Post by petrolino on Jul 23, 2017 1:47:47 GMT
Conscientious student Shirley MacLaine was chosen as understudy to Carol Haney in a production of 'The Pajama Game'; she'd later reteam with famed choreographer Bob Fosse for 'Sweet Charity' (1969). MacLaine could be quiet and subdued, or light and bubbly, terse and hardened, or shrill and abrasive, it was all in a day's work. She could also play casual observer, and sometimes preferred to, maintaining a parallel career as both author and diarist. Like British '60s icon Sarah Miles and French '70s icon Miou-Miou, she was often dismissed as being mad, but seemed happy enough to plough her own furrow.
"Born in Richmond, Virginia, Shirley MacLaine, 83, made her professional debut dancing on Broadway in Oklahoma! in the 1950s. Her first film appearance was in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry, which won her a Golden Globe in 1955. She has made more than 50 movies and received six Oscar nominations, winning one for her role in 1983’s Terms Of Endearment. Her other films include The Turning Point and Postcards From The Edge. Her latest film, The Last Word, is in cinemas now. She is divorced, has a daughter, and lives in Santa Fe and Malibu."
- Rosanna Greenstreet, The Guardian
"Shirley was somebody totally different. Not many Hollywood stars were that different."
- Derek Malcolm, 'Discovering : Shirley MacLaine'
Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder & Shirley MacLaine
'The Apartment' (1960)
'Irma La Douce' (1963)
Shirley MacLaine & Warren Beatty
- Rosanna Greenstreet, The Guardian
"Shirley was somebody totally different. Not many Hollywood stars were that different."
- Derek Malcolm, 'Discovering : Shirley MacLaine'
Jack Lemmon, Billy Wilder & Shirley MacLaine
'The Apartment' (1960)
'Irma La Douce' (1963)
Shirley MacLaine & Warren Beatty
"Frank Sinatra's parents wanted him to pursue a higher education. In particular, Dolly wanted her son to gain work as a journalist. (When Sinatra's godfather, Frank Garrick, a Hoboken newspaper circulation manager, wouldn't support Frank's attempt to land a sportswriter job, Dolly never forgave Garrick and refused to speak to him again. She later boasted that she was the person who taught Frank to never forget a slight.) Sinatra, though, had ambitions of his own. He longed to leave the delimiting prospects of Hoboken and to cross over the Hudson River to the dream life that might be found in New York. And he thought he had discovered the means to that goal in his parents bar, during the moments in his late childhood when he sang along with the pop songs that played on the music roll of the player piano. Sinatra wanted to be a singer – like his boyhood idol, Bing Crosby – and he developed a fervent belief in his own voice.
At first, Dolly disparaged Frank's hope. But when her son's determination outmatched her own, she used her considerable skills to help him. When Sinatra was almost twenty, Dolly persuaded a local trio to take him on as an extra member, and the re-formed ensemble called itself the Hoboken Four. In September 1935, the group appeared on Major Bowes famed radio show, Amateur Hour, with Sinatra on lead vocal, and it was an instant success – though it was Sinatra who, in the months that followed, received most of the attention from audiences. It proved an intoxicating experience for the young singer, as well as a powerful catalyst.
As John Lahr and Sinatra's close friend Shirley MacLaine have noted, Sinatra immediately found in an audience what he wished for from his mother: a love that he could coax surely and that he felt he could trust. In some ways, Sinatra's audience became his most significant love, though like nearly all the other loves that mattered to him, it was a relationship that would bring its share of failure, rancor and deep hurt. Sinatra began his professional life at a crucial time in the history of the entertainment arts. Advances in technology – including improvements in recording science, the influence of radio and the spread of jukeboxes and home phonographs – were changing how music might be heard and preserved. The most important of these changes was a fairly recent one: the prevailing use of microphones by popular singers. It was a development that proved key to Sinatra's success and art."
- Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone
"Throughout June at the BFI Southbank, a family reunion is taking place. You could be a reasonably committed film buff and easily not know that Warren Beatty (born in 1937 in Richmond, Virginia) and Shirley MacLaine (born 1934) are brother and sister. You could watch all of their films, a wide selection of which the BFI is showing in its twinned retrospectives, and still not know. They have never co-starred, nor are they likely to turn up, arm in arm, and take a stroll down memory lane. How is it a reunion, then? Merely because Beatty’s bouffant hairdresser in Shampoo (1975), for a day at least, will be strutting about in the room next door to MacLaine’s fetching gamine in The Apartment (1960). It’s hard to gauge how close the siblings are these days. When Beatty accepted the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, MacLaine got a very significant mention, and responded with undisguised tears, clues to a late-in-life rapprochement. They’ve been through long periods of what might be called competitive estrangement."
- Tim Robey, The Telegraph
“If it moves and it’s female then Warren is interested ... I’m three years older, and I’m protective."
- Shirley MacLaine on kid brother Warren Beatty
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine in 'My Geisha'
Shirley MacLaine in 'Around The World In 80 Days'
Shirley MacLaine - Kennedy Center Honors Musical Tribute
"This script was submitted to actresses as far back as 15 years ago, Bette Davis at one point was interested. I think Kate Hepburn and Anne Bancroft looked at it. Vanessa Redgrave. Something always happened with the agents, or the deal, or the unavailability of somebody. It was like this script was just waiting for me, all those years, for me to make the transition into character acting. It's the type of character. The eccentric of indeterminate age, who time has certainly not been kind to. That's not a traditional leading lady. So I had to make a decision in terms of how I would look on the screen, how I'd be perceived. I hadn't made a film in (more than) four years. Now I was going to play this. I had to pry myself away from the priorities of cosmetic vanity."
- Shirley MacLaine on filming 'Madame Sousatzka' (1988), Chicago Sun-Times
- Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone
"Throughout June at the BFI Southbank, a family reunion is taking place. You could be a reasonably committed film buff and easily not know that Warren Beatty (born in 1937 in Richmond, Virginia) and Shirley MacLaine (born 1934) are brother and sister. You could watch all of their films, a wide selection of which the BFI is showing in its twinned retrospectives, and still not know. They have never co-starred, nor are they likely to turn up, arm in arm, and take a stroll down memory lane. How is it a reunion, then? Merely because Beatty’s bouffant hairdresser in Shampoo (1975), for a day at least, will be strutting about in the room next door to MacLaine’s fetching gamine in The Apartment (1960). It’s hard to gauge how close the siblings are these days. When Beatty accepted the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, MacLaine got a very significant mention, and responded with undisguised tears, clues to a late-in-life rapprochement. They’ve been through long periods of what might be called competitive estrangement."
- Tim Robey, The Telegraph
“If it moves and it’s female then Warren is interested ... I’m three years older, and I’m protective."
- Shirley MacLaine on kid brother Warren Beatty
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine on Larry King Live : Transcript Excerpt
KING: Ellijay, Georgia, hello.
CALLER: Yes, Shirley. What do you think of the career of your brother, Warren Beatty, as an actor, and do you ever think he will ever run for president?
MACLAINE: I really don't know. You'll have to ask him that. I think he's a marvelous actor, a marvelous director and a marvelous producer. What he will do with politics, I don't know.
KING: What do you think his prior lives were?
MACLAINE: You know, that is one person I have had difficulty in...
(LAUGHTER)
KING: We all have.
MACLAINE: Yes. Well, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) withholding then as he is now.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: You're kidding? Warren withholding? Just gives you anything you want to learn. Just don't ask him. MACLAINE: Yes, but that's wonderful for me, because even though we are diametrically opposed in the way we express ourselves, he's acted as a wonderful teacher for me to hone what I'm feeling and hone what I'm expressing. He's a good teacher along those lines.
KING: He's a great actor, right?
MACLAINE: Oh, yes.
KING: Did you sense that in him early, your kid brother?
MACLAINE: No, I saw him more as a reader. I saw him more shy. I think it might be -- I don't know -- hard for him to give vent to these emotions. But boy, when he does, he really does. I mean, I thought he was so brilliant in "Bugsy."
KING: Or "Reds."
MACLAINE: I like "Bugsy" better.
KING: We'll take a break with Shirley MacLaine in a scene from the aforementioned "Steel Magnolias."
KING: Ellijay, Georgia, hello.
CALLER: Yes, Shirley. What do you think of the career of your brother, Warren Beatty, as an actor, and do you ever think he will ever run for president?
MACLAINE: I really don't know. You'll have to ask him that. I think he's a marvelous actor, a marvelous director and a marvelous producer. What he will do with politics, I don't know.
KING: What do you think his prior lives were?
MACLAINE: You know, that is one person I have had difficulty in...
(LAUGHTER)
KING: We all have.
MACLAINE: Yes. Well, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) withholding then as he is now.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: You're kidding? Warren withholding? Just gives you anything you want to learn. Just don't ask him. MACLAINE: Yes, but that's wonderful for me, because even though we are diametrically opposed in the way we express ourselves, he's acted as a wonderful teacher for me to hone what I'm feeling and hone what I'm expressing. He's a good teacher along those lines.
KING: He's a great actor, right?
MACLAINE: Oh, yes.
KING: Did you sense that in him early, your kid brother?
MACLAINE: No, I saw him more as a reader. I saw him more shy. I think it might be -- I don't know -- hard for him to give vent to these emotions. But boy, when he does, he really does. I mean, I thought he was so brilliant in "Bugsy."
KING: Or "Reds."
MACLAINE: I like "Bugsy" better.
KING: We'll take a break with Shirley MacLaine in a scene from the aforementioned "Steel Magnolias."
Shirley MacLaine in 'My Geisha'
Shirley MacLaine in 'Around The World In 80 Days'
Shirley MacLaine - Kennedy Center Honors Musical Tribute
"This script was submitted to actresses as far back as 15 years ago, Bette Davis at one point was interested. I think Kate Hepburn and Anne Bancroft looked at it. Vanessa Redgrave. Something always happened with the agents, or the deal, or the unavailability of somebody. It was like this script was just waiting for me, all those years, for me to make the transition into character acting. It's the type of character. The eccentric of indeterminate age, who time has certainly not been kind to. That's not a traditional leading lady. So I had to make a decision in terms of how I would look on the screen, how I'd be perceived. I hadn't made a film in (more than) four years. Now I was going to play this. I had to pry myself away from the priorities of cosmetic vanity."
- Shirley MacLaine on filming 'Madame Sousatzka' (1988), Chicago Sun-Times
