Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Actors!

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies: 

Actors!

Hi, ho... let's all go. The actor's life for me!

So sayeth these fine fictional fellow of the footlights.

Actors. Love 'em. Hate. 'em. 

Aww, let's just hate 'em.

At least that seems to be the opinion of several of today's cinematic offerings.

Now, though merry, nary shall we tary... (though in one case they did see fit to bury!)

Up with the curtain. On with the lights.

Let's take a look at these tasty thespian-inspired delights.

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Actors And Sin

(1952)

This one has a two-part story - Actor's Blood and Woman Of Sin. The first is about a washed-up Broadway actor and his tough daughter, who is a bigger star than he is; the second is about a literary agent whose newest client, a nine-year-old girl, is the author of a borderline pornographic book.

Actor's Blood takes place in New York City. Broadway star Marcia Tillayou has been found shot dead in her apartment. Her father Maurice is himself an actor, and had watched her theater career rise as his own declined. She had let success overcome her, and had thus alienated critics, fans, producers and her playwright husband. She had a few recent stage flops before being murdered.

Woman Of Sin takes place in Hollywood. Dishonest writers' agent Orlando Higgens has been receiving frantic calls from Daisy Marcher about a screenplay that she had written titled Woman Of Sin. Thinking they are crank calls, Higgins tells her to never again call his office. He then learns that because of a mail mixup, her screenplay had been received by film mogul J.B. Cobb, a man who had once passed on Gone With the Wind based on Higgins' advice. Cobb thinks that Higgins sent the script and offers him a lucrative sum for the rights. However, Higgins does not know where Daisy is or that she is actually a nine-year-old child.

This comedy was written, produced and directed by Ben Hecht and stars Edward G. Robinson, Marsha Hunt, and Eddie Albert. Lee Garmes served as codirector and cinematographer, as he did on most of the films that Hecht directed.

The little girl in the second story is Hecht's own daughter. 

The film marks Edward G. Robinson's second film with actress Marsha Hunt.

Final film of Ben Hecht as a director and producer

Upon original release, several theater chains refused to screen the film because it lampoons of stage and screen. This resulted in a lawsuit by United Artists and Sid Kuller Productions against the A. B. C. Theatres Company.

On July 30, 1943, Ben and Rose had a daughter, Jenny Hecht, who became an actress at the age of 8. She died of a drug overdose on March 25, 1971, at the age of 27, shortly after completing her third movie appearance. A play about Jenny's brief life, The Screenwriter's Daughter by Larry Mollin, was staged in London in October 2015.

You can see this film in its entirety for free on YouTube!

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The Actor And The Savages

(1975)

AKA: Actorul si salbaticii and A színész és a vadak

The director of a famous theater in 1930s Bucharest and his Jewish dramatist are preparing a show designed to satirize the fascist (legionnaire) movement, but the legionnaires are determined to stop the spectacle by any means.

This Romanian family drama was directed by Manole Marcus and stars Toma Caragiu, Mircea Albulescu, Tricy Abramovici, Ion Besoiu, Ioana Craciunescu, and Mircea Diaconu.

Inspired by the life of actor/director Constantin Tănase.

It was entered into the 9th Moscow International Film Festival.

There were a number of mix-ups during the filming. In one scene, Caratase finds in his bed a cut-off hand left by the Legionnaires to frighten him. In the scene a real hand was used, the hand was brought from a morgue. The next day it was thrown out into the garbage bin and when someone found it, an investigation was started but then stopped when it was revealed that this is the garbage left the after the movie shooting. The gun used in the movie by the Commissioner Radu Toma was a real one. The gun was given to the actor Mircea Diaconu, by the Capitan of the security services, only for moment when  related to a scene and after that he took it back. The Capitan of the security service had refused to leave the gun to the actor before the scene, so that the actor could have a bit of practice with it. Seems the gun was loaded, but, thankfully, it misfired during the scene. 

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Story Of An Unknown Actor

(1977)

AKA: Повесть о неизвестном актёре and Povest o neizvestnom aktyore

Pavel Pavlovich Goryaev is a middle-aged actor. For many years, he played in the provincial theater in lead roles. The director of a new play, written for Goryaev, casts a young actor instead. Goryaev falls into despair, leaves the theater, and pleads with his fellow thespians to help him. However, he eventually digests what has transpired, and decides it's time he give up the stage all together.

This Soviet drama was directed by Aleksandr Zarkhi and stars Yevgeny Yevstigneyev and Alla Demidova.

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Provincial Actors

(1979)

AKA: Aktorzy prowincjonalni

A young up and coming director arrives at a small town outside of Warsaw to produce a classic play, Liberation by Stanisław Wyspiański - with a modern bent. Everyone in the production gets their typical stereotypical role, except the aging idol of the ensemble. He's cast in the lead and senses an opportunity to give the performance of his life. However, the director has a different view of his character and the two bump heads right up to opening night. The actor's wife listens to his fears, complaints and frustrations, all the while resigning herself to a fading career as part of a puppet theatre.

 

This Polish drama was directed by Agnieszka Holland and stars Tadeusz Huk and Halina Labonarska. This served as Holland's feature-length directorial debut. 

Holland is best known for her films Europa Europa (1990), for which she received a Golden Globe Award as well as an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination, The Secret Garden (1993), Angry Harvest and the Holocaust drama In Darkness, the last two of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

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I Hate Actors

(1986)

AKA: Je hais les acteurs

Hollywood in the 1940s. A tyrannical producer, a paranoid director, a starlet engaged twenty-four times, and an actor who refuses to age - all against a backdrop of a series of murders. A Hollywood studio is producing another spectacular when the top-billed male stars suddenly show up as corpses, killed before the critics could ever put pen to paper. Under suspicion is a talent agent. Is he guilty or not? These macabre events have everyone off their game, from the producers down to the lowest gofer.

This French film was directed by Gérard Krawczyk from a screenplay written by Ben Hecht and Krawczyk and stars Pauline Lafont, Dominique Lavanant, Jean Poiret, Michel Galabru, Michel Blanc, Bernard Blier, Patrick Floersheim, Sophie Duez, Guy Marchand, Wojciech Pszoniak, Jean-François, Stévenin Patrick Braoudé, Jézabel Carpi, and Jean-Paul Lilienfeld.

The film features a color prologue and epilogue which supposedly take place in 1981, while the body of the film, set in 1940s Hollywood, is shot in black and white.

Actor Gérard Depardieu just happened to be passing through the set on the last day of filming and was integrated into a scene.

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next time...

Same place, same channel.

Actors And Sin - Trailer