News

Burt Lancaster could be just about anything you needed him to be — except small. He was not towering at 6'1", but he sure made it look that way on screen. Whether smiling or glowering, good natured or pure evil, there was a formidable bearing to Lancaster. But he did not lumber. God no, he was as graceful as a circus acrobat because, well, he was one. How dare a man so sturdy be so damn limber. And golden. And beautiful.

Lancaster's acting career was as remarkable as his absurdly perfect physicality. He made his motion picture debut in a stone-cold classic, and was one of the most popular movie stars on the planet for well over a decade. Lancaster worked too frequently to not slip up on occasion, but he generally exhibited great taste, particularly as a producer. His partnership with Harold Hecht (and later James Hill) yielded three Best...

Robert Walker: Actor in MGM films of the '40s. Robert Walker: Actor who conveyed boy-next-door charms, psychoses At least on screen, I've always found the underrated actor Robert Walker to be everything his fellow – and more famous – MGM contract player James Stewart only pretended to be: shy, amiable, naive. The one thing that made Walker look less like an idealized “Average Joe” than Stewart was that the former did not have a vacuous look. Walker's intelligence shone clearly through his bright (in black and white) grey eyes. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” programming, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating today, Aug. 9, '15, to Robert Walker, who was featured in 20 films between 1943 and his untimely death at age 32 in 1951. Time Warner (via Ted Turner) owns the pre-1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library (and almost got to buy the studio outright in 2009), so most of Walker's movies have...

Oscar-nominated Us screenwriter known for his work on Norma Rae, Hud and Hombre

The husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch, who has died aged 89, and Harriet Frank Jr specialised in adapting the work of writers as varied as William Faulkner, Larry McMurtry and Elmore Leonard. The pair enjoyed a particularly successful collaboration with the director Martin Ritt, with whom they made eight films notable for their acute concern with social justice. The screenplays for two of these, Hud (1963) and Norma Rae (1979), were nominated for Academy awards. The latter, for which Sally Field won an Oscar for best actress, had a pro-union theme that illustrated Ravetch's belief in film's ability to "seed ideas and wake up dormant minds".

He was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Jewish immigrant parents. His father, from Russia, was a pharmacist who became a rabbi. His mother, from what is now Israel, taught Hebrew. When Ravetch...