Good Old Tony Curtis! We could always depend on Tony for a sly, ingratiating smile, charm that ranged from candid-sweet to barracuda insincerity, and a desire to please that never quit. Some of his best work came while schmoozing and nice-nice clawing his way to the top, where he epitomized the glamorous movie star with universal appeal. Kino gathers three of Curtis’s better mid-career starring vehicles, directed by three top talents — Blake Edwards, Robert Mulligan and Norman Jewison.
Tony Curtis Collection
The Perfect Furlough, The Great Impostor, 40 Pounds of Trouble
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
312 minutes
Street Date August 4, 2020
available through Kino Lorber
49.95
Starring: Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis appears to have become a Golden Boy at late-’40s Universal-International by playing the role of ambitious actor to the hilt. Everybody caught him dancing a mean rumba with Yvonne de Carlo in Criss Cross; it’s fun to seem him perform a ‘look,...
Tony Curtis Collection
The Perfect Furlough, The Great Impostor, 40 Pounds of Trouble
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
312 minutes
Street Date August 4, 2020
available through Kino Lorber
49.95
Starring: Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis appears to have become a Golden Boy at late-’40s Universal-International by playing the role of ambitious actor to the hilt. Everybody caught him dancing a mean rumba with Yvonne de Carlo in Criss Cross; it’s fun to seem him perform a ‘look,...
- 8/1/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Linda Cristal, the Argentine-born actress who played Victoria Cannon, wife of Leif Erickson’s stoic, heroic rancher Big John Cannon on NBC’s popular 1967-71 Western The High Chaparral, died in her sleep at her Beverly Hills home Saturday. She was 89.
Her death was reported to The New York Times by son Jordan Wexler.
Cristal had built a career as an actress during the 1950s in Mexico’s film industry when she was cast in an English-speaking role in 1956’s Comanche, directed by George Sherman and starring Dana Andrews.
Film and TV credits throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s included roles in Rawhide, Seven Sins, The Alamo, The Tab Hunter Show and Iron Horse, among others. For her performance in Black Edwards’ 1958 comedy The Perfect Furlough, she shared a New Star of the Year Golden Globe Award with Tina Louise and Susan Kohner.
Her highest profile role arrived in...
Her death was reported to The New York Times by son Jordan Wexler.
Cristal had built a career as an actress during the 1950s in Mexico’s film industry when she was cast in an English-speaking role in 1956’s Comanche, directed by George Sherman and starring Dana Andrews.
Film and TV credits throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s included roles in Rawhide, Seven Sins, The Alamo, The Tab Hunter Show and Iron Horse, among others. For her performance in Black Edwards’ 1958 comedy The Perfect Furlough, she shared a New Star of the Year Golden Globe Award with Tina Louise and Susan Kohner.
Her highest profile role arrived in...
- 6/29/2020
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
Blake Edwards. Courtesy of Paramount.“[Blake] Edwards has become a stylistic influence in the cinema,” Andrew Sarris would write of the filmmaker in 1968, “And his personality and script dominate Ralph Nelson’s Soldier in the Rain the way Lubitsch’s personality once dominated Cukor’s One Hour With You.” Sarris would dub himself an “Edwardian”in his support of the film director and the inclusion of Edwards in his foundational book, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968, still remains the most serious scholarship on him. Edwards’ distinction in the book included him in “The Far Side of Paradise,” the category that “falls short of Pantheon,” the highest distinction. Edwards would be categorized alongside the likes of Capra, Cukor, Minnelli, Preminger, and Fuller—strong company, but characterized as such for Sarris because there is fragmentation or disruption within their careers. This high distinction by Sarris would have the great film critic come...
- 10/18/2019
- MUBI
Tony Curtis grew up idolizing the suave and funny Cary Grant, emulated his romantic moves as an actor and then performed a brilliant impersonation of Grant for Billy Wilder. The next step had to be co-starring with the great man himself. Blake Edwards’ amiable, relaxed submarine movie allows Grant to play with ladies’ under-things, while Curtis wrestles with a pig.
Operation Petticoat
Blu-ray
Olive Signature Edition
1959 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 120 min. / Street Date July 1, 2014 / available through the Olive Films website / 39.95
Starring: Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Joan O’Brien, Dina Merrill, Gene Evans, Dick Sargent, Virginia Gregg, Gavin MacLeod, Madlyn Rhue, Marion Ross, Arthur O’Connell.
Cinematography: Russell Harlan
Original Music: David Rose
Written by Paul King, Joseph Stone, Stanley Shapiro, Maurice Richlin
Produced by Robert Arthur
Directed by Blake Edwards
The latest in Olive Films’ Signature Selection special editions is Operation Petticoat, a light comedy war movie noted for teaming Cary Grant with Tony Curtis.
Operation Petticoat
Blu-ray
Olive Signature Edition
1959 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 120 min. / Street Date July 1, 2014 / available through the Olive Films website / 39.95
Starring: Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Joan O’Brien, Dina Merrill, Gene Evans, Dick Sargent, Virginia Gregg, Gavin MacLeod, Madlyn Rhue, Marion Ross, Arthur O’Connell.
Cinematography: Russell Harlan
Original Music: David Rose
Written by Paul King, Joseph Stone, Stanley Shapiro, Maurice Richlin
Produced by Robert Arthur
Directed by Blake Edwards
The latest in Olive Films’ Signature Selection special editions is Operation Petticoat, a light comedy war movie noted for teaming Cary Grant with Tony Curtis.
- 12/2/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
'The Pink Panther' with Peter Sellers: Blake Edwards' 1963 comedy hit and its many sequels revolve around one of the most iconic film characters of the 20th century: clueless, thick-accented Inspector Clouseau – in some quarters surely deemed politically incorrect, or 'insensitive,' despite the lack of brown face make-up à la Sellers' clueless Indian guest in Edwards' 'The Party.' 'The Pink Panther' movies [1] There were a total of eight big-screen Pink Panther movies co-written and directed by Blake Edwards, most of them starring Peter Sellers – even after his death in 1980. Edwards was also one of the producers of every (direct) Pink Panther sequel, from A Shot in the Dark to Curse of the Pink Panther. Despite its iconic lead character, the last three movies in the Pink Panther franchise were box office bombs. Two of these, The Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, were co-written by Edwards' son,...
- 5/29/2017
- by altfilmguide
- Alt Film Guide
Elaine Stritch, one of the most unforgettable and acerbically funny actors of the Broadway stage, as well as the big and small screen, died at her home in Birmingham, Mich., on Thursday. She was 89.
A brash and beautiful presence who infused audiences with laughter even into her late eighties, Stritch is perhaps best known to young audiences as Colleen Donaghy, the mother of Alec Baldwin’s character on 30 Rock. Since the early 1950s, the actress had been entertaining audiences on the New York stage, racking up four Tony nominations. She was such a titan of Broadway that in 2003, in the late prime of her career, the New York Landmarks Conservancy declared Stritch a “Living Landmark.” She also won three Emmy awards between 1993 and 2007.
On Broadway, she was best known for her performance as Joanne in the Stephen Sondheim-penned musical Company and for stealing the show in Noel Coward’s...
A brash and beautiful presence who infused audiences with laughter even into her late eighties, Stritch is perhaps best known to young audiences as Colleen Donaghy, the mother of Alec Baldwin’s character on 30 Rock. Since the early 1950s, the actress had been entertaining audiences on the New York stage, racking up four Tony nominations. She was such a titan of Broadway that in 2003, in the late prime of her career, the New York Landmarks Conservancy declared Stritch a “Living Landmark.” She also won three Emmy awards between 1993 and 2007.
On Broadway, she was best known for her performance as Joanne in the Stephen Sondheim-penned musical Company and for stealing the show in Noel Coward’s...
- 7/17/2014
- by Jordan Adler
- We Got This Covered
Janet Leigh Touch of Evil by Orson Welles, with Charlton Heston Janet Leigh Touch of Evil / Orson Welles. (See previous post: Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis.) Janet Leigh’s career peak lasted about half a decade, from the late ’50s to the early ’60s. In addition to Psycho, The Vikings, The Perfect Furlough, and Who Was That Lady?, that period included what is quite possibly the best performance of her career: as the terrorized American wife of Mexican narcotics officer Charlton Heston in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958), which Leigh filmed while nursing a broken arm. Janet Leigh: Touch of Evil / Orson [...]...
- 7/6/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Los Angeles — Blake Edwards, the director and writer known for clever dialogue, poignance and occasional belly-laugh sight gags in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "10" and the "Pink Panther" farces, is dead at age 88.
Edwards died from complications of pneumonia late Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said publicist Gene Schwam. Blake's wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks.
Edwards had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two," Schwam said. That may have contributed to his condition, he added.
At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the "Pink Panther" movies. The other, "Big Rosemary," was to be an original comedy set during Prohibition, Schwam said.
"His heart was as big as his talent. He was an...
Edwards died from complications of pneumonia late Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said publicist Gene Schwam. Blake's wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks.
Edwards had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two," Schwam said. That may have contributed to his condition, he added.
At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the "Pink Panther" movies. The other, "Big Rosemary," was to be an original comedy set during Prohibition, Schwam said.
"His heart was as big as his talent. He was an...
- 12/16/2010
- by AP
- Huffington Post
It had just been September 30th when multitalent Blake Edwards asked for a moment of silence in the cavernous Samuel Goldwyn Theatre to remember Tony Curtis who had just died less than 24 hours earlier. The actor and filmmaker had worked together on several films including Mister Cory (1957) and The Perfect Furlough (1959) along with huge box office hits Operation Petticoat (1959) and The Great Race (1965). And now Edwards himself has passed away this morning. He was 88. The writer and director and producer best known for the Pink Panther comedy franchise with Peter Sellers had been the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' latest tributee, there to participate in an on-stage conversation about his career for the Academy’s annual Jack Oakie Celebration of Comedy in Film. It was an enthusiastic sold-out house that included many collaborators and stars of Edwards’ movies including his wife Julie Andrews and daughter Jennifer Edwards. The entertaining...
- 12/16/2010
- by NIKKI FINKE
- Deadline Hollywood
This week’s Wamg Top 10 is having a look at all the on and off-screen couples of Hollywood. The Drew Barrymore/Justin Long romantic-comedy, Going The Distance, comes out next Friday on September 3rd, so we thought we’d give it a go with our list of favorite “Work and Play Couples.” Let us know what you think and who you would put on the list in the comments section below.
Honorable Mention: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
Lucille Ball was a rising star under contract to Rko Studios when she was cast as the female lead in the film version of the Broadway smash Too Many Girls. Prior to the start of filming she was introduced to the young Cuban singer who had taken New York City by storm, Desi Arnaz. Stories from several sources in that Rko office said that sparks flew when they locked eyes on each other.
Honorable Mention: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz
Lucille Ball was a rising star under contract to Rko Studios when she was cast as the female lead in the film version of the Broadway smash Too Many Girls. Prior to the start of filming she was introduced to the young Cuban singer who had taken New York City by storm, Desi Arnaz. Stories from several sources in that Rko office said that sparks flew when they locked eyes on each other.
- 8/24/2010
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Actress Janet Leigh, whose ill-fated shower in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho became one of the most frightening moments in cinema, died Sunday at her home in Beverly Hills; she was 77. According to a spokeswoman for Leigh's daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Leigh "died peacefully" at her home on Sunday afternoon, and had been battling vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels, for the past year. A California native, Leigh (birth name Jeannette Helen Morrison) was reportedly discovered by actress Norma Shearer, who saw a photo of a young girl on the desk of Leigh's father and asked if she could borrow it. A screen test for MGM followed, and Leigh was cast in 1947's The Romance of Rosy Ridge. A number of ingénue rolls followed, most notably Little Women, Angels in the Outfield, and The Naked Spur. In 1951, Leigh married the equally photogenic Tony Curtis, and their romance and marriage was press fodder for years, even as they appeared in less-than-memorable films together, including Houdini, The Perfect Furlough, and The Vikings; the two divorced in 1962 after having two daughters, Kelly and Jamie Lee. Leigh's roles improved with her age, and she graduated from maidens in costume dramas to more contemporary heroines, and throughout the 50s she starred in My Sister Eileen, Pete Kelly's Blues, and Jet Pilot, among other films.
Leigh had one of her most memorable roles as Charlton Heston's abducted wife in Orson Welles' 1958 noir classic Touch of Evil, but just two years later she made film history by playing the doomed heroine Marion Crane in Psycho. Her brief but memorable turn in the Hitchcock film, punctuated by the classic shower scene in which the actress was slashed to death by Anthony Perkins, earned Leigh a Golden Globe and her only Academy Award nomination. Though she also appeared opposite Frank Sinatra in the now-classic The Manchurian Candidate, Leigh's Psycho turn overshadowed the rest of her career, a fact that she happily embraced, writing a book about the film's making, Psycho: Behind the Scenes in the Classic Thriller, in 1995. Leigh worked sporadically through the 70s, and appeared with daughter Jamie Lee in 1980's The Fog, but went into semi-retirement in the 80s and 90s; she appeared again with her daughter in the 1998 sequel Halloween: H20. Leigh is survived by her fourth husband, Robert Brandt, and daughters Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis. --Prepared by IMDb staff...
Leigh had one of her most memorable roles as Charlton Heston's abducted wife in Orson Welles' 1958 noir classic Touch of Evil, but just two years later she made film history by playing the doomed heroine Marion Crane in Psycho. Her brief but memorable turn in the Hitchcock film, punctuated by the classic shower scene in which the actress was slashed to death by Anthony Perkins, earned Leigh a Golden Globe and her only Academy Award nomination. Though she also appeared opposite Frank Sinatra in the now-classic The Manchurian Candidate, Leigh's Psycho turn overshadowed the rest of her career, a fact that she happily embraced, writing a book about the film's making, Psycho: Behind the Scenes in the Classic Thriller, in 1995. Leigh worked sporadically through the 70s, and appeared with daughter Jamie Lee in 1980's The Fog, but went into semi-retirement in the 80s and 90s; she appeared again with her daughter in the 1998 sequel Halloween: H20. Leigh is survived by her fourth husband, Robert Brandt, and daughters Jamie Lee Curtis and Kelly Curtis. --Prepared by IMDb staff...
- 10/4/2004
- IMDb News
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