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Olivia de Havilland picture U.S. labor history-making 'Gone with the Wind' star and two-time Best Actress winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 (This Olivia de Havilland article is currently being revised and expanded.) Two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland, the only surviving major Gone with the Wind cast member and oldest surviving Oscar winner, is turning 99 years old today, July 1.[1] Also known for her widely publicized feud with sister Joan Fontaine and for her eight movies with Errol Flynn, de Havilland should be remembered as well for having made Hollywood labor history. This particular history has nothing to do with de Havilland's films, her two Oscars, Gone with the Wind, Joan Fontaine, or Errol Flynn. Instead, history was made as a result of a legal fight: after winning a lawsuit against Warner Bros. in the mid-'40s, Olivia de Havilland put an end to treacherous...

Pope Movies (photo: Anthony Quinn in ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’) [See previous post: "Pope Francis Movie in the Works?"] Now, do we need another Pope Movie? Well, actually there haven’t been that many. Most notable among the Pope Movies of decades past are Michael Anderson’s widely lambasted The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), with Anthony Quinn as what one pundit called "Zorba the Pope," and Nanni Moretti’s widely acclaimed comedy-drama We Have a Pope, with Michel Piccoli as a cardinal who reluctantly is elected chief of the Catholic Church. Here are a few more: Rex Harrison hammed it up as Pope Julius II to Charlton Heston’s equally risible Michelangelo in Carol Reed’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965); Liv Ullmann played the title role in Michael Anderson’s critically massacred Pope Joan (1972), about the alleged medieval female pope; and Finlay Currie reverentially incarnated the official first pope, St. Peter, in Mervyn LeRoy’s dreary (and...

The Shoes of the Fisherman

By Mike Malloy

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Complex and arcane religious rituals wouldn’t seem to make for good filmed entertainment. And yet, the Vatican’s papal election process – occurring again this week to name a successor to Pope Benedict XVI – has been detailed in cinema almost as many times as the more Hollywood-sounding subject of papal assassination attempts.

And while the workings of the pontifical election conclave might not be surprising in a religious film, they were even deemed dramatic enough for inclusion in The Godfather Part III. Yep, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1990 crime epic takes a break between whackings to portray the 1978 conclave that elected the first Pope John Paul.

But more impressive than the fact that cinema has depicted this process is the fact that, on occasion, the movies seem to have gotten it right. When a...

Two-Time Oscar Winner: Olivia de Havilland vs. Warner Bros. Pt.3 [Olivia de Havilland picture: Irwin Allen's The Swarm.] Olivia de Havilland‘s second marriage was to journalist Pierre Galante in 1955. De Havilland moved to Paris, making only sporadic movie appearances (The Ambassador’s Daughter, Libel, The Proud Rebel, Light in the Piazza). None of those made much of an impact, whether with critics or at the box office, though Robert Aldrich’s over-the-top 1964 thriller Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte was a box-office hit. Co-starring de Havilland’s fellow Warner Bros. contract player Bette Davis, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte had de Havilland playing against type. Also in 1964, Walter Grauman’s Lady in a Cage gave de Havilland a good chance to display her acting skills as an invalid stuck in an elevator while terrorized by hoodlum James Caan and pals. In the ’70s, de Havilland made only a handful of films — Pope Joan, Airport ’77, The Swarm, The Fifth Musketeer — all in supporting roles.