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Good Morning
We lost one of the most beautiful and talented actresses yesterday. Eleanor Parker passed away, she was 91 years old. This post features photographs of Eleanor and movie clips of some of my favorite scenes. TCM is going to have a memorial event for her on the evening of December 17th…so be sure to catch that.
Eleanor Parker, 91, Oscar-Nominated Actress, Dies – New York Times
Eleanor Parker, who was nominated three times for a best-actress Oscar but whose best-known role was a supporting one, as the marriage-minded baroness in “The Sound of Music,” died on Monday in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 91.
She was nominated for an Oscar for dramatic roles as a wrongly convicted young prisoner in “Caged” (1950), a police officer’s neglected wife in “Detective Story” (1951) and an opera star with polio in “Interrupted Melody” (1955), a biography of the Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence. She also received an Emmy Award nomination in 1963 for an episode of “The Eleventh Hour,” an NBC series about psychiatric cases.
If she never became a star, admirers contended, it was because of her versatility. Sometimes a blonde, sometimes a brunette, often a redhead, Ms. Parker made indelible impressions but submerged herself in a wide range of characters, from a war hero’s noble fiancée in “Pride of the Marines” (1945) to W. Somerset Maugham’s vicious waitress-prostitute in a remake of “Of Human Bondage” (1946).
Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the daughter of a math teacher and his wife. She appeared in school plays as a child and, in her teens, headed for Massachusetts to study acting at the Rice Summer Theater in Martha’s Vineyard. Then she moved to California and studied at the Pasadena Playhouse.
From the LA Times: Eleanor Parker dies at 91; played baroness in ‘The Sound of Music’
“Eleanor Parker was and is one of the most beautiful ladies I have ever known,” said Plummer in a statement Monday. “I hardly believe the sad news for I was sure she was enchanted and would live forever.”
The fame accompanying Parker’s supporting but pivotal role in the enduring 1965 musical about the Von Trapp family was “something she came to make peace with” after many years, her son said Monday.
“It was a lovely role, and she was terrific in it,” Clemens said, “but it was hardly her greatest role. It was only in the last 10 years of her life that she became glad she had done the film. People of all ages know it.”
Eleanor Parker and Frank Sinatra in Otto Preminger’s The Man With The Golden Arm
The Hollywood Reporter: Actress Eleanor Parker Dies at 91
Eleanor Parker, who somehow remained a Hollywood mystery woman despite a dazzling array of work that included three best actress Oscar nominations in the 1950s, has died. She was 91.
Parker earned her Oscar noms during a remarkable six-year span. She played a naive 19-year-old who transforms into a hardened convict in Caged (1950); starred as Kirk Douglas’ wife with a secret in William Wyler’s film noir Detective Story (1951); and portrayed real-life Australian opera star and polio victim Marjorie Lawrence in Interrupted Melody (1955) opposite Glenn Ford.
During a career that spanned more than half a century, the Ohio native also starred as the smothering wife of recovering heroin addict Frank Sinatra in Otto Preminger’s tense The Man With the Golden Arm (1955); as a woman with three distinct personalities in the drama Lizzie (1957); and as the jealous baroness Elsa Schraeder in Robert Wise’s classic musical The Sound of Music (1965).
Screenwriter William Ludwig, who shared an Oscar for his work on Interrupted Melody, wrote in a 1986 biography about Parker that moviegoers “didn’t go to her films to see Miss Parker being Miss Parker in a different dress or locale. You went to see that person she created on film.”
That ability for the real-life person to disappear onscreen led author Doug McClelland to title the biography Eleanor Parker: Woman of a Thousand Faces.
“I don’t always recognize myself when I see my own [still] pictures,” Parker said in the book. “Even to me, they look like Ingrid Bergman, Pat Neal, Myrna Loy, Joan Fontaine and Eleanor Powell at various times. I never look like me. Frankly, I think all this is wonderful. What woman doesn’t like a little mystery about herself?”
Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio. Her father was a math teacher. At age 15, she attended the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, earning her keep “by [ushering] and waiting on tables. They finally let me appear in one play, a bit in What a Life!,” she told The New York Times.
TCM Remembers Eleanor Parker (1922-2013)
A good case can be made for Eleanor Parker as the screen’s “least-heralded great actress,” as co-star Dana Andrews once dubbed her.
A ravishing beauty with a patrician air and a distinctive, throaty voice, Parker might have become the sort of glamorous star personality who amasses a following by essentially playing herself in film after film. Ironically, she may be missing from the pantheon of best-remembered movie stars because she chose instead to create a gallery of characters so unlike one another that biographer Doug McClelland titled his 1989 book Eleanor Parker: Woman of a Thousand Faces.
Commenting on her chameleon-like quality, Parker herself once said, “When I am spotted somewhere it means that my characterizations haven’t covered up Eleanor Parker the person. I prefer it the other way around.”Today, despite her impressive range, frequent brilliance and three Academy Award nominations as Best Actress,
Parker unjustly does not share the name recognition of studio colleagues Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland at Warner Bros. and, later, Greer Garson and Deborah Kerr at MGM. Still, Parker gave them all a run for their money, whether in gritty black-and-white Warner dramas or MGM exercises in Technicolor glamour.
Woman in White and Naked Jungle. Both of those films fascinated me…I know Naked Jungle was a regular on Creature Feature…hell, Woman in White is haunting itself.
These old movies, Gone With The Wind, Jane Eyre (Orson Wells and Joan Fontaine), Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Woman in White are the keys that opened that door to books…reading and my love for the written word.
I read GWTW for the first time when I was 7 or 8 years old…It was a big deal for me, I remember taking it to school and reading it in the playground, all my friends would comment on how “thick” the book was.
Woman in White was the second “thick book” I read, I remember it vividly because after reading Gone With the Wind for the third time, I asked my mother to get me Wilkie Collins…having seen Eleanor Parker in the dual role on the local TV channel some late night.
Take a look at her in this scene from Woman in White…
Woman in White, The (1948) — (Movie Clip) I’m Afraid I’m Lost
and then wander through the links above…and spend some time to enjoy these clips from her films. She was one of the best.
So be sure to watch Eleanor Parker on December 17th, on Turner Classic Movies….and spend the day with one hell of an actress.
Oh, what would I do if it wasn’t for TCM.
(They were going to show Tony Richardson’s Hamlet with Nicol Williamson on Dec. 17th. I had been waiting a year for them to show it again…I hope they schedule it again soon.
If you have not seen this version of Hamlet it is the best. It is something else you should not miss.)
Before we get to the other morning links, here is the TCM Remembers video for 2013:
Okay the rest of today’s stories are in link dump fashion.
Let the Grievances Commence! Festivus Poles Being Erected in Wisconsin, Florida Capitals | Mediaite
Let’s see if this counts as part of the War on Christmas™: Festivus poles are being erected in both the Wisconsin and Florida state capitals, alongside the other holiday… sorry, Christmas displays. The holiday, famously started by Seinfeld‘s Frank Costanza, has taken on a life of its own and been symbolically embraced by secular groups in the years since. And now they’re fighting for a place at the table. Sometimes it’s a giant A, sometimes it’s a giant pole.
Madison, Wisconsin boasts a giant, 30-foot Christmas tree at the capital, not to mention a secular version of the “room at the inn” including Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Mark Twain, and also now happens to be home to a Festivus pole. The traditional airing of grievances will take place two days before Christmas, though sadly there will be no feats of strength.
Of course Fox found it a War on Christmas: Fox News host flips over atheist holiday display: ‘Baby Jesus is behind the Festivus pole!’ | The Raw Story
H/T Shakesville: 10 examples of Indian mascots “honoring” Native peoples | Native Appropriations
Indian mascots, they’re totes honoring to Native peoples, right? That’s what fans always tell us, at least. Inspired by this image above posted on twitter, from a Sonic in Benton, MO, I decided to take some time to compile a list of just a few instances of how these mascots totally “honor” Native people. This is just from memory, btw. There are so, so, so many more.
Charlie Pierce: Trans-Pacific Partnership Documents Released – Chickens Coming Home To Roost – Esquire
WikiLeaks and The Huffington Post have raised all kinds of unshirted hell this morning by publishing a trove of documents relating to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the gigantic new trade agreement which was negotiated largely in secret — unless, of course, you were a CEO or a lobbyist who worked for one — and which the administration is seeking to “fast-track” through Congress so as to avoid the kind of public scrutiny to which deals like this rarely stand up. OK, that last part’s me, but you get the point.
One of the most controversial provisions in the talks includes new corporate empowerment language insisted upon by the U.S. government, which would allow foreign companies to challenge laws or regulations in a privately run international court. Under World Trade Organization treaties, this political power to contest government law is reserved for sovereign nations. The U.S. has endorsed some corporate political powers in prior trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the scope of what laws can be challenged appears to be much broader in TPP negotiations.
Read that and then look at this link that was in one of the comments on Charlie’s thread: Hightower Lowdown | The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It’s a corporate coup d’etat–against us!
(Just linking it here…not sure on Hightower himself. Is he reliable?)
Special report from the New York Times: Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life – The New York Times
Kudos to Joe Torre and Tony LaRussa: Joe Torre, Bobby Cox and Tony LaRussa elected to Baseball Hall of Fame by veterans committee – NY Daily News
Finally this cockroach is behind bars: Founder of revenge-porn site arrested in San Diego – SFGate
Oh and check out these cockroaches: Alien Cockroach Species Invading the U.S. – News Watch
Makes me think of that scene from Men in Black…
And finally: Rarest Orchid Species Rediscovered, Hochstetter’s Butterfly-Orchid Found In The Azores [PHOTO]
A team of botanists were surprised to Europe’s rarest orchid species growing in the Azores. Richard Bateman
One of Europe’s rarest orchid species has been rediscovered in the Azores, a group of volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean.
The discovery of the Hochstetter’s butterfly-orchid confirms that the islands support three kinds of orchid species, rather than one. The findings, published in the journal PeerJ, explains how the rare species was found.
So delicate and beautiful. Well, that is all folks…have a wonderful day and share your thoughts and stories with us.
