News

Jane Powell, who starred as an angelically visaged young actress in a number of MGM musicals including “Royal Wedding” and “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” during the 1940s and 1950s, has died of natural causes. She was 92 years old.

The blonde, blue-eyed Powell usually played characters with a gentle mischievous streak in her musical comedies, but she would shatter the light-hearted atmosphere of her films when she sang: A surprisingly powerful coloratura would emerge from the diminutive (5-feet-1) thesp.

Her producer and mentor was MGM’s Joe Pasternak, who had earlier developed the talents of Deanna Durbin at Universal.

Auditioning for Louis B. Mayer and for David O. Selznick, she quickly drew a seven-year contract with MGM in 1943. Her first film, on loan-out, was 1944 musical “Song of the Open Road,” in which the actress played a child film star who runs away. She took her character’s name, Jane Powell,...

Kino Lorber unleashes their second volume of forgotten film noir classics with Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema II which includes three distinctly different titles from the 1950s, including Thunder on the Hill (1951), The Price of Fear (1956) and The Female Animal (1958), each containing their own notable nuggets among their cast members and directors.

The gem of the collection is Thunder on the Hill, a 1951 melodrama from Douglas Sirk, which by comparison’s standards is noir-light. The German émigré is of course most noted for a string of 1950s melodramas which would set the inspirational standards for a host of future international auteurs, with items such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), and his 1959 swan song Imitation of Life (the first and last of those being remakes of John M.…...

Although only one of these 1950s B&w thrillers falls within a mile of a hard definition of film noir, all give us glamorous actresses in interesting roles. Claudette Colbert takes her turn at playing a nun, Merle Oberon tries a femme fatale role on for size and Hedy Lamarr does very well for herself as a man-hungry movie star. Kino gives all three excellent transfers, and one comes with an appropriately gossipy audio commentary.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema II

Thunder on the Hill, The Price of Fear, The Female Animal

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1951-58 / B&w / 1:37 Academy, 1:85 widescreen / 84,79,82 min. / Street Date May 12, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95

Starring: Claudette Colbert, Ann Blyth, Robert Douglas, Anne Crawford, Connie Gilchrist, Gladys Cooper, Michael Pate, Phillip Friend; Merle Oberon, Lex Barker, Charles Drake, Gia Scala, Warren Stevens, Phillip Pine, Konstantin Shayne, Stafford Repp; Hedy Lamarr, Jane Powell,...

Child actor Dickie Moore: 'Our Gang' member. Former child actor Dickie Moore dead at 89: Film career ranged from 'Our Gang' shorts to features opposite Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper 1930s child actor Dickie Moore, whose 100+ movie career ranged from Our Gang shorts to playing opposite the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, and Gary Cooper, died in Connecticut on Sept. 7, '15 – five days before his 90th birthday. So far, news reports haven't specified the cause of death. According to a 2013 Boston Phoenix article about Moore's wife, MGM musical star Jane Powell, he had been “suffering from arthritis and bouts of dementia.” Dickie Moore movies At the behest of a persistent family friend, combined with the fact that his father was out of a job, Dickie Moore (born on Sept. 12, 1925, in Los Angeles) made his film debut as an infant in Alan Crosland's 1927 costume drama The Beloved Rogue,...

Hedy Lamarr: 'Invention' and inventor on Turner Classic Movies (photo: Hedy Lamarr publicity shot ca. early '40s) Two Hedy Lamarr movies released during her heyday in the early '40s — Victor Fleming's Tortilla Flat (1942), co-starring Spencer Tracy and John Garfield, and King Vidor's H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), co-starring Robert Young and Ruth Hussey — will be broadcast on Turner Classic Movies on Wednesday, November 12, 2014, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Pt, respectively. Best known as a glamorous Hollywood star (Ziegfeld Girl, White Cargo, Samson and Delilah), the Viennese-born Lamarr (née Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), who would have turned 100 on November 9, was also an inventor: she co-developed and patented with composer George Antheil the concept of frequency hopping, currently known as spread-spectrum communications (or "spread-spectrum broadcasting"), which ultimately led to the evolution of wireless technology. (More on the George Antheil and Hedy Lamarr invention further below.) Somewhat ironically,...