200 Oldest Living Screen Stars

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200 OLDEST LIVING SCREEN STARS
last updated 06/10/2021

103 years old

Marsha Hunt (10/17/17)
This Chicago born actress made over 50 films but never achieved A list stardom (during her peak she was often just below the title) and was one of many victims of the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s. Among her best known films: the Greer Garson version of Pride & Prejudice (she played Mary Bennett), the comedy Bride by Mistake, the family dramedy The Human Comedy (which gave Mickey Rooney a historic nomination), and the well-loved noir Raw Deal.

101 years old

Nehemiah Persoff (8/2/19)
Modern audiences probably remember him best as the loving Papa whose ears Yentl kept checking in song in Barbra Streisand's hit musical. But that was just scratching the surface of his career as he had numerous tv and film roles for decades including the voice of Papa Mousekwitz in the An American Tail movies. At the peak of his career in the 1950s he was in films like Hitchcock's The Wrong Man and the immortal comedy Some Like It Hot...  

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Joan Crawford in '47

by Cláudio Alves

After more than a decade as one of MGM's brightest and most formidable stars, the 1940s were a turning point for Joan Crawford. While she struggled to reinvent herself during these middle years of her career, many of the actress's best movies came from this phase. She left behind a series of lackluster offerings from her original studio, finding new power when carefully choosing projects at her new home, Warner Brothers. It wasn't easy, but she triumphed, winning an Oscar for 1945's Mildred Pierce and going on to get two other Best Actress nominations. More importantly, she solidified her legacy, challenged herself as an actress, and proved to everyone she was more than a flapper or talentless glamour girl.

During this period of Crawford's filmography, 1947 was a particularly auspicious year. She broke our hearts in a romantic tragedy, impressed AMPAS with explosive neurosis, and went on to star in one of Hollywood's most interesting post-war melodramas…

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Adrian, God of Glamour

by Cláudio Alves

Born Adrian Adolph Greenberg, the designer best known as Adrian was one of the most influential costumers in Hollywood history. After working in his family business of millinery, Adrian went on to study costume design in New York and Paris and later found work dressing the starlets of Broadway. His talents soon took him to Hollywood, where he found a home from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, designing the costumes for many an MGM classic. Throughout his tenure in Tinsel Town, Adrian perfected the on and offscreen looks of such great divas as Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and others. Among them, his most essential collaborator and muse was the one and only Joan Crawford…

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Ryan Murphy's "Hollywood" Finale

by Cláudio Alves

Sometimes artists dig their own graves by badly promoting or describing their works. Ryan Murphy's Hollywood is, to me, a good example of that. First off, the title is too vague, promising a portrait of Hollywood history instead of the fantasy the series presents. "Dreamland" would be an infinitely better name, both as a descriptor of the content and a tie-in to the narrative's details.

Titles aside, another big problem surrounding Hollywood is how many have been calling it revisionist history. It's no such thing…

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In defense of Faye Dunaway in "Mommie Dearest"

It's Mother's Day in Portugal and Mother's Day next Sunday in the US. Since we're celebrating 1981 this week, we're starting early with the biggest, meanest mother of them all!

by Cláudio Alves

In 1971, in her book titled My Way of Life, Joan Crawford, the legendary diva of Old Hollywood, said that, of all the actresses of the time, only Faye Dunaway had the talent, the class and the courage to be a movie star. Had she lived to see the younger actress play her in the infamous Mommie Dearest, Crawford would have probably revised her statement. The 1981 biopic is one of the great camp classics of all time, a prestige picture with pretensions of Oscar glory that crashed and burned most spectacularly. Dunaway herself is said to have believed she was on her way to Academy Award glory. Instead, she got a Razzie for Worst Actress...

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