GREAT ACTORS

Anthony Perkins

2009-07-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

Here are two classic songs performed by the legendary Anthony "Tony" Perkins.
Anthony Perkins (1932 – 1992) was an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning American actor, best known for his role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" and its three sequels. He was also a singer. Perkins was born in New York City. He made his film debut in "The Actress" (1953). He received the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actor and an Academy Award nomination for his second film, "Friendly Persuasion" (1956). Following this, he released three pop albums in 1957 and 1958 on Epic and RCA as "Tony Perkins". His single "Moon-Light Swim" was a hit in the United States. He starred with Shirley Booth and Shirley MacLaine in the film "The Matchmaker" (1958). He also acted on the stage. In 1958, he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in "Look Homeward, Angel on Broadway". During this time he also starred in "Green Mansions" (1959) with Audrey Hepburn and "Tall Story" (1960) with Jane Fonda. Perkins was cast as Norman Bates in the Alfred Hitchcock-directed film "Psycho" (1960). The film was a critical and commercial success and gained Perkins international fame. Following the success of Psycho, Perkins had a successful career in Europe. He portrayed Joseph K. in Orson Welles' 1962 adaptation of Franz Kafka's "The Trial". Upon returning to America, he took the role of a disturbed young murderer in "Pretty Poison" (1968). He also played Chaplain Tappman in "Catch-22" (1970). Perkins co-wrote, with composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim, the screenplay for the 1973 film "The Last of Sheila", for which they received a 1974 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. In 1972, he starred in "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" with Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset and Victoria Principal. Perkins was one of the many stars featured in the 1974 hit "Murder on the Orient Express", reuiniting him with Bisset and costarring Sean Connery and Albert Finney among others. Perkins also hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 1976. He starred in his only science fiction film, "The Black Hole", in 1979. Among his Broadway credits are the Frank Loesser musical "Greenwillow" (1960) and Bernard Slade's 1979 play "Romantic Comedy" opposite Mia Farrow.
Perkins returned to the role of Norman Bates in three sequels to Psycho. The first was "Psycho II", which was the second-highest grossing film during the summer of 1983. He starred in the sexually provocative film "Crimes of Passion" (1984) opposite Kathleen Turner. He then starred in and directed "Psycho III" in 1986, followed by the made-for-cable sequel "Psycho IV: The Beginning" in 1990. Although Perkins was fighting disease, he appeared in eight television productions between 1990 and 1992. He made his final appearance in "In Deep Woods" (1992) with Rosanna Arquette.
On August 9, 1973, Perkins married photographer Berry Berenson. They had two sons: actor Oz Perkins (b. in 1974), and musician Elvis Perkins (b. in 1976). They remained happily married until Perkins' death in 1992. Anthony Perkins has played with the greatest stars of his time and many a beautiful woman (Janet Leigh, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau, Sophia Loren, Jane Fonda, Shirley MacLaine, Melina Mercouri, Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Romy Schneider, Silvana Mangano, Alida Valli, etc.) and the greatest directors.
Enjoy Tony Perkins' charming voice and face!

Curd Jürgens

2009-07-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

Here are two German songs (the first one being a Russian-oriented ballad, the second one the German version of a classic American standard), performed by the great Hildegard Knef, chosen to enhance the class of legendary actor Curd Jürgens.
Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens (1915 – 1982) was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He was usually billed in English-speaking films as Curt Jurgens. Jürgens was born in the Munich neighbourhood of Solln, Bavaria, Germany. His father was a trader from Hamburg and his mother a French teacher. He began his working career as a journalist before becoming an actor at the urging of his actress wife, Louise Basler. He spent much of his early acting career on the stage in Vienna. Critical of the Nazis in his native Germany, in 1944 he was shipped to a concentration camp as a "political unreliable". Jürgens survived and after the war, became an Austrian citizen. Like many multilingual German-speaking actors, Jürgens went on to play soldiers in innumerable war movies. Notable performances in this vein include a meditative officer in the epic "The Longest Day". His breakthrough screen role came in "Des Teufels General" (1955, "The Devil's General") and he came to Hollywood following his appearance in the sensational 1956 Roger Vadim directed French film "Et Dieu... créa la femme" ("And God Created Woman") starring Brigitte Bardot. In 1957, Jürgens made his first Hollywood film, "The Enemy Below". Jürgens became an international film star. He eventually gained the role of the villain in Roger Moore's favourite James Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me" as Karl Stromberg, a sociopathic industrialist seeking to transform the world into an ocean paradise. His last film appearance was as Maître Legraine, beside Alain Delon and Claude Jade in the Soviet spy-thriller "Teheran 43" in 1981. He appeared as General Vladimir in the BBC TV series "Smiley's People" in 1982. Although he appeared in over 100 films, Jürgens considered himself primarily a stage actor. He also directed a few films, and wrote screenplays. Jürgens maintained a home in France, but frequently returned to Vienna to perform on stage and that was where he died of a heart attack in 1982. He was interred in the city's Zentralfriedhof. Jürgens had suffered another heart attack several years before. During this he had a near-death experience where he claimed he died and went to Hell. He was a very tall man, standing 1.92 metres (6 ft 4 in) tall. Brigitte Bardot nicknamed him "the Norman Wardrobe" during their work for "Et Dieu… créa la femme". Jürgens was married to Margie Schmitz (1978 – 1982) (till his death), Simone Bicheron (1958 – 1977) (divorced), Eva Bartok (1955 – 1957) (divorced – had 1 daughter Deana born 1957, fathered by Frank Sinatra), Judith Holzmeister (1947 – 1955) (divorced), Lulu Basler, actor (1937 – 1947) (divorced).
An occasional singer, he also recorded some EPs.
Enjoy Curd Jürgens' great style!

Patrick MacNee

2009-07-12T10:35:00.001-07:00

Here are two beautiful and joyful songs performed by the great Max Bygraves, chosen to enhance the elegance of the fabulous Patrick MacNee.
Patrick Macnee (born Daniel Patrick Macnee in 1922 in London) is a British actor. He was educated at Eton College, was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and was awarded the Atlantic Star for his service during World War II. He became an American citizen in 1959. After nurturing his acting career in Canada, Macnee appeared in supporting roles in a number of films, notably in the Gene Kelly vehicle "Les Girls" (as an Old Bailey barrister) and opposite Anthony Quayle in the 1956 war movie "The Battle of the River Plate". He had a small role in the 1951 version of "Scrooge" ("A Christmas Carol" in the U. S.) as young Jacob Marley. Despite numerous other roles in theatre, on television and in cinema, Macnee is still best known as the inimitable secret agent John Steed in the series "The Avengers". Initially a secondary character – the series was conceived as a vehicle for Ian Hendry, who played an associate of Steed's – Steed (and Macnee) became the centre of the show after Hendry's departure at the end of the first season, playing opposite a succession of female partners that included Honor Blackman, Diana Rigg, and Linda Thorson. Steed was also the central character of a revival, "The New Avengers", in which he was teamed with characters played by Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt. Other notable roles include his parts in the James Bond movie "A View to a Kill", as Major Crossley in "The Sea Wolves" (again with Moore), guest roles in "Alias Smith and Jones", "Hart to Hart", "Murder, She Wrote", "The Love Boat" and two villainous roles in "Battlestar Galactica". He also presented the American paranormal series, "Mysteries, Magic and Miracles". Macnee made his Broadway debut as the star of Anthony Shaffer's mystery "Sleuth" in 1972 and subsequently headlined the national tour of that play. Macnee had recurring roles in the crime series "Gavilan" with Robert Urich and in the 1984 satire on big business, "Empire" as the menacing M.D. Calvin Cromwell. In 1984, Macnee appeared in "Magnum, P.I." as a retired British agent who believes he is Sherlock Holmes. He in fact had played Dr Watson to Roger Moore's Sherlock Holmes in a 1976 TV movie, "Sherlock Holmes in New York" and went on to play Holmes in another TV movie, "The Hound of London" (1993). He played Watson in two TV movies with Christopher Lee ("Incident at Victoria Falls" and "Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady"). He also appeared in several cult movies: in "The Howling" and in the rockumentary comedy "This is Spinal Tap". He took over Leo G. Carroll's role as the head of U.N.C.L.E. in "The Return of The Man from U.N.C.L.E." in 1983. Patrick starred in the 1990s science fiction series "Super Force" as E.B. Hungerford. Macnee also appeared as a supporting character in the 1989 science fiction parody, "Lobster Man from Mars" and in "Frasier 8.11".
Enjoy Patrick MacNee's smartness and chic!

Charles Bronson

2009-06-25T17:33:00.001-07:00

Here are two famous songs (performed by Frank Ifield and Arthur Prysock) chosen to enhance the special beauty of the legendary Charles Bronson.
Despite his craggy, unconventional features and sombre manner, Charles Bronson was an international star. He was born Charles Buchinsky in 1921, one of 15 children of a Lithuanian coal miner. He once said of himself: "I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited." Young Bronson's features were hardened by his work in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, and his sport in the boxing ring. Naturally reticent, he claimed to have spoken no English in his childhood home, and only broadened his horizons when he served as a tail-gunner for the US navy during the war. On his return, Bronson decided to study art but, after spending time on set design, enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse and transferred his attention to acting. Although he soon appeared in a catalogue of films, it was not until 1960 that he came to prominence in "The Magnificent Seven", alongside Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. He followed this with "The Great Escape" and "The Sandpiper". In 1967, Bronson was one of "The Dirty Dozen", before taking his career in his hands and heading across the Atlantic. Just as Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef had come to prominence in the European features of Sergio Leone and his peers, so Bronson enjoyed the same success. Such films as "Guns for San Sebastian" and "Villa Rides" assured Bronson of leading man status. The role of the taciturn gunslinger in "Once Upon a Time in the West" made him a superstar. By 1971, he was awarded the accolade of the world's most popular actor, despite a limited range and unemotive style. "Red Sun" (1971), "Someone Behind the Door" (1971) and "The Valachi Papers" (1972) all did well. Back in Hollywood, some of his later roles were softened by the presence of his actress wife Jill Ireland, with whom he appeared in more than a dozen films, before her death in 1990. But it was his very staunchness and unwillingness to compromise that brought him his biggest success. In 1974, producer Michael Winner tapped into the underlying force of Bronson's appeal for the first of his "Death Wish" series. The films were an important benchmark for cinema, with their glorification of "justified" violence. Cold-blooded and without light respite, the series relied on the appeal of Bronson's central vigilante, seeking vengeance for an attack on his family. Drawing on a career spent dispensing monumental violence with minimal emotion, Bronson became the archetypal urban warrior, the defender of honour, immune to doubt. Audiences lapped it up, and Bronson made the poll of top ten box office stars for four years in a row. For many, Charles Bronson remains the original action man, an unknowable loner who let his weapons do the talking...
Enjoy the fascinating beauty of Charles Bronson!

Paul Newman

2009-06-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

Here are two famous songs (performed by Julie London and Nancy Sinatra) chosen to illustrate the class and beauty of the legendary Paul Newman, one of the greatest Hollywood icons.
Is it necessary to introduce Paul Newman? Paul Newman was a screen legend and had the most famous blue eyes in movie history. Paul Leonard Newman was born in 1925 near Cleveland, Ohio, to a Jewish father (the son of immigrants from Poland and Hungary) and a Slovak mother. He acted in high school and spent a year at the Yale Drama School after being in the navy. He then moved to New York and attended the famed New York Actors Studio. His first broadway appearance was in "Picnic" which lead to a film contract with Warner Brothers. He made his first film, "The Silver Chalice", in 1954, picked for his Adonis looks to play a Greek slave. Later, he called it the worst motion picture of the 1950s. But more than 60 great movies would follow over the next 50 years. "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", "The Hustler", "Hud", "Cool Hand Luke", "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid", "The Sting", "Slap Shot", "Road To Perdition" - a seemingly endless list of some of the classics of 20th Century cinema. He produced and directed many quality films and was nominated 9 times for an Academy Award as Best Actor. He finally won this award for "The Color of Money". He lived in Connecticut with his second wife, actress Joanne Woodward. He was also a serious race driver and had founded a successful line of food products with all profits donated to charity.
Enjoy Paul Newman's eternal beauty!

Charlton Heston

2008-04-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

Here is an inspirational song performed by the great Mahalia Jackson, chosen to illustrate the fabulous figure of Charlton Heston, an all-American hero.
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; 1923 -- 2008) was an American actor of film, theater and television. A brawny, virile classical actor whose physical presence, intelligent performances and authoritative voice left a distinctive mark on fifty years of Hollywood filmmaking, his career encompassed roles in numerous historical epics, period dramas, and Hollywood adventure films. At his best in the 1950's and 1960's, Heston continued to play leading roles through the 1990's and was also called upon to lend his voice or imposing stature to certain supporting roles no one quite as large ever really emerged to fill. Heston is best remembered for his heroic roles, such as Moses in "The Ten Commandments", Colonel George Taylor in "Planet of the Apes" and Judah Ben-Hur in "Ben-Hur", the role for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. In the 1950's and 1960's he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. Heston earned recognition for his appearance in his first professional movie, "Dark City", a 1950 film noir. His breakthrough came when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as a circus manager in "The Greatest Show on Earth", which was named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952. Heston became an icon for portraying Moses in "The Ten Commandments", reportedly being chosen by director Cecil B. DeMille because he thought the muscular, 6 ft 3 in, square jawed Heston bore an uncanny resemblance to the statue of Moses by Michelangelo. After Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster and Rock Hudson turned down the title role of "Ben-Hur" (1959), Heston accepted the role, going on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, one of the unprecedented eleven Oscars the film earned. After Moses and Ben-Hur, Heston would be identified with Biblical epics more than any other actor. Heston went on to leading roles in a number of fictional and historical epics — "El Cid" (1961), "55 Days at Peking" (1963), as Michelangelo in "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (1965), and "Khartoum" (1966). In 1968, he starred in the hugely successful "Planet of the Apes". In 1970, Heston portrayed Mark Antony again in a Technicolor film version of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar". In 1971 he starred in the science fiction film, "The Omega Man". In 1972 Heston made his directorial debut, and starred, as Mark Antony in an adaptation of the William Shakespeare play he performed earlier in his theater career, "Antony and Cleopatra". He subsequently starred in successful films such as "Soylent Green" (1973), and "Earthquake" (1974). Beginning with playing Cardinal Richelieu in 1973's "The Three Musketeers", Heston was seen in an increasing number of supporting roles, cameos and theater.
But Heston was also a generous political activist. During the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. In later speeches, Heston said he helped the civil rights cause, "long before Hollywood found it fashionable". He opposed the Vietnam War. While filming "The Savage", he was initiated by blood into the Miniconjou Sioux tribe.
Enjoy Charlton Heston's immense and legendary class!

Kirk Douglas

2007-05-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

Here is a song performed by the great Ed Ames, chosen to illustrate the fabulous figure of Kirk Douglas.
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch Demsky in 1916 in Amsterdam, New York, to a Jewish family who immigrated from Gomel, now in Belarus) is an American actor and film producer known for his gravelly voice and his recurring roles as the kinds of characters Douglas himself once described as "sons of bitches". He is on the list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Kirk Douglas received three Academy Award nominations for his work in "Champion", "The Bad and the Beautiful" and "Lust for Life" (as Vincent Van Gogh). Douglas received a special Oscar in 1996 for "50 years as a moral and creative force in the motion picture community". For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Kirk Douglas has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1984, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In October 2004, the avenue "Kirk Douglas Way" in Palm Springs, California, was named in his honor by the Palm Springs International Film Society and Film Festival. Popular at home and around the world, Kirk Douglas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981, the French Legion of Honor in 1985, and the National Medal of the Arts in 2001.
Ed Ames co-starred with Kirk Douglas on stage in New York, in "One flew over the cuckoo's nest", and sang the title song of the westen "The War wagon" with Kirk Douglas and John Wayne.
Enjoy Kirk's legendary figure and beauty!

Yul Brynner

2007-05-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a Russian-Gypsy song ("The Shawl" - "Shalyonochka") performed by the fabulous Yul Brynner.
Yul Brynner (1920 – 1985) was a Russian-born Broadway and Academy Award-winning Hollywood actor. He was born Yuliy Borisovich Brynner (Russian: Юлий Бори́сович Бри́ннер) in Vladivostok, Russia. His father was of Swiss and Mongolian ancestry. After his father abandoned his family, his mother took Yul and his sister, Vera, to China, and in 1934 she took them to Paris, France. He began acting and modeling in his 20s. He appeared in many movies and stage productions in the United States. He is best known for his portrayal of the Siamese king in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "The King and I" on the stage and on the screen, as well as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film "The Ten Commandments" and as Chris Adams in "The Magnificent Seven". He also starred in such films as the Biblical epic "Solomon and Sheba" (1959), as Solomon (with Gina Lollobrigida), "Westworld" (1973), with Marlon Brando in "Morituri", with Katharine Hepburn in "The Madwoman of Chaillot" and William Shatner in a film version of "The Brothers Karamazov". His final feature film appearance was in the sequel to "Westworld", titled "Futureworld" with Peter Fonda, in 1976. In addition to his work as a performer, Brynner was an active photographer, and wrote two books. Yul Brynner is interred in the cemetery at the Saint-Michel-de-Bois-Aubry monastery in Luzé, near Poitiers, Vienne, France. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and his childhood home, in Vladivostok, is now a museum.
But Yul Brynner was also a singer and made an excellent record of Russian and Gypsy songs with the famous Gypsy guitarist and singer Aliosha Dimitrievich.
Enjoy Yul's exceptional class and voice!

And here is a famous Russian song performed by the great Yul!