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5 random things that happened on this day, January 3rd, in showbiz history
1897 Marion Davies born in Brooklyn. The 1930s film star is best remembered in history as the mistress of tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Multiple films have featured their relationship including current Oscar hopeful Mank (2020).
1952Dragnet begins airing in its regular time slot Thursdays at 9:00 PM on NBC (a couple of weeks after the pilot airs). The influential series -- which basically created the #1 tv genre, the procedural, will run for eight seasons, be relaunched in the late 1960s for another four seasons and spawn three movies. The last of those was a comedy in 1987 starring Tom Hanks just before Big served as the bridge between popular comic actor and serious actor, netting Hanks his first Oscar nod. Two short-lived one season attempts to revive Dragnet were attempted in 1989 and 2003 respectively...
Variety Dean Jones, Disney star of the 60s and 70s, dies at 84. RIP Variety National Medal of Arts recipients this week at the White House include Larry McMurtry, Stephen King and Sally Field! This is Not Porn Peter O'Toole playing cricket during The Lion in Winter Boston Globe Sienna Miller cut from Black Mass - oh the indignities of how many miniscule roles she gets Many Rantings of John thinks Game of Thrones will beat Mad Men to the Drama Emmy. Agree? I think I do. I've managed to keep my Mad Men expectations tamped down (but for Jon Hamm who is deserving times a thousand) and four Best Drama trophies for an 8 year series (F*** you F***ing two-part finale TV/movie trend) is nothing to complain about, you know? Variety raves Tom McCarthy's Spotlight with the "heftiest roles" belonging to Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo. Move it up your Oscar charts
AV Club Anne Hathaway on losing roles to early 20somethings-- hey she isn't talking about Silver Linings Playbook is she? Comics Alliance looks at those unboxed Star Wars: The Force Awakens toys. If you're into that sort of thing Pajiba tries to recast Galaxy Quest which is going to become a TV series now. Honestly, in some cases why recast? Missi Pyle needs to be a regular! MNPP more new pics from A Bigger Splash with Tilda Swinton. It looks more and more scrumptuous the more we see MNPP also believes that Jake Gyllenhaal nudity has been removed from Everest. Boo! Kenneth in the (212) Henry Cavill apologizes for his boner Towleroad Candis Cayne's Curb Your Enthusiasm experience. (I've never told you this but I love Candis Cayne -- since Wigstock in 1995 -- and am so glad she's getting more press via "I Am Cait".) Empire I somehow missed the news that Neighbors is getting a sequel (already filming) but maybe I blocked it out since Selena Gomez and Chloe Moretz are the antagonists this time for our hapless marrieds played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne? Variety on a new biography "Can I Go Now?" on outrageous superagent Sue Mengers agent to Barbra Streisand who is having quite a posthumous revival of late Time Out London Joaquin Phoenix on Irrational Man and why he turned down Doctor Strange
When I was younger I was probably a bit of a snob about [taking on blockbuster roles]. But they’ve gotten better. I’ve flirted with several of those films, having meetings and getting close, but ultimately it never felt like they’d really be fulfilling. There were too many requirements that went against my instincts for character. I’ve been spoiled. I’ve never had to make those compromises. I’ve not met a director yet with one of those films where we go through the script, they say: ‘You know what, fuck this set-piece, let’s focus on the character!’ I understand, but it’s best I don’t do it.
Video of the Day Check out this incredible mashup of movie characters in "Hell's Club" starring Al Pacino, Tom Cruise, and John Travolta. I especially like the Collateral on Cocktail staredown and unobtrusive Boogie Nights appearances
Telluride Lineup The high altitude festival kicks off today with the following 27 film lineup. TFE never attends Telluride because it is against our "deeply held religious beliefs" to pay for the privilege of giving a festival free publicity (unlike most A list festivals you have to pay for a press pass). Titles in red are also playing at TIFF some of which have already played Cannes or Berlinale and some of which will also play NYFF. Titles in blue are playing NYFF but not TIFF which is a roundabout way of saying we'll be seeing most of them within a month, just not this very weekend! They'll also be giving awards/holding tributes to director Danny Boyle (Steve Jobs), Rooney Mara (Carol) -- Nick made a funny -- and documentarian Adam Curtis (Bitter Lake) so Oscar Campaign Season has officially begun. Speaking of Rooney, here's the new poster for Carol. Unimaginative but pretty!
CAROL (d. Todd Haynes, U.S., 2015)
AMAZING GRACE (d. Sydney Pollack, U.S., 1972/2015)
ANOMALISA (d. Charlie Kaufman, U.S., 2015)
BEAST OF NO NATION (d. Cary Fukunaga, U.S., 2015)
HE NAMED ME MALALA (d. Davis Guggenheim, U.S., 2015)
STEVE JOBS (d. Danny Boyle, U.S., 2015)
IXCANUL(d. Jayro Bustamante, Guatemala, 2015)
BITTER LAKE (d. Adam Curtis, U.K., 2015)
ROOM (d. Lenny Abrahamson, England, 2015)
BLACK MASS (d. Scott Cooper, U.S., 2015) Why anyone would be seeing Black Mass at either fest when it opens on 09/18, I cannot say!
SUFFRAGETTE (d. Sarah Gavron, U.K., 2015)
SPOTLIGHT (d. Tom McCarthy, U.S., 2015)
RAMS (d. Grímur Hákonarson, Iceland, 2015)
MOM AND ME (d. Ken Wardrop, Ireland, 2015)
VIVA (d. Paddy Breathnach, Ireland, 2015)
TAJ MAJAL (d. Nicolas Saada, France-India, 2015)
SITI (d. Eddie Cahyono, Indonesia, 2015)
HEART OF THE DOG (d. Laurie Anderson, U.S. 2014)
45 YEARS (d. Andrew Haigh, England, 2015)
SON OF SAUL (d. Lázló Nemes, Hungary, 2015)
ONLY THE DEAD (d. Michael Ware, Bill Guttentag, U.S.- Australia, 2015)
TAXI (d. Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2015)
HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (d. Kent Jones, U.S., 2015)
TIME TO CHOOSE (d. Charles Ferguson, U.S., 2015)
MARGUERITE (d. Xavier Giannoli, France, 2015)
TIKKUN (d. Avishai Sivan, Israel, 2015)
WINTER ON FIRE: UKRAINE’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM (d. Evgeny Afineevsky, Russia-Ukraine, 2015)
Off Screen Vulture smart negative review of Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz. I like the album quite a lot more than this but salient points made Broadway Buzz Kathleen Turner to costar in "Would You Still Love Me..." Off Broadway. It's about gender reassignment surgery. But not her characters (sorry, Friends fans). Her child is considering it in the play. NYT a profile of a "fit-model". I include this because I had never heard of this job until I became friends some years ago with a girl who is one! (Hi, Jenn!) People get this job not from magazine-beauty but from having ideal/average proporations/measurements for clothes-sizes. It's always neat to realize that each industry has jobs you've never imagined that people can actually earn livings from. Gothamist on the best non Broadway theater companies in NYC i09 novelist Don DeLillo to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Book Awards this fall
It's surprisingly easy to photoshop Cate's face over Lucille's so basically it works visuallyCate Blanchett playing Lucille Ball in a future biopic has already, rather oddly, taken over two entirely unrelated comment threads so I suppose we should say something official-like? The news of Aaron Sorkin's Lucy biopic to which Cate Blanchett is attached was one of those news stories that happened in those intermittent time periods when I was doing something other than the interweb (shock) for about 12 hours. I think it was dinner with a friend + 2 hours of Netflix's Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp + sleeping. When I woke up it was like the news had always existed and everyone but me was talking about it. These things happen. Even with our kind of news -- read: 'Actressy And How' -- when we're unlucky.
Undeniably this is a weird project on paper. Can you connect Sorkin's rat-a-tat-tat sober pontificating (even though it has a sense of humor) to Lucille's broad slapstick mixed with indefatigable verbosity? The verbosity sure. But otherwise... What's more, Sorkin's work rarely seems all that interested in women. Neither can I imagine Cate pulling it off without resorting to technical mimicry absent the silly soul -- Cate can definitely do comedy but this kind of comedy? That seems like quite a reach.
with George Sanders in Lured (1947)with Gene Kelly in Du Barry Was a Lady (1943)
Then again, Lucille Ball is a showbiz icon with more sides than just ditzy Lucy from the beloved 50s sitcom. In fact, there are enough movements in that career to suggest that the way to go would be an I'm Not There approach. You've got the savvy businesswoman, the 40s dramatic starlet (see Lured for the improbable sight of glamorous Lucille Ball in a Douglas Sirk directed serial killer drama!), the sitcom superstar, the late career wanderings (Mame anyone? No?). The bio won't cover her whole life, thankfully but looks to focus on 1940 through 1960 and her marriage to Desi Arnaz. If we don't get a scene from the set of Lured (1947) I'll feel personally cheated.
Today is the centennial of one Lucille Ball, born 100 years ago on this very day in New York. Her most famous incarnation was obviously "Lucy Ricardo" on television's beloved sitcom I Love Lucy. But until I Love Lucy and intermittently afterwards, she graced the silver screen, too.
The earliest entry in her filmography I've personally seen is the wonderful ensemble comedy Stage Door (1937) which is an absolute must-see for all actressexuals. No matter where you look on the screen in that film aboard a boarding house for Broadway dreamers, there's a screen goddess for your eyeballs: Hepburn, Ball, Rogers, Miller, Arden. Ball's last film was the ill fated musical Mame (1974) which is often ridiculed for its liberal use of ye olde 'smear the screen with vaseline' de-aging technique and for the quality -- or lack thereof -- in the singing. But even if Mame isn't anything like a classic, if you erase it from film history you lose that awesome scene of her and Bea Arthur crooning frenemy classic "Bosom Buddies" and we can't have that!
[Editor's note: Ugh, what is up with that clip. It's in widescreen but it looks like pan & scan. Is the aspect ratio off on all the vhs/dvd copies available?]
But the Lucy movie my mind always drifts to is Douglas Sirk's Lured (1947). It's worth a look for the curio factor alone, it being an early Sirk, a thriller which predates and predicts Hollywood's serial killer craze by a good 50 years, and an odd snapshot of a moment in time where it looked like she might become a dramatic screen star instead of the loveable goofball TV comic she was clearly meant to be.
If you're interested in Lucy, there's a new book out called Lucille Ball FAQ which is a treasure trove of weird trivia. For example, did you know that she actually auditioned for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind (then again, who didn't?) or that she really wanted but just barely missed out on being Sugarpuss O'Shea in screwball classic Ball of Fire or that that she turned down the fabulous "Alexandra" in Sweet Bird of Youth?(Geraldine Page earned a well deserved Oscar nomination and got to fondle Paul Newman. What was Lucy thinking?)
A new book and a still from Stage Door (1937) with Hepburn, Ball and Ginger Rogers
Did you know that the first celebrity name-checked on I Love Lucy was the movie star Gregory Peck? Or that in one episode Ball mimics her Stage Door castmate Katharine Hepburn's most famous line-reading from that movie "the calla lilies are in bloom again"?
The subtitle of the book is "Everything Left To Know About America's Favorite Redhead". I 'm not well versed enough in Ball's lore to know if that's accurate but the book certainly offers 'A Lot to Know About America's Favorite Redhead.'
Sunday, January 3, 2021 at 10:00AM 
5 random things that happened on this day, January 3rd, in showbiz history
