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Movie Icon Sterling Dead at 88
1 June 2006 (WENN)
Forties TV and movie hunk Robert Sterling has lost his battle with shingles and died at his Brentwood, California home. He was 88. The ghostly star of TV's Topper was born William Hart in 1917 in Pennsylvania, the son of baseball star William S. Hart. After working briefly as a clothing salesman, Sterling made his mark as a movie star and changed his name, so as not to be confused with silent screen actor William S. Hart. He really hit his stride in 1941, when he starred in five of the year's top films, including Two-Faced Woman, in which he starred alongside Greta Garbo, and The Penalty. He wed actress Ann Sothern in 1943 and they had a daughter, Tisha - but the marriage wasn't destined to last and Sterling divorced his first wife in 1949. In 1951, he wed his second wife, actress Anne Jeffreys, who was with the actor when he died yesterday. Sterling and Jeffreys had three sons and teamed up to become a US TV institution in the mid 1950s as the stars of movie spinoff Topper, in which the couple played ghosts. Sterling retired from acting in the 1970s so he could concentrate his efforts as a computer businessman. He returned to the limelight briefly in the 1980s as a guest star in TV series Hotel and Murder, She Wrote.

Garbo Wine Set for Release
20 September 2005 (WENN)
Bottles of wine bearing images of Greta Garbo are set to go on sale on October 1, to commemorate the 100th birthday of the Swedish actress. About 350 cases of the limited-edition sparkling wine, called the 2001 Greta Garbo Brut Rose, will available only at Napa, California's Domaine Carneros Winery at $42 a bottle. And joining the celebrity tipple crowd in selected markets later this month is a line of tequilas from the estate of esteemed Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. The beverage will be released across the US next year. Jorge Gutierrez, president of Dorado, Pizzorni & Sons, says, "(Kahlo) enjoyed tequila very much. She would drink it to inspire herself to do her paintings. She was very Mexican and proud of her country."

Peers Celebrate Garbo's Life
11 April 2005 (WENN)
Friends and acquaintances of late film legend Greta Garbo gathered in Hollywood on Thursday to mark the 100th anniversary of the actress' birth year. The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences invited Swedish actress Lena Olin to host the bash, which was attended by author Gore Vidal and Joan Leslie. Garbo was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in September 1905 and got her big break when she signed a contract with Metro-goldwyn Mayer in 1925. Garbo was nominated for four Oscars in the 1930s before retiring from Hollywood at the age of 36. She died in New York on April 15, 1990 from pneumonia.

Dietrich's Secret Disguise
3 December 2001 (WENN)
Marlene Dietrich spent her last years in disguise in order to avoid being recognised - not living as a Greta Garbo-like recluse The Hollywood star's very own personal chef, Markus Hauer, says she did not isolate herself from society in her Paris apartment, but would dress up and go out regularly. He says the German actress would dress as an American tourist and wear a beehive wig so that she could meet up with her friend Édith Piaf to eat and talk about past loves. He says, "She was full of life, in no way a tragic or broken figure." However Hauer does admit Dietrich's only great sadness was that she did not get to explain herself to her fellow Germans before she died. While Dietrich was carving out her career in Hollywood in the 1930s, Germany fell under the rule of the Nazis. Dietrich did not return to Germany until after the Second World War, when she wore an American uniform and was dismissed as a traitor to Germany. Hauer adds, "There was nothing more she wanted than to set things straight with the Germans, to tell them that she did not go to America for political reasons and was not posing as a self- righteous prophet when she returned."

Classic Femme Fatale Disses Madonna
21 August 2001 (WENN)
Ex-James Bond girl Honor Blackman says that Madonna is not feminine enough to be considered a femme fatale. The 75-year-old has just finished performing in Dishonourable Ladies, in Cardiff, Wales, which celebrates famous femme fatales, including Greta Garbo, Mae West and Cleopatra. The list does not include the Material Girl. Honor explains, "A femme fatale has to have an air of mystery and there's no mystery to anybody these days. Everybody knows everything about all famous people, down to what type of underwear they wear. I don't find Madonna particularly attractive and don't think of her as a femme fatale. I think of a femme fatale as a more feminine woman."

Marlene Dietrich Love Letters Made Public
5 March 2001 (WENN)
Love letters from legendary film star Marlene Dietrich have been made public, nine years after her death on 6 May 1992. Shortly before she shot to stardom in films like Shanghai Express, she wrote to her then boyfriend worried that he had found a prettier girl, according to a love letter made public in Germany on Friday. "Have you already found beautiful women? And someone prettier than me?" Dietrich, then 19, wrote in 1921 to Willy Michel, a baker. "I feel so empty... Now I am crying." Dietrich had met Michel in Weimar when she was an unknown music student there from 1919 to 1921. In a life that apparently included some of the world's best-known men and women as lovers, Michel is little remembered in her biographies. An account published last year said Dietrich had a one-time fling with President John F. Kennedy in the White House in 1962 and other recently published accounts have linked her romantically with Greta Garbo, Frank Sinatra and others. An auction house in Hanover, where Michel lived, has made eight letters to Dietrich's former boyfriend public ahead of their planned sale at auction later this month.

Garbo Tapes Reveal Nothing
18 April 2000 (WENN)
Newly-unsealed letters from Greta Garbo to socialite MERCEDES DE ACOSTA have failed to put the decades-old speculation of a lesbian affair to rest. A total of 113 items, including 25 letters, plus notes that accompanied flowers, telegrams, photos and poems, chronicled a 28-year friendship of ups and downs, but gave no explicit evidence of a lesbian relationship, said Garbo's grandniece, GRAY REISFIELD HORAN. She says, "I see nothing that refers to a liaison. I don't think there's much here to back it up. I only knew her to be interested in men."

Hepburn And Bogie Are No. 1
16 June 1999 (StudioBriefing)
The greatest screen "legends" of all time are Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart according to a poll of artists, historians, critics and "cultural leaders" conducted by the American Film Institute (AFI). The voters chose from lists of 250 actors and 250 actresses who made their debut in 1950 or earlier or who have died since that year. Accepting the award for his father, Steven Bogart said, "My mother Lauren Bacall thinks it's fantastic. And I think it is deserved because he's one of the only guys with that mystique left." The top ten actors on the list were:1. Humphrey Bogart 2. Cary Grant 3. James Stewart 4. Marlon Brando 5. Fred Astaire 6. Henry Fonda 7. Clark Gable 8. James Cagney 9. Spencer Tracy 10. Charles Chaplin The top ten actresses were:1. Katharine Hepburn 2. Bette Davis 3. Audrey Hepburn 4. Ingrid Bergman 5. Greta Garbo 6. Marilyn Monroe 7. Elizabeth Taylor 8. Judy Garland 9. Marlene Dietrich 10. Joan Crawford

Hit List Hit
17 June 1998 (StudioBriefing)
Many film critics immediately faulted the selections, several noting that the works of such pioneers as Buster Keaton, Ernst Lubitch, Busby Berkeley and Preston Sturges were completely absent, as were all of the films starring Greta Garbo and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, And how to explain the inclusion of such films as Dances with Wolves (1990), GoodFellas (1990), Pulp Fiction (1994), Unforgiven (1992), and Fargo (1952) in their stead? they asked.