Elmer Gantry (film)
Elmer Gantry is a 1960 American drama film about a con man and a female evangelist selling religion to small-town America. Adapted by director Richard Brooks, the film is based on the 1927 novel of the same name by Sinclair Lewis and stars Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Shirley Jones and Patti Page. Elmer Gantry was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Score, it won Best Actor for Lancaster, Best Supporting Actress for Jones, Best Adapted Screenplay. Jean Simmons was nominated for the best actress Golden Globe award; the movie presents fewer than 100 pages of the novel Elmer Gantry, deleting many characters and fundamentally changing the character and actions of female evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer, as played by Simmons. The character of Sharon Falconer was loosely based on elements in the career of the Canadian-born American radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, who founded the Pentecostal Christian denomination known as the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1927.
In addition, a plot point from the end of the novel is incorporated into Gantry's and Lulu Bains's relationship, fundamentally changing the fates of both characters. Elmer Gantry is a hard-drinking, fast-talking traveling salesman with a charismatic personality who infuses biblical passages and fervor into his pitches as a way to ease and collect money, he is drawn to the roadshow of Sister Sharon Falconer and is attracted to the saintly revivalist. As the troupe leaves town for Kansas, Gantry sweet talks her naive assistant, Sister Rachel, into telling him information regarding Falconer's past, he uses that information to con his way into Sister Sharon's good graces and joins the troupe preaching "Christ in commerce" and how he is a saved salesman. Gantry and Falconer develop what her manager, Bill Morgan, calls a "good cop/bad cop" routine, with Gantry telling the audience members that they will burn in Hell for their sins and Sharon promising salvation if they repent; because of Gantry's fire and brimstone sermons, the group comes to the attention of the church council in Zenith, Winnemac, a larger city.
Though Morgan does not think Falconer is ready to preach outside of the smaller venues, Gantry convinces her to go to Zenith. They meet with the church leaders, most of whom are wary of turning religion into a spectacle as Gantry does, but he convinces them that the churches must earn money to stay open. Travelling along with Falconer is the big-city reporter, Jim Lefferts. Lefferts is torn between his disgust for religious hucksterism and his genuine admiration for Gantry's charm and cunning; as Gantry's sermons bring Falconer's group to larger venues, Lefferts writes a series of articles labeling the revival a sham and reveals that neither Sharon nor Gantry has any credentials. Falconer admits to Gantry that her real name is Katie Jones and that her origins are humbler than she publicly admits. Falconer becomes Gantry's lover and loses her virginity to him; the success of the Falconer-Gantry team comes to the attention of Lulu Baines, a former girlfriend of Elmer's who fell into disrepute and became a prostitute when her affair with Gantry ruined her standing in her minister father's eyes, Gantry ditched her.
Acting as a moralist, Gantry unwittingly invades the brothel where Lulu works, but sends the prostitutes out of town when he sees Lulu. When he meets Lulu after she phones him, Lulu wants revenge against Gantry for running out on her in Kansas. However, her love for Gantry returns when confronting they embrace. A hidden photographer planted by Lulu records their embrace but Gantry's love for Falconer prevents him from consummating his relationship with Lulu. Lulu proceeds to frame Gantry out of jealousy for his love for Falconer. Lulu blackmails him, Falconer is asked to bring $25,000 in exchange for the negatives of incriminating pictures. Falconer brings the money. Lulu had at first offered Lefferts the exclusive story of Gantry's supposed sexual indiscretion, but he refused, shrugging the pictures off as proof that Gantry is as human as anyone else. An angry mob ransacks the tent at the tent revival following the publication of the incriminating photos in another newspaper, Lulu joins the congregation at this tent revival and is a witness to Gantry's humiliation.
As she watches the mob curse Gantry and smear him with eggs and other produce, she is shaken and flees the scene. Lulu returns to the brothel, now in a dilapidated state from Gantry's publicity stunt, her pimp is there to collect the $25,000, but when Lulu tells him she did not take Falconer's money, he beats her. Gantry comes to Lulu's rescue, he disposes of the pimp and apologizes to Lulu, who publicly confesses to having framed Gantry. Gantry returns to Sharon on the night her new tabernacle opens. Falconer declines Gantry's request to give up her soul-saving ventures, insists that she and Elmer were brought together by God to do His work. A fire erupts at the tabernacle. Unable or unwilling to see past her own religious zeal when the place is engulfed in flames, Falconer dies; the next day, saddened by Sharon Falconer's death, leads a spiritual with her followers. Morgan suggests that Gantry take up where Sister Sharon had left off and Gantry replies with, "When I was a child, I understood as a child and spoke as a child.
When I became a man, I put away childish things." His valise in one hand, Bible in the other, a smile on his face, Gantry strides away. A remastered and enhanced soundtrack was released on CD on Augu
Manhattan (film)
Manhattan is a 1979 American romantic comedy film directed by Woody Allen and produced by Charles H. Joffe; the screenplay was written by Marshall Brickman. Allen co-stars as a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl but falls in love with his best friend's mistress. Meryl Streep and Anne Byrne star. Manhattan was filmed in 2.35:1 widescreen. The film features music composed by George Gershwin, including Rhapsody in Blue, which inspired the idea behind the film. Allen described the film as a combination of Annie Hall and Interiors; the film was met with widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress for Hemingway and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Allen and Brickman. Its North American box-office receipts of $39.9 million made it Allen's second biggest box-office hit. Considered one of Allen's best films, it ranks 46th on AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs list and number 63 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies".
In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. The film opens with a montage of images of Manhattan and other parts of New York City accompanied by George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, with Isaac Davis narrating drafts of an introduction to a book about a man who loves the city. Isaac is a 42-year-old television comedy writer who quits his unfulfilling job, he is dating a 17-year-old girl attending the Dalton School. His best friend, college professor Yale Pollack, married to Emily, is having an affair with Mary Wilkie. Mary's ex-husband and former teacher, Jeremiah appears, Isaac's ex-wife Jill Davis is writing a confessional book about their marriage. Jill has since come out as a lesbian and lives with her partner, Connie; when Isaac meets Mary, her cultural snobbery rubs him the wrong way. Isaac runs into her again at an Equal Rights Amendment fund-raising event at the Museum of Modern Art hosted by Bella Abzug and accompanies her on a cab ride home.
They chat until sunrise in a sequence. In spite of a growing attraction to Mary, Isaac continues his relationship with Tracy but emphasizes that theirs cannot be a serious relationship and encourages her to go to London to study acting. In another iconic scene, at Tracy's request, they go on a carriage ride through Central Park. After Yale breaks up with Mary, he suggests. Isaac does, always having felt. Isaac breaks up with Tracy, much to her dismay, before long, Mary has moved into his apartment. Emily is curious about Isaac's new girlfriend; the two couples enjoy a day out and upon walking down a street Isaac spots Jill's new book Marriage and Selfhood. Emily proceeds to read parts of the book aloud, including passages about a ménage à trois Isaac had with Jill and another woman, an incident where Isaac attempted to run Connie over, much to Mary and Yale's amusement. Humiliated, Isaac confronts Jill, who responds stoically and mentions a film rights deal she has acquired. Upon returning home, Isaac wants to break up.
A betrayed Isaac confronts Yale at the college where he teaches, Yale argues that he found Mary first. Isaac discusses Yale's extramarital affairs with Emily and learns that Yale told her Isaac introduced Mary to him. In the dénouement, Isaac lies on his sofa, musing into a tape recorder about the things that make "life worth living"; when he finds himself saying "Tracy's face", he sets down the microphone. Unable to reach her by phone, he sets out for Tracy's on foot, he arrives at her family's apartment building. He says he does not want "that thing about that like" to change, she replies that the plans have been made and reassures him that "not everybody gets corrupted" before saying "you have to have a little faith in people." He gives her a slight smile, with a final coy look to the camera segueing into final shots of the skyline with some bars of Rhapsody in Blue playing again. An instrumental version of "Embraceable You" plays over the credits. Woody Allen as Isaac Davis Diane Keaton as Mary Wilkie Michael Murphy as Yale Pollack Mariel Hemingway as Tracy Meryl Streep as Jill Davis Anne Byrne as Emily Pollack Michael O'Donoghue as Dennis Wallace Shawn as Jeremiah Karen Ludwig as Connie Charles Levin, Karen Allen, David Rasche as Television actors Mark Linn-Baker and Frances Conroy as Shakespearean actors According to Allen, the idea for Manhattan originated from his love of George Gershwin's music.
He was listening to one of the composer's albums of overtures and thought, "this would be a beautiful thing to make... a movie in black and white... a romantic movie". Allen has said that Manhattan was "like a mixture of what I was trying to do with Annie Hall and Interiors." He said that his film deals with the problem of people trying to live a decent existence in an junk-obsessed contemporary culture without selling out, admitting that he himself could conceive of giving away all of his "possessions to charity and living in much more modest circumstances," and adding that he has "rationalized way out of it so far, but could conceive of doing it."According to actress Stacey Nelkin, Manhattan was based on her romantic relationship with Woody Allen. He
Angela Lansbury
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury is an English-Irish-American actress who has appeared in theater and film. Her career has spanned eight decades, much of it in the United States, her work has attracted international acclaim. Lansbury was born to Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury, an upper-middle-class family in Regent's Park, central London. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States with her mother and two brothers, studied acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight and The Picture of Dorian Gray, earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award, she appeared in eleven further films for MGM in supporting roles, after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances. Although seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate received widespread acclaim and is cited as being one of her finest performances.
Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame, which earned her a range of awards. Amid difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade; these included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, The King and I, as well as in the hit Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Moving into television, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons from 1984 until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history. Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons, she moved into voice work, thereby contributing to animated films such as Disney's Beauty and the Beast and 20th Century Fox's Anastasia.
Since she has toured in a variety of international theatrical productions and continued to make occasional film appearances. Lansbury has received an Honorary Oscar and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes, an Olivier Award, she has been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, various Primetime Emmy Awards on eighteen occasions, as well as a Grammy award for her work on the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for the 1994 Disney animated film Beauty and the Beast. In 2014, Lansbury was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II, she has been the subject of three biographies. Lansbury was born to an upper middle class family on October 16, 1925. Although her birthplace has been given as Poplar, East London, she has rejected this, asserting that while she had ancestral connections to Poplar, she was born in Regent's Park, Central London.
Her mother was Belfast-born actress Moyna Macgill, who appeared on stage in the West End and who had starred in several films. Her father was the wealthy English timber merchant and politician Edgar Lansbury, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and former mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar, her paternal grandfather was the Labour Party leader and anti-war activist George Lansbury, a man whom she felt "awed" by and considered "a giant in my youth." Angela had an older half sister, the daughter of Moyna's previous marriage to writer and director Reginald Denham. In January 1930, when Angela was four, her mother gave birth to twin boys and Edgar, leading the Lansburys to move from their Poplar flat to a house in Mill Hill, North London; when Lansbury was nine, her father died from stomach cancer. In 2014, Lansbury described this event as "the defining moment of my life. Nothing before or since has affected me so deeply." Facing financial difficulty, her mother became engaged to a Scottish colonel, Leckie Forbes, moved into his house in Hampstead, with Lansbury receiving an education at South Hampstead High School from 1934 until 1939.
She considered herself self-educated, learning from books and cinema. She became a self-professed "complete movie maniac", visiting the cinema and imagining herself as certain characters. Keen on playing the piano, she studied music at the Ritman School of Dancing, in 1940 began studying acting at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in Kensington, West London, first appearing onstage as a lady-in-waiting in the school's production of Maxwell Anderson's Mary of Scotland; that year, Angela's grandfather died, with the onset of the Blitz, Macgill decided to take Angela and Edgar to the United States. Macgill secured a job supervising sixty British children who were being evacuated to North America aboard the Duchess of Athol, arriving with them in Montreal, Canada, in mid-August. From there, she proceeded by train to New York City, where she was financially sponsored by a Wall Street businessman, Charles T. Smith, moving in with his family at t
Shirley Jones
Shirley Mae Jones is an American singer and actress. In her six decades of show business, she has starred as wholesome characters in a number of well-known musical films, such as Oklahoma!, The Music Man. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry, she played the lead role of Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children, in the musical situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family, which co-starred her real-life stepson, David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy. Jones was born on March 31, 1934, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, to Methodist parents Marjorie, a homemaker, Paul Jones, owners of the Jones Brewing Company. Jones' paternal grandfather came from Wales, she was named for child star Shirley Temple. The family moved to the small nearby town of Smithton, Pennsylvania. Jones began singing at the age of six in the Methodist Church choir and took voice lessons from Ralph Lewando. Upon attending South Huntingdon High School in Ruffs Dale, she participated in school plays.
Jones won the Miss Pittsburgh contest in 1952. Her first audition was for an open biweekly casting call held by John Fearnley, casting director for Rodgers and Hammerstein and their various musicals. At the time, Jones had never heard of Hammerstein. Fearnley was so impressed, he ran across the street to fetch Richard Rodgers, rehearsing with an orchestra for an upcoming musical. Rodgers called Oscar Hammerstein at home; the two saw great potential in Jones. She became the only singer to be put under personal contract with the songwriters, they first cast her in a minor role in South Pacific. For her second Broadway show, Me and Juliet, she started as a chorus girl, an understudy for the lead role, earning rave reviews in Chicago. Jones impressed Rodgers and Hammerstein with her musically trained voice, she was cast as the female lead in the film adaptation of their hit musical Oklahoma! in 1955. Other film musicals followed, including Carousel, April Love, The Music Man, in which she was typecast as a wholesome, kind character.
However, she won a 1960 Academy Award for her performance in Elmer Gantry portraying a woman corrupted by the title character played by Burt Lancaster. Her character becomes a prostitute who encounters her seducer years and takes her revenge; the director, Richard Brooks, had fought against her being in the movie, but after seeing her first scene, told her she would win an Oscar for her performance. She was reunited with Ron Howard in The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Jones landed the role of a lady. In 1970, after turning down the role of Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch, a role that went to her best friend, Florence Henderson, Jones was the producers' first choice to audition for the lead role of Shirley Partridge in The Partridge Family, an ABC musical sitcom based loosely on the real-life musical family The Cowsills; the series focused on a young widowed mother whose five children form a pop rock group after the entire family painted its signature bus to travel. She was convinced that the combination of comedy would be a surefire hit.
Jones realized, that: The problem with Partridge—though it was great for me and gave me an opportunity to stay home and raise my kids—when my agents came to me and presented it to me, they said if you do a series and it becomes a hit show, you will be that character for the rest of your life and your film career will go into the toilet, what happened. But I have no regrets. During its first season, it was screened in over 70 countries. Within months and her co-stars were pop culture television icons, her real-life 20-year-old stepson David Cassidy, an unknown actor at the time, played Shirley Partridge's eldest son Keith and became a teen idol. The show spawned a number of albums and singles by The Partridge Family, performed by David Cassidy and Shirley Jones; that same year, "I Think I Love You" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart, making Jones the second person, after Frank Sinatra, the first woman to win an acting Oscar and have a number-one hit on that chart, an achievement only matched by Cher and Barbra Streisand.
The Partridge Family won a NARM award for the best-selling single of the year in 1970 for their hit "I Think I Love You". In 1971, The Partridge Family was nominated for a Grammy under the Best New Artist category. By 1974, it was one of six series to be canceled that year to make room for new shows. Shirley Jones's friendship with David Cassidy's family began in the mid-to-late 1950s, when David was just six, after he learned about his father's divorce from his mother Evelyn Ward. Upon David's first meeting with Shirley before co-starring with her on The Partridge Family, he said, "The day he tells me that they're divorced, he tells me,'We're remarried, let me introduce you to my new wife.' He was thrilled when her first film, Oklahoma!, had come out. She's a warm, sweet, good human being, she couldn't have thawed it for me—the coldness and the ice—any more than she did." Shirley was shocked to hear her real-lif
The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American suspense thriller film about the Cold War and sleeper agents. It was produced by John Frankenheimer; the screenplay was written by George Axelrod, was based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh, with Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, James Gregory in supporting roles; the plot centers on the Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, the progeny of a prominent political family. Shaw was a prisoner of war during the conflict in Korea and while being held was brainwashed by his captors. After his discharge back into civilian life, he becomes an unwitting assassin involved in an international communist conspiracy. Officials from China and the Soviet Union employ Shaw as a sleeper agent in an attempt to subvert and take over the United States government; the film was released in the United States on October 24, 1962, at the height of U. S.-Soviet hostility during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It was well-received by critics and was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress and Best Editing. It was selected in 1994 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally or aesthetically significant." During the Korean War, the Soviets and Chinese capture a U. S. Army take it to Manchuria in communist China. Three days Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw and Captain Bennett Marco manage to return to UN lines. Upon recommendation of the platoon's commander, Captain Marco, Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for saving their lives in combat. Shaw returns to the United States to a hero's welcome where he is exploited by his mother, Mrs. Eleanor Iselin, on behalf of the political career of her husband and Shaw's stepfather, United States Senator John Yerkes Iselin; when asked to describe him and the other soldiers automatically respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've known in my life." though Shaw is a cold, unsympathetic loner.
In the years to follow, who has since been promoted to major and assigned to Army Intelligence, suffers from a recurring nightmare. In it, a hypnotized Shaw blithely and brutally murders the two missing soldiers before an assembly of military leaders from the communist nations, during a practical demonstration of a revolutionary brainwashing technique. Marco is compelled to investigate, but with no solid evidence to back his claims fails to receive support from his uplines. However, Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon, Allen Melvin, has had the same nightmare; when Melvin and Marco separately identify the identical two men from their dreams as leading figures in communist governments, Army Intelligence agrees to help Marco investigate. Meanwhile, Eleanor drives the ascension of Iselin, a McCarthy-like demagogue stirring domestic turmoil and climbing the political ladder based on claims that varying numbers of communists work within the Department of Defense. Shaw, who broke with the couple upon his return to America, is revealed to have had been programmed by Russian and Chinese communists to be a sleeper agent who will blindly obey orders without any memory of his actions.
His heroism was a false memory implanted in the platoon during their brainwashing in Manchuria. His programming is triggered by seeing the Queen of Diamonds card while playing solitaire after being induced by his handlers. Several years pass before Shaw finds happiness when he rekindles a youthful romance with Jocelyn Jordan, the daughter of liberal Senator Thomas Jordan, one of his stepfather's political rivals. Mrs. Iselin had broken up the relationship, but now facilitates the couple's reunion in order to garner Jordan's support for Iselin's bid for the Vice Presidency. Although pleased with the match, Jordan makes it clear that he will block any effort of Iselin's to seek their party's nomination. Jocelyn, wearing a Queen of Diamonds costume at a party for her thrown by the Iselins, inadvertently triggers Shaw's programming and elopes with him. In response to the senator's rebuff, Mrs. Iselin, revealed to be Shaw's American handler, triggers him to kill Jordan at his home, shooting Jocelyn as well when she happens upon the scene.
Afterwards, Shaw has no knowledge of his actions and is grief-stricken when he learns of the murders. Discovering the card's role in Shaw's conditioning, Marco uses a forced deck in an attempt to deprogram him and reveal his next assignment, which appears imminent. Mrs. Iselin primes her son to assassinate their party's presidential nominee at the height of the ongoing political convention so that Senator Iselin, as the vice-presidential candidate, will become the nominee by default. In the uproar, he will seek emergency powers that when elected will, in Mrs. Iselin's words, "make martial law seem like anarchy." Mrs. Iselin tells Shaw that while she had requested a programmed assassin for the task, she never knew it would be her own son, selected by the communists in order to bind her more to their cause. Kissing Shaw on the lips in a hint at the novel's incestuous relationship, she vows that once in power she will exact revenge for her son's selection as an assassin. Shaw enters the convention hall disguised as a priest and takes up a sniper's position high in its farthest reaches.
Alarmed by Shaw's failure to call by the appointed time and his supervisor, Colonel Milt, race to the hall to find and stop him. When the moment to shoot comes, Shaw instead kills Senator Iselin; when Marco arrives an instant
Marjorie Rambeau
Marjorie Burnet Rambeau was an American film and stage actress. She began her stage career at age 12, appeared in several silent films before debuting in her first sound film, Her Man, she was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Primrose Path and Torch Song, received the 1955 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in A Man Called Peter and The View from Pompey's Head. Rambeau was born in San Francisco to Lilian Garlinda Rambeau, her parents separated. She and her mother went to Nome, where young Marjorie dressed as a boy and played the banjo in saloons and music halls, her mother insisted she dress as a boy to thwart amorous attention from drunken grown men in such a wild and woolly outpost as Nome. She began performing on the stage at the age of 12, she attained theatrical experience in a rambling early life as a strolling player. She made her Broadway debut on March 10, 1913, in a tryout of Willard Mack's play, Kick In.
In her youth she was a Broadway leading lady. In 1921, Dorothy Parker memorialized her in verse: If all the tears you shed so lavishly / Were gathered, as they left each brimming eye. / And were collected in a crystal sea, / The envious ocean would curl up and dry— / So awful in its mightiness, that lake, / So fathomless, that clear and salty deep. / For, oh, it seems your gentle heart must break, / To see you weep.... Her silent films with the Mutual company included The Greater Woman; the films did expose Rambeau to film audiences. By the time talkies came along she was in her early forties and she began to take on character roles in films such as Min and Bill, The Secret Six, Laughing Sinners, Grand Canary, Joe Palooka, Primrose Path, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1940, Rambeau had the title role in Tugboat Annie Sails Again as well as second billing under Wallace Beery in 20 Mule Team. Other films included Tobacco Road, A Man Called Peter, Broadway.
In 1953, she was again nominated for this time for Torch Song. In 1957, she appeared in a supporting role in Man of a Thousand Faces, a biographical film about the life of Lon Chaney Sr. starring James Cagney as Chaney, although she never worked with the real Chaney in silent films. Rambeau played a supporting role in Bill with Marie Dressler. Tugboat Annie was a follow up to Min and Bill though it was not a sequel. Rambeau replaced Dressler after her death as Tugboat Annie in the sequel Tugboat Annie Sails Again. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Rambeau has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6336 Hollywood Blvd. Rambeau plays a role in one of the origin stories of the Reuben sandwich. According to author and theatre critic Bernard Sobel, the sandwich was invented for her upon a visit to Reuben's Restaurant and Delicatessen in New York City. Rambeau was descended from colonial immigrant Peter Gunnarsson Rambo, who immigrated in the 1600s from Sweden to New Sweden and served as a justice of the Governor's Council.
He was the longest living of the original settlers and became known as the "Father of New Sweden". Rambeau was married three times, she had no children, she first married was in 1913 to Canadian writer and director Willard Mack. They divorced in 1917, she married actor Hugh Dillman McGaughey in 1919, a marriage which ended in divorce in 1923. Rambeau's last marriage was to Francis Asbury Gudger in 1931, with whom she remained until his death in 1967. Gudger was from North Carolina. In the winters they stayed there, in the summer they lived in Sebring, Florida, his previous wife was killed in an automobile accident in Tampa two years before, but Rambeau and Gudger had been sweethearts years before when the former was the "toast of Broadway". She died in 1970 at her home in Palm Springs and was buried at the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California. List of actors with Academy Award nominations Marjorie Rambeau on IMDb Marjorie Rambeau at the Internet Broadway Database Marjorie Rambeau photo gallery at NYP Library Marjorie Rambeau in film "Mary Moreland" Calgary Herald 3 November 1917 Marjorie Rambeau
Death on the Nile (1978 film)
Death on the Nile is a 1978 British mystery film based on Agatha Christie's 1937 novel of the same name, directed by John Guillermin and adapted by Anthony Shaffer. The film features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, played by Peter Ustinov, plus an all-star supporting cast including Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, David Niven, George Kennedy and Jack Warden, it takes place in Egypt in 1937 on a period paddle steamer on the River Nile. Many of the cultural highlights of Egypt are featured in the film, such as the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, temples at Abu Simbel and Karnak though the locations are not in sequence; the boat trip starts in Aswan, follows to Karnak and to Abu Simbel, upstream from Aswan. Furthermore, it was never possible to go by boat from Aswan to Abu Simbel before the Aswan Dam was built because of the cataracts near Aswan. Death on the Nile won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design at the 51st Academy Awards. Jacqueline "Jackie" de Bellefort asks her close friend, wealthy heiress, Linnet Ridgeway, to hire her fiancé, Simon Doyle since he is broke.
Jackie is pleased when Linnet agrees, but Linnet and Simon soon start a whirlwind affair and end up marrying. While honeymooning in Egypt, they are continually hounded by the jilted Jackie. In an attempt to get away, the Doyles pretend to go to the Cairo Railway Station before backtracking to board their booked cruise on a Nile paddle steamer, the S. S. Karnak; when the passengers venture on-shore to examine a nearby temple, a large stone is pushed off a pillar and narrowly misses the Doyles. They are shocked when Jackie finds them and joins the cruise, having ignored the warnings of detective Hercule Poirot to stay away and having revealed that she carries a small automatic pistol in her handbag; that night, Jackie shoots him in the leg. The next morning, Linnet is found dead from a gunshot wound to the head. A "J" written in blood on the wall above her bed appears to implicate Jackie, but she has a solid alibi as Miss Bowers sedated her with morphia and stayed with her all night. Poirot and his friend, Colonel Race, investigate.
They discover that numerous passengers had reasons to kill Linnet: Louise Bourget, Linnet's maid, was bitter due to her mistress' refusal to grant her a promised dowry. Soon a bundle is found in the Nile; the missing pistol is wrapped in Mrs. van Schuyler's stole. A handkerchief was included, stained with blood, a marble ashtray to make sure it would sink to the bottom of the Nile, they discover that Linnet's pearls are missing, Mrs. van Schuyler denies having touched them. Soon after, the pearls are found on Linnet's body, so Poirot deduces Mrs van Schuyler has "returned" them. While Poirot and Race conduct their investigation, Louise Bourget is murdered, her throat has been cut with one of Dr. Bessner's scalpels and a fragment of a banknote is found in her hand. Poirot deduces she saw the murderer coming out of Linnet's cabin and attempted to extort money for her silence. Salome Otterbourne claims to have seen Louise's murderer and is about to tell Poirot and Race when she is shot in the head through an open cabin door with Pennington's revolver, too large to have been used on Linnet.
Poirot gathers everyone in the saloon and reveals that Simon is responsible for Linnet's murder, with Jackie working as his accomplice. She pretended drawing attention to herself. After running to Linnet's cabin and shooting her in the head, Simon shot himself in the leg, using Mrs. van Schuyler's stole as a silencer and replaced one of the empty cartridges with a new one should the gun be found. He wrapped the gun in the stole along with a marble ashtray and the supposed blood stained handkerchief and threw them out the open window. Jackie killed Louise, blackmailing Simon because she witnessed him enter Linnet's cabin killed Mrs. Otterbourne, who saw Jackie exiting Louise's cabin; the plan was that Simon would marry kill Linnet, inherit her money, at a date, marry his old love. When Simon points out that Poirot has no proof, Poirot reveals that the police will do a gunshot residue test known as a moulage test on both him and Jacqueline. Realizing they are caught, Jacqueline confesses before embracing Simon.
Poirot realizes she has taken back her pistol, but is unable to prevent her from shooting Simon in the head before killing herself. The passengers depart when the boat next docks, while Poirot is congratulated for his work. EMI Films had a huge success in 1974 with a film version of Murder on the Orient Express, wanted a follow up; the movie was made during a period of expansion for EMI Films under Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings, who were aiming at the international market with films like The Deer Hunter and Convoy. Death on the Nile was a more traditionally British film. Albert Finney played Hercule Poirot in
