News

Singer and Tony-winning, Oscar-nominated actress Diahann Carroll, the first African American woman to star in her own TV series, has died at at her home in Los Angeles after a long bout with cancer. She was 84.

Her daughter, Suzanne Kay, confirmed the news.

Carroll is perhaps best remembered by younger audiences for her role as the conniving Dominique Deveraux on the nighttime soap “Dynasty” in the mid-’80s. But her first major television assignment was starring as the middle-class single mother Julia in a 1968 sitcom that was praised for featuring an African American in the title role — as much as it was criticized for ignoring the civil rights struggle. The series, which ran for three years, was a trailblazer in leading to greater visibility for African American characters on series television.

The actress characterized by svelte cosmopolitan sophistication had come to television via the musical theater. In the early 1960s...

Or, “Never on Sunday with Your Stepson.” Director Jules Dassin’s monument to his beloved Melina Mercouri transposes a Greek tragedy to a modern setting. The pampered wife of a shipping magnate is like a queen of old — she can fling a priceless gem into the Thames on just a whim, and she goes in whatever direction her heart takes her. When her attractive stepson Anthony Perkins enters the picture, there will be Hell to Pay.

Phaedra

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1962 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date March 21, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95

Starring: Melina Mercouri, Anthony Perkins, Raf Vallone, Elisabeth Ercy.

Cinematography: Jacquest Natteau

Film Editor: Roger Dwyre

Original Music: Mikis Theodorakis

Written by Jules Dassin, Margarita Lymberaki from the play Hippolytus by Euripides

Produced and Directed by Jules Dassin

Anyone into amour fou, the romantic notion of a love without limits, beyond the harsh constraints of reality?...

Soap opera veteran Patricia Barry, whose career included runs on “Days of Our Lives,” “All My Children” and “Guiding Light,” died Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. She was 93. According to the AP, Barry died at her home in Los Angeles. Born Patricia Allen White in Davenport, Iowa, Barry made her theatrical debut in summer theater, later appearing on Broadway in productions such as “The Pink Elephant” and “Goodbye Again.” She began appearing in films in 1947. Her big-screen credits include “Kitten With a Whip,” “Twilight Zone: The Movie” and “Sea of Love.” Also Read: 'Days of Our Lives' Star Kassie DePaiva.

My post about Diahann Carroll's enchanting cameo in the 1961 film. Goodbye Again (Here), got me thinking about that other black and white film shot in Paris, that she was in that same year, Paris Blues. Directed by Martin Ritt, a great American director who I still think is terribly underrated (Hud, The Molly Maguires, Norma Rae, Sounder), the film is admittedly rather thin, plot-wise. More of a souffle than a full course meal. But it's made with real style, and has a wonderful vibrant feel to it, likely in large credit to a great score by Duke Ellington. And besides, what city in the world looks more beautiful in black and white than Paris? The film revolves around two...

HereToFore: Coiro’s Latest Stale, Blatant Exercise

Actress turned director Kat Coiro reunites with Kate Bosworth for her sophomore feature, And While We Were Here, leaving behind the situational comedy from their previous venture, L!fe Happens for a somber hearted travel brochure of a couple’s dismantling. While everyone involved seems to be taking great pains to remain understated, there’s a surprising lack of nuance, and Coiro’s screenplay churns like a mealymouthed derivative of any number of similarly themed vehicles.

On the island of Ischia, located off Italy’s Amalfi Coast, Jane (Kate Bosworth) accompanies her husband Leonard (Iddo Goldberg) on a business trip. She’s a struggling writer from the States, while he’s a successful viola player. For years now, Jane has been working on writing a novel recounting her grandmother’s (the voice of Claire Bloom) experiences in WWII Britain, and she spends time...

Veteran actor Steve Forrest, who had more than 100 TV credits including starring on the mid-1970s police actioner S.W.A.T., died May 18 in Thousand Oaks. He was 87. The brother of actor Dana Andrews, Forrest made guest appearances on scores of TV shows and recurred on the original Dallas. He also played Lt. Hondo Harrelson on ABC’s 1975-76 police actioner S.W.A.T. — he had a cameo in the 2003 feature adaptation — and starred as John “The Baron” Mannering on the 1966 Cold War spy drama The Baron, the first color series on UK TV. Forrest, from Texas, was a sergeant in the Army and saw action in the Battle of the Bulge. He later moved to La and graduated from UCLA in 1950 with a theater arts degree. He went on to work as a stagehand at the La Jolla Playhouse, where he was discovered by Hollywood icon Gregory Peck, who cast Forrest in a...

Anthony Perkins in Goodbye Again

Happy birthday to the man I call my Time Machine Husband (Tm), Anthony Perkins. The effete, beautiful actor best known for his astonishing performance as Norman Bates in Psycho would've been 81 today, and without even reading Charles Winecoff's gripping biography Split Image, you can tell in Mr. Perkins' performances that he was enigmatic, complicated, and conflicted. Though Perkins died of AIDS in 1992, his silver screenlegacy endures thanks to his lengthy, strange filmography.

Hollywood wanted Perkins to be the next James Dean, but his vulnerability and (frankly) apparent gayness stood at odds with that demand. As I like to say, we can't rewrite cinematic history to include all the wonderful gay characters we deserve, so we as gay entertainment anthropologists have to find our stories in the nuances, innuendos, and otherwise untold stories hidden right onscreen (perhaps unintentionally), right within all the stated heterosexuality. Though...

James D'Arcy talks Anthony Perkins, Norman Bates, and Hitchcock, on Blu-ray and DVD now

Hitchcock, the critically acclaimed biopic on the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, is now available on Blu-ray. Directed by Sacha Gervasi (Anvil! the Story of Anvil), the movie deliciously delves into the behind-the-scenes drama that went into the making of Hitchcock's seminial classic Psycho. We recently caught up with actor James D'Arcy, who takes on the guise of Alfred's leading man Anthony Perkins and the persona of Norman Bates, for a quick chat about this provocative and insightful bit of cinematic history.

How many layers are there to Norman Bates and his alter ego Anthony Perkins? Here is our conversation.

Did it make more sense to look at Anthony Perkins' work before Psycho to get an understanding of him as an actor? Since you would both be at that point in life where you...

The star of Hitchcock is versatile, nuanced and passionate. Yet James D'Arcy is so self-deprecating, he says he once got a Hollywood audition only because they thought he was Colin Firth

James D'Arcy sweeps into the London restaurant, grabs my hand in a matey greeting, and slides in beside me on the banquette. He wriggles out of a black sweater, revealing an olive T-shirt and tanned forearms.

I have just seen Hitchcock, his most recent film, an enjoyably heightened account of the making of Psycho in which he gives an eerily exact rendering of Anthony Perkins, wringing his rolled-up script anxiously in the presence of Hitch (played by Anthony Hopkins). Like most of his work to date, it gives no clue as to whom D'Arcy might be offscreen; he is equal parts talent, pointed handsomeness and mystery.

Though alert and nuanced in everything from the briny melee of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World...

My recent post about Diahann Carroll's enchanting cameo in the 1961 film. Goodbye Again (Here). got me thinking of about that other black and white film shot in Paris that she was in that same year, Paris Blues. Like Goodbye Again, Blues was produced by United Artists, and no doubt, Carroll shot her cameo in Again at the same time thst she was working on Blues. Directed by Martin Ritt, a great American director who I still think is terribly underrated (Hud, The Molly Maguires, Norma Rae, Sounder), the film is admittedly rather thin, plot-wise. More of a souffle than a full course meal. But it's made with real style and has a wonderful vibrant feel to it, no...

Since it's the weekend, it's the time for odds and ends on S & A; this one tidbit I thought you might enjoy. It's a very brief scene from the 1961 romantic drama Goodbye Again, made and shot entirely in Paris for United Artists, by director Anatole Litvak, who had a very long career making romantic and suspense dramas, starting in France and Germany in the early 1930's, and then in Hollywood up until the early 70's. This film is also known as Aimez-vous Brahms, since a motif from his third symphony is a plot point and the basis of the movie's main theme. Carroll sings a version of it at the beginning of the scene. The picture revolves...

After doing the rounds on VoD for a few weeks, where many of you will have seen it, Sarah Polley's "Take This Waltz" starts to roll out in theaters from tomorrow, and we can't recommend it enough; it's a messy, sometimes frustrating film, but a deeply felt, beautifully made and wonderfully acted one, and we named it last week as one of the best of the year so far. It is not, however, recommended as a date movie, fitting into a long cinematic tradition of painful examinations of broken, decaying, collapsing or dead relationships.

After all, it's one of the more universal human experiences; unless you get very lucky, everyone who falls in love will at some point have the wrenching experience of falling out of it, or being fallen out of love with. And when done best in film, it can be bruising and borderline torturous for a filmmaker and an audience,...