Apologies to do this but we have scheduling changes (a lot going on chez Nathaniel)
Smackdown "1951" -New Date: Monday, September 19th, 2022
1951 will be our "year of the month" for another few weeks. Email us your votes on the Smackdown (anytime before September 17th) with "1951" in the subject line. You should rate each performance you've seen on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (perfection) hearts. Feel free to include blurbs which we might quote but they aren't necessary.
Joan Blondell, The Blue Veil - good luck finding! Mildred Dunnock, Death of a Salesman - available on YouTube Lee Grant, Detective Story. - rentable from multiple sources Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire - streaming on HBOMax / rentable elsewhere Thelma Ritter, The Mating Season - available on YouTube
Smackdown "2004" -New Date: Monday, October 24th, 2022
Email us your votes on the Smackdown (anytime before October 20th) with "2004" in the subject line of your email.
Smackdown "1951" -New Date: Monday, September 19th, 2022
1951 will be our "year of the month" for another few weeks. Email us your votes on the Smackdown (anytime before September 17th) with "1951" in the subject line. You should rate each performance you've seen on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (perfection) hearts. Feel free to include blurbs which we might quote but they aren't necessary.
Joan Blondell, The Blue Veil - good luck finding! Mildred Dunnock, Death of a Salesman - available on YouTube Lee Grant, Detective Story. - rentable from multiple sources Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire - streaming on HBOMax / rentable elsewhere Thelma Ritter, The Mating Season - available on YouTube
Smackdown "2004" -New Date: Monday, October 24th, 2022
Email us your votes on the Smackdown (anytime before October 20th) with "2004" in the subject line of your email.
- 8/30/2022
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
The movie awards’ season is in full flower with such films as Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”; Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”; Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” Guillermo Del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” and Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” among the favorites for top prizes. But one thing we know for certain is that there is no sure thing when it comes to the Oscars. Consider the case of seventy years ago. Not only were there surprises among the nominees, but there were also some shocks when it came to the winners of the 1952 Oscars.
Let’s revisit the 24th Academy Awards, which took place March 20, 1952 at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood and were hosted by Danny Kaye. This was the last time the ceremony was presented on radio. The show moved to television the following year. Among the presenters that evening were Lucille Ball,...
Let’s revisit the 24th Academy Awards, which took place March 20, 1952 at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood and were hosted by Danny Kaye. This was the last time the ceremony was presented on radio. The show moved to television the following year. Among the presenters that evening were Lucille Ball,...
- 12/6/2021
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
The Supporting Actress Smackdown will resume in March 2021. Final Season!
Happy Smackdown to you Happy Smackdown to you
Happy Smackdown you actressexuals,
Happy Smackdown to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
After StinkyLulu graciously let us continue/revive the series here seven or eight years ago (eep!) we've done 35 episodes: 1938, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1947, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and concurrently with Oscar races as they happened 2016, 2017, and 2018.
So, where to now?
The Remaining Years
1937- Brady (In Old Chicago) | Leeds (Stage Door) | Shirley (Stella Dallas) | Trevor (Dead End) | Whitty (Night Must Fall)
1946 - Baxter (The Razor's Edge) | Barrymore (The Spiral Staircase) | Gish (Duel in the Sun) | Robson (Saratoga Trunk) | Sondegaard (Anna and the King of Siam)
1951 Joan Blondell (The Blue Veil) | Dunnock (Death of a Salesman) | Grant (Detective Story) | Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire) | Ritter (The Mating Season)
1986 - Harper (Crimes of the Heart) | Laurie (Children of a Lesser God) | Mastrantonio (The Color of Money) | Smith (A Room With a View) | Weist (Hannah and Her Sisters...
Happy Smackdown to you Happy Smackdown to you
Happy Smackdown you actressexuals,
Happy Smackdown to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
After StinkyLulu graciously let us continue/revive the series here seven or eight years ago (eep!) we've done 35 episodes: 1938, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1947, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and concurrently with Oscar races as they happened 2016, 2017, and 2018.
So, where to now?
The Remaining Years
1937- Brady (In Old Chicago) | Leeds (Stage Door) | Shirley (Stella Dallas) | Trevor (Dead End) | Whitty (Night Must Fall)
1946 - Baxter (The Razor's Edge) | Barrymore (The Spiral Staircase) | Gish (Duel in the Sun) | Robson (Saratoga Trunk) | Sondegaard (Anna and the King of Siam)
1951 Joan Blondell (The Blue Veil) | Dunnock (Death of a Salesman) | Grant (Detective Story) | Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire) | Ritter (The Mating Season)
1986 - Harper (Crimes of the Heart) | Laurie (Children of a Lesser God) | Mastrantonio (The Color of Money) | Smith (A Room With a View) | Weist (Hannah and Her Sisters...
- 2/17/2021
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Kathy Bates has been cast in Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX series “Feud,” TheWrap has confirmed. The series will focus on famous feuds, as the title suggests, with the first season focusing on Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’ animosity on the set of “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” Jessica Lange will star as Crawford and Susan Sarandon will play Davis. Bates will play Oscar nominee Joan Blondell, known for her work in hit films like “The Blue Veil,” “The Champ” and “The Cincinatti Kid.” Bates has been a frequent collaborator with Murphy, having appeared in four seasons of “American Horror Story.
- 11/4/2016
- by Joe Otterson
- The Wrap
Longtime Ryan Murphy Repertory Company member Kathy Bates has signed up for the auteur’s newest FX anthology series Feud, TVLine has learned exclusively.
Season 1 of Feud will chronicle Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) and Bette Davis’ (Susan Sarandon) combative collaboration on the big-screen classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
RelatedAmerican Horror Story: Ryan Murphy Hints at Next Season’s Freak Show Tie-In
Bates, who has appeared in four seasons of Murphy’s American Horror Story (including current edition Roanoke), will recur as Oscar-nominated actress and Davis confidante Joan Blondell in the eight-episode drama. During her five-decade career,...
Season 1 of Feud will chronicle Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) and Bette Davis’ (Susan Sarandon) combative collaboration on the big-screen classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
RelatedAmerican Horror Story: Ryan Murphy Hints at Next Season’s Freak Show Tie-In
Bates, who has appeared in four seasons of Murphy’s American Horror Story (including current edition Roanoke), will recur as Oscar-nominated actress and Davis confidante Joan Blondell in the eight-episode drama. During her five-decade career,...
- 11/4/2016
- TVLine.com
By the 1950s, Texas-raised actress Joan Blondell (see earlier column) must have resigned herself to filling supporting roles in film. In 1952, the former Miss Dallas received her lone Oscar nomination for her work as supporting actress in The Blue Veil. Five years later, she appears as Katherine Hepburn's wisecracking best friend, Peg Costello, in Desk Set. Her character may not be the focus of the comedy, but Blondell helps make the movie memorable.
I chose Desk Set for this month's column as a sort of counterbalance to the hoopla surrounding the 2014 film The Imitation Game (Marcie's review). This movie is a more humorous take on the early days of computing machines, and actually includes more than one woman in its plot -- whereas the British biopic ignores the many women who worked at Bletchley Park.
In the 1957 film, four reference librarians work for the fictional Federal Broadcasting Company, answering...
I chose Desk Set for this month's column as a sort of counterbalance to the hoopla surrounding the 2014 film The Imitation Game (Marcie's review). This movie is a more humorous take on the early days of computing machines, and actually includes more than one woman in its plot -- whereas the British biopic ignores the many women who worked at Bletchley Park.
In the 1957 film, four reference librarians work for the fictional Federal Broadcasting Company, answering...
- 1/14/2015
- by Elizabeth Stoddard
- Slackerwood
Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes: Introduction to Q&A with Joan Blondell biographer Matthew Kennedy Why Joan Blondell? Actually, this book idea originally came from Joan's son, Norman Powell, who is a director and producer. I was writing a biography of the director Edmund Goulding a few years back, and Norman interviewed me for a documentary he was making on Old Hollywood. When we were through filming, he said casually "Maybe you should do a biography of my mother next." Well, I knew his mother was Joan Blondell, and I was frankly stunned at the suggestion. I have admired her ever since Here Come the Brides, a show I watched religiously when I was a kid, and here was her son inviting me to tell her life story! I finished the Goulding book about a year later, then contacted Norman again to ask if he was serious. He was,...
- 8/25/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Joan Blondell. Those who have heard the name will most likely picture either a blowsy, older woman playing the worldwise but warm-hearted saloon owner in the late 1960s television series Here Come the Brides, or a lively, fast-talking, no-nonsense, and unconventionally sexy gold digger in numerous Pre-Code Warner Bros. comedies and musicals of the early 1930s. Matthew Kennedy's Joan Blondell: A Life Between Takes (University Press of Mississippi, 2007) seeks to rectify that cultural memory lapse. Not that Blondell doesn't deserve to be remembered for Here Come the Brides or, say, Gold Diggers of 1933, Footlight Parade, Havana Widows, and Broadway Bad. It's just that her other work — from her immensely touching performance as a sexually liberated woman in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to her invariably welcome (if brief) appearances in films as varied as The Blue Veil, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and Grease — should be remembered as well.
- 8/25/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Dames Joan Blondell has always been a favorite of mine, much like fellow wisecracking 1930s Warner Bros. players Aline MacMahon and Glenda Farrell. The fact that Blondell never became a top star says more about audiences — who preferred, say, Shirley Temple and Mickey Rooney — than about Blondell's screen presence and acting abilities. As part of its "Summer Under the Stars" film series, Turner Classic Movies is currently showing no less than 16 Joan Blondell movies today, including the TCM premiere of the 1968 crime drama Kona Coast. Directed by Lamont Johnson, Kona Coast stars Richard Boone and the capable Vera Miles. Blondell has a supporting role — one of two dozen from 1950 (For Heaven's Sake) to 1981 (The Woman Inside, released two years after Blondell's death from leukemia). [Joan Blondell Movie Schedule.] Unfortunately, TCM isn't showing the super-rare (apparently due to rights issues) The Blue Veil, Curtis Bernhardt's 1951 melodrama that earned Blondell her...
- 8/24/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Jane Wyman, who won a best actress Oscar for her performance as a deaf-mute rape victim in 1948's Johnny Belinda and played the domineering matriarch on the hit '80s CBS series Falcon Crest, died Monday. She was 90.
Wyman, who was married to actor and future president Ronald Reagan from 1940-48, died at her Palm Springs home, said Richard Adney of Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary in Cathedral City, Calif. No other details were available.
Wyman also earned best actress Oscar noms for The Yearling (1946), The Blue Veil (1951) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). She won three Golden Globes for best actress for her work in Belinda and Blue Veil and in 1951 was given a trophy for as World Film Favorite (Female).
Wyman's icy work as Angela Channing in Falcon Crest, a soap-styled primetime drama centering on a prosperous California wine-producing family, won her a Golden Globe in 1984. She was nominated the previous year for a Golden Globe in that category.
In 1957, Wyman was nominated for an Emmy for best continuing performance by an actress in a dramatic series for her TV show, "Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre," which ran from 1955-58. She starred in and co-produced many of the episodes.
Wyman is believed to share the record for the longest screen kiss ever when she and Regis Toomey hooked up for 3 minutes, 5 seconds in the 1941 movie You're in the Army Now.
Wyman enjoyed a long and varied career, beginning as a singer and as a contract player at Warner Bros., where she met Reagan, who was to become the second of her three husbands.
The couple divorced in 1948, the year she won the Oscar for Johnny Belinda. Reagan reportedly cracked to a friend: "Maybe I should name Johnny Belinda as co-respondent."
After Reagan became governor of California and then U.S. president, Wyman kept a decorous silence about her ex-husband, who had married actress Nancy Davis.
Wyman, who was married to actor and future president Ronald Reagan from 1940-48, died at her Palm Springs home, said Richard Adney of Forest Lawn Memorial Park and Mortuary in Cathedral City, Calif. No other details were available.
Wyman also earned best actress Oscar noms for The Yearling (1946), The Blue Veil (1951) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). She won three Golden Globes for best actress for her work in Belinda and Blue Veil and in 1951 was given a trophy for as World Film Favorite (Female).
Wyman's icy work as Angela Channing in Falcon Crest, a soap-styled primetime drama centering on a prosperous California wine-producing family, won her a Golden Globe in 1984. She was nominated the previous year for a Golden Globe in that category.
In 1957, Wyman was nominated for an Emmy for best continuing performance by an actress in a dramatic series for her TV show, "Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre," which ran from 1955-58. She starred in and co-produced many of the episodes.
Wyman is believed to share the record for the longest screen kiss ever when she and Regis Toomey hooked up for 3 minutes, 5 seconds in the 1941 movie You're in the Army Now.
Wyman enjoyed a long and varied career, beginning as a singer and as a contract player at Warner Bros., where she met Reagan, who was to become the second of her three husbands.
The couple divorced in 1948, the year she won the Oscar for Johnny Belinda. Reagan reportedly cracked to a friend: "Maybe I should name Johnny Belinda as co-respondent."
After Reagan became governor of California and then U.S. president, Wyman kept a decorous silence about her ex-husband, who had married actress Nancy Davis.
- 9/11/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Actress Jane Wyman, who won an Oscar for her performance in Johnny Belinda and who was known offscreen as the first wife of Ronald Reagan, died Monday morning at her home in Palm Springs; she was 93. An actress who started out as a contract player at Warner Bros., Wyman worked in a number of B movies (with most of her early parts uncredited) and was rarely cast in a lead role. In fact, her most notable part during the early '40s was as the wife of fellow contract player Ronald Reagan, whom she married in 1940 and with whom she had two children, Maureen and Michael. Reagan and Wyman would divorce in 1948, as her career was taking off. In 1945, Wyman was able to persuade Jack Warner to loan her out for the Paramount film The Lost Weekend opposite Ray Milland. The film was a box office hit and a critical smash, winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The role finally put her on the Hollywood map, and the following year she starred in the adaptation of The Yearling, for which she received her first Oscar nomination. In 1948, she starred in the melodrama Johnny Belinda, playing a deaf-mute woman living in the backwoods of Canada who falls in love with a kindly doctor (Lew Ayers). The film, in which the deglamorized Wyman was a victim of rape, a single mother, town outcast and put on trial for murder -- all during which she never spoke a line of dialogue -- earned her a Best Actress Oscar and the freedom to choose roles she wished to play.
Wyman also starred in The Glass Menagerie, The Blue Veil (her third Academy Award nomination), So Big, and two Douglas Sirk dramas, Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows, both of which paired her with an up-and-coming actor by the name of Rock Hudson; she received her fourth and final Oscar nomination for Obsession. In the late '50s she moved to television with her own show, Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theater, and worked steadily in the medium throughout the '60s and '70s, occasionally appearing in feature films. In the early '80s Wyman enjoyed a career renaissance of sorts with the primetime soap opera Falcon Crest, in which she played the wealthy and ruthless matriarch of a Napa Valley wine family. During the show's run, her former husband became president of the United States and despite her high profile, Wyman remained quiet and respectful about their marriage, never giving interviews about him. Falcon Crest, which ran from 1981-1990, was essentially Wyman's last role; she made one last television appearance in 1993 in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Wyman was married five times, twice to her last husband, studio music director Fred Karger, whom she divorced in 1965. She is survived by her son Michael; her daughter, Maureen Reagan, died of cancer in 2001. --Mark Englehart, IMDb staff...
Wyman also starred in The Glass Menagerie, The Blue Veil (her third Academy Award nomination), So Big, and two Douglas Sirk dramas, Magnificent Obsession and All That Heaven Allows, both of which paired her with an up-and-coming actor by the name of Rock Hudson; she received her fourth and final Oscar nomination for Obsession. In the late '50s she moved to television with her own show, Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theater, and worked steadily in the medium throughout the '60s and '70s, occasionally appearing in feature films. In the early '80s Wyman enjoyed a career renaissance of sorts with the primetime soap opera Falcon Crest, in which she played the wealthy and ruthless matriarch of a Napa Valley wine family. During the show's run, her former husband became president of the United States and despite her high profile, Wyman remained quiet and respectful about their marriage, never giving interviews about him. Falcon Crest, which ran from 1981-1990, was essentially Wyman's last role; she made one last television appearance in 1993 in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Wyman was married five times, twice to her last husband, studio music director Fred Karger, whom she divorced in 1965. She is survived by her son Michael; her daughter, Maureen Reagan, died of cancer in 2001. --Mark Englehart, IMDb staff...
- 9/10/2007
- IMDb News
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