Deborah Kerr @ 100: The legend, the legacy, "The Innocents"

by Cláudio Alves

For decades she held the record of being the most Oscar-nominated actress never to have won the statuette, with six unsuccessful nominations. In a piteous gesture, the Academy granted her an honorary award in 1994. How fitting that Deborah Kerr received such tribute from the hands of Glenn Close, the current holder of the older actress' erstwhile record. Considering this trivia, it'd be easy to remember Kerr's legacy through the prism of Oscar history. That would be a mistake. I state it as someone who first encountered the British thespian through her nominated roles, constructing a mental image limited by AMPAS' taste. As it turns out, despite her numerous nods, the most outstanding Kerr performances weren't so highly celebrated by the Academy. Simply told, that Oscar-y sextet doesn't do her justice. 

To celebrate Deborah Kerr's centennial, let's remember her range beyond golden laurels, her incandescent talent, the power she brought to her films. Let's honor her by reflecting on the actress' greatest work - the nightmare that is The Innocents…

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Beauty Break: National Book Lovers Day

Curated by Nathaniel R

Clark Gable reading about Rhett Butler. Research!

Today is National Book Lovers Day so we thought we'd celebrate with heavenly creatures getting their book club on. Please enjoy these stars reading (or pretending to read) books for pleasure, or work, or photo-op purposes. Or sometimes as a character in a movie. We love this sort of pic as it's harder and harder in the real world to know what people are reading. You can no longer track what the hot book is by glancing around on the subway -- it's how i discovered lots of great books in the Aughts -- because everyone reads on very private tablets now.

Photo gallery after the jump...

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Monty @ 100: Stardom's Peak in "From Here To Eternity"

by Nathaniel R

Calling your picture From Here To Eternity, even if that's the name of the book its based on, is a major flex and a tempting of fate. How to live up to the title? 1950s and 1960s movies did this frequently, of course, in their battle against the looming threat of television. Screens got bigger and wider and the studio system was, if already mortally wounded, still working hard at making their movie stars iconic. Titles like Giant, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Greatest Show on Earth, frequently dared to proclaim their epic-ness, and if the titles weren't size-conscious, why not add an exclamation point a la Oliver!, Hello, Dolly!, Viva Zapata! or I Want To Live!  In this lust for enormous movies, From Here To Eternity stands out, not just for living up to its promise and being eminently swoon-worthy but for its relative modesty -- capturing something grandiose merely by inhabiting the sealed world and social lives of soldiers and their women on the brink of cataclysmic change. It might have been mere soap opera without the skillful direction of Fred Zinneman and the simple fact that the stars themselves were monumental.

Chief among them was Montgomery Clift, scoring his third Best Actor nomination with his eighth film...

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Oscar Trivia: Ranking the His & Hers Supporting Oscar Wins

Moreno & Chakiris winning for WEST SIDE STORYby Nathaniel R

Only 8 times in the 92 year history of the Academy Awards have both Supporting trophies gone to the same movie. We were thinking about this factoid recently given that 1957 is the topic of next week's Smackdown (get those votes in). 1957's Sayonara wins for Miyoki Umeshi and Red Buttons (who played newlyweds) marked the third instance of both supporting trophies going to the same movie in just a seven year span. Given that that specific type of Oscar pairing has only happened five times more in the next sixty-two years of history, it's clear that "his & hers" was definitely more of a 1950s voter mindset than it is now.

[Tangent: Lead 'His & Hers' statues happen with about the same frequency but are mostly bunched up in the late 70s for some reason]

Let's rank what came before with double supporting wins in a highly unscientific fusion of the performances...

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38 Days til Oscar. 38 Year-Old Oscar Winners

As we countdown to Oscar we'll try and do daily trivia for you for curiousity, infotainment and merriment. Since today's magic number is 38 and no one has ever been nominated for exactly 38 Oscars, let's talk about actors who won when they were 38 years old. There are only 12 of them. Have any favourite performances from this list?

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