Ava Gardner, Classic Hollywood Beauty

Ava Gardner was one of the most beautiful actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. She was born in 1922, the youngest of seven children of poor tobacco farmers and she worked hard to become one of the most glamorous and desirable actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age.

Ava was invited for an interview at the MGM studios purely on the grounds of her remarkable beauty. She then moved to Hollywood in 1941, where, after five years busy in B parts, in everything from unbilled bits to romantic leads in East Side Kids movies, she was perfect as Kitty Collins, the film noir femme fatale of 'The Killers' in 1946, leaving Burt Lancaster such a state that he doesn't resist being assassinated.

Unfortunately, she didn't immediately get many good acting jobs; she was cast for her goddess-like beauty in 'One touch of Venus' in 1948 and dubbed among the chocolate box surroundings of 'Show Boat' in 1951. In 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman' in 1951, she has her most rounded role, as a conflicted temptress who drives men mad but also yearns to join James Mason in the hereafter.

Gardner shines in 'The Barefoot Contessa' in 1954 as an actress supposedly modeled on Rita Hayworth but channeling her own individual and vocational demons. She moved to Spain in 1955 following her divorce from Sinatra, and many of her subsequent movies were made away from her Hollywood base. Her fraying beauty goes well into the all-star worlds of 'The Sun Also Rises' in 1957, 'On the Beach' in 1959, and 'The Night of the Iguana' in 1964. Wondrously witchlike in the little-seen 'Tam Lin' in 1979, she also bravely shows up in Earthquake' in 1974 and 'The Cassandra Crossing' in 1976.

In 1968 Gardner moved to London and spent her final years almost as a recluse. She had a stroke in 1989 that left her bedridden, and her third husband Sinatra paid all her medical expenses. Ava Gardner died, aged 67, of pneumonia, in 1990.

Elia Kazan, Great Director

Elia Kazan is a fascinating twentieth-century American. An immigrant, he was brought to America when he was only four. While he has never lost his Greek-Turkish roots-as witness 'America America -few native directors made films that so persistently dealt with American problems and subjects, ot that were so absorbed in the American regard for sincere intensity of performance.

He is a superficial radical. From 1934-36 , amid the Group Theater, Kazan was a member of the Communist party, and yet, in 1952, he reversed an earlier stand and declared the names of fellow Communists to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Some may have consented to that admission, but others felt betrayed and note that shortly after the hearing Kazan signed a contract (at a reduced salary) in Hollywood. From this, the question arises: how committed are his films? Is he an exponent of tadical concern, or just a master of naturalistic melodrama? Is Kazan an original author of films or a great director of actors who manages to disguise conventional material and commonplace attitudes?

He joined the Group Theater in 1932, originally as as actor: he appeared in 'Waiting for Lefty' and 'Golden Boy' by Clifford Odets and later acted in two films directed by Anatole Litvak-'City for Conquest' in 1940 and 'Blues in the Night in 1941'. But direction ws his real aim and by the mid-1940's he ws the leading director of new plays n Broadway. This side to his work continued throughout most of his career: 'Truckline Cafe' in 1946, 'All My Sons' and 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in 1947, 'Death of a Salesman' in 1949, 'Camino Real' and 'Tea and Sympathy' in 1953, 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' in 1955, ' The Dark at the Top of the Stairs' in 1957, J M in 1958, 'Sweet Bird of Youth in 1959 and 'After the Fall' in 1963.

Kazan's first six films-allbut one made for Fox are barely recognizable as his. Their realism is in the muted postwar fashion, they are muffled by players like Dorothy McGure, Gregory Peck and Jeanne Crain, they take on controversial issues in a literal or discreet manner and they seem to reflect the chadracter of Darryl F Zanuck as much as Kazan himself. 'Boomerang and Panic in the Streets profit from being thrillers, enhanced by unfamiliar loctions and making their social points indirectly. 'Panic', especially, has some effective deep-focus photography of New Orleans by Joe MacDonald that dramatizes the contrived sense of community. But the crusading pictures-'Gentlemn's Agreement' and 'Pinky'-are naive and clumsy, showing very little awareness of the medium, and smothering their issues with sentimentality.

Kazan's personal impact began only with 'Wtreercar', a film taken from the stage, employing a method nurtured at the Actors Studio, founded by Kazan and Bobby Lewis in 1948. It was the new actor-originally Brando-that best expressd Kazan, although in this instance he was burdened by a traditionally florid actress, Vivien Leigh. Thus the film is more a conflict of acting styles than the poetic struggle Tennessee Williams described.

Of course, Kazan had directed 'Streetcar' on Broadway. In that process, through the casting of Marlon Brando and the very physical promotion of Brando's Staney Kowalski, Kazan actually countered some of the playwright's intentions. Kazan was not a homosexual. He invariably needed some kind of sexual investment in a show-imaginative and actual. So he made the Stanley-Stella bond more central and arousing than Williams had intended. He also shifted Blanche, from heroine to natural victim. And so the play worked in part, in 1947, because its poetry had been converted into a raw need Kazan could feel. That incident is a clue to his appetite for acting and actors. For Kazan backed the psychological thrust of Method acting most when he could himself identify with a character. In a real sense, he made the theatre as sexy as movies.

The next films are deeper explorations into emotional naturalism in action: Brando as Zapata; Brando, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, and Lee J Cobb in 'On the Waterfront; James Dean, Raymond Massey, and Julie Harris in 'East of Eden'; Carroll Baker, Eli Walach and Malden in 'Baby Doll'. Zapata still looks an original movie, but 'On the Waterfront' is glossy with skill and has less to do with the New York docks than with the mixture of grand guignol and neo-realism. It is certainly emotional, but the feelings are all planned in advance, and the possible comparison between the Brando who informs on the mob and Kazan's own readiness to talk is embarrassing.

'East of Eden' is Kazan's best film: partly because of Dean's prickly hesitation; partly because the absorbing clash of acting styles (Sean and Raymond Massey) suited Steinbeck's high-class weepie novel; and also because CinemaScope seemed to stimulate Kazan into treating his camera with some of the emphatic care he lavished on actors. 'Baby Doll' while always a minor chamber play, is atmospheric and catches the tender humor of Williams. 'A Face In the Crowd' was the conscience-stricken radical, crudely manhandling the media and unable to deal with an intransigent chief actor. 'Wild River' is the concerned American thinking and feeling in unison, a more speculative film than Kazan usually allowed himself, subtle in its situation, its coloring, and its acting. 'Splendor in the Grass', however, is intense to the point of hysteria, the most extreme instance of Kazan's emotional involvement with his characters, the source of all that is vital and most alarming in his work. As a result, it is a violent film, lurching between great beauty (especially in Natalie Wood's performance) and excess.

At this stage, Kazan grew reflective on his own life. 'America America' was based on his novel, as was 'The Arrangement’, a very obvious commentary on materialism in America. Sadly, the defects of that film seem to Kazan its greatest virtues. The novels he wrote in the sixties and seventies were solidly second-rate, overwritten, and underthought. They showed how banal the energy of a director could seem on the page. But in the woeful 'Last Tycoon', Kazan had lost his essential energy.

After 1980, he had appeared occasionally in documentaries about Greece or the Actors Studio. But his largest venture was the writing of his lengthy biography, 'A Life'. The autobiography is far and away his best book, destructively candid and boastful about his treatment of women, but a lasting work, to be put beside his best films and his enormous glamorization of the American actor. For good and ill, this is one of the great lives in American theatre arts. But when the Academy gave him an honorary Oscar, in 1999, all the old enmities sprang up-and Kazan refused the chance of apologizing. He didn't feel it, AND THAT'S HOW HE DIRECTED PERFORMANCES.

His career was blemished by his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where he identified eight entertainment figures as communists, all of whom were later blacklisted, and who later had a successful career as a best-selling novelist, died 2003 in New York City, aged 94.



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Orson Welles and Citizen Kane

Ego is simultaneously a blunt weapon and a shield from the world. In the case of Orson Welles, ego is the key for interpreting a career of such uneven result that, were it not for strength of ego, he never would have succeeed at all. But because of that same ego, he upset many, lost great fortunes, and was always searching for work. The other key for interpreting Welles is performance; not just of actors standing before cameras, but the more existential theme of new identity is connected with wearing a mask, playing to crowds, and reacting to circumstances. this issue of performace is central to Welles, since most of heis films are concerned with madness and control, and power and weakness: attitudes adopted both in his movies and by the characters in them.

Welles was born a brilliant and beautiful child, interested in music, magic, and painting. His mother died when he was nine years old, his father when he was fifteen, and he spent the rest of his childhod as the ward of a doctor. He tried becoming an actor, first in Ireland, then in England, and finally in New York. Quickly established on radio for possessing one of the world's most distinctive voices, he embarked on a fruitful collaboration with actor John Houseman, forming the Mercury theater in 1937. The next year the pair produced the famous Haloween broadcast of H. G. Wells's 1898 novel, 'The War of the Worlds', and garnered great attention for their staging of classic plays in unusual ways, for instance in the so called 'voodoo' version of 'The Tragedy of Macbeth', which featured an all-black
cast.

Having developed a reputation for being a polymath and a big personality given to wine, women, food, and song, Welles received an unparalleled carte-blanche opportunity at RKO Pictures to make any film he wished. He chose to embellish the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst with certain autobiographical touches of his own and produced 'Citizen Kane' in 1941. Despite artistic innovations
in narrative, camera techmnique, set design, performance, and use of symbolism, 'Citizen Kane' was a commercial failure, although it did garner Welles an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. RKO Pictures again gave him great liberties on 'The Magnificent Ambersons'in 1942 although the studio recut this movie and released it to even greater commercial disappointment and critical indifference.

Disgusted by the experience, and by now seen as a poor risk, Welles was only
entrusted with three more Hollywood movies: 'The Stranger in 1946, 'The Lady from Shanghai' in 1947, and Touch of Evil in 1958. From the late 1940's onward he spent his life in Europe, working on other people's films so that he could finance his personal projects, beginning with Macbeth in 1948.

THE OUTSIDER WITHIN
Although Welles became an industry outsider, his charms onscreen were still in demand as an actor and narrator. He produced memorable works such as 'the Tragedy of Othello: the Moor of Venice' in 1952, 'Mr. Arkadin' in 1955, and 'Le Proces' in
1962, as well as two masterpieces, both notable for being produced in penury and for being extraordinarily effective - 'Chimes at Midnight' in 1965 and 'F for Fake' in 1974.

Welles lso used his considerable charm to promote himself on TV shows where his hulking body was seen to grow ever larger with each year. His obesity, like his artistic temperament and the subjects he chose for screen projicts, tended to iluminate a provound confidence in his abilities, juxtaposed with disgust at his physical person. His size was often hyperbolized with makeup, costume, lighting, and
caamera angles. That this ego would choose to manipulate so grotesque a body through onscreen performance is a naked exposure of sacrificing self for the sake of creativity.

In 1975, the American Film Institute gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. His work was reconsidered and he was promoted as a misunderstood artist. Welles's abilities and 'Citizen Kane' are now held up as paragons of cinema.

Stagecoach, The Western Redefined For Ever

(left)George Bancroft, John Wayne and Claire Trevor
John Ford hadn't made a western for a dozen years when he cast John Wayne and Claire Trevor in a story about a stagecoach ride through dangerous Indian territory. The film does not stint on the genre's traditional satisfactions and the last part of the film packs in plenty of action, including a gunfight between Wayne and the Plummer gang and a stirring Indian attack as the stagecoach careers across the flat desert. The sequence was enriched by some superlative stuntwork by Yakima Canutt, who, playing one of the Apache attackers, leaps onto one of the stage's horses, is then shot, and has to fall between the horses' hooves and under the wheels.

This was Wayne's second chance at major stardom after the failure of 'The Big Trail', and he took it with both hands. From hia first entrance, standing in the desert waving down the stage, he cuts an impressive figure as the Ringo Kid, who has busted out of jail in order to be revenged on the Plummers, killers of his father and brother. But Wayne's appearance is delayed while Ford explores the characters of the other travellers on the coach. Each is deftly and memorably sketched in. Dallas, (Claire Trevor), the girl who is no better than she should be, and who is run out of town, together with drunken Doc Boone, by the puritanical ladies of the Law and order League. Peacock (Donald Meek), a timid whiskey salesman; Hatfield (John Carradine), a southern gambler; Mrs Mallory (Luise Platt), the pregnant wife of a cavalry officer; and Gatewood (Berton Churchill), a banker who is making off with the assets. On the outside of the coach are Buck (Andy Devine), the portly driver, and Curly (George Bancroft), the local sheriff. The interaction between this oddly assorted group allows Ford to explore a cherished theme, the superior moral qualities of those whom 'respectable' society disdains.

Stagecoach was the first film Ford shot in Monument Valley, a landscape of towering sandstone buttes on the border between Utah and Arizona. As the tiny c oach makes its way through the vastness of the desert, the frailty of its occupants is doubly emphasized as the camera tracks toward a group of Indians observing its progress. Ford makes no attempt to present the Indians as individuals; they are merely a force of nature. The film's healthy performance at the box office helped re-establish the Western genre and cemented John Wayne's position as a major Hollywood force.

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The Grapes of Wrath

Few American pictures in the 1930's got to grips with the suffering and dislocation of the Great Depression. Hollywood largely left it to other media such as the theater, novels, and photography to document the national disaster.John Steinbeck's novel, first published in 1939, was based on solid research, following dispossessid farming families from Oklahoa as they journeyed to the orchards of California in search of casual labor.

Despite objections from the conservative financiers wno controlled the studio, Darryl Zanuck bought the book for 20th-Century Fox. He knew that John Ford was the right man to direct, with his feeling for the American people and their history. Ford also identified what was most heartbreaking about the plight of the Joad family - not their acute poverty, but the psychological trauma of being uprooted from their home, of being cast out on the road, rootless. In a memorable scene Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) burns the possessions she can't take with her the night before they must abandon their farm.

For his hero, Tom Joad, Ford cast Henry Fonda, who had just appeared in Ford's 'Young Mr. Lincoln' (1939) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), two other pieces of Americana. Members of the unofficial John Ford stock comany to appear include Russell Simpson as Pa Joad, John Qualen as their friend Muley, and John Carradine as an itinerant preacer. And for his cameraman Ford made an inspired choice. Gregg Toland captured brilliantly the documentary look of the pictures that had been taken of the dustbowl tragedy by government-employed photographers such as Dorothea Lange. No-where is this better seen than in a sequence where the Joads drive into a squatters camp, the camera dwelling on the grim faces of the occupants and on the run-down shacks where they live.

Though The Grapes of Wrath does not shirk from showing the full enormity of its subjects' plight, there is a significant departure from the novel. In Steinbeck's book the Joads first find easier conditions in a government-run camp, but by the end are recuced to starvation wages. In the film, they find the government camp later on, thus making their progress an upward curve, marked by Ma's final speech: 'We're the people...We'll go on forever.'

John Gilbert, The Big Burnout

John Gilbert was one of the very early Hollywood meteors. His rise was sudden and his decline even more dramatic. His talent was evident but it did not save him from the vicious politics of Hollywood. Louis B Mayer made him and it was Mayer who destroyed him.

John appeared in films with the top leading ladies of the silent screen era, including Renee Adoree, Billie Dove, Barbara La Marr and Mae Murray. Lillian Gish, who had a new contract with MGM, picked Gilbert to co-star with her in La Boheme, (1926). With the death in 1926, of Rudolph Valentino, his only competition, John was on top of the world and by 1928 he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood.

His reputation as a ladies' man was further confirmed by the series of romantic films he made with Greta Garbo who starred with him in Love (1927), Flesh and the Devil (1926) and A Woman of Affairs (1928). The on-screen chemistry between these two was incredible reflected a torrid off-screen affair which the studio publicity department publicised diligently. Audience figures, profits and the stars' fame skyrocketed. During this period of unparallelled success Gilbert proposed to Garbo three times but was rebuffed each time.

He did in fact marry four times (three times to actresses Leatrice Joy, Ina Claire and Virginia Bruce.) He had one daughter with Leatrice Joy, a girl, also named Leatrice Joy Gilbert.

The decline of Gilbert's career began at the end of the 1920's and coincided with the advent of talkies. This has led to the persistent rumour that his voice was too high pitched and that audiences laughed when he spoke on screen. This was not true because Gilbert had a distinctive and pleasant voice and made several sound films, including Queen Christina, in which his voice was fine. The truth was that after 1929 when sound came in, John was placed in films such as Redemption (1930) and Way for a Sailor (1930) that were poorly scripted for sound cinema, and just not up to his talents.

In 1932 MGM made the film Downstairs from Gilbert's original story, in which Gilbert played against type as a scheming, blackmailing chauffeur. The film was well received by critics, but did nothing to restore Gilbert's popularity. Soon after making the film he married co-star Virginia Bruce but the couple divorced in 1934.

Gilbert also made the big mistake of incurring the enmity of Louis B Mayer, the head of MGM, and one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Mayer disliked Gilbert intensely and after one heated argument (about his relationship with Garbo), Mayer vowed to destroy Gilbert's career and when his contract ran out in 1933 it was not renewed. Gilbert had begun drinking heavily and died suddenly of a heart attack in 1936 at the age of 40.

The meteor had been powerful but it had run its course.

Mr Smith Goes To Washington

Jimmy Stewart is perfect as Jefferson Smith, whose chief qualification is that he is hopelessly unsophisticated, a man who spends all his time mentoring a troop of young 'rangers.' But this rube is neither stupid nor lacking in courage.

Smith first convinces the cynical woman (Jean Arthur) charged with looking after him of his virtue and his keen sense. And then, after unintentionally creating trouble by proposing a national boys' camp on the precise site that the 'machine' hopes to use for its pork barrel project, he defends himself against false charges in a filibuster that goes on for many hours and leaves him barely able to speak or stand. Crucial in Smith's p assage from irrelavance through disgrace to vindication is the part played by Senator Joseph Paine (Claude Rains). As opposed to the crudely venal political boss Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold), Paine is a man who believes in the American system but who has been seduced by a politics of compromise and deal making. Smith can only be rescued by Paine's conversion.

Smith's deliverance is also made possible by the peculiarly American institution of tthe filibustter, which permits the individual-symbolically enough, not the group-unlimited free speech according to established rules. Smith can thereby exert a power against the group that would condemn him insuring his vindication.


An imprressive bit of Americana, Capra's film is ful of memorable moments, the most moving of which is the montage sequence tracing the newly arrived senator's tour of Washington monuments, including the Lincoln memorial.

Tony Curtis- The Value of Perseverance

Originally dismissed as little more than a pretty boy, Tony Curtis overcame a series of bad reviews and undistinguished pictures to emerge as one of the most successful actors of his era, appearing in a number of the most popular and acclaimed films of the late '50s and early '60s. Born Bernard Schwartz on June 3, 1925, in New York City, he was the son of an impoverished Hungarian-born tailor, and was a member of an infamous area street gang by the age of 11. During World War II, Curtis served in the navy, and was injured while battling in Guam. After the war, he returned to New York to pursue a career in acting, touring the Borscht circuit before starring in a Greenwich Village revival of +Golden Boy. There Curtis came to the attention of Universal, who signed him to a seven-year contract. In 1948, he made his film debut, unbilled, in the classic Robert Siodmak noir Criss Cross. A series of bit roles followed, and he slowly made his way up through the studio's ranks.


In 1958, Curtis and Sidney Poitier starred in Stanley Kramer's social drama The Defiant Ones as a pair of escaped convicts and their performances earned both men Academy Award nominations (the only one of Curtis' career), and was among the most acclaimed and profitable films of the year. He returned to Universal a major star and a much better actor; upon coming back, he first starred in a Blake Edwards comedy, The Perfect Furlough, then made the best film of his career -- 1959's Some Like It Hot, a masterful Billy Wilder comedy which cast him and Jack Lemmon as struggling musicians forced to dress in drag to flee the mob. Curtis next starred with his avowed idol, Cary Grant, in Edwards' comedy Operation Petticoat, another massive hit followed in 1960 by Who Was That Lady? with Leigh and Dean Martin.

For director Stanley Kubrick, Curtis co-starred in the 1960 epic Spartacus, followed a year later by The Great Impostor. With second wife Christine Kauffman, he starred in 1964's Wild and Wonderful, which was reported to be his last film for Universal. Curtis then focused almost solely on comedy, including Goodbye Charlie, the big-budget The Great Race, and, with Jerry Lewis, Boeing Boeing. None were successful, and he found his career in dire straits; as a result, he battled long and hard to win the against-type title role in 1968's The Boston Strangler, earning good critical notices.

Curtis published a novel, "Kid Andrew Cody and Julie Sparrow", in 1977, followed by "Tony Curtis: The Autobiography" written with Barry Paris in 1993. He has also found time to develop his skills as an artist, and his paintings, especially the Marilyn Monroe portraits, have fetched considerable sums. Married four times, Curtis lost his oldest son Nicholas (whose mother was Curtis' third wife Lisa Allen) tragically to a heroin overdose at the age of 23. One of his two daughters from his first marriage to Janet Leigh is the successful actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx was the front man and best known of the Marx Brothers. He was born in 1890 in New York and was the first of 5 surviving sons to go on the stage professionally which he did aged 15 in an act, now long forgotten, called The Leroy Trio. He is best known for playing sharp, wisecracking characters. He always sported a cigar, a moustache made of dark greasepaint and walked with a half crouch.

When his brothers eventually joined him they had a stage success with the musical comedy called I'll Say She Is. It was before one of the performances of this show that Groucho got his painted moustache. Originally he found that it was so much quicker and easier to use greasepaint than a glued-on moustache that he used it from then on and it became one of his trademarks.

Groucho's real name was Julius, and his brothers were Leonard 'Chico', Adolph 'Harpo', Milton 'Gummo' and Herbert 'Zeppo'.

Groucho Marx did 26 movies total, of which 15 were with his brothers Chico and Harpo. The Marx Brothers made some of the wildest and offbeat movies in film history. They were extraordinary anarchists attacking everything from authority figures, the system and education, to politics, sex, war and the police, to the upper classes and culture in general. They combined their own brand of slapstick physical comedy with quick witted one-liners and puns, normally delivered by Groucho. Typical examples:
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

Marriage is a wonderful institution. But who wants to live in an institution?

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

As well as movie success, Groucho was, in the 1940's and 50's, the highly successful host of "You Bet Your Life" a quiz show on radio and television.

Groucho died on August 19th 1977 at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. His ashes are at Eden Memorial Park, San Fernando, California.

Early Louis B Mayer

Louis B Mayer was a self-made man who rose from an apprenticeship at his father's scrap metal business in Canada to become the highest paid corporate executive in the U.S.

He was born Lazar Mayer in the Minsk district of Russia sometime between 1880-1885. The exact date is not certain. He grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada after his parents fled Russian oppression in 1886. His father was a peddler and a scrap metal dealer and after a poverty-stricken childhood Mayer left the family home and moved to Boston in 1904. He became enthralled with the theatrical business; he diligently saved enough money for a theater, a burlesque house and soon afterward was alternating live shows with the latest rage, motion pictures. The theatre became a success and Mayer expanded into film distribution by opening the Louis B. Mayer Film Company. In 1915, with several partners he formed the Metro Pictures Corporation, and one of the first films they acquired for distribution was D.W. Griffith's classic "Birth of a Nation" (1915).

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The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story is a masterpiece of witty one-liners, three great stars performing at their peak and with a great supporting cast.

Divorced socialite Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) is preparing for her second marriage but her first husband, Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) and Macaulay Connor (James Stewart), a cynical tabloid reporter both turn up to make things interesting.

The film earned six Oscar nominations and two wins -- for James Stewart and screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart.

Marlene Dietrich, Multi Talented Entertainer

A number of stars become known by their Surname or Chrisian name alone. Marlene Dietrich is unique in being universally recognised by the use of either of her names.

She was the first German actress to become a major Hollywood star. After a successful career as a cabaret singer, chorus girl and film actress in 1920s Berlin, she became a World War II frontline entertainer during the 1940s, and finally a topline international stage show performer from the 1950s to the 1970s. In the process she became one of the entertainment icons of the 20th century. The American Film Institute ranked Dietrich No. 9 amongst the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.

Marlene became one of the major female stars of the 1930s, in such films as Song of Songs, The Scarlet Empress, Knight Without Armour and the 1939 Western satire, Destry Rides Again, with James Stewart. A series of disappointments -- The Lady Is Willing, The Spoilers, and Pittsburgh -- followed in the early 1940's, with Dietrich reportedly so disheartened with her work that she considered retirement.

During the early Nazi years, Joseph Goebbels offered to make her "The Queen" of German films if she made movies promoting Hitler, but she consistently refused. Instead, she mounted a series of lengthy tours entertaining wartime troops before returning to films in 1944's Follow the Boys, followed by Kismet.

Her show business career largely ended on September 29, 1975, when, apparently under the influence of drink, she fell and broke her leg during a stage performance in Australia.

She appeared briefly in the film, Just a Gigolo, in 1979, and wrote and contributed to several books during the 1980s.

Dietrich died peacefully of renal failure on May 6, 1992, at the age of 90 in Paris. A service was conducted at La Madeleine in Paris before 3,500 mourners and a crowd of well-wishers outside.

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Gary Cooper, Super Superstar

It is difficult to overstate how big a star Gary Cooper was. For a while he was the highest paid person in the United States. Not the highest paid actor, the highest paid person.

Gary Cooper, (Coop), was one of Hollywood's most popular leading men during a career which spanned 5 decades. He received five Oscar nominations for Best Actor, winning twice. He also received an Honorary Award from the Academy in 1961. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Cooper among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No. 11.
In 1952 an aging, weary looking Cooper assumed what may be his greatest role, that of the embattled marshal abandoned by the townspeople he spent years protecting, in High Noon (1952), a "traditional" Western. He won his second Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance (his first was for Sergeant York in 1941. Alvin York had refused to authorize a movie about his life unless Gary Cooper was the actor who portrayed him). He wasn't present to receive his Academy Award in February 1953. He asked John Wayne to accept it on his behalf.
In April 1961 Coop won a special, career-achievement Academy Award, which was accepted in an emotional speech by his friend James Stewart. A month later he died on May 31, 1961 of lung and prostrate cancer in Los Angeles, California.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

Fred Astaire could dance like no one else. Rudolph Nureyev rated him the greatest dancer of the twentieth century, and he is generally acknowledged to have been the most influential dancer in the history of filmed and televised musicals, with only Gene Kelly coming anywhere close to his stylish perfection. His films with Ginger Rogers transformed the movie musical forever, and in them he proved that he wasn't just a dancer -- he was a talented actor and comedian too.
During the 1930's he and Ginger Rogers became the silver screen's most popular dancing duo.
They made a total of nine musicals together at RKO between 1933 and 1939, and though Ginger made several other comedies and solo musicals between her films with Fred, Astaire made only one film without Rogers -- Damsel in Distress (1937) with Joan Fontaine. It was the only film of his career to lose money at the box-office.
The Astaire-Rogers series are among the top films of the 1930s. They include The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), and Carefree (1938). Six out of the nine musicals he created became the biggest moneymakers for RKO; all of the films brought a certain prestige and artistry that all studios at the time were looking for.

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