Almost There: Joanne Woodward in "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds"

by Cláudio Alves

In anticipation of the upcoming 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the next few weeks of the Almost There series will be dedicated to performances that won big at the Croisette and went on to some Oscar buzz. That being said, the first entry in this quasi-miniseries didn't convert Cannes plaudits into industry awards attention. The opposite happened. After opening commercially in the USA at the end of 1972, Paul Newman's third directorial effort, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, got slotted into the main competition of the following year's Cannes Film Festival. By the time Joanne Woodward won the festivities' Best Actress prize, her new Oscar dreams were already busted…

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Gay Best Friend: Calla Mackie in "Rachel, Rachel" (1968)

a series by Christopher James looking at the 'Gay Best Friend' trope

Who wouldn't risk it all for Estelle Parsons in those Edna Mode glasses?

We’re continuing our retro streak of the Gay Best Friend series this week, though we’re moving a bit forward in time (and to the subject of a Smackdown). In our Rebel Without a Cause entry, we discussed how director Nicholas Ray, actor Sal Mineo and writer Stewart Stern all coded Plato as gay, even though the Hays Code wouldn’t let homosexuality be openly discussed on film. This week, we’re looking at another Stewart Stern script, Rachel, Rachel. That film premiered thirteen years later (1968) and with the dissolution of the code we see less of a need to rely on coding. Estelle Parsons’ gregarious teacher Calla Mackie is established as a lesbian within the film. However, it reinforces tropes in gay representation that would continue for decades later. Calla may be a burst of energy early on, but her story moves into the “sad lesbian” and “tragic gay” frameworks we’ve become all too familiar with.

Before delving into Calla, we have to set up the object of her affection, the titular Rachel (Joanne Woodward)...

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It's Virginia Mayo's Centennial

by Nathaniel R

Today marks the centennial of another Old Hollywood star that seems to be forgotten these days but perhaps there are fans among you? Born in Missouri on this day in 1920, Virginia Clara Jones hit the Vaudeville circuit as a professional entertainer when she was 17 and adopted the stage name of "Virginia Mayo" even before Hollywood came calling in the early 1940s. Her first credited film role was in the biopic Jack London (1943) starring Michael O'Shea (who she would marry four years later). Though she was a leading lady with many box office hits to her name, enduring classics (mostly) eluded her. Naturally then she's best remembered today in a supporting role as the unfaithful wife in the superb Best Picture winner The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), one of those utterly magic films where every single actor is killing it...

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Showbiz History: Billy the Kid, Doctor Who, Kayvan Novak

8 random things that happened on this day (November 23rd) in showbiz history

Paul Newman as Billy the Kid

1859 Billy the Kid, future outlaw and movie inspiration was maybe born on this day (there's disagreement on that front). Numerous westerns would feature the gunslinger as a character, sometimes as hero sometimes as villain, who was orphaned at 15 and a wanted outlaw by 16. He's been played on film or television by numerous stars who were usually much older than the actual "kid" (given that he was killed at just 21 years of age), including but not limited to: Val Kilmer, Kris Kristofferson, Dane DeHaan, Emilio Estevez, and of course Paul Newman in The Left-Handed Gun (1958).

1923 Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments premieres. He would of course remake it as the infinitely better-remembered 1956 classic of the same name...

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1987: Karen Allen in "The Glass Menagerie"

Each month before the Smackdown, Nick Taylor considers alternates to Oscar's ballot...

Remember way back when this Smackdown season started with 1981, and I mentioned Karen Allen as someone who somehow missed out on a well-deserved Supporting Actress nomination despite how few films Oscar bothered to recognize that year? Her barnstorming performance in Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of that adventure classic's secret weapons, building on the potential in Marion Ravenwood and delivering a tangible, electrifying character even when the script lets her down. In truth, I sometimes think of Allen alongside contemporaneous stars like Jessica Harper and Brooke Adams: singular, charismatic screen presences you could never mix up for one another despite their similar appearances, all of whom starred in some of the best, most idiosyncratic films of the ‘70s and ‘80s. 

I’d also wager that Harper and Adams’ personas would suggest themselves for the role of the shy, undemonstrative Laura Wingfield in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie more than Allen’s would. Who’d pick Marion Ravenwood (!) for a part given to Jane Wyman in 1950? Yet it was Allen who played the role onstage opposite Joanne Woodward, John Sayles (!), and James Naughton at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1986, and Paul Newman was so impressed by their performances that he decided to make a damn movie...

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