French postcard in the Collection "Portraits de Cinema", Series 3, no. 15, by Editions Admira, Aix-en-Provence, no. PHN 591, 1990. Buster Keaton in The Navigator (Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton, 1924).
Stone-faced Buster Keaton (1895-1966) was one of the three greatest comedians of Silent Hollywood.
Buster Keaton was born Joseph Frank Keaton in 1895 into a vaudeville family. His father was Joseph Hallie ‘Joe’ Keaton, who owned a travelling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company. Keaton was born in Piqua, Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Keaton (née Myra Edith Cutler), happened to go into labour. By the time he was 3, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He was being thrown around the stage and into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. His little suits even had a handle concealed at the waist, so Joe could sling him like luggage. "It was the roughest knockabout act that was ever in the history of the theatre," Keaton told the historian Kevin Brownlow. It led to accusations of child abuse, and occasionally, arrest. However, Buster Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones. Noticing that his laughing drew fewer laughs from the audience, Keaton adopted his famous deadpan expression whenever he was working. For the rest of his career, Keaton was "the great stone face," with an expression that ranged from impassive to slightly quizzical. By the time he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Keaton and his mother, Myra, left for New York, where Buster Keaton's career swiftly moved from vaudeville to film. In February 1917, Keaton met Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joseph M. Schenck. He was hired as a co-star and gagman, making his first appearance in the short The Butcher Boy (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1917). He appeared in a total of 14 Arbuckle shorts, running into 1920. They were popular and, Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends. Keaton was one of few people to defend Arbuckle's character during accusations that he was responsible for the death of actress Virginia Rappe in 1921. In The Saphead (Herbert Blaché, Winchell Smith, 1920), Keaton had his first starring role in a full-length feature. It was a success and Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Comedies. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including One Week (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1920), The Boat (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1921), Cops (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1922), and The Paleface (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1922). Keaton then moved to full-length features. His first feature, Three Ages (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1923), was produced similarly to his short films and was the dawning of a new era in comedic cinema, where it became apparent to Keaton that he had to put more focus on the storylines and characterization. His most enduring features include Our Hospitality (John G. Blystone, Buster Keaton, 1923), The Navigator (Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton, 1924), Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924), College (James W. Horne, Buster Keaton, 1927), and The General (Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton, 1927). The General, set during the American Civil War, combined physical comedy with Keaton's love of trains, including an epic locomotive chase. Employing picturesque locations, the film's storyline re-enacted an actual wartime incident. Though it would come to be regarded as Keaton's greatest achievement, the film received mixed reviews at the time. It was too dramatic for some filmgoers expecting a lightweight comedy. It was an expensive misfire, and Keaton was never entrusted with total control over his films again. His distributor, United Artists, insisted on a production manager who monitored expenses and interfered with certain story elements.
Buster Keaton endured this treatment for two more feature films, including Steamboat Bill Jr. (Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton, 1928), and then exchanged his independent setup for employment at Hollywood's biggest studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Keaton's loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films (although he was interested in making the transition) and mounting personal problems, In 1921, Keaton had married Natalie Talmadge, sister-in-law of his boss, Joseph Schenck, and sister of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge. She co-starred with Keaton in Our Hospitality. The couple had two sons, James (1922-2007) and Robert (1924–2009), but after the birth of Robert, the relationship began to suffer. Influenced by her family, Talmadge decided not to have any more children and this led to the couple staying in separate bedrooms. Her financial extravagance (she would spend up to a third of his salary on clothes) was another factor in the breakdown of the marriage. Keaton signed with MGM in 1928, a business decision that he would later call the worst of his life. He realized too late that MGM’s studio system would severely limit his creative input. For instance, the studio refused his request to make his early project, Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton, 1929), as a sound film and after the studio converted, he was obliged to adhere to dialogue-laden scripts. However, MGM did allow Keaton some creative participation on his last originally developed/written silent film The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton, 1928). which was his first project under contract with them. Keaton was forced to use a stunt double during some of the more dangerous scenes, something he had never done in his heyday, as MGM wanted badly to protect its investment. Some of his most financially successful films for the studio were during this period. MGM tried teaming the laconic Keaton with the rambunctious Jimmy Durante in a series of films, The Passionate Plumber (Edward Sedgwick, 1932), Speak Easily (Edward Sedgwick, 1932), and What! No Beer? (Edward Sedgwick, 1933). In the first Keaton pictures with sound, he and his fellow actors would shoot each scene three times: one in English, one in Spanish, and one in either French or German. The actors would phonetically memorize the foreign-language scripts a few lines at a time and shoot immediately after. In 1932, Nathalie Talmadge divorced Keaton, taking his entire fortune and refusing to allow any contact between Keaton and his sons, whose last name she had changed to Talmadge. Keaton was reunited with them about a decade later when his older son turned 18. With the failure of his marriage and the loss of his independence as a filmmaker, Keaton lapsed into a period of alcoholism.
Buster Keaton was so demoralized during the production of What! No Beer? (Edward Sedgwick, 1933) that MGM fired him after the filming was complete, despite the film being a resounding hit. In 1933, he married his nurse, Mae Scriven, during an alcoholic binge about which he afterwards claimed to remember nothing. Scriven herself would later claim that she didn't know Keaton's real first name until after the marriage. When they divorced in 1936, it was again at great financial cost to Keaton. In 1934, Keaton accepted an offer to make an independent film in Paris, Le Roi des Champs-Élysées/The King of the Champs Elysees (Max Nosseck, 1934) with Paulette Dubost. In England, he made another film, The Invader/An Old Spanish Custom (Adrian Brunel, 1936). Upon Keaton's return to Hollywood, he made a screen comeback in a series of 16 two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures. Most of these are simple visual comedies, with many of the gags supplied by Keaton himself, often recycling ideas from his family vaudeville act and his earlier films. The high point in the Educational series is Grand Slam Opera (Buster Keaton, Charles Lamont, 1936), featuring Buster in his own screenplay as a contestant in a radio amateur hour show hoping to win the first prize... by dancing and juggling. When the series lapsed in 1937, Keaton returned to MGM as a gag writer, including the Marx Brothers films At the Circus (Edward Buzzell, 1939) and Go West (Edward Buzzell, 1940), and providing material for Red Skelton. He also helped and advised Lucille Ball in her comedic work in films and television. In 1939, Columbia Pictures hired Keaton to star in ten two-reel comedies, running for two years. The director was usually Jules White, whose emphasis on slapstick and farce made most of these films resemble White's Three Stooges comedies. Keaton's personal favourite was the series' debut entry, Pest from the West (Del Lord, 1939), a shorter, tighter remake of The Invader (1936). Keaton's Columbia shorts rank as the worst comedies he made.
Buster Keaton's personal life stabilized with his 1940 marriage with Eleanor Norris, a 21-year-old dancer. She stopped his heavy drinking and helped to salvage his career. He abandoned Columbia for the less strenuous field of feature films. Throughout the 1940s, Keaton played character roles in features. He made his last starring feature El Moderno Barba Azul/Boom In The Moon (Jaime Salvador, 1946) in Mexico. Critics rediscovered Keaton in 1949. He had cameos in such films as In the Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1949), Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), and Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson, 1956), and did innumerable TV appearances. Keaton also appeared in a comedy routine about two inept stage musicians in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (1952). In 1954, Keaton and his wife met film programmer Raymond Rohauer, with whom the couple would develop a business partnership to re-release Keaton's films. Around the same time, after buying the comedian's house, the actor James Mason found numerous cans of Keaton's films. Keaton had prints of the features Three Ages, Sherlock, Jr., Steamboat Bill, Jr., College (missing one reel) and the shorts The Boat and My Wife's Relations, which Keaton and Rohauer transferred to safety stock from deteriorating nitrate film stock. Unknown to them at the time, MGM also had saved some of Keaton's work: all his 1920-1926 features and his first eight two-reel shorts. In 1962 came a retrospective at the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, and in 1965 a tribute at the Venice Film Festival. "I can't feel sorry for myself," he said in Venice. "It all goes to show that if you stay on the merry-go-round long enough you'll get another chance at the brass ring. Luckily, I stayed on." In 1960, Keaton returned to MGM for the final time, playing a lion tamer in an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Michael Curtiz, 1960). Later Keaton played a cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer, 1963) and starred in four films for American International Pictures: Pajama Party (Don Weis, 1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (William Asher, 1965), How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (William Asher, 1964) and Sergeant Deadhead (Norman Taurog, 1964). As he had done in the past, Keaton also provided gags for the four AIP films. In 1965, Keaton starred in the short film The Railrodder (Gerald Potterton, Buster Keaton, 1965) for the National Film Board of Canada. Wearing his traditional pork pie hat, he travelled from one end of Canada to the other on a railway motorcar, performing a few stunts similar to those in films he did 50 years earlier. The film was Keaton's last silent screen performance. He also played the central role in Samuel Beckett's Film (Alan Schneider, 1965) and travelled to Italy to play a role in Due Marines e un Generale/War Italian Style (Luigi Scattini, 1965), with Italian comedy duo Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. Keaton's final film was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Richard Lester, 1966) which was filmed in Spain in September-November 1965. He amazed the cast and crew by doing many of his own stunts. Shortly after completing the film, Keaton died of lung cancer in 1966 at his home in Woodland Hills, California. He was 70. In 1987, the documentary, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, directed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, won two Emmy Awards.
Sources: Roger Ebert, Nicolette Olivier (IMDb), New York Times, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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French postcard in the Collection "Portraits de Cinema" (6e série), no. 10, by Editions Admira, Aix-en Provence, no. PHN 862, 1990. Photo: Snap Photo / Cosmos. Woody Allen in Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen, 1984).
American actor-writer-director Woody Allen (1935) is best known for his romantic comedies Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979). In his films, he frequently plays a neurotic New Yorker and often bases them on his own life experiences. He had 16 Oscar nominations for writing, more than anyone else.
Woody Allen was born in 1935, as Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, NY. He was the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg and has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today. Allen broke into show business at 15 years when he started writing jokes for a local paper, receiving $200 a week. At 17, he changed his name to Heywood Allen. He moved on to write jokes for talk shows but felt that his jokes were being wasted. His agents, Charles Joffe and Jack Rollins, convinced him to start doing stand-up and telling his own jokes. Reluctantly he agreed and, although he initially performed with such fear of the audience that he would cover his ears when they applauded his jokes, he eventually became very successful at stand-up. After performing on stage for a few years, he was approached to write a script for Warren Beatty to star in: What's New Pussycat (1965). He would also have a moderate role as a character in the film. During production, Woody gave himself more and better lines and left Beatty with less compelling dialogue. Beatty inevitably quit the project and was replaced by Peter Sellers, who demanded all the best lines and more screen-time. It was from this experience that Woody realized that he could not work on a film without complete control over its production. Woody's theoretical directorial debut was in What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966); a Japanese spy flick that he dubbed over with his own comedic dialogue about spies searching for the secret recipe for egg salad. His real directorial debut came the next year in the mockumentary Take the Money and Run (1969). He has written, directed and, more often than not, starred in about a film a year ever since, while simultaneously writing more than a dozen plays and several books of comedy.
Woody Allen has made many transitions in his films throughout the years, transitioning from his "early, funny ones" of Bananas (1971), Love and Death (1975) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972); to his more storied and romantic comedies of Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); to the Bergmanesque films of Stardust Memories (1980) and Interiors (1978). Later he made the more varied works of Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Husbands and Wives (1992), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Celebrity (1998), and Deconstructing Harry (1997). In the new century, he made films that vary from the light comedy of Scoop (2006), to the self-destructive darkness of Match Point (2005) and to the cinematically beautiful tale of Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Although his stories and style have changed over the years, he is regarded as one of the best filmmakers of our time because of his views on art and his mastery of filmmaking.
Sources: David McCollum and Michael Castrignano (IMDb).
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French postcard by Editions Admira in the Collection 'Portraits de cinema" (1st series), no. 12, 1987. Photo: Léo Mirkine. Caption: Gina Lollobrigida, Cannes (1959).
Gorgeous Italian actress and photojournalist Gina Lollobrigida (1927) was one of the first European sex symbols of the post-war years. ‘La Lollo’ paved the way into Hollywood for her younger colleagues Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale.
Luigina Lollobrigida was born in the picturesque Italian mountain village Subiaco in 1927, as one of four daughters of a furniture manufacturer. At the age of 3, Luigina was already selected as the most beautiful toddler of Italy and in her youth, she started to model. She became an art student and made her film debut in an uncredited bit role in the adventure film Aquila nera/The Black Eagle Returns (Riccardo Freda, 1946) starring Rossano Brazzi. In 1947, she entered the Miss Italia pageant and came in third. The contest was won by Lucia Bosé and the second was Gianna Maria Canale. Both also became film actresses, though not nearly as successful as Lollobrigida. Gina Lollobrigida was discovered by director Mario Costa who gave her a small part as a girlfriend of Adina (Nelly Corradi) in the opera adaptation L’elisir d’amore/Elixir of Love (Mario Costa, 1946). Lollobrigida started to model as Diana Loris for the Fotoromanzi, the popular Italian photo novels. She got her first bigger film part in another opera film, Pagliacci/Love of a Clown - Pagliacci (Mario Costa, 1948), co-starring with one of the greatest Italian baritones, Tito Gobbi. The film, based on Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci recounts the tragedy of Canio (Afro Poli), the lead clown (or pagliaccio in Italian) in a Commedia dell'arte troupe, his wife Nedda (Lollobrigida), and her lover, Silvio (Gobbi). When Nedda spurns the advances of Tonio (also Gobbi), another player in the troupe, he tells Canio about Nedda's betrayal. In a jealous rage, Canio murders both Nedda and Silvio. Lollobrigida's singing in this film was dubbed.
Gina Lollobtrigida's first major success as a leading lady was in Miss Italia/My Beautiful Daughter (Duilio Coletti, 1950), a backstage drama set at a beauty contest. It was followed by the delightful comedy Vita da cani/A Dog's Life (Mario Monicelli, Steno, 1950) with Aldo Fabrizi, and the award-winning crime drama La città si difende/Four Ways Out (Pietro Germi, 1951), based on a script by Federico Fellini. In France, she co-starred with Gérard Philipe in the hugely entertaining melange of swash-buckling adventure, comedy, and romance Fanfan la Tulipe/Fan-Fan the Tulip (Christian Jacque, 1952) and in Les Belles de Nuit/Beauties of the Night (René Clair, 1952). James Travers at Films de France: "As French matinee idol Gérard Philipe is propelled through history and cardboard Freudian dreamscapes, into the arms of such beauties as Martine Carol and Gina Lollobrigida, (director René) Clair appears to have all but lost his tenuous grip on reality (the scene with the dinosaur confirms it) - but who cares? This is a film which, like Clair’s earlier comic masterpieces, is intended to distract and entertain, and it does that marvelously and unashamedly." Gina Lollobrigida had her definitive breakthrough with the huge global hit Pane, amore e fantasia/Bread, Love and Dreams (Luigi Comencini, 1953), in which she starred with Vittorio De Sica. This romantic comedy was nominated in the U.S. for an Oscar, and Lollobrigida herself received in Great Britain a nomination at BAFTA. The success led to three sequels, including Pane, amore e gelosia/Bread, Love and Jealousy (Luigi Comencini, 1954). Her first American film was Beat the Devil (John Huston, 1953). She was at her best as Humphrey Bogart's wife in this odd but endearing noiresque comedy. Next, she earned her nickname ‘The World's Most Beautiful Woman’ for her signature film La donna più bella del mondo (Robert Z. Leonard, 1956), in which she played the legendary actress Lina Cavalieri. For her role in this film, she received the first David di Donatello for Best Actress. Her earthy looks and short 'tossed salad' hairdo were quite influential, and in fact, there's a type of curly lettuce named 'Lollo' in honour of her cute hairdo. (In France 'Lollo's' were a nickname for breasts).
Gina Lollobrigida made another Hollywood appearance in the circus melodrama Trapeze (Carol Reed, 1956) between Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis. Next, she starred as Esmeralda in Notre Dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Jean Delannoy, 1956) opposite Anthony Quinn as Quasimodo. In 1959 she lured Yul Brynner in the Biblical epic Solomon and Sheba (King Vidor, 1959). One of her most popular Hollywood films was Come September (Robert Mulligan, 1961), in which she played the never-contented mistress of Rock Hudson. For this lightweight comedy, she won the Golden Globe as 'World Film Favorite'. She co-starred again with Hudson in Strange Bedfellows (Melvin Frank, 1965), and in 1968 she starred in the enjoyable screwball comedy Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (Melvin Frank, 1968), for which she was again nominated for a Golden Globe and won a David di Donatello award, the Italian Oscar. On TV, Gina Lollobrigida was seen in the mini series Le Avventure di Pinocchio/The Adventures of Pinocchio (Luigi Comencini, 1972). She retired from acting in the mid-1970s but has occasionally returned for the camera, including in a regular role in the American soap opera Falcon Crest (1984). She has used her celebrity to sell cosmetics, published two books of her photography, Italia (My Italy, 1973) and Wonder of Innocence (1994), and created sculptures. In the mid-1970s she wrote, directed, and produced Ritratto di Fidel/Portrait of Fidel, a very personal 50-minute documentary about Fidel Castro that included a rare interview with the Cuban dictator, fuelling persistent rumours that a romance was sparked. In 1986, she was the head of the jury at the Berlin International Film Festival, and in 1999 she ran for a seat in the European Union Parliament, stressing humanitarian issues, but she lost the election. Now virtually retired, Gina Lollobrigida has not made a film appearance since XXL (Ariel Zeitoun, 1997) with Gérard Depardieu. Gina Lollobrigida was married once, to Slovenian physician Milko Skofic, in 1949. Skofic gave up his practise to become her manager. They had one child, Milko Skofic, Jr., born in 1957, and the couple divorced in 1971. In 1993 her grandson Dimitri was born. Lollobrigida has lived since 1949 at her home ranch and gardens in Sicily. The property contains her personal museum. In addition, she regularly stays at her house on Via Appia Antica in Rome and at a villa in Monte Carlo. Since 2009 Lollobrigida has not allowed visitors to her home. In 2013, Lollobrigida sold her jewelry collection through Sotheby's. She donated nearly $5 million to benefit stem cell therapy. Next to her Golden Globe, Lollobrigida has won 6 David di Donatello, 2 Nastro d'Argento, and 6 Bambi Awards. In 1985 she was nominated as an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, Jack Lang for her achievements in sculpture and in photography. In 1992 she was awarded the Légion d'Honneur by president François Mitterrand.
Sources: James Travers (Film de France), NNDB, Andrea LeVasseur (AllMovie), kd haisch (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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French postcard in the Collection 'Portraits de Cinema' by Editions Admira, Aix-en-Provence, Serie 6, no. 1 / no. PHN 863. Photo: SNAP Photo / Cosmos. Robert Redford in The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973).
With his all-American good looks, Robert Redford (1936) was one of the biggest Hollywood stars of the 1970s. In classics as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973) and All the President's Men (1976), he was the intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy. He received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010, the actor, director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Sundance Film Festival was appointed Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in France.
Charles Robert Redford Jr. was born in Santa Monica, California in 1936. His parents were Martha W. (Hart) and Charles Robert Redford, Sr., a milkman-turned-accountant. Redford's family moved to Van Nuys, California, while his father worked in El Segundo. He attended Van Nuys High School and was interested in art and sports. After high school, he attended the University of Colorado for a year and a half. He travelled in Europe but decided on a career as a theatrical designer in New York. Enrolling at the American Academy of Dramatic Art he turned to acting. In 1959, Redford's acting career began on stage, making his Broadway debut with a small role in Tall Story. It was followed by parts in The Highest Tree (1959) and Sunday in New York (1961). On TV, he appeared as a guest star on numerous programs, including Maverick (1960), Perry Mason (1960), The Twilight Zone (1962), and The Untouchables (1963). Redford earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (1962). Redford made his screen debut in War Hunt (Denis Sanders, 1962), set during the last days of the Korean War. This film also marked the acting debut of director Sydney Pollack, with whom Redford would collaborate on seven films. His biggest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963). After this smash hit, he was cast in larger film roles. In the war comedy Situation Hopeless ... But Not Serious (Gottfried Reinhardt, 1965) with Alec Guinness, he played a soldier who has to spend years of his life hiding behind enemy lines. In Inside Daisy Clover (Robert Mulligan, 1965), he played a bisexual movie star who marries starlet Natalie Wood. It won him a Golden Globe for the best new star. A success was This Property Is Condemned (Sydney Pollack, 1966), again with Nathalie Wood. The same year saw he co-starred with Jane Fonda in The Chase (Arthur Penn, 1966), also with Marlon Brando. Fonda and Redford were paired again in the film version of Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967) and were again co-stars much later in The Electric Horseman (Sydney Pollack, 1979).
After this initial success, Robert Redford became concerned about his stereotype image of the blond 'All American'. At the age of 32, he found the property he was looking for in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969), scripted by William Goldman. For the first time, he was teamed with Paul Newman and it was a huge success. The film made him a major bankable star. Other critical and box office hits were Jeremiah Johnson (Sydney Pollack, 1972), the hugely popular period drama The Way We Were (Sydney Pollack, 1973) with Barbra Streisand, and the blockbuster crime caper The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973), the biggest hit of his career, for which he was also nominated for an Oscar. Between 1974 and 1976, exhibitors voted Redford as Hollywood's top box-office name with such hits as The Great Gatsby (Jack Clayton, 1974) and Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975) with Faye Dunaway. The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976), directed by and scripted once again by Goldman, was a landmark film for Redford. Not only was he the executive producer and co-star, but the film's serious subject matter—the Watergate scandal—and its attempt to create a realistic portrayal of journalism, also reflected the actor's offscreen concerns for political causes. He also appeared in the war film A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977) before starring in the prison drama Brubaker (Stuart Rosenberg, 1980), playing a prison warden attempting to reform the system, and the baseball drama The Natural (Barry Levinson, 1984). With his enormous salaries, he acquired Utah property, which he transformed into a ranch and the Sundance ski resort. In 1980, he established the Sundance Institute for aspiring filmmakers. Its annual film festival has now become one of the world's most influential.
Robert Redford continued his involvement in mainstream Hollywood movies, though with a newfound focus on directing. The first film he directed, Ordinary People (1980), which followed the disintegration of an upper-class American family after the death of a son, was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning a number of Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Director for Redford himself, and Best Picture. His follow-up directorial project, The Milagro Beanfield War (1987), failed to generate the same level of attention. Out of Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985), with Redford and Meryl Streep, became an enormous critical and box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture. It was Redford's biggest success of the decade and Redford and Pollack's most successful film together. Redford continued as a major star throughout the 1990s and 2000s. His third film as a director, A River Runs Through It (1992) with the young Brad Pitt was a mainstream success. Then, he starred in Indecent Proposal (Adrian Lyne, 1993) as a millionaire businessman who tests a couple's (Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson) morals. It became one of the year's biggest hits. His film Quiz Show (Robert Redford, 1994), starring Ralph Fiennes and Rob Morrow, earned him yet another Best Director nomination. He co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in the newsroom romance Up Close & Personal (Jon Avnet, 1996), and with Kristin Scott Thomas in The Horse Whisperer (1998), which he also directed. Redford also continued work in films with political contexts, such as Havana (Sydney Pollack, 1990), playing Jack Weil, a professional gambler in 1959 Cuba during the Revolution, as well as the caper Sneakers (Phil Alden Robinson, 1992), with River Phoenix. He reteamed with Brad Pitt for Spy Game (Tony Scott, 2001). Redford stepped back into producing with The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles, 2004), a coming-of-age road film about a young medical student, Ernesto 'Che' Guevera, and his friend Alberto Granado. He reteamed with Meryl Streep 22 years after they starred in Out of Africa, for his personal project Lions for Lambs (Robert Redford, 2007), which also starred Tom Cruise. The film disappointed at the box office. Recently, he starred in All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor, 2013) about a man lost at sea. He received very high acclaim for his performance in the film, in which he is its only cast member and has almost no dialogue. Next, he appeared in the Marvel Studios superhero film Captain America: The Winter Soldier playing Alexander Pierce (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, 2014). More recently, he appeared in such films as A Walk in the Woods (Ken Kwapis, 2015) with Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson, Truth (James Vanderbilt, 2015) with Cate Blanchett, The Discovery (Charlie McDowell, 2017) with Mary Steenburgen, and Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, 2019) with Robert Downey Jr. Between 1958 and 1985, Robert Redford was married to Lola Van Wagenen. The couple had four children: Scott Anthony (1959 - he died of sudden infant death syndrome, aged 2½ months), painter Shauna Jean Redford (1960), writer and producer David 'Jamie' James (1962), and director, and producer Amy Hart Redford (1970). Redford has seven grandchildren. In 2009, Redford married his long-time partner, German painter Sibylle Szaggars. In 2011, Alfred A. Knopf published 'Robert Redford: The Biography' by Michael Feeney Callan, written over fifteen years with Redford's input, and drawn from his personal papers and diaries.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
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French postcard by Editions Admira & Bettina Rheims, no. PHN 139, 1987. Photo: Bettina Rheims, 1985.
English actress Charlotte Rampling (1946) became a legend with her ice-blue eyes, diamond-cut diction and much-remarked-upon cheekbones in such controversial classics like La Caduta degli dei/The Damned (1969) and Il Portiere di note/The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974). In Hollywood, she worked successfully with Woody Allen and Sidney Lumet, and this century she returned spectacularly to the A-list of the cinema in François Ozon’s Sous le sable/Under the Sand (2000), and Swimming Pool (2003).
Charlotte Rampling was born Tessa Charlotte Rampling in Sturmer, Great Britain, in 1946. She is the daughter of Anne Isabelle Rampling-Gurteen, a painter, and Godfrey Rampling, an army officer. Her father had won silver in the athletics track event 4x400m relay at the 1932 Olympics, and gold in the 4x400m relay at the 1936 Olympics. Charlotte attended the Jeanne d'Arc Académie in Versailles, France and the exclusive St. Hilda's School, Bushey, England. At 17 she was spotted on the street, and asked to appear in a Cadbury television commercial. She enjoyed a successful modelling career, before she made her first, uncredited screen appearance as a water skier in the comedy The Knack ...and How to Get It (Richard Lester, 1965). The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival. Later that year she played the female lead in the comedy Rotten to the Core (John Boulting, 1965) with Anton Rodgers and Eric Sykes. At the time London was swinging and the 20 years old Rampling was one of the city’s ‘it’ girls. She played Meredith, the bitchy but beautiful roommate of Georgy (Lynn Redgrave) in the successful comedy drama Georgy Girl (Silvio Narizzano, 1966). But that year, a traumatic event occurred, when her elder sister Sarah shot herself in Argentina after giving birth prematurely and losing her child. Charlotte was devastated by this loss, which she experienced as an abandonment by her sister. She and her father lied to her mother, telling her that Sarah had died of a stroke. Charlotte seemingly overcame this trauma and was able to continue acting. In 1967 she played the gunfighter Hana Wilde in The Superlative Seven, an episode of the hit series The Avengers with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg. After this, her acting career blossomed in both English and French cinema. Among the early roles were the female lead in the British adventure film The Long Duel (Ken Annakin, 1967) starring Yul Brynner and Trevor Howard, and the thriller Target: Harry (Roger Corman, 1969).
Charlotte Rampling has performed controversial roles. In Luchino Visconti's classic, she played a young wife sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Critics praised her performance, and it cast her in a whole new image: mysterious, sensitive and ultimately tragic. ‘The Look’ as co-star Dirk Bogarde called it, became her trademark. She played Anne Boleyn in the film adaptation of Henry VIII and His Six Wives (Waris Hussein, 1972), with Keith Michell as Henry VIII. In the US, she played the wife of Robert Blake in the drama Corky (Leonard Horn, 1972). In 1972, Rampling also married the actor and publicist Bryan Southcombe and had one child, Barnaby Southcombe, (1972) now a television and film director. They were widely reported to be living in a ménage à trois with a male model, Randall Laurence, although she always denied there was ever any sexual relationship. She co-starred with Sean Connery in the science fiction/fantasy film Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974). In Il Portiere di note/The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974). she portrayed a concentration camp survivor who is reunited with the Nazi guard (Dirk Bogarde) who tortured her, and resumes their ambiguous relationship. In France, she offered a passionate rendering of a violent heiress confined to a mental institution in La Chair de l'orchidée/The Flesh of the Orchid (1975), an adaptation of the pulp novel, The Flesh of the Orchid (1948) by James Hadley Chase. The film was the directorial debut of French author and stage director Patrice Chéreau, and also stars Simone Signoret, Bruno Cremer and Edwige Feuillère. Other interesting European films were Un taxi mauve/The Purple Taxi (Yves Boisset, 1977) with Peter Ustinov, Philippe Noiret and Fred Astaire, and Max mon amour/Max, My Love (Nagisa Oshima, 1986), in which she played a woman who fell in love with a chimpanzee. Rampling gained recognition from American audiences in a remake of Raymond Chandler's detective story Farewell, My Lovely (Dirk Richards, 1975) with Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe. Later she stole the show with her part in Stardust Memories (Woody Allen, 1980) as a beautiful but emotionally fragile depressive. She had again success in Hollywood as the deceitful Laura in the acclaimed courtroom drama The Verdict (Sidney Lumet, 1982), starring Paul Newman. Five years later she appeared with Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro. in the American voordoo themed thriller Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987), as an ill-fated woman whose heart is irrevocably extracted from her body.
In the following decade, Charlotte Rampling mainly worked for TV, such as in Great Expectations (Julian Jarrold, 1999), BBC's BAFTA award-winning adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel. She played the decayed spinster Miss Havisham opposite Ioan Gruffudd as Pip. Charlotte Rampling credits François Ozon with drawing her back to film in the 2000s, a period when she came to terms with the death of her eldest sister Sarah. Ozon gave her the lead role in his French drama Sous le sable/Under the Sand (François Ozon, 2000), which was nominated for three César Awards and was critically well received. Bob Mastrangelo at AllMovie: “Sous le Sable belongs to Charlotte Rampling. Delivering a commanding, devastating, and nuanced performance, Rampling portrays Marie Drillon, a middle-aged professor who goes through an emotional roller coaster after the sudden disappearance of her husband. Rampling beautifully handles Marie's various transformations, making it appear outwardly as if she is coping with reality, while inwardly she is collapsing.” The character she played in Ozon's Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003), Sarah Morton, was named in her sister's honour. For most of Rampling's life, she would say only that her sister had died of a brain haemorrhage; when she and her father heard the news, they agreed they would never let her mother know the truth. They kept their secret until Rampling's mother died in 2001. A year later, Rampling became a Dame of France's Legion. At 59, Rampling appeared in Vers le Sud/Heading South (Laurent Cantet, 2005), a film about sexual tourism. She plays Ellen, a professor of French literature and single Englishwoman, who holidays in 1970s Haiti to get the sexual attention she does not get at home. Ozon directed her in the costume drama Angel (François Ozon, 2007) She portrayed the mother of Keira Knightley's character in The Duchess (Saul Dibb, 2008), and she appeared in the terrorist thriller Cleanskin (Hadi Hajaig, 2010), starring Sean Bean and James Fox. Very interesting is the Polish-Swedish co-production The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, 2011) starring Rutger Hauer as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, on whose 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary the film is inspired. She also was among the cast of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Charlotte Rampling married twice. She played the title role in the noir thriller I, Anna (2012) written and directed by her son, Barnaby Southcombe. In 1976, Rampling had met French composer Jean Michel Jarre at a dinner party; and left her first husband Bryan Southcombe the next day. Two years later she married Jarre and had a second son, magician and singer David Jarre. She also brought up stepdaughter Émilie Jarre, now a fashion designer. During 20 years, she accompanied Jarre on his worldwide music and light shows. Then the marriage was publicly dissolved in 1997 when she learned from tabloid newspaper stories about Jarre's affairs with other women and had a nervous breakdown. Since 1998, she has been engaged to Jean-Noël Tassez, a French communications tycoon. Charlotte Rampling stays very active on the screen. In 2013 she played Dr. Evelyn Vogel in the American hit series Dexter, had a small part in Night Train to Lisbon (Bille August,2013) and she appeared in Francois Ozon’s Jeune & jolie/Young & Beautiful (2013).
Sources: Tracie Cooper (AllMovie), Bob Mastrangelo (AllMovie), Sholto Byrnes (The Independent), Pete Stampede, David K. Smith and Alan Hayes (The Avengers), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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