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'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...

Paul Henreid: Actor was ‘dependable’ leading man to Hollywood actresses Paul Henreid, best known as the man who wins Ingrid Bergman’s body but not her heart in Casablanca, is Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013. TCM will be showing a couple of dozen movies featuring Henreid, who, though never a top star, was a "dependable" — i.e., unexciting but available — leading man to a number of top Hollywood actresses of the ’40s, among them Bette Davis, Ida Lupino, Olivia de Havilland, Eleanor Parker, Joan Bennett, and Katharine Hepburn. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of Paul Henreid movies to be shown on Turner Classic Movies in July consists of Warner Bros. productions that are frequently broadcast all year long, no matter who is TCM’s Star of the Month. Just as unfortunately, TCM will not present any of Henreid’s little-seen supporting performances of the ’30s, e.

Prolific make-up artist Stuart Freeborn has died in England earlier today at the age of 98.  Per Film Buff Online, his career spanned almost six decades and included classic films such as Victoria The Great, The Thief Of Bahgdad, The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, and David Lean's Oliver Twist.  His best-known work began with Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by transforming Peter Sellers into three different characters.  Freeborn continued to work with Stanley Kubrick by designing the apes in the "Dawn of Man" sequence.  But perhaps Freeborn's most famous work was serving as make-up supervisor on the original Star Wars trilogy, and helping to craft the look of Chewbacca, Yoda, and Jabba the Hutt. Our deepest condolences go out to Mr. Freeborn's family and friends.

Like most British dramas about the monarchy, The King's Speech skates over the less savoury aspects of royal history

The King's Speech is another addition to the royal family's filmography, a vast body of work that has played an underappreciated but insidious role in maintaining support for the monarchy.

The royal family – always the worst judges of their own self-interest – initially discouraged the production of dramatisations of themselves by making their displeasure known to those censors who vigorously policed stage and screen. In 1937 the lord chamberlain even issued a formal ban on the portrayal of sovereigns on the stage until a century after their accession. This was undoubtedly meant to prevent dramatists writing about the recently abdicated Edward VIII. It did, however, mean that depictions of Queen Victoria could be shown on stage for the first time, as she came to the throne in 1837. Prior to that, even harmless dramas...