Kitty Gordon: Actress in silent movies and on the musical comedy stage. Rediscovering a long-forgotten silent film star: Kitty Gordon It seems almost unthinkable that there are still silent stars who have not been resurrected, their lives and films subject to detailed, if not always reliable, examination. Yet I am reminded by Michael Levenston, a Canadian who has compiled what is best described as a “scrapbook” of her life and career, that there is one such individual – and not just a “name” in silent films, but also from 1901 onwards famed as a singer/actress in musical comedy and on the vaudeville stage in both her native England and the United States. And she is Kitty Gordon (1878-1974). 'The Enchantress' and her $50,000 backside Kitty Gordon was a talented lady, so much so that Victor Herbert wrote the 1911 operetta The Enchantress for her; one who also had a “gimmick,” in that...
- 12/12/2015
- by Anthony Slide
- Alt Film Guide
Vivien Leigh: Legendary ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ star would have turned 100 today Vivien Leigh was perhaps the greatest film star that hardly ever was. What I mean is that following her starring role in the 1939 Civil War blockbuster Gone with the Wind, Leigh was featured in a mere eight* movies over the course of the next 25 years. The theater world’s gain — she was kept busy on the London stage — was the film world’s loss. But even if Leigh had starred in only two movies — Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire — that would have been enough to make her a screen legend; one who would have turned 100 years old today, November 5, 2013. (Photo: Vivien Leigh ca. 1940.) Vivien Leigh (born Vivian Mary Hartley to British parents in Darjeeling, India) began her film career in the mid-’30s, playing bit roles in British...
- 11/6/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
No 83 Vivien Leigh 1913-67
She was an army officer's daughter, born Vivian Hartley in Darjeeling, one of several daughters of the Raj to become actresses (others were Googie Withers, Merle Oberon, Julie Christie), and educated at convents in England and on the continent. At the age of six she confided to her school friend Maureen O'Sullivan (later her co-star in the 1938 movie A Yank at Oxford) that she was going to be a great actress, and entered Rada aged 18. Her dramatic education, however, was interrupted by marriage and motherhood. She was green-eyed, dark-haired, 5ft 3in, one of the most beautiful women in the world, and it was not long before she made an impression in minor plays and films and attracted the attention of Laurence Olivier, with whom she appeared in the costume movie Fire Over England (1937). Vivien accompanied him to Hollywood the following year, embarking on a love affair,...
She was an army officer's daughter, born Vivian Hartley in Darjeeling, one of several daughters of the Raj to become actresses (others were Googie Withers, Merle Oberon, Julie Christie), and educated at convents in England and on the continent. At the age of six she confided to her school friend Maureen O'Sullivan (later her co-star in the 1938 movie A Yank at Oxford) that she was going to be a great actress, and entered Rada aged 18. Her dramatic education, however, was interrupted by marriage and motherhood. She was green-eyed, dark-haired, 5ft 3in, one of the most beautiful women in the world, and it was not long before she made an impression in minor plays and films and attracted the attention of Laurence Olivier, with whom she appeared in the costume movie Fire Over England (1937). Vivien accompanied him to Hollywood the following year, embarking on a love affair,...
- 2/14/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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