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Tommy Dix, who starred as a young military school cadet opposite Lucille Ball in the 1943 MGM musical comedy Best Foot Forward after appearing in the Broadway original, has died. He was 101.

Dix, of Williamsburg, Virginia, died Jan. 15, his family announced. “He was, for those who knew him well, a living link with some of the great American personalities of the 20th century. He will be missed,” they said.

Dix was a popular baritone on network radio and had just made his Broadway debut in The Corn Is Green, starring Ethel Barrymore, when he was hired to play cadet Chuck Green in Best Foot Forward, directed by George Abbott and choreographed by Gene Kelly.

The Broadway musical, which bowed in October 1940 and ran for 326 performances, starred Rosemary Lane as Hollywood star Gale Joy, who accepts an out-of-the-blue invitation from Winsocki Military Academy student Bud Hooper (Gil Stratton) in Philadelphia to be...

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Angelo Badalamenti, the acclaimed David Lynch composer who went from teaching in junior high school in Brooklyn to creating haunting, ethereal music for the filmmaker’s Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, has died. He was 85.

Badalamenti died Sunday of natural causes surrounded by family at his home in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, his niece Frances Badalamenti told The Hollywood Reporter.

The classically trained composer also collaborated with an eclectic mix of singers in virtually every genre during his long career, from Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Shirley Bassey, Patti Austin, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithfull, Liza Minnelli, Mel Tillis and Roberta Flack to Pet Shop Boys, Anthrax, Dolores O’Riordan, Tim Booth and LL Cool J.

Badalamenti composed the theme music for ABC’s Twin Peaks, NBC’s Profiler and Bravo’s Inside the Actors Studio, and for the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona,...

Martha Stewart, best known for co-starring alongside Joan Crawford and Humphrey Bogart in “Daisy Kenyon” and “In a Lonely Place,” respectively, died on Feb. 17, her daughter Colleen Shelly confirmed on Twitter. She was 98.

“The original Martha Stewart left us yesterday,” Shelly wrote. “She had a new part to play in a movie with all her heavenly friends. She went off peacefully surrounded by her family and cat.”

Known for her roles in classic 1940s and ’50s Hollywood movies, Stewart made her film debut in the 1945 musical comedy “Doll Face.” The following year she starred opposite Richard Crane in “Johnny Comes Flying Home” and June Haver in 1947’s “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.” Her additional credits include comedy “Are You With It?” opposite Donald O’Connor, 1952’s musical “Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick” and noir crime-drama “Convicted” with Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford. Her final credit was 1964’s beach-themed musical comedy “Surf Party.

Martha Stewart, an actress whose run of 1940s and ’50s era Hollywood hits included costarring roles in Daisy Kenyon opposite Joan Crawford and In a Lonely Place with Humphrey Bogart, died Feb. 17. She was 98.

Her death was announced by daughter Colleen Shelley.

“The original Martha Stewart left us yesterday,” Shelley tweeted:

She had a new part to play in a movie with all her heavenly friends. She went off peacefully surrounded by her family and cat.

Martha Ruth Haworth aka Martha Stewart

10-07-1922 – 02-17-2021 she had a good run.

Fare thee well Mommy

Born in Kentucky and raised in Brooklyn, Stewart began her show business career as a big band singer with Glenn Miller and Harry James, among others, and launched her Hollywood career with a singing and dancing role in the 1945 film Doll Face, about a burlesque star played by actress Vivian Blaine (the film was cowritten...

This CinemaScope musical remake of 1939’s The Women is highly watchable, especially in this flawless digital remaster. The actresses that bare their claws, compete for husbands and just plain cat-fight are a choice batch, with favorites from the ’50s the ’40s the ’30s — plus a few wildflowers that bloomed cinematically for only a few years (Dolores Gray) and one that somehow managed immortality (Joan Collins). It’s highly watchable despite, or maybe because of, its criminally outdated recipe for marital bliss. Did women really go for this fantasy — did anybody ever really live like this?

The Opposite Sex

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date October 27, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: June Allyson, Joan Collins, Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Leslie Nielsen, Jeff Richards, Agnes Moorehead, Charlotte Greenwood, Joan Blondell, Sam Levene, Alice Pearce, Barbara Jo Allen, Sandy Descher, Carolyn Jones, Jerry Antes, Harry James, Art Mooney,...

“You see your whole life flash in front of you in an hour and some minutes, and then it’s like, wow, did all that really happen? Because I always felt I’m in somewhat of a dream to begin with,” says Herb Alpert, subject of a new documentary about his life from director John Scheinfeld. It’s a dream that now has a release date: “Herb Alpert Is…” is hitting theaters and VOD on Oct. 1.

The doc will be the rare movie with a three-cd soundtrack, of sorts. It’s being announced today that Oct. 2 will see the release of a box set commemorating Alpert’s career, also titled “Herb Alpert Is…” The collection is not officially a soundtrack, as only a portion of its 63 tracks appear in the movie, but it fills a larger need as the first large-scale set celebrating the entirety of the legendary trumpeter’s nearly six-decade catalog.

Captain America's true age at the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame has been revealed. In addition, the year he went back to Peggy Carter has also been confirmed. This information has been talked about before, but it appears it was inaccurate, at least when compared with the official script from the epic movie. After Tony Stark made the ultimate sacrifice to get rid of Thanos and his army, Cap went back in time to return the Infinity Stones and live out the rest of his life the way he always wanted to.

The Avengers: Endgame script reveals Captain America traveled back to Washington D.C. in the year 1949 to be with Peggy Carter after he took back the Infinity Stones. When he appears with Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson at the end of the movie, which takes place in 2023, he is actually 112-years old. This clears up some misinformation about Steve...

Though plenty of confusion remains around the final minutes of Avengers: Endgame, the film’s official screenplay – which was recently released online for awards consideration – at least clears up one point of uncertainty regarding Captain America’s journey into the past.

In the script’s final pages, a title card helpfully clarifies the time and place in which Steve Rogers reunites with his beloved Peggy Carter: “Washington D.C., 1949.” That means the First Avenger had a whole 74 years to enjoy his retirement before passing his shield on to Sam Wilson in 2023. For those curious, the rest of the scene reads as follows:

“Int. Red House, Columbia Heights, Washington DC – Day

A Tea Cup Lies Shattered on the hardwood. We hear Harry James. Move into the living room…past the record player…

To Where Steve Dances With A Woman. They rock back and forth barely moving. As they turn, we see…...

Doris Day may have died with a reputation of being Hollywood’s most scrubbed-clean and wholesome girl-next-door type. But she made it to the big screen courtesy her warmly simmering and easily quavering vocal tones. Before films beckoned, she was a featured vocalist with big band-era kings such as Bob Crosby (Bing’s brother) and Les Brown and His Band of Renown, the latter of which recorded Day sunnily crooning “Sentimental Journey” and “My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time.”

While both ballads made her the toast of radio fans and World War II vets coming home from the battlefront in 1945, Day had so much more to offer during her sadly abbreviated singing career — which included one album released in the 21st century, “My Heart,” and a host of previously unreleased songs she recorded with her composer-producer son, the late Terry Melcher.

Here are some signature smashes and cool surprises from Doris Day.

The band Traffic has probably been getting its heaviest web traffic ever this past week, thanks to the use of a 50-year-old song, “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” that plays briefly but inescapably in the first 10 minutes of the superhero epic. It’s the most prominent of the handful of pop songs that show up during the three-hour running time, at least before an even older oldie, from 1945, brings up the end credits.

And boomers who are well familiar with the Traffic tune as an FM staple for the last half-century may not be that much less initially puzzled by its appearance than millennials: Why isSteve Winwood warbling aboard the starship Benatar?

(Warning: Our answers include mild thematic spoilers, for the hundred or so arthouse partisans and shut-ins who haven’t seen the film.)

Of all the movies you might walk out of saying, “Man, music supervisor Dave Jordan really earned his salary on that one,...

Finally, they're acting instead of reacting.

A U.S. military mission worked somewhat as planned on The Last Ship Season 5 Episode 5.

As expected, the action jumped ahead three months this episode. Or rather the inaction.

First off, Alisha Granderson was indeed murdered, as somehow that stick figure she lived with got the jump on a fully trained Naval officer. I figured killing off Doc Rios and Captain Garnett on The Last Ship Season 5 Episode 1 would be enough bloodletting for this season, but apparently not.

Kelsey is somewhat on the Navy's radar right now, as a guilt-plagued Clayton is trying to track her, but with everything else going on, I can't imagine she's much of a priority. Nor can I imagine she would have much intel to offer, even if she got caught.

The war against Tavo's force was basically in a holding pattern at the Tropic of Cancer line. But...

Part of the Jerry Lewis tribute A Mubi Jerrython. Writer, director, star of stage, screen and television, humanitarian, producer, and total filmmaker—Jerry Lewis was all of the above. For the first six years of his career he was also a professional lip syncher. At age twelve, desperate to follow his parents on stage, Jerry began developing a “record act.” A staple on the lower rungs of the Borscht Belt, burlesque, vaudeville, and nightclubs, record acts (a.k.a. dummy acts) were cheap and easy: they consisted of a performer or performers miming away to recordings. Always considered pretty corny, they were the poor stepchildren on the theatrical bills, but there were plenty of budding comics who broke into show business that way. Jerry Van Dyke was another newbie who started his career doing record acts, and much later Andy Kaufman would put his own spin on it mouthing only...

Feature Ivan Radford 30 Sep 2013 - 07:03

Ivan gives the soundtrack from Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine a listen, and provides a rundown of the filmmaker's 10 best music moments...

You can tell immediately when you're watching a Woody Allen movie. Not just from the opening credits (Windsor Light Condensed on black title cards) but from the music. Woody loves the stuff - he'd rather play clarinet with his band than go to the Oscars. He loves it so much that he joins the list of directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese who are known for using popular, pre-existing music in their soundtracks. The man has directed an astonishing 43 films in his career. Just seven of those have original scores.

Allen started his career with none other than Marvin Hamlisch, who would go on to score The Spy Who Loved Me. Working on Bananas after Take The Money And Run,...

Chicago – Just as Groucho Marx refused to join any club that would have him as a member, Woody Allen would most likely turn down any invite from an adoring fan club. He’s repeatedly voiced his belief that he doesn’t have a high regard for his own work, and recently told documentarian Robert B. Weide that he could live a life devoid of cinema as long as there was a sports team to follow. This may sound like a curious statement from a filmmaker who averages one picture a year, but it speaks to the compulsory spirit of a man trapped within the boundaries of his perfectionism. He can’t bear watching his own films once they’re completed because all he sees are the flaws.

As a longtime admirer of Allen’s work, I’ve been able to savor the sublime moments in even his most problematic pictures,...

Unlike Robert Taylor, who would have turned 100 today, or Ginger Rogers, whose centennial was last July 16, Lucille Ball is actually going to be remembered on the occasion of what would have been her 100th birthday this Saturday, August 6. Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" series continues with 14 Lucille Ball movies. All of them have been shown before on TCM. [Lucille Ball Movie Schedule.] As an actress working mostly at Rko (1935-42) and at MGM (1943-46), Lucille Ball has been a TCM regular, as the Time Warner library encompasses films made at those two studios. On Saturday, TCM will also show the United Artists' release Lured, a crime drama directed by Douglas Sirk, and co-starring George Sanders, and two comedies Ball made during her tenure at Columbia in the late '40s: Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949), co-starring William Holden, and The Fuller Brush Girl (1950), a reboot of The Fuller Brush Man (1948), which starred Red Skelton.

Martin Scorsese is following his recent hit "Shutter Island" with the fantastical family film "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." And then there's the 17th century Jesuit priest drama "Silence," and apparently he's also thinking about a couple of low-budget films to make. But many of us are still primarily interested in the "Raging Bull" director's next big-deal biopic: "Sinatra."

In an interview with ShortList.com, he discussed the status of the Frank Sinatra film, which he continues to work on, and the difficulties he's encountered in turning it into a reality.

"It’s very hard because here is a man who changed the entire image of the Italian-American," Scorsese said of the music and screen legend. "And that’s just one thing. Along with his political work, civil rights, the Mob..."

That organized crime connection has already been an issue, given that Ol' Blue Eyes' daughter (and executive producer of the biopic), Tina Sinatra,...

Carl Ballantine, who performed feats of bumbling comic magic on Vaudeville and on television, the movies and in Las Vegas, died Tuesday of natural causes at his Hollywood home. He was 92.

Perhaps Ballantine's most famous role was as confident con artist and torpedoman Lester Gruber on 1962-66 ABC comedy "McHale's Navy."

Ballantine, born Meyer Kessler on Chicago's South Side, learned magic tricks at age 9 from his barber. By 13, he was performing and supporting his family.

One night, a trick went haywire and he threw out some funny lines to cover things. The audience loved it, the club owner told him to "keep it up" -- and the Amazing Ballantine was born.

Ballantine caught the end of Vaudeville and the early days of television. He played the Palace in New York City, the Hippodrome in Baltimore and many other huge venues of the day.

On TV, he did magic on the shows of Garry Moore,...