Almost There: Shirley MacLaine in "Madame Sousatzka"

by Cláudio Alves

The Venice Film Festival is upon us and, this year, The Film Experience has two writers attending – Nathaniel and Elisa. For those at home, though, it might help satiate some of the FOMO to look back at the festival's long history. Indeed, these next two Almost There write-ups will focus on actors who won the Volpi Cup, managed to capture some Oscar buzz, but still failed to catch the Academy's attention. Today's example is exciting, for it comes from a rare tie. In 1988, the jury presided by Sergio Leone decided to award two performers with the Best Actress prize, an ex-aequo honor. They were Isabelle Huppert for her breathtaking tour de force in Chabrol's Story of Women and, our present subject of analysis, Shirley MacLaine in John Schlesinger's Madame Sousatzka…

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Showbiz History: Richard Farnsworth, The Women, Shirley Maclaine's daughter and more

8 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

1920 Richard Farnsworth, the very talented actor (Comes a Horseman, The Grey Fox), who started in film as a stuntman, was born on this day 100 years ago in Los Angeles. Happy Farnsworth Centennial.  Sadly he died 20 years ago, shortly after delivering his tremendously moving Oscar-nominated performancee in The Straight Story...

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"Won and done." The curse of finally winning an Oscar

by Baby Clyde

I recently watched Susan Hayward all but demanding voters hand her the Best Actress Oscar in-movie during 1958's I Want To Live. It got me to thinking about her fellow Academy favourites, whose eventual triumphs were also their Oscar swan song.

If an actor who achieves multiple acting nominations is going to win it’s usually early on. It’s common to bag the statue and then spend the rest of your career chasing another. Bette Davis won on her first 2 attempts and then suffered 8 consecutive losses. Spencer Tracy won on attempts 2 and 3 and then spent the next 30 years and 6 nominations waiting for his name to be called again. Sometimes a veteran actor with multiple nods will finally get the prize and continue on in Oscar good books, like Paul Newman who won on nomination 7 and scored two more in following decades. But a surprisingly high amount of winners who have been made to wait find that their greatest triumph is also their last. 

If you win on your 5th nomination (or later) odds are high that you won't be invited back. Consider...

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Happy National Siblings Day!

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Fontaine and de Havilland in 1967 at a Marlene Dietrich show

“I bequeath all my beauty to my younger sister Joan, because she has none.”
- Olivia de Havilland, according to her “will,” age nine

 Apocryphal? Who can say. Delicious? 100 percent!

 

Though chronicled to death (at TFE and elsewhere), the purported feud between the most famous siblings of Hollywood’s Golden Age endures like no other. Why? Because it seems silly and pointless in retrospect, as most sibling rivalries and familial angst do. But rather than dwell on the negative, let’s turn our attention to more positive outpourings of mutual love and respect, shall we?

 

Here are 10 of the more famous (in some cases infamous) siblings over the years on the ties that bind—and unbind—them to each other, not to mention the public’s imagination...

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50th Anniversary: Bob Fosse's "Sweet Charity"

by Eric Blume

Fifty years ago today, audiences saw their first Bob Fosse film:  Sweet Charity, the Cy Coleman/Dorothy Fields musical for which he won the Tony for Best Choreography three years earlier.  It’s fascinating to look back at this movie five decades later to see all the seeds that Fosse later brought to fruition in his subsequent films...

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