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Numerous actors aspire to stand on the illustrious stage and utter the iconic words, “I would like to thank The Academy,” as they receive the coveted Oscar. The Oscar is the pinnacle of achievement in the filmmaking industry, a dream for many. However, the reality is that not everyone can emerge victorious.

Many actors have come to understand that even multiple nominations don’t guarantee a win. The competition at the Academy Awards is fierce, and not everyone will have the honor of seeing their name engraved on the prestigious golden statue. We are now listing four deserving actors who finished their careers without ever winning an Oscar.

4 Actors Who Ended Their Careers Without An Oscar Win

As previously noted, securing an Oscar remains the pinnacle of acknowledgement for numerous actors, yet several top stars have not won the prestigious award. In fact, some actors concluded their careers without ever attaining an Academy Award.

John Deyle, a veteran actor on Broadway and television commercials, died June 22 in Mount Kisco, NY of esophageal cancer. He was 68.

Born and raised in Rochester, New York, he studied at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

In 1978, when auditioning for the Richard Rodgers and Martin Charnin musical I Remember Mama, Charnin decided to instead cast him in the original Broadway production of Annie. A member of the third-year cast, which featured Sarah Jessica Parker in the title role, Deyle played Louis Howe, Fred McCracken, and Bert Healy.

His other Broadway credits include understudy to Sir Lionel in the 1980 revival of Camelot, appearing in the original Broadway company of Footloose, and portraying Senator Fipp in Urinetown.

On tour, Deyle played Bert Bratt in the 1996 production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and did three tours of Camelot in various roles, including Forest Merlyn. Off-Broadway,...

John Deyle, who appeared in four Broadway musicals, in more than 100 commercials and as the inept Mr. Science on the first season of Late Night With Conan O’Brien, has died. He was 68.

Deyle died June 22 at his home in Mount Kisco, New York, after a battle with esophageal cancer, his wife, Rebecca Paller, announced.

While auditioning for a role in the musical adaptation of I Remember Mama in 1978, lyricist Martin Charnin told him that he was “all wrong for this show, but we could use you in Annie,” he recalled.

Deyle then made his Broadway debut in March 1979, joining the ensemble of the Sarah Jessica Parker starrer by playing Louis Howe, Fred McCracken and Bert Healy.

He went on to work in the 1980 Broadway revival of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot, starring Richard Burton, and in the subsequent U.S. and Australian tours of the famed musical that featured Richard Harris in the lead.

Yeardley Smith is an American actress, artist and writer. She is best known for voicing Lisa Simpson on The Simpsons.

Yeardley Smith Biography: Age, Early Life, Family, Education

Yeardley Smith was born on July 3, 1964 (Yeardley Smith: Age 58) in Paris, France to Joseph Smith and Martha Mayor. The family moved to Washington D.C. in 1966 where Smith’s father worked as the first obituary writer for The Washington Post and her mother worked as a paper conservator for the Smithsonian Institute.

In an exclusive interview with uInterview, Smith revealed how she got started acting.

“There was a woman in my neighborhood in Washington, D.C. who used to put on, in the summer she would gather up all the kids, she had eight kids of her own, all the kids in the neighborhood and we would lip sync to songs like from Sound of Music or Fiddler on the Roof or...

For only the eighth time ever and first time since 1978, multiple films have simultaneously received at least four Oscar nominations for acting. “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which earned a collective total of 20 academy notices, are now the 39th and 40th films to have four or more of their performers recognized, and they could soon be added to the list of 25 films of this kind that scored at least one acting win. However, it is possible that one or both could follow the 13 other movies – including “The Power of the Dog” (2022) – that lost on all of their acting bids.

“The Banshees of Inisherin” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” each ended up with one lead acting notice, for Colin Farrell and Michelle Yeoh, respectively. Farrell’s three nominated supporting cast mates are Kerry Condon, Brendan Gleeson, and Barry Keoghan, while Yeoh’s are Jamie Lee Curtis,...

The Best Supporting Actor Oscar category is seeing double yet again. Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan received nominations as expected for their turns in Martin McDonagh‘s “The Banshees of Inisherin” on Tuesday, marking the fourth consecutive year a film has received double bids in the category.

“Banshees” is the 22nd film to achieve this, but most remarkably, five of them have occurred in the last six years after a 26-year dry spell. “Bugsy” (1991) produced noms for Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley, but the category went without co-star nominees until McDonagh’s “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017) yielded bids for Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson. After none the following year, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci garnered comeback noms for “The Irishman” (2019). Two years ago, Oscar voters shocked us all by nominating Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield — you know, they who played the title characters in that two-hander “Judas and the Black Messiah” — in supporting.

In addition to being this year’s Oscar nominations leader with a dozen bids across 11 categories, “The Power of the Dog” is the 38th film in the academy’s 94-year history to amass at least four acting nominations. Star Benedict Cumberbatch is up for the Best Actor award, while his castmates Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee have all been recognized as supporting players. In a matter of weeks, their film will either be the 26th to score at least one win from four or more acting bids or the 13th to lose them all.

On average, a film of this kind earns a total of 10 nominations. 33 of them have received Best Picture bids and 13 have won the top honor. “The Power of the Dog” is nominated there as well as in the next seven non-acting categories where its predecessors have most often landed: Best Director (33; 12 wins), Best Film...

Jeanine Ann Roose, best known for playing Little Violet Bick in the holiday classic film It’s a Wonderful Life, died Friday night at her Los Angeles home after battling an infection, TMZ reports. She was 84.

Roose worked as a child actor in the 1940s and ’50s. Her role as Little Violet in the 1946 Christmas classic was her sole film credit. You can see a clip of her in a scene from the film below.

Roose landed her first acting job at the age of eight on The Jack Benny Program. She also appeared on The Fitch Bandwagon and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show from 1946 to 1954 as a character based on the real-life daughter of Harris and Faye.

Other radio appearances included playing Chris in the Lux Radio Theatre production of I Remember Mama and an episode of Mr. President with Edward Arnold. She also starred in the unaired television pilot Arabella’s Tall Tales.

Revisiting last year's introduction when putting together 2021's favorites, it is with a shock to realize how little has changed in the wildly disrupted world of cinema under the shroud of the pandemic. The urge to copy-and-paste the whole shebang is quite tempting indeed.What can we say about this year, 2021? We got a little more used to long-term instability. Cinemas and festivals re-opened, only for some to close again. We, like many, ventured carefully out into the world to finally see films again with audiences, all kinds: nervous ones, uproarious ones, spartan ones, and delighted ones. It was an experience both anxious and joyous. We also doubled down on the challenges, but also the pleasures, of home viewing: of virtual cinemas and virtual festivals, of straight to streaming premieres, of trying to capture a social joy in semi-isolation by connecting with others over experiences shared and disparate.The long...

It’s that time of year again for graduations, which always brings up a bit of nostalgia. There are those graduating high school who are anticipating college, internships or jobs – and freedom from mom and dad. Then there are the college graduates, degree in hand, ready to enter the “real world” and conquer their chosen field. And then there are the adults who look back on their time like it was yesterday, remembering old friends and good times that were had, and reflecting on how different life is than what was expected all those years ago. And the people in each of these generations are indelibly linked by certain tangibles – most especially music and film.

SEEthe 20 best TV graduation episodes ranked

And so it comes as no surprise that many of the finest coming-of-age films are set right before or directly following a graduation, whether it be high school or college,...

It’s that time of year again for graduations, which always brings up a bit of nostalgia. There are those graduating high school who are anticipating college, internships or jobs – and freedom from mom and dad. Then there are the college graduates, degree in hand, ready to enter the “real world” and conquer their chosen field. And then there are the adults who look back on their time like it was yesterday, remembering old friends and good times that were had, and reflecting on how different life is than what was expected all those years ago. And the people in each of these generations are indelibly linked by certain tangibles – most especially music and film.

And so it comes as no surprise that many of the finest coming-of-age films are set right before or directly following a graduation, whether it be high school or college, and that many contain some really great soundtracks.

Liv Ullmann has been an international star since 1966’s Ingmar Bergman’s arthouse hit “Persona”; indeed, she is best-known for her collaborations with Bergman, acting in 10 of his films, and directing two of his screenplays; he was also the father of her daughter, author Lin Ullmann. But there’s more to her than that: She’s written two books, “Changing” (1976) and “Choices” (1979), and, more important, her activism.

Ullmann talked to Variety about acting in Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” in Norway early in her career. In a war-torn area, her character discovers an abandoned baby. The director gave her advice valuable both in acting and in life: See things from both sides, and don’t turn away. Her life was changed with another production, the musical “I Remember Mama,” when Broadway shows raised funds for Cambodian refugees in 1979. The lesson then was similar: Don’t turn away.

‘This...

Traditionally, Oscar voters honor smaller roles in the Best Supporting Actress category, especially compared to the corresponding male one. The average supporting female performance clocks in at just 24 minutes and 37 seconds, with the majority of them falling under 22 minutes. Still, a decent amount of long ones have been consistently recognized, including six that reach the one hour screen time mark. Here is a look at the 10 longest (and here are the 10 longest winners):

10. Jennifer Jason Leigh (“The Hateful Eight”)

57 minutes, 45 seconds (34.46% of the film)

2016’s group of Best Supporting Actress nominees boast the highest screen time average (51 minutes and 46 seconds) in the history of both supporting categories. Leigh, Rooney Mara (“Carol”), and winner Alicia Vikander (“The Danish Girl”) concurrently earned spots on this list and all attracted controversy by appearing to have been placed in the wrong category. As crass outlaw Daisy Domergue, Leigh plays the only major female character in “The Hateful Eight,...

A bona fide film classic, George Stevens’ movie is less revered as an excellent adaptation of Theodore Dreiser than for its intense, almost hallucinatory romantic scenes between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. A guileless poor boy tries to succeed above his economic background and entangles himself between two very different women. I guess the Academy wasn’t ready to take the glamorous young MGM beauty seriously: both Clift and their co-star Shelley Winters received acting nominations, but not Liz. Stevens’ first ‘fifties picture is perhaps the most balanced of his ‘heavy’ and ‘important’ works, a tragedy that’s too deeply felt to be merely ponderous.

A Place in the Sun

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 8

1951 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 122 min. / Street Date August, 2020 /

Starring: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Keefe Brasselle, Fred Clark, Raymond Burr, Walter Sande, Ted de Corsia, Kathleen Freeman, Kasey Rogers, Douglas Spencer, Ian Wolfe.

Cinematography: William C. Mellor...

I Remember Mama: Kore-eda Anoints Deneuve as a Diva in Pleasurable Drama

A subtle exercise in the limited reality of both perspective and memory, auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first foray outside of his native Japan with The Truth (La vérité) is a meta-textual narrative on motherhood and filmmaking. Pairing Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche as an antagonizing mother and daughter duo, Kore-eda’s first film following his 2018 Palme d’Or win for Shoplifters is a departure in many ways, as it melds his familiar themes of emotionally fraught familial ties with titans of the French film industry, both whose presence recalls similar vehicles they’ve starred in for names like Olivier Assayas and Andre Techine.…...

One of the great actresses nominated for the Academy Award multiple times (five) without a win and one of the best screwball comediennes of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Irene Dunne is considered one of the foremost performers of that era, known for her versatility, style and sophistication.

Dunne was born December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Kentucky. The daughter of a music teacher, she was raised around music and had a natural talent for it. She won a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College, and hoped to become an opera singer, but did not pass her audition with the Metropolitan Opera Company. However, she found success in musical theater, eventually appearing in several Broadway productions. While playing the lead in a road company of “Show Boat,” Dunne was discovered by Hollywood and was soon on her way to a varied and prosperous acting career.

SEECary Grant movies: 15 greatest films ranked from worst...

One of the great actresses nominated for the Academy Award multiple times (five) without a win and one of the best screwball comediennes of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Irene Dunne is considered one of the foremost performers of that era, known for her versatility, style and sophistication.

Dunne was born December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Kentucky. The daughter of a music teacher, she was raised around music and had a natural talent for it. She won a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College, and hoped to become an opera singer, but did not pass her audition with the Metropolitan Opera Company. However, she found success in musical theater, eventually appearing in several Broadway productions. While playing the lead in a road company of “Show Boat,” Dunne was discovered by Hollywood and was soon on her way to a varied and prosperous acting career.

Dunne displayed her impressive acting abilities almost immediately,...

“She was just in time to see the last tree split into two, as a man slipped from behind its trunk, and disappeared into the shadow.” – Ethel Lina White (Some Must Watch)

I had the glorious experience of sitting inside a 250-seat movie theater watching A Quiet Place all by myself on a Sunday morning a last year. The technique of stripping sound away from that film, utilizing silence as a narrative vessel, is completely obvious when you are the only person sitting in front of a giant movie screen with nothing but the glow of the film to illuminate the empty seats surrounding you. As the movie progressed I could feel myself moving anxiously in my seat, inching towards the front of the chair in anticipation of the next scare. The darkness and seclusion of the theater playing tricks on my senses as I turned around in my chair...

Hating the Oscars. Hardly an original pursuit—the act itself has a storied history—though certainly an irresistible one. No less a figure than George C. Scott, Academy Award winner for the title role in Patton (1970), memorably dubbed it “the two-hour meat parade.”At that special time each year, having reliably tuned out that months-long drone of speculation from the movie pundits, again one must ask: can I summon up the wherewithal to engage with the scandals du jour, the snubs, the demographic shifts, the sneering wit of the hosts, or, even worse, to ignore it all completely? Raymond Chandler, as true a cynic as did ever put pen to paper, hated them well and hated them early in his report from the 1948 ceremony:“If you can go past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theater without a sense of the collapse of the human intelligence; if...

Virtually every usually-reliable indicator suggests that all of the women at the center of The Favourite — Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz — will receive Oscar nominations on Jan. 22. Should that happen, Yorgos Lanthimos' period dramedy will become only the 19th film in history to produce three or more female acting noms.

The prior titles to achieve this feat, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library confirms, span from Gone With the Wind (1939) through The Help (2011). In between there were The Little Foxes (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), I Remember Mama (1948), Come ...

Virtually every usually-reliable indicator suggests that all of the women at the center of The Favourite — Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz — will receive Oscar nominations on Jan. 22. Should that happen, Yorgos Lanthimos' period dramedy will become only the 19th film in history to produce three or more female acting noms.

The prior titles to achieve this feat, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library confirms, span from Gone With the Wind (1939) through The Help (2011). In between there were The Little Foxes (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), I Remember Mama (1948), Come ...

With just a few weeks left in the big Summer season, Hollywood hopes to get a slight jump on the serious Fall/Winter awards time with an adaptation of an acclaimed biographical novel. Oh, and it’s a “heart-tugger’ about an offbeat family. Now, such movies can be heartwarming like Meet Me In St. Louis and I Remember Mama, or countless other syrupy-sweet homages to home and hearth. And then there’s the opposite, the tough profiles of hard lives with difficult heads of the household like The Great Santini or (gasp) Mommie Dearest. Really, this new flick could almost be “Daddy Dearest”, as its main focus is a man who made life difficult for his offspring, due partly to his boozing, but mainly because he could never really realize his dreams, particularly his elaborate, unmade plans for The Glass Castle.

Those blueprints are a long ago memory for successful...

(See previous post: Fourth of July Movies: Escapism During a Weird Year.) On the evening of the Fourth of July, besides fireworks, fire hazards, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, if you're watching TCM in the U.S. and Canada, there's the following: Peter H. Hunt's 1776 (1972), a largely forgotten film musical based on the Broadway hit with music by Sherman Edwards. William Daniels, who was recently on TCM talking about 1776 and a couple of other movies (A Thousand Clowns, Dodsworth), has one of the key roles as John Adams. Howard Da Silva, blacklisted for over a decade after being named a communist during the House Un-American Committee hearings of the early 1950s (Robert Taylor was one who mentioned him in his testimony), plays Benjamin Franklin. Ken Howard is Thomas Jefferson, a role he would reprise in John Huston's 1976 short Independence. (In the short, Pat Hingle was cast as John Adams; Eli Wallach was Benjamin Franklin.) Warner...

Fourth of July movies: A few recommended titles that should help you temporarily escape current global madness Two thousand and seventeen has been a weirder-than-usual year on the already pretty weird Planet Earth. Unsurprisingly, this Fourth of July, the day the United States celebrates its Declaration of Independence from the British Empire, has been an unusual one as well. Instead of fireworks, (at least some) people's attention has been turned to missiles – more specifically, a carefully timed North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test indicating that Kim Jong-un could theoretically gain (or could already have?) the capacity to strike North America with nuclear weapons. Then there were right-wing trolls & history-deficient Twitter users berating National Public Radio for tweeting the Declaration of Independence, 140 characters at a time. Besides, a few days ago the current U.S. president retweeted a video of himself body-slamming and choking a representation of CNN – courtesy of a gif originally created by a far-right Internet...

Turner Classic Movies continues with its Gay Hollywood presentations tonight and tomorrow morning, June 8–9. Seven movies will be shown about, featuring, directed, or produced by the following: Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Farley Granger, John Dall, Edmund Goulding, W. Somerset Maughan, Clifton Webb, Montgomery Clift, Raymond Burr, Charles Walters, DeWitt Bodeen, and Harriet Parsons. (One assumes that it's a mere coincidence that gay rumor subjects Cary Grant and Tyrone Power are also featured.) Night and Day (1946), which could also be considered part of TCM's homage to birthday girl Alexis Smith, who would have turned 96 today, is a Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a posh, heterosexualized version of Porter. As the warning goes, any similaries to real-life people and/or events found in Night and Day are a mere coincidence. The same goes for Words and Music (1948), a highly fictionalized version of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical partnership.

Happy Haloween. Please enjoy this Photo of Oscar nominee and birthday girl Sally Kirkland wearing a live tarantula Halloween isn't only for trick or treating and costume parties though it is most definitely for those things. It's also home to many fine birthdays and events on this day in showbiz history... 

1795 Poet John Keats is born. Two hundred and fourteen years later Ben Whishaw plays him beautifully in the still undervalued Jane Campion movie Bright Star

1864 Nevada becomes the 36th State. Without Nevada no Las Vegas, one of the favorite cities of filmmakers and storytellers. It is entirely untrue that what happens there stays there -- it's always broadcast!

1879 Oscar nominee Sara Allgood (How Green Was My Valley) is born in Dublin

1892 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle publishes the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Movies and TV haven't shut up about the Great Detective since they were invented as mediums. 

1906 George Bernard Shaw...

Cinemax is about to show us that war is hell even after one has left the battlefield.

The cable network on Thursday announced that its Vietnam-era drama Quarry would premiere on Sept. 9.

RelatedCable/Streaming Renewal Scorecard 2016: What’s Coming Back? What’s Cancelled? What’s On the Bubble?

Based on the Max Allan Collins novels, the series revolves around O.C. alum Logan Marshall-Green’s Mac Conway, “a Marine who returns home to Memphis from Vietnam in 1972 and finds himself shunned by those he loves and demonized by the public,” per the show’s official description. “As he struggles to cope…...

 

Dick Van Patten, the popular comedic character actor, has passed away at age 86. Patten was a child actor who eventually went on to perform in 30 Broadway shows. He also proved to be a popular presence on early TV shows such as "I Remember Mama". In the 1970s, he appeared on "The Love Boat" and a decade later had a hit show with "Eight is Enough". More recently, he co-starred on "Hot in Cleveland". Van Patten also made any number of hit feature films including such diverse fare as the Clint Eastwood western "Joe Kidd" and three movies with Mel Brooks: "High Anxiety", "Spaceballs" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights". For more, click here. ...

Actor Dick Van Patten, perhaps best known as patriarch Tom Bradford on the '80s series Eight Is Enough, has died. He was 86.

Van Patten died Tuesday morning at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, due to complications from diabetes, People confirms.

The actor was born in Kew Gardens, New York, in 1928 and began his career as a child star and model. He made his Broadway debut when he was 7 years old in Tapestry in Gray. He went on to appear in nearly 30 more Broadway shows.

Van Patten made the jump to television with the role of Nels Hansen in I Remember Mama,...

We're just 9 days away from the launch of another Smackdown Summer. Rather than announce piecemeal, we'll give you all five lineups in case you'd like more time to catch up with these films (some of them stone cold classics) over the hot months. Remember to cast your own ballots during each month for the reader-polling (your 1979 votes are due by June 4th). Your votes count toward the final Smackdown win so more of you should join in. 

These Oscar years were chosen after comment reading, dvd searching, handwringing, and desire-to-watch moods.  I wish we had time to squeeze in a dozen Smackdowns each summer! As it is there will be Two Smackdowns in June, a gift to you since this first episode was delayed.

Sunday June 7th

The Best Supporting Actresses of 1979

Meryl Streep won her first of three Oscars while taking her co-star Jane Alexander along for the Oscar ride in Kramer vs. Kramer.

On Looking, HBO's hit dramedy following the lives of gay men living in San Francisco, Raúl Castillo plays Richie, a one-time love interest of lead Jonathan Groff.

The actor was originally meant to appear in only two episodes, but viewers responded so well to his out-of-the-closet, Mexican-American character that he became a series regular.

"Since the pilot episode and from that point forward, Richie is treated with a real sensitivity and a certain dedication – he's a multilayered character. The writers had a real sense of wanting to bring an authentic person to the screen," says Castillo, 37. "It was exciting to...

The 59th annual edition of these kudos took place on June 1 at the Town Hall in Manhattan. (Read the full report here.) Best Play Nell Benjamin, The Explorers Club Steven Levenson, Core Values Conor McPherson, The Night Alive Richard Nelson, Regular Singing Bruce Norris, Domesticated X - Robert Schenkkan, All The Way John Patrick Shanley, Outside Mullingar -Break- Join the red-hot debate about the Tonys in our fiery forums Best Musical X - A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder Aladdin Beautiful: The Carole King Musical Fun Home Love’s Labour’s Lost Rocky The Bridges of Madison County Best Revival of a Play I Remember Mama London Wall No Man's Land Of Mice and Men The Cripple of Inishmaan The Model Apartment X - Twelfth Night (Shakespeare’s Globe Production) Best Revival of a Musical or Revue X - Hedwig and the Angry Inch Les Misérables Violet Tony frontru.

For this very special and ultimately quite spontaneous edition of the podcast, Nathaniel calls a few of his team members to grill them about their moms & the movies. Sadly the entire team was not available -- some of them were being good kids en route to visiting their mothers so they have a good excuse -- but you get to hear from a few of us and how our moms factor into our cinephila. Expect name-droppings of Margo Martindale, Susan Sarandon, I Remember Mama, The Lord of the Rings, A Separation and much more... 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes.

00:01 Intro

01:00 Amir

09:00 Abstew

14:00 Anne Marie

20:30 Tim Brayton

27:00 Funny Girl Interlude & Surprise Guest

32:00 The Guest of Honor, Nathaniel's Mom!

40:00 Exit Music "Baby Mine" with Bette Midler 

Nathaniel's mom & dad in...

1. The term "gaslight." The Ingrid Bergman thriller "Gaslight" -- released 70 years ago this week, on May 4, 1944, wasn't the original use of the title. There was Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play "Gas Light," retitled "Angel Street" when it came to Broadway a couple years later. And there was a British film version in 1939, starring Anton Walbrook (later the cruel impresario in "The Red Shoes") and Diana Wynyard.

Still, the glossy 1944 MGM version remains the best-known telling of the tale, with the title an apparent reference to the flickering Victorian lamps that are part of Gregory's (Charles Boyer) scheme to make wife Paula (Bergman) think she's seeing things that aren't there, thus deliberately undermining her sanity in order to have her institutionalized so that he'll be free to ransack the ancestral home to find the missing family jewels.

This version of Hamilton's tale was so popular that it made the word "gaslight"into a verb,...

The Drama Desk announced nominations this morning for the 59th edition of its awards ceremony, which will take place June 1 at The Town Hall in NYC. The group, which includes writers, editors, academics and others, can take credit for its refusal to segregate Broadway from its off- and off-off- siblings, and therefore reflects a wider range of choices (and quality) than the Theater District-only Tonys. (The nominations also guarantee the group a high-profile in display advertisement in the run-up to the Tony Awards.) And so, for example, the competition for Best Musical includes not only Broadway’s Rocky, Aladdin, The Bridges Of Madison County, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical and A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder but also the Public Theater’s well-received productions of Fun Home and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Best Play nominees include Broadway’s Outside Mullingar and All The Way as well as five plays presented off-Broadway.

King Kong ain’t got s–t on superstar Denzel Washington (at least, not until the beast’s new musical declares a firm date next season), as the movie megastar touched down on Broadway for the first time since his Tony-winning turn in August Wilson’s Fences in 2010. And like that heralded revival, he once again got raves from most outlets. Also receiving raves this week was Wicked star Idina Menzel, who dazzles in If/Then, the new tuner by the Next to Normal team of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt. And though the young fans who adore her voice in Frozen may,...

Following Transport Group's 2011 production of Queen of the Mist, the 20th Century Project continues into its second decade 1910 - 1920 with an urgent new revival of John Van Druten's beloved classic, I Remember Mama. Redefining family, time, and memory, Transport Group's production features a cast of ten veteran actresses who play all twenty-three roles. This bold reinterpretation of Van Druten's simple and honest story reveals how even the smallest and seemingly insignificant experiences of family life can silently accumulate and take our breath away.Previews begin March 16 opening is March 30.BroadwayWorld just met the cast and you can check out full photo coverage below...

Following Transport Group's 2011 production of Queen of the Mist, the 20th Century Project continues into its second decade 1910 - 1920 with an urgent new revival of John Van Druten's beloved classic, I Remember Mama. Redefining family, time, and memory, Transport Group's production features a cast of ten veteran actresses who play all twenty-three roles. This bold reinterpretation of Van Druten's simple and honest story reveals how even the smallest and seemingly insignificant experiences of family life can silently accumulate and take our breath away. Previews begin March 16 opening is March 30.BroadwayWorld just met the cast and you can check out a photo preview below. Check back later for full coverage...

Transport Group, the Drama Desk and Obie award-winning theatre company, has announced that Almost, Maine, written by John Cariani and directed by Jack Cummings III, and I Remember Mama, written by John Van Druten and directed by Mr. Cummings, will comprise the company's 2013-14 season. Both productions will take place at the Gym at Judson, 243 Thompson Street, where Transport Group will now be in residency.

Irene Dunne movies: Five-time Best Actress Academy Award nominee starred in now-forgotten originals of well-remembered remakes In his August 2007 Bright Lights article "The Elusive Pleasures of Irene Dunne," Dan Callahan explained that "the reasons for Irene Dunne’s continuing, undeserved obscurity are fairly well known. Nearly all of her best films from the thirties and forties were remade and the originals were suppressed and didn’t play on television. She did some of her most distinctive work for John Stahl at Universal, and non-horror Universal films are rarely shown now. Practically all of her movies need to be restored; even her most popular effort, The Awful Truth (1937), looks grainy and blotchy on its DVD transfer, to say nothing of things like Stahl’s When Tomorrow Comes (1939), or Rouben Mamoulian’s High, Wide, and Handsome (1937), two key Dunne films that have languished and deteriorated in a sort of television/video purgatory.

Amir here. Since the Oscar nominations were announced on tuesday we’ve all heard tons of new stats about this year's slate. All the ‘oldest’ and ‘youngest’ and ‘most’s aside, the one thing that caught my eye was the double nomination for Best Supporting Actress for The Help’s ladies Jessica Chastain & Octavia Spencer. This is now the fourth consecutive year that the category has included two nominees from the same film. For the trivia lovers among you, this equals the previous longest streak of double supporting actress nominations from 1947 through 1950: Gentleman’s Agreement, I Remember Mama, Come to the Stable, Pinky and All About Eve... (though the earlier run is more impressive since 1949 had two sets of double nominees.)

Trivia: The two longest double supporting runs (though 47-50 actually had a year with two double noms."Pinky" is not pictured by accident. Apologies). In both one actress...

Jesse Metcalfe, Julie Gonzalo, Josh Henderson, Jordana Brewster, Dallas The new Dallas, to be aired on TNT in summer 2012, brings back the old Dallas' Larry Hagman, Patrick Duffy, Charlene Tilton, and Linda Gray as the more mature versions of their characters. New Dallas cast members include Beyond a Reasonable Doubt's Jesse Metcalfe, Fast Five's Jordana Brewster, Christmas with the Kranks' Julie Gonzalo, and Yours, Mine and Ours' Josh Henderson. In addition to Hagman, Duffy, and Tilton, the original Dallas featured a couple of movie veterans, MGM singing star Howard Keel (Show Boat, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) and Oscar nominee Barbara Bel Geddes (I Remember Mama, Vertigo). Also in the recurring cast were Priscilla Presley, Steve Kanaly, and Earthquake's Victoria Principal, among others. Photo: TNT...

Tennessee Williams Centennial Week Wraps

Maggie the Cat, the sex-starved slip-covered wife at the heart of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (discussed earlier this week) is not just alive, she keeps coming back to life. True to her feline symbolism she's had several of them, eight bigs ones actually. Who will risk playing Maggie the Cat's ninth major life and how soon will that be?

Here is a history of the key Maggies for those who love the play... or just if you like to see major actresses in their lingerie. Have you ever seen a production of this play anywhere or just the 1958 film? Do tell in the comments. Would love to hear Tin Roof stories.

1955 ~ Original Maggie

Barbara Bel Geddes, originated the role on Broadway in the 1956 and won a Tony nomination. (She lost to Julie Harris in "The Lark"). Other Key Roles: I Remember Mama (1947, Oscar nomination.

Philip Dorn, Barbara Bel Geddes, Steve Brown, Irene Dunne, I Remember Mama George Stevens‘ film series on Turner Classic Movies continues tonight with a potpourri of films: the romantic drama Alice Adams (1935), the period comedy Quality Street (1937), the family drama I Remember Mama (1948), the tearjerker Penny Serenade (1941), and the light comedy Bachelor Bait (1934). By now, Alice Adams is already over. The film is a tad dated, but Katharine Hepburn remains impressive as the small-town girl who wants to belong to both high society and Fred MacMurray. Why she’d pine for MacMurray’s character, I don’t know, but Hepburn beautifully conveys youthful heartbreak. (Not that older people can’t feel the same.) Hepburn might have won the Best Actress Academy [...]...

It's true, Bong Joon-ho's Mother -- a thrilling blend of horror and I Remember Mama -- is only in limited release at the moment, and expanding slowly. It is, however, available on cable on demand and [Update: release pending] I'm here to tell you to demand it, and watch it, twice. Use the first viewing to absorb the slippery facts in the story, about a Korean schoolgirl found murdered in an abandoned building. A 27-year-old man of limited mental ability is charged with the crime. His mother dedicates herself to proving her son's innocence...and  to finding a killer. Then use the second...

The Academy Awards are this Sunday! The actual statuettes may be nicknamed "Oscars," but some of the best roles have been moms.

Check out our list of Oscar-nominated mom roles, past and present.

Outstanding Oscar Mom RolesThe Blind Side

Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy

(2009)

Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

Mo'Nique as Mary

(2009)

Little Children

Kate Winslet as Sarah Pierce

(2007)

North Country

Charlize Theron as Josey Aimes

(2005)

Walk The Line

Reese Witherspoon as June Carter

(2005)

Something's Gotta Give

Diane Keaton as Erica Barry

(2003)

Unfaithful

Diane Lane as Connie Sumner

(2002)

Erin Brockovich

Julia Roberts as Erin Brokovich

(2000)

Chocolat

Juliette Binoche as Vianne Rocher

(2000)

The Grifters

Anjelica Houston as Lilly Dillon

(1990)

For the Boys

Bette Midler as Dixie Leonard

(1991)

Terms of Endearment

Shirley MacLaine as Aurora Greenway

(1983)

Kramer vs. Kramer

Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer

(1979)

Norma Rae

Sally Field as Norma Rae

(1979)

Sounder

Cicely Tyson as Rebecca Morgan

(1972)

A Patch of Blue...

While you’re already getting your big Academy Awards party ready in time for the telecast on March 7th, we’ve got something for even bigger movie fans to enjoy. Of course, we’re talking about a movie marathon!

All month long, Turner Classic Movies will be running over 360 Academy Award nominated and winning films, back to back, with an interesting twist. In the vain of the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” each film will have a common actor or actress from the previous film.

For example, tomorrow night’s schedule consists of The Graduate with Anne Bancroft and William Daniels, which goes into Reds which stars Daniels and Jack Nicholson, into Chinatown with Nicholson and John Huston. Though we’re already about two weeks into the marathon, there are still plenty of great films to look forward to, including some TCM firsts like Gladiator, Titanic, Alien, and Trading Places.

Barbara Bel Geddes, who won an Emmy for her performance as Miss Ellie on Dallas, died Monday of lung cancer at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine. She was 82. The San Francisco Chronicle reported her death Monday. Jordan-Fernald Funeral Home in Mount Desert, Maine, confirmed the death Wednesday, but owner Bill Fernald said the family asked that no further information be released. Nominated in three successive years (1979-81) for her role as the matriarch of the Ewing family, Bel Geddes played a woman of rock-solid virtue amid a family of oil-world vipers. Bel Geddes was nominated for a best supporting actress Academy Award for 1948's I Remember Mama, in which she played an aspiring writer whose narration framed a Depression-set saga of a Norwegian-American family. It was one of her earliest films.

Former Dallas star Barbara Bel Geddes has died of lung cancer. She was 82. The veteran actress, who played matriarch Miss Ellie Ewing on the classic soap, passed away at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, on Monday. Larry Hagman, who played her son JR Ewing on Dallas, says, "She was the rock of Dallas. She was just a really nice woman and a wonderful actress. She was kind of the glue that held the whole thing together." Though best remembered for her TV work, she was also Oscar nominated for her role as the narrator-daughter in 1948's I Remember Mama and was Tennessee Williams' original sizzler, Maggie The Cat, in Broadway's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Geddes, who also starred in Alfred Hitchcock's classic Vertigo, retired from acting to take care of her husband, Windsor Lewis, after he fell ill with cancer in 1966. After he died in 1972, cash-strapped Bel Geddes accepted a role from Dallas producers - even though she considered TV a step down from Oscar and Tony-caliber roles. She won an Emmy for her role in 1980 - and she remains the only night-time soap winner to be honored in an acting category. Bel Geddes was a heavy smoker, according to reports. Hagman says he had encouraged Bel Geddes to give up the smoking habit, but it was doctors who got her to quit after her heart attack. She is survived by a daughter, Betsy.

Barbara Bel Geddes, the actress of stage, screen and television known to most as the matriarch Miss Ellie on the TV series Dallas, died Monday of lung cancer; she was 82. The Emmy award-winning actress passed away at her home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, where she had spent the past years away from the limelight. No further information other than the date and cause of death was given out, per her family's request. The daughter of theatrical and industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes, the actress was born and raised in New York, with theater in her blood. She made her stage debut at 18 and quickly established herself on Broadway, winning a New York Drama Critics Award at 23 for Deep Are the Roots. Just a year later, in 1946, she signed a Hollywood contract, a deal with RKO that was unusual in that it allowed her to make just one film a year. Though her debut movie, The Long Night opposite Henry Fonda, was less than well-received, she had a hit with her second, I Remember Mama, for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Her nascent Hollywood career was short lived, however, thanks in part to Howard Hughes buying RKO and not considering her "sexy enough," and she successfully returned to the stage in 1950. Five years later she originated the role of Maggie the Cat in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (grabbing a Tony nomination), and in 1958 returned to film in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, playing Midge, the lingerie-designing galpal of James Stewart. Though she appeared in a handful of films after Vertigo, Bel Geddes returned to the stage again, her most notable role in 1961's Mary, Mary, a comedy that ran for 1,500 performances and won her a second Tony nomination. The actress retired in the late 60s to care for her second husband, Windsor Lewis, after he was diagnosed with cancer, until his death in 1972. In 1978, Bel Geddes was "flat broke" (her own term) when she took on the role of Miss Ellie in the CBS drama Dallas. The show became an instant success, and Bel Geddes won an Emmy in 1980, the only cast member to do so; a heart attack in 1984 forced the actress to leave the show for six months (she was replaced by Donna Reed), but she returned and stayed until the show's end in 1990. After the end of Dallas, however, Bel Geddes left acting entirely, and did not return for either the two Dallas reunion TV movies or last year's reunion special. --Prepared by IMDb staff...