Kill Fee

Here’s a link to my review in Newsday of the new Peggy Lee biography by Peter Richmond.

From Interview magazine, May 1996:
Graham Fuller: [Charles] Laughton directed you in The Night of the Hunter. How did he film you in that incredible underwater shot where your character is drowned, her hair drifting like seaweed?
Shelley Winters: Oh, that wasn’t me. They used a model and made a mask of my face, which in those [...]

Thanks to IMDB.com I learned that Anne Bancroft would have been 74 tomorrow, an appropriate occasion, I think, to post a rather stunning image from a Dover paper doll book. I love this Tom Tierney illustration for the completely incongruous pair that Mrs. Robinson and Annie Sullivan make. They’re my two favorite Bancroft roles, although [...]

The Young Girls of Rochefort is a revelation—a staggering, eye-popping delight. Not only as a Jacques Demy/Michel Legrand candied confection with dance numbers but also as a showcase for the throaty, arresting French bombshell that was Françoise Dorléac.
In the current issue of Film Comment, Melissa Anderson traces the short-lived but incandescent career of Dorléac, [...]

Barbara Bel Geddes died of lung cancer on Monday. Though famous for her role as Miss Ellie on Dallas, Bel Geddes stood out to me for another performance–that of Scotty’s girlfriend Midge in Vertigo. A brassiere designer with sharp wit and enormous glasses, she doesn’t stand a chance against Jimmy Stewart’s obsession with breathy Kim [...]