Polly Bergen: 'Desperate Housewives' Emmy nominee; winner for 'The Helen Morgan Story' (photo: Felicity Huffman, Doug Savant, and Polly Bergen in 'Desperate Housewives') (See previous article: "Polly Bergen: Actress on Richard Nixon 'Enemies List'.") Polly Bergen began her lengthy — and to some extent prestigious — television career in 1950, making sporadic appearances in anthology series. She won an Emmy for Best Actress in a Single Performance – Lead or Supporting — beating Julie Andrews, Helen Hayes, Teresa Wright, and Piper Laurie — for playing troubled torch singer Helen Morgan (Show Boat) in the 1957 Playhouse 90 episode "The Helen Morgan Story," featuring veteran Sylvia Sidney as Morgan's mother. Curiously, Bergen's retelling of Helen Morgan's story was broadcast the same year that Ann Blyth starred in Michael Curtiz's Morgan biopic. Also titled The Helen Morgan Story, the film focused on the relationship between the singer and a...
- 9/23/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Polly Bergen: Actress on Richard Nixon's 'enemies list' (image: Polly Bergen publicity shot ca. late 1950s) (See previous article: "Polly Bergen Movies: First U.S. Woman President.") As discussed in the previous post, despite its deceptively progressive premise — the first United States woman president as a palpable reality — Kisses for My President, written by veteran Paramount screenwriter Claude Binyon (Search for Beauty, The Gilded Lily) and newcomer Robert G. Kane (whose sole other movie credit was the poorly received Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy Western Villain), was an unabashedly reactionary, "traditional family values" effort. Ironically, Polly Bergen, for her part, was a liberal-minded, politically active Democrat. At around the time Kisses for My President was released, Bergen, along with Gregory Peck, James Garner, and other Hollywood personalities, publicly came out against California's Proposition 14, a 1964 ballot initiative that would have nullified the Rumford Fair Housing Act, thus paving the way for...
- 9/22/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Polly Bergen dead at 84: ‘First woman president of the U.S.A.,’ former mistress of Tony Soprano’s father Emmy Award-winning actress Polly Bergen — whose roles ranged from the first U.S.A. woman president in Kisses for My President to the former mistress of both Tony Soprano’s father and John F. Kennedy in the television hit series The Sopranos — died from "natural causes" on September 20, 2014, at her home in Southbury, Connecticut. The 84-year-old Bergen, a heavy smoker for five decades, had been suffering from emphysema and other ailments since the 1990s. "Most people think I was born in a rich Long Island family," she told The Washington Post in 1988, but Polly Bergen was actually born Nellie Paulina Burgin on July 14, 1930, to an impoverished family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her father was an illiterate construction worker while her mother got only as far as the third grade. The family...
- 9/20/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Oscar-nominated ‘Imitation of Life’ actress Juanita Moore has died Juanita Moore, Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominee for the 1959 blockbuster Imitation of Life, died on New Year’s Day 2014 at her home in Los Angeles. According to various online sources, Juanita Moore (born on October 19, 1922) was 91; her step-grandson, actor Kirk Kahn, said she was 99. (Photo: Juanita Moore in the late ’50s. See also: Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner photos at the 50th anniversary screening of Imitation of Life at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.) Juanita Moore movies The Los Angeles-born Juanita Moore began her show business career as a chorus girl at New York City’s Cotton Club. According to the IMDb, Moore was an extra/bit player in a trio of films of the ’40s, including Vincente Minnelli’s all-black musical Cabin in the Sky (1942) and Elia Kazan’s socially conscious melodrama Pinky (1949), in which Jeanne Crain plays a (very,...
- 1/2/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ann Blyth movies: TCM schedule on August 16, 2013 (photo: ‘Our Very Own’ stars Ann Blyth and Farley Granger) See previous post: "Ann Blyth Today: Light Singing and Heavy Drama on TCM." 3:00 Am One Minute To Zero (1952). Director: Tay Garnett. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ann Blyth, William Talman. Bw-106 mins. 5:00 Am All The Brothers Were Valiant (1953). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth. C-95 mins. 6:45 Am The King’S Thief (1955). Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Cast: Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, David Niven. C-79 mins. Letterbox Format. 8:15 Am Rose Marie (1954). Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas. C-104 mins. Letterbox Format. 10:00 Am The Great Caruso (1951). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Mario Lanza, Ann Blyth, Dorothy Kirsten, Jarmila Novotna, Richard Hageman, Carl Benton Reid, Eduard Franz, Ludwig Donath, Alan Napier, Pál Jávor, Carl Milletaire, Shepard Menken, Vincent Renno, Nestor Paiva, Peter Price, Mario Siletti, Angela Clarke,...
- 8/16/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ann Blyth today: Light songs and heavy drama on TCM Ann Blyth, a 1940s Universal leading lady best remembered for her Oscar-nominated performance as Joan Crawford’s cute-but-sociopathic teenage daughter in Warner Bros.’ Mildred Pierce, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" star on Friday, August 16, 2013. Note: Today, Ann Blyth, one of the earliest surviving Oscar nominees in the acting categories, turns 85 years old. (See: “Ann Blyth Movies: TCM Schedule.”) (Photo: Ann Blyth ca. 1955.) First, the good news: Ann Blyth is a likable, talented actress and singer, and it’s great that TCM is dedicating a whole day to her movies. The bad news: As mentioned above, Ann Blyth was mostly (1944-1952) a Universal star; TCM is presenting only one of Blyth’s Universal movies, Brute Force (1947), which has been shown before. In other words, not a chance of finally having the opportunity to catch Ann Blyth in B...
- 8/16/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ann Blyth, who received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the film noir Mildred Pierce (1945), is pictured above during a discussion following a screening of the Joan Crawford classic at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on Monday, June 14, 2010. Mildred Pierce was shown as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ "Oscar Noir" series. In the movie, Blyth plays Mildred Pierce’s conniving, selfish daughter. Crawford plays Mildred. A Universal contract player in the 1940s and an MGM contractee in the ’50s, Blyth appeared in about three dozen movies from 1944 to 1957. In addition to Mildred Pierce, Blyth’s other important movies include A Woman’s Vengeance (1947), Brute Force (1947), Another Part of the Forest (1948), The Great Caruso (1951), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953), The Student Prince (1954), and The Helen Morgan Story [...]...
- 6/16/2010
- by Zhea D.
- Alt Film Guide
On this day in 1957, Warner Brothers Pictures released the soulful biopic, The Helen Morgan Story. Directed by Michael Curtiz, this story of the rise and fall of a great singer with a series of romantic issues and an alcohol problem was most notable for the great vocal performance by Ann Blyth in the title role. Also in the cast were [...]...
- 10/2/2009
- by Hollywood Outbreak
- HollywoodOutbreak.com
Paul Newman, who combined Method training with matinee idol looks to become the personification of the cool '60s rebel in such iconic roles as the reckless Hud, the defiant Cool Hand Luke and the hotshot Butch Cassidy, died Friday. Surrounded by friends and family, including his wife, Joanne Woodward, the actor and philanthropist passed away at his farmhouse home near Wesport, Conn., after a long battle with cancer. He was 83.
In a film career that spanned nearly six decades, Newman received seven Oscar nominations before he was finally presented with an Honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable and compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft."
But then he pulled out a trump card of his own, winning the best actor Academy Award the following year for "The Color of Money," in which he reprised the role of pool shark Fast Eddie Felsen,...
In a film career that spanned nearly six decades, Newman received seven Oscar nominations before he was finally presented with an Honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable and compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft."
But then he pulled out a trump card of his own, winning the best actor Academy Award the following year for "The Color of Money," in which he reprised the role of pool shark Fast Eddie Felsen,...
- 9/27/2008
- by By Gregg Kilday and Duane Byrge
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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