Joyeux Anniversaire Alain Delon!

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Though I am a day late, I wanted to post a greeting to one of the most handsomest sexist European actors that ruled the silver screen during the 60s and 70s, Alain Delon. Click here to read a tribute to his career and below catch a clip of him playing the amoral Tom Ripley in Purple Noon (1960) based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. Below is a clip of the ending scenes. Though in French just enjoy looking at Delon.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pspj7-AczlM

WHERE’S THE BACK STORY?

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Though I am not a huge fan of 60s starlet Stefanie Powers, I was looking forward to her autobiography hoping it would be a look into her acting career.  For a short period of time she was a promising movie actress (Experiment in Terror, Palm Springs Weekend, New Interns, Die! Die ! My Darling, Stagecoach) up there with brunettes Pamela Tiffin, Diane Baker, Anjanette Comer but she instead followed Barbara Eden, Julie Newmar, Tina Louise into television with The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. When that was canceled, she worked non-stop on TV (trapped perhaps? though she did a feature movie here and there) making guest appearances and in TV-movies before landing the lead in the series Feather and Father Gang and then Hart to Hart.

Alas per two friends who have perused her book, she gives her acting career short shrift and instead it is another philosophical look at life ala Goldie Hawn, Richard Chamberlain and Raquel Welch.  One friend says Powers even takes a back seat to her long-time boyfriend William Holden in her own memoir!  When it comes to celebrity bios I want to know what went on behind-the-scenes of their TV shows and movies not their opinions about the human spirit. Geez, Goldie all I wanted to read was what was it like to work with Judy Carne instead of the New Agey claptrap you gave us. Hence, her book wound up in the garbage heap half read.  I won’t make the same mistake with Powers’ book.

For a great read, Faye Dunaway’s autobiography comes highly recommended.  She gives us readers the back story on all her movies and the actors she worked with that you expect from a celebrity bio.  This is the one I will be buying.

PRESENTING MISS JULIE NEWMAR

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A lot of people probably do not know that before Julie Newmar donned her catsuit to play the villainous Catwoman on TV’s Batman to purrrrfection, she won a Tony Award for her performance as a sexy Swedish exchange college student who decides her married professor will sire her child in the hit sex comedy The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. (She reprised her role for the movie version in 1960 and received a Golden Globe nomination.)

Life magazine did a photo shoot on the stage set and just recently some never-before-seen photos have surfaced. Click here to read more and see below for a video tribute.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCiesUK9_Io

HE’LL BOOK THEM NO MORE

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Actor James MacArthur passed away recently. He is most famous for his 11 year run as Det. Danno Williams on the hit CBS detective series Hawaii 5-O from 1968-1979. “Book him Danno” became a hugely popular catchphrase used even to this day and in the new reboot of the series with James Caan’s son Scott as Danno.  Due to his TV show MacArthur got to work with pracitically every 60s starlet in town including Nancy Kwan, Anne Helm, Nancy Kovack, Jean Hale, BarBara Luna, Sabrina Scharf, Melody Patterson (who became Mrs. James MacArthur for a short time), Carol Lynley, etc.

On the big screen, MacArthur was an affable leading man going from playing a juvenile delinquent in his debut movie The Young Stranger (1957) to signing with Walt Disney who turned him into a clean-cut teen idol in such films as The Light in the Forest (with Carol Lynley), Third Man on the Mountain and Swiss Family Robertson (both with Janet Munro). After leaving Disney in 1960, he played the leading man for awhile in The Interns (with Suzy Parker), Cry of  Battle (with Rita Moreno), and Spencer’s Mountain (with Mimsy Farmer) before working mostly in ensemble films such as The Bedford Incident and Battle of the Bulge.

Fans of cult movies remember him most as a college radical gone straight in The Love-Ins (with Susan Oliver who has the requisite LSD freak out scene) and cast against type as a motorcycle gang leader in The Angry Breed (with Melody Patterson and Suzie Kaye). Right after he landed Hawaii 5-0.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIlxcrA_MWg