EFSP starts 2017 with a new pageview record

2016 was an excellent year for EFSP. For the first time since May 2010, when we started counting, there were more than 90,000 pageviews in one month in July 2016. December 2016 was even better when we passed the magical number of 100,000. This month, January 2017, the party got even busier and Blogger counted more than 120,000 pageviews for EFSP this year already. So thank you, for visiting EFSP! My special thanks go to Ivo, Egbert, Didier, Marlene (check out her latest post about female stars who passed away in 2016 at La Collectionneuse) and the other friends who help and advise. Tomorrow you'll find here a guest post of one of these friends, David Anderson of the blog Bunched Undies and a week later a new guest post by Didier Hanson. Today we remember a wonderful gift of three years ago. When we returned from our holidays in Italy in 2014, there was this little parcel from East-Hartford, USA, waiting for us at our neighbour's house. It contained rare postcards, photos and a clipping on the Ukrainian-born silent film star Xenia Desni and her daughter Tamara Desni, who had an impressive film and stage career herself in Great Britain. The postcards were sent to us by a relative of the Desni's, their niece Tatiana. In the past, Tatiana had already sent us some scans of the postcards of Tamara Desni and now she gave us the 39 Ross Verlag postcards, which she had collected as a little girl. Again, thanks Tatiana!


Austrian photo by Willinger, Wien. From Tatiana. Xenia Desni and Livio Pavanelli in the German silent film Die letzte Einquartierung aka Küssen ist keine Sünd'/Kissing is no sin (Rudolf Walther-Fein, Rudolf Dworsky, 1926).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 886/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Decla / Ufa. From Tatiana.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 886/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Decla / Ufa. From Tatiana.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1069/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. From Tatiana.

Xenia Desni

Ukrainian-born actress Xenia Desni (1894-1954) was a star of the German silent cinema. Xenia - also known as Dada - was born in Kiev, but travelled at the beginning of the 1920s to Berlin.

She made her film debut with Sappho (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1921). She often worked with director Johannes Guter such as for her breakthrough film Die Prinzessin Suwarin/The Princess Suwarin (1923) starring Lil Dagover.

In the next years followed other successful productions such as Die Andere/The Other (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1924). An international hit became the silent operetta Ein Walzertraum/A Waltz Dream (Ludwig Berger, 1925) with Willy Fritsch.

This was followed by Familie Schimeck/The Schimeck Family (Alfred Halm, Rudolf Dworsky, 1926), Madame wagt einen Seitensprung/Madam dares an Escapade (Hans Otto, 1927), and Erzherzog Johann/Archduke John (Max Neufeld, 1929).

After the coming of sound film, her career soon ended. But Xenia helped to shape the film and stage career of her beautiful daughter.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1026/4, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. From Tatiana.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1028/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. From Tatiana.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1026/3, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. From Tatiana.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 571/3, 1919-1924. Photo: A. Eberth, Berlin. From Tatiana.

Tamara Desni

Tamara Desni (1910–2008) started her stage and film career as a child in Berlin. Tamara acted in three German sound films before leaving with her mother to Great Britain.

In 1931, she made her triumphant London stage debut in the operetta White Horse Inn. For this spectacular production, the entire Coliseum theatre was transformed into the Tyrol. The production was based on the German operetta Im weissen Roessl. White Horse Inn was a smash hit and ran for 500 performances at the Coliseum. The production is even credited with saving the theatre, which was faltering as a music hall.

Tamara followed this up with another leading role in a German import at the Coliseum, the musical Casanova, featuring music by Johann Strauss, Jr.

Desni's British film career took off with the comedy Falling for You (Robert Stevenson, Jack Hulbert, 1933), supporting the popular musical comedy team of Jack Hulbert and Cicely Courtneidge.

Later films included the thriller Forbidden Territory (Phil Rosen, 1934), another Jack Hulbert comedy Jack Ahoy (Walter Forde, 1935) and the historical drama Fire Over England (William K. Howard, 1937), with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Tamara Desni’s film career continued through 1950. After that she moved to the South of France, where her bar and restaurant L'Auberge Chez Tamara, became a popular attraction around Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes.


German postcard for Otto Kurt Vogelsang Lichtbildner, Berlin. From Tatiana.


British postcard. From Tatiana.


British postcard. From Tatiana.


British photo by Vivienne 20th Century Studios Ltd, London. From Tatiana.

NB. For the number fetishists among us:  Blogger counted 126,864 page views for EFSP in January 2017.

Emmanuelle Riva (1927–2017)

On Friday 27 January 2017, French actress Emmanuelle Riva passed away at the age of 89. She became well-known for her roles in the classic Nouveau Vague films Hiroshima mon amour (1959) and Léon Morin, prêtre (1961). In her 80s, Emmanuelle Riva became an icon for world cinema all over again with Michael Haneke's Amour (2012). Riva received both the Bafta and the César award for her role as the retired music teacher Anne in Amour. She was also nominated for an Oscar for her touching performance.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filvertrieb, Berlin, no. 1269, 1969. Retail price: 0,20 M. Photo: Unifrance Film. Publicity still for Berufsrisiko/Les risques du métier (André Cayatte, 1967).

Elle

Emmanuelle Riva was born Paulette Germaine Riva in Cheniménil in eastern France in 1927. She was the only child of Jeanne Riva née Nourdin and Alfredo Riva, an Italian born sign painter.

From the age of 6, Emmanuelle dreamed about becoming an actress, and appeared in various school plays and amateur dramatics groups. For a provincial girl, from a modest family with no connection to the world of theatre or cinema, the theatre seemed an impossible ambition. She worked as a seamstress.

At the age of 26, Riva moved to Paris where she studied at the Dramatic Arts Centre of Rue Blanche. She made her stage debut in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man. Further classical roles followed in Mrs Warren’s Profession (Shaw), L’Espoir (Henri Bernstein), Le Dialogue des Carmélites (Georges Bernanos), and Britannicus (Jean Racine).

She made her screen debut on television playing the Queen of England in the historical anthology series Enigmas de L’Histoire/Enigmas of History (1956-1957). The following year she made her first film appearance with an uncredited role in Les grandes familles/The Possessors (Denys de la Patellière, 1958) starring Jean Gabin.

The following year she acted in the Dominique Rolin play L'Epouvantail (The Scarecrow) at the Théatre de L'Oeuvre in Paris. She was visited in her dressing room by young documentary film maker who had directed only a few shorts and documentaries, Alain Resnais.

Resnais offered her the female lead, Elle, in his first feature film Hiroshima mon amour/Hiroshima My Love (Alain Resnais, 1959) written by Marguerite Duras. Riva played an unnamed French woman - Elle translates as She - talking to her young Japanese lover about the bombing of Hiroshima, about memory and forgetfulness. Riva’s powerful, haunting performance helped the film to become a huge art-house hit. For her role she was nominated for a Bafta Award in 1960. Hiroshima mon amour was also a catalyst for the Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave, innovatively using miniature flashbacks to create a uniquely nonlinear storyline.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1088. Presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Studio Vallois.

Tormented by unrequited love

In the following years, Emmanuelle Riva appeared in critically acclaimed roles in films like the Oscar nominated Holocaust drama Kapò (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1959), and the comedy Adua e le compagne/Adua and her Friends (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1960) as Simone Signoret's feisty friend.

In Léon Morin, prêtre/Leon Morin, Priest (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961) she played an atheist widow in a sexually charged friendship with a priest played by Jean-Paul Belmondo.

James Travers in his review at Films de France: “What makes this such a compelling film are the extraordinary performances from its two lead actors, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva. (...) Riva’s portrayal of a woman tormented by unrequited love is equally arresting and gives the film its harrowing realism and poignancy. Both performances are complemented by the film’s austere realist design, the bleakness of the wartime setting underlined by the work of Melville’s trusted cinematographer Henri Decaë. Léon Morin, prêtre is a powerfully moving study in desire and moral conflict, arguably the darkest and most unsettling of all Jean-Pierre Melville’s films.”

Riva then won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival 1962 for her role as an unhappily married provincial wife who poisons her husband in Thérèse Desqueyroux (Georges Franju, 1962).

She worked with director Georges Franju again on the Jean Cocteau adaptation Thomas l'imposteur/Thomas the Imposter (Georges Franju, 1965). These were all European, mostly French films. Riva spoke French and some Italian but did not speak English and never performed in English.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 177.

An extraordinary career renaissance

Emmanuelle Riva turned down many ‘commercial’ roles and producers stopped calling. Through the years, she enjoyed an extensive theatre career in Paris. In 2001, her last stage appearance was in a production of Medea at Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe.

She appeared occasionally on French television programs, published poems and was also a skilled photographer. When she was in Japan to shoot Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), she bought a Ricohflex and began to take photos of people. In 2008, these photographs were exhibited at the Nikon Salon and were issued in the book Tu n'as rien vu à Hiroshima (You have seen nothing in Hiroshima).

She continued to appear in respectable films like Les risques du métier/Risky Business (André Cayatte, 1967) as the co-star of Jacques Brel, Gli occhi, la bocca/The Eyes, the Mouth (Marco Bellocchio, 1982) as a deeply religious mother whose son (Lou Castel) attempts to shield her from the truth about the death of his twin brother, Liberté, la nuit/Freedom, the night (Philippe Garrel, 1983) as the estranged wife of a revolutionary (Maurice Garrel), and Trois Couleurs: Bleu/Three Colours: Blue (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1983) as the mother of Juliette Binoche.

In 1999 she appeared alongside Micheline Presle in Vénus beauté (institut)/Venus Beauty Institute (Tonie Marshall, 1999), and in 2011 in Le Skylab, starring and directed by Julie Delpy.

The following year she had an extraordinary career renaissance with her role as retired piano teacher Anne Laurent in Amour (2012, Michael Haneke). Anne lives in a chic Paris apartment with her husband, Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), until a series of strokes spark dementia, physical disability and a slow dismantling of her body and mind.

The film got rave reviews and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Riva won for her role both the Bafta Award and the César Award for best actress. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for best actress - the oldest actress ever to be so. The 85th Academy Awards were held on her 86th birthday, but she lost out to Jennifer Lawrence.

Emmanuelle Riva died from cancer on 27 January 2017 in Paris at the age of 89. She was never married and did not have children.


Trailer Hiroshima mon amour/Hiroshima My Love (1959). Source: Criterion Collection (YouTube).


Trailer Léon Morin, prêtre/Leon Morin, Priest (1961). Source: neondreams 25 (YouTube).


Trailer Amour (2012). Source: @HOLLYWOOD (YouTube).

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Kim Willsher (The Observer), Riccardo Simonazzi (IMDb), New Wave Film.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Werner Krauss

German stage and film actor Werner Krauss (1884-1959) became a worldwide sensation as the demonic Dr. Caligari in the classic of the German expressionist cinema, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). He appeared in several silent masterpieces, but his magnificent film career was later overshadowed by his appearance in one of the most notorious propaganda films of the Third Reich.


German photocard for the album Vom Werden Deutscher Filmkunst by Ross Verlag. Photo: Ufa. Werner Krauss in the classic German Kammerspiel film Scherben/Shattered (Lupu Pick, 1921). The woman is Edith Posca, who plays the daughter.


French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie-Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings as Othello.


German postcard by Ross Verlag G.m.b.H., Berlin, no. 666/5, 1919-1924. Photo: Neumann-Filmproduktion. Publicity still for I.N.R.I./Crown of Thorns (Robert Wiene, 1923). Caption: Pontius Pilatus.


German postcard by Ross Verlag G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Sofar-Film-Produktion. Publicity still for Die freudlose Gasse/The Joyless Street (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1925).


German photocard for the album Vom Werden Deutscher Filmkunst by Ross Verlag. Photo: Ufa. Werner Krauss in Geheimnisse einer Seele/Secrets of a Soul (G.W. Pabst, 1926).

Worldwide Sensation

Werner Johannes Krauss (Krauß in German) was born in Gestungshausen, Germany, in 1884. He was the son of a clergyman. He ran away from home and joined a travelling theatre company.

In Berlin he became a film actor. Among his first films were Die Pagode/The Pagoda (Joe May, 1914), Nächte des Grauens/A Night of Horror (Richard Oswald, Arthur Robison, 1916) with Emil Jannings, Hoffmanns Erzählungen/Tales of Hoffmann (Richard Oswald, 1916) and Opium (Robert Reinert, 1919) with Conrad Veidt.

In 1916, he met the noted theatre director Max Reinhardt and went to work for him. Krauss had been trained to do exaggerated gestures for the stage, and the German expressionist cinema was but a short stylistic step further for him.

In 1919, he became a worldwide sensation for his demonic portrayal of Dr. Caligari in Robert Wiene's Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Dr. Caligari is a a sinister hypnotist who travels the carnival circuit displaying a somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt). In one tiny German town, a series of murders coincides with Caligari's visit. Krauss was just 35 at the time he appeared in the film, but his heavy makeup made him seem older.

Doug Tomlinson at Film Reference: “In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Krauss epitomizes the German Expressionist performance aesthetic which would dominate the next decade: an obvious external expression of interiority. Throughout the central part of the film, Krauss hobbles through nightmare sets, his crippled walk an expression of a crippled mind, his dark and menacing facial and body makeup of the rot within, his sparse and erratic white hair of his overall decrepitude. His posture, rounded inward to symbolize mystery and enclosure, refuses the spectator any sympathetic identification. At the film's end, when Caligari is shown to be the head of an asylum and the film the rantings of an inmate, Krauss expressionistically softens all aspects of posture and characterization to appear the epitome of benevolence.“


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 9138. Photo: Fritz Richard. Publicity for the stage play Dantons Tod (the Death of Danton) with Werner Krauss as St. Just.


German postcard by NPG, no. 540. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 263/1, 1919-1924.Photo: Alex Binder / Decla.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 263/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder / Decla.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 770. Photo: Eberth, Berlin.

A Smorgasbord of Visual Delights

Werner Krauss’ heavy, declamatory technique was perfect for such roles as Bottom in Ein Sommernachtstraum/A Midsummer Night's Dream (Hans Neumann, 1924) and Jack the Ripper in Das Wachsfigurenkabinett/The Wax Works (Paul Leni, 1924) opposite Emil Jannings and Conrad Veidt.

He also played Iago in a 1922 adaptation of William Shakespeare's Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922). Hal Erickson writes at AllMovie: “Even without the benefit of sound, the 1922 German adaptation of Othello seems more operatic than Shakespearean. This may be due to the casting of Emil Jannings, to whom restraint and subtlety were strangers. Werner Krauss, of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari fame, is on hand as the duplicitous Iago. Appearing as the unfortunate Desdemona is Lea Von Lenkeffy, better known as Lya de Putti. Produced on an elaborate scale, Othello may not be true to the letter of Shakespeare, but is undeniably a smorgasbord of visual delights.”

Krauss was again prominently featured in such silent masterpieces as Varieté/Jealousy (Ewald André Dupont, 1925), Herr Tartüff/Tartuffe (F.W. Murnau, 1925) based on the classic Molière play, and Der Student von Prag/The Man Who Cheated Life (Henrik Galeen, 1926).

He also worked internationally. In France he appeared as the obsessed Count Muffat in Jean Renoir's version of Emile Zola's Nana (Jean Renoir, 1926). Totally submissive to the demands of the exploitative Nana, he ultimately disgraces himself by barking, sitting, rolling over, and playing dead like a dog. His utterly degraded character is reflected in his lumpish posture.

By 1926, Krauss had worked with such major directors as F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst, Lupu Pick, E. A. Dupont, Richard Oswald, Paul Leni, and Jean Renoir. He was one of the leading German film actors of his time, but his obsessed and evil characters became more and more a cliché.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1613/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Domker, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1613/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Badekow-Grósz, Berlin.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 636.


Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5353. Photo: Fery-Film / Ifuk-Verleih. Publicity still for Der fidele Bauer/The Merry Farmer (Franz Seitz, 1929).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6171/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa. Werner Krauss as the title character in Yorck (Gustav Ucicky, 1931).

Actor of the State

When Adolf Hitler came to power, Werner Krauss clutched the Nazi ideology firmly to his bosom. He only incidentally played in films such as the charming Burgtheater/Burg Theatre (Willi Forst, 1936) with Olga Tschechova.

He was made an Actor of the State by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, and subsequently played the roles of two stereotypical Jewish characters – Rabbi Loew and Sekretar Levy – in Veit Harlan's notoriously antisemitic Jud Süß/Jew Süss (Veit Harlan, 1940).

Hal Erickson writes in his review of the film at AllMovie: “Lion Feuchtwangler's novel Jud Süss was originally about a powerful ghetto businessman who believes himself to be a Jew. Süss's ruthless business practices result in the betrayal of an innocent girl, for which he is arrested and sentenced to be hanged under the anti-Jewish laws of the 18th century. While he waits to be executed, Süss discovers he is not Jewish. Rather than turn his back on the people of the ghetto with whom he'd grown up, Süss courageously refuses to declare his 'Aryan' status, even though it means he will die on the gallows. The Feuchtwangler book was designed in roundabout fashion to strike a blow against anti-Semitism. But when Jud Süss was filmed in Germany at the behest of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in 1940, its original message was twisted and perverted into an argument in favor of 'ethnic cleansing'.”

Krauss also played Shylock in an extreme production of The Merchant of Venice staged at Vienna's Burgtheater in 1943. After World War II, all associated with Jud Süss were plagued with recriminations for their participation, which drove Krauss out of the country for more than three years.

Leading German democrats registered emphatic opposition to public appearances by him. In June of 1954, one of West Germany's highest decorations was ceremoniously conferred on him by West Berlin's cultural and education chief.

The actor appeared in only three more films before his death. His final film was the Heimatfilm Sohn Ohne Heimat/Son Without a Homeland (Hans Deppe, 1955).

Werner Krauss died in relative obscurity in Vienna, Austria in 1959. He was married to Marie Bard who died in 1944.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9108/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Consorzio Vis / Rota. Publicity still for Hundert Tage/Hundred Days (Franz Wenzler, 1935) with Werner Krauss as Napoleon.


Big German card by Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Tobis Sascha foto.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. A 3264/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.


Trailer Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Source: Movieclips Trailer Vault (YouTube).


Scene from Geheimnisse einer Seele/Secrets of a soul (1926). Source: sangrecoagulada (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Doug Tomlinson (Film Reference), Katzizkidz (Find A Grave), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Terence Morgan

Tall, dark and charming English actor Terence Morgan (1921-2005) played many attractive villains and criminals in British films. But he is probably best remembered for his starring role in the TV historical adventure series Sir Francis Drake (1961-1962), about the first Englishman to sail round the world. After this success, parts started to dry up as Morgan was no longer seen as ‘the bad guy’.


British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. D 172. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation LTD.


British Greetings card. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

Daring, dashing and tempestuous

Terence Ivor Grant Morgan was born in Lewisham, London, in 1921. He was the nephew of British character actor Verne Morgan. He started work as a shipping clerk at Lloyd's of London before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

After training at RADA, Morgan began as a repertory theatre actor. His career was interrupted by two years in the army in World War II before he was invalided out with claustrophobia and returned to the stage. He played in Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play There Shall Be No Night in London's West End.

Laurence Olivier spotted the handsome Morgan and gave him the role of Cain in Thornton Wilder's classic Skin of Our Teeth. This 1945 production which also starred Vivien Leigh, proved a huge boost to his career. Morgan joined the Old Vic Company alongside Olivier, playing parts in Richard Brinsley Sheridan and William Shakespeare.

He made his film debut in the role of Laertes opposite Olivier’s Hamlet in the film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, 1948). Ronald Bergan in The Guardian: “His Laertes (…) was everything a Laertes should be: daring, dashing and tempestuous. And, at 27, he was young enough to make a convincing student, 14 years younger than Olivier's over-age Hamlet. He wields his sword with aplomb before dying beautifully in Peter Cushing's arms.”

Morgan was probably the first actor in the part to get fan mail from teenage girls. Hamlet is still the Shakespeare film that has received the most prestigious accolades, winning the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.


British postcard by L.D. LTD., London, in the Film Star Autograph Portrait series, no. 55. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation LTD.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1004. Photo: Rank Film. Publicity still for Dance Little Lady (Val Guest, 1954).

Nasty roles and dramatic exits

Terence Morgan signed a contract with the Rank studio. He played a support to Gregory Peck and Virginia Mayo in the American adventure film Captain Horatio Hornblower RN (Raoul Walsh, 1951), made in England. In Mandy (Alexander Mackendrick, 1952) he played the insensitive father of a deaf girl.

In Gigolo And Gigolette, one of the three W. Somerset Maugham stories in Encore (Harold French, 1951) he played a cad risking the life of his wife (Glynis Johns). In 1953 he again played a villain in Turn the Key Softly (Jack Lee, 1953) as a crook who gets his well-bred girlfriend (Yvonne Mitchell) a prison sentence for helping him in a burglary.

More nasty roles quickly followed with Always a Bride (Ralph Smart, 1953) where he played a Treasury Investigator who turns bad, as well as Forbidden Cargo (Harold French, 1954) as a smuggler, and Tread Softly Stranger (Gordon Parry, 1958) where he is an embezzler and murderer, who robs a steel mill in order to keep his girlfriend Diana Dors in fancy clothes.

He was often given dramatic exits: Dance Little Lady (Val Guest, 1954) saw him fry in the conflagration at the end, The Scamp (Wolf Rilla, 1957) had him suffer a fatal fall down a flight of stairs, and in Forbidden Cargo (Harold French, 1954), he attempted to drive across Tower Bridge as it was opening and drowned in the Thames.

Two films he made in 1955 saw him cast in more positive roles - in the espionage melodrama They Can't Hang Me (Val Guest, 1955) he starred as a dapper Special Branch officer charged with discovering the identity of an enemy agent, and in The March Hare (George More O'Ferrall, 1956) he played an impoverished aristocrat riding a horse for the Derby.

One of his nastiest roles was in crime drama The Shakedown (John Lemont, 1959), when he played a pornographer and blackmailer. He just played a petty thief planning a big haul in the thriller Piccadilly Third Stop (Wolf Rilla, 1960) with Yoko Tani.

In 1958, Morgan bought a small hotel in Hove, Sussex, and ran the hotel for 16 years.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 473.


British autograph card. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

The villainous brother of the mummy

When his Rank contract finished, Terence Morgan had his biggest screen success. He landed the title role in the British adventure television series TV series Sir Francis Drake (Clive Donner, Harry Booth, 1961-1962).

Drake is the commander of the sailing ship the Golden Hind during the 1500s and one of the most famous explorers of the high seas. As well as battles at sea and sword fights, the series also deals with intrigue at the court of Queen Elizabeth (Jean Kent).

During his career, Morgan appeared in 20 films and later notable roles included the villainous brother of the mummy (Rameses VIII) in the Hammer horror film Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (Michael Carreras, 1964), Lord Blackwood in the successful French-Spanish-Italian adventure film Surcouf, le tigre des sept mers/The Sea Pirate (Sergio Bergonzelli, Roy Rowland, 1966) starring Gérard Barray, and an estate agent who is forced to watch as his girlfriend (Suzy Kendall) is abused by thugs in the shocker The Penthouse (Peter Collinson, 1967).

Since roles dried up, he spent an increasing amount of time as a property developer in Brighton and Hove. Incidentally he appeared in films like Hide and Seek (David Eady, 1972) with a young Gary Kemp, and The Lifetaker (Michael Papas, 1976), which had him back as the bad guy again where as a wealthy business man he plans ritualistic revenge on his wife and her lover.

Later he gave a haunting performance on television as an ageing, homosexual matinee idol being blackmailed in an episode of King and Castle (1986) and he had a small part in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Timothy Forder, 1993), based on the novel by Charles Dickens.

In 2005, Terence Morgan died of a heart attack in Brighton, England. He was 83. Since 1945, he was married to actress Georgina Jumel. The couple had a daughter.


Long scene from Tread Softly Stranger (1958) with Diana Dors. Source: Paul Thompson (YouTube).


Trailer of The Penthouse (1967). Source: DEATHTRAP TRAILERS (YouTube).

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Anthony Hayward (The Independent), The Telegraph, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Michael York

English actor Michael York (1942) is the athletic star of several Shakespeare adaptations and three popular Musketeer films. His blond, blue-eyed boyish looks and plummy accent incarnated a traditionally English public-school manliness in such classic films as Joseph Losey's Accident (1967) and Cabaret (1972).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for Logan's Run (Michael Anderson, 1976).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. C.P.C.S. 43033.

Something for Everyone

Michael York, OBE was born Michael Hugh Johnson in 1942, in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire. He is the son of Florence Edith May (née Chown), a musician; and Joseph Gwynne Johnson, an executive with Marks & Spencer department stores.

At age three, Michael broke his nose when he jumped off the roof of a coal house while trying to fly. During his teenage years, York was educated at Bromley Grammar School for Boys, Hurstpierpoint College and University College, Oxford.

He began his career in a 1956 production of The Yellow Jacket. In 1959 he made his West End debut with a small part in a production of Hamlet. York was a member of National Youth Theatre in London's East End and on international tour. He also performed with the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the University College Players. In 1964, he graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in English.

After some time with the Dundee Repertory Theatre, where he played in Brendan Behan's The Hostage, York joined the National Theatre under Laurence Olivier where he worked with Franco Zeffirelli during the 1965 staging of Much Ado About Nothing.

Following his role on British TV as Jolyon (Jolly) in The Forsyte Saga (1967), York made his film debut as Lucentio in William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (Franco Zeffirelli, 1967), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. He also appeared in Accident (Joseph Losey, 1967), Harold Pinter's dramatic film adaptation of the 1965 novel by Nicholas Mosley. At the 1967 Cannes Film Festival the film won the award for Grand Prix Spécial du Jury.

Then York was cast as Tybalt Capulet in Zeffirelli’s innovative Romeo and Juliet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1968). He starred in The Guru (James Ivory, 1969) as a rock star who wants to learn to play the sitar, and he played an amoral bisexual drifter in the black comedy Something for Everyone (Harold Prince, 1970) with Angela Lansbury.


East-German postcard by Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 115/76. Photo: publicity still for The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973).

Cabaret

Michael York starred in the British World War I action-drama Zeppelin (Étienne Périer, 1971), which depicts a fictitious German attempt to raid on Great Britain in a giant Zeppelin to steal the Magna Carta from its hiding place in one of Scotland's castles.

He then portrayed the bisexual Brian Roberts in Bob Fosse's film version of Cabaret (1972) opposite Liza Minelli. Cabaret opened to glowing reviews and strong box office, eventually taking in more than $20 million. The film won eight Oscars and seven British Academy Film Awards.

York then starred as D'Artagnan in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973), and he made his Broadway debut in the original production of Tennessee Williams's Out Cry. One year later the sequel to The Three Musketeers was released (roughly covering events in the second half of the book) titled The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974). Fifteen years later, most of the cast and crew joined together in a third film titled The Return of the Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1989), based on the Alexandre Dumas novel Twenty Years After.

York was among the ensemble cast of the British mystery film Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974), based on the 1934 novel by Agatha Christie. It was another box-office hit. He played a young officer in India in the British drama Conduct Unbecoming (Michael Anderson, 1975), and the title character in the American science fiction film Logan's Run (Michael Anderson, 1976).

The following year, he starred opposite Burt Lancaster in The Island of Dr. Moreau (Don Taylor, 1977), based on H.G. Wells novel of the same name. He also reunited with Zeffirelli as John the Baptist in the TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (Franco Zeffirelli, 1977), starring Robert Powell as Jesus, and he played Marty Feldman’s twin brother in the American historical comedy The Last Remake of Beau Geste (Marty Feldman, 1977).

His next films, Fedora (Billy Wilder, 1978), the English spy thriller The Riddle of the Sands (Tony Maylam, 1979) and the Canadian spy caper Final Assignment (Paul Almond, 1980) were all box office flops, and York started to work more and more for television.


American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, CA, no. Cl/Personality #48-1979. Photo: Douglas Kirkland / Contact.

International Man of Mystery

In the following decades, Michael York enjoyed a busy and varied career in television and on the stage. On television he starred in such TV films as The Master of Ballantrae (Douglas Hickox, 1984), Sword of Gideon (Michael Anderson, 1986), and The Lady and the Highwayman (John Hough, 1989), and he appeared in two episodes of the series Road to Avonlea (1991).

His Broadway theatre credits include Bent (1980), The Crucible (1992), Someone Who'll Watch Over Me (1993) and the ill-fated musical The Little Prince and the Aviator (1982), which closed during previews. He also has made many sound recordings as a reader, including Harper Audio's production of C. S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

He kept returning to the cinema. Remarkable was the French-British drama Success Is the Best Revenge (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1984), which was entered into the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. He appeared in the Dutch costume drama Eline Vere (Harry Kümel, 1991). He played Basil Exposition in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (Jay Roach, 1997) and its two sequels. He was also in the action-adventure The Omega Code (Robert Marcarelli, 1999) with Casper Van Dien.

On TV, he appeared as Mason Fairbanks, Homer Simpson's possible father in an 2006 episode of The Simpsons, and played the character Bernard Fremont (inspired by real life serial killer Charles Sobhraj) in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode Slither (2006). In 2009, he lent his voice to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and in 2016, he returned to The Simpsons as Dr. Budgie.

In the cinema, he was seen in the remarkable Polish film Młyn i krzyż/The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, 2011), starring Rutger Hauer. His autobiography (1993) was issued as Accidentally on Purpose in the U.S. and Travelling Player in Britain. He also co-wrote a book with Adrian Brine called A Shakespearean actor prepares.

York was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to drama. Michael York is married to photographer Patricia McCallum. They met in 1967 when she was assigned to photograph him, and they married in 1968. His stepson is Star Wars producer Rick McCallum. In 2013, York announced he was suffering from the rare disease amyloidosis (a blood disorder). Doctors initially thought he had bone cancer, and in 2012, he had undergone a stem cell transplant, which can alleviate symptoms.


Trailer Cabaret (1972). Source: Warner Movies On Demand (YouTube).


Trailer The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973). Source: TheTrailerGal (YouTube).


Trailer for Logan's Run (Michael Anderson, 1976). Source: Movieclips Trailer Vault (YouTube).

Sources: Andrew Spicer (Encyclopedia of British Film), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Imported from the USA: Robert De Niro

Legendary American actor Robert De Niro (1943) has starred in such classic films as Taxi Driver (1976), Novecento/1900 (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978), Awakenings (1990) and GoodFellas (1990). His role in The Godfather: Part II (1974) brought him his first Academy Award, and he scored his second Oscar for his portrayal of Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980). De Niro worked with many acclaimed film directors, including Brian DePalma, Francis Coppola, Elia Kazan, Bernardo Bertolucci and, most importantly, Martin Scorsese. He also appeared in French, British and Italian films.


French postcard in the Collection Cinema Couleur by Edition La Malibran, Paris, no. MC 33, 1990. Photo: publicity still for Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).


Belgian promotion card by Tasschen Gallery for the exhibition 'Taxi Driver - unseen photographs from Scorsese's Masterpiece'. Photo: Steve Schapiro. Publicity still for Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976).

The most chilling performance of his career

Robert Anthony De Niro was born in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan, New York City in 1943. His mother, Virginia Admiral, was a cerebral and gifted painter, and his father, Robert De Niro Sr., was a painter, sculptor and poet whose work received high critical acclaim. They split ways in 1945, when young Robert was only 2 years old, after his father announced that he was gay.

De Niro was raised primarily by his mother, who took on work as a typesetter and printer in order to support her son. A bright and energetic child, Robert De Niro was incredibly fond of attending films with his father when they spent time together. De Niro's mother worked part-time as a typist and copy editor for Maria Picator's Dramatic Workshop, and as part of her compensation, De Niro was allowed to take children's acting classes for free. At the age of 10, De Niro made his stage debut as the Cowardly Lion in a school production of The Wizard of Oz.

De Niro proved to be uninterested in school altogether and, as a teenager, joined a rather tame street gang in Little Italy that gave him the nickname Bobby Milk, in reference to his pale complexion. While De Niro was by all accounts only a very modest troublemaker, the gang provided him with experience to skilfully portray Italian mobsters as an actor.

He left school at age 16 to study acting Stella Adler Conservatory. Adler, who had taught Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger, was a strong proponent of the Stanislavski method of acting, involving deep psychological character investigation. He studied briefly with Lee Strasberg at the Actor's Studio in New York City, and then began auditioning.

After a momentary cameo in the French film Trois chambres à Manhattan/Three Rooms in Manhattan (Marcel Carné, 1965), De Niro's real film debut came in Greetings (Brian De Palma, 1968). However, De Niro's first film role already came at the age of 20, when he appeared credited as Robert Denero in De Palma’s The Wedding Party (Brian De Palma, Wilford Leach, 1963), but the film was not released until 1969.

He then appeared in Roger Corman's film Bloody Mama (1970), featuring Shelley Winters. His breakthrough performances came a few years later in two highly acclaimed films: the sports drama Bang the Drum Slowly (John D. Hancock, 1973), in which he played a terminally ill catcher on a baseball team, and the crime film Mean Streets (1973), his first of many collaborations with director Martin Scorsese, in which he played street thug Johnny Boy opposite Harvey Keitel.

De Niro and Martin Scorsese worked successfully together on eight films: Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and Casino (1995).

In 1974, De Niro established himself as one America’s finest actors with his Academy Award-winning portrayal of the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), a role for which he learned to speak Sicilian.

Two years later, De Niro delivered perhaps the most chilling performance of his career, playing vengeful cabbie Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) alongside Jodie Foster. His iconic performance as Travis Bickle catapulted him to stardom and forever linked his name with Bickle's famous 'You talkin' to me?' monologue, which De Niro largely improvised.

In Italy, De Niro appeared opposite Gérard Dépardieu in the epic historical drama Novecento/1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976). The film is an exploration of life in Italy in the first half of the 20th century, seen through the eyes of two Italian childhood friends at the opposite sides of society's hierarchy.

He also starred in The Last Tycoon (1976), the last film directed by Elia Kazan. The Hollywood drama is based upon Harold Pinter's screenplay adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon, De Niro continued to show his tremendous skill as a dramatic actor in the Vietnam war drama The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978). The film follows a group of friends haunted by their Vietnam experiences.

De Niro later portrayed middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta in the commercially unsuccessful but critically adored film Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980). The previously skinny De Niro had put on 60 pounds of muscle for his riveting turn as LaMotta and was rewarded for his dedication with the 1981 Academy Award for best actor.


French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. STAR 66. Photo: J. Ritchie / Classico, San Francisco.


British postcard by Classic. Photo: publicity still for Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980).

Reunited in a terrifying way

In the 1980s, Robert De Niro first roles were a worldly ambitious Catholic priest in True Confessions (Ulu Grosbard, 1981), an aspiring stand-up comedian in Scorsese's The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983) and as a Jewish mobster in the sprawling historical epic Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984).

Other notable projects included Sci-fi art film Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) and the British drama The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986), about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in 18th century South America, which won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. It was followed by fare like the crime drama The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987), in which De Niro portrayed gangster Al Capone opposite Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness, the mysterious thriller Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987) and the action comedy Midnight Run (Martin Brest, 1988).

De Niro opened the 1990s with Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990), yet another acclaimed gangster film from Scorsese that saw the actor teaming up with Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci. De Niro next starred in a project that earned him another Oscar nomination, portraying a catatonic patient brought back to awareness in Awakenings (Penny Marshall, 1990), co-starring Robin Williams as a character based on physician Oliver Sacks.

Dramas continued to be the genre of choice for De Niro, as he played a blacklisted director in Guilty by Suspicion (Irwin Winkler, 1991) and a fire chief in Backdraft (Ron Howard, 1991).

Soon afterwards, the actor was once again front and centre and reunited with Scorsese in a terrifying way, bulking up to become a tattooed rapist who stalks a family in Cape Fear (Martin Scorsese, 1991). The film was a remake of the 1962 thriller starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. Peck and Mitchum made appearances in the remake as well. De Niro received his sixth Academy Award nomination for Cape Fear, with the film becoming the highest grossing collaboration between the actor and Scorsese, earning more than $182 million worldwide.

After somewhat edgy, comedic outings like Night and the City (Irwin Winkler, 1992) and Mad Dog and Glory (John McNaughton, 1993), another drama followed in the form of This Boy's Life (Michael Caton-Jones, 1993), in which De Niro portrayed the abusive stepfather of a young Leonardo DiCaprio.

That same year, De Niro made his directorial debut with A Bronx Tale (Robert De Niro, 1993), a film adaptation of a one-man play written and performed by Chazz Palminteri. In 1994, De Niro was practically unrecognisable as the monster in actor-director Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh, 1994).

It was followed by another Scorsese telling of mob life, this time in Las Vegas. De Niro portrayed a character based on real-life figure Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal in Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995), co-starring Sharon Stone and Joe Pesci. In Heat (Michael Mann, 1995), De Niro re-teamed with fellow Godfather star Al Pacino in a well-received outing about a bank robber contemplating getting out of the business and the police detective aiming to bring him down.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for Midnight Run (Martin Brest, 1988).


French postcard, no. 654. Photo: publicity still for Jackie Brown. (Quentin Tarantino, 1997) with Robert De Niro as Louis Gara.


German postcard by CTMG, 2010. Photo: publicity still for Machete (Ethan Maniquis, Robert Rodriguez, 2010) with Robert De Niro as Senator McLaughlin.

Striking out into decidedly different territory

For the rest of the 1990s and into the new millennium, Robert De Niro featured yearly in a big screen project as either a lead or supporting figure. His films include the legal crime drama Sleepers (Barry Levinson, 1996), the black comedy Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson, 1997), the crime drama Cop Land (James Mangold, 1997), the crime thriller Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997), the spy action-thriller Ronin (John Frankenheimer, 1998) and the crime comedy-drama Flawless (Joel Schumacher, 1999).

At the turn of the century, De Niro struck out into decidedly different territory with Analyze This (Harold Ramis, 1999), a hilarious and highly popular spoof of the mob movies that had garnered him fame. Analyze This earned more than a $100 million domestically, with De Niro playing a Mafioso who seeks help from a psychiatrist (Billy Crystal).

De Niro took on another comedy, Meet the Parents (Jay Roach, 2000), as Ben Stiller's future father-in-law. The smash hit spawned two sequels: Meet the Fockers (Jay Roach, 2004) and Little Fockers (Paul Weitz, 2011), both of which were also box-office successes.

De Niro continued to switch between comedic and serious roles over the next few years, reuniting with Billy Crystal for Analyze That (Harold Ramis, 2002), and starring in the spy thriller The Good Shepherd (Robert De Niro, 2006) with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie.

The following year De Niro was featured as a secretive cross-dressing pirate with a heart of gold in the fantasy flick Stardust (Matthew Vaughn, 2007), while 2009 saw a return to dramatic fare with Everybody's Fine (Kirk Jones, 2009). In Italy, De Niro starred in the romantic comedy Manuale d'amore 3/The Ages of Love (Giovanni Veronesi, 2011).

De Niro earned yet another Academy Award nomination for his turn in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2012), playing the father of a mentally troubled son (Bradley Cooper). De Niro teamed up again with Silver Linings Playbook director Russell and stars Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence for the biopic Joy (David O. Russell, 2015), based on the life of Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano.

Later that year, De Niro starred as a widower who returns to the workforce in The Intern (Nancy Meyers, 2015), with Anne Hathaway. In 2016, he starred in another biopic, Hands of Stone (Jonathan Jakubowicz, 2016), playing Ray Arcel, the trainer of Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán. That same year De Niro received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama for his contribution to the arts.

De Niro, who has long resided in New York City, has been investing in Manhattan's Tribeca neighbourhood since 1989. His capital ventures there included co-founding the film studio TriBeCa Productions in 1998 and the Tribeca Film Festival (since 2002). De Niro married actress Diahnne Abbott in 1976. The couple had one son, Raphael, before divorcing 12 years later, in 1988. De Niro then had a long relationship with model Toukie Smith that produced twin sons, Aaron Kendrick and Julian Henry, in 1995. Then in 1997, De Niro married Grace Hightower, with whom he has also two children.


Trailer Novecento/1900 (1976). Source: Eurekaentertainment (YouTube).


Trailer Raging Bull (1980). Source: Movieclips Trailer Vault (YouTube).


Trailer The Mission (1986). Source: Warner Bros. (YouTube).


Trailer for Analyze This (1999). Source: Movieclips Trailer Vault (YouTube).

Sources: Biography.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.