Posts tagged ‘Mickey Rooney’
Kitty Packard Pictorial of the Month: The TCM Classic Film Festival
Welcome to Paradise
Last night, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was aglow with Beethoven and Bach and elegance, and tonight … it’s Thor. See what happens when you leave town, TCM?
Last year’s was fun… this year’s festival was special. Building on last year’s framework, what was noticeable this year was a close-knit sense of community. This shared, communal experience was instant and electric, making fast friends of complete strangers, simply because they happened to be waiting in a queue for the same film. Film is a universal language that unites people regardless of background or distance or age or even language– I’ve been to many a film festival and, without question, nowhere is the power of film more apparent than at TCM’s Classic Film Festival. If for no other reason than the simple fact people are not there simply to watch a movie– nor are they simply there to be seen. (cough, Sundance, cough) but rather to embrace the beauty of film and to engage in an exchange of expression with like-minded enthusiasts.
And that is why The Kitty Packard Pictorial is breaking with tradition and our next Pictorial of the Month is not dedicated to a classic film star… but rather classic film’s reigning patron saint: Turner Classic Movies.
Four days of films, fans and fast new friends, here is our farewell to the TCM Classic Film Festival with a send-off of highlights and a collection of newly released press-photos.
Enjoy, and see you at the Festival next year!
Mickey Rooney, Leslie Caron attend the Vanity Fair party
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Jane Powell and Eva Marie Saint at the Vanity Fair party
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Rose McGowan in Robert Osborne's arms... the luckiest girl in the world.
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Debbie Reynolds signed autographs in Club TCM
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Jane Powell signing an autograph
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Mickey Rooney and Ben Mankiewicz discussing Girl Crazy (1943)
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Peter O'Toole at the screening of Becket (1964)
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Julie Andrews remembers her late husband Blake Edwards @ Breakfast at Tiffanys
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"How Do I Look?" Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
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Hayley Mills and Leonard Maltin discussing The Parent Trap
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Alec Baldwin and Warren Beatty discussed the film Reds (1981)
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Drew Barrymore chatting with Robert Osborne
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Rose McGowan, Robert Osborne, and Anjelica Huston
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The TCM Billboard at Orange and Hollywood
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A long way from home... yet very much at home!
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Hollywood's very own Lady in Black, Kerrie Bible
The night’s silent festivities were introduced by the classic Burns and Allen Vitaphone sketch Lamb Chops. The perfect introduction– we were putty in their silly little hands:
Vince Giardano and the Nighthawks perform Buster Keaton's The Cameraman
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Leonard Maltin talking with Vince Giordano
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Hah-- that's me and good buddy Nicole clapping our hands numb for Vince Giordano's stupendous performance
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Robert Osborne -- our patron saint!
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Marge Champion -- the most youthful 91 year old on the planet!
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Robert Osborne visibly charmed with the charming Marge Champion. (My new favorite person in the world!!)
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TCM's Scott McGee and Anne Wilson-- THANK YOU for making this possible!!
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Passholders puttin' on the ritz outside The Henry Fonda Theatre's Music Box!
Club TCM's After Party-- Farwell, Fantasyland!
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Goodbye, Elizabeth. Farewell, Hollywood.
“Look for it only in books for it is no more than a dream remembered—a civilization gone with the wind.”
Impossibly Beautiful.
With today’s passing of Dame Elizabeth Taylor, I could not quite get those opening credits of David O Selznick’s Gone with the Wind out of my mind. Taylor is not the last star of Hollywood’s Golden Age to leave us— we still, thankfully, have with us the talents of Mickey Rooney, Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell, Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Olivia deHavilland, Joan Fontaine, Shirley Temple and Louis Rainer. All of whom I love dearly. (And a few of whom I prefer as actors to Taylor.)
But as far as the 20th Century idea of “movie star” goes, no one has been, is and will be more consummate of a movie star than Elizabeth Taylor. The name is larger than life, and is topped only by the woman who possessed it: a woman who loved hard, lived large and suffered deeply—an epic story of love, loss and survival. Her passing, symbolically, signifies the end of an entire civilization. A world that no longer exists.
I’m open to argument, but I strongly feel that she is the last Hollywood Superstar.
The Consummate Movie Star
Golden Hollywood, already a legendary Oz, really began fading from our tangible collective hold in the late 90s, with the deaths of Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope. The past years have been especially sad for classic film lovers around the world, particularly with the passings of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Tony Curtis and Jane Russell to highlight but the few. And although dear Elizabeth had been failing for quite some time, the news is still a sad shock to any and all who love her and love the world she reigned over. And somehow, for me anyway, with the candle blown on her legendary life… that golden Hollywoodland that I grew up with is, finally, truly, forever gone.
Created and cultivated by the studio system, bred by the studio system—its shining beacon of beauty and glamour—there will only ever be one Elizabeth Taylor. Initially just another ‘product’ to be exploited by studio suits, Taylor turned the tables and became an accomplished actress (“She knows her instrument,” co-star and friend Paul Newman once said, “and she knows how to play it.”)
The Kitty Packard Pictorial bids adieu to this extraordinary woman, her extraordinary beauty and her extraordinary gifts as an actress.
This moving tribute paid to her by Paul Newman on TCM a few years back sums up so much: her strength as a human being, her worth as a talent– her legacy as a star.
“It was a privilege to watch her,” Newman says in the tribute.
It is now more than a privilege. It is an honour.
Thank you for the memories, Elizabeth. We love you. And you are a part of us. Always.