The Knack ...and How To Get It (1965)

The Knack ...and How To Get It by #RichardLester starring #RitaTushingham and #MichaelCrawford, "a charming, funny and beautifully shot bit of cheekiness"

RICHARD LESTER Bil’s rating (out of 5): BBB United Kingdom, 1965. Woodfall Film Productions. Screenplay by Charles Wood, based on the play by Ann Jellicoe. Cinematography by David Watkin. Produced by Oscar Lewenstein. Music by John Barry. Production Design by Assheton Gorton. Costume Design by Jocelyn Rickards. Film Editing by Antony Gibbs. A number of British Invasion movies remain popular today…

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Jacqueline Fraser Bisset is a British actress. She began her film career in 1965 and first came to prominence in 1968 with roles in The Detective, Bullitt, and The Sweet Ride, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination as Most Promising Newcomer.

Anna May Wong Vs. Peggy Ashcroft

Propaganda

Anna May Wong - (The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong) - The groundbreaking Chinese-American star became the first Asian-American to star in a TV show with this series on the DuMont Network. Like most DuMont shows, no episodes survive, but we know from her other roles that Anna May Wong was indeed very hot!

Peggy Ashcroft - (The Jewel in the Crown, She's Been Away, The Wars of the Roses) - Peggy Ashcroft's brilliance needs no introduction. One the finest stage actresses to ever grace the British stage, Dame Peggy Ashcroft made several notable TV appearances, particularly in the mid and later eras of her career. In the TV adaptation of The Cherry Orchard (1962) she played Madame Ranevskaya, and while her performance was brilliant she cut an elegant, tragic, beautiful and somewhat foolishly carefree figure who instantly caught your eye. In the TV series adaptation of The Wars of the Roses (1965), she played Margaret of Anjou, going from naive youth to fierce warrior queen and bitter old age in a matter of episodes. It was a masterclass in Shakespeare on TV by one of the best Shakespearean actresses ever, a magnetic performance and she herself looked absolutely stunning. In the TV film "Caught on a Train" she played an elderly Austrian aristocrat, self centered, kind-in-a-weird-way, imperious and elegant. In the TV film "Cream in My Coffee" she was a sad married woman hoping that a holiday would build bridges in her marriage that broke down before it even began. The TV series The Jewel in the Crown was one of her best TV appearances ever where she played a slightly dotty retired missionary and her ultimate tragic end. Her swan song on TV was her final TV appearance in the the TV film She's Been Away where she played an old woman released from a mental asylum where she was locked in since her youth. Peggy Ashcroft looked stunning on TV and translated her wealth of stage experience into her television performances, winning several BAFTA awards for Best Actress, being nominated for several more BAFTA's for Best Actress and was nominated for two Emmy's (one outstanding lead actress and another outstanding supporting actress) and a Golden Globe (also for outstanding lead actress) as well.

Master Poll List of the Hot Vintage TV Ladies Bracket

Additional propaganda below the cut

Anna May Wong:

Peggy Ashcroft:

Golden Globes Awards 1965

diana <3

diana ross is an american singer and actress, the former lead singer of the supremes- one of the best selling girl groups in the world. she has 6 no.1 songs, a succesful career in films, the presidential medal of freedom and the kennedy center honors.

growing up diana wanted to be a fashion designer and took courses in millinery, clothing design, pattern making and tailoring. on evenings and weekends she took courses in modeling and cosmetology. she was heavily involved in school and clubs such as the swim team.

at 15 she joined a group called the primettes, and they auditioned to be signed to motown, but were told they had to graduate high school first. the group continued to come to the studio and did what they could to help other artists. in 1960 diana was hired to be detroit's first african-american bus girl, and she began working in a hairdressing salon. she graduated from high school in 1962.

when the group was signed they were re-named and called the supremes. the supremes are stil the best charting girl group ever, with 12 no.1 hits. their song "where did our love go" was transmitted to astronauts during the 1965 Gemini 5 mission. diana made her last appearance with the group in 1970.

she had a succesful career as a solo artist and was the first african american woman to co-host the academy awards. in terms of acting diana was nominated for the saturn award and golden globe award. she's been in tv spanning from 1964 to more recently in 2018. in total she's had 18 no.1 hits- 12 from the supremes and 6 from her solo work. she's continued to inspire big artists, and the supremes were added to the rockn roll hall of fame in 1988.

Barbara Rush ((January 4, 1927 – March 31, 2024) Stage, film and television actress. In 1954, Rush won the Golden Globe Award as most promising female newcomer for her role in the 1953 American science fiction film It Came from Outer Space. Later in her career, Rush became a regular performer in the television series Peyton Place, and appeared in TV movies, miniseries, and a variety of other programs, including the soap opera All My Children and family drama 7th Heaven,

In 1962, she guest-starred as Linda Kinkcaid in the episode “Make Me a Place” on The Eleventh Hour starring Wendell Corey and Jack Ging. In 1962–1963, she appeared three times as Lizzie Hogan on Saints and Sinners. In 1965, she appeared in a two-part episode of The Fugitive titled “Landscape with Running Figures” as Marie Gérard, wife of police detective Lt. Philip Gérard. 1967, she guest-starred on the series Custer.

She portrayed the devious Nora Clavicle in the TV series Batman. In 1976, Rush played the role of Ann Sommers/Chris Stewart, the mother of female sci-fi action character Jaime Sommers in The Bionic Woman.

She was a cast member on the early 1980s soap opera Flamingo Road as Eudora Weldon. In 1998, she was featured in an episode titled “Balance of Nature” on the television series The Outer Limits. She has continued to make guest appearances on television. In 2007, she played the recurring role of Grandma Ruth Camden on the series 7th Heaven. (Wikipedia)

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Such sad news to hear today. An amazing, and enigmatic actor someone who deserved to be called a star.💫

British actor Tom Wilkinson, best known for his role in The Full Monty, has died aged 75 💔Wilkinson, who became an OBE for services to drama in 2005, was born in Leeds - Yorkshire in 1948 and grew up in Canada and Cornwall before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in the 1970s.

In 1994, he appeared as Pecksniff in the BBC's adaptation of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit. He is pictured alongside Maggie Steed.

Across an illustrious career spanning nearly 50 years, Wilkinson won a host of acting awards, as well as two Oscar nominations. He won a BAFTA for 'The Full Monty,' and he also appeared in 'Shakespeare in Love,' 'In the Bedroom,' 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' and 'Batman Begins', He won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as Benjamin Franklin in the 'John Adams' miniseries. A versatile actor won acclaim through decades of work in television and film and onstage. Recently he was reunited with his The Full Monty co-stars, Carlyle and Mark Addy, in a Disney+ series of the same name.

Who remembers this classic!

The original 1997 comedy about an unlikely group of male strippers in Sheffield won an Oscar for Best Original Musical or comedy score and was nominated for three others, including best picture and best director.

Wilkinson’s best roles. Here are his finest films, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis was an officer of the British Army and one of the leading British generals in the American War of Independence.

Wilkinson played a British officer in The Patriot, a US film about the Revolutionary War co-starring Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger and Jason Isaacs. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.

From The Full Monty to Michael Clayton: was a lawyer - Arthur Edens - in Michael Clayton film 🎥 co-starring George Clooney. Tom Wilkinson was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role for In The Bedroom in 2001, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Michael Clayton in 2007.

Wilkinson was winning acclaim again as a high-powered lawyer who has a breakdown in Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton.” He was nominated for another Academy Award for his performance in that film.

In ‘Denial’, Confronting a Holocaust Revisionist in Court. Denial is a drama about a historian’s pursuit through the UK justice system by a Holocaust denier. It stars Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall, Andrew Scott, Jack Lowden, Caren Pistorius and Alex Jennings.

On television, he played Benjamin Franklin in “John Adams,” James A. Baker in “Recount,” for which he was Emmy-nominated and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. in “The Kennedys.”

In Ava DuVernay's 2014 historical drama Selma, Wilkinson portrayed President Lyndon B Johnson. The film tells of the protest marches held in Alabama in 1965 over voting rights for African Americans.

RIP Tom Wilkinson 💔 1948-2023

1957 was a big year for David McCallum, the respected Glasgow-born actor known for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Great Escape” and his 20-year run on “NCIS” as quirky pathologist Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard.

From the Oct. 23, 1957, edition of weekly Variety

The actor, who died Sept. 25 at the age of 90, logged six mentions in Variety that year, starting with the March 20 edition of weekly that featured him in the cast list of a review of the British “crimer meller” (aka crime melodrama) “The Secret Place.” From then on, McCallum was a staple in our pages, limning movies, TV shows, legit stages in the U.S. and U.K. He never stopped working.

Wedding announcement for David McCallum and Jill Ireland from the May 22, 1957, edition of weekly Variety

1957 was also the year McCallum married actor Jill Ireland in London, an event commemorated with a wedding announcement in the May 22, 1957, edition of weekly.

Five months later, McCallum got his first detailed mention in a review of British drama “Robbery Under Arms,” a Rank film production also starring Peter Finch, Ronald Lewis and Ireland. McCallum was one half of a pair of brothers who get swept into a life of crime, and he was singled out in our review. “Good opportunities are given to the brothers, Lewis and McCallum. The latter, in the more subtle part, enhances his rising reputation.”

Growing up in that era of Britain, it’s no surprise that McCallum was a Rank regular. But by the early 1960s, McCallum’s star climbed as he landed a supporting role in the 1963 Steve McQueen hit “The Great Escape.” (Scandal ensued, however, when Ireland and “Great Escape” co-star Charles Bronson began an affair on the set. Bronson and Ireland were married from 1968 until her death from breast cancer in 1990.)

Congrats ad saluting 1966 Golden Globe Award winners from the Feb. 14, 1966, edition of Daily Variety

Soon after “The Great Escape,” McCallum relocated to swinging Hollywood, co-starring with Robert Vaughn in the spy-fi comedy series “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” for four seasons. MGM Television produced the NBC series that was inspired by the success of the James Bond film franchise. McCallum earned back-to-back Emmy nominations in 1965 and 1966 for the show, and the series nabbed the Golden Globe Award in 1966 for Most Popular TV Show.

From the June 24, 1968, edition of Daily Variety

MGM kept McCallum busy in features during his “Man From U.N.C.L.E” hiatus. In 1967 he starred in the globe-trotting movie comedy “Three Bites of the Apple” with Harvey Korman, Sylvia Koscina and Tammy Grimes. “Box office is the name of the game … so let yourself go with McCallum,” MGM exhorted in an ad in the Feb. 8, 1967, edition of weekly Variety for “Three Bites.”

Still, he never strayed too far from the boards. “Dave McCallum” landed prime page-one placement in the June 24, 1968, edition of Daily Variety when he was set to star in the Broadway adaptation of the hit London tuner “The Flip Side,” which opened Oct. 10 on the Main Stem and closed Oct. 12.

McCallum juggled all manner of film, TV and stage projects in the 1970s and ’80s. In the early 1970s he co-starred with Robert Wagner in the British drama series “Colditz” — a bit of foreshadowing of things to come decades later when Wagner joined the cast of “NCIS.”

From the Nov. 16, 1972, edition of Daily Variety

And who says reboots and remakes are a recent phenomenon? Fifteen years after the original series ended, CBS reunited Vaughn and McCallum for a “The Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E.” TV movie that had its charms, according to our review from the April 7, 1983, edition of Daily Variety: “Robert Vaughn and David McCallum resume their spy-snooping as slickly as though they never left,” our critic wrote.

From the Nov. 29, 1982, edition of Daily Variety

Any actor fortunate enough to have a long career will inevitably deal with some downturns. McCallum did a fair amount of low-profile indie and Euro-financed movies in the 1990s. After he landed the “NCIS” gig in 2003, he mostly stuck to moonlighting with voice work in animated series and video games.

In 2012, Variety paid tribute to “NCIS” as it reached its 200 episode milestone – a rare achievement for series and one that has become even more unusual in contemporary times.

From the Feb. 7, 2012, edition of Daily Variety

From the Sept. 22, 2003, edition of Daily Variety

We couldn’t have known it back then, but “NCIS” and McCallum were destined to deliver more than 250 more episodes (not to mention two more spinoffs) during his stint on the show, which is heading into Season 21, although the premiere date is still in flux after production was delayed by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes).

The show clearly won’t be the same without his authoritative and avuncular presence. As we wrote in our Sept. 22, 2003, review of the pilot for the series originally titled “Navy NCIS,” McCallum’s character was key to adding “scientific insight and personality quicks aplenty” to the ensembler.

Rest in peace, Ducky.

SPANKING ON TV #3

Flirting (1991) d. John Duigan

A six-stroke caning over pyjamas for Danny Embling by his Housemaster. At least one member of his dorm has already been dealt with; the rest are nervously lined-up outside the study. Later, the boys compare stripes after lights out. The film is set in Australia in 1965 and deals with the burgeoning romance between the socially-isolated Danny, who has a stutter, and Thandiwe Adjewa, a Ugandan-Kenyan-British girl he meets at a school rugby match. Between them they confront the authoritarian regime in their respective boarding schools.

The film is a coming-of-age melodrama and is a semi-autobiographical piece by the director. It’s the second in an intended trilogy that wasn’t completed. Noah Taylor who plays Danny also starred in the first film: The Year My Voice Broke (1987). It marks the film debut of Thandiwe Newton; Nicole Kidman is in it too, before Hollywood and mega-stardom.

The school is shown as a harsh, uncompromising place where the boys are caned regularly. They bully each other too, and Danny is frequently the butt of their jokes. Even his nickname mocks his stammer. His romance with Thandiwe is something of a revelation to them, then, especially when he sneaks her into the dorm and later hides her in the boys’ showers.

The Housemaster in particular is vindictive and sadistic. As well as the caning at the start of the film, he’s heard caning another boy during prep. It’s telling that he has to chalk his cane, which suggests he enjoys terrorising the boys and inflicting the pain of a caning but isn’t all that expert at it. He always gives out six of the best, too, which shows no discretion or understanding of justice.

The canings we see/hear are massively exaggerated, especially the audio. If a boy was beaten that severely in real life, I doubt he’d just get up and walk off with a nod to the next boy in line.

There is an ongoing joke of one boy, Green, saying or doing the wrong thing and being told to report to different teachers for a caning.

Despite being set in Australia in the 60s, the boys wear long grey trousers throughout, although some wear shorts for rugby and tennis.

Noah Taylor, Thandiwe Newton and Nicole Kidman are all still acting (fancy that). You might recognise Noah from Game of Thrones amongst other things. Thandiwe has won various awards, including a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA for Crash (2004) and an Emmy; she was made an OBE in 2019. Nicole, meanwhile, bagged a Best Actress Oscar and a BAFTA for The Hours (2003), and is also the recipient of two Golden Globes, an Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Noah was 21 when he filmed this. Australia ended corporal punishment in 1985, so it's not inconceivable that he was caned at school. I wonder if shooting these scenes brought back any memories?

NORMAN JEWISON (1926-Died January 20th 2024,at 97).Canadian film and television director and producer. Jewison addressed social and political issues throughout his filmmaking career, often making controversial or complicated subjects accessible to mainstream audiences. He received the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences's Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1999. He received a BAFTA Award and was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Jewison directed numerous feature films and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director three times in three separate decades for In the Heat of the Night (1967), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), and Moonstruck (1987). Other highlights of his directing career include 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), The Thrill of It All (1963), Send Me No Flowers (1964), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Rollerball (1975), F.I.S.T. (1978), ...And Justice for All (1979), Best Friends (1982), A Soldier's Story (1984), Agnes of God (1985), Other People's Money (1991), Only You (1994), The Hurricane (1999), and The Statement (2003).Norman Jewison - Wikipedia

David Crosby, who has died aged 81, was a premier-league rock’n’roll star twice. In the mid-1960s he was a founder member of the Byrds, the Los Angeles band often credited with inventing the genre “folk-rock”. This was defined by their shimmering recording of Bob Dylan’s Mr Tambourine Man, its distinctive harmonies and chiming 12-string guitar carrying it to the top of the charts in Britain and the US in 1965.

Arrogant and argumentative, Crosby was sacked from the Byrds in 1967, but, after producing Joni Mitchell’s debut album, Song to a Seagull, he found an ideal berth with Crosby, Stills and Nash. It was a group of distinct individuals who wrote their own songs, but together they created one of the great harmony-singing blends in pop history. Their debut album, Crosby Stills & Nash (1969), was an immediate smash, and proved hugely influential on a rising generation of west coast artists. Crosby’s long hair, walrus moustache and buckskin jacket made him look like a frontiersman for the Age of Aquarius. Their second album, Déjà Vu (1970), with the addition of Neil Young, and the band becoming Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY), felt like the crowning moment of a California golden age. It topped the US chart, reached No 5 in the UK and has sold 14m copies.

The members then embarked on solo ventures and their reunions grew increasingly rare, though they reformed for a stadium tour in 1974, a lavishly wasteful affair that Crosby nicknamed “the Doom tour”. A major obstacle was that Crosby, a regular marijuana and LSD user, would succumb to a ferocious addiction to crack cocaine, with near-fatal consequences. This came to a head on 28 March 1982, when he was arrested by the California Highway Patrol after he crashed his car into the central divider on the Interstate 405 highway. Police found freebasing paraphernalia and a .45-calibre pistol in the car, and it was later determined that Crosby had suffered a seizure from “toxic saturation”.

A couple of weeks later he was arrested again on similar charges, this time at a Dallas nightclub where he was performing. A spell in a rehab facility in New Jersey failed when Crosby fled the premises. His decline from prince of west coast rock aristocracy to struggling addict was halted only when he was jailed in Texas in 1986, following yet another drugs-and-firearms arrest.

In 1985, Spin magazine had told its readers “The Tragic Story of David Crosby’s Living Death”, but after being paroled from Huntsville prison in August 1986, Crosby staged a remarkable comeback. He marked his return with the enthralling autobiography Long Time Gone (1988) and the solo album Oh Yes I Can (1989). He would make six further solo discs, in addition to Crosby & Nash (2004), two albums with Stills and Nash (Live It Up in 1990 and After the Storm, 1994) and American Dream and Looking Forward with CSNY (1988 and 1999). In 1987 he married Jan Dance, who had survived her own addiction purgatory alongside him. Shortly after being diagnosed with hepatitis C, in 1994 he underwent a liver transplant, the operation paid for by Phil Collins (Crosby had sung on Collins’s 1989 hit Another Day in Paradise), and bounced back with renewed energy.

Born in Los Angeles, he was the second son of the cinematographer Floyd Crosby and his first wife, Aliph Van Cortlandt Whitehead, a scion of the influential Van Cortlandt dynasty. Floyd came from an upper-class New York background, his father having been the treasurer of the Union Pacific Railroad, and his mother the daughter of a renowned surgeon. He had tried his hand at banking in New York before working on documentary films in the South Pacific (including FW Murnau’s Tabu, for which he won an Oscar) and eventually moving to Hollywood, where he won a Golden Globe award for his work on Fred Zinnemann’s western High Noon and made numerous films with Roger Corman.

David’s early musical influences included classical music and jazz as well as the Everly Brothers and bluesman Josh White, and he recalled how he would take the harmony parts when the family would gather to sing extracts from The Fireside Book of Folk Songs. A trip with his mother to hear a symphony orchestra “was the most intense experience I can remember from my early life” (as he wrote in Long Time Gone), because it illustrated how musicians could collaborate “to make something bigger than any one person could ever do”.

He attended the exclusive Crane school in Montecito, California, then Cate boarding school in Carpinteria. Though intelligent, he regarded academic work with contempt and refused to apply himself. One area where he did shine was in musical stage shows, such as his performance as the First Lord of the Admiralty in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. He subsequently attended Santa Barbara City College, but quit and moved to LA to study acting. However, music was becoming his true focus, and he began playing in folk clubs with his elder brother Ethan (who would take his own life in 1997). When a girlfriend became pregnant, Crosby hastily left town and worked his way across the country towards the folk-singing mecca of Greenwich Village, New York, where the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary, Phil Ochs and Joan Baez were breaking through, while Dylan was about to transform the musical climate entirely.

Crosby formed a partnership with the Chicago-born folk singer Terry Callier and they performed frequently together, before Crosby travelled down to Florida in 1962 to sample the folk scene in Miami’s Coconut Grove district. He then worked his way back to Los Angeles via Denver, Chicago and San Francisco. In LA he met Jim (later Roger) McGuinn and Gene Clark, all of them fascinated by the Beatles and the idea of mixing folk with rock’n’roll. They became the Jet Set, which evolved into the Byrds with the addition of the bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke.

Signed to Columbia, the Byrds had already built an enthusiastic local following by playing in clubs such as Ciro’s on Sunset Strip by the time Mr Tambourine Man was released in April 1965, and its success was followed up by their debut album, released in June. Crosby’s distinctive tenor voice was integral to the band’s vocal blend, and he began to develop an idiosyncratic songwriting style.

Influenced by jazz as much as rock, his songs used unusual chords and unconventional melodies. On the band’s third album, Fifth Dimension (1966), one of his most significant contributions was co-writing Eight Miles High. This psychedelic milestone gave them a Top 20 US hit, and also reflected Crosby’s infatuation with the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Their next album, Younger Than Yesterday (1967), featured Crosby’s ethereal Everybody’s Been Burned as well as his self-indulgent sound experiment Mind Gardens, while the song Why reflected his admiration for the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. When the Byrds met the Beatles, Crosby’s enthusiasm for Shankar helped spark George Harrison’s interest in Indian music.

Crosby’s green suede cape and Borsalino hat had made him a Hollywood Hills style icon, but his days as a Byrd were numbered. He had irked his bandmates at the Monterey pop festival in June 1967 by making rambling speeches about LSD and the assassination of John F Kennedy, and also by getting on stage with Stills’s band Buffalo Springfield in place of the absent Young. Crosby’s song Lady Friend (1967) flopped as a single, and during the making of the album The Notorious Byrd Brothers he was fired after arguments over the choice of material. His song Triad, depicting a menage-a-trois, was vetoed by his bandmates as being too risque (Jefferson Airplane subsequently recorded it). Nonetheless, Crosby played on and co-wrote several tracks, and The Notorious Byrd Brothers is arguably the Byrds’ finest album.

Borrowing $25,000 from Peter Tork of the Monkees, Crosby bought a 74ft schooner called Mayan, where he would write some of his best-known songs including Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Wooden Ships. The obvious potential of CSN immediately won them a deal with Atlantic Records, which released their debut album in May 1969. Their second-ever live appearance was at the Woodstock festival that August. Though dominated by the all-round wizardry of Stills, the album showcased the different writing skills of each member. Crosby’s Guinnevere demonstrated his fondness for unusual scales and harmonies, while the bluesy Long Time Gone was a heartfelt response to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and indicated the group’s willingness to embrace political and social issues.

Déjà Vu, released nine months later, brought another strong showing from Crosby. The hanging chords and mysterious time changes of his title track made it one of his most mesmerising compositions, while Almost Cut My Hair was his battle cry for the counterculture. However, personality clashes within the group while on tour in 1970 prompted them to split.

All the members made solo albums, including Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971). Additionally, he formed a successful duo with Nash, which brought them US Top 10 hit albums with Graham Nash David Crosby (1972, also UK No 13) and Wind on the Water (1975), and they reached No 26 with Whistling Down the Wire (1976). In 1973 Crosby reunited with his previous band for the album Byrds, and in 1977 Crosby, Stills and Nash released CSN, which reached No 2 on the US album chart and outsold the trio’s debut. However, by the time they made Daylight Again (1981), another US Top 10 hit, Crosby was in the throes of addiction. Allies (1983), a patchwork of live and studio material, was the group’s last effort before he was jailed.

Crosby’s post-prison renaissance continued with regular tours with CSN, who went on the road almost annually from 1987, with Young joining them in 2000, 2002 and 2006. He released the solo album Thousand Roads (1993), which gave him a minor hit single with Hero, then picked up the pace dramatically in the new century with Croz (2014), Lighthouse (2016), Sky Trails (2017) and Here If You Listen (2018). For Free, featuring Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald, came out in 2021. His final release, in December, was David Crosby & the Lighthouse Band Live at the Capitol Theatre.

One of his regular musical collaborators was James Raymond, his child with Celia Crawford Ferguson, whom Crosby had left pregnant in California in the early 60s, and who had given her baby up for adoption. She later moved to Australia. Raymond met his birth mother in 1994, then in 1995 introduced himself to his biological father at UCLA medical centre, where Crosby was having treatment following his liver transplant. An accomplished musician and composer, Raymond played in the jazz-rock band CPR with his father and Jeff Pevar (they released four albums between 1998 and 2001), was music director for Crosby’s solo live shows and also became a member of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s touring band from 2009.

Yet Crosby’s creative rebirth coincided with a calamitous breakdown in relations with his old comrades. In 2014 Young said CSNY would never tour again after Crosby described his new partner, Daryl Hannah, as “a purely poisonous predator”, and in 2016 Nash, who had always gone the extra mile for Crosby throughout his addiction years, also announced his estrangement from him.

In 1991 Crosby was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Byrds, and in 1997 with Crosby, Stills and Nash. He won the 2019 Critics’ Choice movie award as the “most compelling living subject of a documentary” for AJ Eaton’s film David Crosby: Remember My Name.

Crosby continued to be plagued by health problems. He suffered from type 2 diabetes, and in 2014 was left with eight stents in his heart following major cardiac surgery.

He was the sperm donor for the children of Melissa Etheridge and her partner Julie Cypher: their son, Beckett, who died in 2020, and daughter, Bailey.

Jan and their son, Django, survive him, as do James, a daughter, Erika, by Jackie Guthrie, and a daughter, Donovan, by Debbie Donovan.

🔔 David Van Cortlandt Crosby, musician, singer and songwriter, born 14 August 1941; died 18 January 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

Pasternak's Russia via David Lean

Watching Dr. Zhivago (1965)—I most likely have not seen this film for thirty-five years or more.

The distinctive music gets me of course—it played on AM radio when I was a kid (mid- to late-1960s), so that's burned into the brain deeply. But look at just one of the shots David Lean (or perhaps Freddie Young, his Director of Photography) cooked up—really outstanding. The aspect ratio of Panavision matches Lean's penchant for the awe-inspiring, expansive landscape.

Omar Sharif and Julie Christie carry the film. Of course seeing, and listening to, Alec Guinness is always a treat. And, much to my surprise, this film had a small part for Klaus Kinski. [He and Werner Herzog nearly killed each other (literally) during the making of Fitzcarraldo.] In the end, Dr. Zhivago won four Oscars (including Freddie Young for his fine cinematography) and a truck load of Golden Globes.

I used to watch films like this on television while I was in art school back in the early 1980s. My friends and I would stay up, drinking beer, taking in staples such as Casablanca, 12 Angry Men, works by Hitchcock, etc. Prior to the diffusion of content via cable TV (akin to what happened with music with the rise of FM and streaming much later), these works were shown more regularly on network television: a comforting and recurring presence.

Happy Birthday to Ann-Margret who turns 83 today!

83-Year-Old Ann-Margret Refuses To Give Up Her Harley.

Ann-Margret has a long list of prestigious accolades, but she's just a biker at heart.

Photo: Ann-Margret cruising on a chopper in 1971

Ann-Margret Olsson (born April 28, 1941), credited as Ann-Margret, is a Swedish-American actress and singer. She has won five Golden Globe Awards and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and six Emmy Awards, winning in 2010 for a guest role in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

She is known for her roles in Pocketful of Miracles (1961), State Fair (1962), Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Viva Las Vegas (1964), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Train Robbers (1973), Tommy (1975), Magic (1978), The Villain (1979), The Return of the Soldier (1982), Who Will Love My Children? (1983), 52 Pick-Up (1986), Newsies (1992), Grumpy Old Men (1993), Grumpier Old Men (1995), Any Given Sunday (1999), Taxi (2004), The Break-Up (2006) and Going in Style (2017).

Her singing and acting careers span seven decades, starting in 1961. Initially, she was billed as a female version of Elvis Presley. She has a sultry, vibrant contralto voice. She had a Top 20 hit song in 1961 and a charting album in 1964, and she scored a disco hit in 1979. She recorded a critically acclaimed gospel album in 2001 and an album of Christmas songs in 2004. In April 2023, she released her first rock album, Born to be Wild.

Lauren Bacall for "Young Man with a Horn" in 1950

Betty Joan Perske (September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014), professionally known as Lauren Bacall, was an American actress. She was named the 20th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute and received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009 in recognition of her contribution to the Golden Age of motion pictures. She was known for her alluring, sultry presence and her distinctive, husky voice. Bacall was one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.

Bacall began a career as a model for the Walter Thornton Model Agency before making her film debut at the age of 20 as the leading lady opposite her future husband Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944). She continued in the film noir genre with appearances alongside her new husband in The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), and she starred in the romantic comedies How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Designing Woman (1957). She portrayed the female lead in Written on the Wind (1956) which is considered one of Douglas Sirk's seminal films. She later acted in Harper (1966), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), and The Shootist (1976).

She found a career resurgence for her role in the romantic comedy The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) for which she earned the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for the Academy Award and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. During the final stage of her career, she gained newfound success with a younger audience for major supporting roles in the films Misery (1990), Dogville (2003), Birth (2004), and the English dubs of the animated films Howl's Moving Castle (2004) and Ernest & Celestine (2012).

For her work on theatre, she made her Broadway debut in Johnny 2x4 (1942). She went on to win two Tony Awards for Best Actress in a Musical for her performances in Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). She also acted in the play Goodbye Charlie (1959), the farce Cactus Flower (1965), and Wonderful Town (1977). She made her West End debut in The Applause (1970) followed by Sweet Bird of Youth (1985).

Christopher Julius Rock (born February 7, 1965) is a stand-up comedian, actor, and filmmaker. Known for his work in comic film, television, and stage, he has received multiple accolades, including three Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album and four Primetime Emmy Awards as well as a Golden Globe Award nomination. He was ranked #5 on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time. He ranked #5 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 Best Stanof d-Up Comics of All Time.

After years of working as a stand-up comedian and appearing in minor film roles including Beverly Hills Cop II, he was a cast member on Saturday Night Live (1990-93). He appeared in the films New Jack City, Boomerang, and CB4, which he wrote and produced. He reached mainstream stardom with the critically acclaimed Bring the Pain in 1996. His other specials include Bigger & Blacker (1999), Never Scared (2004), Kill the Messenger (2008), and Chris Rock: Tamborine (2018). He developed, wrote, produced, and narrated Everybody Hates Chris (2005-2009), which was based on his early life. From 1997 to 2000 he hosted The Chris Rock Show.

He was cast in starring film roles in Nurse Betty (1999), Down to Earth, Pootie Tang(both 2001), Head of State (2003), The Longest Yard (2005), the Madagascar film series (2005–2012), I Think I Love My Wife (2007), Death at a Funeral, Grown Ups (both 2010), Grown Ups 2 (2013), Top Five (2014) and Spiral (2021). He is known for his appearances on television including Louie, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, and Fargo. He made his Broadway theater debut in The Motherfucker with the Hat for which he received Drama League Award for Most Distinguished Performance. He hosted the Academy Awards twice; in 2005 and 2016.

He was born in Andrews, South Carolina, his parents moved to Brooklyn. His mother, Rosalie, was a teacher and social worker for the mentally handicapped; his father, Julius Rock, was a truck driver and newspaper deliveryman. He married Malaak Compton-Rock (1996-2016), and she is the founder and executive director of StyleWorks, and they have two daughters. He is the brother of actor/comedian Tony Rock. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

Glynis Margaret Payne Johns (October 5, 1923 - January 4, 2024) Film, stage and television actress, dancer, musician and singer. In a career spanning eight decades on stage and screen, Johns appeared in more than 60 films and 30 plays. She has received various accolades throughout her career, including a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, a National Board of Review Award, and a Laurel Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Laurence Olivier Award. She is widely considered as being one of the last surviving major stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood and classical years of British cinema.

Johns made her television debut in 1952 with Fletcher Markle's Emmy Award-winning series Little Women. She appeared in just one episode: season 4's "Lilly, the Queen of the Movies" as Lily Snape. Her television credits of the 1950s include brief appearances in the Hollywood anthology series Lux Video Theatre (in the 1953 episode "Two For Tea"), Errol Flynn's anthology series The Errol Flynn Theatre (in the 1956 episodes "The Sealed Room" as Lou McNamara and "The Girl in Blue Jeans" as The Girl Susan Tracey), CBS's anthology series Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (in the 1957 episode "The Dead Are Silent"), and ABC's variety and drama series The Frank Sinatra Show (in the 1958 episode "Face of Fear" as Christine Nolan)

Johns was cast in 1961 in the ABC/Warner Bros. crime drama The Roaring 20s. She portrayed Kitty O'Moyne, an Irish immigrant who falls overboard into the harbour as she arrives in the United States. Johns guest-starred in the CBS anthology seriesThe Lloyd Bridges Show in the episode "A Game for Alternate Mondays" of the 1962–63 television season, playing widow Leah Marquand, with Leslye Hunter as her daughter Isabella. On 5 August 1963, Vacation Playhouse premiered the episode "Hide and Seek" as the pilot of her eponymous CBS television series Glynis. The original working title for the series was The Glynis Johns Show; in it, Johns played the neophyte mystery writer and amateur sleuth Glynis Granvile. In the autumn of that year, Glynis officially premiered, starring Johns and Keith Andes as a married couple, Glynis Granville and Keith Granville, a criminal defence attorney. Due to pressure from NBC's The Virginian and Bill Cullen's The Price Is Right game show on ABC, the programme was cancelled after thirteen episodes. In 1965, when CBS reran the series as a summer replacement for The Lucy Show, Glynis ranked #6 in the Nielsen ratings. Johns remained busy on screen, appearing as Steffi Bernard in the episode "Who Killed Marty Kelso?" of ABC's detective series Burke's Law opposite Gene Barry. In 1967, she appeared in four episodes of the Batman television series as villainess Lady Penelope Peasoup, one half of the evil duo with Rudy Vallée as her brother Lord Marmaduke Ffogg.

During the first season of NBC's hit sitcom Cheers, Johns guest-starred as Diane Chambers' mother, Helen Chambers, an eccentric dowager who, due to a stipulation in Diane's late father's will, will lose all her money unless Diane is married by the next day. In 1985, Johns played Bridget O'Hara in the episode "Sing a Song of Murder" of CBS's crime drama television series Murder, She Wrote, working again with Angela Lansbury. From 1988 to 1989, she played Trudie Pepper, a senior citizen living in an Arizona retirement community, in the television sitcom Coming of Age, also on CBS. (Wikipedia)