By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Argentinian composer Lalo Schifrin, who turns 90 today, is known for his concerts, recordings, film scores such as ‘Bullitt’, ‘Cool Hand Luke’ and ‘Dirty Harry’ and TV shows such as ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Mannix’ but don’t ask him to name a favourite.
‘I like all of them,’ he told me, ‘because it’s like asking a father which of his children he likes better.’ Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – At the Royal Court Theatre in April 2004, a tiny, waif-like creature strolls silently onto a wide, spare stage with the audience still settling and chattering and then suddenly becoming quiet.
There is a window to the rear of what is a painter’s gallery and the young woman stares from it for a long time. She comes to the front where her brilliant television eyes make us think we know this person. But any thought of Dana Scully from ‘The X-Files’ evaporates quickly as Gillian Anderson presents us with another Dana, an artist whose tousled, tied-up hair draws back from a face filled with the misery of failure. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Nostalgia was very much in the air in 1986 when I met Raymond Burr, who was born 105 years ago today. He was in the thick of it. His two long-running series from the Fifties and Sixties – ‘Perry Mason’ and ‘Ironside’ – ran in syndication. ‘Perry Mason Returns’ had been the highest rated TV-movie of the previous year and a sequel did just as well.
After he died aged 78 in 1993, stories emerged of how Burr had fabricated many details of his private life largely to shield the fact that he was gay. When I spent a couple of hours with him in the piano bar of the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles, that was not an issue. It was true that he was a world traveler, a gardener, a gourmet and a philanthropist. He was a wine expert, an authority on forestry, a grower of orchids and principal owner of a newspaper. Also, he was one of the most recognisable actors in the world. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – When he was a major star, Robin Williams told me where he thought Jack Nicholson stood in the Hollywood hierarchy. ‘There’s the rest of us,’ he said, ‘and then there’s Jack.’
One of the finest movie actors ever, Nicholson has long been retired but, as he turns 85 today, he remains an indelible and iconic figure. I met him in New York in 1975 at the junket for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ (pictured below). Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Lois Chiles, who turns 75 today, was the first American Bond girl as Holly Goodhead in ‘Moonraker’ opposite Roger Moore (above) but she told me that it hadn’t done much for her career. ’Has it anybody’s?’ she asked. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Tom Clancy, who would have turned 75 today, wrote best-sellers adapted into hit films such as ‘The Hunt For Red October’, ‘Patriot Games’ and ‘Clear and Present Danger’ featuring CIA man Jack Ryan but he told me in 1988 that he was finished with writing because he thought he would go mad. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – American composer Elmer Bernstein, who would have turned 100 today, wrote wonderful film music and he was terrific company with a fine wit.
He was an early favourite of mine with scores for pictures such as ‘The Magnificent Seven’, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Love With the Proper Stranger’. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – One afternoon early in September 1967, the film writers and critics of London gathered in a West End cinema for a screening of a gangster movie starring a pretty-boy Hollywood actor. The cinema was packed although few there believed the Warner Bros. crime picture would have any merit.
The general mood was not helped when there was a problem with the projector. We were beginning to voice our impatience when on the screen suddenly came a series of snapshots of men and women in Thirties attire. Continue reading
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – The late American comic and film director Carl Reiner, who was born 100 years ago today and died in 2020, made some classic comedies but he told me ‘Dead Men Don’s Wear Plaid’ (above) was his favourite. Continue reading
How ‘Oz’ made Judy Garland a legend
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Judy Garland was born 100 years ago today and died more than half a century ago but her legend lives on. Mostly, that is thanks to the enduring popularity of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and the song ‘Over the Rainbow’. If things had gone differently, Shirley Temple would have played Dorothy and even as it was, the picture was not a success when it first came out. Continue reading →