of a heroine of the most pronounced soubrette type. All the stage tricks that tradition has bequeathed to the simple but roguish village maiden, are to be expected in the character of Polly Biggs. The star of Her Right to Live discards them entirely and makes the orphan girl a natural human being with a bright sunny nature, and an innocence that is not more wise than nice.”

In the Fox Film drama Debt of Honour (O.A.C. Lund, 1918), Hyland sacrifices her good name to shield the reputation of a U.S. Senator who has taken her in his home as an orphan. Perhaps her best known film was the Fox production The Merry-Go-Round (Edmund Lawrence, 1919) in which she played both a Gypsy and heroin Susie Alice Pomeroy opposite Jack Mulhall. Newspapers of the era described her double role in this romance as one of the actress' best performances. The crime film Black Shadows (Howard M. Mitchell, 1920) was another Fox Film feature in which Peggy portrayed Marjorie Langdon, a victim of hypnotism who begins to have compulsions to steal.


British postcard. Photo: Fox.


British postcard in Valentine's Real Photograph series, no. 8251. Photo: William Fox.

Producer and director

Peggy Hyland's film credits number more than forty-five, in both British and American productions. Back in England, Australian Fred Leroy Granville directed her for G.B. Samuelson Productions in films like the romances The Honeypot (1920) with Lillian Hall-Davis, and the sequel Love Maggy (1921) with James Lindsay. The Australian director became her husband, but also this second marriage later would end in a divorce.

She also starred in the comedy Mr. Pim Passes By (Albert Ward, 1921) with Henry Kendall. It was based on the 1919 play of the same title by A.A. Milne. In 1922 Hyland told in Kinematograph Weekly that a woman was ‘as capable a director as a man’ and hoped to prove the truth of this assertion with a series of two reel comedies she was to direct.

Hyland wrote, produced, directed and starred in With Father's Help (Peggy Hyland, 1922) and she directed and starred in The Haunted Pearls (Peggy Hyland, 1924), according to Paul Rothwell-Smith at IMDb, although there is no lemma of this film on IMDb.

In 1923, she was back in the U.S. to star in the Arabian adventure Shifting Sands (Fred Leroy Granville, 1923). She stopped making films in 1925. Her final film was the British adventure film Forbidden Cargoes (Fred LeRoy Granville, 1926).

There is only little information about her later life. Wikipedia: “The date of death for Hyland has not been definitively determined. The last whereabouts of her was her marriage to Universal film producer Fred LeRoy Granville in September 1921. (...) She may have after the divorce from Granville reverted to her birth name to allow a clean exit from the film industry. A search of the Find a Grave database, non-famous section, yields no Peggy Hyland (August 2010). However there are several Gladys Hutchinsons, one of whose date of birth is unknown and who apparently died in England in 1944 during World War II and was possibly a casualty of an air raid.”

IMDb notes that Peggy Hyland died in 1973 at the age of 88 in Tonbridge, England, UK.


British postcard in the Lilywhite Photographic series. Photo: Fox.


British postcard in the Lilywhite Photographic series. Photo: William Fox.

Sources: Paul Rothwell-Smith (IMDb), Women and British Cinema, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Michael Caine

May 21, 2015, 10:00 pm

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With his spectacles and his Cockney accent, Michael Caine (1930) became an unusual but ultra cool star of the British cinema of the 1960s. He starred in memorable films like Alfie (1966), The Italian Job (1969), and Get Carter (1971). The lean and tall Brit branched out to Hollywood where his film choices often seemed dictated by his checkbook. Caine proved to be endurable and a new generation of film fans love him for his mentors and father figures in blockbusters like The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014).


Yugoslavian postcard by Cik Razglednica.

 

The working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent

In 1930, Michael Caine was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen Frances Marie Micklewhite-Burchell, a cook and charlady, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a fish-market porter. He has two brothers. Younger brother Stanley Caine appeared in at least three of Caine's films: Billion Dollar Brain (1967), Play Dirty (1969) and The Italian Job (1969). He did not know about his elder half-brother David until their mother died in 1989. For more than forty years, Caine's mother had paid periodic visits to a ‘cousin’ in a mental hospital. David suffered from epilepsy and lived till his death in 1992 in the hospital.

Michael left school at 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England the 20-years-old Caine gravitated toward the theatre and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee of the Odeon Cinema that advertised The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954).

In the years that followed he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in Lindsay Anderson's West End staging of Willis Hall's The Long and the Short and the Tall (1959). He was Peter O'Toole's understudy in that stage hit and took over the role when O'Toole left to make Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962).

Caine's first film role was as one of the privates in Stanley Baker's platoon in the British war film A Hill in Korea (Julien Amyes, 1956). A big break came for Caine when he was cast in the Cockney stage comedy Next Time I'll Sing To You (1963). He was visited backstage by Stanley Baker, the star of A Hill in Korea, who asked him for his upcoming film Zulu, a film Baker was producing and starring in. Zulu (Cy Endfield, 1964) is the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer.

Zulu was a major success, but it was the role of the spy Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 1965) and the young womanizer in Alfie (Lewis Gilbert, 1966) that made Caine a major star. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent.

Some excellent films followed including his American debut Gambit (Ronald Neame, 1966) with Shirley MacLaine, the Harry Palmer spy film Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton, 1966), the caper The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969) with Noël Coward, Battle of Britain (Guy Hamilton, 1969), and especially the crime film Get Carter (Mike Hodges, 1971) and the mystery thriller Sleuth (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1972) with Laurence Olivier, for which he earned his second Oscar nomination.


Spanish postcard by Productos Compactos S.A. Photo: publicity still for The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 1965).


British postcard by Boomerang. Photo: Everett Collection.

What's it all about?

During the bigger part of the 1970s, Michael Caine seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command. There were some gems amongst the dross, however. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston, 1975) and turned in a solid one as the commander of a Luftwaffe paratroop unit planning to kidnap Winston Churchill in The Eagle Has Landed (John Sturges, 1976). Caine also was part of an all-star cast in A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977), was part of the ensemble in the comedy California Suite (Herbert Ross, 1978), and slashed Angie Dickenson in the thriller Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980).

Highlights during the 1980s were Educating Rita (Lewis Gilbert, 1983), earning him the BAFTA and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, and Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986), for which he won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He was not present at the Academy Awards ceremony because he was filming Jaws: The Revenge (Joseph Sargent, 1987), for which he was nominated for worst supporting actor at the 1988 Razzie awards.

His other successful films were the war film Escape to Victory (John Huston, 1981), the Ira Levin thriller Deathtrap (Sidney Lumet, 1982), and the beautiful neo-noir mystery Mona Lisa (Neil Jordan, 1986) with Bob Hoskins. Caine was excellent as Ebenezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (Brian Henson, 1992). In 1992, he also published the autobiography What's it all about? It was a decade later followed by The Elephant to Hollywood (2012). He was awarded the CBE (Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire) in the 1993 Queen's Honours List for his services to drama.

Having by that time practically retired from acting on the big screen, he enjoyed a career resurgence in the late 1990s. He received a Golden Globe Award for his performance in the musical Little Voice (Mark Herman, 1998) and his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Cider House Rules (Lasse Hallström, 1999). In 2000, he was awarded a Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire.

In the last decades, he often played mentors and father figures to younger characters in films. In every film Caine made with director Christopher Nolan, his character either assists, guides, trains or educates the protagonist. In The Prestige (2006), Caine portrayed a magician who teaches the main character the art of illusion. For Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy - Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) - Caine played the supporting and nurturing butler Alfred Pennyworth to Bruce Wayne aka Batman (Christian Bale). For Inception (2010), Caine depicted the father of the main protagonist, Cobb, and aids him by recruiting one of his students. In Interstellar (2014), Caine portrays a professor/engineer, who invites and encourages the central character, Cooper, to lead an important space mission that will determine the future of planet earth.

Among his other more recent films that have been widely acclaimed are the British/German drama Last Orders (Fred Schepisi, 2001) with Tom Courtenay, the parody Austin Powers in Goldmember (Jay Roach, 2002) as Austin’s father, the Graham Greene adaptation The Quiet American (Phillip Noyce, 2002) with Brendan Fraser, Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) and Pixar's Cars 2 (John Lasseter, 2011). In the remake of Sleuth (Kenneth Branagh, 2007), Caine took over the role Laurence Olivier played in the 1972 version and Jude Law played Caine's original role.

Michael Caine married twice. In 1955, he married his first wife Patricia Haines. They divorced in 1958 and have one child, Dominique (aka Nikki). His current wife is Shakira Caine, whom he married in 1973. They have one daughter, Natasha. Caine has he has a granddaughter and two grandsons.


Modern postcard by Classic.


Trailer Get Carter (1971). Source: MOVIECLIPS Classic Trailers (YouTube).


Ytailer Dressed to Kill (1980). Source: MOVIECLIPS Classic Trailers (YouTube).

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

ABBA

May 22, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Tonight is the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2015. For non-Europeans: the Eurovision Song Contest has been broadcast every year since the start in 1956. So it is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world, but also one of the most watched non-sporting events, with audience figures somewhere between 100 million and 600 million internationally. Artists whose international careers were launched at Eurovision include Italian Domenico Modugno of the evergreen Volare in 1958, Céline Dion, who won for Switzerland in 1988 with the French-language song Ne partez pas sans moi (Don't leave without me), and the Spaniard Julio Iglesias, who has since sold over 300 million records worldwide. But the post today is about our favourite winner ever - ABBA. They won the contest for Sweden in 1974 with Waterloo.


German postcard by Polar Music International AB, SIB-tryck AB 1980. Photo: A. Hanser / Polar Music International AB.

First victory

In 1974, ABBA gave Sweden its first victory in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest. They are also the most successful group ever to take part in the tournament.

The Swedish group was formed in Stockholm in 1972, and comprised blond Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson (with moustache and beard), and dark-haired Anni-Frid Lyngstad. ABBA is an acronym of the first letters of their first names.

They became one of the most commercially successful acts in the history of popular music, topping the charts worldwide from 1972 to 1982. ABBA has sold over 381 million albums and singles worldwide and continue to sell millions of records a year.

During the band's active years, Fältskog and Ulvaeus were married, as were Lyngstad and Andersson, although both couples later divorced. At the height of their popularity, both relationships were suffering strain which ultimately resulted in the collapse of the Ulvaeus–Fältskog marriage in 1979 and the Andersson–Lyngstad marriage in 1981.

These relationship changes were reflected in the group's music, with later compositions including more introspective, brooding, dark lyrics.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

Before ABBA

Benny Andersson (1946, Stockholm, Sweden) became at age 18 a member of the popular Swedish pop-rock group the Hep Stars, known as 'the Swedish Beatles'. Andersson played the keyboard and eventually started writing original songs for his band, many of which became major hits in 1966.

Björn Ulvaeus (1945, Göteborg, Sweden) also began his musical career at 18, as a singer and guitarist for the folk-skiffle group The Hootenanny Singers. He started writing English-language songs for his group, and even had a brief solo career alongside. In June 1966, Ulvaeus and Andersson decided to write a song together. Their first attempt was Isn't It Easy to Say.

Stig Anderson was the manager of The Hootenanny Singers and founder of the Polar Music label. He saw potential in the collaboration, and encouraged them to write more. Both also began playing occasionally with the other's bands on stage and on record, although it was not until 1969 that the pair wrote and produced some of their first real hits together: Ljuva sextital (Sweet Sixties), recorded by Brita Borg, and The Hep Stars' 1969 hit Speleman (Fiddler).

Andersson wrote and submitted the song Hej, Clown for the 1969 Melodifestivalen, the national festival to select the Swedish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest. The song tied for first place, but re-voting relegated Andersson's song to second place. On that occasion Andersson briefly met his future spouse, singer Anni-Frid 'Frida' Lyngstad (1945, Bjørkåsen, Norway), who also participated in the contest. A month later, the two had become a couple. As their respective bands began to break up during 1969, Andersson and Ulvaeus teamed up and recorded their first album together in 1970, called Lycka (Happiness), which included original songs sung by both men. In 1971, Frida had her first number 1 single, Min egen stad (My Own Town) written by Benny featuring all the future ABBA members on backing vocals.

Agnetha Fältskog (1950, Jönköping, Sweden) sang with a local dance band headed by Bernt Enghardt who sent a demo recording of the band to Karl Gerhard Lundkvist. This led to Agnetha at the age of 18 having a number 1 record in Sweden with a self-composed song. Agnetha released four solo LPs between 1968 and 1971. She had many successful singles in the Swedish charts. They were often self-composed, which was quite unusual for a female singer in the 1960s. During filming of a Swedish TV special in 1969, Fältskog met Ulvaeus, and they married in 1971. In 1972, she starred as Mary Magdalene in the original Swedish production of Jesus Christ Superstar, to favourable reviews.

Hej, gamle man, a song about an old Salvation Army soldier, became the quartet's first hit. The record was credited to Björn & Benny and reached number 5 on the sales charts and number 1 on Svensktoppen, the weekly record chart airing at Sveriges Radio, staying there for 15 weeks. Stig Anderson was determined to break into the mainstream international market with music by Andersson and Ulvaeus.


German promotion card by Polydor.


Swedish postcard by Ultraförlaget A.B., Stockholm, no. 28 - 012. Photo: Torbjörn Calvero.

The Eurovision Song Contest

Manager Stig Anderson encouraged Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson to write a song for Melodifestivalen, the annual music competition in Sweden which determines the country's representative for the Eurovision Song Contest. After two rejected entries in 1971, Andersson and Ulvaeus submitted their new song Säg det med en sång (Say It with a Song) for the 1972 contest, choosing newcomer Lena Anderson to perform. The song came in third place and became a hit in Sweden.

Ulvaeus and Andersson experimented with new sounds and vocal arrangements. People Need Love was released in June 1972, featuring guest vocals by Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, who were now given much greater prominence. Stig Anderson released it as a single, credited to Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid. The song peaked at number 17 in the Swedish combined single and album charts, enough to convince them they were on to something. The single also became the first record to chart for the quartet in the United States, where it peaked at number 114 on the Cashbox singles chart and number 117 on the Record World singles chart.

The foursome decided to record their first album together in the autumn of 1972, and sessions began on 26 September 1972. Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad shared lead vocals on Nina, Pretty Ballerina (a top ten hit in Austria) that day, and their voices in harmony for the first time gave the foursome an idea of the quality of their combined talents.

In 1973, the band and their manager Stig Anderson decided to have another try at Melodifestivalen, this time with the song Ring Ring. The studio sessions were handled by Michael B. Tretow, who experimented with a 'wall of sound' production technique that became the wholly new sound. Stig Anderson arranged an English translation of the lyrics by Neil Sedaka and Phil Cody and they thought this would be a sure-fire winner. However in 1973, the song came third in Melodifestivalen. Nevertheless, Ring Ring was a hit in many parts of Europe and also in South Africa, but Stig Anderson felt that the true breakthrough could only come with a UK or US hit.

In early 1973, Stig Anderson started to refer to the group privately and publicly as ABBA and in the summer the name became official. Ulvaeus, Andersson and Stig Anderson believed in the possibilities of using the Eurovision Song Contest as a way to make the music business aware of them as songwriters, as well as the band itself. In late 1973, they were invited by Swedish television to contribute a song for the Melodifestivalen 1974 and from a number of new songs, the upbeat number Waterloo was chosen. The group was now inspired by the growing glam rock scene in England.

ABBA won their national heats on Swedish television on 9 February 1974, and with this third attempt were far more experienced and better prepared for the Eurovision Song Contest. Winning the 1974 Contest on 6 April 1974 gave ABBA the chance to tour Europe and perform on major television shows. Waterloo was ABBA's first number one single in big markets such as the UK and West Germany. In the United States, the song peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, paving the way for their first album and their first trip as a group there.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.


German postcard by Polar Music International AB, SIB-tryck AB. Photo: Polar Music International AB. Publicity still for the album Super Trouper (1980).

After ABBA

ABBA has never officially announced the end of the group, but it has long been considered dissolved. Their final public performance together as ABBA was on the British TV programme The Late, Late Breakfast Show (live from Stockholm) on 11 December 1982. In January 1983, Fältskog started recording sessions for a solo album, as Lyngstad had successfully released her album Something's Going On some months earlier. Ulvaeus and Andersson, meanwhile, started songwriting sessions for the musical Chess. Except for a TV appearance in 1986, the foursome did not come together publicly again until they were reunited at the Swedish premiere of the Mamma Mia! film in 2008.

In October 1984, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson together with lyricist Tim Rice released the musical concept double album Chess. The singles One Night in Bangkok (with vocals by Murray Head and Anders Glenmark) and I Know Him So Well (a duet by Barbara Dickson and Elaine Paige, and later also recorded by both Barbra Streisand and Whitney Houston) were both hugely successful. In May 1986, the musical premièred in London's West End, and ran for almost three years. Chess also opened on Broadway in April 1988, but closed within two months due to bad reviews.

Andersson and Ulvaeus' next project, Kristina från Duvemåla, an epic Swedish musical, premiered in Malmö, in southern Sweden in 1995. The musical ran for five years in Stockholm, and an English version has been in development for some considerable time. Andersson and Ulvaeus have continued writing songs for the Swedish duo Gemini in 1985 and 1987. Benny Andersson has also regularly written music for films like Roy Andersson's Sånger från andra våningen/Songs from the Second Floor (2000). In 2001, Benny formed his own band, Benny Anderssons Orkester (BAO), which released three successful albums.

Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson have been highly involved in the worldwide productions of the musical Mamma Mia!, alongside Lyngstad who attends premieres. They were also involved in the production of the successful film version of the musical, which opened 2008. Andersson produced the soundtrack utilising many of the musicians ABBA used on their albums and tours. Andersson made a cameo appearance in the film Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2008) as a 'fisherman' piano player in the Dancing Queen scene, while Ulvaeus is seen as a Greek god playing a lyre during the closing credits.

Both Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad pursued solo careers on the international scene after their work with the group. Lyngstad acted in two films, Gå på vattnet om du kan/Walk on Water If You Can (Stig Björkman, 1979) with Lena Nyman, and the comedy Jokerfejs (Peter Wester, 1984). In 1982, Lyngstad chose Genesis drummer and vocalist Phil Collins to produce the album Something's Going On. The single I Know There's Something Going On became a number 1 hit in a.o. France, Belgium and Switzerland. Lyngstad's second solo album after ABBA was called Shine (1984), produced by Steve Lillywhite. It was her final studio album release for twelve years.

In 1980, Agnetha Fältskog recorded Nu tändas tusen juleljus (Now a thousand Christmas candles are lit), a Swedish Christmas album along with her 7 year old daughter Linda. The album peaked at No. 6 on the Swedish album chart in January 1982 and is one of the best-selling Swedish Christmas albums of all time. In 1983, Fältskog released the solo album Wrap Your Arms Around Me produced by Mike Chapman. This included the single The Heat Is On, which was a hit all over Europe and Scandinavia. In the United States, Fältskog earned a Billboard Top 30 hit with Can't Shake Loose. In 1983, she also starred in the Swedish comedy Raskenstam/Casanova of Sweden (Gunnar Hellström, 1983), a critical and box office success. Fältskog's second English-language solo album, Eyes of a Woman (1985) peaked at number 2 in Sweden and performed reasonably well in Europe. The album was produced by Eric Stewart of 10cc.

From 1992 to 1995, Anni-Frid Lyngstad was chairperson for the environmental organisation Artister för miljön (Artists for the Environment) in Sweden. Her environmental work for this organisation led up to the decision to record again. The album Djupa andetag (Deep Breaths) was released towards the end of 1996 and became a success in Sweden, where it reached number 1. Shelives a relatively low-profile life but occasionally appears at a party or charity function. On 26 August 1992, she married Prince Heinrich Ruzzo Reuss von Plauen, of the German Reuss family. Von Plauen died of lymphoma in 1999 at the age of 49. In addition to losing her husband, Lyngstad had also lost her daughter Lise-Lotte in a car crash a year earlier.

In early 1987, Agnetha Fältskog recorded an album Kom följ med I vår karusell (Come ride with me on my carousel) with her son Christian. The album contained songs for children and was sung in Swedish. In November 1987, Fältskog released her third post-ABBA solo album, the Peter Cetera-produced I Stand Alone. The album spent eight weeks at number 1 in Sweden. Shortly after some minor European promotion for the album in early 1988, Fältskog withdrew from public life and halted her music career. In 1996, she released her autobiography, As I Am, and a compilation album featuring her solo hits alongside some ABBA classics. In 2004, she made a successful comeback, releasing the critically acclaimed album My Colouring Book. In May 2013, Fältskog released a solo album entitled A through the Verve music label.


Clip of Ring, Ring (1973). Source: AbbaVevo (YouTube).


ABBA singing Waterloo at the Eurovision Song Contest 1974. Source: Mozpiano2 (YouTube).


Trailer Abba The Movie (Lasse Hallström, 1977). Source: CinemaTerrorDotCom (YouTube).


Clip of The Winner Takes It All (1980). Source: AbbaVevo (YouTube).

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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L'aigrette (1917)

May 23, 2015, 10:00 pm

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L'aigrette/The egret (1917) is a silent Italian film by Baldassare Negroni. The film, produced by Tiber Film in Rome, was an adaptation by Negroni of a stage play by Dario Niccodemi. Stars were Hesperia, Tullio Carminati and André Habay.


Italian postcard by IPA CT Duplex, no. 5103. Caption: La Dama dell'aigrette. (The lady of the egret) Photo: Tiber Film, Roma. Tullio Carminati and Ida Carloni Talli in the Italian silent film L'aigrette (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917).


Italian postcard by IPA CT Duplex, no. 5105. Photo: Tiber Film, Roma. Caption: Il turpe mercato della contessa di Saint-Servant (The vile market of the Countess of Saint -Servant). Hesperia (at right) and Ida Carloni Talli in L'aigrette (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917).

Cherishing Honour and Virtue

The countess of Saint-Servant (Ida Carloni Talli) has raised her son Enrico (Tullio Carminati) to be proud of his name and title, and to cherish honour and virtue, symbolised by the feather of her aigrette (egret). In reality the countess is hunted by creditors, the castle is falling apart.

Enrico falls in love with Susanne Leblanc (Hesperia), wife of a banker, and in return she loads him with money in order to restore the family castle. Her husband Claudio (André Habay) is not so happy with this kind of charity...

L'aigrette was written as a comedy in three acts in 1912 and had been the first play by Dario Niccodemi. His comedies represent the bourgeois drama in an ironic and sentimental way, in which his characters are modelled on the society of the beginning of the century.

Niccodemi wrote several plays and screenplays. Films based on his work include L'ombra (Mario Caserini, 1917) with Vittoria Lepanto, La nemica/The enemy (Ivo Ulliminati, 1917) and Scampolo, filmed in 1917 with Margot Pellegrinetti, in 1928 with Carmen Boni, in 1932 with Dolly Haas, in 1941 with Lilia Silvi, and in 1958 with Romy Schneider.


Italian postcard by IPA CT Duplex, no. 5107. Caption: La famiglia Leblanc nei gorni felici (The Leblanc family in happier days). Photo: Tiber Film, Roma. André Habay and Hesperia in the Italian silent film L'aigrette (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917).


Italian postcard by IPA CT Duplex, no. 5108. Caption: Claudio, Enrico e Susanna. Tragico colloquio (Claudio, Enrico and Susanna. Tragic conversation). Photo: Tiber Film. Hesperia, Tullio Carminati and André Habay in the Italian silent film L'aigrette (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917).

A Wonderful Cast

L'aigrette had a wonderful cast with stars of the silent Italian cinema, like Tullio Carminati, André Habay, Diomira Jacobini (not pictured on one of the postcards), Ida Carloni Talli and of course in the leading role Hesperia.

Tullio Carminati (1895-1971) was an Italian stage and film actor with a long standing career from the 1910s to the 1960s. He played in Italian, German, American, British and French films as well as on Italian, American and British stages.

Italian actor André Habay (1883-1941) aka Andrea Habay (also written as Habaj or Kabaj) acted in modern dramas and diva films such as Sangue blu/Blue Blood (Nino Oxilia, 1914) and Rapsodia satanica/Satan's Rhapsody (Nino Oxilia, 1917). Later, he also starred as Petronius in the epic Quo vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925).

Ida Carloni Talli (1860-1940) was an important Italian stage actress, who also acted in 92 Italian silent films.

Hesperia (1885-1959), was one of the greatest divas of the Italian silent screen. She often worked with director Baldassarre Negroni, who later became her husband.


French postcard. Caption: Le pardon. (The pardon). Photo: Tullio Carminati and Ida Carloni-Talli in the Italian silent film L'aigrette (Baldassarre Negroni, 1917).

Sources: Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.

Vitold Polonsky

May 24, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Vitold Polonsky (1879-1919) was one of the most popular actors in pre-Revolutionary Russian cinema. He played several hero-lover roles in silent dramas by Yevgeni Bauer and Pyotr Chardynin.


Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Hero-lover Roles

Vitold Alfonsovich Polonsky (Russian: Витольд Альфонсович Полонский) was born in Moscow in the Russian Empire in 1879.

The young Polonsky took drama courses in the Moscow theatre school, and graduated in 1907. He acted in the Maly Theatre in Moscow until 1916.

His first film role was Prince Andrey Bolkonsky opposite Vera Karalli in Natasha Rostova (Pyotr Chardynin, 1915) based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy. He also appeared opposite the other diva of the Russian silent cinema, Vera Kholodnaya, in Pesn torzhestvuyushchey lyubvi/Song of Triumphant Love (Yevgeni Bauer, 1915).

He played several hero-lover roles including Andrey Bargov in Posle smerti/After Death (Yevgeni Bauer, 1915); Prince Baratynsky in Zhizn za zhizn/A Life for a Life (Yevgeni Bauer, 1916); and Lanin in U kamina/By The Fireplace (Pyotr Chardynin, 1917). Polonsky became one of the most popular actors in pre-Revolutionary Russian cinema.

One of the most famous films of the era is the silent drama Molchi, grust... molchi/Be silent, sorrow ... be silent or Still, Sadness ... Still ... (Pyotr Chardynin, 1918) with a star-studded cast including Vera Kholodnaya, Ossip Runitsch, Vladimir Maksimov and Polonsky. This film consisted of two parts, but the first (44 minutes in length) survives.


Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson. Photo: publicity still for Vozmezdie/Retribution (Yevgeni Bauer, 1916) with Vera Kholodnaya.


Russian postcard, no. 133. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Food poisoning

Vitold Polonsky was married twice. His first wife was the Maly Theatre actress Vera Nikolaevna Pashennaya, who became a National Artist of the USSR, a State Laureate and Lenin Prize winner. They had one daughter, Irina Polonskaya.

His second wife was Maly Theatre actress Olga Gladkova. They had one daughter, Veronika Polonskaya, who also became an actress.

In the summer of 1918, the film director Pyotr Chardynin and the Moscow cinema entrepreneur Dmitry Kharitonov requested the State Commissar for Education, Lunacharsky, to aid a group of cinema workers to travel to Odessa to film. They received a permit, and the group travelled to Odessa. Polonsky was part of the group along with Vera Kholodnaya and Ivan Mozzukhin.

In 1918, he directed the film Pesn lyubvi nedopetaya/Love Song Nedopetaya (1918) together with Lev Kuleshov. In November 1918, however, Odessa was occupied by the Entente forces (the Allies of World War I).

A few months later, in January 1919, Vitold Polonsky died from food poisoning.


Russian postcard, no. 124. Collection: Didier Hanson.


Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson. Photo: publicity still for Vozmezdie/Retribution (1916, Yevgeni Bauer) with Lidia Ryndina and Vera Karalli.


Russian postcard with Vera Kholodnaya. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Milly Vitale

May 25, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Milly Vitale (1933-2006) was an Italian actress, who starred in numerous post-war Italian films. She also appeared in a few Hollywood films but never achieved star status like her contemporaries Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 670. Photo: Paramount, 1955.

An innocent girl thrown into a dungeon

Camilla ‘Milly’ Vitale was born in 1933 in Rome, Italy. She was the daughter of conductor Riccardo Vitale, the director of the Rome opera house, and white-Russian choreographer Natasha Shidlowski.

At the age of 15, Milly made her film debut in the Dostoyevsky adaptation I fratelli Karamazoff/The Brothers Karamazoff (Giacomo Gentilomo, 1947), starring Fosco Giachetti. She played her first leading role in the historical melodrama La sepolta viva/Buried Alive (Guido Brignone, 1949) as an innocent girl thrown into a dungeon.

Vitale had her breakthrough in the political drama Anni Dificile/The Difficult Years (Luigi Zampa, 1950). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “The Difficult Years is another uncompromising neorealist exercise by Italian filmmaker Luigi Zampa. The title refers to the years that Italy spent under the thumb of fascism. It is Zampa's thesis that the majority of Italian citizens preferred to ignore Mussolini's trampling of human rights and his ever-increasing megalomania, so long as they were left in peace.”

Another interesting film is the realistic mafia drama Gli inesorabili/The Fighting Men (Camillo Mastrocinque, Roberto Savarese, 1950), starring Rossano Brazzi. Other films in which she appeared were the war-drama Il Caimano del Piave/The Caiman of the Piave River (Giorgio Bianchi, 1951) with Gino Cervi, the romance-drama Il Tenente Giorgio/Lieutenant Giorgio (Raffaello Matarazzo, 1952) starring Massimo Girotti, and the Swashbuckler A fil di spade/At Sword's Edge (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1952).

Vitale appeared in a few Hollywood movies like The Juggler (Edward Dmytryk, 1953), a drama about a survivor of the Holocaust, played by Kirk Douglas. In her most notable American role, she co-starred with Bob Hope in The Seven Little Foys (Melville Shavelson, 1956). However she never achieved star status like her contemporaries Sophia Lorenand Gina Lollobrigida, and returned to Europe.

In England, she made The Flesh Is Weak (Don Chaffey, 1957) and the war film Battle of the V-1 (Vernon Sewell, 1958), starring Michael Rennie. In Italy, she appeared in the Italian-American coproduction War and Peace (King Vidor, 1957) and the historical epic Annibale/Hannibal (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1959) based on the life of Hannibal (Victor Mature).


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 667. Photo: Minerva Film.


Vintage postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1199.

The Queen of France

In 1960, Milly Vitale married the American Vincent Hillyer. The marriage produced two sons, Edoardo (1961) and Vincent Jr. (1964). Hillyer’s wife by a previous marriage had been a princess of the Iranian Pahlevi dynasty. Hillyer had converted to Islam, and, as an honorary Iranian citizen, had close ties with the government in Teheran.

In May 1961, Hillyer and Vitale sued the Pan American Petroleum Corporation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the tune of $30 million for allegedly reneging on an agreement to pay them an annuity of $25,000 and a 2 1/2 % share in net profits in exchange for Hillyer interceding with the Iranian government on an oil exploration contract. The couple divorced in 1966.

Vitale returned to the screen in the Italian thriller Gangsters '70/Days of Fire (Mino Guerrini, 1968) starring Joseph Cotten. She played small parts in the comedies Il medico della mutual/The Family Doctor (Luigi Zampa, 1968) featuring Alberto Sordi, and Contestazione generale/General dispute (Luigi Zampa, 1970) starring Vittorio Gassman.

Vitale retired from acting in the 1970s. Her final film role was as the Queen of France in the Swashbuckler La grande avventura di Scaramouche/The great adventure of Scaramouche (Piero Pierotti, 1972). The film was originally completed in 1970 but not released until 1972 - after the death of director Piero Pierotti.

Milly Vitale died in 2006 in Rome. She had made nearly 50 films.


Vintage postcard. Photo: Paramount.


Vintage postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 143.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Imported from the USA: Raquel Welch

May 26, 2015, 10:00 pm

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In the following months we will continue our series 'Imported from the USA'. Posts about Hollywood stars who worked intensively in the European cinema. Many did that at the end of their careers. Others became stars in European productions and later returned to the US. We start with one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s, Raquel Welch (1940). She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). Then she made in Great Britain One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.


German postcard, no. 100 / 125.


Vintage postcard. Photo: publicity still for Le plus vieux métier du monde/The oldest profession (Michael Pfleghar, 1967).


Spanish postcard, no. 11.

Miss Photogenic

Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall.

At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station.

After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol.

After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name.

Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."


British postcard by Klasik Kards, no. 1541. Photo: publicity still for Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966).


Italian postcard, no. 100/116.


Spanish postcard, no. 597.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

Ground-breaking sex scenes

Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch.

She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo!

Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was."

Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967).

In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968).

Back in the United States she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 43079.


Italian postcard in the Artisti di Sempre series by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 347.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968).


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. Personality 21. Photo: Douglas Kirkland, 1978.

Breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol

Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part as the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.

Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr.

She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975).

A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her into one the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement.

She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.

Her later films include the hit comedy Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001), starring Reese Witherspoon, and Forget About It (BJ Davis, 2006) with Burt Reynolds. Welch was married four times and is the mother of Damon Welch (1959) and actress Tahnee Welch (1961).


Trailer One Million Years B.C. (1966). Source: John Kelly (YouTube).


Trailer Fantastic Voyage (1966). Source: beowulfooo (YouTube).


Trailer Myra Breckinridge (1970). Source: Sleaze-O-Rama (YouTube).

Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Harry Cort

May 27, 2015, 10:00 pm

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Polish actor Harry Cort (1905-?) came from a royal dynasty and had a short film career with starring roles in three silent films, 9:25. Przygoda jednej nocy (1929), Halka (1930) and Karuzela zycia (1930). A 'social scandal' ended the career of the handsome actor.


Polish postcard by Polonia, Krakow, no. 923. Collection: Joanna.

Dressed as a Girl

Harry Cort was born Prince Stanisław Józef Gedyminowicz-Bielski in Trzeszczany near Zamosc, Russia (now Poland). Staś Bielski was born in the lineage of the Gediminids dynasty of monarchs in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, that reigned from the 14th to the 16th century.

At the age of seven years, he and his family went abroad and toured southern Europe, Africa and Asia. In Austria, he witnessed the outbreak of World War I, and in 1919, he survived the Budapest Hungarian communist revolution.

In 1924 he returned to Poland and joined the Corps of Cadets Lviv. He graduated high school in Warsaw and then went to study in Paris.

At the end of the 1920s he returned to Poland. The Polish site Queer relates how the very handsome 21-years old Staś Bielski once visited a ball dressed as a girl. The result turned out to be impressive: "He looked phenomenal, moving up beautifully, it took only fakes for what he was lacking in the figure, his neck was covered with a scarf and his low voice was explained by a cold."


Italian postcard by Ed. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: publicity still of Pola Negri in Good and Naughty (Malcolm St. Clair, 1926).

Social Scandal

Staś Bielski met author and film critic Maria Jehanne Wielopolska who persuaded him to try to play for the cinema.

His film debut was the adventure film 9:25. Przygoda jednej nocy/9:25. Adventure one night (Adam Augustynowicz, Ryszard Biske, 1929) in which he co-starred with Iza Norska. The film is now considered lost.

The following year he played the male lead in the drama Halka (Konstanty Meglicki, 1930). Halka was played by Zorika Szymanska. The film was a remake of the early Polish film Halka (1913), based on an opera by Wlodzimierz Wolski. Later followed a sound version, Halka (Juliusz Gardan, 1937) starring Liliana Zielinska as Halka.

Harry Cort’s third and final film was the romantic comedy Karuzela zycia/Carousel of life (Boleslaw Micinski, 1930) in which he co-starred again with Iza Norska. This film is also considered as lost.

With the advent of the sound films Harry Cort began an intensive study to learn singing and diction. In the early days of the sound era, films were recorded in various languages. Harry Cort prepared to play in films spoken in Polish, German and French. With his knowledge of languages and contacts with Polish Hollywood star Pola Negri, he wanted to play in foreign films.

By the late 1930s he was involved in a ‘social scandal’ that shattered his plans for acting, according to the Polish website Nitrofilm. I could not find more details about this scandal. Probably he then went abroad.

The further fate of Harry Cort or Prince Gedyminowicz-Bielski is unknown.

Sources: Queer (Polish), Nitrofilm (Polish), Film Polski (Polish), Filmweb (Polish) and IMDb.