Jean Seberg made her motion picture debut at age 19 in Otto Preminger’s unusual interpretation of George Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan, about Joan of Arc. Preminger’s daring casting of the unknown Jean received a huge build-up in the press, but Jean’s performance was panned by critics. Jean noted “I have two memories of St. …
Seven year-old Bridgette Andersen stole moviegoer’s hearts in her starring role as the title character in 1982’s Savannah Smiles. She followed that with the horror anthology film Nightmares in 1983, guest roles on television series like Family Ties, Remington Steel, Fantasy Island, and a TV movie playing a young Mae West. Despite a part in …
This week’s challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “chicken”. This is the first of three illustrations I’ve done for this word. Here is the second and here is the third, which I did over a year ago, but fits the theme. In 1920, a railroad worker named Arthur Perdue noticed that the farmers bringing …
Brooklyn-born Samuel Mostel came from very humble beginnings, hoping to one day become an artist. After his graduation from City College of New York, when he took the same Beginner Art class over and over, he joined the Public Works of Art Project and began teaching art. He mixed his natural humor into his classes …
2010 came to a close last week, but it began almost 35 years ago, when I was in high school. After getting tossed out of the majority of my academic classes, I gravitated towards the art department. There, among those paint-splattered desks and rolls of brown kraft paper, I felt comfortable and had as much …
Continue reading ‘from my sketchbook: will the circle be unbroken’ »
Young Peter Boyle joined a monastery, in his hometown of Philadelphia, just after high school. After losing his religious calling, he became a cameraman at a local TV station and later look acting lessons from Tony Award-winning actress Uta Hagen in New York City. He was cast in the title role of the violent and …
In 1939, ruggedly handsome, gravelly-voiced William Holden had the starring role in Golden Boy opposite Barbara Stanwyck. He followed that with minor, forgettable parts through the 1940s until his breakout role as Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder’s classic the hauntingly memorable Sunset Boulevard in 1950. William received his first of three Best Actor Oscar …
Orson Welles lived a life filled with accomplishment. At the age of 20, he presented a version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, reworked in a Haitian setting with the three witches as voodoo priestesses. The production was highly praised for its originality. In 1938, he gained international fame when he frightened the entire country with his radio …
Donna Reed’s career ran the full spectrum from her humble beginnings opposite Mickey Rooney in The Courtship of Andy Hardy to her popularity as a pin-up girl during World War II to her Academy Award-winning performance as prostitute Lorene Burke in 1953’s From Here to Eternity. Network executives must have been focusing on her role as …
Stanley Adams was a television staple for three decades, appearing in numerous roles in countless series. He was cast in parts as diverse as policemen and bartenders to con men and aliens. Among his more than a hundred guest spots, he played Otis the drunk’s equally-soused brother in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, a time …
