Monday, November 09, 2009

Birthday Suits: Nov 9th

Today's Birthdays 11/09
<--- 1869 Marie Dressler is awesome. She gave one of the most aggressive Best Actress winning performances evah. If you haven't seen Min & Bill (1933), you must. You must, you must, you must.
1883 Edna May Oliver feisty character actress
1886 Ed Wynn Uncle Albert from Mary Poppins. He loves to laugh... long and loud and clear. Audiences were always ready to laugh along with him
1922 Dorothy Dandridge first black woman to be nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars (Carmen Jones) and what a neat coincidence that she was portrayed by the first black actress to eventually win the Best Actress Oscar (Halle Berry) in the bio Introducing Dorothy Dandridge
1948 Bille August Danish director of The Best Intentions and Pelle the Conqueror fame
1955 Fernando Meirelles director of declining films: City of God, The Constant Gardner, Blindness. I'm not trying to be mean. But... um... do you have faith he'll pull out of it? Discuss.
1974 Giovanna Mezzogiorno of Vincere (2009) hoopla
1988 Nikki Blonsky I don't know about you but I could hear the bells when she sang in Hairspray

And finally let's hear some love in the comments for Hedy Lamarr, one of the most beautiful actresses of the 40s and one of the first to go nude on film in Ekstase (1933)


Where's her biopic? Or miniseries even. Seriously... you can practically see the scenes spanning the genres: (war drama) Austrian-Jewess Hedy drugs her own maid to escape her husband and Vienna in the 30s, then helps invent frequency hopping. I mean, how many actresses can claim the origins of modern ubiquitous technology? (romance) Hedy marries and divorces six men. (movies about movies) Hedy films one of the cinema's first sex scenes, Hedy's movie banned in Hollywood but they recruit her anyway, Hedy loses the "Ilsa" role to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, Hedy stars in Samson and Delilah! This is a biopic I would gladly watch... even if they framed it in that stupid end of her life looking back way.

10 comments:

Will said...

Happy Birhday to three legends:
Hedy Lamarr - one of the most beautiful actresses ever to be filmed in Hollywood.
Marie Dressler - great Academy Award-winner and at one point Hollywood’s number one box-office draw.
and lets not forget about Academy Award-nominee Dorothy Dandridge who would've turned 87 today, but died at age 42. She was also the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

NATHANIEL R said...

eeek. I didn't mean to forget Dandridge

Andrew David said...

If there's a film made about Hedy Lamarr I hope it includes this supposed tryst with Hitler. I'm hoping for some deep psychological pain and audience-baiting.

Paul Outlaw said...

Ed Wynn, Oscar-nominated for The Diary of Anne Frank!

misscleo3861 said...

Min and Bill is coming on Turner Classic Movies at 3pm Eastern...which is a little over 10 minutes from now. I only found out myself. Maybe someone will catch this?

MrW said...

11/9, what a day for us Germans.

However, a few additional birthdays:
Anthony Asquith, the man who directed Margaret Rutherford (who may be the only actress even more delightful than Marie Dressler) to her Oscar win in 'The V.I.P.s', *1902
Joy Page, who played the Bulgarian bride spared by Rick from a night with Renault in 'Casablanca', *1924
Imre Kertész, Nobel prize winning writer who adapted his best known novel 'Fateless' for the screen in 2005, *1929

Anonymous said...

an Hedy Lamarr biopic...sounds great!!!
who could play her in your opinion?

Marie Dressler was great...but I've never forgotten that her Academy Award winning vanished the only Marlene Dietrich shot to the Oscar...

mirko

NATHANIEL R said...

MrW ... i was just thinking about that Bulgarian bride not two days ago... talking about her in the CASABLANCA/UNFORGIVEN pairing in the next "best pictures" episode which may never arrive. ARGH.

Lara said...

Re Hedy Lamarr's biopic: would you look forward if Amy Redford directs and Rachel Weisz stars? "Face Value" might be happening and they want to explore Hedy the scientist (or so I've read).

normadesmond said...

it's unfortunate that edna may is unknown today. terrific actress who, suprisingly hailed from malden , massachusetts.