| Coordinates | 28°36′50″N77°12′32″N |
|---|---|
| Name | Key Largo |
| Caption | theatrical release poster |
| Director | John Huston |
| Producer | Jerry Wald |
| Writer | Maxwell Anderson (play) Richard Brooks John Huston |
| Starring | Humphrey Bogart Edward G. Robinson Lauren Bacall Lionel Barrymore Claire Trevor |
| Cinematography | Karl Freund |
| Music | Max Steiner |
| Editing | Rudi Fehr |
| Distributor | Warner Bros. |
| Released | |
| Runtime | 101 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Country | United States |
| Gross | US$8,125,000 |
Key Largo is a 1948 film noir directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, and Claire Trevor. It was adapted from Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play of the same name, which played on Broadway for 105 performances in 1939 and 1940.
Key Largo was the fourth and final film pairing of married actors Bogart and Bacall. Trevor won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance.
McCloud finds out that the visitors who are staying at the hotel, supposedly on a fishing trip, are actually notorious fugitive gangster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) and his gang. The gangsters have crossed by boat from Cuba, where Rocco is living in exile, to make a "delivery". Once Rocco's identity is revealed by McCloud, the mobsters drop the pretense and take over the hotel, keeping McCloud, Temple and Nora at bay with the threat of violence; meanwhile, a hurricane is brewing up, heading in the direction of the Key.
After a local deputy is subdued and captured by the gang, Frank rejects an apparent opportunity to kill Rocco when the gangster throws him a pistol and dares him to shoot. McCloud's unwillingness to act raises doubts about his courage, but Rocco's abasement of his alcoholic mistress, singer Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor), and his hand in the murders of the deputy and two local Indians convinces Frank that Rocco must be stopped. His chance comes when Rocco forces Frank to pilot the boat by which the gang intends to return to Cuba. Once at sea, Frank is able to kill every member of the gang, one by one, Rocco last of all. Frank then returns to Nora.
Robinson had always had top billing over Bogart in their previous films together. For this one, Robinson's name appears to the right of Bogart's, but placed a little higher on the posters, and also in the film opening credits, to indicate Robinson's near-equal status. Robinson's image was also markedly larger and centered on the original poster. In the film's trailer, Bogart is repeatedly mentioned first but Robinson's name is listed above Bogart's in a cast list at the very end.
Exterior shots of the hurricane that delays the gang's getaway were actually taken from stock footage used in Night Unto Night, a Ronald Reagan melodrama made the same year by Warner Bros.
Category:1940s crime films Category:1948 films Category:Black-and-white films Category:Crime thriller films Category:Films about organized crime in the United States Category:Films directed by John Huston Category:Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winning performance Category:Films set in Florida
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 28°36′50″N77°12′32″N |
|---|---|
| Caption | Bogart in 1946 |
| Birth name | Humphrey DeForest Bogart |
| Birth date | December 25, 1899 |
| Birth place | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Death date | January 14, 1957 |
| Death place | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1921–1956 |
| Spouse | Helen Menken (1926–1927) (divorced) Mary Philips (1928–1937) (divorced) Mayo Methot (1938–1945) (divorced) Lauren Bacall (1945–1957) (his death) 2 children |
| Website | http://www.humphreybogart.com/ |
After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).
His breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941, with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), with his wife Lauren Bacall; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); The African Queen (1951), for which he won his only Academy Award; Sabrina (1954) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His last movie was The Harder They Fall (1956). During a film career of almost thirty years, he appeared in 75 feature films.
Bogart's birthday has been a subject of controversy. It was long believed that his birthday on Christmas Day 1899, was a Warner Bros. fiction created to romanticize his background, and that he was really born on January 23, 1899, a date that appears in many references. However, this story is now considered baseless: although no birth certificate has ever been found, his birth notice did appear in a New York newspaper in early January 1900, which supports the December 1899 date, as do other sources, such as the 1900 census.
Humphrey was the oldest of three children; he had two younger sisters, Frances and Catherine Elizabeth (Kay). As a boy, Bogart was teased for his curls, his tidiness, the "cute" pictures his mother had him pose for, the Little Lord Fauntleroy clothes she dressed him in—and the name "Humphrey." From his father, Bogart inherited a tendency for needling people, a fondness for fishing, a life-long love of boating, and an attraction to strong-willed women.
The details of his expulsion are disputed: one story claims that he was expelled for throwing the headmaster (alternatively, a groundskeeper) into Rabbit Pond, a man-made lake on campus. Another cites smoking and drinking, combined with poor academic performance and possibly some intemperate comments to the staff. It has also been said that he was actually withdrawn from the school by his father for failing to improve his academics, as opposed to expulsion. In any case, his parents were deeply dismayed by the events and their failed plans for his future.
By the time Bogart was treated by a doctor, the scar had already formed. "Goddamn doctor," Bogart later told David Niven, "instead of stitching it up, he screwed it up." Niven says that when he asked Bogart about his scar he said it was caused by a childhood accident; Niven claims the stories that Bogart got the scar during wartime were made up by the studios to inject glamour. His post-service physical makes no mention of the lip scar even though it mentions many smaller scars, so the actual cause may have come later.
After his naval service, Bogart worked as a shipper and then bond salesman. He joined the Naval Reserve.
More importantly, he resumed his friendship with boyhood mate Bill Brady, Jr. whose father had show business connections, and eventually Bogart got an office job working for William A. Brady Sr.'s new company World Films. Bogart got to try his hand at screenwriting, directing, and production, but excelled at none. For a while, he was stage manager for Brady's daughter's play A Ruined Lady. A few months later, in 1921, Bogart made his stage debut in Drifting as a Japanese butler in another Alice Brady play, nervously speaking one line of dialog. Several more appearances followed in her subsequent plays. Bogart liked the late hours actors kept, and enjoyed the attention an actor got on stage. He stated, “I was born to be indolent and this was the softest of rackets”.
Bogart had been raised to believe acting was beneath a gentleman, but he enjoyed stage acting. He never took acting lessons, but was persistent and worked steadily at his craft. He appeared in at least seventeen Broadway productions between 1922 and 1935. He played juveniles or romantic second-leads in drawing room comedies. He is said to have been the first actor to ask "Tennis, anyone?" on stage. Critic Alexander Woollcott wrote of Bogart's early work that he "is what is usually and mercifully described as inadequate." Some reviews were kinder. Heywood Broun, reviewing Nerves wrote, “Humphrey Bogart gives the most effective performance...both dry and fresh, if that be possible”. Bogart loathed the trivial, effeminate parts he had to play early in his career, calling them "White Pants Willie" roles.
Early in his career, while playing double roles in the play Drifting at the Playhouse Theatre in 1922, Bogart met actress Helen Menken. They were married on May 20, 1926 at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City, divorced on November 18, 1927, but remained friends. On April 3, 1928, he married Mary Philips at her mother's apartment in Hartford, Connecticut. She, like Menken, had a fiery temper and, like every other Bogart spouse, was an actress. He had met Mary when they appeared in the play Nerves, which had a very brief run at the Comedy Theatre in September 1924.
After the stock market crash of 1929, stage production dropped off sharply, and many of the more photogenic actors headed for Hollywood. Bogart's earliest film role is with Helen Hayes in the 1928 two-reeler The Dancing Town, of which a complete copy has never been found. He also appeared with Joan Blondell and Ruth Etting in a Vitaphone short, Broadway's Like That (1930) which was re-discovered in 1963.
Bogart then signed a contract with Fox Film Corporation for $750 a week. Spencer Tracy was a serious Broadway actor whom Bogart liked and admired, and they became good friends and drinking buddies. It was Tracy, in 1930, who first called him "Bogey". (Spelled variously in many sources, Bogart himself spelled his nickname "Bogie".) Tracy and Bogart appeared in their only film together in John Ford's early sound film Up the River (1930), with both playing inmates. It was Tracy's film debut. Bogart then performed in The Bad Sister with Bette Davis in 1931, in a minor part.
Bogart shuttled back and forth between Hollywood and the New York stage from 1930 to 1935, suffering long periods without work. His parents had separated, and Belmont died in 1934 in debt, which Bogart eventually paid off. (Bogart inherited his father's gold ring which he always wore, even in many of his films. At his father's deathbed, Bogart finally told Belmont how much he loved him.)
Bogart's second marriage was on the rocks, and he was less than happy with his acting career to date; he became depressed, irritable, and drank heavily.
The play had 197 performances at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York in 1935. Leslie Howard though, was the star. A critic for the New York Times Brooks Atkinson said of the play, “a peach... a roaring Western melodrama... Humphrey Bogart does the best work of his career as an actor.” Bogart said the movie “marked my deliverance from the ranks of the sleek, sybaritic, stiff-shirted, swallow-tailed ‘smoothies’ to which I seemed condemned to life.” However, he was still feeling insecure. Bette Davis and Leslie Howard were cast. Howard, who held production rights, made it clear he wanted Bogart to star with him. The studio tested several Hollywood veterans for the Duke Mantee role, and chose Edward G. Robinson, who had greater star appeal and was due to make a film to fulfill his expensive contract. Bogart cabled news of this to Howard, who was in Scotland. Howard cabled reply was, “Att: Jack Warner Insist Bogart Play Mantee No Bogart No Deal L.H.”. When Warner Bros. saw that Howard would not budge, they gave in and cast Bogart. Jack Warner, famous for butting heads with his stars, tried to get Bogart to adopt a stage name, but Bogart stubbornly refused. Bogart never forgot Howard's favor, and in 1952 he named his only daughter, Leslie, after Howard, who had died in World War II. Robert E. Sherwood remained a close friend of Bogart's.
I can't get in a mild discussion without turning it into an argument. There must be something in my tone of voice, or this arrogant face—something that antagonizes everybody. Nobody likes me on sight. I suppose that's why I'm cast as the heavy.
Bogart's roles were not only repetitive, but physically demanding and draining (studios were not yet air-conditioned), and his regimented, tightly-scheduled job at Warners was not exactly the “peachy” actor's life he hoped for. However, he was always professional and generally respected by other actors. In those "B movie" years, Bogart started developing his lasting film persona — the wounded, stoical, cynical, charming, vulnerable, self-mocking loner with a core of honor.
Bogart's disputes with Warner Bros. over roles and money were similar to those the studio had with other less-than-obedient stars, such as Bette Davis, James Cagney, Errol Flynn, and Olivia de Havilland.
and Jeffrey Lynn in The Roaring Twenties (1939), the last film Bogart and Cagney made together.]] The studio system, then at its most entrenched, usually restricted actors to one studio, with occasional loan-outs, and Warner Bros. had no interest in making Bogart a top star. Shooting on a new movie might begin days or only hours after shooting on the previous one was completed. Any actor who refused a role could be suspended without pay. Bogart disliked the roles chosen for him, but he worked steadily: between 1936 and 1940, Bogart averaged a movie every two months, sometimes even working on two simultaneously, as movies were not generally shot sequentially. Amenities at Warners were few compared to those for their fellow actors at MGM. Bogart thought that the Warners wardrobe department was cheap, and often wore his own suits in his movies. In High Sierra, Bogart used his own pet dog Zero to play his character's dog Pard.
The leading men ahead of Bogart at Warner Bros. included not just such classic stars as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, but also actors far less well-known today, such as Victor McLaglen, George Raft and Paul Muni. Most of the studio's better movie scripts went to these men, and Bogart had to take what was left. He made films like Racket Busters, San Quentin, and You Can't Get Away With Murder. The only substantial leading role he got during this period was in Dead End (1937), while loaned to Samuel Goldwyn, where he portrayed a gangster modeled after Baby Face Nelson. He did play a variety of interesting supporting roles, such as in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) (in which his character got shot by James Cagney's). Bogart was gunned down on film repeatedly, by Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, among others. In Black Legion (1937), for a change, he played a good man caught up and destroyed by a racist organization, a movie Graham Greene called “intelligent and exciting, if rather earnest”.
In 1938, Warner Bros. put him in a "hillbilly musical" called Swing Your Lady as a wrestling promoter; he later apparently considered this his worst film performance. In 1939, Bogart played a mad scientist in The Return of Doctor X. He cracked, "If it'd been Jack Warner's blood...I wouldn't have minded so much. The trouble was they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie."
(1939) was one of the last films in which he played a supporting role.]] Mary Philips, in her own sizzling stage hit A Touch of Brimstone (1935), refused to give up her Broadway career to go to Hollywood with Bogart. After the play closed, however, she went to Hollywood, but insisted on continuing her career (she was still a bigger star than he was), and they decided to divorce in 1937.
On August 21, 1938, Bogart entered into a disastrous third marriage, with actress Mayo Methot, a lively, friendly woman when sober, but paranoid when drunk. She was convinced that her husband was cheating on her. The more she and Bogart drifted apart, the more she drank, got furious and threw things at him: plants, crockery, anything close at hand. She even set the house on fire, stabbed him with a knife, and slashed her wrists on several occasions. Bogart for his part needled her mercilessly and seemed to enjoy confrontation. Sometimes he turned violent. The press accurately dubbed them "the Battling Bogarts". "The Bogart-Methot marriage was the sequel to the Civil War", said their friend Julius Epstein. A wag observed that there was "madness in his Methot". During this time, Bogart bought a motor launch, which he named Sluggy after his nickname for his hot-tempered wife. Despite his proclamations that "I like a jealous wife", "we get on so well together (because) we don’t have illusions about each other", and "I wouldn't give you two cents for a dame without a temper", it became a highly destructive relationship.
In California in 1945, Bogart bought a sailing yacht, the Santana, from actor Dick Powell. The sea was his sanctuary and he loved to sail around Catalina Island. He was a serious sailor, respected by other sailors who had seen too many Hollywood actors and their boats. About 30 weekends a year, he went out on his boat. He once said, "An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to be."
He had a lifelong disgust for the pretentious, fake or phony, as his son Stephen told Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne in 1999. Sensitive yet caustic, and disgusted by the inferior movies he was performing in, Bogart cultivated the persona of a soured idealist, a man exiled from better things in New York, living by his wits, drinking too much, cursed to live out his life among second-rate people and projects.
Bogart rarely saw his own films and avoided premieres. He did not participate in the Hollywood gossip game or cozy up to the newspaper columnists, nor engage in phony politeness and admiration of his peers or in behind the scenes back-stabbing. He even protected his privacy with invented press releases about his private life to satisfy the curiosity of the newspapers and the public. When he thought an actor, director or a movie studio had done something shoddy, he spoke up about it and was willing to be quoted. He advised Robert Mitchum that the only way to stay alive in Hollywood was to be an "againster". As a result, he was not the most popular of actors, and some in the Hollywood community shunned him privately to avoid trouble with the studios. But the Hollywood press, unaccustomed to candor, was delighted. Bogart once said:
All over Hollywood, they are continually advising me "Oh, you mustn't say that. That will get you in a lot of trouble" when I remark that some picture or writer or director or producer is no good. I don't get it. If he isn't any good, why can't you say so? If more people would mention it, pretty soon it might start having some effect.
The film cemented a strong personal and professional connection between Bogart and Huston. Bogart admired and somewhat envied Huston for his skill as a writer. Though a poor student, Bogart was a lifelong reader. He could quote Plato, Pope, Ralph Waldo Emerson and over a thousand lines of Shakespeare. He subscribed to the Harvard Law Review.
Bogart's sharp timing as private detective Sam Spade was praised by the cast and director as vital to the quick action and rapid-fire dialog. The film was a huge hit and for Huston, a triumphant directorial debut. Bogart was unusually happy with it, remarking, "it is practically a masterpiece. I don’t have many things I’m proud of... but that's one".
and Bogart in Casablanca.]] In real life, Bogart played tournament chess, one level below master level and often played with crew members and cast off the set. It was reportedly his idea that Rick Blaine be portrayed as a chess player, which also served as a metaphor for the sparring relationship of the characters played by Bogart and Rains in the movie. However, Paul Henreid proved to be the best player.
The on-screen magic of Bogart and Bergman was the result of two actors doing their very best work, not any real-life sparks, though Bogart's perennially jealous wife assumed otherwise. Off the set, the co-stars hardly spoke during the filming, where normally she had a reputation for affairs with her leading men. Because Bergman was taller than her leading man, Bogart had blocks attached to his shoes in certain scenes. Years later, after Bergman had taken up with Italian director Roberto Rossellini, and bore him a child, Bogart confronted her. "You used to be a great star", he said, "What are you now?" "A happy woman," she replied.
Casablanca won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture. Bogart was nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role, but lost out to Paul Lukas for his performance in Watch on the Rhine. Still, for Bogart, it was a huge triumph. The film vaulted him from fourth place to first in the studio's roster, finally exceeding James Cagney, and more than doubling his salary to over $460,000 per year by 1946, making him the highest paid actor in the world.
Bogart met Lauren Bacall while filming To Have and Have Not (1944), a very loose adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel. The movie has many similarities with Casablanca — the same enemies, the same kind of hero, even a piano player sidekick (this time Hoagy Carmichael).
When they met, Bacall was nineteen and Bogart was forty-five. He nicknamed her "Baby." She had been a model since she was sixteen and had acted in two failed plays. Bogart was drawn to Bacall's high cheekbones, green eyes, tawny blond hair, and lean body, as well as her poise and earthy, outspoken honesty. Reportedly he said, “I just saw your test. We’ll have a lot of fun together”. Their physical and emotional rapport was very strong from the start, and the age difference and different acting experience also created the additional dimension of a mentor-student relationship. Quite contrary to the Hollywood norm, it was his first affair with a leading lady. Bogart was still miserably married and his early meetings with Bacall were discreet and brief, their separations bridged by ardent love letters. The relationship made it much easier for the newcomer to make her first film, and Bogart did his best to put her at ease by joking with her and quietly coaching her. He let her steal scenes and even encouraged it. Howard Hawks, for his part, also did his best to boost her performance and her role, and found Bogart easy to direct.
Hawks at some point began to disapprove of the pair. Hawks considered himself her protector and mentor, and Bogart was usurping that role. Hawks fell for Bacall as well (normally he avoided his starlets, and he was married). Hawks told her that she meant nothing to Bogart and even threatened to send her to Monogram, the worst studio in Hollywood. Bogart calmed her down and then went after Hawks. Jack Warner settled the dispute and filming resumed. Out of jealousy, Hawks said of Bacall: "Bogie fell in love with the character she played, so she had to keep playing it the rest of her life."
Bogart was still torn between his new love and his sense of duty to his marriage. The mood on the set was tense, the actors both emotionally exhausted as Bogart tried to find a way out of his dilemma. Once again, the dialogue was full of sexual innuendo supplied by Hawks, and Bogart is convincing and enduring as private detective Philip Marlowe. In the end, the film was very successful, though some critics found the plot confusing and overly complicated.
Bogart and Bacall moved into a $160,000 white brick mansion in an exclusive neighborhood in Holmby Hills. The marriage proved to be a happy one, though there were the normal tensions due to their differences. He was a homebody and she liked nightlife. He loved the sea; it made her sick. Bacall allowed Bogart lots of weekend time on his boat as she got seasick. Bogart's drinking sometimes inflamed tensions.
Lauren Bacall gave birth to Stephen Humphrey Bogart on January 6, 1949. Stephen was named after Bogart's character's nickname in To Have and Have Not, making Bogart a father at 49. Stephen would go on to become a best-selling author and biographer, later hosting a television special about his father on Turner Classic Movies. They had their second child, Leslie Howard Bogart on August 23, 1952, a girl named after British actor Leslie Howard.
The film was grueling to make, and was done in summer for greater realism and atmosphere. James Agee wrote, "Bogart does a wonderful job with this character...miles ahead of the very good work he has done before”. John Huston won the Academy Award for direction and screenplay and his father won Best Supporting Actor, but the film had mediocre box office results. Bogart complained, “An intelligent script, beautifully directed—something different—and the public turned a cold shoulder on it".
Under Bogart's Santana Productions, which released through Columbia Pictures, Bogart starred in Knock on Any Door (1949), Tokyo Joe (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), Sirocco (1951) and Beat the Devil (1954). While the majority of his films lost money at the box office (the main reason for Santana's end), at least two of them are still remembered today; In a Lonely Place is now recognized as a masterpiece of film noir. Bogart plays embittered writer Dixon Steele, who has a history of violence and becomes a suspect in a murder case at the same time that he falls in love with a failed actress, played by Gloria Grahame. Many Bogart biographers and actress/writer Louise Brooks agree that the role is the closest to Bogart's real self and is considered among his best performances. She wrote that the film “gave him a role that he could play with complexity, because the film character's pride in his art, his selfishness, drunkenness, lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence were shared by the real Bogart”. The character even mimics some of Bogart's personal habits, including twice ordering Bogart's favorite meal of ham and eggs.
Beat the Devil, his last film with his close friend and favorite director John Huston, also enjoys a cult following. Co-written by Truman Capote, the movie is a parody of The Maltese Falcon, and is a tale of an amoral group of rogues chasing an unattainable treasure, in this instance uranium.
Bogart sold his interest in Santana to Columbia for over $1 million in 1955.
Bacall came for the duration (over four months), leaving their young child behind, but the Bogarts started the trip with a junket through Europe, including a visit with Pope Pius XII. Later, the glamor would be gone and she would make herself useful as a cook, nurse and clothes washer, for which Bogart praised her, “I don’t know what we’d have done without her. She Luxed my undies in darkest Africa”. Just about everyone in the cast came down with dysentery except Bogart and John Huston, who subsisted on canned food and alcohol. Bogart explained: "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whisky. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." The teetotaling Hepburn, in and out of character, fared worse in the difficult conditions, losing weight, and at one time, getting very ill. Bogart resisted Huston's insistence on using real leeches in a key scene where Bogart has to drag the boat through a shallow marsh, until reasonable fakes were employed. In the end, the crew overcame illness, soldier ant invasions, leaking boats, poor food, attacking hippos, bad water filters, fierce heat, isolation, and a boat fire to complete a memorable film. Despite the discomfort of jumping from the boat into swamps, rivers and marshes the film apparently rekindled in Bogart his early love of boats and on his return to California from the Congo he bought a classic mahogany Hacker-Craft runabout which he kept until his premature death.
The African Queen was the first Technicolor film in which Bogart appeared. Remarkably, he appeared in relatively few color films during the rest of his career, which continued for another five years. (His other color films included The Caine Mutiny, The Barefoot Contessa, We're No Angels and The Left Hand of God.)
The role of Charlie Allnutt won Bogart his only Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1951. Bogart considered his performance to be the best of his film career. He had vowed to friends that if he won, his speech would break the convention of thanking everyone in sight. He advised Claire Trevor, when she had been nominated for Key Largo, to “just say you did it all yourself and don’t thank anyone”. But when Bogart won the Academy Award, which he truly coveted despite his well-advertised disdain for Hollywood, he said “It's a long way from the Belgian Congo to the stage of this theatre. It's nicer to be here. Thank you very much...No one does it alone. As in tennis, you need a good opponent or partner to bring out the best in you. John and Katie helped me to be where I am now”. Despite the thrilling win and the recognition, Bogart later commented, “The way to survive an Oscar is never to try to win another one...too many stars...win it and then figure they have to top themselves...they become afraid to take chances. The result: A lot of dull performances in dull pictures”.
Bogart gave a bravura performance as Captain Queeg, an unstable naval officer, in many ways an extension of the character he had played in The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and The Big Sleep—the wary loner who trusts no one—but with none of the warmth or humor that made those characters so appealing. Like his portrayal of Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bogart played a paranoid, self-pitying character whose small-mindedness eventually destroyed him. Three months before the film's release, Bogart as Queeg appeared on the cover of Time magazine, while on Broadway Henry Fonda was starring in the stage version (in a different role), both of which generated strong publicity for the film.
In Sabrina, Billy Wilder, unable to secure Cary Grant, chose Bogart for the role of the older, conservative brother who competes with his younger playboy sibling (William Holden) for the affection of the Cinderella-like Sabrina (Audrey Hepburn). Bogart was lukewarm about the part, but agreed to it on a handshake with Wilder, without a finished script, and with the director's assurances to take good care of Bogart during the filming. But Bogart got on poorly with his director and co-stars. He also complained about the script, which was written on a last-minute, daily basis, and that Wilder favored Hepburn and Holden on and off the set. The main problem was that Wilder was the opposite of his ideal director, John Huston, in both style and personality. Bogart told the press that Wilder was "overbearing" and "is the kind of Prussian German with a riding crop. He is the type of director I don’t like to work with... the picture is a crock of crap. I got sick and tired of who gets Sabrina." Wilder said, "We parted as enemies but finally made up." Despite the acrimony, the film was successful. The New York Times said of Bogart, "he is incredibly adroit... the skill with which this old rock-ribbed actor blend the gags and such duplicities with a manly manner of melting is one of the incalculable joys of the show."
The Barefoot Contessa, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz in 1954 and filmed in Rome, gave Bogart one of his subtlest roles. In this Hollywood back-story movie, Bogart again is the broken-down man, this time the cynical director-narrator who saves his career by making a star of a flamenco dancer Ava Gardner, modeled on the real life of Rita Hayworth. Bogart was uneasy with Gardner because she had just split from "rat-pack" buddy Frank Sinatra and was carrying on with bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín. Bogart told her, "Half the world's female population would throw themselves at Frank's feet and here you are flouncing around with guys who wear capes and little ballerina slippers." He was also annoyed by her inexperienced performance. Later, she credited him with helping her. Bogart's performance was generally praised as the strongest part of the film. During the filming, while Bacall was home, Bogart resumed his discreet affair with Verita Peterson, his long-time studio assistant whom he took sailing and enjoyed drinking with. But when Bacall suddenly arrived on the scene discovering them together, Bacall took it quite well. She extracted an expensive shopping spree from him and the three traveled together after the shooting.
Bogart could be generous with actors, particularly those who were blacklisted, down on their luck, or having personal problems. During the filming of The Left Hand of God (1955), he noticed his co-star Gene Tierney having a hard time remembering her lines and also behaving oddly. He coached Tierney, feeding her lines. He was familiar with mental illness (his sister had bouts of depression), and Bogart encouraged Tierney to seek treatment, which she did. He also stood behind Joan Bennett and insisted on her as his co-star in We're No Angels when a scandal made her persona non grata with Jack Warner.
In 1955, he made three films: We're No Angels (dir. Michael Curtiz), The Left Hand of God (dir. Edward Dmytryk) and The Desperate Hours (dir. William Wyler). Mark Robson's The Harder They Fall (1956) was his last film.
Romanoff's in Beverly Hills was where the Rat Pack became official. Sinatra was named Pack Leader, Bacall was named Den Mother, Bogie was Director of Public Relations, and Sid Luft was Acting Cage Manager. When asked by columnist Earl Wilson what the purpose of the group was, Bacall responded "to drink a lot of bourbon and stay up late."
Bogart was a United States Chess Federation tournament director and active in the California State Chess Association, and a frequent visitor to the Hollywood chess club. In 1945, the cover of the June–July issue of Chess Review showed Bogart playing with Charles Boyer, as Lauren Bacall (who also played) looks on. In June 1945, in an interview in the magazine Silver Screen, when asked what things in life mattered most to him, he replied that chess was one of his main interests. He added that he played chess almost daily, especially between film shootings. He loved the game all his life.
Bogart, a heavy smoker and drinker, contracted cancer of the esophagus. He almost never spoke of his failing health and refused to see a doctor until January 1956. A diagnosis was made several weeks later and by then removal of his esophagus, two lymph nodes and a rib on March 1, 1956 was too late to halt the disease, even with chemotherapy. He underwent corrective surgery in November 1956 after the cancer had spread.
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy came to see him. Frank Sinatra was also a frequent visitor. Bogart was too weak to walk up and down stairs. He valiantly fought the pain and tried to joke about his immobility: "Put me in the dumbwaiter and I'll ride down to the first floor in style." Which is what happened; the dumbwaiter was altered to accommodate his wheelchair. Hepburn, in an interview, described the last time she and Spencer Tracy saw Bogart (the night before he died):
Bogart had just turned 57 and weighed 80 pounds (36 kg) when he died on January 14, 1957 after falling into a coma. He died at 2:25 a.m. at his home at 232 Mapleton Drive in Holmby Hills, California. His simple funeral was held at All Saints Episcopal Church with musical selections played from Bogart's favorite composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and Claude Debussy. It was attended by some of Hollywood's biggest stars including: Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, David Niven, Ronald Reagan, James Mason, Danny Kaye, Joan Fontaine, Marlene Dietrich, Errol Flynn, Gregory Peck and Gary Cooper, as well as Billy Wilder and Jack Warner. Bacall had asked Spencer Tracy to give the eulogy, but Tracy was too upset, so John Huston gave the eulogy instead, and reminded the gathered mourners that while Bogart's life had ended far too soon, it had been a rich one.
His cremated remains are interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California. Buried with him is a small gold whistle, which he had given to his future wife, Lauren Bacall, before they married. In reference to their first movie together, it was inscribed: "If you want anything, just whistle."
{| class="wikitable" style="max-width: 26em;" |+ Academy Awards |- ! Year !! Award !! Film !! y/n |- | rowspan="1" | 1943 || Best Actor || Casablanca || style="text-align: center;" | Nominated |- | rowspan="1" | 1951 || Best Actor || The African Queen || style="text-align: center;" | Won |- | rowspan="1" | 1954 || Best Actor || The Caine Mutiny || style="text-align: center;" | Nominated |}
In 1997, Entertainment Weekly magazine named him the number one movie legend of all time. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him the Greatest Male Star of All Time.
Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) was the first film to pay tribute to Bogart. Later, in Woody Allen's comic tribute to Bogart Play It Again, Sam (1972), Bogart's ghost comes to the aid of Allen's bumbling character, a movie critic with woman troubles and whose "sex life has turned into the 'Petrified Forest'".
In 1997, the United States Postal Service featured Bogart in its "Legends of Hollywood" series.
Category:1898 births Category:1957 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:Actors from New York City Category:American chess players Category:American Episcopalians Category:American film actors Category:American stage actors Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) Category:California Democrats Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer Category:New York Democrats Category:Phillips Academy alumni Category:United States Navy sailors
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 28°36′50″N77°12′32″N |
|---|---|
| Bgcolour | silver |
| Name | Richard Brooks |
| Birthname | Ruben Sax |
| Birth date | May 18, 1912 |
| Birth place | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
| Death date | March 11, 1992 |
| Death place | Los Angeles, California |
| Spouse | Jean Brooks (1941-1944) Jean Simmons (1960-1977) |
Richard Brooks (May 18, 1912 – March 11, 1992) was an American screenwriter, director, novelist and occasional producer.
His second published novel was Splinters in 1941, but his 1945 novel, The Brick Foxhole, was a larger success - it is the story of a group of Marines who pick up and then murder a homosexual man, and the novel is a stinging indictment of intolerance. The book was made into a movie in 1947 as Crossfire, though the intolerance was switched from homophobia to anti-Jewishness to please studio executives and 1940s audiences (Brooks received credit for the book on which the movie is based, but was contractually barred from actually working on the screenplay).
In the 1940s he wrote the screenplays for the critically acclaimed Key Largo and Brute Force, both suspenseful examples of film noir. He also co-wrote Storm Warning, an anti-Klan melodrama with film-noir overtones, in conjunction with Daniel Fuchs. In 1950 he directed his film Crisis, which gave a much darker role to the actor Cary Grant than he had previously attempted. He won his only Oscar in 1960 for his screenplay for Elmer Gantry, although he was nominated for the films Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Professionals (1966), and In Cold Blood (1967).
Other notable films directed by Brooks include The Brothers Karamazov starring Yul Brynner, Lord Jim starring Peter O'Toole, The Last Time I Saw Paris with Elizabeth Taylor -- adapting, in their turn, Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. His last significant project was the controversial Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
He became part of Hugh Hefner's family, and part of Hefner's feudal mansion, where he was observed by the satirist Clive James: "Hefner's estate teemed with voluptuous young women and the dining-room where free hamburgers were available 24 hours a day was impressively populated with Hollywood male notables. But it was sadly apparent that most of them were superannuated lechers. The film director Richard Brooks was typical. He hadn't directed a film in decades and one of the reasons was that he had been here, chomping the free hamburgers, while he eyed the women. He was in Hef's hamburger heaven, sizing up the poontang on his way to a final resting place in Hillside Memorial Park." James's observations are untrue in at least one respect: Brooks worked as a director steadily for 35 years from 1950 to 1985, and he never had a period where he "hadn't directed a film in decades".
Brooks died from congestive heart failure in 1992 in Beverly Hills, California and was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Brooks has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd.
Category:1912 births Category:1992 deaths Category:American film producers Category:American screenwriters Category:Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award winners Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in California Category:People from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:United States Marines Category:American film directors Category:American novelists
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 28°36′50″N77°12′32″N |
|---|---|
| Bgcolour | silver |
| Name | Max Steiner |
| Imagesize | 240px |
| Birth name | Maximilian Raoul Steiner |
| Birth date | May 10, 1888 |
| Birth place | Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) |
| Death date | December 28, 1971 |
| Death place | Hollywood, California, USA |
| Occupation | composer, arranger, conductor |
Max Steiner (May 10, 1888 – December 28, 1971) was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as such is often referred to as "the father of film music". Along with such composers as Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman and Miklós Rózsa, Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films.
Steiner composed hundreds of film scores, including The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944), which won him Academy Awards. He was nominated for the Academy Award a total of twenty six times, a record surpassed only by Alfred Newman and John Williams for the most nominations received by a composer. Three of his scores were also nominated at a time when composers were not eligible to be nominated in the Original Score category.
Steiner was one of the best-known composers in Hollywood, and is widely regarded today as one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. He was a frequent collaborator with some of the most famous film directors in history, including John Ford and William Wyler. Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942), and the film score for which he is possibly best known, Gone with the Wind (1939). Despite being one of the most popular film soundtracks ever written, Gone with the Wind failed to win an Oscar for him.
A child prodigy in composing, Steiner received piano instruction from Johannes Brahms and, at the age of sixteen, enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Music (now known as the University of Music and Performing Arts), where he was taught by Gustav Mahler among others. His musical aptitudes enabled him to complete the school's four-year program in only two. At the age of 16, Steiner wrote and conducted the operetta The Beautiful Greek Girl. At the start of World War I, he was working in London and was classified as an enemy alien but was befriended by the Duke of Westminster and given exit papers. He arrived in New York City in December 1914 with $32 to his name.
Steiner worked in New York for eleven years as a musical director, arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of Broadway operettas and musicals written by Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, and George Gershwin, among others. Steiner's credits include: George White's Scandals (1922), Lady, Be Good (1924), and Rosalie (1928).
In 1929, Steiner went to Hollywood to orchestrate the European film version of the Florenz Ziegfeld show Rio Rita for RKO. The score for King Kong (1933) made Steiner's reputation; it was one of the first American films to have an extensive musical score. He conducted the scores for several Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, including Top Hat (1935) and Roberta (1935).
Steiner scored several films produced by RKO, the final of which was Follow the Fleet. He left RKO in 1936 and soon became the musical director of Selznick International Pictures.
In April 1937, he signed a long-term contract with Warner Bros., and the same year composed the famous fanfare which introduced pictures produced by the studio, although this is no longer in use (curiously, this was never used for the studio's television productions).
In 1939, Steiner was borrowed from Warner Bros. by David O Selznick to compose the score to Gone with the Wind. He was given only three months to compose a large amount of music for the film, whilst at the same time scoring We Are Not Alone, Dark Victory and Four Wives for Warner. Gone with the Wind and Dark Victory both earned him Academy Award nominations, however, he lost to the score of The Wizard of Oz by Herbert Stothart. Along with Clark Gable, Steiner was one of the few nominees for Gone with the Wind that did not win. Many feel that Steiner deserved the award. The score was ranked by the AFI as the second greatest American film score of all time.
Steiner received his next Oscar nomination for the 1940 film The Letter, his first of several collaborations with legendary director William Wyler. A further nomination followed the next year for Sergeant York. In 1942, Steiner won his second Oscar for Now, Voyager, and was also nominated for Casablanca, which remains one of his most famous scores. He received his third and final Oscar in 1944 for Since You Went Away.
Steiner's pace slowed significantly in the mid-fifties, and he began freelancing. In 1954, RCA Victor asked Steiner to prepare and conduct an orchestral suite of music from Gone with the Wind for a special LP, which was later issued on CD. There are also acetates of Steiner conducting the Warner Brothers studio orchestra in music from some of his film scores.
Steiner reunited with John Ford in 1956 to score The Searchers, widely considered the greatest western ever made. He returned to Warner-Bros in 1958 (although his contract ended in 1953) and scored several films, in addition to a rare venture into television composing a library of music for the fourth season of Hawaiian Eye. He continued to score films produced by Warner until the mid sixties.
Steiner's final original score was for the 1965 film Two on a Guillotine. His glossary of film scores encompasses over 300 film scores.
In 1963, Steiner began writing his autobiography, which, although completed, was never published, and is the source of a few biographical errors concerning this composer. A copy of the manuscript resides with the rest of the Max Steiner Collection at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
Category:1888 births Category:1971 deaths Category:Academy Award winners Category:American film score composers Category:Austrian immigrants to the United States Category:Deaths from congestive heart failure Category:Jewish classical musicians Category:Jewish composers and songwriters Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:Opera composers Category:People from Vienna Category:People from Leopoldstadt Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 28°36′50″N77°12′32″N |
|---|---|
| Caption | The cover of Yank, The Army Weekly (1944) |
| Birth name | Betty Joan Perske |
| Birth date | September 16, 1924 |
| Birth place | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 (including Stephen Bogart and Sam Robards) |
| Years active | 1944 – present |
Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske; September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.
She first emerged as leading lady in the film noir genre, including appearances in The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), as well as a comedian in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Designing Woman (1957). Bacall has also worked in the Broadway musical, gaining Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. Her performance in the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.
In 1999, Bacall was ranked as one of the 25 actresses on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list by the American Film Institute. In 2009, she was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award at the inaugural Governors Awards.
Bacall became a part-time fashion model. Howard Hawks's wife Nancy spotted her on the March 1943 cover of Harper's Bazaar and urged Hawks to have her take a screen test for To Have and Have Not. Hawks invited her to Hollywood for the audition. He signed her up to a seven-year personal contract, brought her to Hollywood, gave her $100 a week, and began to manage her career. Hawks changed her name to Lauren Bacall. Nancy Hawks took Bacall under her wing. She dressed the newcomer stylishly, and guided her in matters of elegance, manners and taste. Bacall's voice was trained to be lower, more masculine and sexier, which resulted in one of the most distinctive voices in Hollywood. In the movie, Bacall takes on Nancy's nickname “Slim”.
On the set, Humphrey Bogart, who was married to Mayo Methot, initiated a relationship with Bacall some weeks into shooting and they began seeing each other.
On a visit to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on February 10, 1945, Bacall's press agent, chief of publicity at Warner Bros. Charlie Enfield, asked the 20-year-old Bacall to sit on the piano which was being played by Vice-President of the United States Harry S. Truman. The photos caused controversy and made worldwide headlines.
After To Have and Have Not, Bacall was seen opposite Charles Boyer in the critically-panned Confidential Agent (1945). Bacall would state in her autobiography that her career never fully recovered from this film, and that studio boss Jack Warner did not care about quality. She then appeared with Bogart in the film noir The Big Sleep (1946), the thriller Dark Passage (1947) and John Huston's melodramatic suspense film Key Largo (1948). She was cast with Gary Cooper in the adventure tale Bright Leaf (1950).
Bacall starred in the CinemaScope comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), a runaway hit that saw her teaming up with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable. Bacall got positive notices for her turn as the witty , Schatze Page. At one point in the film, when discussing marriage to an older man, she has the (self-referential) line, "Look at that old fella, what's-his-name, in The African Queen." According to her autobiography, Bacall refused to press her hand- and footprints in the cemented forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre at the Los Angeles premiere of the film.
Written on the Wind, directed by Douglas Sirk in 1956, is now considered a classic tear-jerker. Appearing with Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack, Bacall played a determined woman. Bacall states in her autobiography that she did not think much of the role. While struggling at home with Bogart's severe illness (cancer of the esophagus), Bacall starred with Gregory Peck in the slapstick comedy Designing Woman and gained rave reviews. It was directed by Vincente Minnelli and released in New York City on May 16, 1957, four months after Bogart succumbed to cancer on January 14.
For her work in the Chicago theatre, Bacall won the Sarah Siddons Award in 1972 and again in 1984. In 1976, she co-starred with John Wayne in his last picture, The Shootist. The two became friends, despite significant political differences between them. They had previously been cast together in 1955's Blood Alley.
Bacall received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1997. In 1999, she was voted one of the 25 most significant female movie stars in history by the American Film Institute. Since then, her movie career has seen a new renaissance and she has attracted respectful notices for her performances in high-profile projects such as Dogville (2003) and Birth (2004), both with Nicole Kidman. She is one of the leading actors in Paul Schrader's 2007 movie The Walker.
In March 2006, Bacall was seen at the 78th Annual Academy Awards introducing a film montage dedicated to film noir. She also made a cameo appearance as herself on The Sopranos, in the April 2006 episode, "Luxury Lounge", during which she was punched and robbed by a masked Christopher Moltisanti.
In September 2006, Bacall was awarded the first Katharine Hepburn Medal, which recognizes "women whose lives, work and contributions embody the intelligence, drive and independence of the four-time-Oscar-winning actress", by Bryn Mawr College's Katharine Houghton Hepburn Center. She gave an address at the memorial service of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr at the Reform Club in London in June 2007.
Bacall is the spokesperson for the Tuesday Morning discount chain. Commercials show her in a limousine waiting for the store to open at the beginning of one of their sales events. She is currently producing a jewelry line with the company, Weinman Brothers.
Bacall was selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Honorary Academy Award. The award was presented at the inaugural Governors Awards on November 14, 2009.
Shortly after Bogart's death in 1957, Bacall had a relationship with singer and actor Frank Sinatra. She told Robert Osborne, of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), in an interview that she had ended the romance. However, in her autobiography, she wrote that Sinatra abruptly ended the relationship, having become angry that the story of his proposal to Bacall had reached the press. Bacall and her friend Swifty Lazar had run into the gossip columnist Louella Parsons, to whom Lazar had spilled the beans. Sinatra then cut Bacall off and went to Las Vegas.
Bacall was married to actor Jason Robards from 1961 to 1969. According to Bacall's autobiography, she divorced Robards mainly because of his alcoholism. In her autobiography Now, she recalls having a relationship with Len Cariou, her co-star in Applause.
Bacall had two children with Bogart and one child with Robards. Her children with Bogart are her son Stephen Humphrey Bogart (born January 6, 1949), a news producer, documentary film maker and author; and her daughter Leslie Bogart (born August 23, 1952), a yoga instructor. Sam Robards (born December 16, 1961), her son with Robards, is an actor.
Bacall has written two autobiographies, Lauren Bacall By Myself (1978) and Now (1994). In 2005, the first volume was updated with an extra chapter: "By Myself and Then Some".
She appeared alongside Humphrey Bogart in a photograph printed at the end of an article he wrote, titled "I'm No Communist", in the May 1948 edition of Photoplay magazine, written to counteract negative publicity resulting from his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Bogart and Bacall specifically distanced themselves from the Hollywood Ten and were quoted as saying: "We're about as much in favor of Communism as J. Edgar Hoover." In October 1947, Bacall and Bogart traveled to Washington, DC along with other Hollywood stars, in a group that called itself the Committee for the First Amendment.
She campaigned for Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 Presidential election and for Robert Kennedy in his 1964 run for Senate.
In a 2005 interview with Larry King, Bacall described herself as "anti-Republican... A liberal. The L word." She went on to say that "being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind."
Bacall has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1724 Vine Street.
Category:1924 births Category:Living people Category:American Academy of Dramatic Arts alumni Category:American female models Category:American film actors Category:American stage actors Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe (film) winners Category:American Jews Category:American actors of German descent Category:American people of German-Jewish descent Category:American people of Polish-Jewish descent Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Jewish actors Category:New York Democrats Category:People from New York City Category:Tony Award winners Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Coordinates | 28°36′50″N77°12′32″N |
|---|---|
| Name | Greta Garbo |
| Caption | Garbo in a publicity still for Susan Lenox (1931) |
| Birth name | Greta Lovisa Gustafsson |
| Birth date | September 18, 1905 |
| Birth place | Stockholm, Sweden |
| Death date | April 15, 1990 |
| Death place | New York City, New York, United States |
| Years active | 1920–1941 |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Website | http://www.gretagarbo.com/ |
Regarded as one of the greatest and most inscrutable movie stars ever produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Hollywood studio system, Garbo appeared in both the silent and the talkies era of film-making. She was one of the few silent movie actresses to successfully negotiate the transition to sound, which she achieved in Anna Christie (1930), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She appeared twice as the fabled Anna Karenina, once in silent film, Love (1927), and again with Anna Karenina (1935), for which she received the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. She considered her 1936 performance as the courtesan Marguerite Gautier as her best performance and her role in Camille (1936) earned her a second Academy Award nomination. During the World War II era, MGM attempted to recast the somber and melancholy Garbo into a comic actress with Ninotchka (1939) and Two-Faced Woman (1941), both of which featured her unusually loud, comical, and singing. For Ninotchka, Garbo was again nominated for an Academy Award; Two-Faced Woman did well at the box office, but was a critical failure. Garbo received a 1954 Honorary Academy Award.
In her retirement, during which she became increasingly reclusive, she lived in New York City. A 1986 Sidney Lumet film, Garbo Talks, reflected the continuing popular obsession with the star. Until the end of her life, Garbo-watching became a sport among the paparazzi and the media, but she remained elusive. She died in 1990 at the age of 84 from pneumonia and renal failure.
In 1999, the AFI ranked Greta Garbo 5th on their list of All Time Female Screen Legends, after the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman.
Despite living in near poverty, Garbo maintained her moonstruck attitude toward the stage: she played amateur theatre with her friends and frequented the Mosebacke Theater. Additionally, she later admitted to a childhood crush on Carl Brisson and would cite Naima Wifstrand as a role model.
Alva, Garbo's sister, worked in an insurance office as a stenographer, and Sven, Garbo's brother, eventually married and brought his wife and their only child, a daughter who would later be known as Gray. The family of seven continued to remain in a three-bedroom apartment. The mood at home became further strained when Garbo's father, to whom she was extremely close, began missing work — he had worked odd jobs as street cleaner, grocer, factory worker and a butcher's assistant — and when in winter 1919 the Spanish flu had spread throughout Stockholm and Karl Alfred fell ill and lost his job, Garbo stayed at home looking after her father and brought him to the hospital for weekly treatments. In 1920, when she was 14 years old, her father died.
Garbo was introduced to stage and screen actress Lilyan Tashman at a tennis party in 1927 and allegedly had an affair with her. The two became inseparable companions who went shopping, swimming, and to Tashman's garden cottage.
In 1931, Garbo befriended the writer and socialite Mercedes de Acosta, introduced to her by the author Salka Viertel. According to de Acosta, the pair ultimately began a sporadic and volatile romance, punctuated by long periods during which Garbo ignored her and disregarded her many love letters. After about a year, the relationship ended, but they maintained contact. Following de Acosta's claims about her many trysts with Garbo, in her controversial autobiography Here Lies the Heart in 1960, the pair were permanently estranged.
After a contract dispute with MGM, she eventually signed a new contract with the studio in July 1932, which gave her more control over her parts and her private life. Garbo continued to demonstrate great loyalty to John Gilbert and insisted that he appear with her in 1933's Queen Christina (1933), despite the objection of MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer; Laurence Olivier had originally been chosen for the role. In 1935, David O. Selznick wanted to cast her as the dying heiress in Dark Victory, but she insisted on doing Tolstoy's Anna Karenina instead. Although Anna Karenina was arguably one of her most famous roles, Garbo regarded her role as the doomed courtesan in George Cukor's Camille (1936), opposite Robert Taylor, as her finest performance.
Garbo was nominated four times for an Academy Award for Best Actress; in 1930 for Anna Christie and for Romance, but might have been a victim of MGM's inner politics: she lost out to Irving Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer who won for The Divorcee. In 1937 Garbo was nominated for Camille but lost out to Luise Rainer who won for The Good Earth. Max Breen was among those critics indignant that Greta Garbo's performance in Camille had been overlooked in favor of Rainer. Finally in 1939 Garbo was nominated for Ninotchka but again came away empty-handed: Gone With the Wind swept the major awards, including Best Actress, which went to Vivien Leigh.
The Swedish royal medal, Litteris et Artibus, awarded to people who have made important contributions to culture, especially music, dramatic art or literature, was presented to Garbo in January 1937. She then starred opposite Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Ninotchka attempted to lighten Garbo's somber and melancholy image. The comedy, Garbo's first, was marketed with the tagline, "Garbo laughs!", playing off the tagline for Anna Christie, "Garbo talks!"
During the 1940's, Garbo maintained a discreet liaison with Swedish industrialist John Hjelme-Lundberg who traveled on at least three occasions to New York to be with her. After his death, found among Hjelme-Lundberg's possessions was a box of silk scarves, evidently a gift from Garbo. Additionally, Hjelme-Lundberg kept an autographed photo of the actress with an inscription in their native Swedish: "Hjelme, with all my love, G" ("Hjelme, med all min älska, G."). According to the memoir written by dancer, model, and silent film actress Louise Brooks, she and Garbo had a brief liaison. Brooks described Garbo as masculine but a "charming and tender lover". In 1948, Garbo signed a contract for $200,000 with producer Walter Wanger, who had produced Queen Christina in 1933, to shoot a picture based on Balzac's La Duchesse de Langeais which Max Ophüls was slated to adapt and direct. as the Russian ballerina Grusinskaya in Grand Hotel (1932):
I want to be alone (...) I just want to be alonea theme echoed in several of her other roles, e.g. in The Single Standard (1929) where her character Arden Stuart 'spoke' the line: "I am walking alone because I want to be alone" and in Love (1927) where a title card read "I like to be alone". By the early 1930s the phrase was indelibly linked with Garbo's persona, but Garbo later commented:
I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be let alone.' There is all the difference.
In a surprise interview granted to the press on board the liner Kungsholm in October 1938 in New York after Garbo had returned from her summer vacation in Europe partly spent in Ravello with conductor Leopold Stokowski, she was asked if she had enjoyed her vacation. Sighing huskily, Garbo replied, "You cannot have a vacation without peace and you cannot have peace unless left alone." Garbo neither married nor had children
In his 1995 book Garbo: a biography Barry Paris relates Garbo's relationships—which were often just close friendships—with actor George Brent, conductor Leopold Stokowski, nutritionist Gayelord Hauser, photographer Cecil Beaton, and her manager George Schlee, husband of designer Valentina.
On 9 February 1951, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In 1953, she bought a seven-room apartment in New York City at 450 East 52nd Street, where she lived for the rest of her life. Although she occasionally jet-setted with some of the world's best known personalities—Aristotle Onassis and Cecil Beaton—she elected to live a private life. She was known for taking long walks through the city's streets dressed casually and wearing large sunglasses,
Despite Garbo's obvious wish for privacy, elements of the public remained obsessed with her, and until her death, Garbo sightings were considered sport for paparazzi. In the 1984 film, Garbo Talks, directed by Sidney Lumet, a son (Ron Silver)'s attempt to fulfill his dying mother's (Anne Bancroft) request by arranging for her to meet the Great Garbo reflected popular obsession with the star.
Garbo lived the last years of her life in relative seclusion. On 15 April 1990, aged 84, she died in New York Hospital as a result of pneumonia and renal failure. She had been successfully treated for breast cancer in 1984.
Garbo was cremated, and after a long legal battle, her ashes were finally interred in 1999 at Skogskyrkogården Cemetery just south of her native Stockholm. She invested very wisely, particularly in commercial property along Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. She left her entire estate, estimated at $20,000,000 USD, to her niece, Gray Reisfield.
During Garbo's Hollywood career, the animated cartoons frequently caricatured her. These include from Warner Brothers:
* I've got to Sing a Torch Song (1933) Porky's Road Race (1937) Speaking of the Weather (1937) Porky's Five and Ten (1938) Malibu Beach Party (1940) Hollywood Steps Out (1941).
Among the Disney cartoons Garbo is caricatured in are:
* Mickey's Gala Premiere (1933) Mickey's Polo Team (1936) Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938) The Autograph Hound (1939).
For her contributions to cinema, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard, in a 1950 Daily Variety opinion poll Garbo was voted Best Actress of the Half Century, and she was once designated as the most beautiful woman who ever lived by the Guinness Book of World Records. Garbo was awarded an Academy Honorary Award "for her unforgettable screen performances" in 1954. Garbo did not show up and the statuette was mailed to her home address.
Garbo received praise from many industry colleagues:
Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft. I cannot analyse this woman's acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera. —Bette Davis
She had a talent that few actresses or actors possess. In close-ups she gave the impression, the illusion of great movement. She would move her head just a little bit and the whole screen would come alive — like a strong breeze that made itself felt. —George Cukor
Italian motion picture director Luchino Visconti had actively been working on a film adaptation of Proust's colossal work Remembrance of Things Past since 1969 with a breathtaking prospective cast including Silvana Mangano, Alain Delon, Helmut Berger, Charlotte Rampling, Laurence Olivier and Garbo in the small part of Maria Sophia, Queen of Naples. Reportedly Garbo went to Rome and did a color screen test for the role in 1971, and Visconti exclaimed:
I am very pleased at the idea that this woman, with her severe and authoritarian presence, should figure in the decadent and rarefied climate of the world described by Proust.Filmography
{| class="wikitable sortable" |- ! Year !! Film !! Role !! class="unsortable" | Notes |- | 1920 | Mr and Mrs Stockholm Go Shopping | Elder sister |
Garbo's segment is often known as How Not to Dress
Source: The 2005 Kino Video The Saga of Gosta Berling DVD |- | 1921 | The Gay Cavalier | Maidservant | Uncredited
The film is lost |- | 1921 | Our Daily Bread | Companion |
Source: The 2005 Kino Video The Saga of Gosta Berling DVD |- | 1921 | A Scarlet Angel | Extra | Uncredited
The film is lost |- | 1922 | Peter the Tramp | Greta |
Source: The 2005 Kino Video The Saga of Gosta Berling DVD |- | 1924 | The Saga of Gosta Berling | Elizabeth Dohna |
Directed by Mauritz Stiller |- | 1925 | The Joyless Street | Greta Rumfort | |- | 1926 | The Torrent | Leonora Moreno aka La Brunna | First American movie |- | 1926 | The Temptress | Elena | |- | 1926 | Flesh and the Devil | Felicitas | Directed by Clarence Brown |- | 1927 | Love | Anna Karenina | Directed by Edmund Goulding |- | 1928 | The Divine Woman | Marianne | Only a 9 minute reel exists. Source: The Mysterious Lady DVD |- | 1928 | The Mysterious Lady | Tania Fedorova | |- | 1928 | A Woman of Affairs | Diana Merrick Furness | |- | 1929 | Wild Orchids | Lillie Sterling | |- | 1929 | The Single Standard | Arden Stuart Hewlett | |- | 1929 | The Kiss | Irene Guarry | |- | 1930 | Anna Christie | Anna Christie | Garbo's first talkie
Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress |- | 1930 | Romance | Madame Rita Cavallini | Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress |- | 1931 | Anna Christie | Anna Christie | MGM's German version of Anna Christie, released early 1931 |- | 1931 | Inspiration | Yvonne Valbret | |- | 1931 | Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) | Susan Lenox | |- | 1931 | Mata Hari | Mata Hari | |- | 1932 | Grand Hotel | Grusinskaya | |- | 1932 | As You Desire Me | Zara aka Marie | |- | 1933 | Queen Christina | Queen Christina | |- | 1934 | The Painted Veil | Katrin Koerber Fane | |- | 1935 | Anna Karenina | Anna Karenina | New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |- | 1936 | Camille | Marguerite Gautier | New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress
National Board of Review Best Acting Award
Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress |- | 1937 | Conquest | Countess Marie Walewska | |- | 1939 | Ninotchka | Nina Ivanovna 'Ninotchka' Yakushova | National Board of Review Best Acting Award
Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |- | 1941 | Two-Faced Woman | Karin Borg Blake | National Board of Review Best Acting Award
Nominated—New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress |}References
Bibliography
LaSalle, Mick, San Francisco Chronicle. "Interview with John Gilbert's daughter, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain". External links
*
Greta Garbo Biography—Yahoo! Movies Garbo History Category:1905 births Category:1990 deaths Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:American film actors Category:American Lutherans Category:American silent film actors Category:Breast cancer survivors Category:Deaths from pneumonia Category:Deaths from renal failure Category:Infectious disease deaths in New York Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from Stockholm Category:Swedish film actors Category:Swedish immigrants to the United States Category:Swedish Lutherans Category:Swedish silent film actors Category:American actors of Swedish descent Category:American people of Swedish descent
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
