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Sydney-born Australian actor Rod Taylor, best known as the star of George Pal's original film adaptation of "The Time Machine" and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds," died Wednesday of a heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 84.

Taylor made his feature debut in 'Time,' the 1960 screen version of H.G. Wells' classic. He followed that up voicing the lead dog in Disney's "101 Dalmatians" and delivered a strong performance in "The Birds".

Yet his career never really soared as high after those early successes, even though he kept working in various films such as "Sunday in New York ," "36 Hours," "Young Cassidy," "The Liquidator," "The Glass Bottom Boat," "Hotel," "Dark of the Sun," "Nobody Runs Forever," "Darker Than Amber," "The Train Robbers," "Bearcats!," "The Oregon Trail," "Masquerade," "Outlaws," "Falcon Crest," and "Welcome to Woop Woop".

His last role was that of Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds".

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Taylor in the 1960 screen version of The Time Machine.

By Lee Pfeiffer

If the year 2014 proved to be an exceptionally cruel one in terms of the number of legendary celebrities who passed away, the new year is off to an equally depressing start with the news that Rod Taylor has passed away at age 84. Taylor, who was two days away from his 85th birthday, died suddenly from a heart attack following a dinner party at his home. He was surrounded by friends and family when the end came.  Taylor was a solid leading man who came to prominence in the late 1950s. Although Australian by birth, the ruggedly handsome Taylor could effectively play Brits, Irishmen and Americans with convincing ease. He first gained attention with supporting roles in high profile, big Hollywood studio productions in the late 1950s such as "Raintree County" and "Separate Tables". His breakthrough role came in...

People.com is reporting that actor Rod Taylor died Wednesday at the age of 84 of natural causes.

His daughter Felicia Taylor, a former CNN correspondent, confirmed the news Thursday.

“My dad loved his work. Being an actor was his passion – calling it an honorable art and something he couldn’t live without,” she said in a statement.

“He once said, ‘I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist,” she continued, “ ‘so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.”

Born on Jan 11, 1930 in Sydney, Australia, Rod Taylor is best remembered for his starring roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and George Pal’s The Time Machine (1960). He also provided the voice of Pongo in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians (1961). Taylor also starred in TV’s “The Twilight Zone...

The literary works of American author John D. MacDonald could be said to have a very specific tone. With published titles including The Executioners – from which the film Cape Fear was adapted – his stories conjure suspenseful, sinister atmospheres in hardboiled narratives. There are, then, few people better suited to adapt his work for film than Dennis Lehane – himself the noted author of original novels Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and Shutter Island. The story he has adapted is A Deep Blue Good-by featuring the character of Travis McGee, and it is a project with franchise potential – particularly since it seems to have caught the eye of Christian Bale.

Travis McGee is a hard-nosed salvage consultant, who makes his living recovering stolen property – keeping half the value as his fee, with a view to funding an early retirement. In A Deep Blue Good-by, McGee finds himself on the trail of the powerful and evil Junior Allen,...

Christian Bale has committed to his fair share of non-native accents, from Western Pennsylvania Appalachian to, well, Batman. But now the Welsh actor might have to consider adopting a Floridian way of speaking if he agrees to star as the tough-as-nails Travis McGee in The Deep Blue Good-By. According to Variety, Bale is in early talks to join the James D. MacDonald adaptation.

Published in 1964, The Deep Blue Good-By is the first of a 21-book series following “salvage consultant” McGee on his adventures and skirmishes throughout Fort Lauderdale as he reclaims items, and sometimes people, for all kinds of seedy clients.

Austin Film Society is serving up one more screening of Beyond The Hills this evening at the Marchesa as part of their New Romanian Cinema series. Afs is offering its members a special sneak preview of local filmmaker Chris Eska's The Retrieval (Don's review) Sunday afternoon. I caught this haunting Civil War drama at SXSW last year and definitely recommend seeing it on the big screen. It will open in Austin in a few weeks, but Afs members can see it free at the Marchesa this weekend with a post-film Q&A featuring cast and crew. Hang out after The Retrieval for an Afs Auteur Obscure pick: Robert Clouse's 1970 film Darker Than Amber, preseted in 35mm. Jewels In The Wasteland is taking a break this week, but will return next Wednesday with Ingmar Bergman. 

If you haven't caught Joe yet (or would just like to see it again...

Review by Sam Moffitt

The private investigator has been with us for years, decades really. When I was younger I read as many private eye mysteries as I did science fiction and horror novels and short stories. I read as much of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane as I could find. I also read a lot of the two MacDonald’s, Ross MacDonald’s novels about Lew Archer (one of which made a great movie with Paul Newman as Harper) and John D. MacDonald’s novels about Travis McGee. Although McGee was not strictly speaking a Pi he still functioned as one in MacDonald’s color coded novels like Darker Than Amber (which made a great movie with Rod Taylor).

I used to stay up late to watch classic private eye movies like The Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly (the best Mike Hammer movie ever, seriously!) Murder My Sweet,...

Everett Michael Fassbender and Gina Carano in “Haywire”

“How do you feel about punching a girl in the face as hard as you can?” asked director Steven Soderbergh.

“I think I’m ok with it,” said Michael Fassbender.

Soderbergh sent him the script for “Haywire” and Fassbender became the first of several males cast.

Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas and Channing Tatum soon followed. “Haywire” also stars professional mixed-martial artist Gina Carano who plays Mallory, an international black-ops agent and former Marine.

When Jane Russell died at home earlier this week at the age of 89 from respiratory failure, it was the passing of a Hollywood myth. Not a legend, but a myth, for the Jane Russell we remember, the images of Jane Russell we carry in our heads, were wholly Hollywood magic: making us believe in something that wasn’t really there. Consider: Russell’s obits all use the same words — “sex symbol,” “provocative,” “sensual,” “pinup girl.” For the viewing public, she was all these things, and that was Hollywood smoke-and-mirrors at its best, for the woman behind the image that steamed up camera lenses and burned through movie screens and left many an American male tossing and turning restlessly in his bed after a night at the movies was, in the end – as they used to say in her day – a good girl.

Without taking anything away from her, that she...

Jane Russell, the Hollywood silver-screen siren who ignited a tinder box with Howard Hughes’ bosom-heaving 1943 western The Outlaw, died on Monday at age 89. But the legacy she leaves behind will always be more than just the sum of her ample parts. The raven-haired beauty was only 19 and working as a receptionist in a doctor’s office when the notorious ladies’ man Hughes spotted her and cast her as Rio MacDonald, the smoldering girlfriend of Sheriff Pat Garrett, in The Outlaw. Overnight, she was catapulted from obscurity to infamy, thanks to the movie’s poster, which featured Russell reclining suggestively on a haystack,...

Her sensational, provocative debut in Howard Hughes’ ‘The Outlaw’ scandalized 1940s America, breaking barriers on censorship and revolutionizing the movies forever. She then became the most famous bra spokeswoman in the world!

Jane Russell, the buxom beauty who shot to stardom with her stunning cleavage-baring debut in Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw, has died at age 89. She was the bodacious Hollywood star who paved the way for the buxom beauties who followed, from Marilyn Monroe to Beyonce!

The now-iconic poster for her first movie, made after Jane was just discovered working in a doctor’s office at just 19, featured the young Minnesota-born actress in a revealing blouse that bared one shoulder — and made film censors queasy. Legend has it that Hughes designed a specially engineered bra for her 38-d breasts. But Jane always said she never wore the contraption!

After The Outlaw, Jane, who made her mark by poking fun at...

Envelope-pushing sex symbol starred in 'The Outlaw' and 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.'

By Gil Kaufman

Jane Russell

Photo: Getty Images

You can thank Jane Russell for "Sucker Punch," every Roger Corman jigglefest, the Catwoman outfit Halle Berry was poured into and just about any other body-baring costume that a Hollywood actress has shimmied in over the past 70 years. The buxom pinup beauty who helped push the envelope in onscreen sensuality died on Monday at the age of 89 at her home in Santa Maria, California.

For photos of Jane Russell through the years, click here.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Russell had suffered from respiratory problems and died after a short illness. The actress made her biggest splash in her first role in 1943's "The Outlaw," a Howard Hughes-produced film that played up her sexuality in a marketing campaign that focused on her voluptuous figure.

In fact,...

Jane Russell, one of Hollywood’s most memorable sex symbols from the 1940s and 1950s who starred in films such as the The Outlaw and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, died today at her home in Santa Maria, Calif., of a respiratory illness, the Associated Press has confirmed. She was 89 years old.

The Minnesota-born actress was originally discovered by eccentric movie mogul and billionaire Howard Hughes when he signed her to a seven-year contract and cast her in the Billy the Kid pic Outlaw, which rocketed her to near-overnight fame and caused controversy because of the cleavage she showed in the film.

Jane Russell, the voluptuous actress known for her roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Outlaw along with her lifelong work as an advocate for adoption, passed away today in Santa Maria, CA. She was 89.

She was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921 in Bemidji, Minnesota, the eldest of five children and the only daughter of Roy, an Army lieutenant and Geraldine, an actress. After her father's retirement from the Army and acceptance of a job in California, the family relocated to California's San Fernando Valley and eventually Burbank. She spent her teen years taking piano lessons (at her mother's insistence) and grew interested in theater, joining the drama club at Van Nuys High School and taking part in productions there. Her plan to become a designer after graduation was dashed after the death of her father, when she instead found a job as a secretary and receptionist in order to help support her family. At her mother's urging, she continued to hone her skills with training at stage director Max Reinhart's School of the Theatre, and made additional money working as model.

Her dramatic studies, combined with good fortune -- she was reportedly discovered while working at her receptionist job -- brought Jane to the attention of Howard Hughes, who signed her to a seven-year contract in 1940 after a protracted search for a woman to star in his next project, The Outlaw. The movie, which completed filming in February of 1941, was denied release because it violated the Hayes Office production codes for decency (they were unhappy with the display of Russell's cleavage). While Hughes and the Hayes Office negotiated cuts to the film, Russell was sent on an extensive tour to promote the unreleased picture; her tour, combined with provocative ads and photos promoting the film, put her on the national radar, and a limited release of the trimmed down film in 1943 (along with a wider release in 1946) made her a star. Also in 1943, Jane married Bob Waterfield, her high school sweetheart, who was the UCLA quarterback at the time and who would go on to become a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback for the Cleveland Rams/Los Angeles Rams.

Jane's next film appearance was five years later, in 1946 with RKO's The Young Widow, which was the first time that she would be seen by most filmgoers, since The Outlaw was still tied up in Hayes Code violations. Her following films found her cast with some of the most popular leading men of the time -- Bob Hope in 1948's The Paleface; two incendiary pairings with Robert Mitchum (His Kind of Woman, Macao); co-starring with Victor Mature and Vincent Price in The Las Vegas Story, with Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx in 1951's Double Dynamite, and with Clark Gable and Robert Ryan in The Tall Men (1955).

However, it would be her co-starring role with another popular leading lady of time for which she would be most commonly remembered: as Dorothy Shaw in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with rising star Marilyn Monroe. The pair, cast as two showgirl best friends sailing to Paris to find husbands, redefined the musical with their comedic, overtly sensual stylings and became real-life friends in the process.

As Jane continued to expand her film resume through the mid 1950s, she and her husband Bob continued to build their life together. Unable to have children of their own, they chose to adopt, bringing Tracy and Thomas in 1952, and Robert in 1956, into their family. The adoption struggles the couple faced inspired Jane to found the World Adoption International Fund, which assisted in simplifying the adoption process for over 50,000 families as well as lobbying for the passage of 1953's Federal Orphan Adoption Bill and 1980's Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act.

Jane's already-busy offscreen life included time spent building her musical career; beside her albums 'Let's Put Out the Lights' and 'Jane Russell' and singles recorded with the likes of Frank Sinatra, she would also appear in her own solo nightclub act that toured around the world, and later formed a gospel group with Connie Haines and Beryl Davis that released a single that reached number 27 on the Billboard chart.

As her film roles became less notable - her last being in 1970's Darker Than Amber - Jane returned to the stage, where she appeared in both Broadway and regional productions, and also appeared in TV series The Yellow Rose and Hunter. Her marriage to Bob Waterfield ended in divorce in 1968; she was married twice more, to Roger Barrett (August-November 1968) and to John Calvin Peoples (from 1974 until his death in 1999).

She is survived by her children Tracy, Thomas and Robert.

Jane Russell, the voluptuous "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" star who was a sex symbol and pinup girl during World War II, died at home in Santa Maria Monday. She was 89. She got her start in Howard Hughes' film "The Outlaw" in 1943 and went on to worldwide fame. Russell's last film role was as Alabama Tigress in 1970's "Darker Than Amber." Howard Hughes signed the actress to a seven-year contract in 1943. It took three years for "The Outlaw" to be released because censors objected to the display of Russell's famous cleavage. Over the...

Leonardo DiCaprio will star as private eye/treasure hunter Travis McGee in Oliver Stone's film version of The Deep Blue Goodbye. The film will be based on one of John D. MacDonald's series of McGee paperback thrillers that were all the rage in the 1960s. Rod Taylor played McGee in the 1970 film Darker Than Amber. For more click here...

The Alamo Guide for March 25th, 2010

We Are Back In Action! SXSW is over for another year, and we are jam packed with Super Fun Times! For reals. We’ve got new release films out the wazoo, and a full week of specialty programming.First off, for all you hot tub enthusiasts, the most ridiculous (or genius?) time travel film to date opens Friday at the Ritz. That’s right, folks, it’s a Hot Tub Time Machine. If you’re more of a genre type of guy or gal, check out Mother, the newest thriller from the director of The Host! If you never saw The Host, go rent that, and Then you’ll really want to see Mother! We’ve also got Greenberg at S. Lamar starting Friday for all you thirty-somethings in an existential crisis… or for those that just want to see Ben Stiller in an existential crisis.