Category: Oscar Profile

Many films have memorable Christmas scenes, but few are so intricately connected to the holiday that they wouldn’t be as memorable as they are without those scenes. The first film with a significant emphasis on Christmas to capture Oscar’s attention was George Cukor’s 1933 version of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, the first of four…

Born December 18, 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio to a concert pianist/restaurateur mother and electrical engineer father, he grew up in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and Saratoga, California. His early fascination with home movies led to his career as one the most successful and influential filmmakers in the history of the movies. His career…

Born March 22, 1930 in New York, New York, Stephen Sondheim was raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where his close friendship with Oscar Hammerstein II’s son led to his apprenticeship to Hammerstein under whose tutelage he began his legendary musical theater career. This is, of course, well-known to anyone who has followed his career, or…

For the first time in years there is a new film about Thanksgiving on screens in celebration of the holiday, the film version of the 2016 Tony award-winning play, The Humans. Holidays have been celebrated in films since their inception. There have been films about virtually all of them, 1942’s Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby…

Born May 10, 1899, Frederick Austerlitz became Fred Astaire when he and his older (by 18 months) sister, Adele, became vaudeville tap stars when he was just five years old. As their skills improved, they became bigger stars and broke into Broadway in 1917 with a show called Over the Top. Smash hits including Lady…

When I think of classics from Hollywood’s Golden Age that Oscar failed to recognize, I’m not talking about films that like The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life, modest hits that were nominated for Best Picture Oscars but failed to win the top prizes, but films that weren’t even nominated for those awards.…

Born October 7, 1889 in Chicago, Illinois to a theatrical family, Robert Z(igler) Leonard was the second cousin of the legendary actress and singer Lillian Russell. Although he studied law at the University of Colorado, his first love was the theatre. An accomplished singer, he settled in Hollywood in 1907 after singing in 100 light…

Born June 10, 1886 in Chikura, Japan, Kitano Hayakawa was the son of an imperial Japanese naval officer who planned to follow in his father’s footsteps until he ruptured his eardrum in a deep-sea dive at the age of 18. The despondent teenager attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the abdomen thirty times, but his…

Born January `16, 1890 in Königinhof, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, now Dvur Kralove, Czech Republic, future Oscar winner Karl Freund moved with his family to Berlin when he was 11. In 1905, when he was 15, he went to work as a projectionist. Two years later he was a newsreel photographer. He was then drafted into the…

Born March 11, 1887, Albert Edward Walsh was the son of noted tailor Thomas W. Walsh, who made his reputation designing the uniforms for Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. He grew up in a mansion on New York’s Riverside Drive, where his parents entertained noted dignitaries from Roosevelt to John Barrymore. It was inevitable that Walsh,…

Born March 21, 1889 in San Diego, California, Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II was the son of a superior court judge who died the day his son was born. His mother, actress Laura Winston, returned to her former career, taking him with her. They traveled up and down the west coast and into the Midwest.…

Born February 14, 1960 in Long Beach, California, Margaret Elizabeth Chan, known professionally as Meg Tilly, is the daughter of a Chinese American father and a mother of Irish and Finnish extraction. She is the younger sister of producer Steve Tilly and actress Jennifer Tilly. Her parents divorced she was three and her mother moved…

Born December 4, 1921 in Winnipeg, Canada, Edna Mae Durbin moved to California with her British born parents as an infant. Singing from the age of one and professionally from the age of ten, she made her film debut as Deanna Durbin at 14 in the 1936 MGM short film, Every Sunday co-starring Judy Garland.…

Last week I profiled five female stars of Auntie Mame. This week the accent is on the male stars of Otto Preminger’s 1962 political drama, Advise & Consent. Based on Allen Drury’s 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Advise & Consent, the film’s narrative is about the Senate investigation into the nomination of the President’s candidate for…

Irene Dunne, Loretta Young, and Rosalind Russell were known as the three saints of Hollywood, all of them huge stars and active in charitable works throughout their stardom and beyond. The film careers of all three had dried up by the mid-1950s, Dunne having made her last film in 1952, Young in 1953, and Russell…