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Charles Vanel

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French actor and director Charles Vanel (1892-1989) was a craggy-faced character actor with a rumbling voice and a piercing gaze. In a cinema career of 77 years, this ‘monument of the French cinema’ played in over 200 silent and sound films, in France and abroad. Vanel is best remembered as the silent driver in Le salaire de la peur/The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953), the retired chief commissioner in Les diaboliques/Diabolique (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955), and the policeman in To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955).

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Cinemagazine Edition, Paris, no. 528. Photo: publicity still for Paname... nést pas Paris/Apaches of Paris (Nikolai Malikoff, 1927). Signed by Vanel at 25 April 1930.

Charles Vanel in Michel Strogoff
French postcard. Photo: Tobis / Les Productions J.N. Ermolieff. Publicity still of Charles Vanel as Ogareff in Michel Strogoff (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1936).

Charles Vanel
Mexican card.

A Prolific Silent Film Career


Charles-Marie Vanel was born in Rennes, France, in 1892. His family moved to Paris in 1904, where his parents became shopkeepers. His adolescence was not very happy, being expelled by all the schools which he frequented. He tried to enlist in the Navy, but his poor sight put an end to this ambition.

Possessing a very fine voice, he decided to become an actor and in 1908, he made his stage debut in Hamlet at the age of 16. In 1912 followed his first film appearance in the short Western Jim Crow (Robert Péguy, 1912) opposite Joë Hamman. He participated in numerous theatre tours, in particular with Lucien Guitry during the war. Then he worked with Firmin Gémier at the Theatre Antoine before dedicating himself exclusively to the cinema.

His films of the 1910s included La p'tite du sixième/The Little Girl of the 6th (Louis Mercanton, René Hervil, 1917) and Miarka, la fille à l'ourse/Gypsy Passion (Louis Mercanton, 1920) with Réjane. He acted with the legendary Russian actor Ivan Mozzhukhin in L'Enfant du carnaval/The Child of the Carnival (Ivan Mozzhukhin, 1921), Tempêtes/Tempests (Robert Boudrioz, 1922), and La Maison du mystère/The House of Mystery (Alexandre Volkoff, 1923).

Vanel had his first success in Robert Boudrioz's drama about the grim life of French peasants, L'Atre/Tillers of the Soil (1922). This marked the beginning of a prolific silent film career. He appeared in many films by Jacques de Baroncelli, particularly in the Pierre Loti story Pêcheur d'Islande/Island Fishermen (1927), filmed in his native Brittany. He played in Germaine Dulac's melodrama Ame d'artiste/Heart of an Actress (1924) and René Clair's comedy drama Proie du vent/Prey of the Wind (1927) with Sandra Milowanoff. Vanel worked for German and Italian directors, and played Napoleon in Karl Grüne's Waterloo (1929).

Vanel directed Sandra Milowanoff in the feature film Dans la Nuit/In the Night (1929), in which he also played the leading role. This silent film was overlooked at the time because of the coming of sound, and it would stay the only feature film directed by Vanel. In 2002, at the request of filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, Louis Sclavis composed and recorded a soundtrack for the film, and the Cinématheque Française restored Dans la Nuit. At Film Reference, Liam O’Leary writes: “which allows us to see a very talented director indeed. This story of rural love and jealousy set among quarry workers has a documentary realism”.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Cinémagazine, no. 219 Photo: Soulat-Boussus.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 182. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Europe, no. 260. Photo: Société des Cinéromans.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Editions et Publications cinématographiques (EPC), no. 161. Photo: Teddy Piaz.

Charles Vanel
Belgian postcard by N. Els, Bromurite. Offered by Kwatta. Photo: Ufa.

Clouzot's Stock Company


With the arrival of sound, Charles Vanel spent two years in Germany on French versions of German films. On his return to France he became a familiar figure on the cinema screen. He played the nasty, relentless Inspector Javert opposite Harry Baur in the two-part screen version of Les Misérables (Raymond Bernard, 1934) and also appeared in Bernard’s prostitution and drugs drama Faubourg Montmarte (Raymond Bernard, 1931) and the powerful anti-war film Les Croix de bois/Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard, 1932).

He was in the Foreign Legion melodrama Le Grand Jeu/The Full Deck (Jacques Feyder, 1934), he played Jean Gabin’s buddy in the smash hit La Belle Equipe/The Good Crew (Julien Duvivier, 1936), and he appeared in Marcel Carné's first film as director, Jenny (1936), featuring Françoise Rosay. He also starred in Feyder’s La Loi du nord/Law of the North (Jacques Feyder, 1939) with Michèle Morgan.

His popularity diminished during the war years, but he was able to stage a comeback as a member of director Henri-Georges Clouzot's stock company. He played his most famous role as the eldest of four men assigned to drive two truckloads of nitroglycerine across dangerous terrain in Clouzot's agonisingly suspenseful Le Salaire de la peur/The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953). His increasingly frail character suffers humiliation at the hands of Yves Montand and endures remarkable physical torment during the dangers of the journey. For this role he received the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.

He reunited with Clouzot for Les Diaboliques/Diabolique (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955), and the courtroom drama La verité/The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1958) starring Brigitte Bardot. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny calls Les Diaboliques‘The greatest film that Alfred Hitchcock never made: “A dark, dank thriller with a much-imitated ‘shock’ ending, Diabolique is a masterpiece of Grand Guignol suspense. The simple murder plot goes haywire, and Michel's corpse disappears, prompting strange rumors of his reappearance which grow more and more substantial as the film careens wildly towards its breathless conclusion.”

That same year Alfred Hitchcock cast Vanel as a policeman on the trail of cat burglar Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955). It would be Vanel’s only Hollywood production. The following years he worked for other famous directors like Luis Buñuel in Le Mort en ce jardin/Death in the Garden (1956), Alberto Lattuada in La Steppa/The Steppe (1962), and Jean Pierre Melville in L'Ainé des Ferchaux/An Honorable Young Man (1962).

Charles Vanel
French postcard by CE, no. 2018. Photo: Film Pathé-Natan.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 1076. Photo: Paramount.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Paris, no. 580. Photo: Paramount.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Editions E.C., Paris, no. 21. Photo: C.P.L.E.

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 41. Photo: Pathé Cinéma.

Sobriety and the Correct Tone


Charles Vanel was increasingly active on TV in the 1960s and 1970s, although he continued to appear in interesting films like the thriller Un homme de trop/Shock Troops (Costa Gravas, 1967).

At his site, author Jean Bernard-Luc analyses Vanel’s style: “Sobriety and the correct tone characterize Vanel’s acting. His monolithic appearance, his impassiveness is denied by his eyes, in which concentrates the intense life of his character. Most times, he played the dutiful man, whether he is a state employee, a serviceman, an adventurer or a gangster. He was almost never a seducer.”

In real life Vanel was married to Arlette Mauricette Bailly, and they lived in the south of France for the last 20 years of his life. As late as 1976 he played the leading role of the grandfather in the docudrama Es Herrscht Ruhe im Land/The Country Is Calm (Peter Lilienthal, 1976). That year he also appeared in the psychological drama Alice ou la Derniere Fugue/Alice or the Last Escapade (Claude Chabrol, 1976) starring Sylvia Kristel.

He played memorable parts in the Italian films Cadaveri eccellenti/The Excellent Corpses (Francesco Rosi, 1976) and Tre fratelli/Three Brothers (Francesco Rosi, 1981), an adaptation of a work by Andrei Platonov. The latter earned a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination.

On 1978 Vanel was honoured with a special César award. He retired in 1982, only to make a wholly unexpected comeback at the age of 95 as an old prophet in Si le Soleil Ne Revenait Pas/If The Sun Never Returns (Claude Goretta, 1987). In Les Saisons Du Plaisir/The Seasons of Pleasure (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1988) he played a 100-year-old perfume magnate who decides to marry. This would be his last film.

Charles Vanel died in 1989, in Cannes, France, at the age of 96. He had the longest career of any French film actor. However in Germany, actor Curt Bois even had an 80-year film career. In an interview with a Swiss newspaper in 1986, Vanel said: "You know, in our profession, there is no end. As long as one has the strength to do it, you can act."

Charles Vanel
French postcard by Télé 7 Jours.


Scene from La Belle Equipe/The Good Crew (1936). Source: Herrmith (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.


Trailer for Le salaire de la peur/The wages of fear (1953). Source: Fransefilms (YouTube).


Trailer for To catch a Thief (1955). Source: Video Detective (YouTube).


Trailer Cadaveri eccellenti/The Excellent Corpses (1976). Source: Mr Onlineclip (YouTube).

Sources: Liam O'Leary (Film Reference), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Jean Bernard-Luc (French), New York Times, TCM, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Miguel Bosé

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Handsome Spanish singer and actor Miguel Bosé (1956) was a major teen idol in Southern Europe between 1977 and 1982. Later he became popular as a pop singer in Latin America. As an actor he worked with interesting directors like Dario Argento,  Pedro Almodóvar and Patrice Chereau.

Miguel Bosé
Spanish postcard in the series Tus Idolos by Super Pop Tu revista.

Suspiria


Miguel Bosé was born Miguel Luchino González Borlani in 1956 in San Fernando Hospital in Panama City, Panama. He was the son of Italian actress Lucia Bosè and bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín. He grew up in an environment surrounded by art and culture. Close friends of his family were Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. His godfather was Luchino Visconti and Pablo Picasso was the godfather of his sister Paola Dominguin.

In 1971, propelled by his famous family and their friends, Bosé started a career as an actor. He appeared in small roles in Italian films like the war-comedy Gli eroi/The Heroes (Duccio Tessari, 1973) and the exploitation crime film La Orca/Snatch (Eriprando Visconti, 1976) with Michele Placido.

Bosé quickly won spots on the basis of his talent and good looks alone, rather than his name, and he did study serious acting as well as dancing and singing. In 1975 he started exploring his talents as a singer. With the assistance of Camilo Blanes he recorded his first singles.

Two years later, in 1977, Bosé signed a contract with CBS Records, and he remained with them until 1984. Between 1977 and 1982, Bosè was a major teen idol in Italy (where he sang in Italian and English) and in Spain (where he sang in Spanish). He had 7 top ten hits in a disco/new wave trend that earned him a secure spot in every televised song festival held in Southern Europe.

During this period, he continued to play in films, including the Spanish production Retrato de Familia/Family Portrait (Antonio Giménez-Rico, 1976), the Spaghetti Western California (Michele Lupo, 1977) starring Giulianno Gemma, and the classic Giallo Suspiria/Sighs (Dario Argento, 1977) with Jessica Harper.

Miguel Bosé
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

High Heels


In 1983, Miguel Bosé’s star had severely waned in Italy, and he rarely performed there again until the 2000s. In 1983, 1984, and 1985, Bosé participated in the Llena Tu Cabeza De Rock television specials on Puerto Rico WAPA-TV. In 1985 his song Amante bandido rose to the top of the charts all over Latin America and in Spain. The video to that song also became one of the most widely seen Spanish music videos, with Bose playing both a Superman style superhero and an Indiana Jones type of adventurer in it.

He revived his international film career with roles in the Italian comedy L'avaro/The Miser (Tonino Cervi, 1990), starring Alberto Sordiand Laura Antonelli, and the Spanish melodrama Tacones lejanos/High Heels (Pedro Almodóvar, 1991) starring Marisa Paredes and Victoria Abril.

In Tacones lejanos, the male lead was difficult to cast. The actor had to be believable in drag and as a judge. When the role eventually went to Bosé, his casting was a cause célèbre of the film publicity. The film was enormously successful in Spain and eventually it came second in terms of box-office takings to Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios/Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) among Almodóvar's films released up to that point. High Heels was also a success in France and Italy, but did less well in other countries.

Bosé then played the lead in the French drama Mazeppa (Bartabas, 1993) and the excellent French period film La Reine Margot/Queen Margot (Patrice Chéreau, 1994) featuring Isabelle Adjani and Vincent Perez. His later films were less successful.

Musically, he would return to the top in Italy in 1994, by winning the musical event Festivalbar for the third time. In the following decade, Bosé's popularity continued undiminished as he released four more studio albums and two live albums. In 2007, to celebrate his 30 years as a singer, he released Papito, an album that contains remakes of his previous songs, re-interpreted in duets with artists like Juanes, Alejandro Sanz, Laura Pausini, Shakira, Ricky Martin, and Michael Stipe from R.E.M..

His hit single Nena, featuring Mexican superstar Paulina Rubio, was nominated for a Latin Grammy for best song, and became the best selling download of Spain in 2007. In 2008, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe offered him Colombian citizenship because of his efforts towards peace in Colombia, including his participation in two concerts in 2008. In 2010 he received Colombian citizenship. In 2012 he released the album Papitwo, a follow-up to his successful Papito.

Zac Johnson at AllMusic: "Defying the contemporary formula for pop success, his music has been described as a global fusion of many musical influences. At the center of his music is all the passion and expression of a Latin artist, yet Miguel Bosé has constantly incorporated more diverse musical elements than many of the genre's crossover pop stars."


American trailer for Suspiria/Sighs (Dario Argento, 1977) - without Bosé. Source: EazyWWEfan's channel (YouTube).


Trailer for the Spaghetti Western California (Michele Lupo, 1977). Source: The Spaghetti Western Database (YouTube).


Trailer for Tacones lejanos/High Heels (Pedro Almodóvar, 1991). Source: Eldeseopc (YouTube).


Video clip for the song Nena (2007). Source: Miguel Bosé (YouTube).


Video clip for the song Encanto of Miguel Bosé's laste album Amo (2014). Source: Miguel Bosé (YouTube).

Sources: Zac Johnson (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Twelve rare postcards from Didier Hanson's collection

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Mail from Spain. Collector Didier Hanson sent us recently acquired and - as always - rare vintage postcards. They show known and less known silent film stars from all over Europe. We will share Didier's new acquisitions with you in a series of posts. Today the first twelve.

Carl Brisson
Swedish postcard by Hörling Edition, Stockholm. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Danish film actor and operetta singer Carl Brisson (1893–1958) appeared in 12 films between 1918 and 1935, including two silent films by Alfred Hitchcock. In the Paramount production Murder at the Vanities (1934), he introduced the popular song Cocktails for Two.

Carmen Boni
French postcard. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Italian silent film star Carmen Boni (1901-1963) had a successful career in the Italian cinema of the early 1920s, before moving to Germany where she made one film after another in the late 1920s.

Fania Marinoff
Vintage postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Russian actress Fania Marinoff (1890-1971) lived in the U.S. from childhood and was a prolific performer on Broadway from 1903. She appeared in a few silent films, usually in ethnic or Jewish roles, including The Unsuspected Isles (1915), The Lure of Mammon (1915) and Nedra (1915). She was married to author and photographer Carl Van Vechten.

Iven Andersen

German postcard by NPG, no. 1326. Photo: Memelsdorf, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

German actress Iven Andersen became known with the Aufklärungsfilm Das Mädchen aus der Opiumhöhle (1918). In the following years she played in several films.

Leda Gys and Mario Bonard in La pantomima della morte (1915)
French postcard, no. 7467. Photos: probably a publicity still for La pantomima della morte/The pantomime of death (Mario Caserini, 1915) with Leda Gys and Mario Bonard. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Film diva Leda Gys (1892-1957) starred in ca. 60 dramas, comedies, action thrillers and even westerns of the Italian and Spanish silent cinema. Her claim to fame came with the film Christus (1916), shot in Egypt and Palestine, where Gys performed the Madonna.

Lucien Guitry
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 1. Photo: Sabourin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Lucien Guitry (1860-1925) was considered the preeminent French actor of his day. For many years, he played opposite Sarah Bernhardt. He also appeared in silent films like Tosca (1908) and Ceux de chez nous (1915). He was married to Jeanne Desclois and Renée de Pont-Jest, and his son was the well known actor-writer-director Sacha Guitry.

Maria Carmi in Das Mirakel (1912)
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, no. 8579. Photo: Becker & Maass. Publicity still for Das Mirakel/The Miracle (Cherry Kearton, Max Reinhardt, 1912) with Maria Carmi as the Madonna.

With her aristocratic air, her severe looks but also her sweet undertones, Italian silent film star and stage actress Maria Carmi (1880-1957) was the cinematic translation of the 19th century Primadonna. Later she became Princess Norina Matchabelli and was co-founder of the perfume company Prince Matchabelli.

Nathalie Kovanko
Croatian postcard by Mosinger Film, Zagreb. Photo: publicity still for Le prince charmant/Prince Charming (Viktor Tourjansky, 1925). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Nathalie Kovanko (1899-1967) was a Russian-Ukrainian actress who played in Russian and French silent cinema.

Rita Sacchetto
German Postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 3164. Photo: Alex Binder. Collection: Didier Hanson.

German actress and dancer Rita Sacchetto (1879-1959) was in the 1910s a star of the Danish Nordisk Film Company.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Mister Wu
German postcard. Photo: publicity still for the stage production Mister W. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge (1888-1955) is best remembered for his sinister roles in Fritz Lang's silent masterpieces. He played the devilish hypnotist Mabuse in Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1925) and the mad scientist Rotwang in Metropolis (1927), but he played more parts in classics of the German cinema.

Vera Kholodnaya
Russian postcard, no. 72. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Vera Kholodnaya (1893-1919) was the first star of the Russian silent cinema. Only 26, the ‘Queen of Screen’ died of the Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1919. Although she worked only three years for the cinema, she must have made between fifty and hundred short films. The Soviet authorities ordered to destroy many of the Kholodnaya features in 1924, and only five of her films still exist.

Vitold Polonsky
Russian postcard, no. 113, 1917. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Vitold Polonsky (1879-1919) was one of the most popular actors in pre-Revolutionary Russian cinema.

To be continued. Thanks, Didier!

Imported from the USA: Steve Reeves

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Handsome, musclebound Steve Reeves (1926-2000) was an American bodybuilder and actor, who was a huge success in Hercules (1958) and other Peplum films, the Italian sword-and-sandal epics. At the peak of his career, around 1960, he was reputedly the highest-paid actor in Europe.

Steve Reeves
Small Romanian collectors card.

Steve Reeves
Belgian collectors card. Photo: Apollon Films.

Mr. Universe


Stephen L. Reeves was born on a cattle ranch in the small town of Glasgow, Montana, in 1926. At the age of six months, he won his first fitness title as Healthiest Baby of Valley County. When Steve was 10, his father, Lester Dell Reeves, died in a farming accident. With his mother Goldie Reeves, Steve moved to California.

In high school in Oakland, Reeves began to work out regularly with weights, and he eventually came to the attention of Ed Yarick, who ran a bodybuilding gym. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the Army, and served in the Philippines during World War II and in Japan afterwards.

After his military service, at the age of 20, he won the title Mr. Pacific Coast (1946) in Oregon, which led to his titles of Mr. Western America (1947), Mr. America (1947), Mr. World (1948) and, ultimately, Mr. Universe (1950). The very night after he won the Mr. Universe title, he announced his retirement from bodybuilding competition at the age of 25.

With all the body-worshipping publicity he garnered, Reeves had become interested in pursuing an acting career. He moved to New York and studied acting under Stella Adler but after arguments was refunded his tuition. He was selected by Cecil B. DeMille for the lead role of Samson in the biblical costumer Samson and Delilah (1949), after Burt Lancaster proved unavailable. In order to look convincing on-camera, he was told to lose 15 pounds as the camera added weight. He would not be able to compete in bodybuilding with the diminished weight, so he turned the movie offer down. The part instead went to Victor Mature.

In 1949 Steve did film a Tarzan-type television pilot called Kimbar of the Jungle. He was one of the Olympic Team members not interested in the charms of Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953). In 1954 he had a small role in the musical Athena (Richard Thorpe, 1954) playing Jane Powell's boyfriend. The same year Reeves had a small role as a detective in Ed Wood’s attempt to make a serious Film-Noir, Jail Bait (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1954). On TV, Reeves guest starred on The Ray Bolger Show (1954) and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1957). These roles were mostly posing bits or walk-ons. To Hollywood, Reeves was just a body. But then his fortunes turned.

Sylva Koscina and Steve Reeves in Ercole e la regina di Lidia (1959)
Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Ercole e la regina di Lidia/Hercules Unchained (Pietro Francisci, 1959) with Sylva Koscina.

Sylva Koscina and Steve Reeves in Ercole e la regina di Lidia (1959)
Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Ercole e la regina di Lidia/Hercules Unchained (Pietro Francisci, 1959) with Sylva Koscina.

Herculean acting talent by any stretch


Italian film director Pietro Francisci’s daughter saw Steve Reeves in Athena (1954) and she recommended him to her father. Francisci invited Reeves to come to Cinecitta, the Roman film studios. In 1957, Reeves played the lead character in Le fatiche di Ercole/Hercules (Pietro Francisci, 1958), opposite gorgeous Sylva Koscina.

Hercules was a relatively low-budget epic based loosely on the tales of Jason and the Argonauts, though inserting Hercules into the lead role. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: “Though he did not possess a Herculean acting talent by any stretch, handsome bodybuilder Steve Reeves certainly had an enviable Herculean physique, and made plenty good use of it in Europe.”

Independent film producer Joseph E. Levine took a big chance and bought the rights to the film's American release. He added a soundtrack dubbed in English and after a major US advertising campaign on television and in the newspapers, Hercules became one of the surprise hits of 1959.

Reeves was ‘overnight’ a star. The film’s international success quickly led to the sequel Ercole e la regina di Lidia/Hercules Unchained (Pietro Francisci, 1959), again with Sylva Koscina. Hercules Unchained made even more money and became one of the year's biggest grossing films.

Although he is now best known for his portrayal of Hercules, Reeves played the character only twice. Next he played 19th century Tatar hero Hadji Murad in Agi Murad il diavolo bianco/White Warrior (Riccardo Freda, 1959) with Giorgia Moll. This was followed by his role as Goliath (in Italy Emiliano) in Il terrore dei barbari/Goliath and the Barbarians (Carlo Campogalliani, 1959) with Chelo Alonso. While filming Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Mario Bonnard, Sergio Leone (uncredited), 1959), the chariot Reeves was driving struck a tree and he dislocated his shoulder. This put an end to his more intense exercise routines and caused problems in the following years.

Steve Reeves
Small Romanian collectors card.

Steve Reeves in Morgan il pirata (1960)
Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 661. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Morgan il pirata/Morgan the Pirate (André De Toth, Primo Zeglio, 1960).

Number-one, box-office draw in twenty-five countries


By 1960, Steve Reeves was ranked as the number-one, box-office draw in twenty-five countries around the world. From then on through 1964, Reeves went on to appear in a string of Peplum (sword & sandal films) shot on relatively small budgets.

He played a number of characters on-screen, including Welsh pirate and self-proclaimed governor of Jamaica, Captain Henry Morgan in Morgan il pirata/Morgan the Pirate (André De Toth, Primo Zeglio, 1960), Karim, the fabled Thief of Baghdad in Il ladro di Bagdad/The Thief of Baghdad (Arthur Lubin, Bruno Vailati, 1961), and Randus, the son of Spartacus in Il figlio di Spartacus/The Slave: The Son of Spartacus (Sergio Corbucci, 1962).

He also played Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome in Romolo e Remo/Duel of the Titans (Sergio Corbucci, 1961) opposite Gordon Scott as his twin brother Remus. Reeves reportedly turned down two roles that became international sensations. Cubby Broccoli offered him the role of James Bond in Dr. No (1962), but Reeves refused it because of the low salary the producer offered. Reeves also turned down the role of ‘The Man with No name’ that finally went to Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964) because he could not believe that "Italians could make a western".

He played Aeneas of Troy in La leggenda di Enea/The Avenger (Giorgio Venturini, 1962) and twice he played Emilio Salgari's Malaysian hero, Sandokan in Sandokan, la tigre di Mompracem/Sandokan the Great (Umberto Lenzi, 1963) with Geneviève Grad, and in I pirati della Malesia/The Pirates of Malaysia (Umberto Lenzi, 1964) with Jacqueline Sassard as the romantic interest. R

eeves’ injury of The Last Days of Pompeii, was aggravated by his stunt work in each successive film, ultimately leading to his retirement from film making. In 1968 he appeared in his final film, Vivo per la tua morte/I Live For Your Death!/A Long Ride From Hell (Camillo Bazzoni,1968), a Spaghetti Western he co-wrote.

His first wife had been Sandra Smith (1955-1956). In 1963, he married Aline Czarzawicz and the couple moved in 1969 to Valley Center, California, northeast of San Diego. He had bought a ranch there with savings from his film career. The next two decades Reeves bred horses and promoted drug-free bodybuilding. He stayed with Aline, until her death in 1989.

In 1994, Reeves and business partner George Helmer started the Steve Reeves International Society, which became through its Internet site, a leading proponent of drug-free bodybuilding. In 1996, it incorporated to become Steve Reeves International Inc. Reeves also wrote the book Powerwalking, and two self-published books, Building the Classic Physique - The Natural Way, and Dynamic Muscle Building.

His last screen appearance was in 2000 when he appeared as himself in the made-for-television A&E Biography: Arnold Schwarzenegger — Flex Appeal. In 2000, Reeves died in a hospital in Escondido, California, from a blood clot after having surgery two days earlier. He passed away on the very day that Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000) premiered, the first sword-and-sandal epic to be produced by Hollywood in many years. Steve Reeves was 74.


Scene from The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1957). Source: Marek546 (YouTube).


American trailer for Le fatiche di Ercole/Hercules (1958). Source: George Helmer (YouTube).


American trailer for Morgan il pirata/Morgan the Pirate (1960). Source: Captain Bijou (YouTube).

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Rick Lyman (The New York Times), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Walter Chiari

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Good looking Walter Chiari (1924-1991) was a hugely successful Italian stage and screen actor. He appeared opposite Anna Magnani in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951) and played countless roles in the Commedia all'italiana. Chiari achieved international success with The Little Hut (1957), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Chimes at Midnight (1966), and The Valachi Papers (1972). In the late 1950s and 1960s he was one of the main protagonists of the ‘Dolce Vita’, the glitzy and glamorous Italian jet-set scene, but a drugs scandal in 1970 hurt his screen career.

Walter Chiari
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 311.

Walter Chiari
Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., Firenze, no. 2910. Photo: Minerva Film.

Bellissima


Walter Chiari was the stage name of Walter Annicchiarico, born in Verona, Italy in 1924. His father, Carmelo Annichiarico, was a police official and his mother Enza was an elementary school teacher. The young Chiari was very athletic and both became a swimming and boxing champion. He joined the army of the Italian Social Republic of Salò. After the end of the war, he spent a few months in prison for collaborating with the fascist regime.

He got his first stage job thanks to actress Marisa Maresca, who offered him a part in the show Se ti bacia Lola (If you kiss Lola). Besides for his good looks, he was spotted for his improvisation talent. Chiari started his film career with a role in the drama Vanità/Vanity (Giorgio Pastina, 1947) with Liliana Laine and Dina Galli. The film, set in nineteenth century Milan, is based on a play by Carlo Bertolazzi. Chiari was awarded a Nastro d'Argento for best debut performance.

Next he co-starred in the comedy hit Totò al giro d'Italia /Totò at the Tour of Italy (Mario Mattoli, 1948) starring Totò. It was the first of a long series of comedies, all directed by Mario Mattoli. Very successful was also I cadetti di Guascogna/The Cadets of Gascony (Mario Mattioli, 1950), in which he acted with another newcomer, Ugo Tognazzi. He made comedies with other directors too, such as O.K. Nerone/O.K. Nero (Mario Soldati, 1951) with Gino Cervi as emperor Nero.

Chiari appeared as a young, handsome scoundrel opposite Anna Magnani in Luchino Visconti's neorealism drama Bellissima (1951). The film, which is a satire of the film industry, was shot at the Cinecittà studios. Alessandro Blasetti, a contemporary film director, appears as himself. Bellissima centers on a working-class mother in Rome, Maddalena (Anna Magnani), who drags her young daughter (Tina Apicella) to Cinecittà for the ‘Prettiest Girl in Rome’ contest. Maddalena is a stage mother who loves movies and whose efforts to promote her daughter grow increasingly frenzied.

His first foreign film was the French-Italian film La minute de vérité/The Moment of Truth (Jean Dellannoy, 1952) with Michèle Morgan and Jean Gabin. It was followed by Nana/Nanà (Christian-Jaque, 1955), an adaptation of Émile Zola's novel Nana, starring Martine Carol and Charles Boyer, and the crime film Je suis un sentimental/Headlines of Destruction (John Berry, 1955) with Eddie Constantine. In Italy, he co-starred in the comedy Donatella (Mario Monicelli, 1956) for which Elsa Martinelli won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 6th Berlin International Film Festival.

For MGM, he co-starred in the romantic comedy The Little Hut (Mark Robson, 1957). During the making of The Little Hut, he met Ava Gardner who was still formally married to Frank Sinatra but lived already estranged from him. They started a passionate and tumultuous relationship. Next he featured for Columbia in Bonjour Tristesse/Hello, Sadness (Otto Preminger, 1958) based on the novel by Françoise Sagan. In the meantime he figured permanently in the tabloids as a womanizer. He had affairs with Silvana Pampanini, Elsa Martinelli, Delia Scala, Lucia Bose (with whom he had a long engagement), Anita Ekberg, Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy and Italian singer Mina.

Walter Chiari
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 136.

Walter Chiari
Italian postcard by Turismofoto, no. 108.

Don't worry, I'm merely catching up with sleep


During the 1960s, Walter Chiari continued to stare in light comedies by such Italian directors as Steno, Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi and Nanni Loy.

Unlike many Italian actors of the time he had a full and fluent command of English that he put to good use in his Broadway spell, which in 1961 saw him performing in The Gay Life (a musical comedy inspired by an Arthur Schnitzler play) for 113 shows. He starred in They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966), the last of the Powell and Pressburger films, based on a popular Australian novel by John O'Grady. He also appeared in Orson WellesChimes at Midnight (1966), the Pan-European action-comedy Monte Carlo or Bust! (Ken Annakin, Sam Itzkovitch, 1969), the Australian film Squeeze a Flower (Marc Daniels, 1970), and the crime film The Valachi Papers (Terence Young, 1972) with Charles Bronson and Lino Ventura. The Valachi Papers tells the true story of Joseph Valachi, a Mafia informant in the early 1960s.

In 1970 Chiari was arrested and jailed in Rome on suspicion of cocaine possession and trafficking, with 70 days passing before he was bailed. Despite being known in show business as a cocaine user, Chiari enjoyed for years the de facto impunity often accorded to members of his trade (provided he kept his addiction private). The willingness of authorities to prosecute him, mounting a nationwide scandal, was seen by some as an attempt to distract public opinion from the fruitless search for the culprits of the Piazza Fontana bombing, which precipitated Italy in fear.

After his release and partial acquittal (he was deemed not guilty of the trafficking count and received a lenient sentence for the charge of drug possession for personal use) his career never completely recovered. According to Wikipedia, the Italian state television was off-limits for him, and all he could aspire to were parts in low-key comedies and local television appearances.

He concentrated on theatre and gave some good performances in plays such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Critic, Marc Perrier's Six heures au plus tard and Samuel Beckett's Endgame. His final film was the Italian romance-drama Tracce di vita amorosa/Traces of an Amorous Life (Peter Del Monte, 1990) with Valeria Golina, which was in the competition at the 47th Venice International Film Festival.

The following year, Chiari died of a sudden heart attack in Milan, at home, in 1991. On that same day he had undertaken a complete, positive medical check-up. Not showing up at a dinner with a theatre manager where he should have discussed his involvement in a new production he was found by his host who reached the residence where he was living at the time, sitting in an armchair, in front of a functioning television. His gravestone carries the line he once mentioned to director Dino Risi as his favourite choice for an epitaph: "Don't worry, I'm merely catching up with sleep".

In 1969 Walter Chiari had married actress Alida Chelli. They would divorce in 1981 and had one child. His son, Simone Annicchiarico (1970) became the lead singer of an Italian rock band and hosted the TV programs La Valigia Dei Sogni/Suitcase Of Dreams (2008-2009) and Italia's Got Talent (2009).


Italian trailer for Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951). Source: CinemAmbiente (YouTube).


Italian trailer for Il giovedi (Dino Risi, 1963). Source: primocarnera07 (YouTube).


Trailer for They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966). Source: irena0100 (YouTube).


Trailer for The Valachi Papers (Terence Young, 1972). Source: Tony Baretta (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Biografieonline (Italian), Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.

Nils Poppe

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Actor, director and screenwriter Nils Poppe (1908–2000) was often referred to as the Swedish Charlie Chaplin. He is internationally best known for his dramatic part as the jester in Ingmar Bergman's Det sjunde inseglet/The Seventh Sea (1957), but in Sweden he was much loved as a comedian and participated in over 50 films on cinema and TV.

Nils Poppe
Dutch postcard by Scala Theater, Utrecht, 1949. Photo: Meteor-Film. Publicity still for Ballongen/The Balloon (Göran Gentele, Nils Poppe, 1947). Travelling from one time-frame to another by means of a magic balloon, Poppe is seen in this film as an 8th century Viking, a 13th century Turkish Caliph, a 17th century French King and a present-day (1946) college student.

Smash Hit


Nils Poppe was born as Nils Einar Jönsson in Malmö, Sweden, in 1908. His mother was unmarried and brought him into an orphanage. After two years he was adopted by Anders and Amanda Jönsson in Malmö. At school he became interested in acting and while performing in a school play, he already showed his comedy skills.

In 1930, he started as a serious stage actor at the Hippodromteatern in Malmö. He quickly realized that he was better suited for comedy, revue, operetta and musical, especially as he also was a good dancer and singer. Four years later, he moved to Stockholm to appear in the Klangerevyn (Klang Revue) at the Folkets Hus-teatern (People's House Theatre).

There he first did his Charlie Chaplin parody. Nils Poppe often would be compared to Chaplin. The similarities were numerous, even if Poppe over time developed his very own style.

In 1937 he made his film debut and appeared in Swedish romantic comedies like Skicka hem Nr. 7/Send Home Number 7 (Schamyl Bauman, Gideon Wahlberg, 1937) and Adolf i eld och lågor/Adolf on fire (Per-Axel Branner, 1939). His first leading role was in the comedy Melodin från Gamla Stan/The melody of the Old Town (Ragnar Frisk, 1939).

During the 1940s, he became Sweden's leading film comedian. His comedies included Beredskapspojkar/Prepared boys (Sigurd Wallén, 1941) with Carl Reinholdz, and Blåjackor/Sailors (Rolf Husberg, 1945). He directed himself for the first time in Pengar - en tragikomisk saga/Money - a tragicomic saga (1946). At IMDb, Anders Emil Lundin writes: “This film is a proof of Poppe's genius as an actor. Not only does the story with the seven workers in the forest and little innocent Harry Orvar resemble the fairy tale ‘Snow White’ but it also shows that Poppe could play all varieties of roles - from comedy to tragedy.” It earned Poppe the Swedish equivalent of the Oscar.

In Scandinavia, Poppe is probably best remembered for his character Fabian Bom, which he introduced in Soldat Bom/Soldier Bom (Lars-Eric Kjellgren, 1948) with Gunnar Björnstrand. Bom is the very meticulous stationmaster, who makes sure that the train leaves exactly on the second. But his beloved Plum-Plum, the major's daughter, is infatuated with army officers. To regain her attention, he joins the army. Bom becomes a soldier who loves the military training, long marches as well as hard labour as punishment. He meets Agnes, who falls madly in love with him. The film became a smash hit and ran for 48 weeks in Stockholm cinemas It was the start of a series of 7 films around Bom, including Papa Bom/Father Bom (Lars-Eric Kjellgren, 1949) and Tull-Bom/Customs Officer Bom (Lars-Eric Kjellgren, 1951), with Inga Landgré, who had become his wife in 1949.

Nils Poppe
Dutch postcard by Scala Theater, Utrecht, 1950. Photo: publicity for Tappa inte sugen/Don't give up (Lars-Eric Kjellgren, 1947).

A skillful blend of realistic drama


During the 1950s, Nils Poppe continued to star in Swedish comedies. The Bom films were international successes and especially popular in Germany. Another popular returning character was Sten Stensson, an academic upholding a high moral standard. He figured in Ballongen/The balloon (Göran Gentele, Nils Poppe, 1947) and Ljuset från Lund/The light from Lund (Hans Lagerkvist, 1955).

It surprised many when renowned film director Ingmar Bergman decided to cast him as the street performer Jof in his drama Det sjunde inseglet/The Seventh Seal (1957) opposite Max von Sydow and Gunnar Björnstrand. Tom Wiener at AllMovie: “The Seventh Seal is a skillful blend of realistic drama (the disillusioned knight returning from the Crusades in a land wracked by plague and madness) and the allegorical (most famously, the chess game and further encounters with a black-robed figure representing Death). The historical setting provides a convenient vehicle for Bergman to deal with issues of death and spirituality that are ultimately timeless.”

Poppe showed with his role that he could also convey much warmth and compassion. He would later participate in another Bergman film, Djävulens öga/The Devil's Eye (Ingmar Bergman, 1960), starring Jarl Kulle and Bibi Andersson.

After a period of inactivity in the early 1960s, Poppe started to work for television. In 1966, he took over the running of Fredriksdal´s Open-air Theatre in Helsingborg, where he produced a comedy for each summer. Through a deal with Swedish Television, he managed to make the theatre known throughout the country and also revitalized his own career. People flocked from all over Sweden to see Poppe in farces like Charley’s Aunt. He also played in productions of other theatres. Particularly memorable is his Tevye in the musical Fiddler on the Roof at the Helsingborg City Theatre in 1979.

He retired from the stage at the age of 85, still able to dance, but a few years later he suffered from several strokes, which left him both blind, speechless and immobile. In 2000, he finally died in Helsingborg, Sweden, at the age of 92. Nils Poppe was married twice; first to actress Inga Landgré (1949–1959), and then to actress Gunilla Poppe (née Sundberg) (1965–2000) who was 29 years younger than him. He had two children with each wife. They are actress Anja Landgré, Dan Landgré, dancer/actress Mia Poppe and troubadour/actor Thomas Poppe.


Scene from Soldat Bom/Soldier Bom (1948). Source: SandraF1990 (YouTube).


Official Trailer Det sjunde inseglet/The Seventh Seal (1958). Source: The Cultbox (YouTube).

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth at the blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy. You can visit her by clicking on the button below.


Sources: Tom Wiener (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Anders Emil Lundin (IMDb), Peter Robsahm (Find A Grave), Wikipedia (Swedish and English) and IMDb.

L'Eclisse (1962)

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Today opens the exhibition Michelangelo Antonioni – Il maestro del cinema moderno in Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam. Our favourite Antonioni film is L'Eclisse/The Eclipse (1962). Enigmatic Monica Vitti stars as a young woman who breaks off with an older lover and then has an affair with a confident young stockbroker (Alain Delon - young and very handsome). His materialistic nature eventually undermines their relationship. L'Eclisse won the Special Jury Award at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. 

Monica Vitti in L'eclisse
Dutch postcard by De Muinck en Co, Amsterdam, no. 809. Photo: publicity still for L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962).

Monica Vitti and Alain Delon in L'eclisse (1962)
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962).

As long as their love will endure


In EUR, a modernistic suburb of Rome, a young translator, Vittoria (Monica Vitti) leaves her lover, the writer Riccardo (Francisco Rabal), and terminates their 4-year relationship. Following several sleepless nights, she visits her estranged mother (Lila Brignone) at the stock exchange.

There the dynamic young stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon) casts his romantic gaze in Vittoria's direction. Although they have little in common, Vittoria visits Piero in his office, and they make plans to meet again that night and for every night thereafter - for as long as their love will endure.

Eleanor Mannikka at AllMovie: "There is much to appreciate in this man who is not overly intellectual and is blessedly free of complications, and the same can be said of Vittoria. Yet their innermost fears play upon both of them in ways that go against an honest expression of their love -- and against a lasting relationship."

L'eclisse caps off Michelangelo Antonioni's previous two films, L'avventura (1960) and La Notte (1961), in much the same style. Characteristic for Antonioni's films are the long, significant periods of silence. The people in his film just cannot seem to communicate with each other.

Monica Vitti and Alain Delon in L'Eclisse
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmulu Acin. C.P.C.S. Photo: publicity still for L'eclisse/The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962).

Monica Vitti and Alain Delon in L'eclisse (1962)
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962).

Monica Vitti and Alain Delon in L'eclisse, 1962
Small Romanian collectors card by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962).

A form of poetry


L'eclisse rejects action in favour of contemplation. Images and design are more important than character and story. The long takes and elegant compositions, filmed by Gianni De Venanzo, the elongated views on a building or a street-light, manage to create a form of poetry.

With her wild blond hair, Monica Vitti is perfect as the confused Vittoria. She displays just enough emotion to realise the character, but is malleable enough for Antonioni to illustrate his theme through her.

Alain Delon never looked more handsome than in L'Eclisse. He conveys emotions easily with just the flick of an eyebrow. Delon portrays the materialistic, spiritually empty stockbroker quite effectively.

Although it won several awards, L'Eclisse was never a commercial success and many people seem to find the film boring. It is not. Go and watch it closely and let yourself be hypnotised by Antonioni. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie : "Haunted by a sense of instability and impermanence, his work defined a cinema of possibilities; in Antonioni's world, riddles were not answered, but simply evaporated into other riddles."

Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam organises not only the exhibition Michelangelo Antonioni – Il maestro del cinema moderno but also a film retrospective on Antonioni.


Original trailer for L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962) with the title song by Mina. Source: xx999xx999 (YouTube).


Trailer L'eclisse/The Eclipse (1962). Source: moviolamagics (YouTube).

Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Eleanor Mannikka (AllMovie), TCM, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Betsy Bell

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Beautiful blond and blue-eyed German actress Betsy Bell appeared in Italian action films and Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Betsy Bell
German postcard by Krüger. Sent by mail in the Netherlands in 1965. Photo: Georg Michalke.

Poltergeist


Who was Betsy Bell? At the internet, the best known Betsy Bell was a historical witch who lived in Adams, Tennessee, in the early 19th century. She was called 'The Bell Witch', and became the subject of a poltergeist legend in Southern United States folklore. The legend was the basis of three horror films The Bell Witch Haunting (Ric White, 2004), An American Haunting (Courtney Solomon, 2006) featuring Rachel Hurd-Wood as Betsy Bell, and Bell Witch: The Movie (Shane Marr, 2007). According to Wikipedia, the Bell Witch may have also inspired The Blair Witch Project (Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez, 1999).

However, the girl at this postcard is not a poltergeist but another Betsy Bell. She came from Hamburg in Germany. Glamour photographer Georg Michalke must have taken her picture in the early 1960s. We adore his sexy pictures for several Krüger postcards of the 1950s and 1960s. Find some more of his photos on the postcards below, but also check out our post on him.

One of the few places we could find some information about this modern Betsy was the International Movie Database, but the IMDb does not mention her birth date nor her birth place. Only that she was born in Germany. So, Betsy Bell was probably a nom de plume and made up by someone with a black sense of humour - to name such a sweet beauty after a horrifying witch.

Betsy Bell was one of these many North-European starlets who traveled to Rome in the 1950s and early 1960s. Rome was the European film Mecca at the time, and in Italy she appeared in seven genre films as blond eye candy. Her first known film was the Italian Peplum Il sepolcro dei re/Cleopatra's Daughter (Fernando Cerchio, 1960) starring Debra Paget as Shila, the daughter of Cleopatra. Betsy played just a small part.

Three years later she was seen in Tototruffa '62 (Camillo Mastrocinque, 1963), one of Italy’s favourite Totò comedies. Again Betsy’s part was only a minor one. She then played a German student in a segment of the anthology film Gli amanti latini/Latin Lovers (Mario Costa, 1965), also with Totò. The anthology film was a popular European genre in the early 1960s, but the attractive blonde would play her most important roles in another popular Euro-film genre of the 1960s, the Spaghetti Western.

Elke Sommer
Elke Sommer by Georg Michalke. German postcard by Ufa (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Templehof, no. CK 407. Photo: Georg Michalke/Ufa.

Claudia Cardinale
Claudia Cardinale by Georg Michalke. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/164. Photo: Georg Michalke / Ufa.

Margaret Lee
Margaret Lee by Georg Michalke. German postcard by Kruger, no. 902/356. Photo: Georg Michalke.

Blonde Bar-room Chanteuse


Betsy Bell was the leading lady in Quanto costa morire/A Taste of Death (Sergio Merolle, 1968), starring Andrea Giordana, John Ireland and Raymond Pellegrin. This Western tells the tale of a retired sheriff, who is the only one to stand up against a gang of cattle thieves, which terrorizes the people of a snow swept Colorado mountain town.

The result was mediocre, and at IMDb, Van Roberts writes: “A Taste of Death lacks any sense of style and director Sergio Merolle doesn't do anything that has been done before.” In his review Betsy Bell is not even mentioned.

Next she appeared in the war drama Il dito nella piaga/Salt in the Wound/The Liberators (Tonino Ricci, 1969). She again played the female lead and the male stars were Uruguay-born actor George Hilton and German star Klaus Kinski. At IMDb, a Sgt. Slaughter writes: “A highly picked-on, but nearly perfect Italian WW II drama / action piece with a first-rate cast and some fantastic action footage. The film is so good, that it was basically re-made by Enzo Castellari years later as Deadly Mission.” And again there is no mention of the female star.

Bell played a smaller role as a saloon singer in Sartana nella valle degli avvoltoi/Sartana in the Valley of Death (Roberto Mauri, 1970) starring William Berger. Mario Gauci reviews at IMDb: “This is the first entry I've watched in a long-running series of Spaghetti Westerns revolving around the titular figure, played here by William Berger; as such, he displays no particular features that would make him stand out from similar anti-heroes (such as The Man With No Name or Django) and, in fact, is never even referred to by that nickname!” Gauci refers briefly to Bell: “For the record, the song playing over the opening credits King For A Day is quite decent and is even warbled, for no good reason, by a blonde bar-room chanteuse at one point in the film.”

Betsy Bell’s final film was the Spanish-Italian actioner Siete minutos para morir/7 Minutes To Die (Ramón Fernández, 1971). She played the female lead and her co-stars were Paolo Gozlino (aka Paul Stevens) and again, George Hilton. To promote the film, she was (already in June 1966!) on the cover of Hola!, a Spanish magazine which called her 'la bella actriz hamburguesa' (the beautiful actress from Hamburg). She was quoted that her love life more was more important to her than her career.

That explains probably why we could not find more information about Betsy Bell. If you know what happened to Betsy, let us know.


US trailer for Il dito nella piaga/Salt in the Wound (1969). Source: Cronosmantos (YouTube).


Trailer for Sartana nella valle degli avvoltoi/Sartana in the Valley of Death (1970). Source: Lindberg SWDB (YouTube).

Sources: Hola! (Nº 1138 - 18 junio 1966), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Franco Interlenghi RIP (1931-2015)

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On 10 September, Italian actor Franco Interlenghi (1930-2015) has passed away. He was a popular leading man during the 1950s and worked with major directors like De Sica, Fellini, Antonioni, Bolognini and Rossellini. Although Interlenghi never gained international stardom, he was just as revered in his country as Marcello Mastroianni. Interlenghi was 83.

Franco Interlenghi (1930-2015)
Italian autograph card. Signed in 1958.

Franco Interlenghi
French postcard. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Shoe-Shine


Franco Interlenghi was born in Rome, Italy in 1931 (some sources say 1930).

At 15 years old, he made his film debut in a classic of the Italian neorealist cinema, Sciuscià/Shoeshine (Vittorio De Sica, 1946). De Sica used nonprofessional actors, and he painted an uncompromising picture of the lives of Italian street children abandoned by their parents at the end of World War II. The film concentrates on two such children, Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smerdoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi). With no one else to turn to, the boys form a solid friendship, as well as a ‘corporation’ of sorts: they eke out a living shining the boots of American GI’s.

At AllMovie, Hal Erickson calls Sciuscia'a must-see example of Italian neorealist cinema': "A failure in Italy (director Vittorio De Sica noted that postwar Italian audiences preferred the glossy escapism emanating from Hollywood), Shoeshine was a huge success worldwide, as well as the winner of a special Academy Award. Like Bicycle Thieves, it combines De Sica's frequent focus on children with his emphasis on post-war social problems."

In the following years, young Franco appeared in more successful films like the historical epic Fabiola (Alessandro Blasetti, 1949) starring Michèle Morgan, the neorealist comedy Domenica d'agosto/A Sunday in August (Luciano Emmer, 1950), the comedy classic Don Camillo/The Little World of Don Camillo (Julien Duvivier, 1952) featuring Fernandel, the murder drama Processo alla città/The City Stands Trial (Luigi Zampa, 1952), and the Homer adaptation Ulisse/Ulysses (Mario Camerini, 1954) starring Kirk Douglas and Silvana Mangano.

Franco Interlenghi
Italian postcard by Casa Edite. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 3155. Photo: Dear Film.

Franco Interlenghi (1930-2015)
Italian postcard by Turismofoto.

Layabouts


Franco Interlenghi is probably best remembered for his leading role in Federico Fellini’s beautiful I Vitelloni/Spivs (1953). I Vitelloni follows the lives of five young vitelloni, or layabouts, who while away their listless days in their small seaside village. While the film seems to pay little attention to Moraldo (Interlenghi), he eventually emerges as its key character, plainly serving as Fellini's alter ego.

Franco Interlenghi worked that same year with another maestro, Michelangelo Antonioni, at I Vinti/The Vanquished (1953), a triptych film featuring three murders in London, Paris and Rome.

Interlenghi appeared in supporting parts in several Hollywood productions filmed on location in Italy, like Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951) with Pier Angeli, The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1954) starring Ava Gardnerand Humphrey Bogart, and A Farewell to Arms (Charles Vidor, who replaced John Huston, 1957) with Rock Hudson.

In France, he starred opposite Brigitte Bardot and Jean Gabin in En Cas de malheur/Love is My Profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958).

Among his well known Italian films of the 1950s were also Gli Innamorati/Wild Love (Mauro Bolognini, 1955) with his wife Antonella Lualdi, the comedy Totò, Peppino e i... fuorilegge/Totò, Peppino and the Outlaw (Camillo Mastrocinque, 1956) starring comedians Totò and Peppino de Filippo, the comedy Padri e figli/Like Father, Like Son (Mario Monicelli, 1957), the war drama Il generale della Rovere/General della Rovere (Roberto Rossellini, 1959) featuring Vittorio De Sica, and the crime drama La notte brava/Bad Girls Don’t Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959), again opposite Antonella Lualdi.

Franco Interlenghi and Antonella Lualdi
With Antonella Lualdi. Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1234. Photo: Italy's News Photos.

Franco Interlenghi
German minicard by Ufa-Film-Foto. Photo: Unitalia-Film.

Sexploitation


Although Franco Interlenghi would never gain international stardom, he was a popular film actor in his home country. In addition to films, he also appeared in successful theatrical productions. He worked with famous director Luchino Visconti on an adaptation of Death of a salesman.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he appeared less often for the cinema. His films from this period include the historical drama Viva l'Italia!/Garibaldi (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), the crime film Mise a Sac/Pillaged (Alain Cavalier, 1967), the historical romance Columna/The Column (Mircea Dragan, 1968), and the Western Amore, piombo e furore/China 9, Liberty 37 (Monte Hellmann, 1978) with Fabio Testi and Warren Oates.

In the following decades he was seen more regularly in films and also on TV. His roles were however smaller and the films less successful than during the 1950s. He appeared in supporting parts in the crime drama Il Camorrista/The Professor (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1986) starring Ben Gazzara, the Molière adaptation L’avare/The Miser (Tonino Cervi, 1990) starring Alberto Sordi, the psychological thriller L’ours en peluche/The Teddybear (Jacques Deray, 1994) with Alain Delon, and the drama Marciando Nel Buio/Marching in the dark (Massimo Spano, 1995), about the brutal rape of a young soldier and his attempts to bring the culprit to justice. He also appeared in a sexploitation film by Tinto Brass, Miranda (Tinto Brass, 1985).

More recent films were the sweeping crime drama Romanzo Criminale/Crime Novel (Michele Placido, 2005) starring Kim Rossi Stuart, and the comedy sequel Notte prima degli esami – Oggi/The Night Before the Exams - Today (Fausto Brizzi, 2007).

When he died, Franco Interlenghi was still married to Antonella Lualdi. They had married in 1955 and their marriage was one of the happiest in the Italian film community. Both their daughter, Antonellina Interlenghi and their granddaughter, Virginia Sanjust Di Teulada are actors too. Franco Interlenghi was 83.


Trailer Sciuscià/Shoeshine (1946). Source: Umbrella Entertainment (YouTube).


I Vinti/The Vanquished (1953). Source: Film&Clips (YouTube).


Trailer I Vitelloni/Spivs (1953) with Alberto Sordi and Franco Interlenghi. Source: Umbgu (YouTube).


How to Knock a Kiss: Antonella Lualdi and Franco Interlenghi. A delightful clip by Mr. Rug Cutter with footage from Gli Innamorati (Mauro Bolognini, 1955) and music by Three Suns, Movin`N´Groovin. Source"Mr. Rug Cutter (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Les gens du cinema (French), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Our Gang's Jean Darling and Dickie Moore R.I.P.

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Recently two of the 'Little Rascals' of the Our Gang comedies have died. On 4 September 2015, Blonde Jean Darling (1922-2015) passed away at 93. She was, along with Baby Peggy, one of the last surviving actors who worked in the silent film era. Three days later, she was followed by Dickie Moore (1925-2015), who died at the age of 89.

Jean Darling RIP (1922-2015)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4356/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still of Our Gang with Jean Darling as the blonde girl.

Dickie Moore RIP (1925-2015)
Dutch postcard. Photo: a publicity shot of the Little Rascals a.k.a. Our Gang with Dickie Moore in the middle. Caption: "Gelukkig Nieuwjaar" (Happy New Year).

Jean Darling


Jean Darling was born as Dorothy Jean LeVake in 1922. Her name was legally changed to Jean Darling when she was five months old, a few days after her mother and father split. At six months old she started her screen career during the silent era as a freelance baby.

She got her break in 1926 when she passed a screen test and was accepted for a part in Hal Roach's Our Gang series. Darling appeared in 46 silents and six talkies with Our Gang during this period.

Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals, is a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighbourhood children and their adventures. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively natural way, as Roach and original director Robert F. McGowan worked to film the unaffected, raw nuances apparent in regular children rather than have them imitate adult acting styles. In addition, Our Gang notably put boys, girls, whites and blacks together as equals.

The franchise began in 1922 as a series of silent short subjects produced by the Roach studio and released by Pathé Exchange. Roach changed distributors from Pathé to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927, and the series entered its most popular period after converting to sound in 1929.

Jean Darling played in the Little Rascals shorts till 1929. Later she appeared with Laurel & Hardy in a bit role in Babes in Toyland (Gus Meins, Charley Rogers, 1934) and as the young Jane in Jane Eyre (Christy Cabanne, 1934).

Having toured the world with husband, Kajar the Magician's Show Magicadabr, Jean Darling settled in Dublin and became an author of dozens of short mysteries and horror fantasy for magazines. In 1980 she became Aunty Poppy writing and telling over 450 children's stories on both RTE radio and TV.

Prior to her death, she was one of four surviving cast members from the silent era cast of Our Gang. The others are Lassie Lou Ahern, Mildred Kornman and Dorothy Morrison.

Dickie Moore RIP (1925-1015)
British postcard, distributed in the Netherlands by M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam, no, 136e. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still of Marlene Dietrich and Dickie Moore in Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932).

Dickie Moore RIP (1925-2015)
Dutch postcard by JosPe, no. 327, ca. 1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still of Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall (and not Cary Grant as credited!) and Dickie Moore in Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932).

Dickie Moore


Dickie Moore already made his screen debut as a baby in the John Barrymore film The Beloved Rogue (1927).

He played the little son of Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932) and then was one of the regulars in the Our Gang comedies for a year (1932-1933).

By the time he had turned 10, he was a popular child star and had appeared in 52 films. Later, he gave 14-year-old Shirley Temple her first screen kiss - in Miss Annie Rooney (Edwin L. Marin, 1942). Then the roles began to dry up, and he made his last film in 1950.

Moore worked as a public-relations executive and produced industrial shows. He was the Author of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (But Don't Have Sex or Take the Car) in which he interviewed 31 ex-child actors, more than half of whom found their adult lives beset by alcoholism, nervous breakdowns, or failed first marriages.

Besides his his third and last wife, film actress Jane Powell, Moore is survived by a son, Kevin; a stepson, Geary; two stepdaughters, Lindsay and Suzanne; a sister, Pat Kingsley; and several grandchildren and step-grandchildren.

And how ended Our Gang on screen? Production of the series continued at the Hal Roach studio until 1938. Then the series was sold to MGM, which produced the comedies itself until 1944. In total, the Our Gang series includes 220 shorts and one feature film, General Spanky, featuring over forty-one child actors.


The Spanking Age (1928) with Jean Darling as the 'thirty-five pound pain-in-the-neck'. Source: OldNick08 (YouTube).


Free Wheeling (1932) with Dickie Moore. Source: Our Gang-Little Rascals Classics (YouTube).

Sources: IMDb and Wikipedia.

Twelve more rare postcards from Didier Hanson's collection

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Last week, at 8 September, we posted twelve rare, vintage postcards, recently acquired by collector Didier Hanson. We promised you a follow-up while Didier sent us several other interesting scans. Today a post on twelve more a-century-old postcards including a series made for that enigmatic German production Das Mirakel/The Miracle (Cherry Kearton, Max Reinhardt, 1912) starring the Italian diva Maria Carmi as the Madonna. We end this post with four cards of beautiful Vera Kholodnaya, the ‘Queen of Screen’ of the Russian Empire.

Maria Carmi in Das Mirakel (1912)
German postcard by Verleih Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, no. 7267. Publicity still for Das Mirakel/The Miracle (Cherry Kearton, Max Reinhardt, 1912). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Maria Carmi in Das Mirakel (1912)
German postcard by Verleih Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, no. 7268. Publicity still for Das Mirakel/The Miracle (Cherry Kearton, Max Reinhardt, 1912). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Maria Carmi in Das Mirakel (1912)
German postcard by Verleih Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, no. 8578. Photo: Becker & Maass. Publicity still for Das Mirakel/The Miracle (Cherry Kearton, Max Reinhardt, 1912). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Carmi Meets Reinhardt


With her aristocratic air, her severe looks but also her sweet undertones, Italian silent film star and stage actress Maria Carmi (1880-1957) was the cinematic translation of the 19th century Primadonna.

Carmi was born Norina Gilli in Firenze (Florence), Italy, in 1880. When she married German comedy writer Karl Volmöller she moved to Berlin, where she attended Max Reinhardt's acting school at the Deutsches Theater. She belonged to his company from 1907 to 1909 and used the stage name Maria Carmi.

In 1911, Reinhardt asked her for the pantomime play Das Mirakel/The Miracle written by her husband, Karl Vollmöller. The religious pantomime was originally produced in Germany in 1911 and opened in London on 23 December 1911. Over the years she would give over 1,000 performances of the play.

The next year it was turned into a film, Das Mirakel/The Miracle (Cherry Kearton, Max Reinhardt, 1912). She also appeared in Reinhardts film Eine Venezianische Nacht/A Venetian Night (Max Reinhardt, 1914) with Alfred Abel.

In 1917 Maria Carmi became Princess Norina Matchabelli and in 1924, she and her husband founded the perfume company Prince Matchabelli.

Max Reinhardt
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 8614, 1916. Photo: Hofphot. E. Bieber, Hamburg. Collection: Didier Hanson.

German actor-director Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) was one of the great innovators of the theatre. He also directed several films, including Sumurûn (1910) and Das Mirakel (1912). In 1934, he went into exile and made in Hollywood A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935).

Carmen Boni
French postcard. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Italian silent film star Carmen Boni (1901-1963) had a successful career in the Italian cinema of the early 1920s, before moving to Germany where she made one film after another in the late 1920s.

Leda Gys
Italian postcard. Photo: Robeo & Co, Napoli (?), Collection: Didier Hanson.

Film diva Leda Gys (1892-1957) starred in ca. 60 dramas, comedies, action thrillers and even westerns of the Italian and Spanish silent cinema. Her claim to fame came with the film Christus (1916), shot in Egypt and Palestine, where Gys performed the Madonna.

Sándor Góth
Hungarian postcard. Photo: Pál A. Veres, Budapest. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Hungarian actor and director Sándor Góth (1869-1946) was one of the great pioneers of the Hungarian cinema. During the 1910s, he directed a series of short films for the Hunnia Biográf company, in a style strongly influenced by the stage. In Paris, he appeared in two Hungarian language versions of Paramount films, Az orvos titka/The Doctor's Secret (Tibor Hegedüs, 1930), and Kacagó asszony/The Laughing Lady (Tibor Hegedüs, 1930), which in fact marked the start of Hungarian sound film. As an actor, he was the unparalleled artist of the conversation style. He was characterised by his excellent ability to form characters and to make parodies. Between 1931-39 he taught at the School for Dramatic Arts. One of his books is the interesting Ha Moliere naplót írt volna (1946).

Constantin Stanislavsky
Russian postcard, no. R 42. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Constantin Sergeievich Stanislavsky (Константи́н Серге́евич Станисла́вский) (1863–1938) was a Russian actor and theatre director. The eponymous Stanislavsky method, or simply 'method acting', has had a pervasive influence on the American theatre and cinema, especially in the period after World War II.

The first star of the Russian silent cinema


Didier can't get enough of her, and neither can we: Vera Kholodnaya (1893-1919), so beautiful, so tragic.

Although she worked only three years for the cinema, she must have made between fifty and hundred short films.

Only 26, the ‘Queen of Screen’ died of the Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1919. Five years later the Soviet authorities ordered to destroy many of the Kholodnaya features.

Only five of Kholodnaya's films still exist. But, thanks to Didier, there are now dozens of her postcards online. To remember her.

Vera Kholodnaya
Russian postcard, no. 40. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Vera Kholodnaya
Russian postcard, no. 103. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Vera Kholodnaya
Russian postcard, no. 121. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Vera Kholodnaya
Russian postcard, no. 130. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Thanks, Didier!

Imported from the USA: Richard Basehart

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American actor Richard Basehart (1914–1984) played leading roles in Fellini’s La Strada (1954) and other European and American films of the 1950s. In the next decade, he starred on TV in the Science fiction series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1958), in the role of Admiral Harriman Nelson. Although he never became a major star, he was seen as one of the best actors of his generation.

Richard Basehart
Italian postcard iby B.F.F. Edit., no. 3166. Photo: Titanus. Publicity still for Il Bidone (1955).

Giulietta Masina
Giulietta Masina. Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 3381. Photo: N.V. Standaardfilms. Publicity still for La strada (1954).

La Strada


John Richard Basehart was born in Zanesville, Ohio, U.S. in 1914. He spent a part of his childhood in an orphanage after the death of his mother, when his father, Harry Basehart, found himself unable to look after the four children left in his care. The younger Basehart considered a career in journalism like his father, but when he was 13, he began acting in small roles in a local theatre company and came to enjoy performing.

In the mid-'30s, he joined Jasper Deeter's famed Hedgerow Theater company in Rose Valley, PA. By the end of the 1930s, he'd set his sights on a Broadway career and moved to New York. During the 1939 season, while working in stock, Basehart met an actress named Stephanie Klein, and the two were married in early 1940. He continued trying to establish a foothold in New York and in 1942, joined Margaret Webster's theatre company. In 1945 director Bretaigne Windust cast him in the central role of the proud, dying young Scottish soldier in the play The Hasty Heart. Basehart won the 1945 New York Drama Critics Award for his performance and was named the most promising newcomer of the season.

In 1947, Basehart moved to Hollywood. He had his breakthrough as the killer in the gritty Film Noir He Walked by Night (Alfred L. Werker, Anthony Mann, 1948). Variety reviewed: “High-spot of the film is the final sequence which takes place in LA's storm drainage tunnel system where the killer tries to make his getaway. With this role, Basehart establishes himself as one of Hollywood's most talented finds in recent years. He heavily overshadows the rest of the cast, although Scott Brady, Roy Roberts and Jim Cardwell, as the detectives, deliver with high competence.”

Next Basehart played a psychotic member of the Hatfield clan in Roseanna McCoy (Irving Reis, 1949), starring Farley Granger. Then he appeared in the Film Noir Fourteen Hours (Henry Hathaway, 1951), as an unhappy man who threatens suicide by standing on the ledge of a high-rise building for 14 hours. During the filming, Basehart's wife Stephanie was taken ill with what proved to be a brain tumour, and died very suddenly. Devastated, he finished work on the film. Roles followed in the war drama Decision Before Dawn (Anatole Litvak, 1951) with Oskar Werner, and the Film Noir The House on Telegraph Hill (Robert Wise, 1951). He fell in love with his co-star in this film, Italian actress Valentina Cortese. They married and would have one son, actor Jackie Basehart.

In Italy, Richard Basehart played one of his most notable film roles, the acrobat known as ‘the Fool’ in the acclaimed Italian film drama La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954). The film portrays a brutish strongman (Anthony Quinn) and the naïve young woman (Giulietta Masina) whom he buys from her mother and takes with him on the road; encounters with his rival the Fool (Richard Basehart) end with their destruction. The film premiered at the 15th Venice International Film Festival in 1954 and won the Silver Lion. In 1956, it won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Basehart worked again with Fellini on Il bidone/The Swindlers (Federico Fellini, 1955) co-starring Broderick Crawford and Giulietta Masina. Il bidone continues with many of the same socially conscious, neorealist-inspired themes.

The next year, Basehart played Ishmael in Moby Dick (John Huston, 1956), the film adaptation of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. In Spain, he made the comedy Los jueves, milagro/On Thursday, miracle (Luis García Berlanga, 1957), about some people in a small village who decide to fake a miracle in order to increase the tourism but things don't go as planned. He was also one of the brothers in The Brothers Karamazov (Richard Brooks, 1958), based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel. In 1960, Basehart and Valentina Cortese divorced. She had left him and moved back to Italy with their young son. For months Basehart had a standing phone call in to Italy, but Valentina never answered it.

Valentina Cortese
Valentina Cortese. Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 399.

Richard Basehart
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 884. Photo: Universal International.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea


Richard Basehart starred as Adolf Hitler in Hitler (Stuart Heisler, 1962). The film depicts Hitler through the years, beginning with the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923 and focuses mainly on his private life, in particular, his relationships with niece Geli (Cordula Trantow) and long-time companion, Eva Braun (Maria Emo).

From 1964 to 1968, he played the lead role, Admiral Harriman Nelson, on Irwin Allen's first foray into science-fiction television, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The 110 episodes produced included 32 shot in black-and-white (1964–1965), and 78 filmed in colour (1965–1968). The first two seasons took place in the then future of the 1970s. The final two seasons took place in the 1980s.

Basehart was noted for his deep, distinctive voice and narrated a wide range of television and film projects. In 1964, he narrated Four Days in November (Mel Stuart, 1964), about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1980, Basehart narrated the 26-part half-hour Canadian documentary series Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980), written by Peter Arnett and produced by Michael Maclear. It covered Vietnam and its battles from the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945 to the final American embassy evacuation on 30 April 1975.

Basehart appeared in the pilot episode of the television series Knight Rider (1980) as billionaire Wilton Knight, the creator of FLAG, who dies in the pilot episode. He is the narrator at the beginning of the show's credits. Basehart also played guest parts in popular TV series like The Twilight Zone (1963), Gunsmoke (1971), Columbo (1972), and Little House on the Prairie (1976). Later films include the drama Rage (George C. Scott, 1972), the Science Fiction film The Island of Dr. Moreau (Don Taylor, 1977) starring Burt Lancaster, and the acclaimed comedy-drama Being There (Hal Ashby, 1979) with Peter Sellers.

Basehart was married three times. His first wife was Stephanie Klein (1940-1950; her death). After his divorce from Valentina Cortese, Basehart married Diana Lotery (1962-1984; his death), with whom he had two children, including make-up artist Gayle Basehart. The couple founded the charity Actors and Others for Animals, after they saw a small dog get thrown from a fast-moving vehicle on a Los Angeles freeway.

Richard Basehart died at age 70 in Los Angeles, following a series of strokes. One month before his death, Basehart was an announcer for the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Bruce Eder at AllMovie: “Richard Basehart was too much of an actor (and almost too good an actor) to ever be a movie star -- his range was sufficient to allow him to play murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths, and would-be suicides in 20 years' worth of theatrical films in totally convincing fashion, but also to portray a hero in the longest-running science fiction/adventure series on network television. Without ever achieving stardom, he became one of the most respected performers of his generation.”


Trailer Fourteen Hours (1951). Source: captainbijou.com (YouTube).


Trailer La Strada (1954). Source: MrAris67 (YouTube).

Sources: Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Charles Trenet

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French singer and songwriter Charles Trenet (1913-2001) was most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s. In an era in which it was exceptional for a singer to write his own material, Trenet wrote prolifically and declined to record any but his own songs. His best known songs include Boum!, La Mer, and Douce France. His catalogue of songs is enormous, numbering close to a thousand. He appeared in a dozen musical films, but his songs feature in nearly 100 films and TV-series.

Charles Trenet
French postcard, no. 408. Photo: Roger Kahan.

Charles Trenet
French mini-card by EPC.

Charles Trenet
French postcard by JPB. Photo: disques Columbia.

Charles Trenet
French postcard by PSG, no. 1261. Photo: Barclay.

The Singing Madman


Louis Charles Auguste Claude Trenet was born in Narbonne, France, in 1913. When he was seven years old, his parents divorced and he was sent to boarding school in Béziers, but he returned home just a few months later, suffering from typhoid fever.

It was during his convalescence at home that he developed his artistic talents, taking up music, painting and sculpting. After leaving school he left for Berlin where he studied art, and later, he also briefly studied at art schools in France. When Trenet first arrived in Paris in the 1930s, he worked in a film studio as a props handler and assistant, and later joined up with the artists in the Montparnasse neighborhood.

His admiration of the surrealist poet and Catholic mystic Max Jacob and his love of jazz were two factors that influenced Trenet's songs. From 1933 to 1936, he worked with the Swiss pianist Johnny Hess as a duo known as Charles and Johnny. They performed at various Parisian venues, and recorded 18 discs for Pathé. Around 1935, they appeared regularly on the radio. The duo continued until 1936 when Trenet was called up for national service.

It was after his national service that he received the nickname that he would retain all his life: Le fou chantant (the singing madman). In 1937, Trenet began his solo career, recording for Columbia, his first disc being Je chante/Fleur bleue (I Sing/Blue Flower). The exuberant Je chante gave rise to the notion of Trenet as a "singing vagabond", a theme that appeared in a number of his early songs and films.

His first film appearance was in the lead of the musical comedy Je chante/I Sing (Christian Stengel, 1938). At IMDb, DB du Monteil writes: “The song (Je chante: I sing) provides the movie with its title. The plot is one of the silliest you can think of. It's actually so silly it becomes almost enjoyable. The song is still popular in France whereas the movie is forgotten.” That same year he also starred in another musical comedy, La route enchantée/The Enchanted Road (Pierre Caron, 1938), in which he sang his celebrated song Quand Notre Coeur Fait Boum (When Our Heart Does Boom).

Charles Trenet
French postcard by Edit. Chantal, Rueil, no. 508. Photo: P. Voinquel. Publicity still for La route enchantée/The enchanted road (Pierre Caron, 1938).

Charles Trenet
French postcard, no. 676. Photo: Films CCFC.

Charles Trenet
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3194, 1941-1944. Photo: Harcourt / Schostal.

Charles Trenet
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Rueil, no. 508. Photo: R. Kahan.

Allied Code to the French ‘Underground’


At the start of World War II, Charles Trenet was mobilized. He was in barracks at Salon-de-Provence until he was demobilized in June 1940, when he moved back to Paris. There he would perform at the two famous cabarets Folies Bergère and at Gaîté Parisienne in front of a public often consisting of German officers and soldiers.

The collaborationist press tried to compromise his name and published that Trenet was the anagram of ‘Netter’ — a Jewish name. He was able to show his family tree to the authorities, proving that he had no Jewish origin. This act of self-defence was held against him long after the end of the war. Wikipedia explains that “like many other artists of the time, he chose to go on entertaining the occupying forces rather than sacrifice his career, showing little interest in the Jewish issue. He agreed, when asked by the Germans, to go and sing for the French prisoners in Germany. It is only fair to note that, as a homosexual, Trenet was himself in grave danger of deportation to the camps and may have had little choice but to co-operate and keep a low profile”.

Trenet continued to star in films like La romance de Paris/The Romance of Paris (Jean Boyer, 1941) with Yvette Lebon, Frédérica/Frederica (Jean Boyer, 1942) featuring Elvire Popesco, and Adieu Léonard (Pierre Prévert, 1943) starring Trenet as a village idiot. DB du Monteil calls it at IMDb“Charles Trénet's best film performance, by far.”

He co-starred with famous comedian Fernandel in La cavalcade des heures/Love Around the Clock (Yvan Noé, 1943). The refrain from the song Verlaine, "Blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone...", (Wound my heart with monotonous languor...) from Paul Verlaine's Song of Autumn, (popularized by Trenet) was used as the Allied code to the French ‘underground’ signaling that the Normandy invasion in June 1944 was imminent.

While many of his songs mined relatively conventional topics such as love, Paris, and nostalgia for his younger days, what set Trenet's songs apart were their personal, poetic, sometimes quite eccentric qualities, often infused with a warm wit. Some of his songs had unconventional subject matter, with whimsical imagery bordering on the surreal. Y'a d'la joie evokes 'joy' through a series of disconnected (though all vaguely phallic) images, including that of a subway car shooting out of its tunnel into the air, the Eiffel Tower crossing the street and a baker making excellent bread. Many of his hits from the 1930s and 1940s effectively combine the melodic and verbal nuances of French song with American swing rhythms.

His song La Mer, which according to legend he composed with Léo Chauliac on a train in 1943, was recorded in 1946. La Mer is perhaps his best known work outside the French-speaking world, with over 400 recorded versions. The song was given unrelated English words and under the title Beyond the Sea (or sometimes Sailing), was a hit for Bobby Darin in the early 1960s, and George Benson in the mid-1980s. La Mer has been used in many films such as The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003), Mr. Bean's Holiday (Steve Bendelack, 2007) and in the opening credits of Le scaphandre et le papillon/The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007).

Charles Trenet
French postcard, no. 585. Photo: Harcourt.

Charles Trenet
French postcard by O.P., Paris, no. 18. Photo: Star.

Charles Trenet
French postcard by Serp, Paris, no. 23. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

Charles Trenet
French postcard, no. 21, offered by Vénus, Menin.

28 Days in Prison


After the war Charles Trenet decided to move to the United States where he lived for a few years and where he quickly became a success. After a few triumphant concerts at the Bagdad in New York, Trenet became a big hit and was approached by Hollywood. He met the likes of Louis Armstrong and began a long-lasting friendship with Charlie Chaplin.

In 1951, Trenet returned to Paris and made a comeback at the Théâtre de l'Etoile. In Italy he did a musical appearance in the film Giovinezza/Youth (Giorgio Pastina, 1952) with Delia Scala and Franco Interlenghi. His songs also featured in such international films as Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti a.o., 1945), the Cary Grant comedy Every Girl Should Be Married (Don Hartman, 1948), and Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957) starring Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper.

In 1954 Trenet performed at the Olympia music-hall in Paris for the first time. In 1960 he returned to the Théâtre de l'Etoile, appearing on stage for the very first time without the famous trilby hat which had for so long been part of his act.

In 1963, Trenet spent 28 days in prison in Aix-en-Provence. He was charged with corrupting the morals of four young men under the age of 21 (they were 19). His chauffeur claimed that Trenet was using him as a pimp. The charges were eventually dropped, but the affair brought to public light the fact that Trenet was homosexual. He was never particularly public about it and spoke of it rarely.

In his authorized biography of Maurice Chevalier, author David Brett claims that Chevalier and Mistinguett were the ones who first ‘shopped’ Trenet to the police for consorting with underage boys, around 1940. Trenet never learned of their action.

Charles Trenet
French postcard by E. C., Paris, no. 66. Photo: Gray films. Publicity still for Frédérica (Jean Boyer, 1942).

Charles Trenet
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 865. Photo: Bernard Vauclair, Paris.

Maison Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet's mansion nowadays. Le domaine des Esprits, Aix-en-Provence, France. Photo: Didier@Flickr.

Emotional Farewell


In 1970, Charles Trenet flew to Japan to represent France at the Universal Exhibition in Osaka. The following year he left Columbia, his long-time record label, and recorded Fidèle and Il y avait des arbres. He also made a memorable appearance at the Olympia.

In 1973, Trenet, who had just celebrated his 60th birthday, recorded a new album, Chansons en liberté. The twelve songs on this album were an interesting mix of old and new compositions. His 60th birthday was celebrated in grand style by the French media. Trenet made a surprise announcement in 1975, declaring that he was retiring from the music world. At the end of his final concert at the Olympia he bade his audience an emotional farewell.

Following the death of his mother in 1979, he shut himself away from the world for the next two years. Nevertheless, in 1981 he made a comeback with a new album, devoted to sentimental memories of his childhood. Trenet then returned to his peaceful semi-retirement in the South of France, occasionally rousing himself to give a special gala performance in France or abroad. After giving farewell concerts in France, Trenet was persuaded out of retirement again in 1983 for a farewell concert in Montreal. As a result Trenet performed many more concerts including a series every night for three weeks at the Palais des congrès in Paris in 1986.

In 1999, he returned to the forefront of the music scene with a brand new album entitled Les poètes descendent dans la rue (Poets Take to the Streets). Nearly sixty years after writing his legendary classic La mer, Trenet proved that he was capable of coming up with fourteen inspired new tracks. Following the success of the album, Trenet returned to the live circuit. His concerts proved a huge success, fans in the audience breaking into rapturous applause.

In 2000 old age began to catch up with Trenet, however, and he was rushed to hospital after suffering a stroke. The singer was forced to spend several weeks in hospital recovering, but by the autumn of that year he was well enough to attend the dress rehearsal of Charles Aznavour's show at the Palais des Congrès.

However, this was his final public appearance. In November 2000 the Narbonne house in which Trenet was born — which had become 13 Avenue Charles Trenet — was turned into a tiny museum. Visitors were able to view souvenirs from Trenet's childhood and family life, as well as original drafts of the songs which had made his career. Charles Trenet passed away in 2001, in Créteil, France.


Charles Trenet sings Boum in the film La route enchantée/The Enchanted Road (1938). Source: Charles Trenet (YouTube).


Charles Trenet listens to a record of Que reste-t-il de nos amours? in the film La cavalcade des heures/Love Around the Clock (1943). Source: Charles Trenet (YouTube).


Charles Trenet sings Le debit de lait in the film La cavalcade des heures/Love Around the Clock (1943). Source: Charles Trenet (YouTube).


Charles Trénet sings La Mer live at the Olympia. Source: Charles Trenet (YouTube).

Sources: DB du Monteil (IMDb),  Wikipedia and IMDb.

Stefania Sandrelli

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Sensual, vivacious and very talented Italian actress Stefania Sandrelli (1946) is famous for her roles in the Commedia all'Italiana. She was 15 years old when she had her breakthrough opposite Marcello Mastroianni in the Oscar winning comedy Divorzio all'italiana/Divorce, Italian Style (1961). Later she also played dramatic roles in Italian classics like Ettore Scola's C'eravamo tanto amati, and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Il Conformista/The Conformist (1970) and Novecento/1900 (1976).

Stefania Sandrelli
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

Divorce, Italian Style


Stefania Sandrelli was born in Viareggio, Tuscany, into a middle-class family, in 1946. She was the daughter of Florida and Otello Sandrelli, owners of a well known pension in Viareggio. Her father died when Stefania was eight years old. She has a brother, Sergio, seven years older, who had a successful music career and died in 2013.

At a young age she learned to play the accordion, and studied ballet. In 1960 Sandrelli won the Miss Cinema Viareggio beauty contest. Next she was the cover girl of the magazine Le Ore and made her cinema debut in Gioventù di note/Youth at night (Mario Sequi, 1961) with Samy Frey and Magali Noël. Her second role was as a confidence trickster and petty thief in the war film Il federale/The Fascist (Luciano Salce, 1961), starring Ugo Tognazzi.

Her film career was definitively launched when she appeared as Marcello Mastroianni's seductive, young cousin, Angela in Divorzio all'italiana/Divorce, Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1961). The film won an Oscar for Best Original Script. With director Pietro Germi she later worked three more times: in the dark satire of Sicilian social customs and honour laws Sedotta e abbandonata/Seduced and Abandoned (1963), the comedy L'immorale/The Immoralist (1967) featuring Ugo Tognazzi, and Alfredo, Alfredo (1970) with Dustin Hoffman.

Stefania Sandrelli became in a short time a protagonist of the Commedia all'italiana. She was excellent as a lonely, sickly country woman trying to survive in a hostile post-WW II city in Io la conoscevo bene/I Knew Her Well (Antonio Pietrangeli's, 1965) with Mario Adorf. In France, she appeared in the box office hit Tendre Voyou/Tender Scoundrel (Jean Becker, 1966), starring Jean Paul Belmondo. For her role in L'amante di Gramigna/The Bandit (Carlo Lizzani, 1969), Sandrelli was awarded as Best Actress at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.

Throughout the 1970s, Sandrelli continued to be one of the stars of the Commedia all'italiana. She appeared in Mario Monicelli's Brancaleone alle crociate/Brancaleone at the Crusades (1970) with Vittorio Gassman and Adolfo Celi, in Ettore Scola's C'eravamo tanto amati/We All Loved Each Other So Much (1974) with Gassman and Nino Manfredi, and in the satirical comedy-drama L'ingorgo - Una storia impossibile/Traffic Jam (Luigi Comencini, 1979). She also starred in several dramatic films, such as Delitto d'amore/Somewhere Beyond Love (Luigi Comencini, 1974) with Giuliano Gemma.

Sandrelli worked several times with prolific director Bernardo Bertolucci, and starred in his dramas Partner (1968) opposite Pierre Clémenti, Il Conformista/The Conformist (1970) as the wife of Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Novecento/1900 (1976), as the wife of Gérard Dépardieu. She also played in French productions, such as Les Magiciens'/Death Rite (Claude Chabrol, 1976) with Franco Nero, and the crime-thriller Police Python 357/The Case Against Ferro (Alain Corneau, 1976) starring Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. In 1980 she won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Ettore Scola's La terrazzo/The terrace (1980).

Stefania Sandrelli and Marcello Mastroianni in Divorzio all'italiana (1961)
Small Czech collectors card by Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), 1965, no. S 83/6. Publicity still for Divorzio all'italiana/Divorce, Italian Style (Pietro Germi, 1961) with Marcello Mastroianni.

Stefania Sandrelli
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

Stefania Sandrelli
Italian postcard by Il Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Torino.

The Key


After some less successful films, Stefania Sandrelli relaunched her career with the erotic film La chiave/The Key (Tinto Brass, 1983), based on the novel Kagi by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. The film caused some scandal because of the explicit nude scenes in which Sandrelli was involved and obtained a great commercial success. In the wake of the success of La Chiave, she played in a brief series of successful erotic films. She also continued to appear in dramas like Segreti segreti/Secrets Secrets (Giuseppe Bertolucci, 1985) and the courtroom drama Mamma Ebe/Mother Ebe (Carlo Lizzani, 1985).

One of her best films of this decade was the comedy Speriamo che sia femmina/Let's Hope It's a Girl (Mario Monicelli, 1986), starring Liv Ullman and Catherine Deneuve. For this film Sandrelli was awarded with a David di Donatello for Best Supporting Actress. The film also won the David di Donatello for Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Producer, Best Editing and Best Script. Another award winning film was La famiglia/The Family (Ettore Scola, 1987) in which she starred with Vittorio Gassman, Fanny Ardant and Philippe Noiret.

Sandrelli was nominated to the Nastro Argento (Silver Ribbon award) for Best Actress for her role in the historical comedy-drama Secondo Ponzio Pilato (Luigi Magni, 1987), an ironic reinterpretation of the history, starring Nino Manfredias Pontius Pilate. She won again a David di Donatello for Best Actress for the drama Mignon è partita/Mignon Has Come to Stay (Francesca Archibugi, 1988). The film won another four David di Donatello awards. A popular success was the comedy Il piccolo diavolo/The Little Devil (1988) directed by and starring Roberto Benigni. She also starred opposite Giancarlo Giannini and Emmanuelle Seigner in the drama Il male oscuro/Dark Illness (Mario Monicelli, 1990).

In the following decade, the Italian film industry got into a crisis and Italian films in general were less prolific than they used to be. Sandrelli appeared in TV series and in international productions like the romantic drama Die Rückkehr/The African Woman (Margarethe von Trotta, 1990) with Barbara Sukowa and Samy Frey, the Spanish comedy/drama Jamón Jamón/Ham, Ham (Bigas Luna, 1992), starring Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, and the Argentine-American drama De amor y de sombras/Of Love and Shadows (Betty Kaplan, 1994), based on the novel by Isabel Allende and starring Antonio Banderasand Jennifer Connelly.

She played a supporting part in Bertolucci’s Io ballo da sola/Stealing Beauty (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1996) starring Liv Tyler and Joseph Fiennes. That year she also appeared in the comedy-drama Ninfa plebea/The Nymph (Lina Wertmüller, 1996) with Raoul Bova. She won another the Nastro d'Argento for Best Supporting Actress for the Commedia all'italiana La cena/The Dinner (Ettore Scola, 1998). In Portugal, she appeared in Um Filme Falado/A Talking Picture (2003), written and directed by Manoel de Oliveira, and starring Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich.

In 2005 she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 62nd Venice International Film Festival, and in 2012 she received the title of Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Stefania Sandrelli had a long and tempestuous relationship with Italian singer-songwriter Gino Paoli, since she was 16. Their daughter Amanda Sandrelli, born in 1964, is also an actress. From 1972 till 1976, she was married to Italian athlete and entrepreneur Nicky Pende with whom she also has a son, Vito (1973). Their marriage ended when Sandrelli had a short affair on the set of Novecento/1900 (1976) with her co-star Gérard Dépardieu. Since 1983, she's the longtime companion of director Giovanni Soldati.

Sandrelli has a passion for wine, and in 1993, she started a partnership with Distilleria Bottega to produce her signature wine ‘Acino d'Oro, Chianti Classico DOCG’ commercially. She also continues to act. More recently, she starred in La passione (Carlo Mazzacurati, 2010), a Commedia all'Italiana which was nominated for the Golden Lion at the 67th Venice International Film Festival, and in the TV series Una grande famiglia/The Family (2012-2015). At IMDb, Manutwo writes: “Stefania Sandrelli represents one of the few actresses who are able to age gracefully and still get interesting roles. She is still regarded as one of the most beautiful women in Italy and she is still able to charm the audience with her sweet smile and sparkling eyes.”


Trailer Divorzio all'italiana/Divorce, Italian Style (1961). Source: ClassicCinemaLovers (YouTube).


Trailer Delitto d'amore/Somewhere Beyond Love (1974). Source: Film&Clips (YouTube).


Trailer La chiave/The Key (1983). Source: samivorhees (YouTube).

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth at the blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy. You can visit her by clicking on the button below.


Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Biografieonline.it (Italian), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (1949)

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The Italian melodrama Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (1949) was a product of the Neo-Realism movement of the 1940s. The film was written and directed by Giuseppe De Santis and produced by Dino De Laurentiis for Lux Film. Bitter Rice was a commercial success in both Europe and America, thanks to the ‘shockingly’ sexy performance of Silvana Mangano, dressed in hotpants. The film also starred Raf Vallone, American actress Doris Dowling and a young Vittorio Gassman. The four become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.

Silvana Mangano in Riso amaro
Dutch postcard by Filmverhuurkantoor Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Lux Film Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.

Vittorio Gassman and Silvano Mangano in Riso Amaro (1949)
Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Vittorio Gassman and Silvana Mangano in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Collection: Egbert Barten.

Silvana Mangano in Riso Amaro (1949)
Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Silvana Mangano in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Collection: Egbert Barten.

Doris Dowling and Raf Vallone in Riso Amaro (1949)
Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Doris Dowling and Raf Vallone in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Collection: Egbert Barten.

Is Riso amaro a Neo-Realist film? 


At the time, Neo-Realism was about only 7 years old. Films like Roma Citta Aperta by Roberto Rossellini had taken the world by storm, and overwhelmed international audiences and festival juries. But the Neo-Realist films quickly changed in character and Riso amaro/Bitter Rice lead to a dispute among film critics about the sexualization of the lead character and the melodramatic presence of death and suicide in the film.

At IMDb, Debblyst explains: “Neo-Realist principles (i.e. no stars, mix of professional and non-professional actors, location-only shooting, rejection of ‘beauty’/classicism/romanticism, stressing on ‘ordinary’ people and ‘real-life’ themes) were being stretched: stars were joining in (including international ones, like Ingrid Bergman, or starlets like American Doris Dowling here), productions got bigger and more expensive, crews more professional, equipment more sophisticated, ‘ordinary’ people were being replaced by Olympic beauties (or do ordinary people EVER look like Silvana Mangano or Vittorio Gassman?), ‘ordinary’ characters were getting very complex, and real life was being traded by elaborate, far from realistic drama.”

Riso amaro begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. Trying to escape the law, two small-time criminals, Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman), hide amongst the crowds of female workers heading to the rice fields of the Po Valley.

While attempting to board the train for the fields, the pair runs into Silvana (Silvana Mangano), a voluptuous peasant rice worker. Francesca boards the train with her, in an effort to avoid the police. Silvana introduces her to the planter's way of life. Francesca does not have a work permit, and struggles with the other ‘illegals’ to find a place on the rice fields. After initial resistance from documented workers and bosses, the scabs are allowed a place in the fields.

At the fields, Silvana and Francesca meet a soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone), who unsuccessfully tries to attract Silvana's interest. Toward the end of the working season, Walter arrives at the fields, intending to steal a large quantity of rice. Excited by his criminal lifestyle, Silvana becomes attracted to Walter. She causes a diversion to help him carry out the heist, but Francesca and Marco manage to stop Walter and his accomplices.

Francesca and Silvana face each other, armed with pistols; Francesca confronts Silvana and explains that she has been manipulated by Walter. In response, Silvana turns her gun toward Walter and murders him. Soon afterward, her guilt leads her to commit suicide. As the other rice workers depart, they pay tribute to her by sprinkling rice upon her body.


Silvana Mangano
German collectors card. Photo: Lux / Schorchtfilm. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.

Silvana Mangano
Belgian postcard by Nieuwe Merksemsche Chocolaterie, Merksem. Photo: Lux Film Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.

Silvana Mangano
German postcard by Netter's Star Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Lux Film Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Silvana Mangano.

Is Riso amaro merely a shocker?


The Italian title of the film, Riso amaro, is based on a pun. The Italian word ‘riso’ can mean either ‘rice’ or ‘laughter’, 'riso amaro' can be taken to mean either ‘bitter laughter’ or ‘bitter rice’.

Lucia Boséwas the director's first choice for the role of Silvana. It wasn't until he met former Miss Rome Silvana Mangano by chance that he decided to cast her in the film. In the film, Silvana chews gum and dances the boogie-woogie in an American way in the film. With her character’s downfall director Giuseppe De Santis's seems to have intended to show his condemnation of the products of American capitalism.

Ironically it was Silvana who made the film one of the biggest box office hits of the Neo-Realism cinema. To the standards of 1949, Mangano's performance in the film was shocking. Her hotpants and voluptuous figure earned Riso amaro a lot of publicity, in particular in strongly Roman Catholic Italy. But Riso amaro has more qualities than just being a shocker.

W. Visser at IMDb: “Although its mold of 1949 appears somewhat melodramatic today, the black and white Riso Amaro (= Italian for Bitter Rice) surely ranks among the classics in film history. This very Italian product by Giuseppe de Santis shows a pretty ordinary crime story, excellently interwoven with an impressive decor of harsh season labor in the rice-fields of Northern Italy. The thousands of women, up to their ankles in the water, breaking their backs in the burning sun to earn a few bucks, make a truly great setting.”

The film was selected as one of 100 Italian films to be saved, a collection of films that "changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978". The collection was established by the Venice Film Festival in collaboration with Cinecittà and curated by Fabio Ferzetti, with input from Gianni Amelio and other Italian film critics. Many of the films selected represent the ‘Golden Age’ of Italian cinema, which was manifested in the Neorealist movement.

Doris Dowling in Riso Amaro (1949)
Belgian postcard by Nieuwe Merksemsche Chocolaterie S.P.R.L., Merksem (Anvers). Photo: Lux Film, Rome. Publicity still for Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949) with Doris Dowling.

Doris Dowling and Raf Vallone in Riso amaro (Bitter Rice)
Dutch postcard by Centrafilm, Dordrecht. Photo: Lux. Doris Dowling and Raf Vallone in Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949).


Trailer Riso amaro/Bitter Rice (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). Source: CG Entertainment (YouTube).

Sources: W. Visser (IMDb), Debbylyst (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

From Holland with love: twelve postcards with Lien Deyers

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Film historian Egbert Barten of the Geoffrey Donaldson Institute brought us newly acquired postcards for EFSP. In yesterday's film special on Riso Amaro/Bitter Rice (1949), some of the postcards were from the collection of the Geoffrey Donaldson Institute. Today we continue with a post on 12 of his recently acquired postcards of Lien Deyers (1910-1965). As a young girl, she was discovered by director Fritz Lang who gave her a part in Spione/Spies (1928). She acted in a stream of late silent and early sound films. After 1935 her star faded rapidly and her life ended in tragedy.

Lien Deyers
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5693. Photo: Manassé, Wien Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4283/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5274/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 608 (Luxus series). Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 700 (Luxus series). Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6104/2, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6363/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6536/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6552/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 6922/2, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7913/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Schmiegelski, Berlin. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8842/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Atelier Manassé, Wien. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Thanks, Egbert! For more information on the Geoffrey Donaldson Institute, check out the website (Dutch) or Facebook.

Richard Greene

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Darkly handsome British film and television actor Richard Greene (1918-1985) was a matinee idol of the late 1930s who appeared in more than 40 films. He was perhaps best known for the lead role in the long-running British TV series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1960).

Richard Greene
French postcard, no. 775. Photo: Fox Film.

Richard Greene
French postcard by Viny, no. 89. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Richard Greene
French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès, no. 239. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Richard Greene
French postcard by Viny, no. 107. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Richard Greene
French postcard by Edit. Chantal, Rueil, no. 68. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Exceedingly Good Looking


Richard Marius Joseph Greene was born in the port city of Plymouth, Devon, England, in 1918 (some sources say 1914). He was a descendant of four generations of actors. His father, Richard Abraham Greene and his mother, Kathleen Gerrard, were both actors with the Plymouth Repertory Theatre. His aunt was the musical theatre actress Evie Greene and his grandfather was film pioneer William Friese-Greene.

Greene was educated at the Cardinal Vaughn School in Kensington, where he left at the age of 14. He became determined to pursue the acting profession, making his stage debut in 1933 as a spear carrier in a production of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He was an exceedingly good looking young man with an athletic build, dark wavy hair, and a pleasant speaking voice. He added to his income by modelling shirts and hats.

He played a small role in a 1934 revival of the play Journey's End and a bit part in the British musical film, Sing As We Go (Basil Dean, 1934), but the scene was deleted from the final version. In 1936, Greene joined the Brandon Thomas Company and learned his trade in repertory. He won accolades in the same year for his leading part in Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears, which brought him to the attention of a talent scout from 20th Century-Fox.

At 20, he signed a seven-year contract and went to Hollywood as a rival to MGM's Robert Taylor. The studio added 4 years to his age in all publicity materials. His first film for Fox was John Ford's Four Men and a Prayer (1938), in which he played the youngest of four British brothers in search of evidence to clear their disgraced colonel father (C. Aubrey Smith).

Greene was a huge success, especially with female filmgoers who sent him mountains of fan mail which at its peak rivalled that of Fox star Tyrone Power. Greene played a banker's son turned horse trainer in the popular horse breeding epic, Kentucky (David Butler, 1938) opposite Loretta Young, a college student estranged from his alcoholic father in Here I Am a Stranger (Roy Del Ruth, 1939), and steamboat inventor Robert Fulton in the fanciful historical drama Little Old New York (Henry King, 1940) with Alice Faye.

One of his most notable roles was Sir Henry Baskerville in the Sherlock Holmes film The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sidney Lanfield, 1939). The film also marked the first pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Richard Greene and Loretta Young in Four men and a Prayer (1938)
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. FS 163. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for Four men and a Prayer (John Ford, 1938) with Loretta Young.

Richard Greene
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1317. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for Here I am an Stranger (Roy Del Ruth, 1939).

Richard Greene
British postcard by Real Photograph.

Richard Greene
British postcard by Real Photogravure.

Swashbuckling Roles


In 1940, at the peak of his popularity, Richard Greene interrupted his Hollywood career to return to his homeland to aid in the war effort: an admirable personal decision which would have negative professional consequences. Enlisting in the Royal Armoured Corps of the Twenty Seventh Lancers, he distinguished himself throughout World War II eventually becoming a captain.

He was relieved from duty in 1942 to appear in the British propaganda films Flying Fortress (Walter Forde, 1942) and Unpublished Story (Harold French, 1942) with Valerie Hobson.

In 1943, he appeared in the thriller The Yellow Canary (Herbert Wilcox, 1943) with Anna Neagle while on furlough. He later toured in George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, entertaining the troops. Greene was discharged in December 1944 and appeared in the stage plays Desert Rats and I Capture the Castle.

After the conflict ended, Greene and his young bride, beautiful British actress Patricia Medina (whom he had married in 1941) remained in England for a time where both appeared on stage and in British films. Richard's pictures included the charming comedy, Don't Take It to Heart (Jeffrey Dell, 1944), and the disappointing biopic about the Irish theatre entrepreneur George Howard, Gaiety George (George King, Leontine Sagan, 1946).

In 1946 Greene (accompanied by Medina who'd been offered a Fox contract) returned to Hollywood to complete his contract with 20th Century-Fox. When his dreams of regaining his lost momentum did not materialize, he opted to take whatever film work he could find. After landing a solid supporting role in the wildly popular costumer, Forever Amber (Otto Preminger, 1947), he found himself cast in a series of swashbuckling roles, the most memorable of which was The Black Castle (Nathan Juran, 1952) in which the heroic Greene battled Bela Lugosiand Boris Karloff.

Richard Greene
Latvian postcard by J.D.A., Riga, no. 3058. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Richard Greene
French postcard, no. 801. Photo: Fox Film.

Richard Greene, Peggy Cummins
Dutch postcard. Photo: London Films. Publicity still for That Dangerous Age (Gregory Ratoff, 1949) with Peggy Cummins.

Richard Greene
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 607. Photo: London Films.

The Legendary Robin of Locksley


Richard Greene turned away from filmmaking in favour of the theater and television. During the early 1950s he had a long love affair with Nancy Oakes, wealthy daughter of mining tycoon Sir Harry Oakes. In 1951 their daughter Patricia Louise was born in Mexico City, while Greene was still married to Patricia Medina. Greene divorced from Medina a few months later.

By the mid 1950s his career was in decline. He had lost money on a play, The Lost Tent, which failed to reach the West End. He was disillusioned and cash-strapped when the British company Yeoman Films approached him in 1955. They offered him to play the legendary Robin of Locksley in The Adventures of Robin Hood, a series aimed at the American market.

The still youthful looking Greene eagerly signed on and was an immediate success. The Adventures of Robin Hood ran for 143 half hour episodes from 1955 to 1960. Some of the episodes were directed by the young Lindsay Anderson. It made Greene a major television star and solved his financial problems.

In 1960 he married Columbian heiress Beatriz Robledo-Summers. When The Adventures of Robin Hood ended they pursued together many of his hobbies including travelling, sailing, and breeding champion horses. In the 1960s and 1970s Greene appeared less and less interested in acting, only occasionally accepting roles in mostly forgettable action adventures and horror films, such as The Blood of Fu Manchu (Jesus Franco, 1968) and Tales from the Crypt (Freddie Francis, 1972). His TV work included episodes of The Professionals (1978) and Tales of the Unexpected (1979).

His second marriage ended in divorce in 1980. Two years later he suffered serious injuries in a fall followed by a diagnosis of a brain tumour. In the autumn of 1982 he underwent brain surgery from which he never fully recovered. Richard Greene died of cardiac arrest in 1985 in Norfolk, England. His daughter Patricia Leigh-Wood continued the theatrical tradition – she studied drama at Vassar College, New York. Her daughter Shirley Alice Leigh-Wood (1985) is an actress and dancer, who works under the stage name Shirley Oakes.


Trailer The Little Princess (1939). Source: Video Detective (YouTube).


Trailer for The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939). Source: Video Detective (YouTube).


Trailer for Lorna Doone (1951). Source: Buyout Footage Historic HD Film Archive (YouTube).


Leader of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-1960). Source: buzzzz1964 (YouTube).


Trailer for The Blood of Fu Manchu/Kiss and Kill (1968). Source: Film&Clips (YouTube).

Sources: Dan Van Neste (IMDb), Anna Fraser and Lucy Carpenter (Robin Hood TV), The Times, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Brigitte Fossey

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French actress Brigitte Fossey (1946) made her first film when she was only five, the classic Jeux interdits/Forbidden Games (1952). As an adult, the lovely, sensitive-appearing blonde actress worked with such directors as François Truffaut, Bertrand Blier and Robert Altman.

Brigitte Fossey
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 667.

Forbidden Games


Brigitte Fossey was born in Tourcoing in the north of France in 1946. She was the daughter of Roger Fossey, a schoolteacher, and Marcelle Feuillade.

Fossey was five years old when she was cast by director René Clément to star in his war film, Jeux interdits/Forbidden Games (1952). After the shooting, she received a beautiful red bicycle as her wages.

Fossey played the role of Paulette, a little French girl who is orphaned in a Nazi air attack. She is befriended by the son of a poor farmer (Georges Poujouly), and together they try to come to terms with the realities of death. Mario Gauci calls it at IMDb: “one of the most poignant (and controversial) depictions of childhood innocence on film.”

While not initially successful in France, the film was a hit elsewhere. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film, and a BAFTA award. In Italy, she played the lead role in the drama La corda d'acciaio/The Steel Rope (Carlo Borghesio, 1953) with Fausto Tozzi and Virna Lisi.

Fossey was then hired by American actor/director Gene Kelly for his French-American comedy The Happy Road (1957) with Barbara Laage. It was filmed in the studios of Billancourt. When Fossey was ten years old her parents took her out of the film business so she could receive proper schooling. While completing her education, Fossey studied piano and dance and then went on to work briefly in Geneva, Switzerland as an interpreter and translator.

Brigitte Fossey
French or Belgian postcard, no. 353. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

Brigitte Fossey
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 164.

Les Valseuses


Brigitte Fossey returned to Paris and studied acting at the Conservatory of Dramatic Art. In 1967, at the age of twenty, Fossey was offered the female lead by director Jean-Gabriel Albicocco for his film Le Grand Meaulnes/The Great Meaulnes based on Alain-Fournier's classic novel of young love.

After the popular success of this film, new proposals began to flow. Next she appeared in the box-office hit Adieu l’ami/Farewell Friend (Jean Herman, 1968), starring Alain Delon and Charles Bronson. A cult success was the French comedy-drama Les Valseuses/Going places (Bertrand Blier, 1974), starring Miou-Miou, Gérard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere. Fossey played a supporting part. She also appeared in Blier’s sex comedy Calmos/Cool, Calm and Collected (Bertrand Blier, 1976) as the wife of Jean-Pierre Marielle.

One of her best known films is Truffaut’s comedy/drama L'Homme qui aimait les femmes/The Man Who Loved Women (François Truffaut, 1977). She interpreted an editor, wise counselor and ultimate conquest of Charles Denner.

Twice, she was nominated for a César Award. In 1977 for Best Actress a Supporting Role for Le Bon et les méchants/The Good and the Bad (Claude Lelouch, 1976), and in 1978 for Best Actress for Les Enfants du placard/Closet Children (Benoît Jacquot, 1977).

She also played opposite Helmut Griem in the West German crime film Die gläserne Zelle/The Glass Cell (Hans W. Geißendörfer, 1978). It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Fluent in English, Fossey has appeared in a few Hollywood movies. She played the wife of Paul Newman in the post-apocalyptic Science-Fiction film Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979).

Patrick Dewaere
Patrick Dewaere. Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. cd. 43 157.

Cinema Paradiso


As an adult, Brigitte Fossey acted both on stage (in plays by Anton Chekhov and Molière), and on screen. Very successfully, she played Sophie Marceau’s modern and gentle mother in the film comedy La Boum/The Party (Claude Pinoteau, 1980) about a thirteen-year-old French girl finding her way at a new high school and coping with domestic problems. The film was an international box-office hit, earning 4,378,500 admissions in France.

Two years later, she returned in the equally successful sequel, La Boum 2 (Claude Pinoteau, 1982). Fossey also played a former drug addict opposite Patrick Dewaere in Un mauvais fils/A Bad Son (Claude Sautet, 1980) and had a supporting part in the biography Chanel Solitaire (George Kaczender, 1981) starring Marie-France Pisier and Timothy Dalton.

In 1982, she was a member of the jury at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival. In Germany, she played with Robert Powell in the philosophical drama Imperativ/Imperative (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1982). She next starred in the drama Au nom de tous les miens/For Those I Loved (Robert Enrico, 1983) with Michael York as a Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor who emigrated to the USA in 1946.

She played a small part in the Italian drama Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988), but for the shorter foreign release of the film her scenes were cut. This international version won the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival and the 1989 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. In 2002, the director's cut 173-minute version was released including the scenes with Fossey.

In 1992, she co-starred with legendary Jean Marais in the adventure film Les Enfants du naufrageur/Shipwrecked Children (Jérôme Foulon, 1992). During the 1990s, she began performing in television productions and some of her series became very popular in France. Her most recent TV series is Jusqu'au dernier/Until the last (François Velle, 2014). Brigitte Fossey was married from 1966 till 1980 to director Jean-François Adam, with whom she made the film M comme Mathieu/'M' as in Mathieu (1973). They have a daughter, actress Marie Adam.


Trailer for Jeux interdits/Forbidden Games (1952). Source: Rialto Film (YouTube).

Source: Yvan Foucart (L’encinémathèque – French), Brigitte Baronnet (AlloCiné – French), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Rijk de Gooijer

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Every year in early autumn, the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) takes place. For ten days, the city of Utrecht is the cinema capital of the Netherlands. From 23 September till 2 October, we join the fun with our own Netherlands Film Star Postcards Festival (NFSPF). We start this little festival today with an actor who was the winner of the Gouden Kalf Award (the Gold Calf, the main award at the NFF) in 1982, 1995 and 1999! Rijk de Gooyer (1925–2011) was one of the major stars of the Dutch cinema. From the 1950s until the early 1970s, he became well known as part of a comic duo with Johnny Kraaijkamp, Sr. Later he starred in successful Dutch films like De inbreker (1972) and Soldaat van Oranje (1977). He also appeared in international films such as The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) and Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979).

Rijk de Gooijer
Dutch postcard. Photo: Godfried de Groot.

Informant for the CIA in Berlin


Rijk de Gooyer was born in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 1925 as one half of a fraternal twin. His father was a baker.

At the end of World War II, Rijk worked as an interpreter. Initially for the American 101st Airborne, later on for the British Field Security.
One of his first screen credits was a part in the American TV series Secret File, U.S.A. (1955), filmed in the Netherlands for syndicated TV in the USA.

He also played in the Dutch films Het wonderlijke Leven van Willem Parel/The amazing life of Willem Parel (Gerard Rutten, 1955) featuring Wim Sonneveld, and Kleren maken de man/Clothes make the man (Georg Jacoby, 1957), starring Kees Brusse.

From 1959 till 1961 de Gooyer studied at an actors school of the Ufa in Berlin. During these years, he would have worked for the CIA as an informant. In Germany, he appeared in the film Schachnovelle/Brainwashed (Gerd Oswald, 1960) starring Curd Jürgens.

Back in the Netherlands, he played parts in the crime films Rififi in Amsterdam (Giovanni Korporaal, 1962) and De blanke Slavin/The White Slave (Rene Daalder, 1969).

In the 1950s, he started a comic duo with Johnny Kraaykamp. Thanks to their performances on TV, the duo became extremely popular. In the Johnny & Rijk shows on TV, De Gooyer always played the part of the feeder, with Kraaijkamp providing the laughs. They split up in the 1970s, when De Gooyer focused more on his film career.

Rijk de Gooijer and Johnny Kraaykamp
Rijk de Gooijer and Johnny Kraaykamp. Dutch postcard by Editions Altona, Amsterdam / Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam. Photo: Telefunken.

Rijk de Gooijer performs Brief uit La Courtine
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam (Sparo), no. 1111. Photo: Artone. The song Brief uit La Courtine (Letter from La Courtine) was written by Eli Asser and a hit in 1964.

Rijk de Gooijer and Ronnie Bierman in Quitte of dubbel (1977)
Dutch postcard. Publicity still for the TV film Quitte of dubbel/Double or quits (Hank Onrust, 1977) with Ronnie Bierman.

The Burglar and Nosferatu


Rijk de Gooyer played his first lead role in the cinema as master safe-cracker Glimmie in the crime film De inbreker/The Burglar (Frans Weisz, 1972). Martin Smith at IMDb: “Rijk de Gooyer is at his best in this movie. Like in real life, Rijk is humorous, tough and resourcefully. John Blooming (sic, Jon Bluming), a Dutch martial arts expert and trainer of the Dutch Olympic Karate team a long time ago, plays the role of the big, strong but not too bright sidekick very convincing. His massive appearance says more than words. I saw this movie many years ago and it always stuck in my mind.”

The success of the film lead to other lead roles in thrillers like Naakt over de schutting/Naked Over the Fence (Frans Weisz, 1973) with Jon Bluming and Sylvia Kristel, and Rufus (Samuel Meyering, 1975) with Cox Habbema. He also played a supporting part in the British ant-apartheids thriller The Wilby Conspiracy (Ralph Nelson, 1975), starring Michael Caine and Sidney Poitier.

Memorable is his role as a Gestapo agent in the war film Soldaat van Oranje/Soldier of Orange (Paul Verhoeven, 1977). The film, starring Rutger Hauer and Jeroen Krabbé, became one of the most successful films of the Dutch cinema. Another masterpiece was Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht/Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) with Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula. De Gooyer played a supporting role as a town official.

De Gooijer continued to appear regularly in Dutch and international films. His best films include Een vlucht regenwulpen/A flight of rainbirds (Ate de Jong, 1981), Vroeger kon je lachen/One Could Laugh in Former Days (Bert Haanstra, 1983) and Ciske de Rat/ Ciske the Rat (Guido Pieters, 1984). In 1982 he won the Golden Calf at the NFF for Best Actor for all his works. He continued to play excellent roles in interesting films like the Jewish drama Leedvermaak/Polonaise (Frans Weisz, 1989) and the literary adaptation De avonden/Evenings (Rudolf van den Berg, 1989) as the father of Frits van Egters (Thom Hoffman).

In 1995 he again won the Golden Calf for his role as a former vaudevillian who tries one last time to find the dignity of a legitimate role in Hoogste Tijd/The Last Call (Frans Weisz, 1995). De Gooyer was videotaped afterwards while he threw the award out of the window of a cab for the TV show Taxi (the Dutch version of Taxicab Confessions). His last Golden Calf, for Madelief, Krassen in het Tafelblad/Daisy (Ineke Houtman, 1998) was also thrown out on the street, this time by his friend Maarten Spanjer who hosted Taxi.

De Gooyer was also the lead in the TV series In voor- en tegenspoed/In Sickness and in Health (1991-1997), the Dutch version of Johnny Speight's sitcom franchise known in the UK as Till Death Us Do Part and in the US as All in the Family. De Gooyer played Fred Schuit, the Dutch equivalent of Alf Garnett or Archie Bunker. He won a Golden Film in 1997 for the role. His final film was Happy End (Frans Weisz, 2009). Rijk de Gooyer died in 2011 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He was 85. He was married to Tonny Domburg, sister of actress Andrea Domburg.


Rijk de Gooijer&Johnny Kraaijkamp Senior perform their hit song Waterlooplein in one of their TV shows. Source: mervinproducties (YouTube).


De inbreker/The Burglar (Frans Weisz, 1972). Full movie! Sorry, no subtitles. Source: Draadloosstroom (YouTube).


Danish (!) trailer for The Wilby Conspiracy (Ralph Nelson, 1975). Source: Joenke 77 (YouTube).


Dutch trailer for the crime film Grijpstra en de Gier/Fatal Error (Wim Verstappen, 1979) with Rutger Hauer. Source: Camero Piyawat (YouTube).


The legendary fragment from Taxi (1995). Source: Kanaal van 1000birds (YouTube).

Sources: Martin Smith (IMDb), AllMovie, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Floris (1969)

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Every year in early autumn, the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) takes place. For ten days, the city of Utrecht is the cinema capital of the Netherlands. From 23 September till 2 October, we join the fun with our own Netherlands Film Star Postcards Festival (NFSPF). Today, a post on a Dutch television series, which started three of the most successful careers in the history of the Dutch cinema. It's our all-time favourite TV series - Floris (1969), directed by Paul Verhoeven, written by Gerard Soeteman and starring the young Rutger Hauer.

Rutger Hauer in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 4, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Rutger Haueras Floris van Rosemondt.

Hans Culeman in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 5 (?), 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Hans Culeman as Maarten van Rossum.

Hans Boskamp in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 7, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Hans Boskamp as Lange Pier.

Hans Boskamp in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 10, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Hans Boskamp as Lange Pier.

Rutger Hauer in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 14, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

Unforgettable screen debut


Yeah! Finally, I was able to lay my hands on some vintage collectors cards of Floris (1969). These small cards, produced in 1970, are quite rare these days, and therefor my series is not complete yet.

The Dutch television series, set in the Middle Ages, is the favourite series for many of my generation in the Netherlands and also in Belgium. At the time, all kinds of merchandise was produced for the kids and of course they are a cult now.

In the series, blonde, athletic and the then incredibly young Rutger Hauer made his screen debut as the exiled knight Floris van Rosemondt. His performance is unforgettable, Hauer is the ultimate knight.

With his Indian friend Sindala (Jos Bergman), Floris tries to get his birth right papers back from Maarten van Rossem (Hans Culeman), an evil lord.

During their quest they get help from Wolter van Oldenstein (Ton Vos), a noble man who offers them a place in his castle. They also meet the imposing pirate Lange Pier (Hans Boskamp).

Apart from Sindala and Floris, all the characters are based on historical figures. Scriptwriter Gerard Soeteman did an amazingly inventive job and it is one of the reasons why many adults love to see this childrens series too.

Rutger Hauer in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 17, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

Rutger Hauer in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 19, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

Rutger Hauer and Jos Bergman in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 23, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 26, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Caption: Soldaat van Gelre (Soldier Van Gelre).

Ton Vos in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 29 (?), 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Ton Vos als Wolter van Oldenstein.

In the best Robin Hood style


In 1967, the success of television series like the British Ivanhoe (1958-1959) with Roger Moore, the French Thierry La Fronde/Thierry the Sling (1963-1966) with Jean-Claude Drouot, and the Flemish Johan en de Alverman (1965) with Frank Aendenboom inspired Carel Enkelaar, manager of NTS Television to make a similar series, set in the Netherlands.

Hanne Aboe Derwort highly recommends the series at IMDb: "One of the first Middle Age series ever, the stories of the adventures of Floris in medieval Holland are also among the most funny tv-series ever.

The budget was very low, which can be seen, but the interaction between the actors is nothing less but wonderful. Floris and his trusty companion Sindala is in best Robin Hood style, but with the addition of Eastern magic to the swordfighting skills and sheer strength (and luck) of our hero. (...)

The fact that the series is in b/w actually helps, no need to mess around with anything when somebody's wounded. If you can locate the tapes, watch it."

Rutger Hauer in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 30, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

Jacco van Renesse in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 31, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Caption: Vaandrig Rogier (Ensign-bearer Rogier). Rogier was played by Jacco van Renesse.

Jos Bergman and Rutger Hauer in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 38, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 39, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969). Caption: Kanonnier van Van Rossum (Gunner of Van Rossum).

Rutger Hauer and Jos Bergman in Floris (1969)
Dutch collectors card, no. 50, 1970. Photo: Gerard Soeteman. Publicity still for the TV series Floris (Paul Verhoeven, 1969).

The most popular TV series in the Netherlands


In 1969, Floris was the most popular TV series in the Netherlands. The series had many reruns through the years.

Floris has also been shown in East Germany (as Floris - Der Mann mit dem Schwert) and Scotland dubbed in English. In the UK, the series aired on Yorkshire Television in 1970 as The Adventures of Floris. None of the English dubbed episodes survive.

1975 saw a German remake of the series, Floris von Rosenmund (Ferry Radax, 1975), again starring Rutger Hauer, but with German actor Derval de Faria as Sindala. This version put much more emphasis on the comedic aspects of the stories.

The series also lead to the film Floris (Jean van de Velde, 2004) which features Michiel Huisman (known for his role in Game of Thrones) as the grandson of the original Floris. Some of the footage from the 1969 series with Hauer and Bergman is included. Rutger Hauer was originally asked to play the father of young Floris, but he declined.

It would be great if Verhoeven, Soeteman and Hauer could reunite for one more film. Even after more than 40 years, it's not too late. Both Verhoeven and Hauer are still very active. Please, mr Soeteman write that one script which they simply can't refuse.


Episode Het brandende water (The burning water). Sorry, no subtitles. Source: eikcid (YouTube).


Dutch TV documentary in the series Andere tijden (Other times). Sorry, no subtitles. Source: 192TVideo (YouTube).

Source: Hanne Aboe Derwort (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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